How do I create terminal session independent env vars on OS 10.10?

I read Mortimer's answer here http://ift.tt/1wqHXV3 and added this file in /Users/MyName/Library/LaunchAgents called environment.plist:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN"     
"http://ift.tt/vvUEPL">
<plist version="1.0">
<dict>
  <key>Label</key>
  <string>my.startup</string>
  <key>ProgramArguments</key>
  <array>
    <string>sh</string>
    <string>-c</string>
    <string>
    launchctl setenv GRADLE_HOME /Applications/gradle-2.0 
    launchctl setenv JAVA_HOME    
/Library/Java/JavaVirtualMachines/jdk1.7.0_71.jdk/Contents/Home
    </string>

  </array>
  <key>RunAtLoad</key>
  <true/>
</dict>
</plist>

Restarted my laptop, opened a terminal, and ran echo $GRADLE_HOME but it is still blank. How do I set an env var that is persistent throughout terminal sessions in Mac OS 10.10?

Can I play Blu-ray discs directly on a MacBook using an external drive?

Is is possible to use an external drive to play Blu-ray discs on a MacBook? It has a Core2Duo processor and 9400m graphics. does it need any software, either paid or free?

Gathering statistics in Mac Dictation

Is there any way to log the use of / gather statistics in Mac Dictation, such as the following:

• Use of commands (e.g. log command name, timestamp)


• Use of words (e.g. log wordl, timestamp)

?

Terminal not beeping on bell character

I'm running a nearly vanilla installation of OS X Yosemite 10.10.1 with the usual Homebrew, MacPorts, and Fink. I have barely anything installed with these utilities. For some reason, my Terminal.app is not producing an audible bell. I have since enabled the visual bell, and at first it didn't produce a result either until I disabled the "Only when sound is muted" option. I do not have my system's default audio device muted; it is in fact at 100% volume and fully functional. It seems like Terminal.app is under the impression that my system audio is muted for some reason. How can I get my Terminal.app to beep like it did in past versions of OS X?

Retrieve Passcode from iphone backup files

This is the scenario in front of me.

An iPhone 4s is available with enter passcode. I have its backup taken from iTunes. I have extracted all the files (*.plist, *.db, *.sqlite, etc.) from those backup files.

Now my job is find the passcode from the backup. I no longer have access to the iPhone.

I have viewed almost all the files and still unknown with the file that contains the passcode. It would be great help if anyone would point me into the right direction.

If any other security app such as Applock is present, where does its passcode resides.

Deleting notes in ipod

All my notes are synced to my gmail account and can be accessed. Now if I delete all my notes on my ipod, would it also delete all my notes in my gmail because it syncs. I do not want the notes in gmail to be deleted.Thanks for the help.

Can I use a 3.5mm mic in an ipod touch?

I have a microphone with a 3.5 mm jack. Can I use this for recording in garage band in my ipod touch. Thanks for the help.

Adobe Flash player won't install on my mac

I'm trying to update Adobe Flash player on my mac OsX 10.6 with Safari. Everything was working out in the update process until I clicked 'Install Adobe Flash player' and it requested my mac's username and password for permission. I entered the correct information, clicked 'ok', and nothing happened. Usually, the installer is supposed to come up but instead nothing happens.

iTunes sync stalls on "Backup" step after I've taken new photos on my iPod Touch

I have an iPod Touch 5, which has a camera. If I take a photo with the camera, then sync with iTunes on Windows 7, then the sync process will stall on the Backup step, once that step is almost complete. It doesn't move after that.

I checked the Task Manager and it shows that iTunes is using 25% CPU so it seems to be doing something, but nothing ever happens.

In order to temporarily fix the problem, I open Command Prompt as admin and run netsh winsock reset, which will indeed fix the problem. But only until the next time I take new photos, and sync.

Is there a more permanent fix I could try for this problem?

Bootcamp on startup is on lowest brightness and cannot change. (MBP)

It all started this morning, since I listen to podcasts on youtube before bed and barely use my mac side but still update it I use my bootcamp partition for most of my stuff.

so I went to bed with the screen dimmed all the way down and then went to sleep then when I woke up my computer was shutdown but still perfectly fine I then started up windows and then after the starting windows windows logo screen the screen goes black since it is dimmed all the way down and now I cant brighten it back up.

