If you’re currently running macOS Mojave, you can re-download a macOS High Sierra installer for whatever reason to macOS Mojave. Re-downloading older versions of macOS system software can be desirable for a variety of reasons, and in this case getting the older High Sierra release is most often to create a macOS High Sierra USB installer or for running an older macOS release in a virtual machine or something of that nature.
If you’ve searched the Mac App Store from Mojave, you’ve probably noticed the High Sierra installer is nowhere to be found. But not to worry, we’ll show you how you can download macOS High Sierra 10.13.6 from macOS Mojave 10.14.
How to Download macOS High Sierra from Mojave
Need the macOS High Sierra installer again but you’re running macOS Mojave? Here’s how to get it:
Note that this is not a downgrade process nor is it intended to be, it’s merely downloading the macOS High Sierra installer onto a Mac running the newer macOS Mojave release. You can not install an older macOS release over a newer release. Instead, if you want to downgrade for whatever reason, your best bet would be to downgrade from macOS Mojave to High Sierra (or earlier) by using Time Machine backups made prior to the initial Mojave update. Another option would be to perform a macOS High Sierra clean install, though a clean install completely erases a Mac and removes all data from the computer, making it less practical for most users given that most users want to maintain their personal data.
Interestingly enough, if you try and search the Mac App Store for “macOS High Sierra” from within macOS Mojave, you will not find the installer in the Mac App Store listings. For whatever reason, Apple has hidden the installer, and thus you must click on a direct download link that opens directly to the MacOS High Sierra download page within the App Store.
Users who had previously downloaded other versions of macOS (including High Sierra) using the same Apple ID can also find the prior macOS releases available from the “Purchases” section of the Mac App Store.
If you’re a Mac command line user you may have noticed that many frequently used commands entered into the Terminal (or iTerm) result in an “Operation not permitted” error message since updating to MacOS Mojave 10.14 or later. The “Operation not permitted” error in the Terminal can be seen after issuing even simple commands like using ‘ls’ ‘mv’ and ‘cp’ within the users own directory, but also in many other directory locations on the Mac, and when trying to use many defaults commands. Obviously this type of error message makes navigating and using the command line in MacOS Mojave to be quite difficult if not impossible for many purposes. Don’t worry, the Terminal is not broken in new MacOS versions.
This walkthrough will show you how to fix “Operation not permitted” error messages seen at the command line in Terminal for Mac OS in Mojave 10.14 or later.
How to Fix “Operation not permitted” Error in Terminal for Mac OS
Pull down the Apple menu and choose ‘System Preferences’
Choose “Security & Privacy” control panel
Now select the “Privacy” tab, then from the left-side menu select “Full Disk Access”
Click the lock icon in the lower left corner of the preference panel and authenticate with an admin level login
Now click the [+] plus button to add an application with full disk access
Navigate to the /Applications/Utilities/ folder and choose “Terminal” to grant Terminal with Full Disk Access privileges
Relaunch Terminal, the “Operation not permitted” error messages will be gone
If you have not encountered the “Operation not permitted” error message in the Terminal of MacOS (Mojave 10.14 or later) yet, then it’s likely because you haven’t wandered into a directory or file path that has the additional access restrictions (or that you don’t use Terminal, in which case this entire article is not for you).
While many of the various core System and root directories will throw error messages in macOS Terminal too, you can also find the error message even when trying to work in the users own Home directory, including in many of the user ~/Library/ folders, like ~/Library/Messages (where iMessage attachments and chat logs are stored in Mac OS) and ~/Library/Mail/ (where user-level mail plugins, mailbox data, and other Mail app data is stored), and many others.
You can test this yourself, before and after making the settings adjustment outlined above with a simple command like using ls on one of the protected folders:
ls ~/Library/Messages
If Terminal does not have Full Disk Access granted, you will see the “Operation not permitted” error message.
If Terminal does have Full Disk Access granted, or if SIP is disabled, you will not see that error message in the MacOS Terminal.
In case you were wondering, yes that does mean there are actually two ways to fix the “Operation not permitted” errors you may encounter in MacOS Terminal; the first which we detail here is rather simple that grants additional access privileges to Terminal app, and the other is a bit more dramatic which involves disabling System Integrity Protection on the Mac which is generally not recommended and we won’t specifically cover here, though simply disabling SIP and rebooting is typically enough to make the error go away if you’d rather go that route.
