texts: MacBook Pro will not detect monitor until the cord is unplugged/replugged from the monitor itself

texts:
My MacBook Pro 2017 (running macOS Sierra 10.12.5) won't detect my monitor until I've unplugged and replugged the cord ONLY into the monitor itself. The cord is a USB-C to HDMI cord.

Things I've tried that haven't worked: Turning the monitor off/on, opening/closing the Mac with the cord in.

Anyone have any thoughts on how I could fix this issue? At the moment every time I plug my Mac into my monitor I have to pull my monitor to the front of my desk and unplug/replug the cord into the monitor.


texts: Does anyone know a decent app to monitor bandwidth usage, ideally from the terminal?

texts:
I'd like to monitor my bandwidth usage on my Macbook pro, and keep logs of it. Ideally, I'd like to view/monitor them via the Terminal. Can anyone recommend me some applications?

EDIT: To clarify, I want to keep a time-series graph of the bandwidth I/O


texts: sync calendar and contacts without iCloud in Mavericks

texts: How can I sync calender and contacts in Mavericks and iOS 7 without using iCloud (or any cloud for that matter)? Is the only option really to setup a CalDav and CardDav server in my local home WiFi network? If so, how do I do it? Will I be needing a dedicated machine for the server (I just have one iMac)? Will all my devices automatically be able to sync once they are connected to the local WiFi? Do you know of any good step by step tutorial?


texts: iTunes Match can no longer download anything on iPhone

texts:
I am able to stream songs but cannot download and store them. This goes for any song in my library whether purchased, matched, or uploaded and whether Wi-Fi or LTE.

This has become a large issue as I have recently begun taking the metro to work at a new job and cannot stream for most of the time underground. My data usage has increased to near the throttling limit during last month and that's been a contributing factor.

Even worse, the songs actually are downloading completely but then never adding to the local library and then giving me an individual popup message for each song saying it failed. So more data usage occurs for nothing.

I've tried disabling/reenabling match on both my phone and the MacBook, and countless other settings adjustments but nothing's worked so far.

Update: Discovered today that songs I have streamed do remain on the device after. When you shut off the cell&wifi networks the cloud-only songs are greeted out so this was easy enough to test.  Downloading (and not streaming) still does not actually retrieve the song in the music player, however.

32 GB iPhone 5 running iOS 6.1 jailbroken
I realise the word "jailbroken" very well may be the source of my troubles but I'd like to try some other options first before upgrading to see if this fixes the issue.  Especially because it had been working fine until recently while jailbroken, and I've seen reports of the same exact issue on phones running stock iOS 7 also.


texts: Where can I find the installed package path via brew

texts:
I installed some packages via brew. But I can not find where they are.

I can not get access by typing hping on terminal

% brew install hping
(git)-[master]
Warning: hping-3.20051105 already installed


texts: What is a good program for timing activities?

texts:
I am looking for a program to time projects and activities, both computer- and real life-based, allowing me to tell him to start and stop timing this or that activity, in a very light, background, non-invasive way, and possibly keping past data about time intervals spent on various activities.

I have been trying out such a program called TrackTime, but it is (at least on my 10.5 MacBook) quite slow to react, and cannot show easily data for more than five or so activities.

Any suggestion for such a program?

UPDATE: Thanks everybody for your answers, but I am not sure I have yet found what I am looking for. For instance, while I appreciate the usefulness of these features, I am not interested in iCal integration, nor in the ability to create invoices.
Basically, what I am looking for is just a sort of "multi-timer", in which each timer can be easily started/stopped, and which logs the timings in any readable form. It may well be, as someone suggested, that it can be done with just some script.


texts: How do I get a refund of an iTunes gift card with illegible numbers for redeeming the value?

texts: When scratching the back of an iTunes gift card to get the numbers to redeem it, the numbers scratched off and now I can't redeem the value of it.  How can I get a refund or a new gift card with the same value?


texts:
I am having issues with Adobe Creative Cloud.  This started about 3 months ago.  I get a timed out message whenever I attempt to connect to CC. I have uninstalled CC and every attempt I have made at a new install gives me the same answer:  That the server has timed out and I need to check my internet connection or my firewall. Error code 207.  I have a hardwired internet connection and have checked my firewall settings (from what I can tell, I have added exclusion for adobe.com and creativecloud.com).

Can anyone help me here??? I have my computer specs listed below.

iMac (27-inch, Late 2013)
Processor: 3.4 GHz Intel Core i5
Memory:  16 GB 1600 MHz DDR3
Startup Disk: Macintosh HD
Graphics:  NVIDIA GeForce GTX 775M 2048 MB
OS X Yosemite Version 10.10.5
(also, I have Bitedefender Antivirus for Mac.  I have turned OFF the Continuous Scan... just in case this was causing the problem.)


texts: How to debug iPhone slow/hung wifi network problem

texts:
PROBLEM

I have a very strange problem: my iPhone network seems to hang every few minutes. It happens in Safari, Mail, News, Twitter, Tweetbot, YouTube, and other apps. Here are some ways it happens:

when I Google search from the Safari omnibar (page load progress bar gets stuck at 15%, network activity spinner keeps spinning, followed often by a "Safari could not open the page because the server stopped responding"; oddly, Google autocomplete suggestions work perfectly while I'm typing the search query)
when I click a link in the search results (the page load progress bar gets stuck at about 30%)
when I try to refresh Mail with pull-down and release (the "Checking for new mail" message shows for a long time, even though my mail server is on the same LAN)
when I click on a story in News (blank page often followed by "you're not connected to the Internet")
when I click on a link in Twitter or Tweetbot

In all instances, I just have to wait a minute and everything is back to normal, until it happens again in 5-10 minutes, which is super annoying.

I have multiple wired and wireless devices connected to the network (and AirPort Extreme 802.11ac wifi access point) and this only happens on my iPhone. I don't think I'm losing wifi during these hangs, I suspect it's some kind of TCP/IP (DNS, IPv6, etc.) issue. I have an uncommon network setup:

Internet > cable modem > pfSense firewall > Windows Server (Mail and DNS server) > LAN switch > Airport Extreme

QUESTION

What is causing this?

What do I look for when debugging this using the Device Console, Xcode Instruments, or WireShark?


texts:
Spotlight is great to do some fast calculation and conversions.

But can he also do some geeky conversions like Integers <> Hexadecimals or Integers <> Binary ?


texts: Repeating Reminders on desktop won't stay in sync with iOS

texts:
When I create a reminder that is set to repeat, for example:

"take out the garbage" repeat every 2 weeks.

it pops up on my phone and on my desktop.

When I check it off on my phone, my computer never gets the message that it was checked off. If I check it off on my computer, my phone never gets the message that it was checked off.

I'm running OS X Mountain Lion 10.8.2 and iOS 6.0.1 on an iPhone 4S.

This has never worked for me and I've been through several versions of each OS.

Any suggestions?


texts: Does Amazon Prime video support Dolby Vision on Apple TV?

texts:
Amazon Prime video came to Apple TV today. Amazon Prime video supports Dolby Vision, but does it support it on Apple TV. I ask because Amazon Prime video doesn't support all Dolby Vision capable devices.

In my case I have an Apple TV 4K.


texts:
A friend of mine has an iPhone 3G and around September his phone seemed to lose all of his SMS messages, and now only messages received since then are visible. I have found some sources saying that this can happen when the message database becomes corrupt (or there is a message which is corrupt somewhere and it's breaking things). I understand that the database archive is an SQLite DB and that somebody with similar symptoms solved this by deleting the offending message from the database manually. I'm happy to do this but the iPhone is not jailbroken and I assume I won't have write privileges on the device.

I've tried backing up the iPhone via iTunes and extracting the messages using a tool but it only found the messages that the device can see, and there are no backups from before the issue occurred.

Is it likely that the messages still exist on the device and can be extracted? Is it possible to restore them so that the device can read them again?

Edit in response to mankoff's reply:

I've now performed a backup of the iPhone in iTunes and have analysed the SQLite database dump and the message with the earliest timestamp is as follows:

INSERT INTO "message" VALUES(2,NULL,1315907872,NULL,131,0,NULL,1,0,0,0,0,NULL,NULL,NULL,NULL,1);

For reference the table schema is:

CREATE TABLE message (ROWID INTEGER PRIMARY KEY AUTOINCREMENT, address TEXT, date INTEGER, text TEXT, flags INTEGER, replace INTEGER, svc_center TEXT, group_id INTEGER, association_id INTEGER, height INTEGER, UIFlags INTEGER, version INTEGER, subject TEXT, country TEXT, headers BLOB, recipients BLOB, read INTEGER);

This corresponds to Tue, 13 Sep 2011 09:57:52 GMT which is the earliest message that the phone can also see. I'm not sure how a NULL sender could occur and the database seems to contain no instances of this.

Given this information is there any way that the data could still be on the phone and extractable (short of forensics)?

Edit 2
I'd also like to ask: what could have caused this problem?


texts: Can I use two 4k displays with MacBook Pro MGXA2

texts: According to specs on Apple site it is not possible, but they not always accurate. Have anybody tried this?


texts: Deleted all photos/apps on iPhone 4s but settings shows 3.1 GB of photo storage used

texts: I am trying to get the iOS 8.3 update on my iPhone 4s and I have deleted all my apps and photos including the recently deleted. I then went to my settings and my non-existent 'photos' are taking up 3.1 GB of my storage. I don't understand.


texts:
Is there a way to have split screen, where one side remains anchored across all spaces/desktops?

What I'm trying to do is essentially have two desktops split on the same screen, much like if you were having two screens connected at the same time side by side.

Currently the only solution seems to be split screens but on different desktops (i.e. if swipe to another desktop, new split screen setups, not one persistent one), but I want to have random things like spotify, chats, etc. on one side whilst I flick between apps like browsers, word, programming software etc.

I have a widescreen so I have the space to do that, frankly otherwise this screen I just bought is too wide!

FYI I'm using the LG 34" 5k2k widescreen 34WK95U


texts:
So I have this VM in my VMware Fusion, I add 5GB of space to the HDD but then I got this message saying resize the partition:

But when I login to my VM and launch Disk Utility, I am not seeing the option to Resize the partition


texts: iOS apps "could not be purchased at this time"

texts:
Every time I open the App Store on my iPad, after about 30 seconds, a message appears saying that a number of apps "could not be purchased at this time." This problem seems to originate by attempting to download an app or an update, then canceling when it prompts me for my password. Even if I download it successfully at a later time, the notice persists.