Please help I need this bootcamp partition.

iOS, Cruise Ships and data usage

I was on a cruise ship in the Caribbean a month ago and needed to keep in touch via email.

Connect@sea offered a 300mb plan which I thought would work. I followed all of their guidelines about what to disable etc.

All was going well until...

I woke up on day 3 and IOS 8.1.1 had downloaded (182mb) and was ready to install. After the 182 mb download, my wifi package was also empty.

I can't find any way that I could have prevented that large automatic download. Is there a way? (It's true that it doesn't install until you approve it, but it downloads automatically.)

What are the best practices when you take your iPhone with you on a cruise? (it wasn't easy at all actually, there are a lot of controls to use when you don't want to use cellular data, but everything is designed to assume that WIFI is a giant unmetered pipe---not a restricted connection that you don't want to suck data from.)

OS X Yosemite - how do I clear individual types of browser data in Safari?

Prior to upgrading my MacBook Pro to OS X Yosemite, I was able to clear individual types of browser data (such as cookies, visited URLs and website data) in Safari. However, the "Clear History and Website Data..." option in the new version of Safari only lets me choose how far back I want to clean the data; it doesn't let me choose what types of data to clear. How do I enable the option for choosing the data types?

I'm sure the solution is very simple, but I can't seem to figure it out for the life of me.

Why does fan increase slowly its speed at boot and system is so slow?

I am given a MacBookAir5,2 [A1466 (EMC 2559)] that is very slow. To give you an idea, a sequence of:

1. Power on


2. Log in and loading the desktop


3. Power off from the menu

takes around 10 minutes.

The MacBookAir runs quite cool. With $ top I see around ~10% of CPU usage after logging in and ~25% of RAM and sysctl hw.cpufrequency returns 1,800,000,000 without the commas, which I suppose is good. Also, I noticed that fan speed is always at (almost?) full speed. So, after searching around I did a PVRAM/NVRAM reset and an SMC reset.

PVRAM/NVRAM reset seems to be successful since I get the "double restart".

But I question the SMC reset. The steps of the procedure are:

1. Shut down the computer.


2. Plug in the MagSafe power adapter to a power source, connecting it to the Mac if its not already connected. (I shut it down having MagSafe plugged in)


3. On the built-in keyboard, press the (left side) Shift-Control-Option keys and the power button at the same time.


4. Release all the keys and the power button at the same time. (I did this, holding them down for <1, ~5 and ~10 second(s).)


5. Press the power button to turn on the computer. (Now, this does NOT work. I have to unplug MagSafe in order for power button to turn on the MacBookAir.)


6. Note: The LED on the MagSafe power adapter may change states or temporarily turn off when you reset the SMC. (It does not change states to me.)

The strange thing is that when I turn it on, the gray screen appears with the "loading" icon. Then, after let's say 10 seconds I can listen to the fan increasing its rotation slowly from its minimum speed to -I guess- the maximum. This increase is quite slow and takes around 10 seconds.

Should the next step be delivering it to a proper technician or there is something else I can do?

iCloud password reset

How do I change the Apple iCloud password that is synched to a computer no longer available to me?

I am trying to backup my contacts to my new computer. I have loaded the latest iTunes application on my notebook. updates my iPhone 4S iOS8. The mobile icon doesn't appear in iTunes. The folder shows up in the drive tree.

So I am trying to backup everything to an iCloud account however I can't access it.

Can one use Apple's Bootcamp drivers on a Parallels VM?

So this just occurred to me: What if I installed Windows as a Parallels VM and used bootcamps drivers instead of the parallels drivers, would this work?

Something tells me it won't, and that this is a really stupid question, in part because the VM is not actually your machine, but then again, it's a VM working ON the actual machine... no?

How to add songs to my IPOD without iTunes and without "seeing" the IPOD as a device

I'm running Windows in a virtual machine. I have my IPOD mounted in my host os and have the directory shared to my virtual machine. Therefore my Windows instance sees the IPOD as a directory, not a device.