The “Operation not permitted” message is one of a variety of command line errors you may encounter in Mac OS Terminal. Another frequently seen command line error is the the “command not found” error message which can also be encountered in the Terminal for MacOS for a variety of different reasons as well.
If you are (or were) participating in the beta testing program for MacOS Mojave and have since updated to the final version of Mojave, you may wish to no longer receive beta software updates. By opting out of beta updates in MacOS Mojave, you will be sure that a Mac only receives final stable builds of future macOS releases, rather than any of the ongoing beta testing builds.
Halting the beta system software updates is recommended for most Mac users who were participating in the MacOS Mojave beta program at any casual level, particularly public beta users. If you’re a developer running beta system software for testing purposes, this may not apply to you.
Read on to learn exactly how to opt out of beta system software updates and stop receiving them on a Mac.
Note: Apple has changed the way to opt a Mac out of the beta software updates, and while in previous versions of Mac OS X you could opt-out of beta updates through the App Store control panel in a fairly obvious manner, MacOS Mojave now has you visit a different preference panel to then find an obscure small button to un-enroll a Mac from beta updates. If you previously went looking for the setting and missed it, you’re not alone.
How to Stop Receiving Beta Updates in MacOS Mojave
No longer want to get beta system software updates in MacOS Mojave? Here’s how to leave the beta program and instead get final stable builds of future MacOS releases instead:
Go to the Apple menu and choose “System Preferences”
Choose the “Software Update” preference panel
On the left side of the Software Update control panel, look for the small text that says “This Mac is enrolled in the Apple Beta Software Program”
Directly underneath the beta enrollment message, click on the tiny blue text that reads “Details…” (yes it’s a button)
A pop-up message will appear on screen reading “This Mac is enrolled in the Apple Beta Software Program. Do you want to restore default update settings? Any previous updates will not be removed, and this Mac will no longer receive beta updates.”
Choose “Restore Defaults” to opt-out of the MacOS Beta program and stop receiving beta MacOS software updates
Enter the admin password if requested, then close System Preferences when finished
That’s it, now only final public builds of MacOS Mojave and future Mac OS system software updates will be shown in Software Update on that Mac. For example, you would only see MacOS 10.14.1 final rather than any of the various beta versions of that release.
You should not opt out of receiving beta software updates if you are actively running a beta version of MacOS, instead you’d want to first update macOS Mojave beta to the final version of macOS Mojave, and then opt out of the beta updates afterwards.
The beta update opt-out button is a bit obscure and the wording contained within the dialog is a little confusing, particularly compared to opting out of beta updates in prior versions of Mac OS system software, but nonetheless if you choose “Restore Defaults” after clicking the tiny ‘Details’ button then that Mac will stop getting any beta software updates.
A similar tip is available for iPhone and iPad users, and you can easily leave the iOS 12 beta testing program on any enrolled iOS device as well. Once again you’d only want to do that if you’re actively on an iOS final release.
As you may know by now, the list of MacOS Mojave compatible Macs is more strict than previous releases of Mac OS system software, but that doesn’t necessarily mean you can’t install and run macOS Mojave on some unsupported Macs. If you’re an advanced Mac user and you’re reasonably brave (and have adequate backups), then it turns out you might be able to install and run MacOS Mojave on unsupported Mac hardware after all, thanks to a free third party tool from the technical wizard known as “DosDude”.
Essentially the Mojave Patcher Tool creates a modified USB installer drive (similar to the regular Mojave boot installer drive you can make) which you can then use to install not only macOS Mojave on the otherwise unsupported Macs listed below, but also a series of patched macOS Mojave component files that allow it to boot.
Just a quick word of caution: while you may be able to get macOS Mojave running on an unsupported Mac, this is truly only for advanced users who are adventurous. You certainly wouldn’t want to try this on a Mac that you must have performing in an optimal setting at all times, or on your only computer, but if you feel like tinkering around and running macOS Mojave on an unsupported Macintosh computer you can certainly try it out. Because it patches the operating system and installer, not everything is going to work perfectly on all machines – for example, on some machines networking may not work, or an iSight camera may not work, or GPU acceleration may not function – and there could be various bugs, performance quirks, and other theoretical problems with attempting this, but for the truly tech savvy and brave, the Mojave patcher tool and accompanying walkthrough from DosDude can get the job done.
