texts:
Here what happened with me today. TimeMachine asked me whether I want to set a backup disk, I've answered yes, but then, when I've realized that in order to backup anything TimeMachine will clean the disk, I've changed my mind and canceled everything. And my disk suddenly became read only.

What I've tried before Googling:

$ sudo chflags -R nouchg Elements/
$ sudo chmod -R a+w Elements/

But I've failed with both of this, getting "read-only file system" messages.

What I've tried after Googling:

Open Disk Utilities
Click Repair Disk Permissions

But this button is disabled, and I have no idea what exactly should be done to enable it.

I have been using this disk for a quite a long time, and never had any permission issues with it. (Disk is formatted as NTFS, if that helps. Capacity is 2TB, of which 1.92TB are available.)

I'd really appreciate if someone will give me a hint how this can be resolved.


texts: Cannot change admin account password on company-provided laptop

texts:
I have a macbook pro running macOS Big Sur 11.1 that was given to me by my former employer. They allowed me to keep the laptop after I left the company. When I try changing my password, I get this error:

I understand that my company's network administration setup still has its tentacles in my machine. This is the output from klist:
Credentials cache: API:9F3BD780-2620-4574-A37D-C745AC9FBCA5
        Principal: my.username@company.domain.name

  Issued    Expires    Principal

How do I change my password?


texts: If i am not on 3G nor WiFi, do iMessage get sent via SMS?

texts: How does iMessage work? I had messaged one of my friend with iMessage, and he replied to me. However, I had disabled 3G and was not on a WiFi network. Were the subsequent replies routed via regular text message/SMS?


texts: Watching personal 4K videos on Apple TV 4K

texts:
It seems I'm not able to watch 4k/60 FPS personal videos on an Apple TV 4K. I put them in photos and while I'm sure they're 4K, I only get to stream HD from my Apple TV 4K.

I have a gigabit connection, so it should be able to stream from wherever.

I also tried to stream from "computers" with family share, but the same videos I made with iMovie are not supported by the Apple TV.

The only 4K videos I am able to watch are the ones bought from iTunes.

Is there a way to watch personal 4K videos on an Apple TV 4K?

 <- this file here is played HD on the tv, no matter what I try.


texts: Cannot download macOS Sierra from App Store

texts: I want to download macOS Sierra from the App Store to create a bootable USB stick (according to Apples web page). However, the App Store tells me that I have installed it and only shows me an "open" button. There is no Install macOS Sierra app in the applications folder. Spotlight however finds it, but it is marked as unknown version and does not start from there. I also cannot find it in Finder. Any ideas?


texts:
When playing some TV shows on Netflix on a new Apple TV, sometimes the show does not start playing. I get the spinning pinwheel for a "normal" period of time, then a black screen. If I press select, I can see the playback progress bar shows the proper length for the show I selected, but the only command it responds to is Menu.

If I switch over to the Roku that this the Apple TV is replacing, it can stream the same episode just fine. Ditto if I try streaming it over the Xbox or Blueray player.

Things I've tried

I've changed from Google's DNS, back to my ISP's (Time Warner), to OpenDNS and back to TWC's with no improvement. (on suggestion that the geo location was confused)

Tried switching from DHCP to static allocation, no improvement, so I switched back. During the process, I think I power cycled it 4 times or so and then it started playing.

Set Up

Apple TV -HDMI->    TV
         -TOSLINK-> Receiver

WiFi to Linksys WRT130 over N
Road Runner 10Mbit (when it isn't raining)


texts: Apple MacBook Air stuck in continuous boot loop

texts:
All of a sudden my MacBook Air has started continuously rebooting. The screen cuts out, it goes back to apple logo then log in prompt. I can log in and then after a few seconds typically it cuts out and process repeats. Sometimes it cuts out before I can even log in.

The time is quite variable before it does cut out and restart.

I booted to safe mode and have run disk diagnostics about three times now, every time it comes back all fine.

I panicked and finally bought a dedicated external hard drive and did a time machine back up which completed successfully.

After this I rebooted normally and things seemed fixed, I was using it for about 30 mins with no reboots until an app which switched to full screen caused it to cut out and the same behaviour to start again.

If it's not the disk- what could it be and where should I go from here?

MacBook Air 2013 - os ex El Capitan


texts: Late 2013 Macbook Pro Versus a Later Build

texts:
I have a used Macbook Pro i7 late 2013 that I bought when I started my contracting work.

I was thinking of buying a new one (except 15"), but I don't know if it's truly worth making the purchase. I figure I do some homework first.

My question is: what is the difference between a i7 late 2013 and a new model? Are there any benefits?


texts: I have an iPhone 4s and want to send a mass text. How do I send a mass text to 30 people without sending to everyone else in my Contacts?


texts:
Regarding MacBook Pro early 2011: sound loop, black screen

It happened again and it's the 5th time in one month. Everytime I play youtube videos on Safari only the screen just freeze and the fan gets much louder.

I forced it to shut down and when I turn it on again I got black/grey/blue screens..

Is the Flash Player the main source of problem here? I updated it to the latest version.


texts: I have an extremely long document in text edit that I want to delete roughly half of. Is there a better way to do this than selecting by clicking and scrolling?


texts: I am a little confused, I am using Messages but after like 20 messages the previous messages disappear. How can I increase it or go back and look at previous messages?


texts: Smart Playlist in iTunes for songs without ratings

texts: Is there a way to create a Smart Playlist in iTunes that will show songs that aren’t rated?


texts:
pdfsplit returns the following error when launched from terminal:

pdfsplit --version
-bash: /usr/local/bin/pdfsplit: Bad CPU type in executable

OS: macOS Catalina 10.15.2

file

Checking architecture.

file /usr/local/bin/pdfsplit
/usr/local/bin/pdfsplit: Mach-O universal binary with 2 architectures: [ppc:Mach-O executable ppc] [i386:Mach-O executable i386]
/usr/local/bin/pdfsplit (for architecture ppc): Mach-O executable ppc
/usr/local/bin/pdfsplit (for architecture i386):    Mach-O executable i386


texts: Is there a keyboard shortcut to bring up Finder?

texts:
Is there a default keyboard shortcut to start a new Finder window?
If not, is there a way to assign one?

I tried System Preferences > Keyboard > Shortcuts > App Shortcuts and created a new item for Finder, and assigned shift-command ⌘-F, among other things, but nothing worked.


texts: Unable to connect to TP-Link wireless router with iPad 2

texts:
I work in an office of 3 developers, all of whom own an iPad. Two of the developers have an iPad 3, and I have an iPad 2.

I am the only one that cannot connect to the TP-Link TL-WA801ND Wireless Router.

I have tried the classic troubleshooting technique of turning the router and iPad off and back on again, but to no avail.

My iPad 2 model number is MC769B/A and I am running iOS 7.0.4 (11B554a).

I can connect to the building's Wifi network fine, and also when i'm at home I can connect to my own router and extender without any problems.

What could be the reason that I can't connect?


texts: 2012 Macbook Air Mt Lion 10.8.2. Can I factory reset and upgrade using only an external monitor?

texts:
I just purchased a 2012 MacBook Air with a broken screen. I'm using it as a desktop via an external monitor. I plan to do a factory reset and then upgrade to mavericks.

Will I be able to complete the factory reset and upgrade using only an external monitor?

Could I essentially accomplish the same result of erasing the previous owner's data and restoring the MacBook by just updating to Mavericks? Again, using only an external monitor.


texts: Using an external microphone with iPad Air or the new iPad Mini

texts:
I have an external USB microphone that works fine with the iPad 3 using the Camera Connection USB adapter and a USB hub for power. Can a similar setup be used for the new generation of iPads?

Edit: Just to be clear, an answer with practical experience or a link to someone who has verified this setup is preferred.


texts: Software to duplicate external hard drive formatted ExFAT

texts: I have an external hard drive with a 2.9TB ExFAT partition that I keep my photos and other media on. (ExFAT so that I can also see and edit my media on Windows computers.) I just bought a second hard drive that I will set up the same way so that I can back up my media. Normally, I use SuperDuper! but that only works with Mac formats. Is there any Mac or command line software that can check for exact duplication? Due to the size of the drive (2.9TB with 1.8TB used), I don't want to do the duplication manually.


texts: Mac OS Mojave: How to rename my keychain?

texts:
I just recovered my OS from TimeMachine.

What happened is that instead of my keychain being restored, it was renamed to login.keychain2 and a new empty login.keychain was created.

I tried to delete the new one and rename login.keychain2 back to login.keychain. It worked during the current session, but when I restart the computer, the previous situation happens again: a new empty login.keychain is created and the one I want to use is renamed...

How do I fix that? It's really annoying...


texts: MacBook Air mid 2011 external Display resoltion > 1080p which adapter?

texts:
I want to use my new 27" Display in full resolution. I've tried two different cheap mini displayport to hdmi adapters but they only work with a max resolution of 1080p.
Do I really need an expensive Mini DisplayPort to Dual-Link-DVI-adapter or should i try a mini displayport to displayport adapter to get the full 2560x1440 resolution?


texts: "We could not complete your purchase" dialog on login

texts:
I keep getting this dialogue every time I log in.

I haven't used the app store in over a year, so I am not sure what this is about.

I am also concerned that it is trying to make a purchase without my knowledge and the only thing stopping it is my low disk space.

Does anyone know what's going on?


texts:
I'm trying to reformat the hard drive on an iMac G5 prior to selling it. I've booted the Mac from the installation DVD that came with it, opened Disk Utility, and told it to erase the drive using both security options for zeroing out and rewriting the data. However, Disk Utility seems to be hanging: I let it run for over 12 hours and it didn't finish; I needed to unplug the Mac and restart it (the program wouldn't even let me force-quit it.)

I started the process again, but it still seems to be going extraordinarily slowly. Is there something wrong with this, or does it just plain take a long time? I'm not hearing the hard disc spinning; it sounds like it's hung again.


texts: How to Move Photos out of an Event and into the Main section of iphoto?

texts:
I have created many events over the years of having my mac... and I am noticing that my events are becoming very jumbled from importing photos over the years and just tossing them into the closest relative event I can find.. I am wanting to have all my photos in the basic part of iphoto without any events.. so that I can recreate ALBUMS that appropriately file my pictures so I can find them easily when I need them.

Can anyone assist me with this?

Thanks :)


texts: How to fix a file that's read-only despite showing correct permissions

texts:
A file copied from a NTFS share has become read-only, other files in the same folder are OK.

