Omnigraffle attempts to save its files as packages - a format OS X supports, but windows and samba servers do not.

There is an "save this document as a flat file" preference option for each document in Omnigraffle which should resolve this issue and should be used if you regularly save to network shares on non-Apple servers.

http://forums.omnigroup.com/showpost.php?s=c1d4e102eef15890d2c46830044899aa&p=52096&postcount=5

You'll need to change the document properties for each document you wish to save this way:

  You can go in to the Inspector for the document, and look in the Canvas accordion pane under the Document Settings tab. There, you will find a heading for "File format options", which by default seems to be set to "Automatic." You can change this to "Save as flat file", and save the document

If you need to do this often, you can change the document templates so that any new documents you create will automatically be flat files:

  Go to the OmniGraffle application bundle, right-click, and select
  "Show Package Contents."
  Finder will show you the inside of
  application bundle. Navigate within the application bundle to Contents
  => Resources => Templates. In here, you will find a set of OmniGraffle documents that are used as your default document templates.
  Open
  the document template that you want to modify. OmniGraffle launches
  and shows you the document.
  Open the Inspector for the document, go
  to Document Settings under Canvas, and set the document template
  file's File Format option to "Save as flat file."
  Save the document
  template.

  Now, all new OmniGraffle documents created from that document template
  will also have their default preference set to "Save as flat file"
  since the template's preference has been set to that setting.

(via maxim porges)


Most MacBook use MagSafe charging which doesn't operate on the same voltage as USB - so the vast majority of battery banks that charge anything USB won't work. There are some inverters that would power the adapter using 120 or 240 VAC but those are quite large.

Only the new MacBook with USB-C connector is low power enough to charge over the new power delivery specification for USB 3.1 that generally is supported along with the change to USB-C connector. Any charging bank would need increased power than what is used to charge most any mobile devices made in 2015 and earlier.


How to find lost Safari password on iPhone

If the password isn’t showing on the website you intend, you can retrieve it manually. Settings -> Passwords & Accounts -> Website & App Passwords.


Can I easily copy or replicate an advanced gradient fill in keynote?

Use ⌥+⌘+C to copy style and ⌥+⌘+V to paste style.


What is "Setup" process on activity monitor?

You can find the path to the process which will tell you more about what it is.

From the gear menu, choose Sample Process.

Observe the path to the process.

In this example, I sampled Activity Monitor itself, which shows that the Activity Monitor process is inside Activity Monitor.app.


There's no such thing as a "Windows formatted" DVD. DVD and CD-ROMs have their own format which is supported by Windows, Mac, Linux and all sorts of appliances, media players, etc.

I will recommend testing:

1) Can the Mac play other DVDs than the problematic one?

2) Does the problematic DVD play on another PC?

If test 1 is negative, try to resolve the problem with the DVD drive on the Mac - for example cleaning the lens, etc. Maybe consider buying an external USB DVD-drive.

If test 2 is negative, try cleaning the DVD disc itself and check it for scratches, etc. It might not be possible to fully recover all the data from it.

If both tests are positive you might have a DVD that is in the process of being filled up with data - i.e. it is not finalized yet. You would then need to finalize the disc - most easily done using the original software you used for burning data to the disc.


Which Ports are open by Default on iPad 2 (iOS 6)?

No ports are open by default on iOS 6. This shouldn't be confused with the also true statement that iOS 6 will open network connections to several Apple servers so that APNS and iCloud push email and software updates work.

You will have to configure things like WiFi sync or run file sharing software or a web server to get the device listening on IPv4 ports.

I use an app called Netstat from the iTunes Store to inspect all network connections. That should help you determine which setting or app has opened port 1027 on your device. On all my iOS 5 and iOS 6 devices, the only default open port (LISTENING) is on localhost/loopback.


Mac Password dialog box font missing / corrupt

I have the same issue. Did some Google searching and tried to clean the cache in the font database through terminal: "sudo atsutil databases -remove; atsutil server -shutdown"

This did not work, so the other option would be to remove San Francisco for now from your user folder. Haven't tried that yet.


So, I just found out I have this unanswered question. The solution is to drag out from the URL/Searchbar. You will then not drag the url but the file.


What happened to some of the symbols in Mac OS X Lion?

You may need to reinstall the fonts Symbola or Quivira on your Lion OS.  Also you may need to specifically select these fonts for the text where you want them to display.


How to remove privacy settings for files and folders in Catalina?

In short, those buttons don't work and there's no easy way of adding, deleting, or modifying the contents of that list.

For the difficult way, have a look at this answer:
Add apps to "Files and Folders" permissions?


File-paths in iCloud: Tilde ( ~ ) within the paths. What's the meaning?

The reason for naming things like that starting with top level domain and going down to being more and more specific is to have them grouped automatically when listing them. This is common practise for things like java classes or preference files (but usually separated by dots).

Using the tilde character has nothing to do with the home directory tilde. I guess it's just one of the last remaining symbols of the standard charset without a special meaning in this context, while .:;<>$/"*# and so on may have conflicts with different interpretations.


Using iMac (2010) as a display for my PC laptop with with VGA only output (female)

You can with hardware, but it's not going to be cheap.  The main issue is going from analog (VGA) to digital; it's much easier to convert one digital format to another.  One (clunky) solution would be to chain a VGA to DVI scaler ($330) to a DVI to Mini DisplayPort converter ($150).   If you get similar products on eBay, you can get a complete solution for a little under $250.

A better solution would be with software like ScreenRecycler or one of the recommended alternatives.  This way, you're effectively remotely viewing your screen - with a fast enough computer, this works well.


Mission Control occasionally freezing computer and garbling screen content

You can do a couple resets to the computer to see if it resolves the issue.

Disk utility (application) > select 'Macintosh HD' on the left-hand column > and click VERIFY disk under FIRST AID.

This takes about 2 - 3 minutes and will let you know if you have a corrupt hard drive which might be causing that issue

Reset PRAM -- Shut computer down > hold down: p + r + Command + Option > with these four keys held down, proceed to hold down the 'POWER' key as well in the top-right hand corner of the keyboard. > hold down all 5 keys until you hear TWO sounds come out of the computer.

It'll be that familiar chime sound that it makes upon starting up normally

These steps work for all Mac computers -- let me know if this works


USB Hard drive has very small chance of being recognized by Macbook Pro each time it is connected, but works with other machines

I had the same issue with a WD Elements 2.5" 2TB disk on my retian macbook with macOS High Sierra.

My assumption is that the disk "fell" off the USB bus and macOS instead of gracefully retrying is just giving up.

In my case the disk worked for an hour or two, but then I got the error that I should eject Disks before unplugging them and the errors in the dmesg.

I guess this is a combination of macOS being not very forgiving and the WD on-disk USB controllers being a little wonky.

I was using a USB3 hub between the macbook and the disk, so maybe that was the source of wonkyness.

I have no ZFS drivers installed.


Can I restore data backed up from a newer version of iOS?

Unfortunately you cannot restore an iOS device to any backup that had been done from a newer version of iOS, using either iCloud or iTunes, due to the firmware.
iTunes will give an error and iCloud will not even show the backup as an option to restore from.

To be able to use the backup that you have, you must upgrade the iPhone 4 to the newest 5.1.1 update that was just released. It should go smooth from there.

I work at the Genius Bar at an Apple Store.


How do I change the font in all pages in Pages app at once?

First select all of the document by pressing Command+A. Then click on Format > Style on the Pages toolbar at the top and choose the font you wish on the sidebar on the right.


Restore option-left and option-right in MacOS terminal - What is the action sequence?

I have the following settings:

Option Left is \033b
Option Right is \033f


Transferring text messages with upgrade from iPhone 4 to iPhone 5

I would get a program like PhoneView and just archive both device's SMS/Voicemail/call records. Unless the new phone is really new and you don't mind losing the new texts to restore a backup of all the texts from the old, there's not a way to inject or combine both stores of text messages.


By default, MacPorts installs in /opt/local, which usually needs to be created and therefore MacPorts by default needs root to install and upgrade. However, it doesn't have to be this way. MacPorts can be configured to use any directory you want as its root directory, and according to this page if you set your home directory to be its root directory you can use MacPorts without needing to be root.


Disable Thunderbolt ports in macOS Mojave to mitigate the Thunderclap vulnerabilities

The best way to do this is to move away those kernel extensions completely. This means that they're never loaded during boot - and thus you do not have a "gap" where the computer is vulnerable during the time between boot and the time where you run the kextunload commands. In addition you do not have to deal with dependencies for unloading them.

The necessary steps are:

1) Boot the Mac in Recovery mode (boot the Mac with cmd-R pressed).

2) Open Terminal

3) Disable SIP by running:

  csrutil disable

4) Create a folder to contain the disabled extensions:

  mkdir /Users/<username>/ArchivedExtensions/

5) Move the kernel extensions you want to disable away by running:

  mv /System/Library/Extensions/<name>.kext /Users/<username>/ArchivedExtensions/

6) Re-enable SIP by running:

  csrutil enable

Note that  should be substituted with your username, and  should be substituted with the extension you want to disable. You can run the command multiple times with different names to disable more extensions.

The relevant extensions you can disable are:

AppleThunderboltDPAdapters.kext
AppleThunderboltEDMService.kext
AppleThunderboltIP.kext
AppleThunderboltNHI.kext
AppleThunderboltPCIAdapters.kext
AppleThunderboltUTDM.kext
IOThunderboltFamily.kext


Why can't I use cmd key to change languages for a single character?

Cmd isn’t mormally used for making characters in macos -- instead it is employed for menu shortcuts and other purposes. You can use caps lock to switch to the US keyboard for character input if you set that option in system preferences/keyboard/input sources.