Check out DosDude’s Mojave patcher and walkthrough here to get macOS Mojave running on an unsupported Mac
The DosDude website has both a complete tutorial available at the above link, along with the downloadable patcher tool.
Dosdude also produced a YouTube video demonstrating macOS Mojave on a technically unsupported older MacBook Pro 17″ model from 2009, and Mojave actually appears to run pretty well on the machine:
Thanks to the Dosdude website for the screenshot above of the “About This Mac” screen, which is showing Mojave on an older unsupported Mac.
So while the official list of supported Macs for macOS Mojave is pretty strict in comparison, and you can’t just download Mojave and install it on unsupported hardware without the DosDude utility, the unofficial list of Macs that can run the OS through the tool is much more generous as you can see below, with many perfectly good Macs making the cut.
List of Unsupported Macs That Can Run MacOS Mojave with DosDude Mojave Patcher
Unsupported Macs that apparently can use the Mojave patcher to install macOS Mojave include the following:
– Late-2008 or newer MacBook Air or Aluminum Unibody MacBook: – MacBookAir2,1 – MacBookAir3,x – MacBookAir4,x – MacBook5,1
– Early-2009 or newer Mac Mini or white MacBook: – Macmini3,1 – Macmini4,1 – Macmini5,x – MacBook5,2 – MacBook6,1 – MacBook7,1
– Early-2008 or newer Xserve: – Xserve2,1 – Xserve3,1
As you can see, the potential list of Macs that can run Mojave with the assistance of this process is much more thorough than what Apple officially supports. But caveat emptor, as with all software modifications.
Will everything be perfect? Certainly not. Will performance be better than some other versions of Mac OS or Mac OS X? Probably not, it might even be worse. Will everything work exactly as expected, as if it was an official support from Apple? No, probably not. But that doesn’t mean that it’s not worth pursuing for some Mac users, and perhaps the better features in macOS Mojave are too compelling to not try out by venturing into the waters of
If this sounds appealing to you, then check out the Dosdude tutorial and Mojave patch tool. Just remember this is NOT an official patch or release from Apple, and due to the technical nature of this it isn’t for the faint of heart, you will absolutely need above average technical knowledge, patience, and full backups of the computer, as this is basically a hack that allows Mojave to install and run on hardware that Apple does not support.
There’s obviously no tutorial included here in this post as I haven’t personally tried or tested this yet, but if you do, and you get macOS Mojave running on an older Mac, be sure to let us know in the comments below how well it works, and what your experience was. Personally, my older unsupported Macs are still running Snow Leopard, Mavericks, El Capitan, and Sierra, and only the latest machines will run Mojave for my particular setup, but to each their own, and it’s undoubtedly cool that Dosdude has consistently come up with utilities like this to get various versions of Mac OS system software running on hardware that it wasn’t specifically intended for. It’s your Mac so use it however you like and with whatever operating system software release you like best. Enjoy!
Today’s the day, Mac users: the latest version of macOS, called Mojave (and officially it’s version 10.14), is now available. It’s not a major revamp of the operating system (it’s been a while since the Mac has had one of those), but it does add new features that can help you be more productive with your Mac.
That being said, you may be hesitant to upgrade. After all, what you’re using now works fine, and why risk the potential for problems? We hear you, and if you don’t want to upgrade right away, you’ll be fine. But in case you’re on the fence, here are a few reasons why you should upgrade to macOS Mojave now.
MacOS Mojave Dark Mode is easier on the eyes
The first new feature Apple discussed at the 2018 Worldwide Developers Conference unveiling of Mojave, the first feature that the Mojave website highlights, and the first feature I’m covering here is Dark Mode, which uses darker colors for user interface elements like the toolbar and menus. Being first implies a sense of importance, but to some, Dark Mode may seem like an odd feature to highlight first. “Yeah, so the Mac uses dark stuff. So what?”
Think about how you use your Mac (or computers in general). When you’re looking at a computer screen, you’re basically staring at a light source. And if you’re like me, you do almost all of your work all day long while staring at this light source. With a traditional Mac UI, you’re usually using windows that are predominating bright white, and staring at the light for a while can cause eye fatigue.