How can I stop this notice from appearing?


texts: I just installed Lion, and now I'm hanging on startup. What went wrong?

texts:
I purchased Lion from the Mac App Store and installed it on my mid-2009-era MacBook Pro. The installation went smoothly and the computer restarted itself on schedule. I heard the startup noise, saw the Apple logo and the spinny thing... and then it turned to this:

I let it hang like that for fifteen minutes or so before I got bored/antsy. I then forced shutdown with the power button and started it back up - same song 'n' dance. It's been doing this for thirty minutes or so now. The machine is hot and whirring away about something, but no progress is being made. It all feels very foreboding.

Do Not Enter can't be a good thing, but as far as I can Google, there are a bunch of different things it could mean. What do you think, Apple.SE?

(FTR, I have some experience with software and troubleshooting, but very little with hardware maintenance/repair/fiddling about.)

Update:
As far as I can tell from Googling around and from friends' tips, this denotes an issue reading or communicating with the hard drive. I've made a Genius bar appointment for this afternoon and will report any useful information that comes out of that meeting.

Post-Genius-Visit Update:
I visited the geniuses today and, long story short, I am getting a new hard drive. They were unable to mount my drive, and Disk Utility was able neither to repair it nor to reformat it. The Genius I spoke to believed that the fact that this happened to my computer immediately after installing Lion is a coincidence, or that the drive was on its last legs and that Lion was the proverbial backbreaking straw, not that the problem was caused specifically by the installation. One of the other Geniuses around also mentioned, though, that he'd seen a few cases like mine today, including the Lion part. Does this sound odd to anyone else? If not, I'll post & accept an answer saying a new HD is the solution - assuming I can install Lion on the new one without it becoming all borked up...

To be continued, I suppose.


texts: How can I restrict access to certain Preference Panes?

texts:
Several of the preference panes on my Mac at work have are translucent and when I hover over them I get the following message:

  Your system administrator has not given you access to this preference pane.

How is this configured? I'd like to do the same for my machine at home that my niece and nephew use.

Clarification: On my Mac at work: National IT for my organization created the original image (I'm with local IT). I'm guessing when they created the image they used some admin configuration tool (similar to Group Policy on windows?).


texts:
Introductory explanation

An umlaut is a German vowel, represented in writing as a letter with two dots (diaeresis) over the basic vowel. Examples of umlauts are ä, ö, and ü.

These three letters can be represented in text either as one single character – for example, ü as Unicode U+00FC – or as two characters: the basic vowel (e.g. u, U+0075) and the combining diaeresis ( ¨, U+0308).

Both the single character umlaut and the two-character umlaut look the same in a PDF document, but their underlying code is different. This animation shows text copied from the same (!) PDF file opened in Firefox (top) and Preview (bottom) into a plain text editor (BBEdit) and then deleting individual letters:

When the umlaut is represented as one character, and you search for a German word with an umlaut, e.g. Tür "door", in a text, you will find that word if it is there. If on the other hand the umlaut is represented as two characters and you search for Tür, you will not find it:

Die Tür ist offen.  <= you will find "Tür" in this text
Die Tu¨r ist offen. <= you will not find "Tür" in this text

Question

In Apple's Preview and Safari, but also in the latest version of Adobe Acrobat Reader DC (18.011.20058), umlauts in PDF documents are represented as two characters (vowel plus diaeresis), while in the same PDF document, when I open it in Firefox, Chrome, or an older version of Adobe Acrobat X Pro (10.1.16), they are represented as a single character.

Why is that so, and how can I avoid two-character umlauts when I create PDF documents?


texts: How to perform a "Clean Install" these days?

texts:
Long ago, back in the OS 7 and earlier days, it was a snap to perform what was formally called a "Clean Install" of the OS.  It would utterly remove the OS and place a brand-spanking new one in its place.  Applications and data (other than system preferences and such) would be untouched, and you rarely even had to reinstall a single application.  Adjust a few system prefs and you were good as new in no time at all.

I believe this feature went away around OS 8, and since then I've never known of a good way to perform a clean install.  Migration Assistant is useless and ranting about it is unhelpful here.

I have a mid-2011 iMac, running "low" Sierra from an external SSD (Thunderbolt).  I've got vestiges of Mavericks and all kinds of applications I no longer use floating around, and I feel that it's time to clean up.  But every time I've done this in every flavor of OS X, it's ended up being an utter nightmare of lost application files (prefs, extensions, etc.), lost system settings, lost chat logs (Messages, Skype, etc.) and so much more.  It's as bad to clean my Mac these days as it always had been on Windows!

My approach to date has been to install a fresh OS on a newly created partition of my drive, and go through countless reboots back & forth between the two systems while I copy applications and their preferences and settings over.  Still it's inevitable that something will get lost or not be able to transfer over like mail rules, chat histories, or all manner of other stuff.  Eventually I can delete the original partition once I'm confident in the migration (though there are often problems doing that, too!)

So is there a "best practice" or reliable way to completely replace my current macOS Sierra installation with a fresh copy, without losing any application data including preferences, mail & chat histories, app settings, etc.?  I'm OK with having to reset basic system settings as I expect that, but losing anything related to my user-installed applications, is really quite unacceptable IMO.


texts:
When trying to install software from App Store on OS X 10.11, I get the error message "The product distribution file could not be verified. It may be damaged or was not signed." I have tested several different pieces of software, and get the same issue on all of them.

I have found a few suggested solutions, however they are from 2011, and refers to the /var/folders, which El Capitan does not have (I can't remember when it disappeared, but I think it was some time ago).

In the system logs, I see the following each time I get the error:

  09/10/15 19:28:04,476 storedownloadd[642]: *** Assertion failure in -[CheckPreflightOperation verifyDistributionAtURL:allowsDevSign:allowsUnsigned:osVersionToBeInstalled:error:distributionController:], /Library/Caches/com.apple.xbs/Sources/Commerce/Commerce-453/CommerceKit/CheckPreflightOperation.m:291

When I browse to /Library/Caches, I do not see com.apple.xbs.

As my first attempt to resolve this issue, I renamed /Caches to /Caches_old (paranoid, I guess, but the practice has stood me in good stead previously, so I think it's not the worst idea in the world), then closed and reopened App Store, and retried the installation.

I was now prompted to re-enter my iCloud password. I did so, and was presented with a new error message: “%Program% failed to download. Use the Purchased page to try again. In the Purchased page, the program had a line next to it, saying “An error has occurred”.

Once more consulting Console, I get this:

  09/10/15 20:22:16,130 sandboxd[114]: ([314]) storeaccountd(314) deny mach-lookup com.apple.backupd.sandbox.xpc
  09/10/15 20:22:17,347 storedownloadd[642]: SSDownloadAsset caching-server-locator-timeout 10

I tried renaming the old Caches-folder to Caches - no go.

I tried renaming the Caches-folder to Caches_Old, and then creating a new Caches-folder - no go.

I rebooted the computer - no go

I renamed the new Caches-folder to Caches_older, then renamed the Caches_old-folder to Caches, and rebooted - no go

Any ideas?

Update: I have also tried renaming the Caches-folder, and then rebooting. A new Caches folder is then generated, but the problem remains the same.

Update 2: I have tried starting the Mac in safe mode and trying it there. The error still persists, but now I get a new error:

  12/10/15 21:12:20,744 sandboxd[128]: ([500]) ReceiptInstaller(500) deny mach-lookup com.apple.DiskArbitration.diskarbitrationd
  12/10/15 21:12:24,747 storedownloadd[404]: AssetDownloadOperation no modified URL for http://osxapps.itunes.apple.com/apple-assets-us-std-000001/Purple/99/60/6a/mzm.zqwtwhxj.pkg


texts: What causes network data use besides automatic updates?

texts:
Yesterday I updated my old OS to Yosemite. I saw that automatic updates were using a lot of data so I turned them off them off in System Preferences. After restarting my computer, I checked Activity Monitor > Network, and Received Data shows 1.67GB

What uses data besides automatic updates? Is there a way to reduce the data usage?


texts: Late 2006 iMac without OS: How do I boot to reinstall?

texts:
I was given a late 2006 iMac with the hard drives erased and no OS loaded. The iMac boots to flashing folder. I purchased a Mac OS Tiger Install DVD but it is not bootable. I also have a Mac OS Leopard Drop-in DVD that will boot to the installation menu but will not install because 10.4 is not found on the HD.

I have a MacBook Pro with Yosemite loaded and purchased a Thunderbolt to Firewire adapter and Firewire 800 to 400 cable to connect to the iMac. I put the iMac in Target Disk Mode and partitioned the HD into two partitions and copied the Mac OS Tiger install DVD to partition 1. On the MBP in Finder I can see on the iMac the Tiger install DVD loaded onto the partition 1 but in Finder the Install Mac OS has a slash through it. When I double click the Install Mac OS icon I get a pop-up when on the MBP saying Power PC Applications are not supported so I cannot run the Install MAC OS.

Is there some other way to get Mac OS Tiger installed on the iMac since the MBP cannot run the Install Mac OS on the iMac?


texts: Does opensnoop really lists all files that are read?

texts:
I have two users on my system, 501 and 505. 501 can sudo, 505 can not. I was logged in in the GUI as 505 and wanted to see what files that were read when I launched a certain program so to run opensnoop I open a terminal su:d to 501 and then just executed sudo opensnoop 2>/dev/null.

Strangely (?) enough, launching, in the GUI, a program as 505 didn't generate any output from opensnoop at all (I just saw the occasional 501 related output, which is surprising in itself considering 501 have 35 GUI based applications open as well as several CLI programs running).

Does opensnoop only list processes belonging to the user that runs the command (but what about sudo???)? Or why does it not report any file i/o when launching Safari?


texts: Karabiner-Elements cannot open new Terminal window unless Terminal already in focus

texts:
I am on Catalina 10.15.7 and use Karabiner-Elements 13.3.
When I use the rule shown below for opening Terminal nothing happens unless Terminal is in focus (you can see Terminal on the menu bar).
Seems like something to do with security permissions. When I run the script itself from within iTerm (not Terminal) I got a pop up asking for allowing "access to control". Once accepted the shortcut worked when either Terminal or iTerm was in focus.
Obviously I want the shortcut to work regardless of what is in focus. How to achieve that?
{
  "title": "Open Terminal",
  "rules": [
    {
      "description": "Open Terminal",
      "manipulators": [
        {
          "type": "basic",
          "from": {
            "modifiers": {
              "mandatory": [
                "left_control",
                "left_alt"
              ]
            },
            "key_code": "t"
          },
          "to": [
            {
              "shell_command": "osascript -e 'tell app \"Terminal\"' -e 'do script \"tmux\"' -e 'end tell'"
            }
          ]
        }
      ]
    }
  ]
}


texts: Any way to display the duplicated songs in iTunes 11?

texts: I recently upgraded to iTunes 11 (v 11.0 (163)) and the show duplicate feature has been removed. What tools or alternatives exist to display duplicates in iTunes?


texts: How do I send data from an iPhone via Bluetooth to a MacBook?

texts: Since you can't send data via Bluetooth from an iPhone to a MacBook, I need to know if there exist any external bluetooth alternatives that you can use to transmit data to a MacBook?


texts: How does Mac OS X decide which volumes to mount? One of my disks doesn't mount at boot

texts:
I have four disks in my Mac Pro. The boot disk and two others mount when OS X starts but the fourth one does not. I can mount it in Disk Utility and it appears to be all right.