If you use the input source named "Hebrew" , then you should be able to get Latin characters by pressing caps lock (without actually switching to the US layout).

The input source named "Hebrew PC" will generate Latin characters when you hold down the Shift key, but only upper case.


Liquid keyboard damage on MB Air - password keys don’t work even with USB keyboard

Physical damage simply cannot “fry” software; it’s impossible.  The most likely cause is that something is shorted in the MacBook keyboard and it’s conflicting with the same signals being sent by the USB keyboard.

Disconnect the keyboard from the logic board and then use use the USB keyboard to login.  While it will get you up and running, it’s not a permanent fix.  The top case will have to be replaced.

See Keyboard key stuck or not being recognized; how to fix for more details


Access application submenus with AppleScript

There are a couple of things.

First you will need a delay between the Activation of the App (Firefox) and the click action.

If you do not,the click action will be fire way too soon for the application to pick it up.

Secondly, in my FirfFox the Zoom in Menu item is under the View menu.

So the code needs to work back from the Zoom in menu item back to the initial Menu item taking in all the nodes in between.

click menu item "Zoom In" of menu 1 of menu item "Zoom" of menu 1 of menu bar item "View" of menu bar 1

activate application "Firefox"
delay 1
tell application "System Events"
    tell process "Firefox"
        click menu item "Zoom In" of menu 1 of menu item "Zoom" of menu 1 of menu bar item "View" of menu bar 1

    end tell
end tell

Each Sub menu item must have a controlling menu

So you could even use.

click menu item "Zoom In" of it's menu of menu item "Zoom" of it's menu of menu bar item "View" of menu bar 1


installing express without npm for the MEAN stack

I fixed it by downloading and installing node.js which also installed npm.


AppleShowAllFiles Command not working in Mavericks OS X 10.9

It worked for me in 10.9. You should be using -bool TRUE (not just TRUE), although it worked for me either way. Also, are you running it as two commands (killall Finder is a second command)? The only other thing I can think of is that cfprefsd might have the old setting (or lack therof) cached, so you may have to shut it down it first. If I understand the setup right, that shouldn't be necessary, but just in case:

killall cfprefsd
defaults write com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles -bool TRUE
killall Finder


Does any data go into SSD from bootable OS USB (besides OS itself)?

If you used installed OS X on your SSD from a bootable hard drive partition that was cloned from an install DVD, nothing else residing on your hard drive will be copied over without you knowing about it.

The only time user data is copied over onto a new drive is when transferring from a Time Machine volume or a disk in Thunderbolt/Firewire Target mode - something that cannot happen without your knowledge or consent.


There are a number of different options to try to fix recurrent Keychain Access issues.

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/6724601


How do I lock my screen without making it sleep on macOS 10.11.3?

You can set up a hot corner for screen saver, and have the security settings to require your password immediately after the screen saver starts. This means when you go to leave the computer, you just move the mouse to a specified corner of the screen and BAM it's locked.

First, you would open System Preferences, and then go to "Desktop & Screen saver". Then click the "Screen saver" tab in the top middle.

Click on the "Hot Corners" button in the bottom right. Here, you can select a corner of the screen to attach an action to.

I'd suggest one of the bottom corners for this. Since there are menu buttons in both top corners on a Mac, you don't want to accidentally trigger the screen saver every time you want to open the Apple menu or Notification Centre. I have the bottom left corner on my set to display sleep, but you can choose "Start screen saver" for a corner as well.

Second, you will need to go back to the main System Preferences page, and click "Security & Privacy". In the General Tab, you can tick the box for "Require password X minutes after sleep or screen saver starts"
The "X minutes" bit is a drop down box and you can choose from Immediately or 5 seconds, up to 8 hours.

Now whenever you want to lock the screen, just move the mouse right into the corner you selected before leaving the computer and when someone else tries to use the computer, it will ask for your password.

Edit Jan 5th:
As of High Sierra (10.13), there is an option in the Apple Menu to lock the screen, which does not cause the system to sleep. Works a charm. You can also press the Control, Command and Q keys as a shortcut


Is it possible to return the iPhone to its very original factory state?

Settings -> General -> Reset -> 'Erase all Content and Settings'. On some devices (3gs and 4) this will only return the iPhone to factory settings (but not activation mode). For the latter, I'd just plug it in to iTunes and click 'Restore'.


Apple has a very good triage step that I follow even after doing a very good job like you in trying to eliminate things (or hope for a quick fix)

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204267 (always start with the basics)
https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204156 (Which leads to general OS startup)
https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT207019 (which is the detailed - just updated and boot fails process)

Why not start down that path and this evening make a good last backup so you can proceed where it says erase and start over?

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204904 (The erase and start over process)


How can I transfer all my songs to iPhone instead of just purchased songs?

There are multiple ways to get around this issue, and I've detailed one below. Before trying that, though, see if this solves your problem:

Select the iPhone in the iTunes sidebar. Go to the Music tab and look at what music is syncing.
I expect maybe only the "Purchased" playlist is syncing, and that's why. If that's the case, simply select  and you're set!

Here's the other fix, if that doesn't work:

Select the iPhone in the iTunes sidebar. Find the tick box that looks like this:  and make sure it's checked.
Go to Music in the sidebar and select everything (Tip: ⌘ (command or control) A!).
Drag everything to your iPhone.


Will an iPad 2 3G from UK work on a Poland's (or another country's) 3G network?

It's not locked to any one carrier so you should be able to insert a Micro SIM card for your local carrier and it will work.

The catch is that there are different sets of GSM frequencies in use, so you should verify that your chosen carrier uses frequencies supported by the iPad.  Odds are it will work, but better to be safe.

From the specs page, here is what it supports:

  UMTS/HSDPA/HSUPA (850, 900, 1900, 2100 MHz); GSM/EDGE (850, 900, 1800,
  1900 MHz)

The broader situation is that the only problematic (less interoperable) 3G iPad is the Verizon-specific model sold in the USA


How do I delete forward on a Macbook Pro?

As an alternative to Fn+delete, you can also use control+D to trigger a forward-delete, at least in most places.  Some older apps may not support it, apparently.


Is there a better way to manage Text Messages?

If you are jailbroken, you can use iCleaner:

Source: http://www.iclarified.com/images/news/37323/160771/160771.jpg

  Message attachments: it deletes files sent and received via iMessage or MMS. The “smart” setting only deletes files that do not show up in any message, while “on” deletes all attachments (messages with attachments will show a blank icon).

Source: http://www.funkyspacemonkey.com/icleaner-ultimate-ios-device-cleaning-app


Game Center friend invites not working in iOS 10

Many Game Center's features were removed from the Game Center service itself so they still wouldn't work, including adding friends, even if you have Ios 10 . Now, you can see just the rankings and the goals of the game; you can also invite and challenge your friends only through iMessage, and only if the game supports it.


Open file in Sublime Text tab via AppleScript

Sublime Text doesn't provide an AppleScript suite, but does provide a command line utility ‘subl’ in:

/Applications/Sublime Text.app/Contents/SharedSupport/bin/subl

Usage is available with --help.

subl is aware of the current window when opening files and adds the file as a tab.

/Applications/Sublime\ Text.app/Contents/SharedSupport/bin/subl /path/to/file

To run this in AppleScript, use ‘do shell script’.

do shell script ¬
    "/Applications/Sublime\\ Text.app/Contents/SharedSupport/bin/subl /path/to/file"

do shell script
    "/Applications/Sublime\\ Text.app/Contents/SharedSupport/bin/subl " ¬
    & quoted form of POSIX path of (alias "path:to:file")


Which iPhone English dictionary gives the best pronunciation?

I would try the Dictionary.com app.

http://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewSoftware?id=308750436&mt=8


You may want to give GV Connect a try or Talkatone.

Both work on iPad with instructions here and here.


My volume is greyed out with a (/) on it

‘Optical digital-out port’ shown in System Preferences indicates that the computer believes something is plugged in to the audio out on your computer. Try plugging in headphones then disconnecting them, or otherwise clean the port.


iPhotos > Shared Photo Albums: Protect from Remote Deletion

If the person who shared the Albums either deletes them, or their account is otherwise deleted, your access to the shared albums will also cease. However, if you want to ensure future access to the shared pictures, you must copy the pictures locally to your own iPhotos account.

In iPhotos:

Click on Shared Album
Click "Select"
Choose all the photos you want to protect from the sharer deleting the Shared Album (even or losing their account completely)
Click "Share" button
Choose "Save Image"

Now if the person who shared the album deletes it, you've copied the images into your own iPhotos account.  In the age of this global pandemic, I suspect a lot of cherished family photos will be lost forever as the virus claims loved ones who obviously won't be paying the monthly iCloud storage subscription fees.

Hope this helps folks safeguard their cherished memories from inadvertent loss-


How to use Mission Control with multiple monitors?

Why not use one "space" and place the parallels apps on monitor 2 and mac apps on monitor 1?

Spaces is like completely new environment of all monitors attached and can't be used in different way.

Maybe this question is a bit old and it's available since Yosemite and El Capitan.


Macos opens Instruments when I press "Command" + "~"

Unfortunately when I have opened Chrome and I want to switch between its windows, ⌘` opens Instruments.

As Instruments is a part of Xcode, not Google Chrome, check the Chrome > Services menu for a service assigned: ⌘`
You can change it in: System Preferences > Keyboard > Shortcuts > Services


Stay with bash and install a newer bash with brew (v5.0.11 instead of Apple's bash v3.2.57). Add the path to brew's bash to /etc/shells. In the advanced options of the System Preferences > Users & Groups > (alt-click) your user > login shell change the login shell to brew's bash. Some things may break though.

