Retina Macbook Pro 15" 2015 vs iMAC 21" 3.1 GHZ i7 256 SSD

I find that the flexibility of being able to move around in the house makes it worth getting a laptop. Mobile freedom is really addictive once you get used to it. The only issue is that, for coding, having a ton of screen real-estate is advantageous. Obviously the iMac has the MacBook Pro beat in that regard, but you could get a cheap external display for that purpose. It depends on which setup you'd find yourself most comfortable with. Sometimes, if I'm just writing a Python script with no UI, I can easily do it with one monitor, and so then the mobile freedom offered to me by my laptop is incredibly nice. The other times, I have a cheap external monitor for my UI, and my MacBook Pro's monitor for the code, since it has such a high res display to make all the text crystal clear. The UI monitor doesn't have to be terribly high-res, just large. It works well for me.


Can I disable the iPhone's auto-rotation to landscape mode?

Before iOS 4 - jailbreak software changes could do this.

For iOS 4 and later, the lock function easily sets a portrait mode for all apps that run in both portrait and landscape.

You can lock the screen rotation on the iPhone 3GS and 4, running iOS 4, to portrait only by double pressing the Home button (bringing up the task switcher), swiping right to show the media controls and pressing the left most icon (looks like a refresh button), the rotation lock. When locked you will see a padlock in the icon and a new status bar icon of the same design.

Note: this does not affect applications which only run in landscape mode, such as most games.

Edit: Video of how to do this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xYkUzYXtZT0


Sync only Desktop folder, but not Documents, with "Store in iCloud"? (iCloud Drive)

Doesn't look like there's a way to single out the Desktop via the 'Manage Storage' GUI.

However, you can always just symlink any directory from your iCloud drive; that way you can ensure that only the Desktop folder is being synced. This is with the caveat that while your Desktop files are being stored in iCloud, they're still taking up space on your HD before, during, and after sync. If you do it on every Mac then you'll keep your Desktop in sync between them all (files added, deleted, changed etc); this might not be what you're after though.

If symlinking isn't something you know how to do, instructions are below.

Backup (via TimeMachine or whatever you use).

Then fire up Terminal and run the following to move your Desktop folder into your iCloud Drive:

mv ~/Desktop /Users/<yourusername>/Library/Mobile\ Documents/com~apple~CloudDocs/

Then just symlink it to the usual 'Desktop' location:

ln -s /Users/<yourusername>/Library/Mobile\ Documents/com~apple~CloudDocs/Desktop /Users/<yourusername>/Desktop

Now anything that you add to ~/Desktop (by dropping things onto your desktop etc) will actually be dropped into your iCloud drive. They are of course still taking up local space on your machine. When you delete something from your desktop then it's gone from the 'Cloud' as well. The benefits of this are more for sync between machines (+ access via your iPhone of course).

If you've got another mac, move anything you value from it's desktop folder into your iCloud Drive 'Desktop' folder first, then delete ~/Desktop on that machine and symlink again as above.


In order to show the play button, the icon needs to be at least 64x64 pixels. It works fine now that I've enlarged my icons from 60x60.


Why does the iMac not allow memory parity error checking?

This is not Apple specific at all. First, why is ECC (72-bit) used over parity? The reason is simply that DRAM chips have been made in data widths of 4, 8 or 16 bits for decades. ECC lets you simply add another commodity chip, instead of making a specific low-volume 5 bit chip. Besides, when you have parity, you can't correct any error, so all you can do is crash the computer when an error is detected. So the net effect is to cause more computer crashes, even if the error is in part of the RAM that is not in use.

There's two reasons why Apple can't put ECC in. One is simply the integrated memory controller Intel puts in does not support ECC to force workstation/server makers to buy the more expensive Xeon line. You can check the ECC supported processors on the Intel ARK.  You see it's only Xeons and low-end CPUs (server appliance market), but none in the Core i5 or i7 range.

Second, the SO-DIMM pinout simply lacks data pins for the 72 bit bus in order to shrink the size for laptops. Memory bus routing is very difficult and the extra 8 lines would also make it difficult for laptop motherboard manufacturers.

Many numerical simulations do not require ECC. Real-world tests have suggested that the extra cost and speed penalty of ECC isn't worth it. As another example, some companies even tell you to turn off ECC.


Since your device didn’t assign the name, it came from caller ID

Contact your carrier for details of how and why they vet those names or if they just let people feed data claiming to be whatever sender they want and easily spoof (Lie to) the caller ID system.

Your carrier and national cell phone regulator would be the people to look at if and how SMS naming is being regulated or if the carriers can do whatever they please in terms of naming and whether you get to know who sent that SMS.


Yes, it is indeed better than carrying around a laptop, because it is lighter, faster and instant-on "computer". Also great for taking notes during the meetings, answering emails if that is the sort of thing you do. The typing may be a bit difficult if you are too much used to the normal keyboard. Of course, you can attach the Bluetooth keyboard.
As Philip pointed out, iPad has Wifi, so you shouldn't be having any problems connecting to Wifi network, if your office has one. Also, with 3G you can stay connected even when you don't have the Wifi.
About the Remote Connection, iPad supports VPN networking if that is needed, and there are several applications on iPad that allow you to use it as a Remote Desktop. But I think it might be difficult thing to get used to - using touchscreen to control the mouse etc.