A familiar Light Mode window in. macOS Mojave…
…and a new Dark Mode window.
Dark Mode feels a lot more comfortable to me, though I don’t feel more or less fatigued at the end of the day. (That’s probably due to the fact that I make it a point to take quick “vision” breaks every 30 minutes or so.) Some people think Dark Mode helps you focus on what you’re working on; I can’t say I agree or disagree, I don’t notice a difference in where my attention is at. But while I’m working, being in Dark Mode feels more pleasing, and I now have a preference for it. I’m also looking forward to more apps offering Dark Mode interfaces.
MacOS Mojave Continuity Camera
Before Continuity Camera, it took a bit of effort to get a photo or scan on to your Mac. With Continuity Camera, the process is a lot more efficient.
You can scan images directly into Notes.
In apps that support the feature, all you need to do is click in the area where you want your image to appear, and then go to the File menu and look for an option to import a scan or photo from your iPhone or iPad. Select it, and an indicator appear in your Mac app and your iOS device’s camera automatically launches. You can then snap a pic or “scan” your document, and the result is automatically inserted in your document. So easy. Unfortunately, this feature doesn’t allow you to select a pic that’s already on your iOS device for placement in your document, but maybe that’s for a future update.
Continuity Camera works right now with Mojave’s bundled apps, like Notes, Mail, Messages, and in the Finder. It also works with Apple’s Numbers, Pages, and Keynote. Look for third-parties to add this functionality soon.
Using an iPhone X to scan a receipt in Notes for Mac.
MacOS Mojave improved security features
Security isn’t a glamorous topic, but there are a few now security features that make Mojave an attractive upgrade.
Because of what I do for a living, I’m often downloading and trying new software, sometimes from developers with whom I’m not familiar. So I run a few utilities to keep an eye on what’s going on with my Mac. One of the utilities I use is OverSight, which flashes an alert any time an app wants to access the Mac’s FaceTime camera and microphone.
macOS Mojave now lets you know if apps are trying to access your Mac’s microphone, camera, and other items.
An OverSight-like feature is now built into Mojave that can alert you when an app wants to accessalong the camera and mic, as well as iTunes device backups, Time Machine backups, your Mail database, your Message history, your Safari data, and other data.
Even better is that Safari in Mojave has improved Intelligent Tracking Prevention. What this does is that it blocks attempts to track the websites that you visit. If you trigger one of these tracks (often by clicking on a comment button, or when you Like something on Facebook), Safari posts an alert to let you know that you need to allow tracking to continue on.
Mojave also has more features for managing password, such as the ability to create strong passwords, the ability to automatically enter in a security code that you get vis SMS, and password auditing. These are great features, but as a longtime 1Password user, I don’t think I’ll be giving it up for Mojave’s built-in features. I prefer 1Password’s management tools, even though it means I’m not being efficient about my password usage.
MacOS Mojave Quick Look for quick image edits
As the family documentarian, it’s my job to take pictures and videos of family events. But I don’t just shoot and then file away the results; I look at the pics and videos and edit them. Usually, they’re easy edits, but it feels like a hassle to preview a file to see if it needs to be edited, and then open those files that do in an app.
Crop a photo directly in Quick Look. No need to open an app.
Mojave makes Quick Look most robust, providing simple editing tools so you don’t even need to open an app. Now when you preview an image (select it and then press the space bar), you can click on the Quick Actions icon between the Rotate icon and the Open in Preview button, and a set of editing tools appears. You can rotate in 90-degree increments and crop images, and there’s even a set of markup tools you can use to write notations. For audio and video, you can trim clips.
If you are perusing through dozens and dozens of photos and videos, the new Quick Look Quick Actions helps a ton with simple crops and trims. It can be a real time saver.
MacOS Mojave News, Stocks, Voice Memos, and App Store
If you frequently use the News, Stocks, and Voice Memos apps on your iPhone or iPad, then you’ll probably find good use for them on your Mojave Mac. With the News and Stocks apps, your preferences can be saved to iCloud, so your topics, channels, watch list, and more are syncs between all your devices. Voice Memos can save your recording to iCloud so you can access them on any device.
The new News app in macOS Mojave.