Finder's Info says in the Sharing & Permissions:

You can only read
Name        Privilege
myname (Me) Read & Write
admin       Read only
everyone    Read only

ls -l@

total 142040
-rwxr-xr-x  1 myname admin  5388424 Sep 17  1998 Bad File
-rwxr-xr-x  1 myname admin  3534780 Feb  3 21:36 Good File

How to undo? chown/chmod didn't do anything...


texts: How to stop a iCloud Drive file or folder download in OS X?

texts:
I activated iCloud Drive on my MacBook with OS X, and some folders showed as not downloaded yet. So I clicked on the arrow next to the folder name to download the whole folder from the iCloud to my local MacBook.

I realized that my current internet connection (I am at my friends place currently) is too slow and therefore blocks all the traffic.

  How can I stop an active download from the iCloud Drive to my local
  Mac under OS X?


texts: Macbook Retina recognizing replaced SSD as external despite being internal

texts:
Just bought a Retina Macbook Pro and swapped the SSD for a 1TB drive, it boots and seems to run fine, except the drive in 'about' shows as external and when I set in finder show/hide external it appears/disappears-

Is this going to be an issue (boots and runs) and how can I fix it?


texts: Mac Location Services: Frequent Polling?

texts: I frequently see the Location icon in my menu bar despite not having any apps running that use it. When I click it, it says Maps is using my location, even when I don't have the maps open at all. Is this normal? Should I be worried about some kind of security issue?


texts: ⌥ +⇧ + 7 (backslash on Swedish keyboard) crashes programs on macOS High Sierra

texts:
Using macOS 10.13.4

I'm using the swedish keyboard layout on my iMac, and I've got a problem with my keyboard. Everytime I press "⌥ +⇧ + 7" the active program (some programs crashes after pressing it 2 times) will crash. May it be, "Terminal", "Messages", "Chrome" or whatever..

For example, in Terminal, first time I press it, it will open help, second time, it will crash the terminal with this stacktrace:

Application Specific Information:

objc_msgSend() selector name: deselectAll:

Thread 0 Crashed:: Dispatch queue: com.apple.main-thread
0   libobjc.A.dylib                0x00007fff58c05e9d objc_msgSend + 29
1   com.apple.shortcut            0x00007fff528fc4d9 -[SCTSearchManager performSearch] + 43
2   com.apple.shortcut            0x00007fff528f9456 SCTHelpMenuHandler + 750
3   com.apple.HIToolbox            0x00007fff307d4904 DispatchEventToHandlers(EventTargetRec*, OpaqueEventRef*, HandlerCallRec*) + 1541

If I press the same combination in Messages, I get the same. If I do it in Chrome however it's a different error. But Chrome still crashes, with with another stacktrace. I just want to write backslashes. Any help how to debug this issue?

Stacktrace when pressing it in Chrome:

Application Specific Information:
Crashing on exception: -[__NSArrayM length]: unrecognized selector sent to instance 0x6000000583c0

Application Specific Backtrace 1:
0   CoreFoundation                      0x00007fff3159932b __exceptionPreprocess + 171
1   Google Chrome Framework             0x00000001070486a1 ChromeMain + 30804705
2   libobjc.A.dylib                     0x00007fff58c13c76 objc_exception_throw + 48
3   CoreFoundation                      0x00007fff31631e04 -[NSObject(NSObject) doesNotRecognizeSelector:] + 132
4   CoreFoundation                      0x00007fff3150f870 ___forwarding___ + 1456
5   CoreFoundation                      0x00007fff3150f238 _CF_forwarding_prep_0 + 120
6   Foundation                          0x00007fff335f7c82 NSSelectorFromString + 66

I can write backslashes just fine with English keyboard-layout.


texts: Are my frequent Safari beach balls caused by my extensions?

texts:
Every 2-10 minutes Safari pauses with a spinning beach ball for roughly 10-90 seconds, sometimes asking if I want to reload everything, making Safari almost unusable.

I've installed several safari extensions that mess with pages to prevent cross site attacks, scripting, cookies, etc.  In particular, my active extensions are : AdBlock, ClickToFlash, Ghostery, JavaScript Blocker, and JavaScript BlackList.  Anyone experienced conflicts amongst these before?

Additionally, I've installed but disabled Disconnect, NinjaKit, and WasteNoTime, but presumably disabled extensions cannot contribute to the problem.

I'll experiment with disabling these active scripts piecemeal, starting with JavaScript BlackList, who's role is presumably superseded by Ghostery and JavaScript Blocker.

I'm especially curious about whether Ghostery and JavaScript Blocker might be conflicting, given that they do very similar page editing.  I prefer JavaScript Blocker for being infinitely more aggressive than Ghostery, but Ghostery has a better curated block list, which helps me allow stuff through JavaScript Blocker.


texts: Record iPhone's Screen and the audio with Quicktime?

texts:
I know that I can record the phone's screen, but I want to record my phone audio too. I prefer for it not to hear the sounds around me (due to my house being loud).

I tried soundflower and loopback. I might do it wrong. And no, its not same as Screen recording, its Movie recording. I'm doing Walkthrough for the game which has voice characters.

iPhone 5C
Mac 10.11.4


texts: Calendar.app extremely slow in El Capitan. Rebuild cache? Other solution?

texts:
After updating to El Capitan, my friend found her Calendar.app runs extremely slowly. Clicking the button to move to the next week's display results in spinning beach ball (the new one). Beach ball spins for something like half a minute. Makes the app practically unusable for someone booking appointments while the customer waits.

The same calendars shared over iCloud run nearly instantaneously on an iPad Calendar app (iOS 9.0.2). So the problem seems to be Mac-only.

All other apps run well. Only Calendar is beach-ball-spinning slow.

Calendar.app was already annoyingly slow in Mountain Lion & Yosemite, but is much worse in El Capitan. This computer has been upgraded through the years across these OSes.

Perhaps crud has accumulated in the Mac's local files for these calendars. Is there some way to rebuild or replace the Mac's cache of these calendars and get fresh copies from iCloud?

Any other workarounds or solutions?


texts: How to disable any and all eye-candy features on Mac OS X 10.6.8?

texts:
I'm going to install Linux Mint virtual machine and work primarily through there.

I want to shut off any and all eye candy on Mac to squeeze out every last bit of performance I can. Akin to "Set for best performance" setting on Windows 7.

  Turn off visual effects

  If Windows is running slowly, you can speed it up by disabling some of
  its visual effects. It comes down to appearance versus performance.
  Would you rather have Windows run faster or look prettier? If your PC
  is fast enough, you don't have to make this tradeoff, but if your
  computer is just barely powerful enough for Windows 7, it can be
  useful to scale back on the visual bells and whistles.

  You can choose which visual effects to turn off, one by one, or you
  can let Windows choose for you. There are 20 visual effects you can
  control, such as the transparent glass look, the way menus open or
  close, and whether shadows are displayed.

  To adjust all visual effects for best performance:

  Open Performance Information and Tools by clicking the Start button ,
  and then clicking Control Panel. In the search box, type Performance
  Information and Tools, and then, in the list of results, click
  Performance Information and Tools.

  Click Adjust visual effects.   If you're prompted for an administrator
  password or confirmation, type the password or provide confirmation.

  Click the Visual Effects tab, click Adjust for best performance, and
  then click OK. (For a less drastic option, select Let Windows choose
  what’s best for my computer.)

How can I do something similar on Mac OS X 10.6.8?


texts: OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion Finder sidebar/Favorites: add MyComputer shortcut?

texts: How can I add a shortcut to "MyComputer"/"This Mac" (container of all drives) to the Finder.app sidebar (section: "Favorites), please?


texts: MBP shuts down at 40%~ battery, and recalibration didn't help

texts:
EDIT: I don't think this is a duplicate question. My MBP is only 2 years old and its battery cycle count is only 90.

I have a MacBook Pro (13-inch, 2017, Four Thunderbolt 3 Ports) with macOS 10.12.6, and there is a battery issue.

It shuts down when there is still 40%~ battery left.

I tried to reset the SMC and recalibrate the battery. I followed all the instructions, but I don't even know how I can be sure if the SMC reset was successful.

More importantly, the recalibration was not helpful at all.

macOS still gives me the warning "Service Battery", and as shown in the screenshot attached, coconutBattery reports 60%~ in the "Design Capacity" section. It shuts down at 40%~ battery as before.

Why is the MBP battery like this despite the not-that-high battery cycle count (90)?

Is going to an Apple service center the only option I have? Are there any other things I can try by myself?

Thank you.


texts: iCal invites sent to my Gmail address (which is also my Apple ID) get added to iCloud

texts:
My Apple ID is my Gmail address. I also use Google Calendar as my main calendar. But, when someone sends me a calendar invite from their Apple Calendar app, I don't get an email in Gmail, and it there's no invite on my Google Calendar. Instead, it gets added to the built in iCloud Calendar that I never use. This causes me to miss events that I need to be added to.
I tested this on my own, and "invited" another Gmail account I have from the Apple Calendar app - it sent an email invite to that Gmail, which I could open, click add to calendar, and have on that calendar. This is what I want to happen when someone else with an iPhone and iCloud Calendar invites my main Gmail to a meeting.
This never used to be an issue for me in the past when I didn't utilize an iPhone (but still had the same Apple ID), but now I am unable to receive any invite from an Apple user to that specific Gmail. It appears as though Apple recognizes the email address when someone tries to invite me, and instead of sending the invite to the email, just adds it to the iCloud calendar.
Is there a way to turn off this iCloud calendar from accepting invites, so that these invites can be sent to my Gmail as a normal email invite?
Unfortunately, switching to using the iCloud calendar is not an option. I know I can subscribe to my Google Calendar in the Apple Calendar app, and to my iCloud Calendar on Google Calendar, but I need these events to actually populate on my Google Calendar itself, not just subscribe so that I can "see them all in once place".
Thank you!


texts: iMac 21.5-inch Mid 2010 won't boot into OS X after installing Ubuntu, will boot into grub rescue

texts:
So, as the title says, I have an iMac 21.5-inch Mid 2010 model and I installed Windows 8.1 with Boot Camp. After attempting to uninstall Ubuntu and Windows in Disk Utility (in OS X and Recovery) it would always give me an error,
"Partition failed with the error:
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."

What I have tried:

I have tried resetting PRAM/NVRAM with Command + Option/Alt + P+R, nothing.
I have tried holding X to Start up from an OS X startup volume when the Mac would otherwise start up from a non-OS X startup volume. Using Startup key combinations for Mac, still nothing (did work before).
I have done things in grub rescue such as ls (lists partitions and disks) and attempted to boot back into Ubuntu.
I have tried holding Option/Alt to get into the startup manager, still boots to grub rescue.
I have tried holding Command + R to boot into Recovery, worked before, not working now.

What I can't do:

Can't use another Mac to do anything such as target disk mode (no firewire cable).