How can I tell Mac OS X to mount it?

diskutil list /dev/disk2s2
/dev/disk2
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      GUID_partition_scheme                        *1.0 TB     disk2
   1:                        EFI                         209.7 MB   disk2s1
   2:                  Apple_HFS Broken                  999.9 GB   disk2s2

Update: There seems to have been a misunderstanding about this question. I do not want to find out what's wrong' with my disk I named "Broken". It appears to work fine. I also reformatted it several times. I want to know how to tell OS X to mount a specific disk at boot. I named the disk "Broken" because it doesn't mount automatically, not because I have any problems with it as such and nor are there any error messages. Just forget I mentioned the disk and answer the question how to tell OS X which disks to mount at boot, if you know the answer. Thanks.


texts: AirPrint no longer works since new router

texts:
Trying to print from iPad, worked fine until we got upgraded from 60 MB/s to 100 MB/s; new router is dual 2.4 GHz & 5 GHz tried both, updated printers firmware.

Curiously we can still print from within 'brother' app; can print pdfs photos webpages etc... it's just AirPrint with iOS apps like mail, safari that doesn't work: "No air printer found".

Router ports are all on but greyed out. Printer is a Brother HL-5450DN, iOS is 9.3.5 and the router is Arris DG1670

printer/apple/internet support can't figure it out, any help would be greatly appreciated!


texts: How to rebuild Mac partition showing unexpected GPT table size

texts:
I'm attempting to rebuild a Mac partition for an external 3TB Hitachi hdd that recently failed to mount. Apart from an unexpected GPT table size which I'll show later, this drive issue seems similar to How to fix Mac hard drive partition showing as Fdisk_partition_scheme.

Here is some background and info. on the drive I've gathered:

Since the drive's enclosure appeared to have a loose connection, it was given a new enclosure. As a precaution and to have a working copy, dd was used to create an image of the entire 3TB drive. For any steps that require a device as input, I attach the image using hdiutil attach -nomount path/to/file.dmg.

The drive was originally formatted with a single partition using Mac OS X Snow Leopard. I found the HFS+ partition type GUID while scanning through the data in the hex editor, Hex Fiend:
53746F72-6167-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC (Apple Core Storage Container HFS+ FileVault volume container). This was followed by the 1st EFI part entry is at offset 4096:

The 1st EFI system partition is at offset 8192:

I attempted to extract the GPT/EFI and HFS partition information from the above image:

06 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 = 6 (start of EFI).

05 C8 00 00 00 00 00 00 = 51205 (end of EFI).

06 C8 00 00 00 00 00 00 = 51206 (start of HFS).

6F 94 A9 2B 00 00 00 00 = 732533871 (end of HFS).

The secondary EFI system partition at offset 3000592957440 appeared to contain the same start and end values, and the secondary EFI part entry was at offset 3000592973824.

The 1st HFSJ entry was found at offset 209740800:

The total # bytes given by diskutil info is 3000592982016:

If the HFS main volume size is 732533871 - 51205 = 732482666 blocks, then the logical block size should be 4096 (which gives total # blocks on disk = 732566646). Although a 512 byte block size was given by diskutil info (above image).

Unfortunately gdisk couldn't read the GPT data:

GPT fdisk (gdisk) version 1.0.4
Partition table scan:
MBR: protective
BSD: not present
APM: not present
GPT: not present

This is what I used as an attempt to start to rebuild the GPT partition table (following How to fix Mac hard drive partition showing as Fdisk_partition_scheme):

sudo dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/disk2 bs=512 count=40
sudo gpt create /dev/disk2

Then I ran sudo gpt -r show /dev/disk2, which gave an unexpected GPT table size:

  start   size  index  contents
  0      1         PMBR
  1      1         Pri GPT header
  2     18         Pri GPT table
 20      1
 21     18         Sec GPT table
 39      1         Sec GPT header

After the above GPT utility results, I wasn't sure which logical block size to use to rebuild the EFI and HFS partition tables.

Thanks for any help!

1/31/2020 Update

I finished using rsync to make another 3TB disk image copy (I've been keeping the original disk image that was created via dd as a backup).

I think I located the 3rd partition at offset 3000458738688 bytes (it was the 1st data string following the end of the HFS main volume). It appears to end either at offset 3000582143352 or 3000582143360 (any input on this is appreciated):

Unlike EFI/GPT and HFS, there didn't appear to be start or end addresses in any headers that I could extract for this 3rd boot partition. Note that I added larger partition images to show this. So I'll try using the above estimated byte offsets (converting to sectors/blocks) as input for the 3rd gpt add step.

Thanks again for any feedback!


texts:
There are quite a few links referring to whether a MacBook GPU is CUDA capable

Is my mac book pro suitable for CUDA?
Can I run CUDA on Intel?

Apart from the information stated in the above posts, is there even a MacBook capable of running CUDA?

Apple has been supporting Intel Graphics GPUs for quite some time. Is there a possible NVIDIA GPU for Macs to enable CUDA support?

Do the new MacBooks of 2015 (and the possible 2016) come with a CUDA capable GPU?


texts: How to disable Command + Control + Arrow Key shortcut in Mavericks

texts:
I use Sublime Text and this shortcut (Edit > Line > Swap Line Up/Swap Line Down) allows me to move lines of code up and down in the file while shifting everything around it. On my new computer this command moves the window currently in focus to the next space.

I checked the keyboard shortcuts in Preferences but could not find it. Where else can I find the shortcut and disable it so that I can use it in Sublime?


texts: Photos taking up storage on iPhone when I have no photos

texts:
Problem from iOS 10.1.1 to 10.2.1.

I have no photos at all on my iPhone yet in settings it says my photo library is taking up ~200MB of space. The number of space being taken up keeps changing constantly(in the settings app on my phone). In iTunes, the storage bar at the bottom does(when in the sync menu) not show photos.

What is taking up this storage, and how can I reduce it?

Troubleshooting:

I disabled iCloud photo library and iCloud photo stream, still showing the same thing.
Tried doing what @User9125 said, didn't work. I had set the date all the way back when I first got my phone, nothing showed up.
Rebooting
I had hundreds of photos in Whatsapp, I deleted them but I didn't get the storage back. It didn't even make a dent in the amount of storage being used by Photos so I don't think a third-party app could be taking up this storage.
I don't think a system app is taking this space either, because I cleared the pictures in mail and messages.
I tried using iCleaner(through sideloading) in Secure Mode and Fast Mode, but it did not clear up the photos.


texts: Can I put my Photos library on an external hard drive also used for Time Machine?

texts:
So, I am new to Macs, and I have a MacBook Air.
I've got lots of phots to import into the Photos program, so I decided to stick them all on an external hard drive.

I have also used that hard drive for Time Machine backups.

Then I saw this warning on the Apple Support page: https://support.apple.com/en-gb/guide/photos/system-photo-library-overview-pht211de786/mac

  WARNING: If a Photos library is located on an external drive, don’t
  use Time Machine to store a backup on that external drive. The
  permissions for your Photos library may conflict with those for the
  Time Machine backup.

My external hard drive simply has a folder for the backups (backups.backupd) and folder called Pictures that contains my photo library.

I don't quite understand the warning. Can the two really not be on the same disk (I don't understand why) or is it saying that I can't use Time Machine to backup the photo library on that disk, which makes some sense...

How are the permissions in the Pictures folder affected by anything that Time Machine is doing? Isn't Time Machine only interested in the backups.backupd folder?

Sorry if this is a dumb question, but I can't seem to find an clear answer.


texts: Successfully launching a shell script from Finder when the path has a space in it

texts:
Been trying to work this out this morning and beginning to wonder if this is even possible.
When launching a shell script through Finder, either by using the extension .command or opening .sh files in Terminal, the following command is executed:
Macbook-Pro:~ /Users/mulquin/Desktop/test/Path\ With\ Spaces/run.sh ; exit;
Could not open input file: /Users/mulquin/Desktop/test/Path

Trying it with quotes instead of escape characters yields the same result
Macbook-Pro:~ "/Users/mulquin/Desktop/test/Path With Spaces/run.sh" ; exit;
Could not open input file: /Users/mulquin/Desktop/test/Path

The users this is intended for are not tech savvy so asking them to open Terminal, browse to a directory and ./run.sh is unfortunately not an option.
I had a look at Platypus but the script location will be dynamic as the users will be running it from their desktops or other location they choose.
Has Apple really not noticed this issue or am I doing something wrong?


texts: How to run a script on login whilst being hidden

texts:
I have an applescript (scpt) script that I would like to run on login of a user.
I would like the script not be visible in the dock, menu bar, etc. (This would probably mean running it in the background or something.)

What would be the best way to do this?

Preferably, I would like it that it would not be easily noticeable that the script is being auto-run. Also, a way to somewhat easily remove the script from login would be helpful.

If needed, I'll attach a copy of the script. It's supposed to be a prank using the say command, any tips for improving the script would be nice ;)


texts:
I'm trying to run a backup from one HDD to another at 10pm everynight on a Mac Pro. I have tested the rsync and it backups just fine outside of the cron table. Here is what I have and it's not running

* 20 * * * rsync -av /Volumes/HDD1/* /Volumes/HDDbackup/

This is on a Mac Pro that doesn't get turned off nightly


texts: Which has better sound output -- an iPhone 6s or an iPad Mini Retina (1st generation)

texts: I am moving to a new job in a Windows environment. Currently I have my Mac running to a Schiit Modi via USB and then from the DAC into a receiver. At my new job, I will have to output sound from either an iPhone 6s or an iPad Mini Retina (1st generation). Between these two devices, does one have a better onboard DAC?


texts: How to remove folder in '/private/var/root/Android'?

texts:
Please help me remove folder '/private/var/root/Android' on my Mac.
I make sudo rm -rf /private/var/root/Library/Android/ but nothing happens.

Any ideas, I will be very grateful.


texts: Showing the taskbar in Parallels Coherence mode

texts:
I just installed Parallels 6 and upon launching it for the first time, it started up in coherence mode and I saw the taskbar overlayed the Mac OS X UI. After a few seconds, though, it disappeared. I tried enabling the relevant settings I found related to this, but I was never able to get the taskbar to appear again.

