texts: What happens if you stop iTunes Match subscription?

texts:
If you cancel your iTunes match subscription, what exactly does happen?

Can you still download the songs you matched already, but cannot match any new ones? Or can't you download any song anymore? Will the matched songs you already have downloaded on your Mac or iOS device be deleted or will they be kept?


texts: HD accidentally reformatted to MBR, how to get back to GUID?

texts:
So in trying to create an MBR partition of my hard drive which I could then use to boot a solaris-derivative OS using rEFIt, I messed up. Rather than a hard drive with a primary GUID partition map scheme to boot OS X 10.7 from, and an auxiliary partition with an MBR scheme for non-Mac OS's, I now have a hard drive that strangely enough, is formatted with an MBR scheme. Additionally, the very helpful recovery HD is gone, and I don't think i'll be able to reinstall it (http://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/19145/how-can-i-create-or-recreate-a-lion-recovery-partition), without a normally formatted HD.

In Terminal:

diskutil list
    /dev/disk0
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:     FDisk_partition_scheme                        *500.1 GB   disk0
   1:                  Apple_HFS Macintosh HD            500.1 GB   disk0s1

In Disk Utility:

Disk Description : APPLE HDD HTS547550A9E384
Media Total Capacity : 500.11 GB (500,107,862,016 Bytes)
Connection Bus : SATA
Write Status : Read/Write
Connection Type : Internal
S.M.A.R.T. Status : Verified
Partition Map Scheme : Master Boot Record

Not surprisingly, this initially caused some problems in that neither Macintosh HD nor the Recovery HD were being seen by EFI, but I was able to erase the hard drive, and restored my OS via Time Machine.

This leaves me in a tenuous situation. Messing with partitions and such is always risky business, and if anyone can come up with a reliable and trusted method for returning my HD to its native GUID'ness, it would be much appreciated! As I have a Time Machine, I'd be totally ok with completely erasing my HD and reinstalling lion.

EDIT:

sudo fdisk /dev/disk0
Disk: /dev/disk0    geometry: 60801/255/63 [976773168 sectors]
Signature: 0xAA55
     Starting       Ending
 #: id  cyl  hd sec -  cyl  hd sec [     start -       size]
------------------------------------------------------------------------
 1: AF 1023 254  63 - 1023 254  63 [         1 -  976773167] HFS+
 2: 00    0   0   0 -    0   0   0 [         0 -          0] unused
 3: 00    0   0   0 -    0   0   0 [         0 -          0] unused
 4: 00    0   0   0 -    0   0   0 [         0 -          0] unused


texts:
I've got a MacBook Pro (Retina, Mid 2012), once in a longer period of time my MagSafe 2 adapter simply fries. Just a minute ago I fried the third MagSafe 2 adapter in three years time. It occurs with a click-sound like something small and fragile broke, right after that the charging LED turns off and it's dead.

Is there anything that I should check with my MacBook? Or is there something else I could attempt to try? Since I'm not really in the mood to fry another MagSafe 2 adapter.

Edit: I've also tried resetting SMC and even tried sitting on it to warm it up as suggested in this article.

Edit: Also ran a Apple Hardware Test which returned 4sns/1/40000001:IDOR-0.000 which seems to basically mean "No power connected". Not of much use.


texts:
I'm trying to upgrade my MBP 2018 to Catalina, but everytime I finished download it, the error pop up as below:

I downloaded it almost 10 times, but no success


texts:
I have a external hard drive and I'm checking it with the Disk Utility. However, it gave me an error says

** No NTFS file system checks have been implemented yet.

How can I install one?


texts: Is it possible to consolidate music bought from iTunes Stores in different countries in a single device?

texts: My main account is on the Canadian iTunes Store but I would like to buy albums that are only available on the Japanese and UK iTunes and have everything together on an iPad. Is it possible to switch stores on the Windows iTunes app, buy these albums, and then transfer them over to the iPad? Or even better, would I be able to download these albums from my account on the iPad directly? Regardless of which country's store they were bought from originally?


texts: New macOS install stuck on loading screen, but works in safe mode

texts:
First a bit of history:
I had installed Bootcamp on my MacBook and to give it more space, I had deleted macOS recovery and system partitions from Easus Partition Manager on Windows. But because of this, I wasn't able to install macOS back as Internet Recovery wasn't able to download.
So I booted it in Target Disk mode and wiped the SSD clean from another MacBook. Internet recovery now downloaded fine, but now I got "Downloading installer information to the target volume failed" on trying to install the OS.
So now I did a Disk Utility "Restore" via target disk mode from the other MacBook, but on booting, I was getting APFS PreBoot volume not found error, I followed this guide to manually create that volume: https://www.tecklyfe.com/boot-failures-after-converting-macos-ssd-to-apfs and now that the SSD was fixed, I clean reinstalled macOS Catalina via Internet recovery.
But after installation, it seems to be stuck at the loading screen with the Apple logo and the loading bar at around 60%. However, it boots just fine in safe mode. Also while in safe mode, I noticed that it can't properly recognize my in-built keyboard, even though all keys work just fine on trying. If I go to keyboard settings in safe mode, I see the following screen:

The "Change keyboard type..." shouldn't ideally be there. I know because I tried booting another working MacBook to safe mode and I don't see that button there.
On clicking on the button, I see:

BTW I got the above screen on the first safe mode boot as well.
Then I clicked Continue, and I try clicking on the button to the right of the left shift key, i.e., Z:

I am not sure if that's the reason for it not booting up, but just putting it there.
I have already tried NVRAM reset, SMC reset, DFU firmware revive, installing Mojave, Big Sur. None helped.
I also tried unloading and even deleting the Apple HIDKeyboard, TopCase and MultitouchDriver kexts, thinking maybe the driver isn't able to communicate with the built-in keyboard/touchbar/touchpad properly, but that didn't help either. I am almost at the end of the list of all things to try. My MacBook is out of warranty. As such, I am asking here for more things to try out before sending it out to the service center.
EDIT: Attaching the output of diskutil and gpt:
Thanks a lot!


texts: How can I undo changes made to a picture I accidentally saved via preview?

texts:
The was a picture that I was looking at in my computer, I drew a line with the preview tool.
Since my was slow and the app was not responsive,  I force quited Preview.
I opened the document and  it saved the line I drew on the picture as part of the picture. I don't have the original picture but I don't want the line to be there.
Can I undo what I have done via a backup or version of this file?


texts: How long does it generally take Apple to propagate subject category changes in my submitted eBooks

texts: I have several books on sale in the ibooks store. A couple of weeks ago I did a minor change to the subject category of all my books. About a week after that I started to notice a drop on sales. I am trying to figure out whether this drop might be due to normal seasonal cycles or it might be that my change got propagated and classified the books in the wrong pile.


texts: How do I change the action for Force Click on a Force Touch trackpad?

texts:
I have a new MacBook Pro Retina 13 Early 2015 with the Force Touch trackpad.

It's described to have the following feature:

  Click and continue to press on the trackpad to enable new capabilities, like looking up a word's definition, previewing a file in the Finder, or creating a new Calendar event when you Force click a date in the text of an email.

Generally: How can I change, tweak, tune, enhance the 'capability' of this force click?

Particularly: I'd love to have it do translation in Safari and Terminal much more frequently than I want it to do dictionary lookup.


texts:
How can I download the last iPhoto version for Yosemite?

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

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


texts: How to downgrade Safari from 8.0.6 to 8.0.4?

texts:
I am investigating a website bug that seems to only occur in Safari 8.0.4 (Yosemite 10.10.2), but I am on 8.0.6 (Yosemite 10.10.3) already.

Is there any way to downgrade Safari to the patchlevel I require that does not include restoring an old backup from Time Machine or reinstalling the OS?


texts: Remove partition and restore the space without erasing

texts:
Time ago I split  the hard drive (500gb) in two partitions (250 each), now I don't need them anymore, so I have first erased successfully one partition and now I have still the second one (Mac HD 2)

See the image attached

What I need now is to reapply the 250 gb I have gained from deleting to the Mac HD2, how is it possible? I am in the situation that I don't want erase it but I need the 250 gb left there.


texts: Magic Trackpad 2 - Can't connect through Bluetooth

texts:
My Magic Trackpad 2 can't connect via Bluetooth with my MacBook Pro 2014.
The trackpad works fine when connected via cable, but when I unplug it, I can't get the Bluetooth to kick in. I've tried restarting my laptop, resetting the Bluetooth module, clearing my laptop's NVRAM, using different USB ports, and a bunch of different connect/off/on combinations with the bluetooth, cable, and trackpad, but nothing's working. Apple support didn't help and I can't factory reset the trackpad itself through Bluetooth since it won't connect through Bluetooth in the first place.
I'm running macOS 10.15.7 and my Bluetooth v 7.0.6f8. Other Bluetooth accessories connect perfectly fine to my laptop.
I don't have access to another Apple computer to test whether it's my laptop or the trackpad itself.
Any help/suggestions would be greatly appreciated. Thank you so much.


texts: troubleshooting connections issue between two macs

texts: I often want to move files between my MacBook and iMac, but its such an issue that I usually resort to failure. They will see each-other on the network (shown in Finder) but after selecting the machine and waiting a while there will be a message like "connection filed" or similar. The other MacBook in the house doesn't even show on this list at all. So I am wondering is there a secret to getting networking happening, or at least something I can use to troubleshoot these issues?


texts: Mounting encrypted HFS partition after messed up partition table

texts:
I have an external 2 TB Harddisk that had a 1.5 TB exFAT Partition and a 500GB HFS+ encrypted Partition. I wanted to shrink the 1.5 TB to 1 TB. I used https://www.diskgenius.com/ to shrink the exFAT Partition which worked, I ended up with a 1 TB Partition visible in Windows.

But after attaching the external harddisk to Mac now the 500 GB encrypted Partition is not recognized anymore. Mac's disk utility still shows disk2s2 with 512 GB but is not able to mount it.

My guess is that this disk was GPT before but got overwritten with a MBR by disk genius and that there is now data missing for MacOS to recognize the disk. Is that possible?

Is there any hope of recovering my data? Does HFS store some information needed for encryption in the GPT that might have been overwritten now?
Can I somehow force MacOS to mount disk2s2 as an encrypted HFS+ volume?
Does the GPT automatically get overwritten by MBR or is it possible that the MBR somehow just takes priority over the GPT and if the MBR gets deleted the GPT takes over again? Sorry if this is a dumb idea, I don't know much how these partitioning tables are stored on disk.

Any help appreciated.


texts: El Capitan WiFi Connection Drops Continuously

texts:
I have MBP Late 2013 and El Capitan 10.11.4 installed. But i have got a serious WiFi Connection dropping problem for a while. It is quite irritating as you may guess.