If you're on an environment which doesn't need custom applications that run on Windows/Computer, and you can get all your work done by just email and the browser, yes iPad can replace your netbook.


Cleaning the camera roll from my mom's iPhone 5s

You will need to go to the "Recently Deleted" album and remove them as necessary if your iOS version > 8.1.

To remove all photos in "Recently Deleted", tap "Select" at the top and then "Delete All" at the bottom.


As far as I know, you can't replicate this alert without enabling that option. If you do enable that option, you can cause a flash from Terminal using:

osascript -e "beep"

However, if you don't want to enable that option, you can use invert colours. Using the invert colours Accessibility option twice causes the screen to flash, therefore pressing the keyboard shortcut ⌃⌥⌘8 twice will cause a flash:

#!/usr/bin/osascript
tell application "System Events" to repeat 2 times
key code 28 using {command down, control down, option down}
delay 0
end repeat


How do I connect a late 2013 MBP Retina to two DVI monitors?

The Dual Link DVI adaptor is for connecting screens ~30" – not for connect multiple screens.

You would need to connect one via the Thunderbolt port and one via the HDMI port.


iPad Mail client - IMAP with X.509 client certificates?

See the comments above where the asker reports that they never got this to work.

So on iOS 5.1, X.509 certificates will not easily be of use to secure email on iOS without some engineering effort and perhaps not at all.


In the new Contacts Application for Mountain Lion there are no buttons for group management, only menu items.

Under the File Menu, there are New Group, New Group from Selection, and New Smart Group… menu items.

When you have a group selected, under the Edit menu there will be a Delete Group menu item available.

To be able to select groups, you need to be in the proper view under the View menu: Groups.


This might be a little late but I had the same problem. Went to the genius bar and they said to call Apple Care. I called Apple Care three times. The first two people said that there are other item which could be taking up space and couldn't provide a solution. The third one was more experienced and fixed the problem within minutes. She had access to the "iCloud support tools". This is a tool the Apple iCloud team has access to (but we as consumers don't). She used the iCloud storage repair kit and within minutes, my devices refreshed and the free space showed up. Apparently this problem occurs when you upload a file, it gets corrupted, then once deleted, iCloud doesn't recognise the space as being free. Hope this helps.


Did Apple remove the zooming feature from the Magic Mouse in a recent OS update?

Hold down cmd# while scroling then the magic mouse zooms.


Manage Finder favourites with defaults write or similar?

Some scripts for this:

https://www.jamf.com/jamf-nation/discussions/27814/finder-settings-script
https://www.jamf.com/jamf-nation/discussions/20218/the-slftool-thread (using repo below, I think)

And there is a relevant github that can manage these preferences as well:
https://github.com/mosen/mysides

[Edit: Seems like, due to a change with sfltool in 10.3, people are using this: https://github.com/robperc/FinderSidebarEditor ]


Play key opening iTunes even if Spotify is currently selected

I found this for you.

  Mac Media Key Forwarder

  Forwards media keys to iTunes or Spotify directly.

  You can prioritize which app you would like to control or you can go
  with the default behavior which controls the running app. The app
  runs in the menu bar.

It has some limitations.

It might not work on Mojave till (if) the developer fixes it.


Canon say that they are working on a fix. In the meantime, converting to a TIFF, removing the alpha channel and printing that works. (Just checked and it works fine for me MP640.)


SSH command has no -Z option - Obfuscated ssh client

Problem sovled. You can download obfuscated-openssh and compile it in MacOS to get a new ssh command.

Download it from https://github.com/brl/obfuscated-openssh.

Download and install gcc - http://www.mkyong.com/mac/how-to-install-gcc-compiler-on-mac-os-x/

$ sudo ./configure
$ make

If there are some errors while compiling it, remember to check this  https://discussions.apple.com/thread/2546848?start=0&tstart=0 (see details below)

$ export LDFLAGS="-L. -Lopenbsd-compat/ -fstack-protector-all -mmacosx-version-min=10.4 -lresolv"
$ ./configure
$ make

All done, you will have a new ssh. Check version.

$ ./ssh -v
OpenSSH_5.2p1, OpenSSL 0.9.8r 8 Feb 2011
usage: ssh [-1246AaCfgKkMNnqsTtVvXxYyz] [-b bind_address] [-c cipher_spec]
           [-D [bind_address:]port] [-e escape_char] [-F configfile]
           [-i identity_file] [-L [bind_address:]port:host:hostport]
           [-l login_name] [-m mac_spec] [-O ctl_cmd] [-o option] [-p port]
           [-R [bind_address:]port:host:hostport] [-S ctl_path]
           [-w local_tun[:remote_tun]] [-Z obfuscate_keyword]
           [user@]hostname [command]


How to accept incoming network connections in OS X 10.11 El Capitan?

Because of your builtin OS X firewall.

Go to System preferences -> Security -> Firewall and add "Word.app" in the "Firewall options" as exception.


Fill in suggestion in search without triggering search

Without jailbreaking, this is not possible. If you jailbreak, you can install Platinum which adds an i button to the right of each suggestion which can be tapped to add the suggestion to the search without the search taking place.