How can I show the taskbar in Parallel's Coherence mode?


texts: Backup/Time Machine solution for an office full of iMacs?

texts:
EDIT:
For anyone coming across this question, the best solution I've found is a cloud backup company called Backblaze — it's in the cloud, so no longer have to worry about hardware failures and we now just have a large network drive for shared resources (which actually is also then backed up via Backblaze)!.

Original question:

In our office we have ~8+ or so iMacs. Currently we're backing up to individual hard-drives via TimeMachine.

We're looking at creating a more stable backup solution, one that is kept away from the iMacs in the networking room, so all backups are centralised.

I was thinking of using something like a Drobo with plenty of HDD space, that all of the iMacs back up to.

However, ideally, I don't want people to be able to see the backups of other machines.

Is it possible to have a centralised backup HDD that is write only, in conjunction with Apple Time Machine?

Or any other solution that may be relevant, ideally from someone else who already has an office of Apple machines and backing them up in a clever way.


texts: In other questions, such as "How to properly update git on mac?" it is implied that Apple Git isn't as good as using separately installed versions of Git. What are the downsides to using Apple Git?


texts: Is there such thing as a 3rd generation 8GB iPod touch?

texts: They are advertised all over Kijiji and Craigslist - just wanted to make sure that the 3rd generation only came in 32 and 64GB.


texts: Will Excel formulas be OK if they are imported within a spreadsheet into iPad Numbers?


texts:
I'd like to load some automounter maps from NIS.  I don't need to set up authentication, I just want to enable NIS as a data source, and hook it up the automounter.

$ cd etc
$ grep + /etc/auto_master
+auto_master  # Use directory service
$ ypcat -k auto_master
No such map auto_master. Reason: Request arguments bad
$ ypwhich
can't clntudp_create: Can't communicate with ypbind

P.S.  I would like to create a new NIS tag, but I can't yet.

I found this:  still trying it:
https://superuser.com/questions/163807/setting-up-nis-nfs-on-mac-os-10-6

Not sure if I need to reboot after using DirectoryUtility.app


texts: Is Back to my Mac an encrypted and secure connection? Is there a good technical explanation how it works? Would you recommend to use it to connect to a home server via VNC?


texts: Wrong Root Name Appearing in Terminal | MacOS

texts:
I just noticed today that a weird name that appeared on my teminal "rrmando2x13g" as shown in the image below. Usually only my computer name (removed in cyan) used to appear.
Does this mean its a malware or someone else has logged in to my computer?

Is there a way to remove this?


texts: Is it possible to connect the new DELL 31.5-inch monitor (UP3216Q) at 3840x2160 to the new macbook pro (late 2016)?

texts:
I don't know exactly how to match the MacBook Pro 2016 specs to this display to see if it would connect at the native resolution (full pixels) of the dell display.

https://www.amazon.com/Dell-UltraSharp-UP3216Q-Screen-Monitor/dp/B016IBVKNU

Where can I learn how to qualify a display with MacBook Pro 2016?


texts: How to connect MacPro 2013 Thunderbolt 2 to USB C

texts:
I see several posts about USB-C and TB-3 to TB-2 but are they reversible? As I cannot find a TB-2 to USB-3 device I thought maybe I could connect my MacPro (Late 2013) to a USB-C hub which has USB-3 ports. My primary purpose is to access storage devices not displays.

How can one go from TB-2 to USB-C or USB-3?


texts: Being asked to log into a different account to update Xcode?

texts: I wanted to update Xcode 5 to Xcode 6, but the App Store said I had updates available for other accounts. I then uninstalled Xcode but now when I go to the App Store it still says Update rather than Free?


texts: Why does "Turn Passcode Off" on iOS take so long?

texts:
Actually, all of these operations take a lot longer than I expect:

Turn Passcode On
Turn Passcode Off
Change Passcode

I'm not complaining. I'm a developer (not Apple tech) who thinks it takes longer than it ought to basically hash a few bytes and write to an SSD. I assume that's because the work involved in managing an iOS password is either more complicated than I imagine, or it's some kind of anti-cracking countermeasure. The more I wonder about it, the more curious I am about the details. Is it some kind of cool cryptography thing??

Does anyone know anything about this? What actually happens when I disable passcode-to-unlock behavior on an iPhone?


texts: Are there solutions to block pornography on iOS and watchOS?

texts:
I need an effective solution for preventing my ability to see porn and immodest content on both my iPhone 11 Pro Max and iWatch 5 cellular.

Once that is accomplished:

I do want to otherwise  retain maximum functionality on these devices.
Also this solution needs to have Some measure of uninstall protection

What software or service can help with this content blocking?


texts: Setting global variables with macOS Catalina

texts:
I use the environment.plist method to setup global variables in macOS.
I have this template in ~/Library/LaunchAgents
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN" "http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd">
<plist version="1.0">
    <dict>
        <key>Label</key>
        <string>setenv.XDG</string>
        <key>Program</key>
        <string>/bin/zsh</string>
        <key>ProgramArguments</key>
        <array>
            <string>/bin/zsh</string>
            <string>-c</string>
            <string>
                launchctl setenv FOO BAR;
            </string>
        </array>
        <key>RunAtLoad</key>
        <true/>
    </dict>
</plist>

It works.
But: when I restart my computer, I need to open Terminal.app and close it at least once or the variables will not be available to GUI apps.
How shall I change that setup to skip opening Terminal.app after a reboot?


texts: Unable to authenticate iMessage on MBP, but working on iPhone/iPad

texts:
Yesterday, I tried to send a text through iMessage on my MBP 13" (2020) only find it not sent about 10 minutes later. I tried sending it again, the same outcome.
I sent the message directly through my iPhone SE (2020) without any problems. Fact: text service is working fine.
I decided to logout/login to iCloud on my MBP. This of course necessitated me to reconnect my iPhone and iPad to my iCloud account. Those reconnect without any problem.
The problem came with the MBP. iMessage asks me to log in with my Apple ID and I get the following error message:

Could not sign in to iMessage.
An error occurred during activation. Try again.

I have tried multiple times to connect/authenticate iMessage without success. I am wondering if a preference file has been corrupted and is unable to authenticate. How can I fix this error and reconnect iMessage to iCloud?
MBP 13" (2020): running 10.15.6


texts: How to prevent screen from waking up on activity in VNC session from remote Android device

texts:
I am connecting to my iMacs running OS X Mavericks remotely. For security purposes I have fast user switched to a dummy account before leaving work, so that my remote connection doesn't allow anyone near my machine when I connect to get unauthorized access.

This works fine, but when I test the process from another machne in my office, I notice that when I first connect, the screen comes on (powers up) and it prompts for the dummy user's password. After a few seconds it times out and goes back to sleep, and if that were it I could deal with it, but this is not the end of it. Whenever there is activity in the VNC session, the screen comes back on again! I am not constantly typing, so the reult is that the screen keeps going on and off over and over and over.

Aside from the concern of wear and tear (the whole display essentially being turned on and off over and over) there is also somewhat of a security concern as well. This constant cycling can attract unwanted attention. For instance, at night when the office is dark, one office suddenly becoming light and then going dark over and over can attract the attention of security.  During the day, if the display is in a common area, the screen going on and off can interrupt meetings as people try to figure out why the machine is behaving strangely or are just distracted by it.  It may be undesirable to have an indication that the machine is in use, and this continual waking is very indiscreet.

Is there some way to disable this? I have tried several VNC clients to no avail. I don't recall for sure, but I don't think OS X Mountain Lion had this problem.

This related question is similar, but the asker is apparently okay with solutions that involve dimming the screen.  This is not acceptable in this situation, because while the computer in question usually is idle, it is conceivable that another user on a different account might be trying to use the machine when I VNC in.  Therefore, any attempts to dim the screen would potentially be fighting against a different user on the machine.

Additionally, in my situation I need to VNC into my Mac from an Android device, so solutions specific to Mac OS X clients (which seem to cover most of the remaining answers) are not applicable here.  I have tried both clients which require the generic VNC password, and those that automatically log me in separately from the logged in user, but the screen wakes up in all situations I have tried.  Having to install a special VNC server on my Mac when there is already one that comes with OS X is also undesirable, as it is really more trouble than is saved by eliminating the problem.

Edit: ok, edited to explain how my question is different from and not answered by the question it is marked as a "duplicate" of. Now what?


texts: Can different CPU on logic boards from the same overall A1369 MacBook Air work?

texts:
I could get a Macbook Air (A1369, Core 2 Duo 2.13 GHz, 4GB Ram) with a broken Logicboard very cheap and i have the idea to replace it with a A1369 1.7 GHz i5, 4GB Ram Logicboard (could get it also cheap)

So, I'm wondering how I would tell if the working i5 logic board would fit in the other chassis and work with the parts there?


texts: Clear multiple entries form "Open With" context menu

texts: How do I clear multiple entries of the same application from the "Open With" context menu?


texts: Can I set the stereo Bluetooth profile as the default, or remove the mono profile?

texts:
Whenever I turn on my Nokia bluetooth headphones they automatically connect to my Macbook. The problem is they always connect to the Mono (and not the Stereo) profile. So I have to disconnect and reconnect with the stereo profile. Is there anyway to either delete the mono profile or set the stereo profile as the default?

Mac OS X 10.6 Nokia BH-905


texts: I've inadvertently put my iPhone 4 in "recovery mode" and now it insists I restore without even a chance to backup. Is there a way to exit recovery mode?


texts:
Here's the log from my problem report. I'd really appreciate if someone could take a look at it. I should also mention that my computer has been freezing and beeping three times. I removed google drive from my computer as I had seen it caused problems with previous versions of OS X, and I reinstalled the OS. Neither has fixed the issue.

I have a 13 inch 2011 Macbook Pro. OS X Mavericks 10.9.5.