I couldn't find any clue why this is happening. None of my other devices experience the same problem, only MacBook Pro.

Here is the console logs
http://pastebin.com/fY3J5PUW

Thanks in advance


texts: How can I create a Windows 7 USB from Mac OS to work on a PC?

texts:
I know this has been asked about two or three times here, but none of the solutions work. Basically I have a frozen PC, a Mac w/o virtual Windows, a Windows ISO, and a USB stick. While I initially thought that using Bootcamp will solve the problem, the Windows installer created using bootcamp is not recognized by my PC.
Are there any solutions to creating a Windows 7 USB stick to work on my PC?

EDIT: I've been looking around, and it seems that unetbootin might solve the issue. Does anyone have any experience with the software?


texts: Is it possible to create a shortcut that represents every file in a directory

texts:
Is it possible to create a shortcut

ln -s ./source ./destination

that represents every file in a directory? I know I could just create an alias for the parent directory, but in my situation, I have to have an alias for each file. It would be prettier if I could create one alias that represented every file in a directory, rather than a whole bunch of them.

The syntax, I imagine would be something like this:

ln -s ./source/* ./destination

But of course that doesn't do anything.


texts: PDF added to iBooks on Mac does not sync to iCloud Drive or my iPhone

texts:
A few minutes ago I added a small PDF to iBooks on my Mac (DRM-free, not purchased through iTunes). My Mac has iCloud Drive enabled.

My understanding is that this should cause it to be uploaded to iCloud Drive, and thus available on iCloud.com. However, when I log in to iCloud.com, there is no PDF available in iCloud Drive.

Today I also enabled iCloud for iBooks on my iPhone. The PDF is not available there either.

(In iTunes on my Mac, I still have the iPhone set to sync books with my Mac. I was planning to turn this off once I confirmed that iCloud Drive was working. But I don't think that matters here. Bonus points if you can provide any advice on the impact of changing that setting, though I'm pretty sure it should be obsolete once everything is using iCloud.)

Do I have to wait some undetermined amount of time for this to propagate? Any way to make it manually sync so I can confirm it is working?


texts: How to make a terminal window always float on top?

texts:
I see tons of people who have asked this question in the past, and the answer is always the same.. "Use Afloat".  But since Afloat hasn't been updated in ages, and has only support for certain applications (and questionable support at that), I'm afraid that it is not an acceptable solution.

I want to be able to make an arbitrary window - in this case a terminal window - float on top of all other windows.  Please note that this is NOT the same as keeping it on "all desktops" (I'm already doing that), as the window will still pop behind other windows on the other desktops.

How can I, Using OSX Lion circa December of 2012, keep a specific Terminal window on top of all other windows, of all other applications?


texts: What happens when MDM vendor certificate expires?

texts:
There is no way to renew the MDM vendor certificate,you just have to create a new one.
After I create a new one, the devices have to be re-enrolled.
Is there a way I can avoid re-enrollment of devices?
I want to know what happens to the enrolled devices when the MDM vendor certificate expires?


texts: Mysterious Self-Originating File with the one-charcter name ":" (colon)

texts:
There's a file in my /users/myName that has appeared out of nowhere. It's named ":" in Terminal, "/" in Finder. It may be deleted (either drag and drop to trash or rm in Terminal) but will reappear the next time Terminal is closed--if already closed, one must open and then quit the terminal before it will appear. The file contains no data (0 kb).

I hope this isn't so mysterious to someone. Any insight would be most appreciated.


texts: Catalina Error: Can't Login After Time Machine Restore

texts: The Reset Password Failed Error failed from the perspective of an alternate Admin User. Here's the context: A Time Machine backup from a 10.10 with a current 10.15 destination. After setting the password, it doesn't work for the login. It just shakes.I also tried it from Recovery Mode where the user didn't appear. In Single User Mode using the ls command, the user does appear. When attempting the reset from Single User Mode after using mount -uw / then launchctl load /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.opendirectoryd.plist  then passwd username, it offers the reset, but when attempting, it gives the error that the password is too short when it clearly isn't too short. How can I recover this user? I've also reset user permissions to no avail. I think it may be a secure token issue. Commands I found online here, but they don't work: https://discussions.apple.com/thread/251177550?answerId=252256442022#252256442022


texts: Limit internet use when using mobile Internet

texts:
iCloud and other background services that I use seem to assume that Internet bandwidth is unlimited. As soon as I launch my Lion MacBook, hundreds of megs of updated documents, software updates, mail, notifications etc are downloaded.

This is desirable when I'm on broadband, but when I'm travelling and tethered to my iPhone, it's expensive.

Is there a way I can block all programs except Safari from using bandwidth? I could dual-boot a linux distro, but that seems overkill, and I'd lose access to mac apps.

Thanks,

Bernie     :o)


texts: How to turn off slide transition when switching between two full screen applications on OS X Mavericks?

texts:
Application switching cause one application to slide into another. Most times this is fine but am working on a MacBook Air and the slide transition causes motion sickness at times, especially after prolonged use (4+ hours). Looking for a way to turn off these animation.

Totalspaces2 has a turn off slide transition option, so I am pretty sure it's possible. Lion, Mountain Lion had Terminal commands for animation. I tried them all, and they don't work with Mavericks. I'm looking for Mavericks terminal commands to achieve the same.


texts: iTunes sync stuck on step 5: Importing Photos

texts:
When I'm trying to sync my iPad 4 (iOS7) using my Macbook (Mavericks) it stucks on the stage "Importing photos". It was syncing for more than 9 hours with absolutely no progress until I cancelled it. There are around 500 pictures to import.

The cord is good. USB port works well. I have the most recent iTunes, iPhoto. Already tried to rebuild iPhoto library. Nothing helps.

Please advice.


texts: Finder search does not find all relevant documents MacOS 10.6.8

texts:
I'm having problems with the search in Finder windows in MacOS X 10.6.8.

If I'm typing a search keyword in the textbox in a finder window and search for "file name" or "content", I get no or only a few results, although there should be much more results.

Is this a bug in OS X?

e.g. if I activate the search for "file name" and type "a" in the text box, I get 8 results.
When I search for "b" instead, I get 61 results, and 60 of them have an "a" in the file name!

Is this a known bug?
Is there a solution?

Edit: I've tried to

rebuild the spotlight index with sudo mdutil -E _PathOfPartition_
repaired permissions on the startup drive

... but no change - Finder/Spotlight does not list files as results, although they exist and match the search criteria.


texts: Error "Metric (TFM) file not found" with MacTex 2016

texts:
I want to use TexMaker as LaTeX editor on a Macbook with OS X 10.9.5.
I installed TexMaker 4.5 and MacTex 2016.
A first attempt to compile a given document (that was written with TexMaker on a Linux computer) gives errors because some .sty files are missing. So I looked for them on the internet and put them in the folder that contains my document.
A second attempt to compile the document gives following error:

Error ! Font U/psy/m/n/10=psyr at 10.0pt not loadable: Metric (TFM) file not found.

I read on tex.SE [still searching the post] that this can be due to multiple LaTeX distributions being installed on your computer. I think that this can be the case. How can I check which versions are installed? Or could there be a different cause?
Update
In usr/local/texlive there was a folder 2016 and 2016basic. I removed the 2016 folder but the problem persists.
Update 2
According to this question:

On macOS / MacTeX install collection-fontsrecommended in the TeX Live Utility or tlmgr install collection-fontsrecommended from the command line.

I did the latter from the command line. It said

tlmgr: package repository http://ctan.cs.uu.nl/systems/texlive/tlnet (not verified: gnupg not available)
===============================================================================
tlmgr itself needs to be updated.
Please do this via either
tlmgr update --self
or by getting the latest updater for Unix-ish systems:
http://mirror.ctan.org/systems/texlive/tlnet/update-tlmgr-latest.sh
and/or Windows systems:
http://mirror.ctan.org/systems/texlive/tlnet/update-tlmgr-latest.exe
Then continue with other updates as usual.
===============================================================================
tlmgr: Terminating; please see warning above!

So I proceeded with tlmgr update --self and it said

tlmgr: package repository
http://ftp.snt.utwente.nl/pub/software/tex/systems/texlive/tlnet (not verified: gnupg not available)
tlmgr: saving backups to /usr/local/texlive/2016basic/tlpkg/backups
/Library/TeX/texbin/tlmgr: create(tlpkg/tlpobj/texlive.infra.tlpobj) failed: Permission denied at /usr/local/texlive/2016basic/tlpkg/TeXLive/TLPOBJ.pm line 561.

How to proceed?


texts: That was supposed to be my finder window with my backups over time but I only see black screens. :(


texts: New Outlook for Mac (v16.44) & Applescript

texts:
I am trying to migrate a number of AppleScripts to the new Outlook for Mac.
A basic task is to retrieve selected messages.
I have been using for years
set msgSet to selection
.. but this does not work with the new Outlook -- it returns (*missing value*).
Same with
set msgSet to current messages.
Any thoughts on what might be the reason?
Thanks!
Giovanni


texts: Open resource from inside the bundle using c++ / qt

texts:
I have a Qt app set as a bundle, and it requires a resources database. If I place it inside the bundle, how do I open it ?

The app was created in Windows, and in Windows and Linux, I can use the path for the database:

fopen(path, r);

I can do the same thing in Os X with a path like "/Users/Me/Company/Product/resources.db" or "/Library/Application Support/Compay/Product/resources.db"

1) What path would I use for the resources.db if I want to place the database in Contents/Resources ?

2) Would I be able to do anything to access the location using an Open File Dialog ?


texts: I want to clean install 10.11 on a MacBook Air 2008 and an iMac 2007.Both seem unable to boot from netinstall or an USB Stick. Which options do I have to get them quickly to 10.11?


texts: Looking for software to generate keystrokes from voice commands for gaming purposes

texts:
[MacOS Catalina 10.15.6]
I would like to be able to bind spoken commands to keystrokes for gaming.  Fifteen years ago, on Windows, I used a small program called "Shoot", so I've been looking around for something similar but haven't been able to find anything suitable so far. (VAC was another alternative at the time, also for Windows.)
Apple's Voice Control is (a) processed in the cloud, which is a show stopper, and (b) kind of overkill for what I need, and (c) only allows OS based short-cuts and other "well known" keyboard commands.
Is there something around that can do this on MacOS?  Preferably Open Source?


texts: App Store update shows different account

texts:
I have a new app update I cannot install. When I review my installed user I see my @mac.com address. When attempting to update Cobook, I'm prompted for my @gmail.com account. The strange parts are:

I'm clearly not logged in as the gmail account
The gmail address is configured as a verified alternative ID

I'm running OS X 10.10.1 which was upgraded from 10.9 through the beta up to here. I see a separate issue on lion that doesn't address my problem.


texts:
On my MacBook Pro with macOS Mojave, my version of zsh is 5.3.

zsh --version

  zsh 5.3 (x86_64-apple-darwin18.0)

That version is a few years out-of-date, according to this. That page shows version 5.7.1 being current.