Of these apps, I’ll get the most use out of the News app. It seems that people tend to rely on social networks to get their news, but with social networks, the people you follow are the arbiter of what shows up on your feed—and for a lot of people, that’s preferable. I like to have more control over the articles that are fed to me, and that includes topics that may not necessarily jibe with that of the people I follow. The News app allows you to set your sources and subjects, so you can get a feed that’s customized to your interests.
Apple has also redesigned the App Store, so it’s easier to find apps. The company is also putting a more effort into your ability to learn about new software, by featuring App Store editors’ picks and curated app lists.
Group FaceTime: Coming soon to macOS Mojave
If these reasons aren’t compelling enough for you to upgrade to Mojave now, there’s a feature coming soon that will make you want to upgrade: Group FaceTime. When it becomes available—Apple says it’ll be here later this fall—you’ll be able to do a group chat with up to 32 people using a Mac, iPhone, or iPad. If this feature was available now (and it worked well), it’d be the number one reason why you should upgrade to Mojave.
Let’s hope Group FaceTime comes to the Mac sooner than later.
Have you ever wanted a little digital globe you could interact with, spinning the Earth around to see the continents, oceans, and features of our planet? If so, you’ll be happy to discover that the Maps app on the Mac has a hidden globe view that allows you to interact with and spin planet Earth as a virtual globe.
The hidden globe view in Maps can be a great feature for obvious geography reasons, whether it’s for informational, exploration, educational uses, just having a little fun, or any other reason you’d like to reference a globe. Even more interesting is that Maps Globe view uses satellite data to show the Earth surface relative to the sun, making both day time and night time views visible depending on the time of day. The whole Globe view is quite interesting and fun to play with.
Read on to learn how to access Globe view in the Maps application for Mac.
How to Access Globe View on Maps for Mac
Ready to switch the Maps app into Globe view? Here’s how you can do that:
Open the “Maps” application on the Mac
Choose “Satellite” view by clicking the button in the upper right corner
Now zoom out in Maps view, you can zoom out by clicking the minus “[-]” button in the bottom right corner of Maps app or by using a pinch gesture on a tracking surface
Keep zooming out until you see Maps has entered into Globe view
Interact with the Maps app as usual, you can spin the globe, rotate it around in just about any orientation with a click and drag, zoom in and out, etc
You can zoom in and out of globe view quite fast with the pinch and spread gestures on a tracking surface.
One of the more compelling aspects of Globe view in Maps is that it uses updated satellite imagery based on time of day and the Earth position relative to the sun, so you can see where night and day fall on the globe.
The daytime view is brightly lit as you’d expect and makes identifying continents, oceans, and land features pretty easy. The night time view of the world is quite fascinating as well because it uses detailed satellite imagery to show light pollution on the surface of Earth, making it easy to locate cities, developments, and the human behavior on the planet, visible much like the glowing activity of humans is from the International Space Station, NASA imagery, or some other satellite or space craft (maybe this trick could be extra helpful to any aliens out there floating around in space looking down at Earth but haven’t figured out quite where to land yet).
And yes if you’re an iOS user and you were wondering, the Maps app on iPhone and iPad also has globe view that is accessible in basically the same way as this, hidden behind Satellite view and requiring lots of zooming out to see.
Exiting out of Globe view is just a matter of either choosing the “Map” mode of Maps app, or zooming into any surface on the Earth close enough so that the globe is no longer visible.
Some Maps features work in Globe view while others don’t, for example you can drop pins and share a location while in Globe view, but features like scale indicators and saving Maps as a PDF don’t entirely work while in Globe view. You can also use “Show Labels” to toggle off or on the labeling of cities and continents.
Some versions of Mac OS support the ability to login any user account directly to the command line right from the traditional login screen, thereby bypassing the familiar Mac user interface. Instead you’re essentially signing a user directly into the Terminal (a bit like using the ssh client to connect to an SSH server), without having to load the desktop, Finder, WindowServer, or any other frills of the GUI. This can be handy for advanced users who need quick access to the complete command line from a particular user account, but want to skip the complete login and loading of the Mac OS graphical environment. Keep in mind not all versions of system software support this feature however, so it’ll take a bit of discovery to determine which do and which do not.