I can open the IPOD in Windows and browse the iTunes formatted library. However, for a ton of other reasons I won't get in to, I need to add songs to this directory (I think its called iPod_Control) manually without using iTunes. Is this possible? I don't think I can just drop a song file in one of the directories (named F00, F01, etc) and be good to go.

Is there a way around this?

Force sync to Videos app for recent purchases?

I've been purchasing movies on iTunes for quite a while, and I've had the same issue on my iPad Air 1 for months. When I buy a new video on the Store, it doesn't appear in Videos for at least a day. This is, needless to say, rather annoying.

Things I've tried so far:

• Restarting the app (double tap home, and swipe the app up)
  
  
  
  • Both the store and the videos app.
  
  
  
  


• Restarting the iPad.


• Swiping down to try to "refresh" the list.


• Signing out of the iTunes store and signing back in.
  
  
  
  
  • This one actually works... For a minute...
  
  
  • Must do this every time I buy a new movie, or wait a day or two.
  
  
  
  

Any suggestions for clearing the Videos App's cache? Forcing a sync, etc?

Can't send attachments in email using my MacBook Pro

This morning when I tried to send attachments (Word docs) from my Gmail and Yahoo accounts, the attachments failed.

I tried updating Safari, and that didn't help. Tried using Chrome instead of Safari and that didn't help either.

Can anyone help me restore my ability to include attachments in emails?

"Open With" ...running application option?

This may have been asked before but I couldn't find any reference to it.

So Control-Click on a file brings up the context menu with "Open", "Open With.." and a number of other options. I often want to open a text based file in something other than the default application – for example, opening an mxml (Flex) file in BBEdit. The default application for that is Flash Builder and I don't want to change the default.

Is there some kind of extension or service I can add to have an "Open with Running Application...(list of open applications)"?

Or if not that, a way a user (me!) can register an app to open certain file types, so for example, BBEdit is listed as an option for mxml but is not the default?

How can I use an old mac as an external display using software?

I want to use a "space" or "application" with another computer on the network. Just the UI not keyboard and mouse.

The other goal is to add a pseudo screen, without getting an extra monitor. Can't use os x native screen sharing as that will always have the same content as current action space.

Any ideas..?

old mac = imac 2009, so cannot use as a targetted display. can use hardware to make it happen.

Similar to Can I use my early 2009 iMac as an external screen?

also similar to http://ift.tt/1qieMlf

Is Time Machine sufficient in the case of a reformat?

I installed OS X Server 4.0 on top of Yosemite and my VPN got hosed. I've tried many things to fix the issue including attempted uninstall of OS X Server. Now I am going to re-install the OS. In preparation for said install, I setup time machine for the first time.

Will time machine be able to restore files after a OS re-install or do I need to consider manually backing up files? Second, will time machine restore the potentially broken part of my OS as well (considering I ran time machine after the fact)?

Google Calendar will not WorK or sync with Calendar.app after Yosemite or IOS 8.1.2

Just in last 3 weeks:-

Have new computer 3 weeks ago, Yosemite. Had trouble with ical. Would open and load. After perhaps an update, realised the CPU was working hard, fan working hard, activity monitor put iCal 100% CPU usage. Have tried (with Apple support) correcting the library, ical plist; reinstalling software; apple then replaced the new computer. Enabled, disabled, deleted, installed gmail 'internet accounts' on all devices. Cannot deactivate on the phone as it crashes, can't even turn calendar off on the phone setting.

I got replacement computer. Clearly, Not a hardware problem as happening with new computer.

New Computer, 3 days ago and have now spent Spent 4.5 hours last night with iMac and then iPhone apple support again (1.5 week before). Apple remotely connected to the new computer, took stats and usage info activity monitor while running ical with google calendars.

We determined iCal is working with iCloud.Can create appointments both ways and shows on different devices of different software and OS. Google Calendar is working with iCal and with Mavericks fine. Google calendar DOES NOT WORK Yosemite and IOS 8.1.2

ical and Google calendar are NOT working with Yosemite and with new iOS for iPhone and heard iPad.

I had also updated my iPhone few days ago. Noticed the timezone had changed on the calendar appointments. After working with Apple support last night, suggesting restoring phone to earlier back up when it worked. I did a restore last night, but still have the version 8.1.2. Big issues. Can't turn off google calendar. it freezes completely (when trying to turn off calendar). Calendar is blank then crashes.