Installation of a Radeon 4870 Graphics card

If it's the 3,1 [Early 08] the connectors are just under the front fan assembly, near the top. Cables should already be in situ & just need disentangling.

Not sure on the earlier machines, but they haven't moved far from there on the 4,1 so it might be reasonably consistent across models

Picture, courtesy of iFixit of the 3,1 location...


Unable to restore/reinstall/erase from recovery

Probably the El Capitan installer tried to convert your traditional partition scheme to a CoreStorage volume and failed miserably.

Though a Logical Volume Group and a Physical Volume were built, it still misses a Logical Volume Family and at least one Logical Volume.

You may now either add a Logical Volume or revert to the traditional scheme:

Boot to Recovery Mode by holding cmdR
Open Terminal in the menubar Utilities->Terminal
enter diskutil cs list

To add a Logical Volume enter:

diskutil cs createVolume lvgUUID type name size
with lvgUUID: UUID of the Logical Volume Group. It's the first listed.

Example:

diskutil cs createVolume 0E37A07F-7123-4AE4-9C3C-D51D0C05E47E jhfs+ "Macintosh HD" 100g

This will create a 100 GB journaled HFS+ volume with the name "Macintosh HD". To create one Logical Volume using all available space in the Logical Volume Group the following should work instead of 100g: 100% or 250g

Quit Terminal, open Disk Utility and verify the new volume "Macintosh HD".
Then use Time Machine to restore the backup.

If the creation of the LV fails some inner structures of the LVG probably are corrupted and you have to delete the LVG.

To delete the Logical Volume Group enter:

diskutil cs delete lvgUUID with lvgUUID: UUID of the Logical Volume Group. It's the first listed.

In your case:

diskutil cs delete 0E37A07F-7123-4AE4-9C3C-D51D0C05E47E

Deleting the Logical Volume Group will automatically create one new classical JHFS+ volume with the name "Untitled" occupying all available space on the disk.

Quit Terminal, open Disk Utility, verify the volume "Untitled" and rename it by erasing it. Then use Time Machine to restore the backup.


Your icon files are stored in the .DS_Store file located in each folder.  This file is what contains the metadata of the folder including the custom icon, the icon spacing, etc.

What is a .DS_Store file?

Drop Box, does not sync this particular file.  According to their help guide .DS_Store is ignored:

This means that your custom icon won't get synced.  You will have to create the custom icon manually.


Symlinking /User/SpecialFolder to different drive creates Folder in Folder

This occurred because you already had something in your home directory called "Downloads" - the ln command is smart enough not to write over it, so instead created the symlink within it.

If you're starting from scratch you can mv ~/Downloads ~/Volumes/Data/; if you've already successfully copied your Downloads directory you can simply delete the old one in your home directory: rm -Rf ~/Downloads.

After that your original ln command should work. You shouldn't need to prefix it with sudo:

ln -s /Volumes/Data/Downloads ~/Downloads

Or, as fd0 suggested, instead of using rm you could use ln -s -f option to unlink the directory. Thus creating the desired results:

ln -s -f /Volumes/Data/Downloads ~/Downloads


Killing dock a couple times seemed to fix the problem:

killall Dock

In case Dock doesn't get restarted automatically run

sudo launchctl load System/Library/LaunchAgents/com.apple.Dock.plist
sudo launchctl start com.apple.Dock.agent


Login screen will not show list of users

Have you tried deliberately selecting the Name and password option in System Preferences > Users & Groups, rebooting, then re-selecting the List of users option, and then rebooting again?
In my experience, some munged-up preferences files (.plists) can be 'fixed' in this manner.


AppleScript to close "About this Mac" window

The window is shown by the loginwindow process, and you can close it by clicking the close button:

tell application "System Events" to tell process "loginwindow"
    click button 1 of window 1 -- or window "About This Mac"
end tell

close window 1 didn't work.


Late-2007 Mac Mini (A1176) Unsoldered Mystery Connector on Interconnect Board

There were rumors early in the mini's life that there was (at some point) supposed to be a built-in iPod Dock on the top. They were even supposed to have gotten far enough in the design that they left the headers for the USB and FireWire connections on the board. Those may be them. (Here's a The Register article on the subject.)

To my knowledge, nobody's proven or disproven this rumor. If you, in your explorations, find an answer, do post it here!


iTerm2 does not take the focus with the hotkey window

This one had me too. Just untick "Floating window" and restart iTerm2.

Full directions:

MENU: iterm2
MENU ITEM: Preferences...
TAB: Profiles
LIST ITEM: [Your Hotkey Profile Name]
TAB: Keys
BUTTON: Configure Hotkey Window
CHECKBOX: Floating Window <= UNCHECK THIS


This should help resolve the error 1015:

http://iphonerumors.blogspot.com/2010/11/bypassing-itunes-1004-1015-error-when.html


What is the expected durability of a Mac mini (2020) flash storage?