Before diving in, realize this is really only for advanced Mac users thoroughly comfortable with the command line environment. It’s also important to point out the hidden login Console / Terminal is completely different from Single User Mode or the Recovery Mode Terminal, which are supported on all Macs and Mac OS versions. For one, with the Console Login trick you can login directly as any user on the Mac with user level privileges, whereas Single User Mode always uses a root login with many system services and processes disabled, and is aimed for more administrative purposes. Two common uses of Single User Mode are repairing a disk with fsck and changing an admin password, or other troubleshooting tasks. Single User Mode and Recovery Terminal are really best for troubleshooting and is not an appropriate environment for more generic command line interactions, but the direct Console login can be used just like you would the Terminal app.
Does my MacOS version support Login Terminal / Console?
Console Login is not supported by all versions of Mac OS or Mac OS X. The Console login feature appears to be supported in Mac OS X 10.9.x (Mavericks), 10.8.x (Mountain lion), 10.7.x (Lion), 10.6.x (Snow Leopard), Leopard, Tiger, etc but may or may not be supported in MacoS Mojave (10.14) macOS 10.13.x (High Sierra), macOS 10.12.6 (Sierra), OS X 10.11.6 (El Capitan), or 10.10 Yosemite. Feel free to report in the comments below if you have success with this or not, and your version of system software.
You can attempt to enable the login console in Mac OS / Mac OS X with the following defaults command, and then reboot the Mac to then follow the directions further below to see if you can access the login screen terminal:
sudo defaults write /Library/Preferences/com.apple.loginwindow.plist "DisableConsoleAccess" NO
If you attempt to load the Console from login screen on an unsupported Mac, you will either just see a blank black screen which appears to be inescapable, requiring you to forcibly reboot the Mac, or you will briefly see a flash of white text on the black screen, and then a blank black screen that also requires a reboot to escape. If you know of a way around this, share with us in the comments.
How to Access a Terminal at Login Screen in Mac OS
Note you must have automatic login turned off on the Mac, otherwise you will not have access to the login screen on boot from which to access the console. Remember, not all versions of Mac OS support this feature.
Reboot the Mac as usual
At the login screen, choose “Other”
For username, type the following and then hit return – no password is necessary yet
>console
Hit the Return key
If successful, you will see a login prompt at the command line, as if you just booted up a unix environment without a windowing environment, now enter a user name and password to login directly to the command line as that user
NOTE: If unsuccessful, the screen will turn black and you will have to force reboot the Mac by holding down the Power key to exit
Assuming you successfully logged into the login Console, you will have full access to everything you would in a normal Terminal environment, but without any of the Mac OS graphical interface. You can exit out of this environment by rebooting from the command line with the shutdown or reboot commands.
Note you can access the “Other” field whenhiding the login user name list or with the list of users at the logins screen enabled, but it will not work with Automatic Login enabled.
This is a little known trick, and that it’s supported in some versions of Mac OS but not in others further muddies the waters of when and where it will work, and if support has been pulled from modern versions (it appears to be missing from the latest macOS releases). MacWorld referenced the secret login Terminal some time ago and uncovered discussion of the trick from way back in 2002, suggesting that the console login may work in all earlier versions of Mac OS X but not in the most recent versions. To find out definitively what versions support the capability, user exploration in a wide variety of more recent Mac OS releases would be necessary. I was able to successfully access Terminal via the login console on a Mac running Mavericks, but not on a Mac running High Sierra or Sierra, for example. It’s entirely possible this feature is gone for good in modern macOS releases, in which case this will only apply to older Mac OS X system software.
Every once in a while you may encounter .bin and .cue files, or a cue/bin cue sheet, of a disk image, often when downloading old Mac software (or even DOS, Windows, Linux) for a retro machine, for an audio or video disc, or just as a disk image of something. Mac users therefore may need to convert that bin and cue file into an ISO file for usage elsewhere, whether it’s for a virtual machine or even burning the ISO to a disc.
This article is going to demonstrate how you can convert a .bin and .cue file into a .iso file on the Mac.
We’re going to be using a free tool called binchunker to convert the bin and cue files to an iso. binchunker is a command line tool, so you will need some comfort in and basic knowledge of the command line to achieve the bin/cue to iso conversion. While there are various downloads of binchunker available as precompiled binaries, we’re going to instead recommend using Homebrew to install it onto a Mac, Homebrew is also free and easily installed in macOS or Mac OS X. If you come across binchunker through other means as a prebuilt binary, the command usage for converting bin and cue to iso is the same.