 Anonymous UUID:       92DD52E1-7A31-2D1C-094A-3C09E0C092A4

 Wed Oct  1 11:54:48 2014 panic(cpu 3 caller 0xffffff800f0dc43e):
 Kernel trap at 0xffffff800f1e2e9d, type 14=page fault, registers: CR0:
 0x0000000080010033, CR2: 0x00000000000deadf, CR3: 0x000000000870502b,
 CR4: 0x00000000000606e0 RAX: 0x0000000000000000, RBX:
 0xffffff801c5aea50, RCX: 0x00000000000deadf, RDX: 0x0000000000000000
 RSP: 0xffnfff80a9ea3d70, RBP: 0xffffff80a9ea3d70, RSI:
 0x000000004463b6a5, RDI: 0xffffff801c5aea50 R8:  0x0000000000000001,
 R9:  0x0000000000000000, R10: 0x0000000000000000, R11:
 0x0000000000000246 R12: 0x0000000000000000, R13: 0xffffff801c5aeaa0,
 R14: 0x0000000000000000, R15: 0xffffff801bfc88d0 RFL:
 0x0000000000010246, RIP: 0xffffff800f1e2e9d, CS:  0x0000000000000008,
 SS:  0x0000000000000010 Fault CR2: 0x00000000000deadf, Error code:
 0x0000000000000002, Fault CPU: 0x3

 Backtrace (CPU 3), Frame : Return Address 0xffffff80a9ea3a00 :
 0xffffff800f022f79  0xffffff80a9ea3 Model: MacBookPro8,1, BootROM
 MBP81.0047.B27, 2 processors, Intel Core i5, 2.3 GHz, 4 GB, SMC
 1.68f99 Graphics: Intel HD Graphics 3000, Intel HD Graphics 3000, Built-In, 384 MB Memory Module: BANK 0/DIMM0, 2 GB, DDR3, 1333 MHz,
 0x80CE, 0x4D34373142353737334448302D4348392020 Memory Module: BANK
 1/DIMM0, 2 GB, DDR3, 1333 MHz, 0x80CE,
 0x4D34373142353737334448302D4348392020 AirPort:
 spairport_wireless_card_type_airport_extreme (0x14E4, 0xD6), Broadcom
 BCM43xx 1.0 (5.106.98.100.22) Bluetooth: Version 4.2.7f3 14616, 3
 services, 15 devices, 1 incoming serial ports Network Service: Wi-Fi,
 AirPort, en1 Serial ATA Device: WDC WD5000BPKT-75PK4T0, 500.11 GB
 Serial ATA Device: MATSHITADVD-R   UJ-898 USB Device: Hub USB Device:
 BRCM2070 Hub USB Device: Bluetooth USB Host Controller USB Device:
 Apple Internal Keyboard / Trackpad USB Device: FaceTime HD Camera
 (Built-in) USB Device: Hub USB Device: IR Receiver Thunderbolt Bus:
 MacBook Pro, Apple Inc., 22.1


texts: Bash history not initially remembered with iterm2

texts:
I've got an annoying problem with iterm2 not remembering my history when I close out a terminal window. I'm not sure if it might be my .bash_profile config or what.

Here is what is happening:

1) type in some commands
2) issue `history` command
3) commands are listed
4) close terminal window and open brand new terminal window
5) issue `history` command
6) commands from previous sessions are NOT listed
7) close terminal window and open brand new terminal window
6) issue `history` command
7) commands from very first session now appearing

Anyone know why the previous commands aren't showing up right away when a new window is opened and only after a second terminal window is opened?

UPDATE: Everything works as expected with the plain old terminal app.

Update 2: I have the shell integration feature installed

Update 3: It turns out the first update was incorrect. It is also flaky on Terminal. Sometimes it will work and other times it doesn't.


texts: Redial Last Incoming Call without Unlocking Phone

texts:
I left my iPhone X running iOS 11 at a casino. Someone at the casino called two of my contacts while they had my phone.

1:32 Brian calls my phone to see if we can hear it
6:36 My phone calls Brian
9:32 Nancy calls my phone to see if we can hear it
10:52 My phone calls Nancy

Between 9:32 and 10:52 I miraculously remembered my iCloud password, so we already knew where the phone was and we were on our way there.

But I haven't been able to figure out how they made those calls. I assume it has something to do with them being at the top of the Recent Calls list.

I'm pretty sure (but not 100%) that I had Siri disabled. If I did have it enabled, I would have also had it enabled on the lock screen. But even in that state, I can only get it to show me the last caller and it tells me I have to unlock to make the call.

Is it possible to redial the last incoming call without unlocking?


texts: Mac has enough memory, but still pages in, is that a problem?

texts:
I recently upgraded my memory, but I notice that while the OS does NOT page out at all (from what I see in Activity Monitor), the machine pages in regardless.

Why does that happen? Is that a problem?


texts: How do I download all PNGs on a page with iOS Workflow?

texts:
I want to save all of the PNGs from this goofy website so I can turn them into a PDF. I thought I'd use Workflow for iOS, which I've never used before.

I get the contents of this page and then get all the links

Get Contents of URL
|> Get URLs from Input
|> Quick Look

But, when I want to filter or match those URLs for PNGs, I get weird applewebdata:// URLs, like

applewebdata://{guid}/path/to/PNG

I am currently using iOS and trying to make Workflow (or something similar) work for this task. Thanks for the other suggestions, but they won't work for me!


texts: El Capitan won't save change in default mail reader

texts: In El Capitan, whenever I try to change my default mail program from mail.app to Spark, it reverts my preferences as soon as I close the preferences pane.


texts: How to mirror a Mac desktop to a larger Windows computer's screen?

texts:
I've a 15-inch MacBook Pro and a 21-inch All-in-one Windows Computer.
However, I haven't any HDMI or DisplayPort cable but Ethernet.

I would like to transfer the Mac's desktop to the larger computer display, if possible with the native resolution of the latter (1920x1080), with a keyboard and mouse plugged on the Mac to control it. It is possible, just with LAN or Ethernet? If yes, how?


texts:
I'm using Gopro Fusion Studio to render 5.2k content before editing with Adobe Premiere. I never had problems rendering 4k but 5.2k makes the app crash.

My Mac:
MacOS Version: 10.13.5
Model: MacBook Pro (13-inch, Mid 2012)
Processor: Intel Core i7 2.9Ghz
Memory: 8Gb 1600MHz DDR3
Graphics: Intel HD Graphics 4000 1536Mb
SSD disc

But I can render with this Mac:

MacOS Version: 10.12.6
Model: MacBook Pro (Retina 13-inch, Early 2015)
Processor: Intel Core i5 2.7Ghz
Memory: 16Gb 1867MHz DDR3
Graphics: Intel HD Graphics 6100 1536Mb
SSD disc

I took some screenshots of Activity Monitor when rendering with my Mac:

After reboot

Fusion Studio open ready to render

While rendering before a crash

After app crash

I admit that my computer may be in the minimum viable threshold regarding Gopro's minimum system requirements. And this got me wondering if upgrading to 16Gb 1600MHz DDR3 would make any difference or if the major problem is with my GPU.

Thanks for your time.


texts: How to create a playlist in Quicktime Player for many files in separate subfolders?

texts:
I have a folder of .mov files that are all part of a video tutorial session. The directory looks like:

Tuts/
  Tut1/
    Chapter1/
      1-1.mov
      1-2.mov
      1-3.mov
    Chapter2/
      2-1.mov
      2-2.mov
   Tut2/
     ...

While trying to watch this series I have to go back to Finder and open the next .mov file in order to get start the next video. I've been looking around Google and can't seem to find a way to make Quicktime Player just play the videos in order.

Is there any way to import this folder into Quicktime Player and just play them all in order without having to close Quicktime Player, go back to Finder, find the next video, open that video with Quicktime Player?


texts: How to ask siri about event length in calendar?

texts: How do I ask Siri about event length in calendar? She tells me that I have event and it starts at 10am but asking 'how long does it take' or 'how long is it' confuses Siri.


texts: Unsupported Macbook 4,1 (2008) on 10.10.5 (Supplementary) - No Audio After Update - What Next?

texts:
NOTE: If you are not interested in how I got to this point, skip to the last paragraph.

As it currently stands, I have Mac OS X Yosemite running on my black Macbook 4,1. With the following kexts (in addition to the defaults provided by MacPostFactor), I was able to get OS X 10.10.2 running fully, with little-to-no issues:

Intel GMA X3100 kexts (provided via an installer)
IOAudioFamily.kext
AppleHDA.kext
Apple_iSight.kext

I also installed the NoSleep extension, the Software Update Patcher (not before learning the hard way), the AirDrop Enabler, and the System Font extension (which changes the system font to the one used by the Apple Watch). In order to enable the kexts, I had to pull up KextDropper and enter this in the Terminal:

sudo nvram boot-args= kext-dev-mode=1

Everything (including Time Machine :) worked fine without modification after the update to 10.10.2 - except for the fact that I can't change the screen brightness (battery killer status confirmed).

However, I did mention: "not before learning the hard way"...
In order to get to this version number, I had to update from 10.10.0, and when I did that update, I did it without the Software Update patcher. So, I ended up going into the Recovery Image, and deleting 'PlatformSupport.plist' from the Terminal (fun times?). Then, I rebooted into the fully-functioning 10.10.5 (Revision 1) OS X desktop. This, of course, was the easy part. I have now encountered the difficult part.

What I am here to ask about is something that occurred after my update to 10.10.5, Revision 2. When I updated to 10.10.5 (Revision 2 - Recovery Update), everything continued to work, except for one thing - the Macbook is now back to having no audio support. I checked the boot arguments, and that revealed nothing. The kexts I installed are still in '/System/Library/Extensions'. I don't know what happened.

The main question(s):

1) How can I get audio capabilities back for this version of OS X?

2) Should I simply update to El Capitan (from App Store update) instead?

Possibly related (but not identical in nature):

"Apple Stack Xchange | Installing Yosemite on Unsupported Macbook 4,1"
"MacRumors | Post by AtVusr, on Installing Yosemite on Unsupported Macbooks"
"MacRumors | Post by a02, on Installing Yosemite on Unsupported Macbooks"

The last link was one of the first solutions I tested - Voodoo audio kext(s) weren't able to fix this :(


texts:
Since I passed to El Capitan, good'ol Create Booklet 1.2 (http://www.macupdate.com/app/mac/21068/create-booklet) won't work anymore (it used to be free, but is now paid for). All the available booklet creation programs cost something and I simply can't afford them.

So I went on a hunt to use Automator and/or AppleScript. I only found this site which does not seem to be maintained anymore, I also tried to contact the webmaster/owner, but none of the available e-mail addresses work (they came back with a delivery failure): http://automatorworld.com/archives/create-pdf-booklet/

Does anyone have an idea how to create such an applet for Mac?

What would be the (mathematical?) formula and/or the routine to start such a project with Automator/AppleScript?


texts: Recommendations for networking an encrypted OSX Extended format drive

texts:
I have a 2TB external USB drive.  I formatted it using OSX Extended encrypted.

I'd like to have it available on my local network preferably without having to have it permanently connect to one of my Macs.  My router (from EE) doesn't support it.  Infuriatingly, neither does my Apple Time Capsule.

  AirPort base stations don't support encrypted formats or disks formatted as APFS, ExFAT, or NTFS.

Other than connecting it to a Mac, how can I have it available on my network?  Is there a router or other network device that would allow me to access the drive?  I have a Synology NAS but I don't believe it will support the drive format either.