I've had my 2018 Mac mini with 512 GB since November 2018 (around 580 days). According to DriveDx, the on-board SSD has been powered on for 28 days, despite the fact that the Mac has been switched on almost permanently.
The drive has written a total of 17,1 TB of data, according to the SMART data from DriveDx. I've heard 300-600 TBW bandied about as a typical SSD lifespan. (300 for the blade on a 2014 MBP; 600 for a 2018 Samsung EVO NVMe.) In which case, I've used about 0.06% - 0.03% of the drive's writes.
So it should last me 26-52 years. You may be able to extrapolate a result based on your own usage.
If you are expecting to write 8 times the disk's size every month, then using a larger external drive, which can be replaced more cheaply if necessary, may be a safer/better option.


Where to place my pictures from a harddrive

If you use the Photos app, do not remove the Photo Photo Library.photolibrary directory.
You can place the pictures you have on your drive in the Pictures folder. What I would do is create a new folder inside Pictures and place my image files in there.
You can use the Photos app to browse your library in the directories you placed in the new folder under Pictures. If you would like to not use the Photos dedicated library, you can remove that option in the Preferences of Photos under General > Importing > Copy items to the Photos library. Make sure iCloud Photos is deselected under the iCloud tab in Photos.


Newly created alias should be activated constantly

Terminal opens a login shell. The config file is .bash_profile!

You either have to source .bashrc in .bash_profile or add the alias to .bash_profile.

The proper alias would be: alias l.='ls -dG .*' (to get rid of ls: --color=auto: No such file or directory!


Can anything cause the battery "cycles count" to appear higher than it really is?

A faulty sensor could do it. Apple says:

"A charge cycle means using all of the battery’s power, but that doesn’t necessarily mean a single charge. For instance, you could use your notebook for an hour or more one day, using half its power, and then recharge it fully. If you did the same thing the next day, it would count as one charge cycle, not two, so it may take several days to complete a cycle."

Looks like a good case for a visit to the Genius Bar, and perhaps having your battery replaced. I agree it does not seem at all plausible that your cycle count is higher than the days you have owned it.


There is a simple general explanation for why this happens: macOS will make shortcuts (aliases / sym links) to files that exist on a mounted disk Image or remote volume.

When you open that shortcut, the images get re-mounted assuming there are no password is needed or the credentials are cached in an unlocked keychain.

Now - you might need to do some work sleuthing why you are running files from those specific images, but the general idea is you can look around and worst case copy the DMG files to an external drive and delete them locally to see what things complain about a missing link / missing file when they run or open.

The most common case is you didn’t copy apps from the DMG to /Applications or a local folder and apps in the dock or elsewhere point at the DMG and not a local copy.


How to install older Xcode version from the App Store

if you have previously purchased the xcode version you are interested in, you can download it again from the purchased tab in the app store

and

"There are older versions of Xcode available at the Apple Developer website, but as long as you just use the latest non-beta version of the SDK, you should be fine. E.g. just use Xcode 3.2.5 and iOS 4.2 SDK. The NDA only covers the pre-release versions"

from https://stackoverflow.com/questions/4839526/where-to-download-older-xcode-versions


Can you use an iPhone 5 to call if you have internet service, but no cell service?

Assuming the WiFi connection has enough bandwidth for audio, you could install Skype and use SkypeIn/SkypeOut to be reachable via a phone number.


Platypus

Use Platypus to create an application from your bash script. This approach avoids needing to use AppleScript.

  Platypus is a developer tool that creates native Mac applications from command line scripts such as shell scripts or Perl, Ruby and Python programs. This is done by wrapping the script in a macOS application bundle along with an executable binary that runs the script.

Other Approaches

Mathias Bynens has an article on How to create simple Mac apps from shell scripts.

Also worth reading is the related question How to make a Mac OS X .app with a shell script?


Can one access all application data when given physical access to an iPhone?

The sandbox protects data from app A from being accessed by app B, it doesn't protect data against the OS or any OS-level access. And as has already been mentioned in the comments: Once an attacker gets physical access to a device, all bets are off anyway.
If you want to specifically protect data items you need to add encryption within your app to handle this.


The easiest solution to reach Blu-ray or DVD ISO on Mac is to digitize ISO image to readable file type for iMac, this is my suggestion.


Firmware Password Lock after Bootcamp Install

No - Firmware Passwords exist to prevent any non-approved boot methods and prevent you from bringing any other boot to the system.

It's like putting superglue in a deadbolt lock and only having the small lock on the handle. If the small handle (your normal OS) breaks - you can't get in by bringing another small handle - you need to release the deadbolt (firmware password).

Open a case with Apple Support to see if your firmware lock can be bypassed locally or you need to prove you own the Mac and have apple generate a rescue key.

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204455

  A firmware password prevents starting up from any internal or external storage device other than the startup disk you've selected.


Bluetooth module do not see any discoverable device

I've had the same things happen over the past 6 months (mine's a mid-2012, thought). I've tried to find out the root cause on many occassions - but I'm pretty sure it's a culmination of many, many different factors (wear and tear, bumps/drops, formatting drives repeatedly, etc.). Just found this though:

  § UHE Button Operation:
  Your Bluetooth USB adapter may have UHE button, this is applied in the condition
  when computer system is without BTW driver installed but need to make
  connection with Bluetooth enabled keyboard or mouse or any HID devices

I also use iTerm2, which is notorious for provisioning issues (can't have a worse problem when it comes to the command line).