How to Convert a .bin and .cue to ISO in Mac OS
As mentioned, we’ll be using Homebrew to install binchunker, so if you have not done so yet you can install Homebrew first before proceeding, and then you can install binchunker by issuing the following brew command:
brew install bchunk
After binchunker is successfully installed on the Mac, you can then convert the .bin and .cue into an iso file with the following command syntax:
bchunk Input.bin Input.cue Output.iso
Hit return and the conversion will begin, wait until it completes (obviously) before attempting to use the iso file.
For a practical syntax example, if we have a set of .bin and .cue files named as “MacUtilities1998.bin” and “MacUtilities1998.cue” located on the Desktop, and you want to convert those into a single iso file named “MacUtilities1998.iso”, you would use the following command syntax:
You can also run bchunk without any conditions to get more information about the command and it’s options.
Once your iso has completed conversion from the origin .bin/cue files, you can mount the iso image, or burn the .iso file from the Mac Finder, or if you’re on an older version of system software you can burn an .iso directly in Disk Utility for Mac OS X, though it’s important to remember that feature was removed from modern versions of Disk Utility which is why the Finder is necessary instead. Whether you mount or burn the iso is up to you and what you need to use it for.
There are other options for managing .bin and .cue files on the Mac as well, including the Roxio Toast app which was quite commonplace on many older Macs with disc drives, so if you’re working with an older machine it’s worth seeing if you have that app laying around. And if you happen to be trying to work with a bin/cue file for Windows, then the utility known as Daemon Tools can mount a .bin and .cue file as well as other disk images, making it helpful if you’re eventually working with a Windows PC anyway.
By the way if the only reason you installed bitchunker was for a one time usage, you can removing the package from Homebrew after you’re finished with it, though there’s little harm to leaving binchunker installed, and if you plan on converting additional bin and cue files into .iso you will likely want to leave it installed. Binchunker can also convert a bin/cue file to a cdr file, which can be helpful as well.
System Integrity Protection (SIP) locks down certain Mac OS system folders to prevent modification, execution, and deletion of critical system-level files on the Mac, even with a root user account. While the SIP security feature is enabled by default on all modern Mac OS releases, you may find yourself in various situations where you need to check SIP status to find out if it is enabled or disabled on a particular Mac, or to otherwise confirm the SIP status on any Mac.
There are two ways to check System Integrity Protection status; by using the command line, and by using the System Information profiler tool.
This article will show you both methods to see how to determine if System Integrity Protection / SIP is enabled or disabled on a Mac.
How to Check if System Integrity Protection is Enabled on Mac with Terminal
You can check any Mac for SIP protection by using the command line. This is particularly great if you need to remotely check SIP status through ssh, for example.
Launch the Terminal application in Mac OS, it’s located in the /Applications/Utilities/ directory
Type the following into the command line, then hit return:
csrutil status
You will see one of the following messages, indicating the status of SIP on that Mac:
If SIP is on – “System Integrity Protection status: enabled.”
If SIP is off – “System Integrity Protection status: disabled.”
If SIP is enabled, you likely want to keep it that way. If SIP is disabled, you will likely want to turn it back on.
How to Check SIP Status on a Mac from System Information
Mac users can also check if System Integrity Protection is enabled or disabled by referring to the System Information tool found in MacOS:
Open the /Applications/ folder and then go to /Utilities/
Open the “System Information” application (you can also get there by holding Option key and clicking the Apple menu to choose “System Information”)
Scroll down the left side list and choose “Software”
Look for “System Integrity Protection” on the right side, and whether or not you see an “Enabled” or “Disabled” message alongside that
Again, if SIP is enabled, you almost certainly want to keep it that way. And if SIP is disabled, you likely want to turn it back on again to enjoy the protection that SIP offers.
What Folders Does SIP Protect in Mac OS?