If it makes a difference, it's not a backup drive.  I use it to store personal documents that I'd prefer to have encrypted.


texts:
OK I have been upgrading and moving things around between computers for years and in that time I have managed to have a lot of duplicates in the iPhoto Picker:

I have consolidated the libraries down to three but the iPhoto Library Picker (hold OPTION when launching iPhoto) is filled with a bunch of old cruft that I would dearly love to remove. Problem is I can't find where this list is kept.

It does not seem to be in any of the iPhoto preferences in my home or system folder nor in Application Support either.

Any ideas where this data is stored?


texts:
I am new to the world of iPads and iPhones, so forgive my ignorance if something sounds silly.

I am trying to find a solution for transferring my SMS messages from a Nokia backup file which only contains SMS messages (file is .nbu format) to my new iPhone 4S, and have come across a couple of answers from the user mankoff such as here

I'm not really a programmer so I'm am a bit lost. I can find the relevant folder containg the iPhone backup, and I already know where the nokia backup is. I have a program called Notepad++, which I have used to run scripts before, but not really sure how to do this.

Is there an easier guide, or a slightly more step-by-step answer? I have two years worth of SMS and still refer to some of the messages and would hate to lose them.


texts: Xcode Instruments is throwing an error about non-existent iOS app extension

texts:
This is the error I'm getting when I try to run an Instruments network trace on my iPhone:

This extension is part of the the Wide Protect app, which I've deleted. I've already tried restarting the iPhone and deleting/reinstalling XCode. Looks like some crud is getting left behind, but is it on the iPhone or on my Mac?


texts: How to remove Local Disk entries in DCIM sub-folders in iPhone?

texts:
in iOS 8, multiple entries of "Local Disk" spawned every time I use Windows 7 File Explorer to transfer files to my computer.

How to remove those? and when will iPhone / iOS re-index those random sub-folders in DCIM folder?


texts: How do I really (dig) flush the DNS cache on OS X 10.9?

texts:
I'm on OS X 10.9, according to support.apple.com I can flush the cache with

sudo killall -HUP mDNSResponder

Unfortunately this does not really refresh my DNS cache at all, also not like this:

dscacheutil -flushcache; sudo killall -HUP mDNSResponder

E.g.

$ dig www.example.com|grep CNAME
www.example.com.    83955   IN  CNAME   example.com.

If cache were cleared it would be showing a number close to 86400, 3600, 300 or 60 are the TTL values offered by my domain name provider).

If I add @dns-host to dig it works as expected:

$ dig @ns0.transip.net www.example.com|grep CNAME
www.example.com.    60  IN  CNAME   GITHUBACCOUNT.github.io.

I also tried the other commands on that page. In the meantime I work around this by ssh'ing onto one of my servers and check things there. But I'd like a proper way to really refresh all DNS cache on my Mac.  How can I do that?


texts: Principle of resolution scaling via External monitor (GPU performance)

texts:
I will demonstrate my idea on a 4K monitor, there are 4 options:

Native 4K
1692p
1440p
1080p

From What I undersrand, the 4K and 1080p should be on par when it comes to the GPU demands as the 1080p is derived (directly scaled, i.e., zoomed) from 2160p. However, 1440p and 1692p, respectively, are more demanding as macOS has to scale down from 2 times higher resolutions, i.e., 2880p and 3384p.
If it works that way, then by the same logic, if I list the GPU demands with the 2K and 5K monitors, then the scale would be as follows (starting from the least GPU heavy case):

(2K) 1440p native, (2K) 720p
(4K) native, (4K) 1080p, (2K) 1080p
(2K) 1152p
(4K) 1440p, (5K) native, (5K) 1440p
(4K) 1692p
...
...

Does it work that way or am I getting it all wrong?
I have been wondering about this for a long time as Windows uses a different mechanism, which is clear to understand.


texts: How can I add a voiceover to my Keynote presentation?

texts: I have a MacBook Pro with OS X 10.9.4 and Keynote 6.2.2.  I have a presentation done in Keynote with slide and music.  Now I want add a voice over.  Can I do that and if so how?


texts: Keeping photos in sync between phone and laptop (without iCloud?)

texts:
I have an iPhone and a Macbook running macOS Catalina. I would like to keep my photos in sync between both devices, specifically:

I want to have on the laptop all the photos that I take with the phone.
I would like to be able to delete photos so they disappear from both devices.
I would prefer that my phone only has photos that I took with it (i.e. I don't want other photos from my laptop to appear on my phone).
At the moment I have plenty of available storage on both the phone and the laptop, so space is not going to be a problem in the foreseeable future.

Having the photos on iCloud seems to be what I need, however I ran out of space there so all recent photos taken with the phone are not uploaded to the cloud and I cannot see them on the laptop.
I could pay to have additional storage on iCloud, but I'm looking for alternatives.
I can use the Photos app to import all new photos from the phone to the laptop every once a while. This works and this is actually the kind of solution I'm looking for, but I don't know how to delete photos from both devices without having to delete them manually on both places.
I don't know if it's possible to have iCloud store only the most recent set of photos, and have the older ones offline. If it's possible, how to do that?
Thanks!


texts: Can't update Xcode even with 19gb free space

texts:
I have an available update for Xcode that is in the 7gb range, and when I try to update I get an alert saying there isn't enough disk space - I checked my space and I have 19gb available (of 120gb).

Is this correct, or some kind of error? It seems like I have more than enough space.

Update: I deleted some earlier device support files and I now have 24gb free space and I still don't have enough space for the update. I feel like something's amiss here, as the update is only 7gb - I'm not sure if I should keep deleting things to free up space - will it even make a difference?

Update 2: I restarted my computer with 24gb free space and when I clicked Update, the update seemed to go forth and download - however when the download completed, the button switched back to "Update". When I clicked on it again, I got the "not enough space" alert again - even though now I have 26.5gb free space. I restarted again and keep getting the same message. Truly don't know what's going on here! Here's a screenshot, as requested, of my storage window:

Update 3:

Screenshot after running df -h in terminal as per request:


texts: iCloud still full after deleting lots of messages

texts:
My iCloud was full, mostly due to messages.

So, I deleted the biggest message files, reducing the space down to 1.78GB.

However, it still says my iCloud is full - on my phone, laptop and on icloud.com, even though there should be 2.62 extra GB free.


texts: How to exclude docker files from time machine backups

texts:
I don't need back up of my docker files. How do i exclude them from time machine backups
I see people mentioning /Users/david/Library/Containers/com.docker.docker folder but that does not exists on my machine.

Docker engine version: 20.10.2 running on
Big Sur: 11.2

Update: Found the location
My virtual machine appears to be here. I added it to the list of folders to be excluded. However that folder is not shown in the Time Machine UI.

tmutil addexclusion  /Users/david/Library/Containers/com.docker.docker/


texts: My friend's WiFi switch is greyed out. How can I fix it?

texts: He can't turn on WiFi at all. Tried resetting network settings, but haven't restored. Not jailbroken.


texts:
I use a Tascam US-122mkII audio interface to record music with. I recently upgraded my Macbook to OS X 10.9.5 and tried to update the drivers for my Tascam but they don't seem to be installing correctly. The control panel for the interface displays a blank after the 'Driver Version' label. Consequently, I'm not currently able to use the device.

I have tried uninstalling and reinstalling the driver several times but it makes no difference. I have also tested this on another computer running Mavericks and it seems to work fine, so I don't think it's a conflict with the operating system. Somebody suggested that perhaps there is a conflict with traces of the previous driver still on the system. Is there anyone who can tell me how to check this or offer any other suggestions? Tascam were unable to help.

Yours hopefully,

M


texts: Disable indexing for Xcode projects selectively

texts:
Is it possible to selectively disable indexing for Xcode projects? The following question discusses how to disable it globally, but I would like to disable it for selected projects only.

https://stackoverflow.com/questions/13959709/stopping-xcode-from-indexing

The reason I am trying to do this is because one of the Xcode projects, Chromium is too big and takes ages to index.

The similar feature is available in Visual Studio, but I couldn't find any in Xcode. I tried searching the Web, but to no avail.


texts: WiFi accessory connectivity issue with iOS 12

texts:
I have a WiFi to Serial accessory that I'm using with an iOS app.

I was able to use it properly until iOS 12.

The app requires both Wifi (to collect data from the accessory) and Cellular (to send data to the cloud) to work. I can get either WiFi or Cellular to work separately but not at the same time except that I can access the accessory settings page over http with Safari (but not with the app over TCP). The app is using GCDAsyncSocket library for requests to the accessory.

I've been able to get things work randomly by disconnecting the WiFi network, reconnecting it and set set WiFi assist on/off but I think that there should be a way to get things working properly.

What exactly changed on iOS 12 to get things broken?

Thanks


texts: Change network location automatically based on network

texts:
Possible Duplicates:
  Can the built-in OS X “Location” feature auto select locations based on wireless networks?
  Can I automate location changing so I don't have to drive the choice manually?
  Start/stop internet sharing from a script?

Is it possible in Mac OS X to somehow make it change the network location from a custom location profile to automatic when leaving the home network without having to manually adjust the settings in system preferences?


texts: Location of Speakers on MacBook Pro Retina, 13-inch

texts: This sounds obvious, but I've looked all over the internet and haven't been able to find a simple answer telling me where the sound comes out of on a 13-inch Retina MacBook Pro (late 2012). All I can see on the laptop itself are a bunch of vents at the connection between the screen and the keyboard, some longer vents on the left and right sides of the laptop's bottom, and the gaps between the keys themselves. Anyone have a clue?


texts: Mouse Keys randomly enabled. How can I prevent this?

texts:
I'm running macOS 10.12 on a MacBook Pro (Retina, 13-inch, Early 2015).

Randomly, mouse keys was enabled when my hands were not touching the keyboard. I don't have a bluetooth keyboard (although I do have a bluetooth mouse which I was not using at the time). This is the second time it has happened.

This is either a software or hardware bug, but it seems oddly specific to be a hardware bug when I don't see other random keypresses.

How can I diagnose this? I can't find any mention of 'mouse' in system.log.
Is this a known bug? I can't seem to find any other mentions.
Can I prevent this from happening again?


texts: Are there any clean-up tools for Address Book data?

texts:
I use a great add-on tool called Thunderplunger to clean up my address book in the Mozilla Thunderbird email client, but I need something similar for the original Mac Address Book too.
Basically I have big email lists of subscribers from the last few years. By the time they got removed though and I get a lot of bounces when I try sending newsletters (which they opted-in to!), but it's too tedious to delete them one by one, especially when I want to send a newsletter after some time has passed and many mail addresses changed/got deleted.