OR

Start using zsh: move the POSIX-compliant .bashrc content to .profile and source this file in .zshrc like this:

[[ -e ~/.profile ]] && emulate sh -c 'source ~/.profile'

Some things may break though.

OR BEST

Start from scratch and learn how to configure zsh. A lot of things in your .bashrc like aliases and env variables should work in .zshrc though.

There is no Google translator from bashin to zshlish. If you don't post the content of your .bashrc (we still can't look over your shoulder!), we won't be able to tell what may go wrong.


How to partition a pen drive with Disk Utility in El Capitan?

Open Disk Utility and select the disk in the sidebar (not a partition).
Click Partition in the toolbar.
Enter the first partition information.
Click the + button to add a second partition.
Enter the second partition information. The size will be entered automatically from the remaining space.
Click Apply.


Go to System Preferences -> Keyboard and check "Use all F1, F2, etc. keys as standard function keys." System Preferences can be found in the Apple menu, or in your Applications folder. Then, make sure that Eclipse still has the F11 shortcut for 'Run' - it might be different on OS X.


How to bring application to foreground using Spotlight/keystrokes (named windows/named applications)?

Is there a way to put names on windows and then open them by name?

No, there is no built-in mechanism in macOS to assign names to different windows of an app and access it by names.

  Spotlight generally works, but if you have more than one open application window it doesn't quite work.

When using Spotlight to search and launch an already running app, the window will be shown in the foreground in the following cases:

There's only a single open app window.
The app window(s) are not minimized, but hidden using the keyboard shortcut Command + H.

If the app is hidden while none of the window is minimized, invoking app name will show all of them.
If the app window(s) are minimized, only one of them is shown in the foreground.

The other open and minimized windows can be brought to foreground using either one of the following methods:

Right click on the Dock icon for the app and select the window. The minimized windows are shown with a leading ◆ icon in the context menu.
Bring the app to foreground normally using Spotlight. Now use the Application Windows Hot Corner action to see just the app windows, maximized or minimized in a Mission Control like view.


Pictures folder on iMac has a 4 GB Photo Library

Leave it. Photos still needs to download your Photos when you decide to view them. It will either download a device-optimized or full-resolution copy depending on your chosen settings.

Think of this file as a local cache of your photo library, although it also contains other things that are not stored in iCloud, such as Smart Albums and facial recognition data. If you delete this file Photos will need to recreate it and rebuild your library from iCloud data. In particular, it will need to re-download thumbnails for all of your photos.

The idea is that if you do run low on storage, Photos will start purging photos you haven’t viewed in a while, in albums you haven’t specifically marked as Download Originals to this Mac.


After latest Safari update, bank websites don't recognize my computer or autofilled name+pwd

Try launching Keychain Assistant.

Find the password for the site in the Passwords section.

Just double-check that the password is correct if you enter it manually.

I haven't had Safari/Keychain forget a password, especially a financial password, since I became a Mac convert in 2010, across many machines/devices and OS upgrades.


Where to find a list of purchased books in the Amazon Kindle app for iPad?

The current latest version of the Kindle app running on iPadOS 13 is Version 6.28. Follow these steps to see the list of all your purchased books:

First of all, make sure you are logged into the Kindle app with the correct account. To ensure, tap on the More button shown at the bottom toolbar, and then tap on the Settings item.

Check for the logged in account under Registration.

Once confirmed, Tap on the (X) button shown at top right to dismiss the Settings screen. Now in the bottom toolbar, tap on the Library button to navigate to the Library screen.
Once on the Library screen, in the toolbar shown under the search bar at the top of the screen, tap on All to show all the books, samples and documents associated with your account. Selecting Downloaded would only show the books, samples and documents downloaded locally, and it would show a blank page if you have not downloaded or synced any content to your iPad.

Tap on the Filter button shown towards the top left of the screen (under the bell icon), to filter the listing to show just the purchased books by tapping on the Books item.

The same steps can be followed to access the list of purchased books in the iPhone app.


What can I, as a user, do about offensive reviews in App Store?

There is a direct way of reporting these concerns, although Apple does not make it obvious how to do it, unfortunately.

Go to the review in question and press & hold (long press) on it, and you will see this pop-up:

Tap on "Report a Concern" and it will bring up this window:

"It contains offensive material" seems like an appropriate choice.

You will be given a text box to explain why you think it is offensive.

Can't say that anything will actually happen with it, but I'd wager it's the best chance you have of getting someone's attention.


Locating A WiFi Network Password Within OS X That Has Been Saved On My Mac?

If you have saved it previously, open Keychain Access (located in /Applications/Utilities or via Spotlight) and search for the wifi network name.

If you have found it, check the lowest checkbox to reveal the password. You need your login password to do so.


High Sierra 10.13.4 Mission Control Hot Corners Broken

Apple Support was willing to help me troubleshoot, even though I don't have a current support contract.  We tried several things, and eventually determined that a desktop/window manager add-on called Magnet was messing up the UI events.  (I had tried just turning off the add-on, but that didn't work.)  It was some other troubleshooting step, including:

Reset NVRAM (shutdown, power up with Opt+Cmd+P+R)
Safe-mode Boot (Restart, hold Shift during boot)
Create new admin user, log in (this helps distinguish a system problem from a particular user's preferences problem)
Disable startup items

Resetting NVRAM didn't help, but safe mode worked.  (However, safe mode turns off all graphics acceleration, so it's really slow on a Retina machine.)

The new user didn't show the problem, so it was clearly something in my preferences / profile.

Finally, turning off Magnet auto-start and rebooting cleared up the problem in my user account.  I was subsequently able to turn Magnet on again, and it's working OK now.  So I suspect it was a stray preference that conflicted with an OSX upgrade, which got cleared out by the rebooting and other troubleshooting steps.

I'm extremely grateful to Apple Support for the help!


Problem activating TargetDisplay Mode for Mac Mini (2014) connected to iMac 21'' (mid-2010)

Unfortunately, the Mid-2010 iMac 21" doesn't support Target Display mode. Only the 27" iMac from that generation does, which is why you are getting no response when you press CMD+F2. The Apple website offers more information here:


Why am I not prompted to 'Keep notes on iPhone' when I disable Notes in iCloud settings?

It's either a bug or by design. My iDevices do the same.

You could try moving them to a different account using the notes app on the Mac, if you have access to that. That wouldn't solve your problem completely though.


Use Command-Tab to tab to the app as usual
Before releasing the Command key, press Option as well
Release Command and Tab
Release Option

Doing it is actually easier than explaining it, so just give it a try!


How do I find my Apple ID connected to my iphone if the phone has been lost?

There doesn't seem to be any easy way to do this.

To do it by trial and error, you can go to the iCloud web-site and login with each of your Apple IDs and try the "Find my iPhone" feature to locate it and/or send a message/tone to it.

If you have any other iOS devices with a similar setup, you can check on them as well.


Keynote 6.6: How can I make an object wider by animation, but not higher

One way to accomplish this is with the Magic Move animation.  However this will require an additional slide.  Duplicating the slides including their content will not give the appearance of a slide change, only items that are moved or changed will appear to animate, not the slide itself.  See animation below.

Create your object on one slide.
Duplicate the slide.
Resize the object in the second slide to the desired width.
Set animation on the first slide to Magic Move
Change the animation duration and/or acceleration to the desired result.

Slide one:

Slide two:

Resulting animation:


My account is hidden from start login screen after migrating it to a new Macbook

From OS X: About FileVault 2:

  Users not enabled for FileVault unlock will only be able to log in to that Mac after an unlock-enabled user has started or unlocked the drive. Once unlocked, the drive remains unlocked and available to all users, until the computer is shut down.

In order to enable the migrated user for FileVault:

Log in with the account which works
Run Preferences, go to "Security & Privacy" and then the "FileVault" tab
Check for any user accounts which are not enabled yet and log them in (once)


Yes, Apple has a Reuse and Recycling Program where you can get a Gift Card for the value of your computer.  Of course, what value they might consider it to have is another question.


iPad mini offers update to iOS 6.0.2 that won't install

Since things aren't working as expected, make a backup - perhaps two, one to iTunes and another to iCloud.

Connect the device to iTunes and let iTunes download the entire 6.1 update rather than monkeying with a pair of delta patches that iOS downloads to save space on the device and save bandwidth and time to update.


Normally, your iPod will load the previous messages. That's from my experience...


How to recreate Lion Recovery HD partition?

I installed a larger drive in my MBP and cloned my original disk to the new drive using SuperDuper!  This process doesn't create the restore partition. Reinstalling Lion onto the new drive created the necessary partition for me.

I reinstalled this using the "USB Key" installer run from a partition on an  external drive. My User accounts, applications, etc. survived the reinstall but I did have to run the updaters for the OS and reinstall Java after the Lion reinstall.

Note that I did all of this before enabling Filevault on the new drive. Not sure that mattered, but it seemed prudent.


Automator action to upload a file/folder

You can combine Automator's Run Shell Script step with the command line tool curl.

curl can upload files using the -F flag followed by a file path. See ariejan de vroom's uploading files with Curl for an example.

Your shell script can be passed a list of files from earlier Automator steps:

for f in "$@"
do
    curl -i -F "$f" http://example.org/upload
done


Late 2011 MacBook Pro 15" broken graphics - want to use external monitor

The linked forum thread has 109 pages; What is your current state of MacBook - what have you tried from that forum post?

If your MacBook is now working and using the integrated graphics card, you can try to buy a USB to VGA/HDMI/... adapter.