➥ Is there some way to update to the current version of zsh?


texts: Manually enter "Where From" text for screenshot Metadata?

texts:
What I would love to be able to do, is the opposite of what this person asked about; I want to ADD the "where from" text (in my case, a URL I could copy-paste from a browser tab) for screenshots I take of genealogical documents online.  I realize what I'm asking isn't the intent of this metadata field, but for my own use, it would be extremely useful.  If Info Sheet via "get info" (command+I) could accommodate a text-box for this field, that would be surreal, but any alternative method is worth knowing about.  The goal is that this could be done very quickly and without too much effort after I copy the URL.

This particular question relates to this question I posted a short while ago, which is far more important; a way to auto-launch Info Sheet after a screenshot is captured, as a reminder, to force me to paste the URL into the Comments box (which isn't the perfect spot for my needs but nevertheless far better than not having the URL at all).  Thanks all!  I'm a bit of an idiot with code but learn a great deal from all of you.


texts: How can I install an older version of iTunes?

texts:
I need to install iTunes 12.6.5 per this article in order to be able to download iPad apps directly from iTunes (since that functionality was later removed from iTunes). So I've tried to follow the relatively simple instructions by downloading the installer package, and running it. However as soon as I try to open the "Install iTunes" app it says "This software is not supported on your system."

I'm running macOS 10.14.2 (Mojave). Do I need to somehow uninstall the existing version of iTunes first? I tried doing that by dragging it from Applications into the Trash, but that reported "iTunes can't be modified or deleted because it's required by macOS."


texts: How to remove preinstalled Apache and PHP from Mac OS Sierra

texts:
I have been trying to figure out how to completely remove preinstalled Apache and PHP from my macbook pro ... The reason is that I am using the homebrew version of both Apache and PHP. The current version of PHP that I am using is PHP 7 as you can see in the screenshot below

but when I use php -v in the terminal it shows me PHP version 5.6 .. see screenshot below.

I am trying to find the preinstalled PHP but can't seem to find it ... Can you guys help me out and point me to the right direction ? Thank You.


texts:
I use VirtualBox on my MBP and often need to mount my USB flash drive inside the guest.  The problem I'm running into is that the host OS (OS X Mavericks) immediately mounts the USB flash drive when I insert it.  When I try to unmount it (gracefully, through Finder), OS X complains that the device is in use.  Further research into lsof reveals that Spotlight and AVG are doing their thing with the flash drive.

Rather than fiddling with individual app settings, I'd like to just modify the host OS behavior so that the USB device doesn't auto-mount.  Any suggestions?


texts: automatically set alarm clock on iPhone if calendar event

texts:
Is there any way to automatically set the alarm clock on my iPhone if my calendar has an event in the morning?  The calendar events are being added from a variety of platforms via Google calendar, and I'd like there to automatically be an alarm on the phone (if the event is in the morning.)

Thanks


texts: How to launch a terminal which executes vim from a script?

texts:
Basically, what I want to achieve is something similar to gnome-terminal -e vim in Linux.

It will launch a vim window and when I quit vim with :q, the window will be closed.

How can I do this with Terminal?


texts: Apple TV - Can't Sign In, or use YouTube (but other stuff works)

texts:
Apple TV was working fine up until yesterday.

I had rented & watched Men in Black 3 and it was all good - that was my first day experience wi Apple TV - great!

Now it's all gone downhill...

Nothing changed on my network - connecting wired directly to my router/modem to the net.

Apple ID is fine as i've tested it on other iDevices.

I have the iTunes Store set to Australia with correct Time Zone.

I've got Home Sharing turned on with my Apple ID on the Apple TV and it's working.

The problems ...

When I try to Sign In, I either get (it's random) ... 'Unable to Sign In - Apple TV can't connect to the server at this time. please try later.', OR  'Unable to Sign In - The Apple ID you entered couldn't be found or your password was incorrect. Please try again.'

When I try to watch YouTube I get ... 'No content was found - There is a problem communicating with YouTube. Try again later.'

Funny thing is everything else works - Movies & TV Shows previews, iTunes Festival, Trailers, Vimeo etc.

* ? Any ideas guys?

FYI - I'm with iiNet (Australia).

Updated ...

Have cross posted here (there is a workaround included in the discussion now) - https://discussions.apple.com/message/19836260#19836260


texts: I have a iMac 2009 later with High Sierra OS, I am using my mini display port already to 2 other tvs. I need to connect a 3rd tv but to display a different display. Only other ports I have available is a Firewire 800 port and 4 USB ports, I understand that the display driver for the USB ports on this Mac and OS version there was a problem and will never work. What other option do I have to run another 3rd video output to show a different display.


texts: iPad Keynote Presentation in portrait mode

texts: I'd like to use Keynote on iPad in portrait mode, so that I can use it while it's in my dock and so I can make app wireframes in it that are portrait mode apps (vertical orientation). Is this possible?


texts: How to stop automatic switching of Space when switching between apps?

texts:
When I have the same app opened on more than 1 Space, switching between apps sometimes brings me to another Space. This is very disorientating.

A specific example is: I have a few Chrome windows opened in Space 1 and a few more opened in Space 2. When I switch to Chrome using Command + Tab, sometimes the Space switching takes place too.

How can I make switching apps (Command + Tab) and switching between windows of the same app (Command + ~) stay in the same Space?

I have made the configuration below, So Command + ~ stays within the same Space. But Command + Tab still triggers Space switching if I have the Same app opened in more than 1 space.

System Preferences → Mission Control

Disable When switching to an application, switch to a Space with open windows for the application.
Disable Group windows by application.


texts: How can I forcibly shut down my Mac at an appointed time?

texts:
I'm looking for an auto shutdown app that will forcefully shut down the computer at an appointed time.

The most important part of this is that the shutdown should not be cancelable (unless the process is extremely onerous).


texts: I cannot see Time Machine in Finder to eject it

texts: On my MacBook Pro, running macOS Sierra, Time Machine is not visible in Finder as an option, so I can't eject it.


texts:
I'm using iPhone 4, iOS 5.1.

Can I block or disable hotspot mode in iOS 5.1?


texts:
I was given a iMacG4 (PowerPC)  and intend to give to an 8 year old for the purpose of web browsing and exploring python.  I would like to gain administrative (sudo) privilege.

Although I have access as a common user, I do not have the password, which means no sudo privilege.  I also do not have the original CDs.

Does it make sense to reset the box to factory settings or is there a better technique to gain sudo ability?  Considering its age is the factory reset procedure different from modern Macs?

I did find this crudely written procedure from the youTube factory reset procedure:

Restart or Turn On Your iMac G4 or G5 Computer
Press Cmd-S at the same time when you see a black screen.
Root # should come up
When you see the root # type mount -uw / and press Return
Type rm /DB/.applesetupdone followed by Return
Your screen will come up with all these white words going down which is normal
It will shutdown, Turn ON your iMac G4 or G5 Computer
It will take a while to load up, then it should load a quick video starting with a apple logo.

I could not confirm if step 4 was performed correctly and
Step 5 did not work because it was read only.


texts: How is the System Keychain secured in OS X?

texts:
I'm looking for something either like this security white paper for iOS except for OS X or even better, some kind of security audit report from an independent expert.  After reading through documentation like the Keychain Services Programming Guide I'm even more confused about what is vulnerable to an adversarial attack on an unencrypted backup of an OS X System.
Last time I checked, the user's login keychain under OS X was about as secure as the password.  I recall some issue that shrank the actual secrecy of the key to something like 111 bits (foggy memory, please feel free to correct me) due to some issue with how the password is converted to a key, but that was a long time ago and hopefully that's been fixed.
On the other hand, I've been told the System Keychain is inherently less secure because any administrator can access it and an intruder has many options for becoming an administrator besides guessing a single user's password.
In particular, I'm worried about storing passwords used in automated scripts in the System Keychain as the system files are backed up and stored off-site without further encryption.  Documents and other user data are encrypted before being taken off-site, but I have a nagging suspicion that there's a path I'm overlooking that recovers those keys once the System Keychain is compromised (due to our procedures, not necessarily any cryptographic flaws).  So I want to have a thorough understanding of how the System Keychain is simultaneously secured yet accessible to any administrator.

How are the keys architected such that any administrative user can unlock the System Keychain?

Are there cryptographic restrictions that limit what an administrative user can do with information in the System Keychain in any way?

Given an unencrypted system backup without /Users, how would you gain access to the keys in the System Keychain?

I'm interested in OS X 10.5 Leopard and later versions, but specifically limited to desktop or laptop Macs without a T2 chip or secure enclave. Apple's Spring 2020 Platform Security Whitepaper explains pretty well that the critical keys encrypting keychain data are stored on the T2 chip and the T2 chip itself manages and applies ACLs which restrict access to the decryption functionality. So on those computers, as with all iOS devices, the keychain database is tied to the hardware and cannot be used on a different device.


texts: Is it safer to upgrade Yosemite to Big Sur by upgrading to Catalina first?

texts:
My Macbook (just) qualifies as supported for Big Sur and is running Yosemite 10.10.5 (OK, I'm a little slack with upgrading). I have completed a full backup to external drive.
The doc says:

Upgrading from macOS Catalina 10.15 or Mojave 10.14?
Go to Software Update in System Preferences to find macOS Big Sur.
Click Upgrade Now and follow the onscreen instructions.
Upgrading from an older version of macOS?
If you’re running any release from macOS 10.13 to 10.9, you can upgrade to macOS Big Sur
from the App Store. If you’re running Mountain Lion 10.8, you will
need to upgrade to El Capitan 10.11 first.

Should I upgrade to Catalina (the last 10.x) first, then Big Sur (11.x) or just go straight to Big Sur?
Is there less risk of screwing up my Macbook going via Catalina, or is the risk the same?


texts: Whenever I try to shut down my iMac (3.2 GHz Intel Core i3, running 10.7.3), it closes out all programs, goes to the gray screen with the spinning ball and just hangs there.  This occurs in restart or shut down mode.  Any thoughts?


texts:
I'm trying to Boot Camp my Mac Pro (Late 2013, MacPro6,1).

  You cannot partition an external disk, a RAID disk or an internal disk on which FileVault encryption is in progress.
  Restart your computer using an internal disk that is not part of a RAID set or try it again after FileVault has completed.

Well, this is an internal SSD (an OWC Aura), and there's only one intentional partition; so I don't know why it's telling me this.