I know there's no 100% method to filter out invalid addresses, but it helps at least a bit. If there was a method to import/export addresses and all their information (I have some special fields like categories and notes) from Address Book to Thunderbird and the other way round - that would solve the problem as well. But I can't believe there's no tool out there too clean up your Address Book ?!


texts: Query openldap server with macOS Contacts app

texts:
I have an openldap server using the docker image docker-openldap and would like to query it with Apple's Contact app on macOS.
Everything is pretty standard, but I can't get it working.
# docker-compose.yml
version: '3'

services:
  ldap:
    image: osixia/openldap
    volumes:
      - ./ldap:/var/lib/ldap
      - ./slapd.d:/etc/ldap/slapd.d
    environment:
      - LDAP_ORGANISATION=Example
      - LDAP_DOMAIN=example.com
      - LDAP_ADMIN_PASSWORD=1234
      - LDAP_READONLY_USER_USERNAME=readonly
      - LDAP_READONLY_USER_PASSWORD=1234
    ports:
      - 0.0.0.0:389:389

I can successfully query the server with ldapsearch:
ldapsearch -H ldap://example.com -b dc=example,dc=com -D "cn=admin,dc=example,dc=com" -w 1234

I also can successfully query and edit the ldap server using phpldapadmin.

But if I try to query the ldap server with Apple's Contacts app on macOS, I just get "no results".

Using tcpdump I can see that the Contacts app is contacting the ldap server. And also in the ldap server's log, I can see that the Contacts app is talking to the ldap server.
How do I need to configure the Contacts app and/or the openldap server in order to query the ldap server with the Contacts app?


texts: Not able to delete user from iTunes Connect Users and Roles

texts: I am trying to delete a user from iTunes Connect users and roles tab. This user was provided a developer role and has not accepted the invitation. The invitation is already expired. When ever I click on Edit and select the user and again click on delete it doesn't seems to do anything and the user remains in the list as it is below is the screen shot for same.


texts: How can I manually replace the addressBook files on my iPhone?

texts:
I upgraded from iOS 4 to iOS 5 and after it installed, I realized my contacts and apps were no longer there. I'm not too concerned about retrieving my apps, but I would really like to retrieve my contact list.

I looked at the files from my last sync and used the iPhone Backup Extractor tool to get all of the files from my sync. There I found my 'AddressBook.sqlitedb' and 'AddressBookImages.sqlitedb' files. I jail broke the iPhone and installed iFile so I can get at the files on the iPhone. When I try to edit the current 'AddressBook.sqlitedb' file with the contents of the old one, it doesn't seem to affect the contact list.

How can I retrieve my old Contact List?


texts: My Macbook Air isn't outputting the correct resolution

texts:
I bought a DELL P2416D with a 2560x1440 resolution but I didn't know that it wasn't compatible with OS X.

I use a mini Display Port to HDMI adapter.

Also the Mac detected the monitor as a TV and so used the YPbPr color format but I already fixed that issue by forcing the RGB color format and I would like to know if I can force a higher resolution or if you know a better solution to my problem.


texts: Why does updating Garageband 6.0.5 to 10 cost money?

texts: I have Garageband 6.0.5. Why does updating to Garageband 10 (next version, don't get fooled by numbers) cost money? I thought updates were free!


texts: My Today Extensions in El Capitan are all missing

texts:
I was using my Mac over the weekend when I decided to change the song on iTunes from the Today Extension in the sidebar. I swiped to bring the sidebar into view and

Hmm... not there (also no Weather, etc.) OK, I'll open up the Edit interface and

ok, nothing there either. I'll just open up "Extensions" in System Preferences and turn things on

Nothing there either (there should be a fourth entry on the left hand side for "Today Extensions")

I have a second machine at work that doesn't have these problems. Both on the same version of El Capitan.

In the interest of full disclosure I am running El Capitan 10.11.1 beta 3 because I didn't opt out of beta updates to the GM quickly enough (was on beta 1 when I first noticed) but like I said my work machine is on the same version/beta and doesn't have these issues. And I was on beta 1 for days before I noticed.

Any idea what I can do to get my extensions back?

(also, my Time Machine backup outgrew my hard drive so rolling back isn't an easy option)


texts: Part of display not working, changing display region for macbook pro

texts:
Recently, something went wrong with my Macbook Pro 13" 2019 model's display. About 1.5 inches (in length) of my display went completely black and there are some vertical lines on the edges of this black portion. It appears to be a hardware issue.

I was wondering if I can do something so that my entire screen appears in only the part to the right of this black portion, until I can find the time to give my laptop for repair. I know I can just rescale my window each time, but I don't want to keep doing that every time I open a new window.
Can I use software to remap the entire display area to a smaller section of a physical display?


texts:
I do brew search date unsuccessfully.
I have coreutils in my system.
I could not find GNU date anywhere.

How can you have GNU date in OS X?


texts: Impossible to Delete Catalina Installers

texts:
I've tried to delete the Catalina installer twice - and both instances have become stuck in Trash.
Trying to empty Trash via GUI results in 'operation can't be completed because item is in use` errors. Same thing when I reboot into safe mode and try to empty Trash again.
sudo rm -rf ~filename

gives 'operation not permitted' and then 'directory not empty` errors
ls -laO

show no flags set for the files. So no impediment there.
I've also tried the third-party deletion tool Trash It! on it's most aggressive setting to no success.

This is what the two files look like in Trash. I've never seen those icons before. I'd say it was something installer related but the Big Sur installer deleted without issue. I'm not sure what steps to take next.


texts: How to export groups from an iCloud Address Book account using Automator?

texts:
I’m using Mac OS X Lion with iCloud. My address book ‘lives’ on iCloud and I’ve gat a number of groups in the address book.

Under Snow Leopard I used Automator to export addresses from a group using the following actions:

Get Selected Address Book Groups (Get selected “groups”)
Get Contact Information (Export Format “Spreadsheet (tabs)” with all fields selected, and Add Labels checked)
New Text File (Save as: “addresses.txt”, where “Desktop”)

– this worked like a charm, but since I got to use Lion, I only get the header filled with the labels, no addresses.

Although I do have a workaround (i.e. selecting all cards of a group and using “people” instead of “groups” in the first action of the workflow), I run in other problems like the fact I can’'t export to the MAC Roman encoding but must use UTF-8. In that case the address lines are garbled with mysterious spurious characters.

Is there a way to retrieve the individual contacts from a selection of Address Book groups in Automator, or is this a bug in Lion?


texts: can't connect two hard-drives to my airport

texts:
I have two seagate usb 3.0 4tb drives full of music that I want to access wirelessly. I have my Bites USB 3.0 hub powered by DC 5V cord. I want to connect these to my airport extreme (5th gen), but there's a problem.

When I connect the whole thing to my airport, it says that the hard drives need to be repaired. When I connect them (via usb hub) to my Macbook Air, it can only see one hard drive at a time (the first connected), but all of them work (as if they're not broken, my Mac sees both when I plug them directly). So obviously - there's something wrong with the usb hub. But what exactly? How can I fix this?


texts: How to reimport Live Photos in Apple Photos?

texts:
I use "My Photo Stream" to sync new photos into the Photos app on macOS. I just learned live photos are synced as still images via the stream.

When I want to reimport those live photos they are hidden under thousands of already imported photos.
Is there a way or a tool to easily reimport those live photos to complete my library on macOS?


texts: When I buy a Mac, does it come with reinstallation media?

texts: Can I format my Mac? If I had one, would a full OS installation media be provided? Or at least an OEM version of it? If not, how much it costs to get one of these?


texts: How to set a reminder and alarm at the same time

texts:
How can I set a reminder to send me a notification at the same time the first ou a specific alarm goes of?

What I am trying to do is, I have to take a medicine everyday in the morning, but I wake up at a different time everyday. So I wanted to have a notification "Take the Med" when I wake up.

Any ideas on how to achieve this?


texts: How can I read PDFs in scrolling mode on an iPad 2?

texts: I bought a used iPad 2, mainly for reading. After a short while I found out that it won't run a more recent iOS than 9.3.5 and that there are basically no apps that run on this iOS version (rendering the iPad 2 almost unuseable--I really couldn't believe it). I have been able to open PDFs with the iBooks app that came with it, but I don't like the way you have to swipe from right to left on the screen to get to the next page. Is there either a way to switch to a "scrolling" behaviour in iBooks, where you can just swipe up and down on the screen to move seamlessly between pages, or a PDF viewer app that supports this and can still be installed on iOS 9.3.5?


texts: When i type more then like 200 words on Chrome or textEd or even on notepad, my mac becomes laggy as hell?

texts:
I use MBP 2019 and it is so weird that if I type a lot of text anywhere, the computer gets slowed down. I said a lot but it is even 100 words? I do not understand its cause, I code and on VSCode, I have tons of text which seems not to be affecting the system. However, as soon as I type (this many texts) on Chrome, my computer just slowed down like hell.
Is there any solution for this? I type it on windows and bring it to MBP but what the hack... :/


texts: Which adapter to get in order to use Dell U2515H with Thunderbolt port?

texts:
I have MacBook Pro (late 2013) and I'm considering getting Dell U2515H QHD monitor. The MBP has two Thunderbolt ports.

The monitor supports DisplayPort and DisplayPort 1.2.

Which adapter I need to get in order to use the Dell U2515H with my MBP?


texts:
I like to hike (with dogs).  Please how can I add GPS coordinates to an iPhone contact address field or otherwise like "the lodge near Au Sable Falls, NY" at 44.181430, -73.965213.  There is no road within 2 miles.
I can add it into the Notes field but minor pain to copy/paste each time I need the information.


texts: How can I get a text message sent from myself, to myself, to sound an alert?

texts:
I am scheduling texts to myself to make absolutely certain I don't miss certain meetings.  The Reminders app is way too subtle, but a text message with a custom text tone, would work great.
The trouble is, automating a text with a calendar alert works but always sends as me, to me.  Which means no sound is triggered.  I've even set my custom text tone and it doesn't matter, no sound will ever trigger.
Is there any way to have a text message sent in Messages from my mac, to my phone, trigger a sound on the phone?


texts: Visual Studio 2017 Mac: Command line arguments

texts:
1st time using/playing with VS 2017 for Mac. Where do I enter command line arguments that will be saved for use with each run?

I have found that I can enter arguments in RunWith->CustomConfiguration Arguments field, but they are not saved. I have to re enter them each time I run.

On the PC version, you can enter the CL args in the properties area and they are saved for use with each run (no need to reenter).


texts: Logic Pro X images replaced by words fix?

texts:
so i accidentally pressed some buttons at logic and long story short some images and widgets like the red circle rec button or the drum kit at the new project are now replaced just by words (eg REC and drummer)

I include some screenshots so that you can fully understand the problem. The top ones are taken from garageband. That was the way everything was presented at logic before shit happened.
The goal is to reverse this thing and go back to the current garageband way.
I tried to find the solution but failed and i guess its something very silly and easy to fix so...yeah.

thanks in advance!


texts: Where is the repeat button on a song for iOS 8.4 music app? Help!


texts: Copied all my local notes to Apple's iCloud notes.  It's been a few days and they haven't indexed yet.  I found if I edit a notes file then it gets indexed.  I don't want to edit all my notes apps as they maintain the date of last usage.  How can I force an index of all the Apple notes?


texts: Preferred Order of NVRAM/PRAM, SMC, and OS resets

texts:
Is there a preferred order in which I should reset the NVRAM/PRAM, SMC, and OS on my MBP?