Streaming to an Apple TV (which then connects to a TV/monitor) should work, even without the dedicated graphics card, but there are some limitations to it (e.g. may be slow, not ideal for videos/transitions,...). At least I could not find anything that implied it being a problem.

AirPlay is as far as I know only for music.

But you should probably read more about this problem here.


Finding the folder a note is stored in in Notes

This works on 10.12.6 Sierra: Search for the note, select it, then clear the search field. The folder will be highlighted in light gray.


Finder has trouble mounting folders with special characters

Without having to learn the entire illegal character list for every OS, it's best to train people to an easy subset of these rules…
Alphanumeric only. No umlauts, etc. No spaces, use underscores.
You could probably make a call on Capitals, most OSes are case insensitive, so it shouldn't matter.
Don't let them use edge cases & you won't have to fix them;) This is especially important if you have multi-platform access, as illegal characters on one OS may not be on another.
I'd make a rule on replacing umlauts too, decide whether Müller should become Muller or Mueller & stick to it - that way people will not need three guesses to find an otherwise known name.
Using underscores with no spaces just makes paths simpler - no-one has to guess whether they need folder name folder\ name folder%20name or "folder name" to find something, it's always folder_name.
% is a URL escape [encoding] method as seen above, %20 means space - best to be avoided for names in URLs.


How do I delete/break a symbolic link in Lion?

You can delete the symlink the same way as any other file. It will not follow the link. You can do this in finder by moving the link to the trash, or from the command line using rm path/to/symlink.

Do not attempt to remove all symlinks on your computer. They are used by the system in some places, such as frameworks.


Restricting/Disabling imessage capability on my teen's iphone

You can disable iMessages by having your teen go to settings and making all the changes she wants to the following items:

iCloud
Mail, Contacts, Calendars
Messages
Facetime
Twitter, Facebook, Flickr and Vimeo

Then you will want to observe that she turns off iMessages on the device and then lets you turn on restrictions with a PIN that you keep confidential from the teen.

In restrictions, under general in the settings app, you will want to prevent changes to Accounts about 2/3 of the way down the screen under ALLOW CHANGES text. Select "Don't Allow Changes" and then check that iMessages is now dimmed out in the settings app.

Now, that will restrict that one app - however there are hundreds of app store apps that allow chatting and you might have to consider also preventing app store installs entirely to mitigate that risk. However, with phones and iPods getting cheaper and cheaper, if a teen wants to communicate, it's going to be hard to prevent that with policies and technological efforts that are more geared for toddlers and pre-teens.

Good luck reaching some balance of control and trust going forward.


How to sign out of iCloud on iPhone and Macbook without having access to rescue email and with Find my iPhone and Find my Mac turned on?

First of all, the comment by Patrix is an excellent way to start. I've helped many users by using the various options there (sometimes having to add other security email addresses, calling Apple Support, etc). This process may or may not be extremely frustrating - I've seen users sort things out pretty quickly, and others who have had to wait days for Apple to call them back once everything was sorted.

However, another option which may or may not be palatable to you is to just contact your previous employer.

About six weeks ago I came across a very similar situation, except in their case it was an old email address from an ISP they were no longer with. After some negotiation the old ISP agreed to recreate the email address at their end for one hour and set it up to autoforward to the user's current email address. During that hour the user was able to access the emails from iforgot.apple.com and change their email address etc.

Of course, in your case it may be a case of being allowed access to your old email (either because it still exists, or because they've recreated the address for you). Or they could set up an autoforward as happened in the above example.

If this isn't an option, then iforgot.apple.com really is your only option.


Hold down the Option key when you launch iTunes. You will be asked to choose an existing library, or create a new library. You can search the web for iTunes multiple libraries and find the answer.

I suggest that you create a new iTunes library, move songs that you don't listen on a regular basis over there. If you already have them in a play list, just export them from your primary library and import in the other library.


Will installing Jupyter Notebook mess up the Hydrogen package in Atom?

No, I  use both on my iMac with no problem. Both work fine. I also have High Sierra.


For MS Office you can download the Template here:


How do WWDC presenters paste text during demos?

Apple used custom code called "Demo Monkey" whose source code is available on GitHub.


Removing a Gmail account on a computer I'm selling

All you need to do is remove that account from the Mac you intend to sell and all your emails will subsequently be deleted from that Mac and no other devices will be affected. To remove the account:

Open Mail Preferences (Cmd + , or Mail -> Preferences)
Select "Accounts"
Select the account(s) that you wish to remove, and proceed to select the minus button below the list of accounts.
Accept the prompt by clicking "Remove".


How to uninstall LibreOffice from Mac OS Catalina?

For any app that comes with an installer package, check to see if there is an uninstaller option.

Check with the developer, to ask what step they recommend for removing the app.

Otherwise, for most apps, delete the following:

the .app bundle from /Applications.
subfolders with the app's name in /Library/Application Support and
<user>/Library/Application Support

There may be subfolders in the company's name, e.g. Adobe.

If you want to go mad, you can also look for folders with the app's name in other subfolders of the user Library:  Caches, Containers, LaunchAgents. They may be named as com.company.appname, or org.company.appname.

There may be files in <user>/Library/Preferences, of type com.company.appName.plist. Typically these will be only a few Kb, and if you miss them (or other small files in other places), they will do nothing but occupy one-hundred-millionth of the space your hard drive.

Essentially, this is all that so-called 'cleaner' apps do: search for files with the app's name in your user Library. They can of course delete the wrong thing and miss obscurely named files just as easily as you can.

Orphaned files left over will just sit on your hard drive and never be read. (Ahhhh.) They won't affect the running of your computer in any way.


iTunes won't actually transfer pictures from your iPhone to your laptop. To do that, you will need to use the built-in Windows Image Capture program. It should open as an option when you plug your iPhone into your computer. After starting the program you can import the pictures from your iPhone.

Here is Apple's official documentation on importing photos: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201302

These steps may be more concise:
http://www.digitaltrends.com/photography/best-ways-get-photos-iphone/


Without a backup, can I downgrade from Sierra to El Capitan?

If you downloaded El Capitan Installer in Mac App Store before, you can find the application in your Purchased section on the top of the app, where you can download it again, write the installer to a usb and boot from that USB in order to install El Capitan to your Machine. Details are written here.


Most important MacOS folders to move from SSD to spinning HDD, and how to move them?

For my Hackintosh SSD-HHD "separation" purposes, I moved my /Users directory to be mounted directly on my (spinning) HDD partition.  Details here.

I view symlinking /Users to be generally risky for MacOS.

Haven't yet moved my /Library mount; not certain merit of doing that (eg: hard to gauge /Library disk activity).  Would be great if someone could detail the default system log paths for MacOS (I'm running Lion) to help sort this out.

In any case, my /Users dir definitely gets hammered with lots of write IO + storage capacity (both things not optimal for Flash-memory-based storage), so definitely moved that off.


How do I import my iPhone Mail imap account settings to my Macbook Mail client?

You can't do this. You will have to enter the IMAP details by hand.


Why do I have to pair my devices again after changing the Bluetooth adapter?

Every Bluetooth "thing", for lack of a better word, has a unique identifier. If it didn't, devices wouldn't be able to differentiate from one another. Walk down the street with AirPods here in a month or two and without a unique device identifier, you would get everybody else's music/conversations/whatever coming through your AirPods as you got within ~30 feet of them.

Your paired devices are still in that list because your computer remembers devices that were previously paired to it.


Right click on the item in the list and choose Remove Item.


What determines the "special" color of the status bar in SpringBoard?

As far as I have seen, the color is supposed to tell you a little bit about what is going on, or what app is active.

Voice Memos is red, which is the color typically used for 'Recording'.
Calls are green, which is the color of the Phone app's icon and is used in several places in the app (e.g., the Accept button).
AirPlay is blue, which is the color that Apple typically associates with both wireless and music (AirPort and Bluetooth logos are blue, iTunes' icon is blue, the Remote app's icon is blue).
Personal hotspot is blue, which again is the color of 'wireless'.


Can't download Xcode Beta 3 without Apple Developer membership

Seems like the problem is resolved. I can download Xcode Beta from Apple Developer website.


This sounds like something that happened to my MacBook Pro 15" Early 2011, stayed on white screen for couple minutes then turned off again.
Took it to Apple and they came to the conclusion that my motherboard wasn't working so I had to get it fixed for $500 (£250 ish) and after that ever since works perfectly fine.
The cause of my problem was that it could of been my old charger (was falling apart, and so Apple replaced it for free) could of sent an electric charge that fried my motherboard.

Hope this relates or helps you to fix your issue.


Is there an iPad app to play movies from an SD card?

The "Camera Connection Kit" is called that for a specific reason. The USB and SD Card readers are meant to either directly connect your camera to it, or just the SD card from it.

This means also that the readers only function with the Photos application, and nothing else. This is also the reason why most external keyboards don't work anymore.

There is no SDK access to the Camera Connection Kit, so third-party apps may not use it.

IIRC, Movies taken by your camera are imported into the Photos app as well. I do not recall whether or not you can view them from within the Photos app.


Changed my PATH to have /usr/local/bin ahead of /usr/bin and now pip isn't found

Ok... so after a bit more digging I think I found the answer to my own question. While running pip --version doesn't work, running pip3 --version gives me pip 9.0.1 from /usr/local/lib/python3.6/site-packages (python 3.6).

What I think is happening is that pip is located in the same location as python2 that comes with the Mac OS, while pip3 sits in the homebrew location.


Yes, deleting an iPhone backup just delete the backup and doesn't delete any data/content or configuration settings from your iPhone.

Yes, deleting a backup from iCloud indeed frees up space that can be used for other purposes.