> diskutil list
/dev/disk0 (external, physical):
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      GUID_partition_scheme                        *1.9 TB     disk0
   1:                        EFI EFI                     209.7 MB   disk0s1
   2:                  Apple_HFS Kate's HD               1.9 TB     disk0s2
   3:                 Apple_Boot Recovery HD             650.0 MB   disk0s3

> diskutil corestorage info disk0
disk0 is not a CoreStorage disk

> diskutil info disk0
   Device Identifier:        disk0
   Device Node:              /dev/disk0
   Whole:                    Yes
   Part of Whole:            disk0
   Device / Media Name:      OWC Aura SSD

   Volume Name:              Not applicable (no file system)

   Mounted:                  Not applicable (no file system)

   File System:              None

   Content (IOContent):      GUID_partition_scheme
   OS Can Be Installed:      No
   Media Type:               Generic
   Protocol:                 PCI
   SMART Status:             Not Supported

   Total Size:               1.9 TB (1920080281600 Bytes) (exactly 3750156800 512-Byte-Units)
   Volume Free Space:        Not applicable (no file system)
   Device Block Size:        512 Bytes

   Read-Only Media:          No
   Read-Only Volume:         Not applicable (no file system)

   Device Location:          External
   Removable Media:          No

   Solid State:              No
   Virtual:                  No
   OS 9 Drivers:             No
   Low Level Format:         Not supported

> diskutil info disk0s2
   Device Identifier:        disk0s2
   Device Node:              /dev/disk0s2
   Whole:                    No
   Part of Whole:            disk0
   Device / Media Name:      Kate's New HD

   Volume Name:              Kate's HD

   Mounted:                  Yes
   Mount Point:              /

   File System Personality:  Journaled HFS+
   Type (Bundle):            hfs
   Name (User Visible):      Mac OS Extended (Journaled)
   Journal:                  Journal size 147456 KB at offset 0x37e2000
   Owners:                   Enabled

   Partition Type:           Apple_HFS
   OS Can Be Installed:      Yes
   Recovery Disk:            disk0s3
   Media Type:               Generic
   Protocol:                 PCI
   SMART Status:             Not Supported
   Volume UUID:              A22B65B2-1BAF-3561-B295-EF8343111867
   Disk / Partition UUID:    B85D962F-C97C-4C64-99AC-FD6C2F47F173

   Total Size:               1.9 TB (1919220523008 Bytes) (exactly 3748477584 512-Byte-Units)
   Volume Free Space:        710.0 GB (710019452928 Bytes) (exactly 1386756744 512-Byte-Units)
   Device Block Size:        512 Bytes
   Allocation Block Size:    4096 Bytes

   Read-Only Media:          No
   Read-Only Volume:         No

   Device Location:          External
   Removable Media:          No

   Solid State:              No

What steps can I take to install Windows on this volume? Preferably, I'd like to make Bootcamp “just work.”


texts: Strange sleep mode of MacBook behaviour after water damage

texts: Months ago I drowned my MacBooks keyboard in water and it died. I'm using an external keyboard now the Mac works as before. However, there is this interesting feature that if I just close the Mac (sleep mode?) then it runs hot and the battery drops to 0% within about 15 Minutes. So now if I don't use the Mac, I just keep it open so the battery doesn't go away. What might be the explaination for this new property?


texts: Magic Window causes GfxCardStatus to switch to Discrete mode

texts:
I was trying out the Magic Window timelapse wallpaper app and noticed that GfxCardStatus changed to discrete as soon as I loaded the application. It consumes 79.7mb of real memory. Does this mean there is a big impact on battery life ? How can I know for sure ?

rMBP Mountain Lion OSX 10.8


texts: Having problems with Mail and a few other programs freezing

texts:
I have a brand new macbook. I don't  really know a ton about macs...I'm newly switched from a life of windows pc's.  I keep reading about how you can unintall and then reinstall your OS. I can't get my head around how you would do this, bc w/windows you would have no way to get on the internet to access the program without an OS on the computer. I can imagine getting a drive to put it on, from which you could reinstall, but that seems to defeat the point if you think your version could be corrupt and want to ditch it and get a clean copy.

My computer is the Macbook(not an air or pro), so it has no drives and only one port. I do not have any external drives.

When I bought this machine I asked the genius bar to transfer my files, music and photos only. They  ended up transferring my entire drive, which included windows folders.I've deleted most of this, but am not sure if I've removed everything and do not know if this could be the source of the problem. Could these files have corrupted anything?

Any thoughts greatly appreciated. Sorry if I appear ignorant! It's only bc I am when it comes to this :~)


texts: Apple software update was stuck at downloading now its stuck at cancelling

texts:
I got a notification to update the itunes v12.2.1.Initially had lots of download going on so the download was slow.Later after completing the  windows downloads the itunes update is simpply stuck at one place it doesn't resume the download.

When I start another download it starts downloading very fast but when I see the same for itunes the update doesn't resume it is stuck at 51.70MB

A few while later as it was still stuck on that 51.70 I clicked the Stop but now even the cancelling is stuck.

Although I can simply open the task manager and closed it but why exactly did the software update didn't resume when it had the free bandwidth for updating


texts: Does anyone know where the backlight fuse is on a 2016 MacBook Pro 15" touchstrip model?

texts: I found an image of a 13" but it doesn't match the 15" board.  It is a Model A1707.  Just need to test the fuse.  Thanks!


texts: Using an Air as an iPod dock for extra headphone volume

texts:
I have an iPod Classic 160GB synced with iTunes in Windows on a desktop computer.

Volume from the iPod through headphones is too soft. When I'm away from the desktop, is it possible to connect the iPod to my MacBook Air to listen to content through the Air as if it were a docking station? I could use headphones on the Air.


texts: Will internal HDD spin down when a Mac is booted from another internal SSD?

texts:
On my MacBook Pro, I am planning on removing the optical drive and adding an SSD to the mix. Since Apple doesn't support this configuration, I don't find any official documentation covering SSD in the optical bay or HDD in the optical bay.

I presume the energy saver setting would spin down any spindle-based drive when it's idle (like in a Mac Pro), but would like to ask others that may have experience with this configuration in a recent MacBook Pro.

When booted from OS X installed onto an SSD, will the internal HDD be spun down when not in use?


texts: Copying images from iMessage creates duplicates

texts:
This is extremely annoying problem. Few months ago I've forwarded few panoramas to a friend and it crashed her phone. Today I tried to copy & paste few select pictures and instead whole pack times 8 was about to get sent. Even more frustratingly, drag & drop of selected photos from iMessage copies just one item. Copy and paste is trying to copy 25x items and crashes top of the line MBP.

Screenshots below


texts:
Everytime I use cmd + shift + p (which is used in a lot of advanced text editor like sublime to open the command palette) my mac opens a window .

I don't want this mac to be connected to airplay.

I've looked at all airplay settings in system preferences as well as the keyborad shortcuts one. I even set a global cmd + shift + p on an arbitrary command to make it conflict with the airplay one, without success.

Installing keycues and cheatsheet didn't help me find it.


texts: How can I change the case of all contacts' cities?

texts: Most of my contacts in Contacts.app have the city typed in UPPERCASE. This has led my iOS devices to correct, for example "Stockholm" to "STOCKHOLM" for a while. How can I bulk change all cities from UPPERCASE to Titlecase?


texts: Coming from a Windows Server world, how does one connect workstations to an Apple server?

texts:
I have a number of workstations on a LAN with a new OS X Lion Server. The server is "set up," in that there are user accounts on the server, among other things, but I actually don't know how to connect the individual workstations to the Lion Server.

In the Windows world, this would be called "Joining the domain" and, depending upon setup, could include setting up home directories, directory redirection to the server, policies related to mapping certain drives, among any number of things.

Any help is appreciated. :-)


texts:
I had to force quit Pages as it was not responding (apparently my computer ran out of application memory and almost all applications stopped working).
After restarting (which involved force quitting all those applications including pages), some (but not all) of the files that were open in the previous session cannot be opened. The error message I get reads

"File" can't be opened right now.
Pages couldn't read the file.

The file exists and was apparently modified at a time after I worked on it last but well before the restart.
Is there a way to re-claim the file or at least the text in it?
Edit. It does not appear that the file is damaged, because even if I recover a previous version from backup, Pages cannot open that either (nor does it want to open a copy). So, it appears that the file is somehow locked.


texts: MacOS partition shows up as FFFFFFFF-FFFF-FFFF-FFFF-FFFFFFFFFFFF (Mojave)

texts:
I suspect this this may be  a duplicate, but I'm not sure what I should do considering almost everyone else has another macOS version or other partition size and I'm not sure how to generalize another answer to my setup.

So I wanted to delete a Linux partition back to APFS on my main HDD, but it split up the APPLE SSD SM0256F Media. I'm still on my macOS system, but I know that if I reboot I won't be able to access it. I've made a backup but would like to make the partition bootable/accessable since I can't backup programs etc. I still have a 16GB USB drive for use if that's necessary. Also Macintosh wasnt split up as it is now. Macintosh was the main drive that showed up in Disk utility.

  /dev/disk0 (internal, physical):
       #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
       0:      GUID_partition_scheme                        *251.0 GB   disk0
       1:                        EFI EFI                     209.7 MB   disk0s1
       2: FFFFFFFF-FFFF-FFFF-FFFF-FFFFFFFFFFFF               205.8 GB   disk0s2

    /dev/disk1 (synthesized):
       #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
       0:      APFS Container Scheme -                      +205.8 GB   disk1
                                     Physical Store disk0s2
       1:                APFS Volume Macintosh HD            122.9 GB   disk1s1
       2:                APFS Volume Preboot                 45.8 MB    disk1s2
       3:                APFS Volume Recovery                517.0 MB   disk1s3
       4:                APFS Volume VM                      2.1 GB     disk1s4

    /dev/disk2 (external, physical):
       #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
       0:      GUID_partition_scheme                        *15.7 GB    disk2
       1:                        EFI EFI                     209.7 MB   disk2s1
       2:       Microsoft Basic Data SD CRUZER               15.5 GB    disk2s2

gpt -r show disk0

    start       size  index  contents
          0          1         PMBR
          1          1         Pri GPT header
          2         32         Pri GPT table
         34          6
         40     409600      1  GPT part - C12A7328-F81F-11D2-BA4B-00A0C93EC93B
     409640  401934440      2  GPT part - FFFFFFFF-FFFF-FFFF-FFFF-FFFFFFFFFFFF
  402344080   87890639
  490234719         32         Sec GPT table
  490234751          1         Sec GPT header


texts: What's the accepted "abbreviation" for the original iPhone?

texts: I've got an original iPhone that I'm trying to find a case for online and searching is quite difficult. What's the accepted shorthand? I've seen 2G (which seems wrong, as that would mean 2nd Generation, which would be the iPhone 3G), and 1G, neither of which seem to yield good results.


texts: Bootcamp - Stuck on "Partitioning Disk..."

texts:
When attempting to add a Windows 10 (April 2018, build 1803) partition to my 2019 iMac, I get stuck on "Partitioning disk..." perpetually.