If so, what is this order (and why)?

Edit: I intend to do all of them to completely reset my computer. No need to explain what each does, I know what they do.


texts: FileVault: How come a new user can log in without disk password?

texts:
I thought I had enabled full volume encryption on my OS X 10.9.5 MBP. Then I created a new user and when rebooting, this new user is able to log in without knowing the password for the disk.

The start up screen is presented with the new user to the left and the normal "Unlock disk" (or something like that) icon to the right – if I want to log in with my normal admin account, I first have to unlock the disk and then my user becomes visible.

What gives?


texts: Catalina import iTunes Library.xml from Music app

texts:
I formatted my Mac Catalina beta, because I expected the redesigned Music app to successfully import iTunes Library.itl file from Time Machine Backup.

However, when I import > select the file, nothing happens and even if I manually add ~/Library/Music/iTunes/iTunes\ Media/Music file into Music app, some of the music files are missing.

Is there any way to completely reset Music app's preferences, thereby re-initiating iTunes Library import sequence from OS update? Or, is there a way to properly import previous iTunes Library from Music app?


texts: TimeMachine shows a sea of nothingness when I select Mail

texts:
I select Mail
I open time machine
it shows this:

You see? Nothing, no message. There is nothing on the timeline. Timeline does not offer anything to click. You click and it goes nowhere.
I have used this functionality in the Mojave, but this does not work on Catalina.
Before suggesting me to fiddle on the Time Machine directories to restore all my mails, know that I do not want to restore one trillion emails to restore the one email that I have deleted and am trying to recover.
I just want this to work.
Thanks


texts: Could not activate iPhone because "activation server cannot be reached"

texts:
I just purchased an iPhone 5s and attached to my iCloud. After that it seems that App Store applications were not installing properly. I did a factory reset and the following screen is shown:

Could Not Activate iPhone
Your iPhone could not be activated because the activation server cannot be reached. Try connecting your iPhone to iTunes to activate it, or try again in a few minutes.
If this problem persists, contact Apple Support at apple.com/uk/support
Try Again


texts: How can I test a new version of iOS on my iPhone but revert if it doesn't work well?

texts:
I buy refurbished, unlocked smartphones and try to use them as long as possible with a discount MVNO for service.

Right now, I have an unlocked iPhone 4s running iOS 7.0.6 (11B651). I'd like to try upgrading to iOS 9 so that I can use some apps that require it. However, my research has turned up reports of iOS9 being quite slow on an iPhone 4s. While the benchmarks are useful, it's hard to know how frustrating it will be to have that kind of performance day-to-day without trying it.

So is it possible to try iOS 9 on my phone and revert back to iOS 7 if it is unbearable? If so, how does one do it?


texts: I probably should elaborate. I'm looking for the icons for the keyboards (the flags and the cutout-of-white icons used for Japanese/Chinese/that one used for custom inputs). I did some poking around and couldn't find them. If you find them please post an answer. I really need these for something.


texts: External monitor not working on full resolution with MacBook

texts:
I know this problem has been answered before, but I could not make any of the presented solutions work for me.
I just bought a Phillips 245B monitor with QHD (2560x1440) so I could run it in native resolution with my MacBook Pro (15-inch, Mid 2010) and its NVIDIA GeForce GT 330M GPU.
Unfortunately the maximum resolution that IOS lets me choose is 1080p.
I tried already:

Preferences -> Displays -> option-click on Scaled
Resetting the PRAM
A different Mini Display Port to HDMI adapter (from Gravis) and a Mini Display Port to display port adapter, which resulted in a "no video output" on the monitor.
Creating a new EDID file like here, which resulted in the monitor staying black.

I hope one of you guys can help me :-)
Cheers


texts:
I bought a new sealed iPhone 3GS from the vodafone store. ( Yes brand new one, it seems that they got some old phones stored of different brands and models. )
The problem is that this iPhone won't charge by any possible way:

What happens when I connect it to the charger:  The red charging icon appears then iPhone starts up till the activation screen appears, the top right battery icon appears as charging for the 1st time and after a few seconds it appears as fully charged.
As soon as I remove it from the wall charger it turns off.
Connecting  with my pc/mac won't make it  turn on. ( not enough power)
I'm stuck at the activation screen due to the previous two points.

I went to the vodafone customer care and they told me they can't repair or replace it by the same model but I can  return the phone and can get my money back.
However, I love this classic phone and I want to keep it.

So my question is do you think that battery is dead because of being stored for more than 4 years or can it be something wrong with the iPhone charging circuit?
In this first case I can take the risk and pay for the new battery but I won't open the phone in the second case and I will return it.


texts: Daisydisk reports more than 40GB "still hidden" space on macOS Catalina

texts:
On my Mac running macOS Catalina, I noticed there were much less and less free space during past several weeks in which I had done little file additions or software installations. Scanning with Daisydisk returns with results as above, with a "still hidden" part of space taking more than 40 GB.

I've tried tmutil listsnapshots / and tmutil listsnapshots /System/Volume/Data and found there were not a single local snapshot on my machine.

I've looked up about this question on AskDifferent before posting, and unfortunately none of the replies in theses two questions, Gigabytes of disk space shown as hidden space in DaisyDisk and MacBook HD “Other” all of a sudden almost full, solved my problem here.

Does anyone know what caused this "still hidden" space and how may I free it?


texts: Son changed password on iPad, need to recover Pages document

texts: My son changed the password on his iPad and promptly forgot the new one... He was working on a lengthy document in Pages on it and was hoping to recover the work since his last save to iDisk.  Will he lose this work if we reset the iPad in iTunes?  Any way to transfer the file from iPad to iTunes (it doesn't appear in the list of documents that we can transfer over)?


texts: What is the performance bottleneck when launching large applications on OS X?

texts:
I have an Early 2011 13" Macbook Pro (i5 2.3Ghz).
I've upgraded it to have 8GB 1333 ram and an OCZ Vertex II (120GB) SSD.

There are a couple of heavy lifting apps on my mac that take roughly around 10 seconds to launch (WebStorm being one of them).

I was hoping that having an SSD in the machine would increase performance (and it has) but I'm still too impatient for these waits.

I'm considering installing a second OCZ Vertex III (120GB) SSD into the superdrive slot and configuring it in a RAID0 in hopes of increasing disk performance even further.

My question is, what are the primary bottlenecks that are causing apps to launch slowly on my Mac? If it's something other than the disk, I might as well save my $$$.


texts: Fake ethernet interfaces (feth / if_fake)? Anyone ever seen this?

texts:
I've been digging into Darwin source to try to find some way to create virtual Ethernet interfaces on Mac/Darwin without adding a kernel extension like tuntaposx. In doing so I've found something interesting that seems to exist but have zero documentation.

Here's the source file:

https://opensource.apple.com/source/xnu/xnu-4570.41.2/bsd/net/if_fake.c.auto.html

Reading the file leads me to think this is similar to a veth pair on Linux: create two interfaces and packets going into one pop out the other.

The only problem is that I can find nothing on the Internet about this.

I have been able to confirm that it exists as of OSX Mojave and assume they exist on older versions too:

# ifconfig feth0 create
feth0: flags=8843<UP,BROADCAST,RUNNING,SIMPLEX,MULTICAST> mtu 1500
  ether 66:65:74:68:00:00
  peer: <none>
  media: autoselect
  status: inactive

After looking some more I seem to have found an undocumented option in ifconfig to link two of these:

# ifconfig feth0 peer feth1
# ifconfig feth0
feth0: flags=8843<UP,BROADCAST,RUNNING,SIMPLEX,MULTICAST> mtu 1500
  ether 66:65:74:68:00:00
  inet 9.9.9.9 netmask 0xffffff00 broadcast 9.9.9.255
  peer: feth1
  media: autoselect
  status: active

Now when I add an IP to feth0 and tcpdump feth1, I see a bunch of packets that are things like mDNS announcements that you would expect a Mac to spew into a new Ethernet link.

I'm posting this here because I'm curious about whether anyone else has any clue about this or has ever used it.

Edit: I can now confirm that if you peer them and bring them both up (ifconfig feth0 up, etc.) you can inject packets into either side and see them in the other. It looks like this indeed could work as a layer 2 Ethernet tap device or virtual machine veth pair device without requiring a kernel extension. Not only is this awesome for network virtualization but paired with Apple's virtualization extensions it would also allow a kext-free VM host with full networking capabilities.

Edit #2: We also just found this, which is also not very well documented albeit much better than feth. It may offer a more officially supported way of creating virtual Ethernet devices. We'll have to see how it works. The feth stuff is still interesting though!

https://developer.apple.com/documentation/vmnet


texts: iPhone display of incoming calls and texts

texts: My iPhone displays phone numbers on incoming calls. How do I get it to display the name of the caller


texts: Can I use the sound output on both my late 2009 iMac and my Cinema Display?

texts:
I purchased a 27" Cinema Display to go with my late 2009 iMac.

What I would like to do is use the speakers on both displays.  This doesn't seem possible using System Prefs -> Sound.  I can only set it to use one set of speakers or the other.

Ideally I'd have the cinema display output the left channel while the iMac outputs the right.

Is there a way to use them both?


texts: View location of a document open in Preview

texts:
I've got a PDF open in Preview (5.5.2) and I want to know where it is located in my filesystem. How can I find that out in Preview? In MS Word, there's a command called Document Properties which gives detailed information about the active document; I'm looking for an equivalent.

Aside: I've been able to do this in a roundabout fashion from the command-line by piping lsof through grep using an expression that contained a word in the document title.


texts: JetDrive 725 - SHould I use TRIM enabler?

texts:
I just installed a JetDrive 725  and it is really nice!

As I am using Yosemite, TRIM can not be enabled that easily, and the TRIM Enabler is needed. Now there is a certain risk when using it, as kext-signing needs to be disabled.

Now my question: is it worth enabling TRIM? Is it be really that beneficial? Any experiences with it?


texts: Do App Names with Special Characters Effect their Visibility in the App Store?

texts: I plan to release an app with an accent at the end. This would be my first iPhone app in the app store so I'm sort of new to this. Do special characters in its title the hinder the chances of my app being discovered in the app store? Say for instance if I had an app by the name of música. If the user searches for musica (without the accent mark) will it return my app in the search results?