Bluetooth gets in the way a lot (for me), so I've messed with the settings quite a bit. I wouldn't be surprised if the same was true for you. Likely through iTerm as well, which worsened the situation.

The largest cause seems to be from inconsistent settings, firmware upgrades, and the kernel issues that come with them. Doesn't take long for it to start taking a toll on the battery, power settings, and worsening kernel panics, kind of like this (old but relevant): https://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-t-506162.html

You will have to dig deep. But the issue is buried under some random setting, plugin, or other microscopic detail. Find the source, then patch the kernel appropriately.


This disk is your os x startup disk and appears to have been partitioned by another utility

Yah disk utility is bound and determined to not let you (or itself) potentially erase any more data, especially if it sees the signature of another disk partitioning utility. Welcome to the Wonderful World of Macintosh Computing... sigh.

Probably your best bet is to back up your Mac and Windows data (if not already) and boot the Mac from the COMMAND-R keyboard shortcut and wipe and reinstall from scratch. Your Ubuntu installer has gone and done some things to the partition table that Apple doesn't like and it is likely not going to be recoverable easily.

You could likely haunt the Ubuntu forums as I am sure this has been done and CAN be done. Heck there might even be someone around these parts with that experience.  But if you need the Mac back up and running ASAP the quickest way might just be to repartition and start from scratch.


How do I select a new SMTP "Primary Server"?

I haven't figured out a way to rearrange the servers so that a different one is the Primary, but I was able to work around it by simply tapping on the Primary server entry and change the details so that it points to the server that I want.  That way, the one I am actually using is the Primary.

As Christian said in the comments, it doesn't matter, because if I only have one server actually turned on, that is the one that Mail will use.


In addition to the "sleep corner" mentioned in Tetsujin's answer, there is also a small app out there called Caffeine which you can use to prevent the machine (and thus display as well) from sleeping. Note that it will even stop a laptop from sleeping when the lid is shut, so be sure to disable it. There are also alternatives like Amphetamine and Owly that seem to do the same thing, but I've only use Caffeine. All of them hit the same underlying OSX setting, apparently.


Is a person fully able to make use of iCloud's ability to store and sync documents in the cloud if a person is not a die-hard iWork user?

If you don't use iWork, iCloud will not help you very much for your documents and other files. On an iOS device, you can only open iWork files from iCloud. If you use any other file types, Dropbox would probably be the best alternative to iCloud.

Although Mountain Lion allows you to store other kinds of files on iCloud, the only benefit you get from that is cloud backup of those files. However, if you want more than 5 GB of space, you have to pay for it, so it's likely not worth it.

Update: I read that app developers now have the ability use iCloud to store files used by their apps. So, in the future, Microsoft could allow for you to have an iCloud library for MS Word files so that you could save them to iCloud on your Mac and then open them in your Microsoft Word application on your iPad (which doesn't exist). The catch is that the developer has to make the Mac app and the iOS app for this to be possible. So, as a counterexample, since Apple does not have a TextEdit app for the iPad, you can't open TextEdit files from iCloud on the iPad. Some company, though, could write a Mac app and an iOS app that allows you to edit text files from iCloud on any device.


Increasing available RAM on Bootcamp under Win7

First, let me explain the problem a little: in 32-bit mode, the processor can only address 4GB of stuff. The problem is that "stuff" doesn't just include RAM, it includes RAM and memory-mapped I/O, most notably the video card. Since your new iMac has a bigger, better video card (with more video memory), it takes up more of the 4GB address space and there's less left for actual RAM.

There are several ways to make more RAM accessible to your program:

Switch to 64-bit Windows. This allows the OS to address all of your RAM, and is really the right way to solve the problem. If you can't recompile your custom program for 64-bit mode, it should be able to run in 32-bit mode thanks to the WoW64 compatibility layer.

Downsides: you'll have to do a custom install of the OS (meaning you basically start from scratch). There's also still a possibility that the program won't work (most likely if it includes 32-bit device drivers), and in this case you'd have to do another custom install to get back to 32-bit Windows. So, while this is really the best solution, you might want to try the other options first.
Enable physical address extension (PAE). If the driver supports it, this'll allow the video memory to be mapped above the usual 4GB limit, allowing you to use more of that 4GB for RAM. I haven't used this, but it looks pretty easy to enable and disable, so I'd be tempted to try this first.
Enable 4-Gigabyte tuning. This shifts how the address space is allocated, giving applications more and the kernel less. I'm not sure how this'd work (or even if it would work at all) in your situation, but it is another possibility. It can also be used together with PAE, so you can try different combinations to see what works.


iPad Remote app with Apple TV 2 not remembering where I was in iTunes pane

My "Remote" app experience is somewhat similar, although I am usually connecting to iTunes on my Mac, not ATV.  There used to be a "Stay Connected" option in the app that's no longer there.  I too would love to find a way to "stay connected", so I can just jump back into Remote to see what's playing!


You can replace the colours in the default palette. Once you have set a cell to your preferred colour, drag the new colour from Current Fill to one of the palette slots:

This will replace the colour in the palette:


How Do Macbooks Automatically Connect to Xfinity Wifi

That information is in your keychain.