When I look at Disk Utility, the OSXRESERVED and BOOTCAMP partitions appear:

My iMac is running the latest stable release of macOS, 10.14.5 (18F132). Is there a known bug/solution to this problem?


texts:
In Pages, it is possible to indent paragraphs by going to Format > Layout > Indents > First and changing it to the desired value.

However, when updating the "Body" Paragraph Style to use this, it causes the first paragraph to be indented as well, which I would prefer not to have. It also causes one-liner paragraphs to be indented, which looks quite awkward.

Is there a way to prevent Pages from indenting the first paragraph in any sequence of paragraphs, without having to manually remove the indentation from each first paragraph?


texts:
Is it even possible ?

I want to boot my actual Mac OS X Server in Parallels. ( With all the programs and setting )
The Reason is : I want to create a Test-System, where i can experiment without harming the running system.
PLEASE HELP ME. I need this JOB !!!


texts: Is there a way to completely remove all data access, including WiFi, on iPhone 4?

texts: We want to give our teen a phone for talk and text only. She has to earn trust again before having access to anything online. We are upgrading and would like to hand down one of our old phones. Our plan is through Sprint if that makes a difference.


texts: Local Directory empty on my FileZilla Pro Client

texts:
I am using FileZilla Pro 3.44.2 on my MacOS Mojave. Support didn't help regarding my issues.

The only local directory on my FileZilla left hand panel browsable is /Users/anjanesh-mac/Downloads. /Users/anjanesh-mac/ shows no folders/files.

https://imgur.com/a/oWJUbSw

I don't see others reporting this issue. Is there something wrong with my setup and how can I fix this?


texts: After using AirDrop to get a photo from iPhone to Macbook, the file format is HEIC and can I choose "one of" the sequences of photos?

texts:
The HEIC format (and file extension such as IMG_1201.HEIC) is probably what the format is when the iPhone takes the photo that is "live" -- that a user can choose one frame out of the many frames for a duration of something like 0.5 seconds.

If viewed on iPhone I can choose one of the split second photo -- such as if somebody blinked the eye, I can choose another one that is 0.2 seconds later right on iPhone.  After "AirDrop" to Macbook Pro (using OS X Mojave), can the default Preview app let the user choose the 0.2 seconds one as on the iPhone?


texts: How to upgrade Homebrew itself (not softwares/formulas installed by it) on macOS 10.12.3?

texts:
I have homebrew installed long before the OS is upgraded a few times to 10.12.3. Now that

$ brew --version
Homebrew 0.9.9 (git revision 080c; last commit 2016-08-11)
Homebrew/homebrew-core (git revision b163b; last commit 2016-08-10)

How to properly upgrade to newer version, say 1.1?

$ brew upgrade

didn't work.


texts: How does maximizing/full screen work in Mavericks and Yosemite?

texts:
OSX features full-screen mode in recent versions but that's not really the same thing as automatically resizing a window to use the full desktop like on Windows...

And, what is the + button supposed to do exactly? It generally seems to make the current window a bit bigger but not in an obviously consistent way.

Somehow I can't figure out how this is supposed to work (or I'm too used to the Windows way of things), so any explanation would be apprecated.


texts: How are the apps published on the App Store licensed to end-users?

texts:
What license is used by apps published on the iOS and Mac App Store? I am assuming this information is a part of the Apple Developer Program License Agreement.

Does the individual/organization publishing the app has a choice of license? Are the individual apps licensed as a part of license for iOS (the system software) itself?


texts: Why BlueTooth is activated after updating the iOS?

texts:
I noticed something while updating the iOS. After finishing the updating, I always find that BlueTooth is on and activated.

Any idea why Apple is doing that?


texts: How can I get my device's unlock passcode from the KeyChain?

texts: Assuming that the four or six digit unlock code to the phone is in the Keychain, where exactly do I find it? I see my passwords for apps but not the unlock code for the phone


texts: Is this fun partition mess I have made fixable on the Mac OS X side?

texts:
On a MacBook Pro, a wrong decision long time ago still causing numerous problems.

In a nut shell, I run bootcamp and OS X together on the same drive and the OS X stopped booting a while ago (I was trying to resize so that I make space for Win7). Today I fixed some issues but along the way, I messed up the boot system and moved to GPT (mistake!).

Here is my existing partition table:

    Number  Start (sector)    End (sector)  Size       Code  Name
      1              40          409639   200.0 MiB   AF00  EFI system partition
      2          409640          819239   200.0 MiB   EF00  EFI System Partition
      3          819240       300150351   142.7 GiB   AF00  Apple_HFS_Untitled_2
      4       300150352       301419887   619.9 MiB   AB00  Recovery HD
      6       390352896       488396799   46.8 GiB    0700  BOOTCAMP

I like to solve the following problems:

Notice the number 5 that is missing, that is 50gb, recover this and make this seen from Win7.
Somehow see my main OS X partition from Win7 (this was the case before I move to GPT, now windows just says protected GPT)
Merge my existing 50G Bootcamp to the newly minted 50Gb so that I have a decent windows machine with a single drive letter.

Directions appreciated, especially 1 and 2 are more Mac specific, I think I can figure out 3, if I can solve 1 and 2.

SOLVED
I basically use the gpt application and there is an option that converts GTP to MBR. That solved the problem 1 and 2. http://sourceforge.net/projects/gptfdisk/ is the tool I have used.


texts: Failed to set a credential for network based account

texts:
We want to assign credentials to network based accounts according to the following Apple kbase: How to allow administration of OS X from network-based accounts

dseditgroup -o edit -n /Local/Default -u localadmin -p -a networkuser -t user admin
Failed to set credentials

Can anyone advice what's wrong and how to improve it?

OS X 10.10


texts: I am deaf in one ear and have trouble conversing in a noisy restaurant. I am looking for a way to place my iPhone 5 on the table in front of my partner so that the sound picked up by its built-in microphone is transmitted to an earphone I would wear. Suggestions ?


texts: MacBook Pro doesn’t recognize new internal HDD

texts: My MBP 13” mid 2012 doesn’t recognize new HDDs (500 GB HGST 5400 rpm SATA 3.0gb or 500GB HGST 7200 rpm 6.0g) in Disk Utility, but picked up a Toshiba 500 GB. My previous HDD failed(dead). I am confused; Is it really something with the brand, or rather a compatibility issue or something else?


texts: Are all Verizon iPhone 5S are GSM Unlocked globally?

texts:
I am getting an iPhone 5S, Verizon version from USA and I plan to use it in India (on a GSM network). I read that Verizon iPhone 5S are GSM unlocked globally and can be used anywhere in the World. Is that true? Is that for only select model numbers/batch? Or does it apply to all Verizon iPhone 5S?

PS - I will be not using 4G/LTE, only 2G/3G is enough.


texts: Hardware shut off of iPhone mic (eavesdropping prevention)

texts:
You may have heard of some news about iPhone (and computer) that some software can eavesdrop on you by, using a software/malware.  A recent example of that is this one: Facebook Doesn’t Listen To Everything You Say, But It Does Listen When You Do This

So I want to prevent anyone from doing that.

For camera, I think a very safe counter measure is to simply block the view of the camera (by a piece of tape, for example).  (Note, by the way, that even the FBI Diretor suggested you to do that.  See this article: FBI Director: Cover up your webcam)

Now how about the microphone?  Perhaps one counter measure is to blocking the internal mic also by a tape.  But I am also thinking whether I should do the following instead?  Plug in a dummy plug into the headset/mic jack (the plug has four rings and does not really connect to a real headset/mic electrically).  Would this disable the internal mic by hardware?  I think this method may be better because I am not sure a paper tape can block the audio completely for the internal mic.  Do you agree with this assertion?

Any suggestion?  Thanks!

The answer may be same or different for iPhones and computers (and other smartphones).  But let's assume for now my main concern for now is iPhone.

Note: I have read this post but I still don't know the answer.  My question is what if the dummy plug has four rings but those rings are not electrically connected to a microphone.


texts: Change shortcut for switching to the next most recently used app among your open apps in MacOS

texts:
From the Mac keyboard shortcuts page

I found shortcut for switching to the next most recently used app among your open apps : Command-Tab.

I want to change it to Option-Tab.
Does anyone know name of this shortcut so I can add a new shortcut key as Option-Tab in App Shortcuts


texts: Can you tell me how to place a photo into a Simplenote? I am using an iPhone 6s or a MacBook with OS X El Capitan.


texts: How to analyse an iOS 8.2 Messages misbehaviour?

texts:
Bug description

In iOS 8.2 I just discovered a misbehaviour of Messages application
within the function to delete SMS.

When a given discussion is opened, I want to select and delete a set of SMS. To achieve this I usually long-tap on one SMS to make the Copy | More… menu appear, and choose More…. Then the current SMS is automatically selected and the bottom changes to a menu with a blue trash on the left and a blue arrow on the right.

Actually this function is unreachable. When I long-tap on one SMS the hidden Copy | More… menu appears:

but the bottom does not change. The function to delete a message or a set of messages is not there:

I compared the Messages settings with one running iOS 7.1.2 wich doesn't present this problem. They have exactly the same configuration.

Workaround for the dummies

If I quit the Messages application, the bug vanishes…
temporarily.

Question

Is this a known problem?

Might this be a configuration error I made and which I didn't see?

Might this be a bug?

How may I diagnose this for sure?


texts: How to check originality of parts in a second hand Mac mini?

texts:
How can I check that all the parts in a Mac mini late 2014 are genuine or not?

I have found that we can change the About this Mac details from system.

How can I know that Details shown in About this Mac is right and not a cheat?


texts: How to use AppleScript application with "open file -a AppleScriptApp"?

texts:
Some information about what I am trying to achieve

I am using emacs inside of terminal. I know about existence of cocoa versions of emacs (like GNU Emacs for OS X, Aquamacs and Emacs Mac Port). But I prefer to code inside of terminal.

Everything is fine in my setup except the fact that sometimes I want to open file inside of emacs from Finder or any other software. So I need find running process of emacs in terminal or create new one and open the fine inside of running emacs.

So basically I need to create an .app wrapper for opening files in terminal emacs.

Trying to get it done

As far as I understand, open -a my_emacs_app /path/to/file is the same as opening file in application from finder. So that's why I am testing my_emacs_app using open command.