My iMac Specs:

iMac (21.5-inch, Mid 2010) - Technical Specifications

21.5 inch, 3.06 Mhz, has OSX 10.10 installed with Windows and Ubuntu 14.04.2 LTS.


texts: My Mail app (MacOS Catalina 10.15.3) displays phantom unread messages

texts:
My MacBook displays 1 unread message in smart mailbox while there are none.
It used to work OK, but recently it shows unread messages. When I click on this Smart Mailbox it doesn't display any messages. Settings for the Smart Mailbox is OK. I tried methods described in different topics but it doesn't seem to work. Any ideas? Thanks


texts: How do you position your hand to press Command (cmd) + Option (alt) keys?

texts:
Combination Cmd+Opt+some key is pretty common in OS X. For example "cut": Cmd+C  Cmd+Opt+V.

I'm struggling to press it with one hand. It's hard. Things goes insane if combination also includes Shift ("Save for Web" in Photoshop - Cmd+Opt+Shift+S).

It is easier to press "equivalent" Ctrl + Alt on Windows which placed like Ctrl+Command on Mac.

First of all I was trying to avoid Cmd+Opt in any sofware I used. But it looks like, it's the "OS X way" and there always be the software containing shortcuts with this combination.

How do live with this? How to make it less painful?


texts: how can i stop the thief from using my iPhone?

texts:
My i phone 5 was stolen and i'm freaking out because the thieves keep on using my i phone. i knew this because when i contacted my i phone it answered me.

i tried to locate it but it keep on showing offline then i remotely erase my phone but it seems that the thief is not connecting to the internet. i'm afraid because he has the freedom to access my contacts and pictures! please help me.


texts:
I can't delete the Finder favourites, however I can add them.
No luck in editing com.apple.sidebarlists and com.apple.finder since the favourites aren't stored there (anymore?).

My first guess would be a permission issue, however I have no idea where that would be.


texts: Get password prompt in the terminal/shell

texts:
When I am connecting a Mac through ssh, I don't have any GUI.

However, for some of the commands like security find-internet-password, there will be a GUI prompt for the admin's password. How can I have the prompt in the shell instead of GUI?


texts: Show preview when switching windows with ⌘+Tab

texts:
The ⌘+Tab key combination switches between active and background windows on my MacOS on MBP.

When hitting this combination, a small preview of the selected window appears. Another hit on the Tab key while ⌘ is pressed previews and selects the next window. Releasing the ⌘ switches to the currently selected window.

Recently, this preview does not appear, so I can't efficiently switch to other windows using a key combination.

Any idea how to restore that preview, please?


texts: Hide mouse pointer after any key press in macOS Mojave

texts:
While using macOS Mojave, I would like the mouse pointer (cursor, carat) to become invisible as soon as any key is pressed, including modifier and navigation keys.

In summary:

The mouse should remain invisible until moved.
The mouse must remain at the same coordinates as when it disappeared; no sending it off the screen, out of sight.

I have tried Cursorcerer which allows a single hotkey to hide the mouse and also an idle timer, neither of those features address the problem.  Many Mac applications (iTerm2, Sublime Text, Firefox) have settings that hide the mouse when keys are pressed.  Some applications (Chrome, LibreOffice) do not.  I have investigated modifying keyloggers in Python (https://github.com/beatsbears/pkl) with

NSCursor.setHiddenUntilMouseMoves(true)

and Objective-C (https://github.com/neilco/keylogger) with

[NSCursor setHiddenUntilMouseMoves:YES];

without success.

Those calls to setHiddenUntilMouseMoves do not cause the mouse to hide.  A recent OS update (10.14.5) is preventing them from running.

Can anyone suggest a way for me to achieve my desired outcome?

I am open to using terminal commands, 3rd party software, etc.


texts: Is there an easy way to export all movies from iPhoto into iMovie

texts: Is there some easy way to just move all of my movies out of iphoto and into imovie?


texts: iPod Touch 2nd Generation (Used) boots into Apple Logo when dead, then shuts off. If charged however, everything is normal. What is going on?

texts:
I've been trying to calibrate my battery after enabling the battery meter by editing a .plist file in a copy of my iPod's backup. I restored that backup to my iPod, and the battery meter worked just fine. The iPod is running iOS 4.2.1.

However, attempts at calibrating it do not work. It will shut off after reaching "0%", but if I hold the power button, it just boots back into iOS with ~19% remaining.

I let it drain after that, and if I hold the power button again after it shuts off, guess what? It's back at ~19%.

I repeat this one more time before it refuses to boot into iOS. Once it drains the third time, it will boot into the Apple logo, then shut off after ~15 seconds. If I continue attempts to boot, it will continue doing this.

If I plug it into a charger though, it will boot into iOS and claim that it has 3% remaining and is charging. There are absolutely no problems with it (besides the weird battery meter).

I also own an iPhone 5 (iOS 10.3.2), and when that device hits 0, it stays there. It will not boot up and just shows the "I need to be charged" indicator.

I'd like to know what's going on here, how to get the battery calibrated correctly, and how to get the battery as stable as possible (Similar to my iPhone 5).

This is the method I used to enable the battery percentage meter.


texts: What are the differences between an iPod touch and an iPhone 4S?

texts:
I see that the prices for the 64GB iPhone 4S and iPod touch are the same.

Besides having a phone as well as the monthly data fee and Siri, which I see is on the iPhone 4S, are there any other difference between the two products that I may be missing?  It looks like both use the same version of iOS.


texts: Disk Utility on Mavericks fails because "disk is too small"

texts:
I'm on mavericks and I am trying to delete a partition of an external hard drive. This is its schema

Partition1: 50GB  "MavericksBackup": Bootable backup
Partition2: 187GB "Home Data": Absolutely Empty
Partition3: 12GB  "Install OS X Mavericks": it contains only the bootable app to install Mavericks

Now I'm trying to Erase the Partition3 from Disk Utility and it fails with the following error:

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.

What that even means?

I have tried to delete or resize also the Partiton2 and I get the same error.
I suspect the problem was created by Carbon Copy Cleaner: I've used it to copy everything from my internal HD to Partition1 to make it bootable. At the beginning of the process a warning message told me that in order to make Partition1 bootable I also had to create a recovery partition. I let it handle it.

Now, in fact I don't see the Recovery HD partition from disk utility but if I launch diskutil list I do get this (different) list of partition, including the Recovery one, not visible from Disk Utility:

/dev/disk1
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:                  GUID_partition_scheme            *250.1 GB   disk1
   1:                        EFI EFI                     209.7 MB   disk1s1
   2:                  Apple_HFS MvaricksBackup          49.9 GB    disk1s2
   3:                 Apple_Boot Recovery HD             650.0 MB   disk1s3
   4:                  Apple_HFS Home Data               187.3 GB   disk1s4
   5:                  Apple_HFS Install OS X Mavericks  11.6 GB    disk1s5

Not sure how to solve this? I would really avoid to reformat the whole disk...

EDIT: I started the disk utility in debug mode with this terminal command defaults write com.apple.DiskUtility DUDebugMenuEnabled 1 then Debug menu and Show Every Partition. This in fact shows the extra EFI and Recovery HD partition but that didn't help me solving the problem.


texts: How do I remove unwanted OS X User Accounts?

texts: When starting my MacBook Pro I get 4 Accounts to choose from and need to choose one of them.  One of the 4 Accounts is named Guest - will keep this.  The other two are not wanted. One has Admin below it. The other has Standard below it.  The one I use is Peter with Admin below it. How to remove the two unwanted Accounts?


texts: Can the Java SDK pop-up be disabled entirely?

texts:
Whenever an application attempts to use, or even check to see if Java is installed, a pop-up is generated that steals focus and tells you all about how to install the latest JDK. This is perhaps useful the first time, but when it repeatedly happens for things that just check to see if java is available, it's a huge annoyance.
(e.g. compiling various code from source, they often check for java among many other tests, to decide whether to build-in certain features at compile-time)
So what I'm after is a sensible way to disable the pop-up entirely. Ideally without changing system files that are likely to be overwritten/repaired by updates, or forcefully protected from change with System Integrity Protection in OS X 10.11 El Capitan.
Related questions
How to get to know which app causes the "would you like to install java?" dialog in Mavericks to appear? attempts to find a way to determine what is at fault—though in my case I generally know what's triggering the pop-up, I just don't want to see it since I already know that I don't want to install the JDK.
How does one detect if java is installed without triggering a visual prompt? is hopefully something developers will find, and enact, to detect java yet avoid the pop-up when its not actually necessary.


texts: How to get an applescript to play a song file

texts:
Okay so I want an applescript app that plays a song. The song isn't already on the computer and it's contained inside contents/resources of the app's package contents. This is my current code

tell application "Finder"
    set apppath to POSIX path of (application file id "com.apple.ScriptEditor.id.play" as text)
end tell
set song to {apppath, "/Contents/Resources/song.mp3"} as string
set songpath to POSIX file song as text
tell application "QuickTime Player"
    activate
    open songpath
    play the front document
    tell application "System Events"
        set visible of application process "QuickTime Player" to false
    end tell
end tell

On my computer this code seems to work. However when distributing it, other computers get an error in quicktime. The document “song.mp3” could not be opened. The file doesn’t exist. Any help?

Edit: Fixed an incorrect variable which doesn't fix the problem because I changed the code to post it here and mixed it up.


texts: Fast CD ripping on old MacBook Pro, slow ripping on i5 PC?

texts:
I'm ripping my entire music collection into ALAC, as it's the best solution for quality and compatibility across all devices in our household. In order to speed the ripping process up, I have iTunes installed on my PC and Apple laptop with the same ripping settings (ALAC, error correction enabled), with the aim to merge the two local libraries later. The issue I have is, the Windows PC is extremely slow compared to the laptop, despite having the power advantage.

Any ideas what could be causing this? I the DVD-RW drive in the PC (Samsung SH-224DB) is capable of reading at 40x but it's clearly not even close. From what I have read, the SuperDrive in my laptop is only 20x~.

I'm almost tempted to convert the computer into a temporary 'Hackintosh' to see if there is any difference.

Screenshots of ripping progress


texts:
The new GNU Octave 4.0.1 was released March 23, 2016.
I would like to find some standard way to install it in El Capitan (mine OS X 10.11.3) because it has significantly better support in some functions than Matlab, discussed in the thread here.
I do brew search octave and get

homebrew/science/octave    Caskroom/cask/octave       Caskroom/cask/xoctave

where one of the first two should be a correct one.
The project's homepage support for OS X is down here about installing Octave on OS X systems.
There is also ruby's way of installing Octave described in the thread How to install Octave on OS X (Yosemite) but for Yosemite.
I would like to find some standard way of getting Octave for OS X.