Just enter the name of the WiFi in the search box in key chain.

If you do not know the name look it up.

All the networks that your computer has ever joined are saved in System Preference > Networks > advanced.

UPDATE.....Xfinity WiFi is not actually called Xfintiy, it is called Comcast.

Use Comcast when searching in your keychain.

I just looked up mine and there it is, even so I do no longer use it.


What does it mean to sync apps to iPhone

This Apple Support article provides a quick summary of what syncing does. Basically, as XAlexOwnZX mentions, a sync copies applications, music, and other information between your iTunes account and your iDevice. This process backs up the content (apps, etc.) on your computer.

The advantage of syncing is that if your iPhone gets corrupted, you'll be able to restore it (or its replacement) to working condition, with all of the purchased content that is installed.

The disadvantage is that syncing takes time - however, with iOS 5, you can choose to sync over WiFi and you don't need to tether your iPhone to your computer.


Any Mac built in the last 10 years comes with Apache and PHP installed and ready to go. All you need to do is run one command to start apache (apachectl start) and un-comment 1-2 lines in httpd.conf. installing massive packages that leave you with multiple copies is NOT necessary.

If you want a friendly interface and a box to check, get Apple's Server application.


How to make the terminal auto-complete from the command history?

You may use reverse-search.
Just press ctrl+R and start typing your command, and then just press Enter.


How to show Hard Disk icon on Desktop via Terminal?

To show various drive icons on the desktop use the following commands in Terminal:

External hard drives:

defaults write com.apple.finder ShowExternalHardDrivesOnDesktop -bool true

Hard drives:

defaults write com.apple.finder ShowHardDrivesOnDesktop -bool true

Removable media:

defaults write com.apple.finder ShowRemovableMediaOnDesktop -bool true

(To complete all options available in the Finder preferences: mounted servers:)

defaults write com.apple.finder ShowMountedServersOnDesktop -bool true

Afterwards restart the Finder:

killall -HUP Finder

To disable showing the respective desktop icons simply replace true by false


VMware Fusion: Command + Tab window switching not focusing *inside* virtual machine

While I work from a Windows host to a Linux VM, I found the same issue.

The solution that VMWare offers is the key Ctrl + G.
On a Mac I'm assuming that would be Option + G.

Once my VMWare window has focus, pressing Ctrl + G will allow me to start using keyboard commands in the VM.

Your procedure would become pressing Command + Tab, then Option + G

Source:
https://www.howtogeek.com/howto/vmware/keyboard-shortcuts-for-vmware-workstation/

Hope it helps!


Are there any free alternatives to finder?

I don't know the good free alternatives, but PathFinder is the best file manager I have ever used, and probably one of the best desktop apps I've ever used. The features I use most

Bookmarks and multiple tabs
Multiple panes
Side panes with folder shortcuts
Drop stack

Most importantly, it's not clunky (relatively) and is very reliable. It was worth every cent I paid for it.


Is it possible to configure an iOS device to remember credentials for a Wifi SSID but NOT auto-join it?

There's isn't a great solution but one possible workaround is to set SSID A to use a non routing static IP and just switch it back to DHCP whenever you actually want to use it. Just click the circled i to the right of the network name and click the Static toggle.

You'll need to enter a valid (but non functional) static IP and Subnet Mask (I tested with 10.1.1.1 and 255.0.0.0) or it won't keep the static IP setting. This let's you keep wifi on all the time and never enter your password again.


How to install python3.7 on a mac (mojave using homebrew

The following procedure worked for me (in addition to the commands in the original question):
brew uninstall --ignore-dependencies python3
brew uninstall --force python#3.8
brew install python3

and adding the following line to .bash_profile:
alias python="python3"

For a Mac this was really easy! Only about 10 commands.


VirtualBox Share Guest Internet With Host

In order to get this working, you'll need to setup "Internet Connection Sharing" in the Windows 7 guest. You do it like this:

Open Control Panel => Network and Internet => Network and Sharing Center
Click Manage Wireless Networks in the left sidebar
Click on your USB WiFi connection, and then Adapter properties at the top
Select the Sharing tab and check "Allow other network users to connect through this computer's Internet connection"

Now your Mac host should be able to use your virtual connection to the guest to access the internet. If you want, you can set the host to use DHCP on that connection to get IP address, gateway and DNS information automatically.


Good work with the detailed error message. I would try to install just libpng with brew install libpng and then if that fails brew update && brew update && brew doctor just to check out common issues. ( I know you said you tried this - but it's not clear that you succeeded with that try)

The above recommendation is from https://github.com/Homebrew/brew/blob/master/docs/README.md#readme

That links to the Troubleshooting Checklist for if you find one package that fails you (looks like libpng from your logs so far).

  run brew gist-logs <formula> (where <formula> is the name of the formula that fails you).


How to remove a number from 'Recents' on iPhone, rather deleting all?

You will have to wait for iOS 5 to be able to do what you are asking. I'm running iOS 5 and I'm able to do this without a jailbreak.


Can I restore my new iPhone 5s 7.1.1 with my iphone 4s 7.0.4 itunes backup?