My first attempt is to create application using AppleScript. Here is the code that process passed arguments:

on run argv
    if (count of argv) > 0 then
        -- get file path from argv
        -- and log to logfile for testing purposes
        return "defined"
    else
        -- no args means no file
        -- log to logfile that we can't extract file path
        -- from empty arguments
        return "failed"
    end if
end run

And actually it works when I try to run it using

$ osascript my_emacs_app.scpt /path/to/file

It opens the file and logs what expected to log file.

When I run it using

$ osascript my_emacs_app.scpt

It logs to file that no arguments were passed.
So I was happy with it. But remember, I need an .app wrapper. So I am exporting this script as application (and place it inside of /Applications/ folder). And then when I try to

$ open -a my_emacs_app /path/to/file

I see that application is executed for a short time and then is closed. But nothing good happens. I mean, file is not opened in emacs and nothing is logged into log file.

Does any one know, how to export such scripts?


texts: Can't run one particular program from Terminal without using its full path

texts:
I want to run a program ds9 from the Terminal. The program is clearly in the PATH, which I determined by running:

which ds9
/Users/evgenii/miniconda3/envs/iraf/bin/ds9

But when I run the command by typingds9, it shows me the following error:

-bash: /Applications/ds9.app/Contents/MacOS/ds9: No such file or directory

I can still execute it fine if I use the full path as follows:

/Users/evgenii/miniconda3/envs/iraf/bin/ds9

What's going on? Why is it trying to run /Applications/ds9.app?

Permissions are as follows:

-rwxrwxr-x@ 1 evgenii  staff  18613852  9 Nov 20:13 /Users/evgenii/miniconda3/envs/iraf/bin/ds9

Update:

Here is the output of running type -a ds9 command:

type -a ds9
ds9 is aliased to `/Applications/ds9.app/Contents/MacOS/ds9 -xpa no'
ds9 is /Users/evgenii/miniconda3/envs/iraf/bin/ds9


texts: steps to get a Mac to report CPU and memory load via SNMP?

texts:
My group runs a bunch of Mac Pros and xServes of various flavors, and being a fairly recent hire, I am getting up to speed on how to monitor them properly. We use SolarWinds NPM and SAM, and monitor those Macs via SNMP.

Problem: some of them do not report CPU and memory load, and one - volumes.

snmp configurations on these are identical.

Is this about MIBs? What's the easiest way to get all of our Macs to report CPU and memory load?

Say, I have two xServes (OSX 10.6.8 but it doesn't really matter); one is reporting CPU/mem, the other one isn't. snmpd.conf files are identical. What do I need to do to enable CPU/mem polling on the handicapped machine? Is this about copying certain MIBs in /usr/share/snmp from one machine to another?

Thanks!


texts: iPhone 5: Does the Wahoo Key work with the Classic-to-Lightning adapter?

texts:
I have a Wahoo Fisica Key I use for sports. It’s is a small dongle that enables sports apps to connect to heart rate monitors, pedometers, etc. It goes into my iPhone 4 classic iPhone 30-pin-connector.

Wahoo’s website obviously says it does not work with the iPhone 5, but I assume this is just for the physical incompatibility of 30-pin and Lightning. When upgrading from iPhone 4 to iPhone 5, will the sensor work with the 30-pin/Lightning adapter?


texts: Making Terminal bash auto-complete stop at ambiguous character and display all possible options

texts:
The behavior I see happening is that when I type something partially and hit TAB, if there are multiple files/commands that match what I had typed in, only the first one is displayed. Further TAB hits result in other matches being shown. Instead, I want the auto-completion to fill till the first ambiguous character and then if I hit TAB again, display all possible choices (as in say Ubuntu terminal). This is what I have in my .inputrc:

set completion-ignore-case on
set show-all-if-ambiguous on
TAB: menu-complete

The show-all-if-ambiguous seems to be what I am looking for, but it doesn't seem to work for me.

I actually want the behavior that this member doesn't:

Skip first terminal beep and to display ambiguous filename expansions

I like hearing the first BEEP (or stop) and then typing in some more characters to fix the ambiguity.


texts: How to screencapture just the active display in a dual monitor setup?

texts:
When I use ⇧+⌘+3 to take a screenshot with my laptop connected to a external monitor, it output a couple of images, one for each display.

Is there any way to take the screenshot of just the active monitor instead of both?

BTW, I know that exist ⇧+⌘+4 that let me select a region, but this is not the idea.

I found the command screencapture that can capture only the main monitor with -m option.

screencapture -m ~/Desktop/screencapture.jpg

But, what about second monitor?


texts: Is there a quick, free viewer for Word docs?

texts:
TextEdit will open them, but often doesn't display them correctly.

I really like QuickLook, but it won't stay open and doesn't allow for copying text.

OpenOffice seems to read the files adequately, but is slow to launch.

The ideal would be something like Preview that can open Word docs.


texts:
My daughter has an iPod Touch 4th generation I think it is with iOS 6. We have a problem with it whereby it doesn't show any wireless networks at all. Previously, it connected fine and would show networks available without issue.

Note: Like a lot of iPods it has been dropped in the past and ended up with a cracked screen which has been replaced.

On the two most used networks, I've restarted the routers to no avail.

The only network it 'sees' is when I turn my iPhone 5 into a personal hotspot. It then sees and connects to that wireless network.

I've also tried manually entering the SSID details of the two home networks but it immediately returns something along the lines of 'Cannot connect to ...'.

Additionally, when first going into Settings>Wi-Fi it briefly displays the circular 'I'm doing something' next to the 'Choose a Network' text but then disappears.

I've obviously restarted the iPod and Reset Network Settings.

Any help would be very much appreciated!

Thank you.


texts: Suddenly the "diagnosticd" daemon rise up to over 200% CPU usage

texts:
Suddenly the diagnosticd daemon rise up to over 200% CPU usage, even with Xcode is not running, on OS X Mojave 10.14.1

I can't figure out it. The fans become very noisy.


texts:
We have an early 2005 Power Macintosh G5 2.0 DP (PCI). This tower has been having a lot of problems: freezing randomly, runs hot and slow, fans race intermittently, CDs/DVDs don't always load, won't go to sleep sometimes...
What is happening and how can I fix this??

Here are additional specs:

Dual 2GHz PowerPC G5 Processor
2GB DDR SDRAM
Runs OS 10.5.8

This is the model info for this tower: http://www.everymac.com/systems/apple/powermac_g5/stats/powermac_g5_2.0_dp_pci.html

Additional System Profiler info is here at:
http://inventaweb.net/matthew/sysprofiler.txt

I deleted the log files from the file because they are way too long, but everything else is there.


texts:
I have a question that's probably not asked too often, because it has little negative impact on the user. I can't find it on The Google anyway.

So this question is for the edification of the curious-minded.

In my production environment I manually backup often. I have noticed that when simply duplicating files, they don't take up as much space as they used to in older versions of MacOSX.

As an experiment (because I am a nerd) I attempted to fill my hard drive by copying large files. Duplicating files barely changed the "capacity" / "available" numbers at all.

The duplicates are there.

Can someone explain this aspect of the OSX filing system to me? It's absolutely amazing!

Details:

not using Cloud
MacBook Air ca. 2017
MacOSX 10.14.6


texts: Why did I lose the ability to print to a networked printer?

texts:
I have a Canon iP3600 printer connected to a networked hard drive and up until a few days ago I was able to print from it. however, i have now lost the ability to print ever since i downloaded Apple's updated software for the printer!

I have my mac partitioned and running Windows 7 and can still print perfectly from there, so the cables are obviously not the problem. I can still print perfectly if I connect the printer via USB directly to the Mac. I can even print a test page from the Print preferences page.

I just cannot print from a document. Print Queue keeps saying "Copying print data" but nothing happens! Have downloaded the latest driver from the Canon website and deleted and re-installed the printer several times and several ways to no avail.

Any ideas most welcome...


texts: How to fix a Macbook Pro trackpad where the mouse pointer is randomly moving?

texts:
The trackpad on my Macbook Pro just started acting oddly. It's randomly clicking (which might cause me to switch programs), right-clicking and even once my screen even showed the swiping animation as if I was trying to switch to a different desktop.

Part of me fears that this is some sort of joke hacking attempt (I know of a USB device you plug into someones computer and it randomly moves their mouse and types on their keyboard), but there is nothing plugged into my machine and I just turned off the Wi-Fi and watched as this web page tried to close, the mouse right clicked twice, highlighted a word and clicked "Paste and Match Style" in the Chrome right-click menu.
Also as I've been typing (with my Wi-Fi turned off) the mouse has randomly been clicking inside this question and changing where I am typing.

I just plugged in a USB mouse which seems to work fine but the trackpad is now nearly useless. I can't even move the mouse cursor more than a few centimeters with it.

Is this a common issue?
EDIT
I think it is dying actually. I can now click but not move at all with the trackpad, while a regular mouse works fine.
EDIT 2
And now it seems to be working again. I turned on the option for "Ignore Trackpad when Mouse is plugged in" under Universal Access. I cleaned the trackpad with rubbing alcohol, I whined and complained for a few minutes to my dog, turned off the "Ignore Trackpad" setting, unplugged the USB mouse, and the Trackpad appears to be working mostly normally.
If I run my finger across it at the top or bottom portion of the mouse, it works, but there is a line horizontally across it (almost exactly where a physical trackpad button would end on the old trackpads) that is "dead".  The mouse stops moving, or moves sluggishly when hitting that spot and that "spot" goes across the whole trackpad.


texts: I have prepared bootcamp with windows 8.1 iso. After the very first start of Win 8.1 i see a very small page with the language/country settings, but i cannot choose anything or go further because keyboard trackpad dooesn't work. What do I wrong ? (OS 10.10.4) Same procedure on Macbook pro 13" shows big language setting page and keyboard works well. Any suggestions?


texts: Flashing question mark appears after wake from sleep when charging Macbook Pro

texts: My laptop is a Macbook Pro 2017 non-touchbar. When the Macbook goes into sleep mode while it charges, most of the time the flashing question mark appears when I try to wake it up. I can't do anything but to force shutdown when this problem occurs. If I don’t plug in the charger and it goes into sleep mode, everything is normal when it wakes up.


texts: What percentage of Mac users have OSX Lion or higher?

texts:
I'm working on a web app and the user needs Safari 6.0 or higher which means they need Mac OSX Lion or higher (per Wikipedia)

Users can install Chrome in that case, but I'm wondering how much of an "edge case" this is.


texts:
My iPhone 7 has really low output through the headphone jack, I’ve compared it with two other  iPhone 7 using the same app and same song. The output of built in speakers is perfect but headphone jack outputs really low sound.

I updated the firmware through iTunes and restored my data through backup and I tried turning on/off sound check and volume limit in the Settings but nothing worked.