So iCal on mac PC does not sync, if it loads, it is causing huge issues and is crashing. Google calendar doesn't even load on the iPhone. It is crashing.

Apple are working on it their end. Have said it is not an Apple issue, have suggested it more likely a Google, Calendar issue.

Safari 7.1 Bookmark not closing properly

I sometime notice this random behaviour of the bookmarks not closing and it leaves me with something like this, any suggestions?

I'm running Mavericks with everything updated.

In Yosemite, the 'Alerts" Alert style notification dismisses on its own

I've setup the Thyme app's notifications to be "Alerts" style, which requires the user to interact with it to dismiss it:

However, they dismiss on their own after about 5 minutes. How to configure these so they never dismiss on their own?

No game achievements in steam at all

Buy the game Monochroma some time ago and no one achievement has earned until I passed it. Already trying to get help in steam forum, but nothing. Maybe anyone have this kind of problem on mac platform with steam games? Thanks for watching!

How to restore system from network drive?

I have a 2014 MacBook Pro.

I want to restore my OS from a Time Machine backup which is on a shared network volume.

When I restart in recovery (Apple-Opt-R), it boots from internet, but if I try to restore from Time Machine backup, it fails to see the server where the shared volume is.

Do I need to log/mount the share somehow?

Installing Mavericks on a new Mac Mini (end 2014) shipped with Yosemite pre-installed?

Excuse me for my english, I'm french and I try to find a solution for my new Mac Mini buy in December. My new Mac Mini it's configured with Yosemite 10.10.0. and it's a problem for me because I use some professional music software like Cubase Elements 7 or Studio One 2, it's not compatible for the moment with Yosmeite. I want to downgrade and I read your post and I'm in panic because I view that not possible to downgrade my new Mac Mini in OSX Mavericks. I have created a external bootable usb key with a Mavericks in my other Mac. When i restart on my usb key bootable, appear this symbol

It's the kernel panic when I try to boot on the usb key. I think it's mean it's not possible to downgrade on Mavericks with this New Mac Mini (end 2014) ?

Actually I'm in OSX 10.10.1, it's possible that the problem come because I'm in this version ?

Thanks for your help and your answers...

Adding a photo to iphoto by right clicking in the finder

How does one add iphoto to the list of choices when right clicking on a photo in the finder?

Make a specific tag the default window in OS X Finder

I've got a tag in OS X which is labeled "To-do", and I want that Finder shows the files (and folders) that are labelled with this tag when I open a new finder window. So that the view that is shown when I click the tag in the sidebar to be set as Finders default view for new windows.

I have tried changing the option of default location in Finders settings, but I can only choose folders there. I have also tried using a smart folder with the tag as the only search condition, but smart folders are also not allowed to be chosen as default location in Finder. Right now I'm using "all my files" as default location, sorted by tag where I made sure that my "To-do" tag is at top, by naming it "1To-do". However, this is also unsatisfactory, since "all my files" does not show the folders that I've tagged.

Does OS X Manage RAM?

I was reading this SuperUser question, and it made me wonder, does OS X do any sort of memory managment, or does alloc() just fail to allocate memory, causing the process to crash?

Mobile Safari Redirects to App Store

According to several news stories, the iOS 8 betas included a new feature:

Safari now blocks ads from automatically redirecting to the App Store without user interaction.

(The last link makes it look like the feature did get into the released version of iOS 8, not just the betas.)

However, certain sites (with ads) are still managing to open the App Store on my iPhone 5S.

Is there a way to ensure this setting is enabled?

Is is possible to deactivate the Lightning port?

On a current iDevice, such as an iPhone 6 or an iPad Air 2, is it possible to deactivate the Lightning port? I don't want to break it, just temporarily disable it, similar to how Settings > Bluetooth can be used to temporarily disable Bluetooth.

Edit: Why? To prevent data exfil in an enterprise setting. So I'm looking to prevent data sync and data transfer. Charging is still ok.

Turn by turn navigation GPX file app

We wanna start doing car rallys and these routes are delivered using a GPX files.