I do successfully brew update and brew upgrade before the commands.
My Homebrew is 0.9.5 (git revision 80d1; last commit 2016-03-24).
user1256923. I run brew info octave but I get

Error: No available formula with the name "octave"

How can you install Octave in some standard way for El Capitan?


texts: If I change my computer name how does it affect my computer's paths?

texts:
I wanted to change my computer's name and did so.  I used it for a while but when doing other programming related work felt like I was hitting a wall sometimes because of pathing.

I changed terminal name by executing a command line command and did the rest through Users in System Settings inside of Advanced Settings that you can access by pressing control and clicking on the User.

Ex. starting up a MySQL server/accessing MySQL command line tools/Python or php acting up.

Can changing my computer's name result in this kind of affect?


texts:
I run unsuccessfully brew search strings giving only Caskroom/cask/stringsfile.

I want to run this commmand strings -td -3 <file.raw.

How can you install GNU Strings in OSX?


texts: Delete a file locally, but keep it in iCloud

texts:
I have a file on my desktop that is now synced with iCloud using the new feature of macOS.

I would like to delete it, but keep a copy of it in the iCloud.

I am nervous that if I simply delete it from my Mac, it will also be deleted in iCloud.

Is there a way to keep the iCloud copy, but delete the local copy?

For example, here are two directories on my desktop, one is only in the cloud, the other is both in the cloud and saved locally:

I would like to make the Personal Docs folder become like the Datasets folder


texts:
I use the Windows OS and iTunes 11.1 and recently I noticed that the last few version of the Itune App Store they had made changes to the viewing of app in both iphone & ipad. The old version can view app according to their release date ( date shown ) but now under the release date for the app ( date shown is remove ). I had problem viewing the lastest app since last view under the respective category.

Is there a way to show the release date of the app in the current app store?


texts: Are iOS applications required to have retina images?

texts: All my research indicates that the answer is "yes" but I'd like some external confirmation from a source I trust (either Apple.com or this site) as I have a bunch of non-retina images and would really prefer not to create retina graphics.


texts:
I have an old Kingston 2 GB USB flash drive.  I believe it was bought in 2006.

When I plug it into the right hand side USB port of a 2012 retina MacBook Pro, nothing happens. When I plug it into the left hand side port, it works fine.

Does this indicate a problem with the computer and its ports?  Does it indicate a problem with the USB drive?

All other devices I tried worked with both the left and right hand side USB port.


texts: Is FCP X 10.1.1 hanging because of older hardware?

texts:
I'm weighing the value of upgrading my machine because FCP X 10.1.1 is constantly hanging—more than once per 5 minutes—and I'm at a loss what to do. Is this just because I have older (Mid-2010) Xeon processors? Could there be other hardware issues contributing to this?

Choose your own adventure in answering my question:

If I can get more life out of this machine, that would be great. In that case, please share any troubleshooting next steps.
On the other hand, if I'm being unrealistic to try to keep this machine alive, convince me.

My projects are stored on the boot disk, an internal 3rd-party SSD. I'm running a high-powered albeit older machine with the latest version of FCP X and OS X. Hardware specs below.

The issue is sometimes concurrent with this error message from the Console: Final Cut Pro[3457]: * OpenGL error 0x0506 (invalid framebuffer operation) in function "GL_CHECK_CURRENT_ERROR"

I've submitted feedback to Apple's development team.

Detailed system information:

Model Mac Pro Mid 2010
Processor  2 x 2.4 GHz Quad-Core Intel Xeon [8-Core]
Memory  16 GB 1066 MHz DDR3 ECC
Graphics  ATI Radeon HD 5770 1024 MB
Software  OS X 10.9.3
Storage Physical Drive:
  Media Name: Crucial_CT480M500SSD1 Media
  Medium Type: SSD
  Protocol: SATA
  Internal: Yes
  Partition Map Type: GPT (GUID Partition Table)
  S.M.A.R.T. Status: Verified


texts: Can websites be locked down on the iPad?

texts:
In our network, we use NetMotion to lock down laptops in the field so they can only access what we allow them to access (no ESPN, news, Google) in the truck. As we look at iPad 3Gs (and similar competitors), we want to be sure we keep the same tight control on what websites they visit (and have internal access to network resources at the same time). Is this possible?

VPN isn't really effective unless there is a way for it to be forced on at all times.


texts: 2 External monitors on 21,5 iMac Late 2009?

texts:
So I wonder if I can use 2 external monitors on my Late 2009 21,5 iMac?
I currently use 1 external monitor and it works great but I now want to sell it and use 2 external monitors but there is only one thunderbolt display output.

Is there a thunderbolt display adapter that has 2 HDMI's or 2 VGA outputs that would work for my device? Please, send links if you find one that works.


texts: In Apple Pages, how can I disable italic swashes?

texts:
I am laying out a long document in Pages '09 v4.1 (923), using the "Hoefler Text" typeface for the body text. On certain characters (k, e, and others) at the end of an italicized word, the advanced type features of Pages use the swash variation of the last character, though there is an otherwise "normal" italic of the letter. My client does not like the look of this, and I'm looking for a way to disable this behavior.

I have tried going to the Font panel, click on the gear to select Typography, and there are Smart Swash options shown in the window that appears. However, no matter which swash options I enable or disable, Pages seems to ignore them, and continues to add the swashes.

How can I disable these swashes?

Clarification: This happens at the end of an italic span, not for letters that may end a word inside the span; and the span is often in the middle of roman body text. For instance:

Note the swash on the end of the 't' in "not" and 'k' in "Trek." Not also how in the last line, the 'e' in "stare" gets no swash, but the 'e' at the end of the italic span, in "Trekkie," does.


texts: are disk drill 3 dmg whole system backup images the same as macos disk utility dmg backup images? / would I need to create boot usb to use them?

texts:
I have a small and slow ssd on an old macbook, I want to upgrade the ssd one day, but keep my old macbook because I don't have much money and I like it.
I have auto time machine backups to a usb and clone sometimes on another usb, but I want to upload whole system dmg to a cloud service, as a third backup, so I have an option of using it to restore to my bigger newer ssd.
I have a third party proram called disk drill 3 that easily makes system dmg, or I could use native disk utility, will they be the exact same? and also when I put my new bigger ssd in and it's empty, will it be required to make a recovery boot disk usb beforehand to even get to recovery menu, and then load the dmg (which will downloaded from cloud to another usb at that point from another pc), from there?
system details:
macbook air 11" mid 2012
catalina 10.15.6
disk drill 3 pro is the third party program, 3.8.965 pro
I can click my main system drive there and select backup into DMG-image as opposed to creating dmg from disk utility from catalina.
thanks for any responses.


texts: "Could not load Vox Preferences preference pane." Solutions?

texts:
I'm trying to install the Vox prefs pane so I can have it use the play/pause next and previous media keys rather than iTunes. However after installing, I get the error "Could not load Vox Preferences preference pane". I think the first time I installed it (I tried several times) it told me something about it needing an intel mac to run, which, of course, I have.

[Edit: The first warning after opening system preferences and trying to load the Vox pref pane is: "You can’t open Vox Preferences preferences because it doesn’t work on an Intel-based Mac." Curious. Vox is quite recent. Why would they distribute a prefs pane extension that only works on PPC macs?]

Anyone got any ideas as to what's wrong with this pref pane?

Running 10.7.5.


texts:
I can open books on the command line using:

/Applications/Books.app/Contents/MacOS/Books

but how do I open a specific book if I have the path to it?


texts: Why can’t I use a Live Photo as a wallpaper

texts: I've got an iPhone 6. I know it is capable to set a live photo as the device wallpaper. But I couldn't do it because it only gives me 'still' and 'perspective' as the options. So how can I set a live photo as a wallpaper?


texts: Preview Bug with (Mountain) Lion -- hangs/crashes on repeat postscript openings

texts:
I have been able to duplicate this error on both Lion and Mountain Lion.

Open a(n) (enhanced) post-script file (either .ps or .eps) using preview.
It should convert properly to PDF and be displayed
Open the same file a second (or a few more) times
Eventually preview will hang, then crash

For me, opening the same file 3 times is usually plenty.

Can other people reproduce this problem?

Any ideas for causes/fixes?

This seems like a big bug; im surprised it would have made it this far (especially from Lion).

After duplicating the problem, having Preview.app hang, and force quitting, my 'problem report' is at http://www.2shared.com/file/RjuzZbvC/Preview_2012-08-22-224825_Daed.html (too long to include, don't see another way to attach a file...)


texts: Is the 3rd generation iPad Carrier Locked in the US?

texts: Is the 3rd generation iPad carrier locked in the US to either Verizon or AT&T? Can you swap out SIM cards between Verizon and AT&T?


texts: iMac screen froze while in use, shutdown, restarted, got worse

texts:
iMac (approx 7-8 yrs old)

Screen froze while in use. Shut down for 10 mins. Restarted, graphics came on distorted. Apple logo in the middle of screen with small broken lines and specks all over the screen.  It tried to load but froze up again. Had to push power button a few times and hold it down to shut off.


texts: Time Machine: Backups.backupdb uses way too much space when copied to another volume

texts:
I'm in the process of copying my TM backups to another volume. I followed these instructions: formatted the new volume, set the permissions, disabled automatic TM backup and dragged Backups.backupdb to the new volume.

That folder used about 400 GB on the old volume, and that was the estimated size shown in the copy status window. But then, after getting to 400 GB it just continued. Right now it is saying that 596 GB out of 596 GB have been copied and for the last few hours it's been showing that only 5 seconds are left. I've looked at Backups.backupdb on the new volume, which contains folders with different dates, and only 4 out of 15 folders have been copied so far! The new volume is 1TB, and all different tools report that 596 GB are indeed in use, so if it continues like this, there won't be enough space for my backup on the new volume.

How come is that possible? I suspect it has something to do with hard links that TM uses, but I got very strong impression that the above copy procedure described by Apple would make everything work automatically. What can I do? Should I cancel copying? I'm running macOS Mojave, and both volumes are formatted as HFS+ (Mac OS Extended).


texts: MacBook Air's battery doesn't charge, Service Battery state, but only 400 cycles

texts:
Yesterday everything was fine with the battery in my MacBook Air 13'' 2012 (2 years old). It was lasting for 4-5 hours like new. Today, all of a sudden, the battery has stopped charging at all (I have only 40% left). While the power cable is plugged in, its LED doesn't indicate any colour. I rebooted the system, no difference. In System Info I have:

Cycle Count: 409
Condition: Service Battery

I heard that the lifetime of the battery should be 1000 cycles. I didn't update any software recently.