I had an iPhone 7 plus and iPhone X in the past and I used same backup for all of my phones. I had the same issue with iPhone 7 plus but iPhone X had no issue with the audio output. Is there any problem with my iPhone backup or there is an issue with my phone?


texts: macOS Big Sur menu bar color on Parallels

texts:
Having macOS Big Sur installed in Parallels, I'm trying hard to change menu bar color according to the wallpaper used. This is needed to debug an issue with some macOS application.
And, seeing clearly on screenshots over the internet, setting black background image must change menu bar color to the black as well, despite the Dark or Light mode is set.
However, in my case, it always depends on the Dark/Light mode (please see the attached screenshot).
Is there some other configuration option? Or does this just doesn't work on Parallels?


texts: Why can't my iPhone sync with my hp laptop and how can I fix it?

texts:
I have an iPhone 4s and I'm connecting it to my HP computer with Windows 8.1 OS. I don't have iTunes on it yet. When I connect it syncs then un syncs very fast almost as if my laptop is rejecting it. The Lightning works because when I connect it to a charger socket it charges perfectly. The USB port works because I can insert flash.

Are there any drivers needed and do I have to download them? Is it mandatory to install iTunes?


texts:
I have recently formatted my MacBook Pro and installed High Sierra (v10.13.6). Ever since, although I do not have many apps installed, finder changes are shown very lately..

For example: I take screenshots With keyboard shortcuts, they appear on desktop after some MINUTES..
Or: I delete 100-150 files, they are still shown on finder window for some time, some of them without thumbnails..

Does somebody have the same problem?

Finder relaunch fixes everything. But I have to relaunch Finder after every change..

Here is a screenshot of finder after I deleted some files. See the last column where "the kind of file" is shown. The removed files are still shown, but without any kind:


texts:
http://youtu.be/xi5UuemkYd0 is a video that kinda shows what I need to do.
I have two things i need. The first is software that can control the mouse on osx 10.9.2. What needs to happen is it needs to go up and click aux 1 and go down and click say ProPresenter. Then it would do the same for aux 2 and 3.

The second thing i need is a way to make sure any key presses do not interact with the ATEM software. I was thinking about some sort of say 10-15 key external keyboard that did not map to normal keys. Not sure though.

A bit more info on what I am doing here. This software controls a video switcher board at our church. Auxes 1,2,3 and 4 are respectively front screen, back screen, choir screens and a screen in front of stage.

At different time during the service I have to switch between sources. At the moment I am rapidly clicking each aux but when you are switching 4 sources at once it gets a hair too slow. So I want to set up a way to hit a single button to do what i need. I am not sure but I figure I could get away with about 5-10 different scenes set up.

The other issue is that the ATEM software also controls the main video switcher as well as the aux screens and I really do not need to hit any keys that make it do anything because we are live on TV at this point and I do not need to be messing up the rest of the team.


texts: Determine and Use Resolution as a Variable in UNIX script on Mac

texts:
I'm deploying a NetRestore image to multiple kinds of Macs: MacBooks, MacBook Pros, Mac Pros, iMacs and Mac Minis. I have several custom designed login screens that I'd like to use but everything before 10.10 requires that you know the monitor resolution otherwise the login background won't show correctly.

Is there a way to use the output of this code as a variable for a series of IF/THEN statements?

system_profiler SPDisplaysDataType |grep Resolution

The normal output shows like this

  Resolution: 2560 x 1440
  Resolution: 1920 x 1200
  Resolution: 1920 x 1200

(This is if you have three monitors...I'd prefer to use the first result).

My intention is for the script to run when binding the Mac to Active Directory (which has to be done manually), so the resolution should already be available. It would select the correct resolution image and then copy it into the required location.

Or by chance does anyone have any good idea on how to create custom login window backgrounds and user backgrounds to work on any type of Mac with any resolution? (Just like the OS does when you select "Fit to Screen" in System Preferences)

Thanks!


texts: Close [X] kills Chrome/Firefox/Safari Tabs

texts:
I am new to OSX - but I have a behaviour that is not normal I suppose:
When I quit browsers (doesn't matter if Chrome/Firefox/Safari) via the red [X] = hide -> all tabs are lost although I turned windows saving on in browser options. If I use Cmd+Q this does not happen. I already tried the OSX option "Close windows when closing" - but this had no effect...


texts: How can I set the double-click speed in Lion with a multi-touch trackpad?

texts: In Snow Leopard and earlier (or perhaps the difference was with the hardware; I don't know which as I updated my computer and OS simultaneously), there was a preference under Trackpad to change the speed needed to perform a double-click. How can I speed it up now that it isn't there?


texts: Using the home (house) button in Logitech K400 keyboard

texts:
I've just bought the Logitech K400 keyboard/trackpad combo. The volume buttons above the keyboard works just fine. But the home button (that has a small "house" icon) doesn't do anything on OS X Lion.

Is there a way I can use it to display Launchpad? I've tried using System Preferences to use it as a "hot key" but it didn't register any key press there.


texts: At symbol is in the wrong place on an Apple keyboard on Windows 7

texts:
We have an Apple keyboard connected to Windows 7 on a Sony laptop.

The email at "@" symbol is located on the 2 key, however when the alt key and 2 key are pressed simultaneously we don't get the "@" symbol, we get a quotation mark.

What settings need to be changed to rectify this?


texts: Avoiding Spam attribution for video alarm notification in Mail.app

texts:
I had been searching for years to avoid my own camera video alarm to be placed into spam by my Mail spam filter.
I finally understand the problem and have found a solution so I share it here.
The camera, an Axis model, can be configured to send mail by connecting to a smtp server.
The smtp server will send mail to an alias address that will be redirected to a final address.
Then the final address will be retrieved from the Mail app.
And in Mail app, the mail will likely not be stored online as the addition of images by these video will unnecessarily bite into iCloud storage plan (your mileage may vary)
The source of the problem is that Mail/iCloud won't allow you to force a message as "not spam" if it has decided otherwise.


texts:
Strange thing keeps happening with one of my clients. They are running 3 iMacs 2of which are running 10.9.3 and 1 is running 10.9.4. While they are accessing a Windows share, they can be working away quite happily until it comes to saving where they no longer have access to the file opened from the server and have to save as a new file. They are accessing using smb://{servername}/{share}

What would cause this?

Cheers


texts: How to tell which Alternate Mode a display is using on 2016 MacBook Pro

texts:
I have a 13" MacBook Pro 2016 (non-touchbar) which I've connected to a couple of HDMI displays.  I know that Macs support both HDMI and DisplayPort over USB-C Alternate Modes, and I'd like to know which.

One of my adapters (Choetech) says it uses DisplayPort 1.2 so I'd like to confirm this.  The other (Bqeel) doesn't say so I'd like to know how to find out.  I've got a couple of others that I'd like to investigate too.

I tried looking in Graphics/Displays in System Information but in both cases it says "Connection Type:  DVI or HDMI" so I'm not really any the wiser.


texts: Does Apache require special settings to run a command?

texts:
I am trying to create an image using Bio::Perl/Bio::Graphics and implement it on my webserver. However, whenever I am trying to run my scripts online, the command line does not respond to run my script.

One of my perl module files contains this system command:

my $command = "perl Graphics.pl $start $end $attributes";
system($command);

All values are routed to this command and all scripts work perfectly fine when run manually through the command line. Apache does not report an error messages except that the file it was supposed to create in Graphics.pl hasn't been created:

> [Mon Dec 16 12:15:59 2013] [error] [client ::1] Cannot Open Output 59_15_12_16_11_113_1_349_0.png, referer: http://localhost/~User/cgi-bin/Home.pl

>[Mon Dec 16 12:15:59 2013] [error] [client ::1] File does not exist: /Users/User/Sites/cgi-bin/59_15_12_16_11_113_1_349_0.png, referer: http://localhost/~User/cgi-bin/Results.pl?start=1000&end=20000&chr=All&type=protein

Is there an additional setting that needs to be configured in the Apache settings so it can use the command line?

My specs are the following:

Server version: Apache/2.2.24 (Unix)
perl 5, version 16, subversion 2 (v5.16.2)
Mac OS 10.9 Mavericks

Any help would be greatly appreciated.


texts: How can I **EASILY** install this Mac OS X on a bunch of Macs without downloading the whole thing every time?

texts:
I am a Linux guy, and I have to provide support for about 15 Mac users. I need to install this OSX 10.8.x and I got the license codes all sent to me. But I can't figure out how to get whatever file on mine, so I can re-use it. How do I do that?

Do I really have to go through this whole registration info where I have to enter a credit card and everything else about me before I can get access to anything?


texts:
I'm having trouble with my built in iSight and I'm trying to reset the SMC. My MBP has a non-removable SMC, so the instructions ask me to press CMD-SHIFT-ALT-POWER at the same time, release it at the same time and then press the power button to power on the machine.

Trouble is that, the machine power ons when I press CMD-SHIFT-ALT-POWER and I dont think that resets the SMC. What should I be doing to correct this?


texts: Any one know how to remove this shared chrome instance?

texts:
This keeps popping up and showing current tabs from a colleague's computer. Any way to disable this? It may be because we're using a global apple ID but unsure.
Thanks in advance.


texts: So, I today I went into my settings to see that my iPad is being supervised by some school. I don’t even go to this school, I had to look it up to realize it was a school, and they don’t even own this iPad. I certainly know this was not there before,I don’t know how long it has been in supervision for but I’ve only now seen it. I looked up how to remove the supervision and I was told to factory reset my iPad so I tried but it is telling me that there was an “error connecting to the Apple ID server”. I’ve realized just now that this happened like 10 min ago as my WiFi stopped working out of no where and it is asking me to put in the password for the WiFi which is strange. I don’t know if it has restricted anything but I sure don’t want them controlling my iPad.


texts: Why not have iCloud keychain as default?

texts:
Yosemite 10.10.1 and iOS 8.1.2

On my Keychain Access on OS X, I have the "login" default keychain and an "iCloud" keychain (I have iCloud Keychain ON for all my devices).

I'm just wondering, could I just copy all items from "login" to "iCloud" keychain, in order to have it available on my iOS just in case? If that is the case, why wouldn't this be the default behaviour when I "save a password" on my Mac?

Thanks


texts:
I am not sure if this is the case, but when you do iCloud Backup of your phone, it will backup Whatsapp. ( I am unsure if this include the Photos and Video )

Then Whatsapp itself has backup option to backup itself in iCloud Drive Backup.

Is that a double Backup? Because i see 2.1GB inside the iCloud Backup, and then 1.7Gb inside document and settings.


texts: Does personal hotspot always use cellular data?

texts:
If I have my iPhone connected to a wifi connection, then put it on personal hotspot, is the device I'm connecting to my iPhone with using cellular data bandwidth, or the wifi bandwidth?