What we are looking for is an app that can make a route from our home to the start of the gpx file and then start navigating the GPX route.

Can I download the Yosemite install "app" on a MacBook Air, move it to an install USB drive, and install it on a MacBook Pro?

That is, is there a difference between the Yosemite install "app" that I would get on the Mac App Store, between the one I would get on a MacBook Air vs. on a MacBook Pro?

Trying to download it on my Air and install it clean on my Pro.

I need to delete one line of text [on hold]

How do I restore the trash can (delete function) on my text messages. Currently I have to delete all because I can't get rid of the camera icon.

Fusion installing Mavericks this item is temporary unavailable

I am new to Mac. I have a MacBook Air running 10.9.4.

I installed Fusion VMWare and I am trying to install a VM for 10.9.4 using the "Install OS X from the recovery partition. When I get to the installation step that asks for my Apple Id, I log in and get this message: "This item is temporarily unavailable - Try again later".

Why???

Couple things to note: This Mac was passed down to me, I do not have a Mavericks installer and never purchased one.

Thanks,

Chris

iPhoto not launching after upgrading to OS X 10.10, Yosemite

Ever since I migrated to a new Macbook Pro Retina (MacBookPro11,2) and to OS X 10.10, iPhoto won't run.

I was running OS X 10.8 on a Macbook Pro (MacBookPro7,1) before. I have tried uninstalling iPhoto and reinstalling using the App Store.

The error I receive is this, full crash log:

Exception Type:        EXC_BREAKPOINT (SIGTRAP)
Exception Codes:       0x0000000000000002, 0x0000000000000000

Application Specific Information:
dyld: launch, loading dependent libraries

Dyld Error Message:
  Library not loaded: /Library/Frameworks/NyxAudioAnalysis.framework/Versions/A/NyxAudioAnalysis
  Referenced from: /Applications/http://ift.tt/13Doaqo
  Reason: image not found

From what I can tell, there are certain libraries that can't be loaded. Apparently, simply reinstalling iPhoto does not do the trick. Is there anything else I can do?

iTunes fails to sync

I just bought a new iPhone. I'm trying to sync music to it. iTunes get stuck in "Waiting for changes to be applied..." for what seems like an endless period of time.

Furthermore all of the songs appear on my phone, but they have the cloud icon next to them, which means they aren't actually present on the phone, only the metadata is.

Photos and other data syncs without a problem.

I've tried unchecking the "Sync Music" button in iTunes, but now it still hangs.

How do I even start to figure out what's gone wrong? Does iTunes have crash logs or something?

why is iCloud email deleted on iPad?

9 months of emails are gone from my iPad they still appear on iCloud on my computer. how can I restore them to iPad?

"Email This Page" in Yosemite

In Yosemite the option "Email This Page" does not work well.

Let me explain it in more detail: I designed a html page, I uploaded to the server and then I go go to that page and File > Share > Email This Page. This is a way to create and send a designed html page that works well in previous versions but not in Yosemite. There are different things that do not work for instance:

the background in Mail is not full, Mail creates a white border. This is the code:

<body bgcolor="#622181">
<table border="0" cellpadding="35" cellspacing="0" width="100%" bgcolor="#622181">

the link in Mail does not work if it is in a img. Mail ignores the width too:

<a href="http://ift.tt/1Gv9BmE">
<div id="boto"><img src="http://ift.tt/13CUk5z" width="60"/></div>
</a>

How long can I safely leave my Macbook Pro running?

I've set up my Macbook Pro 2011 to run a linux home server through virtualbox. I noticed that this laptop seems to get hot after a few hours compared to my previous laptop (toshiba, windows 8) which I could leave running for days and it never heated up. I am curious though how long I can safely run my Macbook without putting it to sleep? (I have NoSleep installed) I have no problems rebooting once a week or so, just want to know for certain if this actually necessary, cause otherwise I'd put a fan on it and stick it in a corner and forget about it. CPU usage seems to be around 10% when running the server from what Activity Monitor is telling me.

One contact with several numbers - sent messages

I have a contact with multiple (two) mobile numbers.

How do i know to which number the sms (text message) was sent? The system did not ask me which telephone number to use.

Is there a way to check it?