Unfortunately you can not do it. There is not way of recording unless you jailbreak.


merge folder trees on OSX by moving, not copying them

Have you tried DiffMerge ? Its an application that is used to merge and compare files and folders.

It updates the content of respective folders by comparing and merging contents graphically.

Product Features

DiffMerge is an application to visually compare and merge files on Windows, OS X and Linux.

Graphically shows the changes between two files. Includes intra-line highlighting and full support for editing.

Graphically shows the changes between 3 files. Allows automatic merging (when safe to do so) and full control over editing the resulting file.

Performs a side-by-side comparison of 2 folders, showing which files are only present in one file or the other, as well as file pairs which are identical or different.

Right-click on any two files in Windows Explorer to diff them immediately.

Rulesets and options provide for customized appearance and behavior.

Identical feature set on Windows, OS X, and Linux.


AppleScript: How to write to a specific line of a text file?

Edited version:

set selected_file to ((path to documents folder as text) & "hom.txt") as alias
set text_data to "This is the newcomer sentence."

InsertLine(selected_file, text_data, 4)

on InsertLine(the_file, the_data, num_line)
    try
        set file_id to open for access the_file with write permission
        set text_data to read file_id

        -- CHECK EMPTY LINE
        if (paragraph num_line of text_data) ≠ "" then
            set the_offset to (offset of (paragraph num_line of text_data) in text_data) - 1
            set remaining_data to (the_data) & (text the_offset thru -1) of text_data
            set eof of file_id to the_offset
        else -- LINE IS EMPTY
            set num_line to num_line - 1
            set the_count to (count of (characters of (paragraph num_line of text_data))) - 1
            set the_offset to (offset of (paragraph num_line of text_data) in text_data) + the_count + 2
            set remaining_data to the_data & linefeed & ((text (the_offset + 1) thru -1) of text_data)
            set eof of file_id to the_offset - 1
        end if

        -- WRITE DATA TO FILE
        --write the_data to file_id -- INSERT LINE
        write remaining_data to file_id -- WRITE REMAINING DATA
        close access file_id
    on error
        try
            close access the_file
        end try
    end try
end InsertLine


Upgrade boot camp from Windows 8.1 to Windows 10

It has been a while since I use windows 8.1, but I believe you can mount the Windows 10 iso. From there you can just click on the setup application and upgrade to Windows 10.

Some comments on what you are attempting.

I understand you dowloadeded a windows utility to create the bootable USB. You make not mention copying the Windows Support Software to the USB. This is required.
You see three options: Mac, Windows and the USB drive. The correct answer is "EFI Boot". I assume this is what you meant by USB drive.
The Boot Camp Assistant creates the partitions necessary for the installation of Windows. You make no mention of creating space for the Windows partitions.
All Microsoft "Media Creation Tool"s are incompatible with Apples way of installing windows. In other words, you should not use a Microsoft "Media Creation Tool" to create the USB Windows installer. You can use a Microsoft "Media Creation Tool" to download the Windows iso file.
Your Mac already contains all the tools needed to create a USB Windows installer from an Windows iso file. You should use the Boot Camp Assistant to download the Windows Support Software, but from there you can create the USB installer without the aid of the Boot Camp Assistant.
Actually, you can install Windows 10 without using any USB drives. A procedure for this is given here.

If you do not have working Windows 10 iso file and you have activated your Windows 8.1 installation, then you can upgrade to Windows 10 for free. This offer expires at the end of the year. You do have to agree that you use "assistive technologies". (Microsoft will not check to see if you do). The web site to see is: Customers who use assistive technologies can upgrade to Windows 10 at no cost.


How do I install a specific release of a Homebrew formula on GitHub?

Not sure whether this is a good idea or not, but it does seem like you can install from an older commit.

So for example the following command seems to work to download, build and install version 2017.05.02.01 of buck. Note that it will try to download and compile from source because the binaries have been deleted from the repo.

brew install https://raw.githubusercontent.com/facebook/homebrew-fb/7511722fd58e999e5d8c3a415d4e8cd1deee8f21/buck.rb

I got to this by:

Going into the commit history of homebrew-fb
Clicking on the <> button for the "Update buck.rb to v2017.05.02.01" commit to take me into the repository as it existed with that commit
Selecting the buck.rb file
And lastly clicking the "Raw" button to get the url directly to that specific version of the buck.rb


Storing my iTunes library on an external flash drive in a MacBook Air

Has anybody done this?

Not with a flash drive, but with an external drive. I've kept my iTunes library on a USB-attached drive for years now. Semantically, the situation is identical to storing it on the flash drive. The OS see's a remote disk in both cases.

  Any advice?

Format it as Mac OS Extended (Journaled). Most flash media come pre-formatted as FAT32 these days. You don't want that.

For moving your iTunes library the correct way see: What is the safest way to move the iTunes Library from one hard drive to another?

  Would it be backed up with Time Machine correctly?

As long as it's not listed in the Exclusions list in Time Machine, yes: it will be backed up. To check the exclusions list: System Preferences -> Time Machine. Click on the Options... button and make sure your flash drive volume isn't listed in that list. If it it, select it, and click the - (minus) button at the bottom of the list to remove it.


While iOS 5 does, indeed, support iTunesless software update, previous versions don't, which is your case.

Therefore I suggest you to go to any Apple Store, which will certainly help you with your issue, or try any other Apple Retailler.


Ensure that the applications reside in /Applications/iWork '09 or the software update process does not seem to find them.


The first step I would try after doing what you have done already would be to turn off iCloud backups and restart the phone before turning it back on again.

If that doesn't work, I would try to initiate the backup from iTunes using the Back Up Now button. (I'm assuming you were trying from the iPhone) Go to iTunes and select your device the you should see this:


Does 2.8GHZ Mid 2015 MacBook Pro come with dual graphics as default?

To answer your question "Does the 2.8GHz model come with dual Intel/AMD graphics card or just Intel embedded graphics only?", the 2.8GHz model came both ways.

The MacBook Pro (Retina, 15-inch, Mid 2015) with a 2.8GHz CPU was available with either an Intel Iris Pro Graphics only, or with the Intel Iris Pro Graphics and AMD Radeon R9 M370X Graphics, so you can't go by just the CPU.

The MacBook Pro (Retina, 15-inch, Mid 2015) with a 2.8GHz CPU and only the Intel Iris Pro Graphics has the Model Identifier: MacBookPro11,4

The MacBook Pro (Retina, 15-inch, Mid 2015) with a 2.8GHz CPU and both the Intel Iris Pro Graphics and AMD Radeon R9 M370X Graphics has the Model Identifier: MacBookPro11,5

So unless the Tech Specs provided by the seller states the Model Identifier as MacBookPro11,5 or states it has both the Intel Iris Pro Graphics and AMD Radeon R9 M370X Graphics then you'll have to ascertain additional information from the seller to determine what Graphics Adapters it has.

See here and here as references, as well as the official Tech Specs.

I also used information from Mactracker to determine and verify my statements.


Chrome cant show image when using cellular data. but working fine when using wifi

If other images work on your iPhone on cellular, the problem most probably is on your web site.


MacBook Pro won't boot of freshly installed copy of macOS

Alright, I found out what the problem was. I was talking to a local IT-guy, he said, that SSDs from than manufactor, ADATA, wouldn't work with macOS.
So the only solution was to buy another one.


Unable to insert disk into optical drive (MacBook early 2009 model)

I just had this problem with my 17" mbp early 2009.
ODD was blocked like there was disc already in, but of course there wasn't.
Tried many times SMC & PRAM reset and Force shutdown. Sometimes the drive clicked and I managed to insert one disc, which was read just fine.
But after ejecting it, the block was again there.

Then googled some more and typed "drutil eject internal" few times in terminal and all was OK again.


Can't get inheriting TM to work (Big Sur)

I had the same issue.
Seems to me that the -a option of tmutils is broken in Big Sur (11.2.1).
However, instead of letting tmutils perform the association on all volume stores:
sudo tmutil associatedisk -a "/Volumes/Macintosh HD" "/Volumes/Time Machine Backup/Backups.backupdb/Christian Fischer’s iMac/Latest/Macintosh HD"

you can do the association for each volume store yourself:
for f in "/Volumes/Time Machine Backup/Backups.backupdb/Christian Fischer’s iMac/"*; do if [[ -d "$f" ]]; then sudo tmutil associatedisk / "$f/Macintosh HD"; fi; done

This worked for me like a charm ;-)


Is it possible to make a style sheet for Safari's Top Site page?

Unlike Chrome, Safari doesn't seems to use a webpage for the top sites but rather another programmatic view.

As you might have seen, the webinspector doesn't work on this page.


ipa installed on device but not appearing

This IPA application may not have signed for your phone. So you can not launch it in a normal way. Resigning the IPA or patching the launchd in your phone with some packages like AppSync may resolve this.


How to mount a hard drive to AirPort Extreme?

Make sure the hard drive is formatted correctly and working properly. Do this by plugging it into your computer first. If you plug it into a PC because you don't have a Mac and it works, then it's probably formatted NTFS. This is bad because Airport Extreme can't read NTFS, and PC's can't format HFS+. You could reformat it as FAT32 but you will waste a lot of space depending on the size of your files. Your best option would be to find a friend with a Mac or just go to the Apple store and format your hard drive as HFS+.

In simple words, if a Mac can copy files to the drive, then it should work fine with the Airport Extreme. If the hard drive is formatted factory default and the box doesn't say "Mac" somewhere on it, then it probably will not work with the Airport Extreme without being formatted by a Mac.