Does it all mean that the battery is dead? Or maybe there is a way to conquer it? Thank you!


texts: I accidently moved my iMac with the SD card inserted and the card got bent, it cannot be read anymore. Not sure if it can be recovered. I was wondering if somehow the files are stored on the HD. I did not import the (RAW) files.


texts: terminal starts with `no such file or directory` message

texts:
I removed Enthought Canopy from my Mac and now when I start terminal there's this warning message says

-bash: /Users/myname/Library/Enthought/Canopy_64bit/User/bin/activate: No such file or directory
-bash: /Users/myname/Library/Enthought/Canopy_32bit/User/bin/activate: No such file or directory

of course they don't exist because I deleted the program. How do I remove the message?


texts: iTunes (Music.app) not converting song entirely / skip to the next one when playing

texts:
When using iTunes for AAC conversion, sometime only a part of the song is converted (also, when playing the song, iTunes does not plays it entirely and skip to the next one before the end).
But when I use another app (like MediaHuman Audio Converter for conversion or IINA for playing), the song is converted/played entirely.
The issue clearly comes from iTunes but I cannot find it. I looked up into the information of the songs having the issue in iTunes but the pre-ended box is not checked.
So far I tried to :

consolidate my library (from Apple support)

rebuild a new Library with the .xml file (following that procedure)

reboot into safe mode

but the problem still remains.
It appear that when testing with a new user account (with same file), iTunes manage to do it...
I never signed into my Apple ID, and my library is stored on my boot volume (~28,000 songs for 125 Go).
Anyone with a similar issue and/or knows how to solves it?
UPDATE :
It looks like the issue only occur when opening a full album into iTunes, and that the duration of each song will be equal to the shortest one (for example : if the shortest song is 2:36,  every other will skip at 2:36).
Sometimes it goes well for the first song of the album (even if it´s not the shortest one) but after playing a shorter one, the skip loop begin...
By adding the song of the album one by one into iTunes, everything works fine...
I just updated to macOS Catalina (10.15.7) and Music 1.0.6.10 have the same issue.


texts: Moving iMovie (10) libraries to external hard drive

texts:
I have a friend who have a 13" macbook pro from 2014.
The OS is Yosemite 10.10.15.

My friend would like to upgrade her OS to either High Sierra or Mojave or even maybe Catalina or Big Sur, however she has a pretty big iMovie library and thus she can't upgrade because the iMovie library takes too much disk space.
Also she would like to move her iMovie library to an external hard drive, which would also solve the disk space problem.
Obviously, even if the iMovie library is on her external hard drive she'd still like to be able to work on it with her macbook.

The issue I have is that I found plenty of ways to do this with iMovie 11+ but with iMovie 10 the tutorials I found sometimes specify some particular manipulations and sometimes not, so I am not very confident about the manipulation I should do on her macbook.

Could anyone point me to a safe tutorial to do this ? Or explain me step by step how should I do this ?
Also I guess that after upgrading her mac OS she will want to upgrade her iMovie software, is there any compatibily issue I should be aware of ?

I am pretty tech savy, but I don't know a lot about mac OS and even less about iMovie...
As a side note, I made her format her external hard drive in extended mac OS, and I did a partition for time machine and an other partition for her iMovie stuff.


texts: Macbook pro Sierra. Slow finder open/save as dialog boxes

texts:
Whenever I click file-open or file-save as in any program, the finder dialog box takes a tremendous amount of time to open (approx 2mins). I have tried all kinds of solutions throughout the web and none have worked, not even temporarily.  Most of the fixes I have seen say that good patches came after Mavericks, but I am running sierra.  I have had the problem even throughout El Capitan, but it was barely a problem. On El Capitan the longest delay was maybe 10 seconds.

A few things I have tried/noticed

The problem occurs in safe mode, but it does NOT occur on the guest accounts
Going into Safe Mode doesn't fix the problem
Deleting the Finder plist doesn't work
Deleting Icloud caches do not work


texts: Is there a widget for Mac OS X dashboard that has bigger sticky notes?

texts:
Is there a widget for Mac OS X dashboard to write down notes?

N.B. What I use now are yellow small sticky notes (I'm using 8 on several spots on the scren).

I really love them, but sometimes it would be useful to enlarge them and make them bigger rather than put several of them into one.


texts: Is it possible to submit not sandboxed app to the Mac App Store

texts:
I have an AppleScript Cocoa application that does a lot of shell scripts like kill or chflags. Is there any way I can try to send it on review to MAS and get it approved?

According to Wikipedia:

  Disallowed types of applications revealed by Apple include new apps
  that are not sandboxed (as of June 1, 2012). At WWDC 2013, Apple
  announced that this rule no longer applied, and that so-called
  "temporary exceptions" may be used when the app has a reason not to be
  sandboxed.

However, Apple OS X Developer website states that sandboxing is required for Mac App Store.


texts: I left my iphone 6 in the sun and it stopped working.  It has been a few hours since I cooled it down and it still doesn't work or even take a charge.  Is the battery damaged?  How do I fix this problem?


texts:
Looking at my Users & Groups I have just noticed two users I never payed any attention before.
Maybe they already exist from the beginning of time i.e. when my macbook pro was installed for the first time.
But, as told, I have never, ever, ever noticed them.

Does anyone know where these users come from and if I can delete them?


texts: 2017 MacBook Pro has no startup disk when updating MacOS beyond Sierra

texts:
My 2017 15" MacBook Pro gives a flashing question mark every time I try to update to a newer OS. The install process looks completely normal until it restarts for the last time and boots up to a flashing folder. When I look in recovery I see my SSD and the MacOS Base System, first aid on either of these does nothing. From startup disk within recovery I see no available disks. Starting while holding option shows the ssd as EFI Boot, and booting this shows a slightly different installer that also fixes nothing.

I am able to internet restore to Sierra if I want, so I keep doing that and I've tried updating to High Sierra, Mojave, and Catalina, all of which have had the same issue. I've reset ram and SMC, I've done clean installs and reinstalls on each operating system with and without first aid on every visible drive beforehand, the only way I can get the laptop to boot is by doing an internet recovery back to Sierra, at which point it works perfectly. Fully erasing the hard drive and attempting clean installs of each OS have also not worked through either internet installation or usb installation. I've tried some terminal commands recommended for this type of problem but I can't remember exactly what they were (several were about mounting and remounting drives). I'm not comfortable or familiar with the terminal at all.

I don't care about data recovery or anything like that, I just want a newer OS because Sierra is no longer compatible with a game my friend plays a lot. At this point I'm kind of at a loss. I'm a windows person fixing this for a friend, so the fact that a clean install didn't work is kind of jarring. Any help or advice is appreciated, thank you.


texts:
I'm having a bit of an odd issue with my terminal.

I'm used to the prompt being Joosts-Macbook:~ Joost$ or something of that nature, but all of a sudden it displays a number I don't recognise: n041134:~ Joost$. I've added a screenshot of the Terminal below.

It does not seem to properly start bash either, since I can't do ./script.sh to execute a script anymore - it requires me to type bash script.sh fully.

I'm on Mountain Lion 10.8. I'm not aware of anything I may have done that has caused this. I noticed it when I was trying to execute a shell script that did some find and replacing using sed, but it might have been like this earlier.

I tried the obvious fixes such as logging out and rebooting, but to no avail.


texts: Anaconda and its libraries in macOS Catalina

texts:
Apple is constantly introducing changes to how it handles a range of issues. Some are, I assume, security-related. This affects programming environments such as Python (Anaconda) and R and others. Placing moved from /Library/Frameworks/ to /opt/ to ~/opt/. This really affects productivity. Also, there are libraries such as intel-openmp that rely on gcc (from hpc). Things are changing and becoming unbearably messy.

Can anyone compile a sensible how-to's / recommendations:

Home for Anaconda (/opt/ or ~/opt/)?
How to compile gcc that is required by openmp?


texts: Is there a way to disable Genius updates in iTunes?

texts:
Is there a way to prevent iTunes from performing Genius updates each time it launches?

I don't use this feature, and the process seems to slow down the process of getting access to the store and to my connected iOS devices.


texts: Where's the macOS log "Mac Analytic Data" file located in the macOS startup drive? .  I can't say beyond 5 days back or so in that log in Console for macOS High Sierra..


texts: What is the use of a clean OS (Lion) install?

texts:
My machine is a iMac8,1 (24", early 2008) that I bought with Mac OS 10.5 Leopard installed. My question is: what are all the benefits and drawbacks of performing a clean operation system (OS) install? Specifically a clean Lion install in contrast to an incremental upgrade plan.

What I already know:

Upgrading to Snow Leopard and subsequently to Lion was easy and without loss of any data. I am aware of obsolete clutter being automatically removed in the processes (mostly PowerPC support), however, I can imagine that some is still present, e.g. Leopard and Snow Leopard system files that are now obsolete. They unnecessarily occupy space.
Another arbitrary advantage of a clean install has more to do with ‘personal hygene’: old (third party) programs that I haven't used (and associated files) won't be re-installed.
A third and last benefit of a clean install has to do with the physical space the OS occupies on the hard disk drive (HDD). Since the OS is practically the first thing on the disk it occupies the (faster) outer ‘rings’ of the HDD. That makes the OS faster than if it would occupy the inner rings. I presume that happens in the incremental upgrade as I did.

What are other advantages and disadvantages of a clean install? And are there any gaps or inconsistencies in what I already know?


texts: Cannot open Desktop Settings and Energy Saver settings

texts:
i don't kwow why, but i can't able to open Preferences settings options like Desktop and Energy.

It show me this error:

  TRANSLATION:
  error in preferences
  Cannot load the Desktop & Screensaver preference pane

What's the problem?
How can i solve this issue?

any idea?

Using OSX 10.7.3 with last updates.


texts: Where does this strange output in Terminal come from?

texts:
Everytime I open my terminal I get a little notification error:

declare -x Apple_PubSub_Socket_Render="/tmp/launch-jsWpOJ/Render"
declare -x DISPLAY="/tmp/launch-yARwMh/org.macosforge.xquartz:0"
declare -x HOME="/Users/Austin"
declare -x LANG="en_US.UTF-8"
declare -x LOGNAME="Austin"
declare -x OLDPWD
declare -x
PATH="/usr/bin:/bin:/usr/sbin:/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/opt/X11/bin:/usr/local/git/bin:/usr/local/MacGPG2/bin"
declare -x PWD="/"
declare -x SHELL="/bin/bash"
declare -x SHLVL="1"
declare -x SSH_AUTH_SOCK="/tmp/launch-PWYfTW/Listeners"
declare -x TERM="xterm-256color"
declare -x TERM_PROGRAM="Apple_Terminal"
declare -x TERM_PROGRAM_VERSION="326"
declare -x TERM_SESSION_ID="EA9B2123-82A5-470E-8F9D-328367CEE7BD"
declare -x TMPDIR="/var/folders/hb/ss6hsppn5497rzzmnx81hh8r0000gn/T/"
declare -x USER="Austin"
declare -x __CF_USER_TEXT_ENCODING="0x1F5:0:0"
declare -x __CHECKFIX1436934="1"

I don't really know how to get rid of this, I think it might have something to do with XQuartz or X11. Can anyone point me in the right direction to fix this?


texts: Why is there something white behind the "slide to unlock" in my lock screen? (iPhone 4, iOS 7.1)

texts:
I get the following lock screen on my iPhone:

The image was taken by myself, i added a filter from the iPhone Filters, and when I set this image as background, there is this white thing behind the slider. Why is it there and why is it only partially there? The original image looks normal, like this:


texts: How to stop sound output switching to a monitor when it gets plugged in?

texts:
When I plug my (HDMI) display into my laptop, the sound output switches to it. I can switch it back, but is there any way to stop this automatic switch?