You'd think it's a silly thing. But I'm JUST out of range of a wifi signal with my laptop, so my plan is to put my phone in a window not too far from my desk, and use it almost as an extender.


texts:
Is there any way I could disable two finger swipes for horizontal scrolling on the Mac. I want to configure it for moving between tabs (using a 3rd party app called BetterTouchTool)

Edit:
Oh I should mention that I've already disabled the option 'swipe between pages using left/right two finger scrolls', but that just disables the back/forward feature — not the horizontal scrolling functionality itself. (And even though most pages don't have space horizontal scrolling, the action still produces a "dummy" movement.)


texts: MAMP always grabbing focus when quitting an app in Mavericks

texts: Upgraded from Lion to Mavericks and now when quitting any app, MAMP is always grabbing the focus instead of the previously opened app e.g. open MAMP, open Safari, open TextWrangler, quit TextWrangler, MAMP has focus instead of Safari. This was working fine in Lion. Anyone seeing similar behaviour or know how to fix it?


texts: Operation failed when I tried to create a partition

texts:
I'm trying to create a partition in following "Part 2: Preparing your Mac" from this website. I have to create "Ubuntu Boot Loader" in selecting the principal hard drive "APPLE SSD AP0512J Media", select Partition -> + -> Name : Ubuntu Boot Loader -> Format : Mac OS Extended (Journaled) -> Size: 128 MB, but I got the following error with Disk Utility :

I got the following message when I hit "Show Details" :

  Running operation 1 of 1…
  Checking prerequisites for resizing Logical-Physical volume stack
  The requested size change for the target disk or a related disk is too small. Please try a different disk or partition, or make a larger change.
  Operation failed…

Could anyone be able to tell what do I have to do to fix the "Operation failed"?


texts: Is there a way to view and control the powerstate of the discrete GPU on a 2011 MBP in OSX?

texts:
I noticed that running with the discrete GPU uses more power and generates more heat. I just need the discrete GPU to drive an external monitor, I'm not concerned about performance.

By controling the power state I expect to control the voltage and frequency of the GPU. This could be achieved by either changing the power state of the GPU or the voltage and frequency directly.

I just want to make sure that the MBP runs as cool as possible.


texts: On my home screen, sometimes apps blink or flicker in a random order. Does anyone know what this means, or is it just some sort of glitch?


texts: Power Photos app removes duplicates I need to keep when copying photos to a new library

texts:
I have a pretty large photos library (over 20,000 photos), and as I inevitably knew that I would, I ran out of space on my hard drive. I have an external hard drive already, and I'm looking to move my library to live only on the external hard drive to free up space on my computer's.
Because of the size of the library I wanted to organize it better, and create individual libraries for each year, and for certain events. I also figure this will help avoid any issues with it getting stuck while copying such a large number of pictures, if I'm not trying to do all 20,000 at once. I created albums that represented what I wanted the new libraries to be (one for each year) and put all those photos from that year in.
The issue I'm having is that when I copy the photos from the albums into the new libraries on my hard drive using the Power Photos app, it removes all duplicates. For most people this would be desired, however, although I do sometimes use outside applications, I edit many photos simply using the photos editing tools since I usually only want a few light and color adjustments. Before I edit a photo, I always duplicate it and edit the duplicate so that I have the original, and if I decide I don't like the edit or I want to consider a different way to edit it I still have the original image to use for those purposes. Whenever Power Photos removes all of the duplicates, it removes the photos I've edited, which I obviously don't want.
Is there any way around this? I tried removing the "version 2" title from a duplicate and that did not work, and I thought that renaming the duplicate photo may work but I can't find where to rename an image in photos.


texts:
I can not open external hyper link using Chrome as my default browser.

Example: if I click a link from Mac Mail nothing happens. If I click a link from tweetdeck I get this error: The application "Google Chrome" is not open anymore.

When i switch my default browser to Firefox then web pages are opened as expected in ff.

OSX V. 10.11.6

Chrome V.  54.0.2840.98 (64-bit)


texts:
Dmg file contains a volume with identifier Apple_HFS, which is compressed with various methods (zlib, bz2, etc.), how can I extract a raw, uncompressed HFS volume from DMG file?

Right now, it cannot be done with Catacombae - HFSExplorer, due to unknown block type, with the 0x80000007 identifier, which is probably LZFSE compression method, 7z also won't do a good job.

Command line tool would be nice. I can't mount it and extract files because I want exactly, let say Apple_HFS.hfs file.


texts: System Files iMovie 10 & 8.0.6 Garage Band 10 & 5.1

texts:
I am trying to remove some clutter from my HardDrive.

I notice that I have both iMovie 10 and iMover ver8.0.6 installed.
Similarly I have Garageband 10 and Garageband 5.1 installed.

I would like to remove the plists, folders and anything that is specific to the old versions without deleting something that is also used by the newer versions.

Can anyone list for me all the files and folders that are necessary to run
just iMovie 10?

and a list of the system files and folders necessary for just Garageband 10?

Thanks.


texts: macOS Mail.app loses usernames/password for Google Apps accounts

texts:
Background:

I manage 2 computers, both 2017 MacBook Pros. One of which is running macOS High Sierra 10.13.x (latest sub version) for about 6 months. The other one was running the same, but is now running macOS Mojave 10.14.x.

I have 8 email accounts setup on both computers, 6 of which are Google Apps emails accounts (Gmail accounts running on a private domain). The other two are:

iCloud
3rd party IMAP/SMTP.

I use macOS Mail.app to manage all these email accounts.

For the Google apps accounts, i have two-factor authentication enabled, so when you add the accounts for the first time, the wizard takes you through the two-factor authentication process.

All the email accounts have worked fine for the past 6 months.

I rarely shutdown the computers, but put them into sleep mode instead.

The Issue:

One day about 2 weeks ago, I came in and opened up the computers and all the Google Apps email accounts in the Mail.app connection doctor were showing login errors relating to the IMAP and SMTP usernames and passwords. This was strange as all the accounts stopped working at the same time. This is happening on both computers.

I went through the accounts one by one and re-entered the passwords and went through the two-factor authentication process. The accounts worked fine for the rest of the day.

Next day I opened the computers and the exact same error re-occurred. I tried relaunching Mail.app, but to no avail. I then tried restarting the computers, which allowed the email to connect.

Next day the exact same error re-occurred. I restarted the computers and the email accounts connected fine. Ive also found that on occasions that if i delete the keychain tokens for one account, the password and 2FA up again for that one account, it can sometimes make all the other accounts active again. It definatley is an Mac Mail issue, as the accounts will always continue to work via iOS Mail.

So I've been able to find a workaround for the issue, but by no means a permanent fix. Any ideas why this could be happening and what could be done to fix it permanently?

I've had a similar issue years ago that I posted here:

Mac Mail keeps losing the 2 factor auth passwords for Gmail

but the fix that worked back then dose not appear to be working now.


texts: Preview for PDFs - Incorrect Pages are Bookmarked

texts:
I'm experiencing a strange error when bookmarking pages in a PDF document using Preview. If I bookmark a file whose book-listed page is 666 and whose actual page within the document is 703, for example, preview will bookmark the book-listed page 703 which occurs in the actual document at page 740. The only way I can get a bookmark for the page listed at 666 is to find the pdf-page 666 and create the bookmark there (which is page 629 in the book-listing).
I never encountered this strange behaviour on my MacBook Air 2013, but I recently upgraded to the Macbook Air 2020. Has anyone else experienced the same issue and if so, how did you fix this?
I'm using Preview version 11.0 (999.4)
I'm running macOS 10.15.7


texts: How to upgrade from iOS 4 to iOS 6 without losing app data

texts: I am still on iOS 4, and I understand that I need to erase my iPad before upgrading. But I don't want to lose the game data stored locally, particularly Candy Crush. :) Is there a way to preserve data while upgrading?


texts: I have two users accounts on my computer, one needs to stay connected to a VPN while the other account, both being logged in, is not supposed to use the VPN. OS X 10.9 seems to only give me global VPN access or none. Does anyone know a solution?


texts: Can Spaces be configured by project, rather than by application?

texts:
Spaces seems to give you a choice of having a given software application open in a single space or in all spaces. Is there a way to configure Spaces to so that each space is devoted to a particular project, regardless of what applications you happen to be using for that project?

For example, in Space 1 I might have Word files, Excel spreadsheets and a browser window devoted Project A. In Space 2 I might have a separate set of Word files, Excel spreadsheets, and a browser window devoted to Project B, etc. That way I can switch between projects by simply switching spaces, rather than having my screen cluttered with all of my projects at the same time.

If Spaces can't do this, does anyone know of other ways to create this type of functionality in Snow Leopard (or Lion)?


texts: Where Exactly are Apple Diagnostics Results Stored on Disk

texts:
I know that on macOS you can access the last run Apple Diagnostics test in System Information, as seen in the image below.

You can also access reference codes in the Terminal using system_profiler SPDiagnosticsDataType | grep "Reference Code".

Where on disk is this information actually stored? Or how could I use Finder to access this information? I understand there are a few other questions that are asking about software diagnostics, but I am looking specifically for hardware diagnostic results. I have checked the following directories already, and have not found the Apple Diagnostics results.

~/Library/Logs/DiagnosticReports

/Library/Logs/DiagnosticReports

~/Library/Logs

/Library/Logs

/private/var/log

Thanks in advance!


texts: Is there any method to make PDF print out nicely for highlighting on Google Chrome?

texts:
This problem happens on Google Chrome but is also on the Mac, so I am not entirely sure if it is a Mac related issue or Chrome issue.
For some webpages, such as https://redux.js.org/introduction/getting-started Google Chrome can print it out as a PDF, but the first highlighting using Preview would show the highlighting is off. This has been happening for more than a year:

It doesn't happen if it is printed by Safari, but Safari sometimes has some issue such as the content column quite narrow.  Is there a way to make it print out suitable for highlighting if it is on Chrome?  It might be a Google Chrome issue or it might be somehow related to how macOS support printing but as a PDF file. Since printing as PDF is particular to Mac but not on Windows, so I am asking this on Ask Different.


texts: dd ruined my USB stick, how do I recover?

texts:
I tried to copy a Linux distro over to my USB using DD. But half way through it failed because the computer went to sleep or something.

I plugged the USB in and I get a message saying it's unreadable now on the Mac. I've plugged it into a Windows box, and ran Diskpart, but it's saying the volume is 0 bytes.

I've tried to get it to show in Linux and Mac to no avail. The issue happened when using dd on my macbook, hence why I've asked on Apple SA.

Any advice on what to do from here? I recall I had a similar issue in the past but don't know how to fix it.