Why can't i activate facetime on my ipod touch

i found the answer.  you have to go into:

Settings
WIFI
and click on your wireless router and change the DNS to 8.8.8.8


shortcut to open multiple programmes and have them open a specific file

The short answer is yes. The longer answer is, it can be done more then one way.

I'd probably opt for a bash script and wrap it in a application bundle using Platypus, although you can use a Run Shell Script action in Automator too.

In Automator you might want to try the Watch Me Do action, although that will be slower then just a bash script.

Note that some things you mentioned may not be able to be bash scripted, can't say for sure because I do not use Tower or MAMP, although the others are bash scriptable

I can't give a complete answer as I do not use Tower or MAMP however for Sublime Text, Terminal and Safari the following works for me.

Note that Sublime Text includes a command line executable subl within its application bundle. The typical path might be, /Applications/Sublime\ Text.app/Contents/SharedSupport/bin/subl and executing it with --help will display its internal help information.

The following script example could be used if you can ascertain the commands necessary for Tower and MAMP.

#!/bin/bash

/path/to/subl --project <project>
open -a Terminal /path/to/the/location/I/want
# Tower commands.
# MAMP commands.
open -a Safari http://127.0.0.1


I have not found a 3rd party application that does this well. You can obviously block a number via your cell carrier. Since I could not find a good method to block calls with an application I ended up adding the number to be blocked to my contact list and assigned a "silent" ring tone to the contact. Although it will not block a incoming call it will cause the phone to play a silent ringtone when the number in question calls. Not a true block caller solution but at least a potential workaround.


Updated XCode to 7.0.1 via the app store but it still shows itself at 6.4 in the app and missing the new features

I would do the following:

Open Xcode
Open Preferences
select Locations

If your command line tools and Xcode about box don't both say 7.0.1 (7A1001) then you might want to just delete Xcode using Launchpad and then re-open the App Store to download a clean copy of the app. If you want to purge old simulators and SDK from ~/Library/Developer, do that now as well after making a backup of things just in case.

I had some issues with the beta versions of the app and deleting all traces of the app helped me with some document set download issues - perhaps your simulator issues are related to mixing versions between 6 and 7 too?


Can I hide the sync icon in the menu bar on Lion?

Just ⌘ Command-Drag & Drop it away from the menu bar, this way you can also re-arrange your icons. This trick will only work for OSX icons (e.g. Time Machine or WiFi), for non OSX native icons (e.g. Dropbox or GeekTool) you need a third party app like Bartender or Menu Bar Rearranger.


This is actually a use case for the "Import Files into Photos" action if the images are coming from outside of Photos.


ios Photo never finish upload after switching app

I have to run the photo in the foreground, connect the iphone to power and let it run for the whole night. The message is finally gone in the morning.

However now the message has become "Uploading 38,160 items". It is attempting to re-upload everything from my iphone. My older photo are not accessible now (a exclamation icon is shown on the lower right corner on all my older photo)

There must be a more serious problem with icloud.


Bootcamp Windows USB Installation Errors

The (fixed) Pre-Installation Environment (boot.wim) of your Windows_7.iso doesn't contain the necessary drivers to use the USB3-interface of your Early 2013 Macbook Retina.

To circumvent limitations (new drivers, new hardware) Microsoft uses the $WinPEDriver$-feature to provide drivers at installation time.

Apple Boot Camp uses this method to provide the necessary drivers with the boot medium - your thumb drive.

Usually the Boot Camp Assistant does the whole work properly:

Partition your drive
Download the appropriate Boot Camp Support Software
Create the Windows 7 install thumb drive (with all necessary drivers)

Please check if you meet the following requirements:

Backup of your entire hard disc
Windows 7.iso Home Premium x64, Professional x64, or Ultimate x64
(these three are us-en digitalriver isos and here is a full list of all images available there)
Formatting of the USB-device (according to Apple):

If the size of the thumb drive is 32 GB or less it should be MS-DOS (FAT).

If the size of the thumb drive is over 32 GB it should be ExFAT.
Boot Camp Support Software version: 5.1.5621

download link: Latest Boot Camp Support Software
File/Folder structure of the root of your boot device (your thumb drive):

If your boot device doesn't contain $WinPEDriver$, AutoUnattend.xml and BootCamp please download and extract BootCamp5.1.5621.zip and copy the contents of the resulting BootCamp folder to the root level of your install drive.
If your install drive already contains those files and folders then check if the USB drivers are present.
(Paths: /$WinPEDriver$/IntelxHCISetup/Drivers/HCSwitch/Win7/x64/ and /$WinPEDriver$/IntelxHCISetup/Drivers/xHCI/Win7/x64/).
If they aren't present the wrong Boot Camp Support Software package has been chosen. Delete $WinPEDriver$, AutoUnattend.xml and BootCamp and continue with step 6.

Now the installation should work.


External USB drive keeps disconnecting randomly

After studying my problem further, I identified the Newertech Ministack 2012 as the cause of my problem.

Our drives disconnected, because they overheated. Practically, while fans start spinning when I turn the Ministack on, they do not resume spinning when drives return from standby/idle and stay off. This caused already a couple of dead hdds in our setting and other drives experienced temperatures around 70C.

Strangely the enclosures are quite clean inside, this could mean that the fan behavior has been consistently this way since we bought them. The enclosures have been bought through official channels between 2014 and 2015.

I am starting to believe this might be a production related or architectural related problem this model has. The day after I contacted Newertech the enclosures where unavailable for purchase. Usually I had good experiences with the company, but data storage is very important so I am trying to get to the cause of this issue.

I tested different settings by turning the enclosure on, accessing the drive, letting the drive idle (usually 10 min) and go into standby, reaccessing the drive and inspecting fan behavior. I switched HDD vendors, cable, interfaces, computers, OS-X versions, this leaves the enclosure.

Could someone please give me a feedback? I would like to figure out if my enclosures just all went bad with the same problem or if we all have a very huge problem! My drives heated up to 70C and should be around 40C, with 60C the maximum advised temperature from the drive vendor.


My calls keep randomly go through Google Voice

Does your phone reroute your calls to Google Voice, or do your calls get rerouted on the recipient end?
I think you’ll be better off seeking help on this on Google forums, as it seems to be a Google issue (with your network), not an Apple issue (with your phone).
https://support.google.com/voice/answer/165221?co=GENIE.Platform%3DDesktop&hl=en


The simplest "whole system repair" is to reboot to Recovery  Cmd ⌘   R  at boot, then just reinstall the entire OS from there.

This will repair the OS, but not remove any data or apps.


I've used MySQL QueryDB Client in the past. It has been my favorite iPhone app for MySql after testing out quite a few. It is certainly not perfect but it gets the job done when I need it to. I wouldn't recommend using this full time, only for backup.

https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/mysql-querydb-client/id576948046?mt=8

Good luck!


Is there a Safari shortcut that always works to reopen last-closed tab?

The answer is no, Safari does not provide any built-in functionality or shortcut (to the non-existing functionality) to restore the last closed tab.

The only functionality that Safari currently offers is:

Reopen last closed window
Undo Close Tab (as part of the Undo event chain)

The first does just that, re-opens the last closed window, including all the tabs that were open when it closed.

The second works as you already know, it only works if it's the last thing you did, or you have to undo other things which is the caveat you noted above.

Looking at Safari Extensions, there are a few Tab managers around, however none of them specifically note their support for Tab Undo's except SafariTabs and this functionality was removed from the product for Safari 5; as the developer notes that Safari 5 now provides this as part of the Undo chain

Developing a solution for this while it's not trivial, isn't something that is going to be impossible as Apple have done most of the hard work. :D

Safari provides event propagation to Safari Extensions, and the particular one you would be interested in is CloseEvent (SafariEvent).  Of course determining a method of distinguishing between the CloseEvent's for Windows (with each Tab receiving its own CloseEvent) and singular Tab CloseEvents... well there's the hard work.


macbook mid 2010 13" won't recognise ssd crucial mx200 HD 500gb placed in the optical drive

I suggest trying to put the SuperDrive back, and then seeing if the SATA cable for that works, if it does, you can switch the HDD for the SSD to check if it's faulty.

Also - there are inexpensive power supply / USB data connection kits so you could get one of those and test the bracket you purchased external to either MacBook and see if everything works over USB first.

the inexpensive self powered ones are fine in most cases
if you're wanting something to be sure you have a good part, consider getting one with a power supply. (or three since they are so cheap and as you know - sometimes a new part could be bad so having spares to test helps greatly). https://www.amazon.com/SANOXY-A12940-Drive-Adapter-Converter/dp/B001OORMVQ/

I wouldn't worry about a link negotiation between 3 Gbps or 6 Gbps - either will result in things working and even in the most stringent benchmark - it's almost never you are seeing more than 3 Gbps on a sata link so in practice you see no benefit from that - certainly not a cause for a drive not showing up entirely.


Animate text in final cut pro: knocking previous text further from centre

The Apple tool for that job is Motion and it can make plug in for iMovie or just do the work you want. Adobe Premiere Pro probably does what you want, but instead of a one time $50 charge - that is $20 a month subscription. You do get a free trial of Premiere so you could make sure it would work for your project.

You could possibly find someone who already knows motion to make you a plug in or find one that works for your needs, but the general solution to making custom text animations is to use Motion or the Adobe CC suite tools for video

https://filmora.wondershare.com/imovie/top-5-imovie-plugins.html


Change permissions of wheel to Read Only

For OS X versions before 10.11

sudo chmod g-wx /System/Library/Extensions/Soundflower.kext

For 10.11 you'll need to disable SIP first.


How do I detect malware and remove it from iPad?

You haven't got malware on your iPad. To extract zip files, you need a third-party app and this app's data will be contained within the sandbox of that app.