(I've found many people complaining, but no answers. A script which reversibly disabled HMDI audio would be acceptable.)


texts:
I'm considering to buy a Mac Pro (or wait till mid 2013 because of the update of the Mac Pro lineup).

What i'm concern about is: How is the support for graphics card under OS X Mountain Lion?

I've read something that since Lion, many more ATI 7xxx cards are supported without any flashing or something like that.

I want a Mac Pro because of its extensibility. And the graphics card is my only concern.

For which reason: Playing games from time to time could so be possible.

Is there any source or community which uses the Mac Pro heavily and is helping me with this kind of questions?

Thanks!

EDIT: Or, let me put it this way: I want a strong power machine with OS X, so i can have multiple OS Versions on multiple hard drives.

  But, with this machine, i want to also play games, maybe on windows.
  So: There are drivers for "gaming graphics cards" for windows. Can i
  plug two graphics card in the mac and only "activate" the one i need?

  Sure, it isn't that easy, but how would a work around look like?


texts: My MacBook Air sometimes doesn't charge when the charger is plugged in

texts: Sometimes when I connect my MacBook Air to the charger, the charge light on the MagSafe connector does not come on (and System Information says the power is not connected and the battery is not charging). I tried using a different charger and the MacBook charges fine. What might be the problem?


texts: The Casing & Protective Layer for iPhone 4 is Free, or Is It?

texts:
We all understand that the way to solve iPhone 4's antennagate problem is to use case and a protective layer. As far as I understand, Steve Jobs said that all these case and protective layer is available for free.

However today as I went to an iPhone reseller (I'm located in Malaysia), I was told that I would have to purchase the case and the protective layer – they would not be given for free.

Now I'm not sure what's wrong here – whether it's my understanding of Jobs' word, or if it's how the way the local Apple reseller works. I understand that when Jobs said that these casing would be given for free, it would be free regardless of which country you are in. It certainly doesn't mean that only US stores would give out the case for free, but  every single country in the world which sells iPhone 4 must give it out for free. But the sales representative told me that it's only in the US that the case would be given for free.

So I am confused: is the local Apple reseller running around like ancient Chinese warlords and take no directive command from the HQ?


texts: How to copy books from iPad iBooks to PC?

texts: I have some books in iBooks on iPad 2 (iOS 5) that were manually transfered to iPad via iTunes (without syncing). How can I copy back a book to my PC, from iPad?


texts: OS X 10.10 default username and password?

texts:
Is there a default username/password for brand new OS X installs that have yet to go through the initial setup process?

I have several headless macs already racked, but no display set up for them, because we intend to run them through ARD (Apple Remote Desktop) and ssh.

Before the initial setup (where the .AppleSetupDone file gets created for the first time), is there a default username and password for either remote desktop or ssh?


texts: Changing Sound Outputs w/Applescript (I seem to have misplaced my tab group)

texts:
I'm starting with the disclaimer that this is my first time posting, so if I breach etiquette, I promise it's by accident; just let me know.

I'm trying to make an AppleScript to change the sound output on my Mac with a voice command (I hurt my arms recently and have been programming automations and tying them to dictation). And while I've been able to make a lot of things work, I've had trouble with this one.

The really frustrating thing is, I can, technically, get it to work. I have made the script as follows:

tell application "System Preferences"
    reveal anchor "output" of pane id "com.apple.preference.sound"
end tell

tell application "System Events" to tell process "System Preferences"
    tell table 1 of scroll area 1 of tab group 1 of window 1
        select (row 1 where value of text field 1 is "Andrea Comm USB-SA Headset")
    end tell
end tell

quit application "System Preferences"

I can run this, and it will change my sound output to my headset. The problem is that once that's done, I can't change it to anything else until I do it manually. I literally duplicated the script and replace the name of the headset with "headphones", but when I run it, it says it can't get tab one of group 1. I even made a completely identical copy, one that also switches the output to the headset, and had the same exact problem.

But, if I go and manually reset the output, I can run this same script to change to the headphones, and it will work. Then it's the other script that won't work until I've manually changed the output again.

I've looked all over, and I cannot find a solution to this problem. No one else seems to have this issue, but I've had it across multiple scripts. And while I'm normally all about being my own special little snowflake, in this case it's not helping me any.

Any help you can provide would be great. Thanks so much!


texts:
I am in the US and want to download an app, only in the US Store.

I tried changing the App Store Country, but seem to hit an impasse.

When entering my Credit Card details I cannot select Australia as the billing address.

I have 2 MasterCards, one Travel Money card with $US, and my Australian card.

I give up - this is apparently not possible!

I can't change App Store Country without changing Family Sharing.


texts: How to disable lock-screen hotkey (Command-ctr-Q) in High Sierra?

texts:
I use the command-ctrl-Q key in emacs, but find that it is locking my screen on Mac OS X High Sierra.  Checking the System Preferences in the Keyboard Shortcuts finds nothing to turn off.

I'd rather not move my meta key off of Command to option and thus keep it where I'm used to it.

How can I disable this functionality?


texts: How to change the multitasking view in iOS 9?

texts: So I just made the jump from iOS 7 to 9 (I know, big jump) and I'm already thrown off by the switched multitasking view. I don't mind the overlapping idea, but the big difference is that the apps extend to the left now instead of to the right. Is there any way at all (without jailbreaking) to change the multitasking view in iOS 9 so that the open apps extend to the right instead of to the left? Thanks!


texts: How to delete /var/folders/xx/xxxxxxxxx when the corresponding user account is deleted?

texts:
The user specified tmp path is /var/folders/xx/xxxxxxxxx , which can be got by $TMPDIR. It will be created when creating a new user.

But when I delete the user at System Preferences, choosing Delete the home folder, the tmp path isn't deleted automatically, even after a reboot.

The /var/folders/xx/xxxx path cannot be deleted manually. It cannot be deleted by sudo rm -rf, because it's protected by the System Integrity Protection(SIP).

$ sudo rm -rf /var/folders/hk
rm: /var/folders/hk/wq1w61c90wb1d0ycqwjy_6yh0000gq/0/com.apple.LaunchServices.dv: Operation not permitted
rm: /var/folders/hk/wq1w61c90wb1d0ycqwjy_6yh0000gq/0: Operation not permitted
rm: /var/folders/hk/wq1w61c90wb1d0ycqwjy_6yh0000gq/T: Operation not permitted
rm: /var/folders/hk/wq1w61c90wb1d0ycqwjy_6yh0000gq/C: Operation not permitted
rm: /var/folders/hk/wq1w61c90wb1d0ycqwjy_6yh0000gq: Operation not permitted
rm: /var/folders/hk: Operation not permitted

How can I delete it without turn off SIP?


texts: What is procedure to print multiple envelopes with different addresses in Pages?

texts:
I need to print a bunch of envelopes for holiday cards. How do I do this? I want to do it from Pages because I need to change some details on some before they print. How do I do this?

I am not seeing any easy or intuitive way to do this. Thanks.


texts: Can't block access to photos for iOS application - strange situation

texts:
I have an application to which I gave access to photos several years ago.
Now I want to prevent the application from accessing photos, but the application is missing in Settings -> Privacy -> Photo.
If I reinstall it, it immediately has access to the photos and does not ask for permission.
Updating to newest iOS 14.6 and resetting Settings -> General -> Reset -> Reset Location and Privacy doesn't help.


texts: MacOS High Sierra Messages app unread icon reappearing, causing system to hang

texts:
I am experiencing a strange problem with the inbuilt messages app on my iMac. For 2 of the threads in the app, the unread count is not resetting and when I read the thread, the blue unread icon initially disappears before immediately reappearing again. Furthermore, doing this seems to cause the rest of the system to hang for some time afterwards, so it's becoming quite problematic. I have tried the following to fix this problem:

Force quitting the app.
Deleting the threads (problem reappeared on next communication with the person in question).
killall Dock in Terminal.
Booting in safe mode.
Changing notification settings.
Scrolling far back through the threads.
Reinstalling OS (not a complete clean reinstall).

None of these things have worked and I'm now at a loss for what else to try. Has anyone seen this issue before?


texts: Is there a way to re-organize the way mailboxes from multiple accounts are organized in macOS Mail?

texts:
I am trying to group the folders by email account not by type, if I have three mail accounts:

Gmail,
Outlook,
iCloud.

I want them to be shown in the Mail app, as follow:

- Gmail
    - Inbox
    - Received
    - Junk
    etc…

But the way it’s shown as follow

Inbox
- Gmail
- Outlook
- iCloud

Is there any way I can do this with the Mail app in macOS?


texts: Does MacPorts keep a log for actions like install and upgrade?

texts:
After I ran sudo port upgrade outdated I’d like to know what was upgraded. The output was longer than my scrollback buffer.
I checked /opt/local/var/macports/logs/ but it seems to only contain logs for some of the compilations, not installation. For example, a copy of the output of sudo port upgrade outdated would be nice. Right now I simply tee the output to a file, but this kills the nice progress bar since port doesn’t see a TTY at the stdout.


texts: Stop Xcode from Hijacking my File Associations

texts:
I typically associate certain file types with certain editors and IDEs. You know R with RStudio, Java with JetBrains, and all the other goodies with Sublime Text.

But every time I install an Xcode update, Xcode takes over every code-related extension imaginable, and I have to associate my files manually.

Is there anyway to prevent Xcode from taking over my file associations?


texts: iPhoto "A photo Has been found in the iPhoto library that was not imported"

texts:
Every Time I launch iPhoto I get the following error message twice... 'A photo Has been found in the iPhoto library that was not imported, would you like to import it now'

So i Click yes and then it appears again, after clicking yes again it goes away and lets me into iPhoto its not the end of the world but gets pretty annoying as it never imports anything and is just pointless and time wasting. Its been appearing on every load of iPhoto for about 6 months now any ideas ?


texts:
My phone number is changed, so now I can't log in my Apple ID as it sends the two-factor authentication code to the previous phone number. Also, I'm not logged in in any other Apple product.
I requested the "forgot password" change, and after a few weeks, I received an SMS to the new phone number, that now I can start the change process. But the recovery still asks for the previous phone number.
What can I do?


texts:
I know, OS X 10.10 memory management knows what it does, it is good, you shouldn't question it. But this, I do not understand. I have 16 GB of RAM, 6 GB used, plus 2.5 GB app-cache, 1 GB file-cache and 1.5 GB reserved is a total of 11 GB used memory. But for some reason, I have 1 GB of compressed memory and about .5 GB of used swap. Whenever the system starts to use swap, it get's noticeably laggy. Because of this, I have to reboot about once a day.