Intermittent Static / Garbage External Display On Wake and Boot? Picture included

Intermittently (relatively frequent) when the MacBook wakes from sleep and it kicks the external displays on, one or all of them may be fuzzy like this. I have one display in a Thunderbolt port, and the other one is Apple HDMI adapter in the HDMI port.

I've ruled out the adapters being the problem, I've done a PRAM reset. (even after it booted from PRAM reset it did it at boot up on login screen)

To fix it, I have to unplug and plug it back in and cross my fingers that it doesn't happen again.

Any ideas?

MacBook Pro (Retina, 15-inch, Late 2013) 2.3 GHz Intel Core i7 8 GB 1600 MHz DDR3 Intel Iris Pro 1536 MB

Low-res photos when transferred from iPhone

I have an iPhone 4S running iOS 8.1.2

When I take photos using the built-in camera app, and transfer them off my phone using DropBox or PhotoSync the photos mostly end up as low-res versions. Not all of them, but about 90%.

I've spent some time trying to work out what is going on and its melting my brain.

Things I know:

1. 
   

   The problem is related somehow to the iPhone camera app as it doesn't happen with Camera+.

   
   


2. 
   

   The photos do exist on my phone at full-res. If I plug my phone into the laptop with the USB cable, a drive gets mounted and I can get to my photos, copy them off and they are there basking in their high-res glory. That rules out any dumb stuff like 'was I using the front-facing camera' or 'have you set the phone to store photos at low-res'.

   
   


3. 
   

   If I use DropBox or PhotoSync they come through as (mostly) low-res.

   
   


4. 
   

   I'm not doing anything with iCloud as I know that causes lower-res versions.

   
   

Any help would be appreciated as it is doing my head in!

AKG 550 headphones w Iphone5

Help.. I have just bought AKG 550 headphones for my daughter who has an iphone 5.... and just realised the connector on the h/phones is way larger than the input on the phone for normal (iphone) headphones. Is there an adaptor I can buy that allows her to use the headphones w her iphone?

macbook air mid 13 overheating

My set up is macbook air mid 13 with i7 processor and 8GB of ram running OS X Yosemite. Which is plenty for my use, at least it has been. I usually have no more than 3 apps running as notes, reminders and safari. I also use statsbar to watch the performance and the usual is 1/3gb of ram free. The problem I started noticing is in the past week the machine has started overheating as I can feel it by touching the laptop and hearing the fan, which only used to happen when I tried to turn on all I could to see if the machine would handle it.

I supposed some would say that it also may depend on the amount of stuff I have open in safari as neither notes nor reminders use up the cpu that makes it overheat. I usually have up to 5 tabs open: youtube, couple of news websites and a couple of wiki tabs. Which the machine used to handle with no problems at all.

So my main question is how come the machine is going crazy and what can I do to prevent it?

What Can I Connect To ExpressPort Slot?

I have a mid-2010 MacBook Pro. It has an ExpressPort Slot connection that seems to have no uses without something else to connect in there.

What are the possible things that I could use this port for?

iTunes could not back up the iPhone because the backup could not be saved on the computer. Please Disconnect and reconnect Iphone and try again

Hi I'm Running Yosemite on Macbook 5,1 Late 2008 2.0GHz with SSD for apps and HDD for data.

I'm Trying to back-up my iPhone on the computer but i'm not able. I tried restarting both computer and phone. It doesn't let me click on back up now either.

Any suggestion?

iPhone 4 signing in issues

So I just got my iPhone and I made a new Apple iTunes account and I verified my account through email then I tried to download a game and it says please sign in so I tried signing it and it said I need to complete my registration and to put in bank details , which I already did signing up... so I put them in again and this time it came back with " card declined, payment method didn't work" blah blah blah.. I cannot download games and I cannot access my emails or apples iTunes I cannot sign in it wot let me can someone help? Thank you

How can one start a process and monitor its syslog messages?

I would like to start a process and monitor its LOG_DEBUG syslog messages.

I know that I can change the filter of an already running process with syslog -c process (and then monitor its messages with syslog -w -k Sender process), but that requires the process already to be running and furthermore fills up logfiles with messages that I only need temporarily.

Is my only option to change the running configuration with syslog -config, then later restore the configuration once I have read the messages I want? Surely there is a "better" way.