How can I lock files with specific passwords on mac, ideally through terminal?

The /etc/hosts needs to be readable by other program in order to fulfill its purpose. If you encrypt the file in any way, those other programs will not be able to read the file - and it will stop working.

So in short, you cannot do this (i.e. encryption) in a meaningful manner.

However what you can do is ensure that others do not have passwords for administrative accounts on your Mac. If they do need more privileges for something, make it so that you assign access to that specific resource (for example via a sudo access limited to a specific program) - and ensure that you do not give out full administrative access.

An example of using sudo for giving access to edit a file is to use the "sudoedit" option in sudo. This allows you to give another person access to edit a file without letting their editor run as the privileged user (which is bound to let them "escape" and allow them to other things as the privileged user). It is achieved by copying the privileged file into a separate location, letting the user run their usual editor under their own user id to edit that file, and then copying its contents over the privileged file afterwards.

In sudoers you would specificy something like:

username  sudoedit /etc/hosts

By default this will allow "username" to edit that file, and requires him to enter his own login password before doing so.

If you want to the user to input a different password, that is not his login password, you have basically two ways of going about it.

One way is not to use "sudoedit": Instead create a custom program (can be a shell script) that simply inputs a string and checks that it matches the password you want, and then just mimics what sudoedit does. It can also be quite simple and just a "cp" command to copy over a specific path from the user's own home folder to /etc/hosts.

The alternative is to modify which passwords sudo will accept as valid. This is done by editing /etc/pam.d/sudo and uncommenting the standard lines beginning with "auth". Instead provide the authentication module and options you want to approve.

If you want to do something completely custom, you can compile your own PAM module that simply asks for a password and checks that it is a specific string. You can start with the source code for the default pam_opendirectory PAM module and simply rip out the OpenDirectory parts and replace it with a simple strcmp(). The source code for such a custom module is very few lines of code.

You can find the pam_opendirectory PAM module source code here:

https://opensource.apple.com/source/pam_modules/pam_modules-76/pam_opendirectory/pam_opendirectory.c.auto.html


Early 2011 Macbook Pro boots, then shuts off

I too had a battery-less MBP early 2011. The full speed fan effect is normal in this case, AFAIK. Seems to be by design.
It's only when I installed a battery, even if it was faulty (third party) that I could do something on the machine.
I would advise you not to loose any more time and order/borrow a battery.


How to disable auto-capitalization in Apple Mail app (really impossible?)

Go to Settings → Keyboard and set up a text replacement for ecoli → ecoli to see if it gets suppressed. Though it is not a viable solution for all of your words.

Look into Grammarly app where you can type, maintain a personal dictionary of corrections and then use gestures to quickly copy paste or even run them in split mode.


How can I turn off quick look on MacOS Catalina?

Try
sudo launchctl unload -w com.apple.quicklook.plist

I don't know whether you will have to disable SIP to do this, or even if it's possible since Catalina [& can't test].
Found on Apple Forums - https://discussions.apple.com/thread/2582860


All resolved. MBP started playing up again without a few hours. GPU overheating and corrupting the display.

Took it back to Apple again and this time they replace the logic board. MBP is now running noticeably cooler with no issues. Have reinstalled the SSD without any problems.


Is there a "windirstat"/"Disk Inventory X" type iOS app? (ie app for visualizing hard drive usage on iOS)

Your only option is to make a backup of the iOS device on a Mac/PC, then use a third party tool to copy the files into the filesystem as regular files.

From there you can run Disk Inventory X or any similar tool.

Beware that iOS uses compression and doesn't necessarily store all of your files on the local device (photos and music in particular could be in the cloud), so this will not give you an accurate measurement. But it will be as close as you can get.


What happened to Preview's "Markup.appex"?

Right-clicking on the Markup extension in System Preferences > Extensions offers a "show in Finder" option, which yields:

/System/Library/CoreServices/Finder.app/Contents/PlugIns/PlaceholderMarkUp.appex


Seems they added the installer recently to the new App Store on Mojave. If you search for macos mojave the installer shows up in the results under the "Utilities" category.


How do I bypass a VPN for Continuity to Work?

By excluding the executable \usr\sbin\mDNSResponder executable and either rebooting for killing the existing process, Continuity properly works to make and receive phone calls using an iPhone.  This means VPN users can exclude that process and still gain functionality of Continuity if they want.
It should be noted that by excluding that executable they would be exposing it's network traffic to the network without the protection of the VPN.  Thus if on an insecure network it might be possible for the network provider to see what the user is doing (though the actual call traffic is encrypted, IIRC).
Different VPN's have different mechanisms, I know what works for PIA to exclude the executable but I'm not familiar with all VPN packages.  The PIA application UI doesn't allow for excluding just bare executables, but it is possible.  Pulling from this post on the PIA forum one needs to install a package called jq using Homebrew.
Once installed, it can be excluded via:
piactl -u applysettings '{"splitTunnelRules":'"$(cat /Library/Preferences/com.privateinternetaccess.vpn/settings.json | jq '.splitTunnelRules + [{"linkTarget":"","mode":"exclude","path":"/usr/sbin/mDNSResponder"}]' -c)"'}'

The FaceTime application should also be excluded, but that can be done through the PIA UI without any trouble.
The change is persistent and survives a reboot.  Before changes work a person will have to reboot or kill the mDNSResponder process to force it to reload.  Other services offer Split Tunnel as well to exclude certain applications, but as I said I don't know how to make it work for anything but PIA.  Excluding the executable should work, so long as there is a way to do that.
As an addon, I've also found that I need to exclude /System/Library/PrivateFrameworks/IDS.framework/identityservicesd.app as well as /usr/libexec/avconferenced from the VPN in order to make the connection reliable when using WiFi Calling.  It appears the system establishes a VPN of its own using identityservicesd and while I could not actually see any activity over the network from avconferenced the system got really flakey about establishing a phone call until I excluded it.  Not sure why.


On the Mac showing the problem

edit com.apple.finder.plist in ~/Library/Preferences
set to 0 or remove scrollPositionY (and scroolPositionX) for the list view
save that preference file
restart the finder (option click in the dock).


How to check if MacBook screen is genuine?

In terminal.app you can paste this command to find out which display you're using:

system_profiler SPDisplaysDataType

which should return all of your Graphics/Display information.

Now the question is what is genuine? Apple and just about every other company uses parts from many different manufacturers at any given time. The only way to know is by identifying the exact model and serial number of your MacBook Pro and then determining which part was used in that particular batch.


Time Capsule. Drive is ok, cannot connect through wifi

Are you running the latest firmware and have you already tried resetting the TC to factory defaults?


Retrieving Old Mag Issues from Newstand iPad

As someone says above, iExplorer is a good way to view the data files on the device, but my question is this - don't you have access to your purchased periodicals even if you delete them?

Here's my test case. I bought a new device, and reinstalled a few apps from scratch, including all of my subscriptions. I checked each of them, logged in with my Apple ID, and every one that I have bought has a Download icon beside it. I even have some magazines with non-consecutive subscriptions, and the editions from each subscription are available for download. (i.e., AUG-NOV 2011 and SEP-DEC 2012).


How can I prove to an airline that the iPad mini they found is the one I left on the plane, without giving them the passcode?

If you have your iPad's serial number it should be visible on the back of the device.

source: Apple

As mentioned in the comments below, you can get the serial number by either:

Logging into the AppleID associated with the device at appleid.apple.com.
In the Apple ID area in the Settings app on your iPhone logged into the same Apple ID. (The very first thing if you scroll to the top of Settings.)


What steps can help burning an iMovie '09 project to DVD when the program crashes?

I would start by checking out Software Update to make sure that there are not any current updated for iMovie '09. I would then just try to export the project in a resolution of your choice to the desktop (or wherever you prefer), and just use Disk Utility to burn it from there. This will make sure that you at least have a hard backup of the project, and this may be more effective as you're not trying to run two programs at once (as iMovie is transferring to iDVD). This is key as your system may not have enough RAM to do two high-end processes at once (I don't know your system, so this is only an assumption). This being said, I would try to make sure that you have the fewest amount of programs running during this time period I would then try to take the exported project from the desktop, and throw it into iDVD to burn it with the menus of your liking. I hope this helps, and let me know if you have any more questions.

Note: If you are on a laptop make sure it's plugged in, and that you are running a program like Caffeine to keep it from falling asleep during this process.


This is expected - the iPhone 4S does not have stereo speakers. The left "box" is actually a microphone:

image from apple.com/iphone/specs.html


Yes, you should install the final release of Mavericks.

The seed of Mac OS X 10.9 GM, Mavericks, is different to the edition available through the Mac App Store.

The seed had build 13A598.
The final release is build 13A603.

This suggests bugs were found and fixed since the final preview release. We have had reports of behaviour changes between the two versions.


External monitor has blurry font on a MBP retina

The MacBook Pro (Retina, 13-inch, Late 2013) has an Intel Iris 5100 GPU and is capable of supporting an HDMI-compatible device, including 4K, while using one Thunderbolt display or it can support two Thunderbolt displays.

In terms of external resolution, this model supports up to 3840 x 2160 pixels at 30Hz or 4096 x 2160 pixels at 24Hz (using HDMI) or up to 3840 x 2160 pixels at 30Hz (using Thunderbolt).

According to the specs of the Acer R241Y, this has a maximum resolution of 1920 x 1080 at 60Hz. And, according to the user manual, this resolution is achieved using VESA mode.