What do I miss here? Why swap? Why compressed memory? Why lag?

Maybe there are some clevererer people than me around here. Any answer as to WHY is greatly appreciated.

Here is a screenshot of the memory tab of Activity Monitor:


texts:
Recently, whenever I attempt to compose a message in Apple Mail, my entire system slows to a screeching halt and I have to shut mail down before I can have access to any other application. What's strange is that opening messages in my inbox and reading them has no effect on my computer's performance. I managed to boot up Activity Monitor during the most recent episode and it told me that Mail was using over 40 GB of memory. I'm no computer expert, but I'm fairly certain this is not supposed to happen. I've attached a screenshot for reference.

Has anyone encountered a similar problem and been able to find a solution? Or does anyone have an idea what might be going on and have a recommendation on how to remedy the situation? If not, no worries, I can take my machine to the Apple Store, but hoping to avoid that journey if at all possible. Thanks in advance for your time and assistance!


texts: Export from Photo into Folders labeled by date shot

texts:
First, just to get this off my chest, I used to have such a beautiful, simple, efficient system of cataloging my photos by date shot, whether from my professional Canon cameras or my iPhone. I did it all out of Lightroom. Then came the time when I could no longer import iPhone into Lightroom and this messed it all up. Then came the time when I could not import even into Photo and this created a nightmare that, if everything works as designed from here forward will take me months, if not years, if ever, to straighten out and at a tremendous loss of time. But Apple has trapped me and I am trying.

My last iPhone upgrade allowed me to finally be able to import from my phone into Photo (I always keep my phone updated) . This still requires a couple of extra, previously unnecessary, steps to go from there to put into folders I can catalog by day right along with my Canon shoots in Lightroom. When I export, the photos show up in folders with the name of the area where they were shot and there can be several such folders from one single day.

This just adds to the nightmare. Is there any way I can set it to export out of photo directly into folders labeled by date with no interference from folders labeled by location?


texts: Recover Apple Music Playlist Deleted by Mistake

texts:
Does anybody know how to restore an Apple Music playlist that was deleted from my Mac? It's a personal collection I've been curating for a long time and my toddler deleted it. Is there a cached version somewhere in the back end I could trace it back to?
Thanks


texts: "File is Locked" message for a folder with thousands of subfolders/files

texts:
After transferring a massive code project to my Mac, I noticed I couldn't write anything to the files inside due to the "File is Locked" plus an access denied message.

Unlocking the root folder didn't help, chmod didn't make a difference, and granting read-write to everyone and applying to all subfiles didn't help either.

Is there a terminal command I can use to programmatically unlock all folders and files below a specific directory?


texts: Are BT MAC addresses of devices requesting BT connections to the Mac logged in High Sierra?

texts:
A neighbor of mine has a phone that keeps trying to connect to my Mac. Considering they're probably trying to connect, I'm a little annoyed.

Any way I can find the BT MAC logged anywhere by default in High Sierra so I can pop this into the IgnoredDevices array?

My console digging hasn't helped me so far.


texts:
I installed freetds and unixodbc via Homebrew, more or less following the directions found in this sql server and odbc on Mac link.

I diverged from those directions when it came to the location for the driver and setup, instead using

Driver = /usr/local/Cellar/unixodbc/2.3.2_1/lib/libodbc.dylib
Setup = /usr/local/Cellar/unixodbc/2.3.2_1/lib/libodbc.dylib

in the file /usr/local/Cellar/unixodbc/2.3.2_1/etc/odbcinst.ini since this is where I found my ODBC dynamic libraries.

(I also made those changes because Macs do not use *.so files, that's a *nix nomenclature, which I admit made me nervous in following those directions, but they did seem to match advice at other sites, such as this one for installing RODBC on Mac and these great instructions for *nix.)

I have tried to run it, made changes, done a trace via dtruss, specifically doing this command:

dtruss isql -v odbc-test <my_user_id> <associated_password> 2> junk_to_sift_through.txt

No matter how I adjust things - without actively breaking them further - I keep getting the following error:

[IM004][unixODBC][Driver Manager]Driver's SQLAllocHandle on SQL_HANDLE_HENV failed
[ISQL]ERROR: Could not SQLConnect

The junk_to_sift_through.txt generated file with errors is fairly large, but below is the tail end of it, which should have the error hidden somewhere in it.  But I cannot seem to figure it out.

open_nocancel("/usr/local/Cellar/unixodbc/2.3.2_1/etc/odbcinst.ini\0", 0x0, 0x1B6)       = 3 0
fstat64(0x3, 0x7FFF53378CB8, 0x1B6)      = 0 0
read_nocancel(0x3, "[ms-sql]\nDescription = TDS connection\nDriver = /usr/local/Cellar/unixodbc/2.3.2_1/lib/libodbc.2.dylib\nUsageCount = 1\nFileUsage = 1\nTrace = Yes\n\0", 0x1000)        = 143 0
read_nocancel(0x3, "\0", 0x1000)         = 0 0
close_nocancel(0x3)      = 0 0
open_nocancel("/Users/mike/.odbcinst.ini\0", 0x0, 0x1B6)         = 3 0
fstat64(0x3, 0x7FFF53378CB8, 0x1B6)      = 0 0
read_nocancel(0x3, "[ms-sql]\nDescription = TDS connection\nDriver = /usr/local/Cellar/unixodbc/2.3.2_1/lib/libodbc.2.dylib\nUsageCount = 1\nFileUsage = 1\nTrace = Yes\n\0", 0x1000)        = 143 0
read_nocancel(0x3, "\0", 0x1000)         = 0 0
close_nocancel(0x3)      = 0 0
fstat64(0x1, 0x7FFF5337CD08, 0x1000)         = 0 0
write_nocancel(0x2, "[ISQL]ERROR: Could not SQLConnect\n\0", 0x22)       = 34 0
write_nocancel(0x1, "[IM004][unixODBC][Driver Manager]Driver's SQLAllocHandle on SQL_HANDLE_HENV failed\n\0", 0x53)  = 83 0

Any ideas out there?

Thanks!


texts: Is there anyway to show stopwatch on iOS Lockscreen?

texts:
I was wondering is there anyway (app or tweak, jailbreak or normal) to show the currently running stopwatch on the lock screen of iOS device?
just like an album art and music controls running background.

I've needed this feature recently when was on exam duty as an invigilator because students never stop asking for how much time remaining. Sadly, I had to get my iPhone out of my pocket and enter the pin to answer that.

(It might have been a bit arrogant to show off the awesome 5S.)


texts: How can I customize the highlight colors in Preview?

texts:
Is it possible to change the default highlight colors used by macOS's Preview?
Only yellow here is usable, other colors are toooo deep/dark that I think they didn't highlight, but de-highlight what I think important...


texts: Before Catalina, do live photos count as both photo and video in the "Photos" app tally?

texts: I'm just wondering whether live photos were counted twice because they were photos but also videos. Thanks in advance.


texts: How can I disable the iPhone Restrictions code?

texts:
I have forgotten my Restrictions passcode.

Is there a way that I can change it without resetting the iPhone? I have tried updating it and have contacted Technical Support, but they suggested that I back up my files to iCloud and restore to factory settings.


texts: Bizarre toolbar behavior for Chrome on Big Sur ...?

texts:
I just finished reading multiple articles from google on "missing toolbar", however none fix my specific case.
I tried un-installing all my extensions and when this did not work I un-installed Chrome altogether and re-installed it.
Basically, I can't get the top toolbar to display.  Here is a screenshot of the toolbar which will not display:

The one trick I did find to get it to display it I can put the cursor to the top of the screen and hold it there.  Note:  this is what used to get it to display.  However; NOW, I have to command tab to another application and command tab back to Chrome and this will "trick" Chrome into displaying the toolbar.
Very annoying.
I believe this happened when I "upgraded" to Big Sur, but I'm not 100% sure.
As I mentioned this is a fresh install with no extensions.
Chrome
Version 90.0.4430.212 (Official Build) (x86_64)
Big Sur
11.1 (20C69)
All of my other apps behave as expected regarding the toolbar.
I found a fix:
There is a settings I had to click.  This is clearly a bug as it only effects Chrome and not my other apps.

If I select this option it will now show the toolbar without me having to rig it.
It has no effect on the other apps.
How can I report this to Chrome?


texts: Transferring Keynote to Youtube or Quicktime with delay in music and timing of slides

texts:
I am having a problem when I transfer my keynote project to Youtube or Quicktime. The slides don't change at the time I designed it in Keynote and my song only plays on the first slide when transferred eventhough in keynote I designed it to play for all of the songs.  In keynote it plays perfectly but when I transfer to these other programs, it just isn't working right.  Any insights? and or directions to fix this issue?

Thank you
Dawn


texts: Do iPhone apps have permission to make calls without user interaction?

texts:
I was reading about a missed call scam just now where the user gets charged even if they don't call the number back. It occurred to me that a malicious iPhone app could make calls to premium numbers to scam users out of money - indeed, it appears this has happened in the past.

According to Apple's own documentation:

  When a user taps a telephone link in a webpage, iOS displays an alert asking if the user really wants to dial the phone number and initiates dialing if the user accepts. When a user opens a URL with the tel scheme in a native app, iOS does not display an alert and initiates dialing without further prompting the user.

It seems to me that an apparently benign iPhone app could, say, wait until the phone was left on charge (and hence likely not being attended by the user) and then initiate a call to a premium rate number to net the developer a tidy bonus. There doesn't appear to be any permission in iOS I can change to prevent this behaviour, since this is opening the phone app with a URL rather than accessing any phone data.

Can anyone confirm if my understanding is correct and, if so, why on earth Apple haven't closed such a gaping hole?


texts: Solid coloured wallpaper for Home Screen on my iPhone

texts:
I had a wallpaper on my iPhone (running iOS 12), which I had to change (because details were incorrect). So far so good, but I made the mistake of changing both.

How can I get a plain background on the Home Screen without any distracting graphics?