What happened was correct - the backup only contains your data (apps, contacts, messages, etc) not the operating system version. As your 5S had 7.1.1 installed, restoring your backup kept that iOS version but restored your data.

If you'd prefer to have iOS 7.0.4 on your 5S you'll need to install that version first (manually, using iTunes), then restore your 4S backup. You will then end up with a 5S running 7.0.4 with all your data.


How to copy pdf file to Books using File manager?

Go to the  PDF file of interest on your iPhone or iPad and tap on it to open it.. Go to the share icon at the top and click it. A pane opens and on the 2nd row of options, you'll see options like AirDrop, Messages, Mail, and others. Slide this row to the left and at the end of that row you'll see an option for "More". Click on that option. This brings up a new menu and you should scroll down this menu to the option "Open in Book". Click on this option. Your PDF will be displayed using Books. Tap on the page that is displayed on your screen and you'll get another share icon at the top of the display. Click on this share icon and on the panel that opens is an option to Copy to Books. Click this. Now a copy of the PDF is saved in Books.


Is it possible to add a symbol to the character palette?

The character palette simply gives you access to the characters in the fonts on your system.  To add something to it, you need to create a font with that character in it or add the character to an existing font.  Common font creation tools for OS X are Fontlab and Fontforge.  There are also some online services that may work (use Google to find them).


Can the default View settings for Spotlight "Show all in Finder" be changed?

It doesn't seem possible
Notice that when you switch to Finder search, the View > Show View Options does not display the option to set window viewing defaults like a regular Finder window does (a):

If you find the search inadequate and not just a cosmetic irritation, it may be useful to further refine your Finder search with additional filters that can be accessed from the filter buttons (b) or directly in the search bar.


UPDATE

I put my implementation here with install instructions:

https://github.com/dosentmatter/rainbow-bash-prompt

It uses the C implementation of lolcat but I modified it a little to make it psuedo-random.

OLD ANSWER

Here is how I did it. Add this to your .bashrc:

PS1_colorless=${PS1:-'\h:\W \u\$ '}

ESC=$(echo -e '\033')
SOH=$(echo -e '\001')
STX=$(echo -e '\002')
PS1_color_wrap='s/'$ESC'\\[[[:digit:];]*m/'$SOH'&'$STX'/g'

PS1="\$(lolcat -f <<< \"$PS1_colorless\" | sed '$PS1_color_wrap')"

It works by running lolcat dynamically on $PS1_colorless and doing a sed to add in control characters so line wrapping works correctly.

It takes a little less than 200 milliseconds to run. So it might be too slow for you. Here is an example I timed:

I chose to use PS1 and not PROMPT_COMMAND because I wanted to be able to use the bash prompt escape sequences such as \h, \W, etc. which wouldn't be possible with PROMPT_COMMAND since I need to pass it to PS1 for expansion before running lolcat. You can use alternatives like ${HOSTNAME%%.*} to imitate the behavior of \h but I don't think you can do it for something like

\#     the command number of this command

It uses -f to force lolcat to run even though the output is being piped to sed. lolcat defaults to not output anything if the output is not to a tty.

After doing the lolcat, it does a sed to surround the ansi color syntax such as ESC[38;5;184m (ESC is the control character \033) with the control characters SOH and STX so it becomes SOHESC[38;5;184mSTX. SOH and STX are just \[ and \] respectively in the bash prompt control characters. I have to use SOH and STX control characters instead of \[ and \] because I am generating colors dynamically. \[ and \] would not work because they are translated to control characters when PS1 is first parsed. \[ and \] would work if you used PROMPT_COMMAND to generate output for PS1 but then I wouldn't be able to use \u and \W because lolcat would have been run before passing \u to PS1 for expansion.

For reference:
https://stackoverflow.com/questions/24839271/bash-ps1-line-wrap-issue-with-non-printing-characters-from-an-external-command

Characters surrounded by SOH and STX are treated as non printing characters. This is required so line-wrapping works correctly and doesn't treat the ansi color as actual visible characters.

If you want to use literal non-printable control characters, you can replace

this

ESC=$(echo -e '\033')
SOH=$(echo -e '\001')
STX=$(echo -e '\002')
PS1_color_wrap='s/'$ESC'\\[[[:digit:];]*m/'$SOH'&'$STX'/g'

with this

PS1_color_wrap='s/^[\\[[[:digit:];]*m/^A&^B/g'

Note the ^[, ^A, and ^B are the literal control characters so you can't just copy and paste. You would have to use something like vim to enter them

In vim:

^[ == Ctrl+vEsc or Ctrl+vo033

^A == Ctrl+vCtrl+a or Ctrl+vo001

^B == Ctrl+vCtrl+b or Ctrl+vo002

EDIT (a little faster in python):
The python one seem to run a little bit faster:

Change these variables in your .bash_profile:

PS1_colorless=${PS1:-'\h:\W \u\$'}
PS1_newline="tr -d '\n'"
PS1_spacing=' '
PS1="\$(lolcat -F 6 -p 25 -f <<< \"$PS1_colorless\" | $PS1_newline | sed '$PS1_color_wrap')"
PS1+=$PS1_spacing

The python version has extra newlines in the output so I remove them with the tr. It also removes trailing spaces so I removed the trailing spaces from PS1_colorless and add them back with PS1_spacing.