Possible solutions

On your MacBook Pro:

REFRESH RATE - As a first step, I would check the Refresh Rate set in your MBP. You can find this under the Display tab within System Preferences > Displays. If you change it, you may need to wait a couple of minutes to ensure the change has taken effect properly.
RESOLUTION - I would also double-check you're not using the Scaled option for your resolution. Instead, make sure you have the Best for display option selected - also found in System Preferences > Displays.
RESET NVRAM - It may be worth resetting your NVRAM. If you're unsure how to do this, refer to my answer here. Make sure you look under the PRAM/NVRAM heading.

NOTE: If, at any point, the display switches off after configuring options in your Displays System Preference, just press the Esc key to undo the last change.

On your Acer R241Y display:

If you're still having issues after checking/trying each of the above, try the following:

Mode type -  If your display is already in Auto mode, manually try each of the others (e.g. Standard mode, Graphic mode, etc) one by one. If it's already on a specific mode, then try it in Auto mode instead.
Focus - You can also manually configure the display's focus. You should be able to do this by going to the Picture Menu.
Reset your display - There should also be a Reset option on your display's menu. It may be worth trying this if all else fails.

[EDIT]

Since your issue is around how fonts look, there is also a setting in your System Preferences > General. Maybe try ticking/unticking the Use LCD font smoothing when available option to see what difference that makes.


If you open the App Store and under the App Store menu item click on preferences. This opens a panel where you can change or turn off updates. This is for High Sierra. It may be different in Catalina but I thought it was worth the effort to check.


It is 11 mm to 12 mm. Try measuring mine.


With iOS 9, Apple updated the list of times when iPhones will require a passcode rather than Touch ID. The list is now:

Restarting the device
Five failed fingerprint recognition attempts
Receiving a remote lock command via Find My iPhone
Enrolling new fingerprints in Touch ID
Not having been unlocked in any fashion in 48 hours
NEW! When the iPhone or iPad hasn’t been unlocked with its passcode in the previous six days, and Touch ID hasn’t been used to unlock it within the last eight hours

You probably hit the brand new last condition without knowing it. I know you said your phone was charging for only 4 hours, but depending on how long it had been since you actually unlocked, it may still have happened.

Source


No it will not delete the data from your phone. A backup is stored on your PC/Mac or on iCloud but the backup is just a reference copy of what is already on your phone. Deleting a backup will not delete the current data on your phone.


How to disable the built-in MacBook keyboard?

Install Karabiner

Choose your external keyboards on Devices > Advanced.

Check the corresponding box

Source


Files created by Terminal are not visible in my Finder

You're running git status in the wrong repository (your home directory, ~, i.e. /Users/adam). You need to move into the repo that you want to act on, i.e. cd ~/Desktop/Tools/Git/MyFolder, or a subdirectory of this, and then run git status.

You've created the home.html file in ~.

You must have run git init on your home directory or a parent of it, i.e. /Users/adam, /Users, or /. The first is most likely, as the others would require use of sudo. You can forget about / get rid of this repo by running rm -rf .git within that directory.

I encourage you to learn the basics of Git by watching this video.

Here's a good video on Linux terminal basics as well. macOS isn't Linux, but it's Unix-based, just like Linux, so the principles are the same; the knowledge directly applies to macOS.


Open/Reopen dialog regarding Finder keeps popping up?

Research this particular issue kept leading to this as one potential solution.

macOS 10.14 Mojave problems: how to fix them
The last time you opened Finder, it unexpectedly quit while reopening windows

To find & delete the preferences file for Finder. This file is located here:

$ find ~/Library/Preferences -name com.apple.finder.plist -ls
18015144       48 -rw-------    1 smingolelli      staff               24369 May  5 19:50 /Users/smingolelli/Library/Preferences/com.apple.finder.plist

You can delete it like so:

$ find ~/Library/Preferences -name com.apple.finder.plist -delete

Deleting this .plist file for Finder stopped Finder from continuing to crash.


Lack of screen refreshing is often a sign of something failing in the video card or perhaps even a damaged/corrupted video driver. This is a bit problematic on a Mac as it is rarely even possible to remove and re-install a video driver, which would be a simple and free first step.

Depending on what is going on you may want to update (or re-upadte) your system with the latest combo updater. With the hopes that it will re-install or update the current video driver with a 'clean' version.

I would, however, be tempted to run a cleaner/maintenance app to make sure there are no corrupted cache files and all necessary maintenance scripts and disk/filesystem repairs are done before running the combo updater. My recommendation would be the free utility Onyx. Download and run it (First quit out of all open apps), give it your password and allow it to verify your disk. Then use the automation tab and let it do it's thing. Reboot when done and apply the Combo updater.

After that reboot if the issue has not gone away and you are sure it is not related to any specific app or family of apps (like all your Adobe apps that might share a graphics library...) it may be a hardware issue, which could be diagnosed at an Apple store with a Genius Bar appointment.

If you want to try one more thing and have the time and equipment, you might consider installing a fresh copy of macOS on an external drive along with one or two of the apps that demonstrate the issue most readily. Possibly even a different version of the OS than you currently use. This would show if the combo updater really fixed any video driver issues and guarantee a clean OS and application install. In effect eliminating any and all software variables lurking in your current system,


BitTorrent Automatically Installed on MacOS High Sierra

Sorry to say this but the only way to get a bittorrent client installed with macOS is if you get it from anywhere but the Mac App store.

Note that macOS High Sierra is free from the Mac App Store. So there is no reason to get it any other way.

On the off chance that you did install from the Mac App Store it is likely that the bit torrent client was installed previously via some other means, possibly as a Trojan or virus of some other type.

If I were you, I would boot into recovery mode, reformat your hard drive and install everything from scratch. Hopefully you have a good uncontaminated backup.


Upgraded 10.9.1 to 10.9.2 now SD cards not recognized

try another brand of sd card, I had this problem with sandisk cards but al others would work perfectly.
You can also try wiggling it around a bit after a while it would read my cards if I did that.
Just don't break the card ;)


Open your terminal and enter softwareupdate -l to see the available updates. Use softwareupdate -i -a to download and install all available updates.


iOS 3rd-party mail app which allows connections to multiple ports at the same time

I do not know of a third party application. But besides a vpn, you could try going to settings>mail>your specific mail account. This may give you the option to change the incoming mail server, but it may not. But you can change the outgoing mail server by adding a entire new secondary server in case the first one doesn't work. You can look at the pictures attached.


How do I confirm that my Mac has hibernated?

Use the following command to check:

pmset -g log | grep -i "wake from"

If the latest entry says: "Wake from Hibernate", the Mac was hibernated when you last woke it up (for example opened the lid).

If it says for example "Wake from Standby" it was not hibernated.


iPhoto on Mac doesn't download the full iCloud photo library

iCloud Photo Library needs to be enabled in Settings (on iOS or OS X) devices and then the photos will sync. Also make sure the devices are up to date.

I have just been through the process on a replacement iPhone (iOS 8.3). I setup the device on Friday (12 June 2015) and only today (18 June 2015) did my Photo's application show the correct count of photos (approx 25000). The most recent ones have thumbnails already and the older ones are still getting them. I did not realize when I setup the device that it was still on iOS 8.0 (Photo Library was marked as Beta) so that could have contributed to the delayed sync.

This device has been on wifi networks (work / home) for the majority of the time since configuration. Please note that this post is from South Africa where both of these connections top out at 10 mbps on a good day.


What are snapshots

The snapshot feature is used to ensure the reliability of your data and to make it possible to roll back the ﬁle system to an earlier point in time. In other words, if you ever need to return your Mac to a previous state, you can simply restore to that relevant snapshot.

How do snapshots work?

APFS keeps track of snapshots by keeping a single volume checkpoint for each snapshot that’s been created. This is done by ensuring that the contents of any files that are part of a snapshot are protected from deletion. APFS achieves this 'protection' by:

ensuring that if/when these files are deleted after a particular snapshot was created, the blocks containing the data from those files are not actually overwritten, even though the meta-data associated with those files is erased from the ﬁle system hierarchy
continuing to protect this data for as long as that particular snapshot exists

How are snapshots created?

Assuming you have macOS High Sierra (or above) installed and that your boot volume is formatted as APFS, your Mac will automatically create a snapshot before installing any operating system updates.

You can also create snapshots manually as follows:

Open the Terminal app (by default it’s located in the Utilities folder within your Applications folder)
Now copy and paste the following command into Terminal:

tmutil snapshot
Press Enter
A confirmation message will appear within Terminal

NOTE: At present snapshots older than 24 hours are automatically deleted. As a result, manually creating a snapshot as per the steps above is an excellent strategy when you're about to install any major new software/hardware or if you're about to undertake some testing. Having a snapshot gives you a  "get out of jail free" card, albeit only valid for 24hrs!

For more info on how you can restore from a snapshot, refer to the following:

About Time Machine local snapshots
Restoring from a snapshot with APFS


Seeing SMS messages on iPad and iMessages on iPhone

If I understand you question correctly you want to receive SMS  and iMessages on both your iPad and iPhone.
If so follow these steps.

If you haven't already done so upgrade both your device to the latest iOS 8 firmware (iOS 8.1)
To fix your iMessage problem, on the iPhone go to Settings > Scroll down to messages > Toggle iMessage on and enter your Apple ID credentials
To get your iPad receiving SMS messages with your phone's number go on your iPad unlock it and keep it on.
Then go back on your iPhone and stay on the page I told you to go in step 2 and tap 'Text Message Forwarding' you should see your iPad and any other Apple devices you have if they are on the same iCloud account (which they will need to be for this too work).

If they are:
Toggle the button next to the name of your iPad and it will ask you for a code which should popup on the iPad.

If not: Go back to the main settings on the device not correctly set with iCloud scroll back up to 'iCloud' tap it and sign out if already signed in and sign in the with the Apple ID used on the other device.