How can Launchpad be configured to keep layout after reboot?

I updated to Yosemite. I organized my launchpad but when I turned my laptop on after shutting it down, my apps weren't grouped together like I did before.

What do I need to do to keep the layout I defined?

Ridiculous number of unnecessary empty birthday calendars that can't be deleted

I have an iPhone 5 running iOS 8.1.1. My Calendar app is showing me a ridiculous number of birthday calendars ("Friends' Birthdays" under Gmail, "Birthdays" under Facebook, and 8 separate calendars named "Birthdays" under "Other"). This is what the list of calendars looks like:

I have no idea how they got there. I am syncing the Calendar app with Google, Facebook, and Meetup, but I can't imagine how that would produce such a ridiculous number.

What can I do about these? I would like to delete or merge some of them but the app is not giving me the option. Is it possible to delete most of them without losing anyone's birthday?

If I look at the Calendar app on my Mac (which is running Yosemite), I don't see all of these calendars. I only see one under Google that says "Birthdays", another under Google that says "Friends' Birthdays", and one under Other that says "Birthdays".

EDIT: I did some looking around and it seems like the "Birthdays" calendar under Gmail has my contacts' birthdays and the "Friends' Birthdays" calendar has my Facebook Friends' birthdays. But all of those "Other" birthday calendars don't seem to have a single birthday in them. I think I can delete them safely without losing anything. I just need to know how.

I logged into iCloud using the iCloud website. I clicked on the calendar icon and all I saw was two empty calendars called "Home" and "Work". I did not see all the empty birthday calendars. I didn't see anything useful or meaningful, but I wouldn't expect to because I am syncing all of my calendar events with Google, not iCloud.

Paint.NET alternative for Mac OS

I would be extremely greatful to anyone pointing me in the direction of the Mac OS analogue for Paint.NET.

Basically the way I use it is I take lots of screenshots for work, then put arrows in there, some ovals and text - it's all for documentation purposes - mainly for Confluence.

The feature I can't live without is the arrows - they have points where you can easily curve them creating a very good visual e.g. for tutorials.

And of course it's great that you can do all of that in a lightweight app, couple of clicks manner.

Thanks in advance!

Purchasing iPhone from Canada AppStore with US credit card

I am looking to purchase an iPhone for a friend who stays in Canada. I am making the payment with my US credit card. So, I went to the Canada Apple store(apple.com/ca) to do the purchase. However,when I attempted to fill in the credit card billing address, it looks like they accept only canada-based billing addresses. Unfortunately, my friend doesn't have a credit card, so I must be the one to pay for it.

How do I get around this? I really need to complete the purchase as soon as possible, so any help would be greatly appreciated.

Open HTML files on Dropbox application

On my computer I'm developing some simple front-end web pages made of typical structure:

1. HTML source code for structuring the elements;


2. CSS classes linked to the HTML;


3. JavaScript files linked to the HTML as well.

I put everything on a Dropbox folder and I'm so able to view all these files from my Dropbox application on the iPhone.

If I open the HTML files from there, I'm only able to see its basic HTML structure: no CSS is called, nor Javascript functions. Clearly because I'm not opening on a browser, but on a simple file viewer.

MY QUESTION: Is anyhow possible to open HTML files with a browser (such as Safari) from the iPhone so to be able to see the whole result (CSS, links and JavaScripts included)? I've already tried the "Open this file on..." function on Dropbox, but it doesn't show me Safari as an app that accepts that kind of file.

Thanks in advance.

Scroll lock on USB keyboard does not enable scroll lock

I have a Windows keyboard that attaches to a KVM that I use to control my Macbook Pro and my desktop. Pressing scroll lock twice on the KVM switches between the two computers. On the Macbook scroll lock is mapped to the decrease brightness button, and pause/break is mapped to increase brightness. I can switch between the two machines, but the screen changing brightness is a bit of an annoyance.

Is there a way to map the scroll lock button to using scroll lock on just the USB keyboard?

ThunderBolt to Mini Display port

Is it possible to connect a Macbook Air 2013 to Macbook Pro 2009 through a thunderbolt cable in order to transform the latter to a second Display ?