In case you are wondering what directories and folders are protected by System Integrity Protection, the current list is as follows:
/System
/sbin
/bin
/usr *
/Applications **
* /usr is protected with the exception of /usr/local subdirectory, which is often used by tools like Homebrew
** /Applications is protected for apps that are pre-installed with Mac OS (Calendar, Photos, Safari, Terminal, Console, App Store, Notes, etc)
Those directories are protected from modification (adding, deleting, modifying, editing, moving, etc) from any administrator account and even root accounts, the latter of which is perhaps why SIP is sometimes called ‘rootless’. Only if System Integrity Protection is manually disabled can you have modification privileges of those directories, and disabling SIP requires an admin password and boot access to a Mac.
Aside from the security benefits offered by SIP, it also can prevent deletion of system files and system resources in Mac OS (whether intentional or accidental) since those critical files and folders do not have modification access while the feature is turned on. Again, don’t turn SIP off unless you have a really compelling reason to do so, and even then then you’ll almost certainly want to quickly turn it back on again.
As previously mentioned, SIP is enabled by default on all modern Mac OS software releases. This includes macOS Mojave, macOS High Sierra, MacOS Sierra, and Mac OS X El Capitan, and it’s safe to assume all future Mac OS system software versions will have SIP enabled by default as well. If the version of Mac OS is older than what SIP supports, the feature will not be available, and neither will be the ability to check the status of SIP with the csrutil command, or the System Information method.
If you’re a Python user you may already be familiar with the handy trick that allows you to instantly create a simple web server using an easy command string entered in the command line of Mac OS. But if you’re a Mac Python user who has installed or updated to Python 3, then you will find the traditional command string from the prior Python versions does not work to initiate the web server in new Python 3.x+ releases.
Not to worry, the simple web server Python trick still works in Python 3 for Mac (and for Linux and Windows too of course, but we’re obviously covering MacOS), it’s that the command syntax is just slightly different. We’ll show you how to start a simple web server with Python 3 by using the new Python 3.0+ equivalent of the python -m SimpleHTTPServer command.
From the command line, enter the following syntax exactly*:
python -m http.server
OR (depending on how Python 3.x is installed and named):
python3 -m http.server
Hit return and Python 3 will instantly start a simple HTTP server from the directory in which the command was executed.
The http.server in Python 3 will run in the terminal, if there is no web file in the directory than the directory index itself will be shown.
You can test this immediately by opening the following URL in any web browser on the computer:
http://0.0.0.0:8000
All web server activity, like accessing individual files, folders, directories, etc, will be shown in the active Python terminal window live as it happens, sort of like tailing web logs on an Apache or Nginx server.
* Important Note: if you have python and python3 installed concurrently, you may need to change the syntax slightly to reference python3 and python2 or another python version. This will depend on how you updated to Python 3 on the Mac, but a common example would be using the ‘python3’ command instead:
python3 -m http.server
Just as before, hit return and the active directory will be turned into a web server.
What’s the Python3 equivalent of python -m CGIHTTPServer?
Another common trick is to use the CGI (Common Gateway Interface) server in Python for CGI scripts in python or perl. Thus if you need to run the python3 equivalent of the “python -m CGIHTTPServer” command for CGI that would be as follows:
python3 -m http.server --cgi
Alternatively, if Python 3 is installed and named as python, the command would simply be:
python -m http.server --cgi
Either way you’ll need the –cgi flag to start the CGI HTTP server in Python 3.
I get an error saying “/usr/bin/python: No module named http” now what?
If you see an “/usr/bin/python: No module named http” error when trying to execute the python -m http.server command string then you most likely are not running Python 3, or you are using the wrong command for python3 (i.e. python vs python3, depending on how the version is named and how it was installed or updated to on the Mac). It’s also possible that Python is not installed on the computer at all, though that’s less likely for Macs because Python2 is installed by default on Mac OS, though users must manually install the updated Python 3.x on the Mac, which simultaneously preserves the original Python 2.x release version. Typically this is achieved with Homebrew.
Change the syntax as referenced above, or if you’re using an earlier Python version try the “python -m SimpleHTTPServer” command from Python 2 and before.
Of course the python simple web servers are not meant for production environments and they’re really just best for a quick scratchpad or test environment. If you want to run a web server that is publicly facing or just more robust in general, you’d want to go with something like Apache or Nginx, though configuring those individually on a Mac requires some setup. A simpler option for an full web server environment on the Mac is to use MAMP, which makes setting up and starting a full Apache, MySQL, PHP environment on the Mac about as simple as it gets.