I seem to be able to select a Black background, but nothing else from the default wallpaper set. I am sure there were more options on older iOS versions.


texts: Cannot not install application from App Store on macos mojave

texts:
I am a new Mac user and have purchased a Mac Pro 5,1 running Mojave to learn the basics of macOSX.
After some initial difficulty, I have logged on to the mac, created an appleid, added payment details, signed on to the (Macosx) app store and itunes under mojave.
In the apple App store I selected to install two free apps I use under MS-Windows: Microsoft OneNote and OneDrive. There were a whole array of problems trying to install this way. However, I have now got to the point where app store shows these two applications as "Purchased" but they are not installed on the mac. I have several times tried to redownload the apps but they do not install and no install materials appear in the Download folder. There are no diagnostic / error messages indicating a problem - just no installing occurs.
I cannot find on the mac the apps I have "purchased" (they are free but marked as "purchased" in App Store) in either the Applications folder or in the Launcher. The way I can describe the behaviour it is like I have had my order for the OSX applications accepted by App Store but they haven't been delivered to my mac pro.
I have rebooted the macPro about 4 times and retried the "installation" and nothing installs and there are no error messages from App Store.
Any ideas as how to fix?
Separately - and maybe relevant or not -  I can install apps from outside the app store but cannot install apps from inside the app store. For example, I went to the OBS website, downloaded the install package, ran it, and OBS is now installed and running on the mac - easy.
Thanks.


texts:
Somehow, contacts are being added automatically to my Mac address book.  They contain only an email address, which suggests that a mail program is creating these entries automatically.  The only email clients I use are Mac Mail on the desktop and the Mail app on iPhone.  I can't find any setting in either app that would cause this behavior.

New entries are even being created for email addresses that are already associated with an existing contact.  And if I delete them, they just come back again (though I can't tell when exactly that happens).

Mac Mail is set up for an iCloud account and an Exchange account.  But the entries that are being added do not exist in the Exchange directory.

From Mac Mail, I tested both sending and receiving to/from an address not in my address book, but I did not observe an entry being created automatically.

Any idea what else might be causing this behavior?!


texts: How can I disable inline attachment previews (i.e. view as icon by default) in Mac Mail in macOS Mojave?

texts:
I would like to disable inline attachment previews by default, and instead view all attachments as icons in Mac's Mail app in macOS Mojave.

In High Sierra, the following terminal command was sufficient:

defaults write com.apple.mail DisableInlineAttachmentViewing -bool yes

However this command does not work in Mojave.

How can I accomplish this in Mojave?


texts: How can I control my mac using only my keyboard? (e.g. macOS Catalina Voice Control with only the keyboard)

texts:
Preface:
I am a fan of accessibility overlays, especially when they can be used to reduce the usage of the mouse pointer to control you computer.

Now with the release of macOS Catalina, I think the new "grid overlay" and "numbers overlay" should be mapped to the keyboard as well.
Imagine typing in Mail, then switching application and tabbing to the browser, and only with the keyboard, navigating the application!

How can I invoke macOS Catalina "Voice Control" features using only the keyboard?

How can I control my mac with keyboard only?


texts: Partition MacBook Pro with Mac OS X Lion using Disk Utility

texts:
I've just bought a new MacBook Pro with Mac OS X Lion.

The problem started when I tried to divide the hard disk into more than 3 partitions, so I erased the existing partition and tried to divide the hard disk using Disk Utility. So, I opened the "Partition" tab and chose "3 partitions" and when I hit "Apply" it says that "Couldn't unmount partition".

Can anyone please tell me how to fix that or how can I partition my hard disk?


texts: Restore Mac from Time Machine while in Safe Mode. Password protected, not seen

texts: When I boot to safe mode and try to restore my Mac from Time Machine, OS X can't find my WD My Passport External Drive as it's password protected. Unless I unlock the drive, OS X won't be able to access my Time Machine Backup. So what do I do now?


texts: Can similar apps be uploaded on Apple Store?

texts:
I have uploaded 2 similar apps with different colors,name,icons.
ios team rejected my latest app upload giving the following reason:

Guideline 4.3 - Design
We noticed that your app provides the same feature set as other apps submitted to the App Store; it simply varies in content or language, which is considered a form of spam.

Is it possible to upload similar app with different developer accounts?


texts:
Hey is there a tool that blurs my screen output in real time? It'd be perfect if it only blurred my external display but everything's fine.

I am on El Capitan now


texts: Should I upgrade my iPad 2 to iOS 9.3 from iOS 5.1.1? ( Late March 2016)

texts: I recently recovered my lost iPad 2. I cannot afford a new tablet at the moment and I will use my iPad 2 as a daily driver (to browse the web, read books, college lectures, play games and other light applications). My biggest concern is that the iPad might become unusably slow with iOS 9. It runs smoothly with iOS 5 at the moment but most of the applications are not compatible and many features are not functioning (mail etc.).


texts: Is it possible to disable MacBook trackpad under Windows 7?

texts:
Is it possible to disable trackpad when running Windows 7 on Macbook Air/Pro? Anyone with this setup can confirm that it's possible?

(I don't use this setup yet, I'm just thinking about it, and want to make sure it supports my needs).


texts: Are kernel extensions also stored elsewhere?

texts:
I discovered a kernel extension earlier in this path "/Library/Application\ Support/VirtualBox/VBoxDrv.kext".
What confuses me a bit, are extensions not saved in /Library/Extension?


texts: A junk mail that don't want to be deleted

texts:
I got a strage behaviour on my Mail.app:

In my Junk mail folder I see an email of Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) coming from this email address: phuonghm@baria.baria-vungtau.gov.vn

It's obviously a spam email, and the I delete it each times that I found it. But some days ago I observe that the email arrival date it's always the same, and this means that each times I delete it, email come back from the trash and return to the junk folder.

The most freaky things is that this email is ONLY in my Mac. In my iPhone and on iCloud.com there's not trace of this email.

Could this be some spyware of something?
How I can (try) to finally delete it?

PS: When I delete it I also empty the trash.
PPS: On Mail this email is set as junk.

Infos:

MacBook Pro mid 2010
OSX 10.10.3
Mail.app 8.2 (2098)


texts:
There's a somewhere in one of the Apple apps where they condense the days of the week into "weekdays" or "weekends" etc. can't find it. Any idea? I'm trying to mimic this in one I my apps but I can't find the behavior to examine it.

Which Apple app condenses day names into weekday and weekend? Is it calendar? Reminders?


texts: Is there a way to decolorize Safari 12 pinned tab icons?

texts: Safari 12's pinned tabs now show garish, distracting, and unpredictable colored icons in place of the subdued grayscale icons of previous versions. Is there a way to decolorize these icons?


texts: Can a website create and/or update Apple Subscription Calendar?

texts:
I am making a website for scheduling work and off-days (for about 30 employees and managers) and I would like to make it so that the website imports their work times into their Apple Calendar.

Is there any way the website could create an Apple Subscription Calendar for each employee and then update it when the timetables change?


texts: How can I add a second Twitter account to iOS Contacts/iCloud?

texts:
iOS 5 recently added Twitter and Facebook fields for contacts, and this was also incorporated into iCloud. However, it seems that you can only add one Twitter (and Facebook) account per contact, which is rather inconvenient as I know several people who have 2 Twitter accounts.

Is there a way to add a second Twitter field to iOS Contacts or iCloud? I know I could add a twitter:@username URL, but I was wondering if it's possible to natively add a second account.


texts: On the MacBook Pro with Retina display, what is the specific screen they use, (any idea on model number), or is it their own manufacture?


texts: NTFS partition on external HD not recognized or mounted on El Capitan or Sierra, even with latest Paragon or Tuxera

texts:
I have a mid-2013 Air 11" with El Capitan just upgraded to Sierra.

I have an external Seagate USB 3 HD with GUID partitioning scheme, an HFS+ partition I boot off, and an NTFS data partition.

The HD was bought Mac-formatted and came with a free version of Paragon, which I have updated to the latest version. It's used as a data disk on my PC but as the only disk on my Mac which is missing the SSD.

I had been using it successfully on both my Windows and Mac laptop as best as I can recall but then didn't use the Mac for three months or so until the other day.

The Mac boots off the HFS partition but does not see a valid second partition.

I've tried shutting down and switching the drive back to the PC and both partitions work fine there.

I've tried both the free-for-Seagate and the trial versions of the Paragon NTFS driver 14. I've also tried without Paragon and the OS does not even let me use it read-only. I've now also tried the latest trial version of Tuxera.

First Aidis the only one which includes anything like an error code:

Unknown filesystem version: e.89

Could there be something in the partition table that needs to be changed with a low-level tool?

I have noticed that the Mac somehow seems to know the previous name of the second partition from when it was an HFS installation partition!

Here is how the various tools on my Mac and PC see the drive ...

Mac, Disk Utility:

Mac, diskutil list:

Mac, Tuxera:

Mac, First Aid:

Windows, Disk Management:

Mac, gpt:

$ sudo gpt -r show disk0
Password:
      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  487043280      2  GPT part - 48465300-0000-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC
  487452920    1269536      3  GPT part - 426F6F74-0000-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC
  488722456  121948144      4  GPT part - 48465300-0000-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC
  610670600       2040
  610672640  121944064      5  GPT part - EBD0A0A2-B9E5-4433-87C0-68B6B72699C7
  732616704       2048
  732618752  244154368      6  GPT part - EBD0A0A2-B9E5-4433-87C0-68B6B72699C7
  976773120         14
  976773134         32         Sec GPT table
  976773166          1         Sec GPT header

Mac, fdisk:

$ sudo fdisk /dev/disk0

Disk: /dev/disk0    geometry: 60801/255/63 [976773167 sectors]
Signature: 0xAA55
         Starting       Ending
 #: id  cyl  hd sec -  cyl  hd sec [     start -       size]
------------------------------------------------------------------------
 1: EE 1023 254  63 - 1023 254  63 [         1 -  976773166] <Unknown ID>
 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

Hex dumps of raw disk as requested in comments by klanomath:

$ sudo hexdump /dev/rdisk0s4 | grep "eb 52 90 4e 54 46 53 20"
0000000 eb 52 90 4e 54 46 53 20 20 20 20 00 02 08 00 00
^C
$ sudo hexdump -s 57g /dev/rdisk0s4 | grep "eb 52 90 4e 54 46 53 20"
e898fde00 eb 52 90 4e 54 46 53 20 20 20 20 00 02 08 00 00


texts: Is it good for performance to sleep a Mac rather than shut it down?

texts:
OSX Mountain Lion, Mid 2012 13" MacBook Pro.

I'd like to know what is the best practices about closing the Macbook Pro lid (sleeping) verses shutting it down?

I often simply close it during the night, leading to long uptimes (4 days right now).

Sometimes I feel it's not as snappy as it is when I rebooted it a few minutes ago.

Should I shut it down when I don't use it for 3+ hours for example? Will it help it lasting longer or am I being paranoid?