You can get it here:
https://github.com/tehmaze/lolcat

I will update if I ever get the C port working:
https://github.com/jaseg/lolcat

I can't get it to build on mac os. If anyone can get it working on linux or mac os, please let me know.


How to take a screenshot of the same precise region with a key combo?

This is quite easy to do.

The Built in Screencapture has a command line option to capture a rect area. This is a rectangle with a screen coordinate point, width and hight,
 x,y,w,h

We can use this in an Automator.app Service workflow and then give the service that it creates a hotkey/shortcut in the keyboard services system preferences.

First we create the Service workflow in Automator.

Open Automator and a new Service Workflow document.

Set :

service receives: none
In : Any Application

Add a Run Applescript action.

Type or paste this code into the Run Applescript action, replacing the default code.

  set theDate to do shell script "date +%Y_%m_%d_%H%M%S"
set theTempPath to POSIX path of (path to desktop)
set thePath to theTempPath & "screenCapture_" & theDate & ".png"

do shell script "screencapture -R320,210,848,440 -tpng" & space & quoted form of thePath

The code above will create a timestamp string to add onto the end of the file name.

This serves two purposes, 1, you can visually see when they where taken, 2 and more important, the files will no be overwritten by the next capture as the name will be different.

-R320,210,848,440  is the Rect option: x,y,w,h

-tpng   is the file type format option: png

& space  we need a space between the options and the next part of the command.

**&quoted form of"  escapes spaces and illegal characters that the command line will error at if we do not guard against them.

& thePath  adds  the file output path which includes the file name

The ampersands &  are applescript syntax to say this and this.

Save the Service. You will be prompted to give it a name.

Now open the system Preferences and go to the keyboard system pref. Then the Shortcuts Tab and finally the services selection panel.

Scroll right down to the bottom to the General group

Select your service and give it a shortcut. ( remember to use one that does not clash with any other apps you have that use shortcuts: I show I used Cmd + shift +R, but I changed it in mine as I found a clash with Safari reader shortcut)

In most cases the shortcut will be picked up by apps straight away but some may need to be closed and reopened.

An aside:

The files are set to land on the desktop.

You can change this in a couple of ways.

But to save me adjusting this for everyone, the easiest thing to do is add a move finder items action

First add this bit of code to the end of the code above:

return (POSIX file thePath) as alias

This will pass on the file path to the next Automator action.

Then add a  move finder items action and choose your destination from it's dropdown menu.


Seeking OS X app recommendation: instant text entry

You can do this without any third party software. Just use Automator to create your own Service that appends the input string to any text file.

Open Automator and select to create a new Service that receives no input in any application.

From the Library, drag the Run AppleScript action to the area on the right, and use the following script code:

on run {input, parameters}
    return text returned of (display dialog "Enter some text:" default answer "")
end run

Then, add a Run Shell Script action that receives input to stdin, and replace the default script with the following:

cat >> /Users/danielbeck/notes.txt

Instead of /Users/danielbeck/notes.txt, specify any path.

Here's what it looks like in Automator:

Save as e.g. Add Note, and assign a keyboard shortcut in System Preferences » Keyboard » Keyboard Shortcuts » Services » General » Add Note

Here's the dialog box:

You can press Cancel, Escape, or Cmd-Period to cancel.

You can even change how the notes appear in the text file through changes to the Run Shell Script action. For example, you can use the following instead, if you reconfigure the Run Shell Script action to receive input as arguments instead:

echo $( date +"%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S" ) "$@" >> /Users/danielbeck/notes.txt

It will look like this in the resulting file:

2012-01-30 12:38:56 foo
2012-01-30 12:38:58 bar


I just looked at the user manual for my Macbook Pro (mid-2012), and discovered this info:

Storage Temperature:

-4 to 113 degrees Fahrenheit

Operating Temperature:

50 to 95 degrees Fahrenheit

According to the storage temperature, it looks like your -5 F is calling it a little too close.

This appears to be an online copy of the user manual I have.

Look here for more manuals.


Is there a Calendar program out there with features that can make the "days" be linked from 5am to 5am (one day), rather than from 12am to 12am?

If you change the start of a "day" to be 05:00, then it wouldn't really be a day anymore.   You're best bet may be to change your timezone to be 5 hours off.


Someone on Apple Discussions recommended you Delete "MJRecorderDevice.driver" located in /Library/Audio/Plug-Ins/HAL then reboot your system.


According this this link it is possible:

https://www.chrisnewland.com/solved-mac-osx-samba-cifs-through-ssh-tunnel-error-the-server-localhost-is-available-on-your-computer-364

  Finder identifies smb://127.0.0.1 as a local filesystem and refuses
  to mount port 445 even if you've set up an SSH tunnel using

-L 445:localhost:445

  The solution is to alias your lo0 interface to
     127.0.0.2 and Finder doesn't see this as a local address.

sudo ifconfig lo0 127.0.0.2 alias up

  Create the ssh tunnel and map to your    Samba / CIFS server

ssh user@remote -L 127.0.0.2:445:smbhost:445

  Now you can open the share in Finder

smb://user@127.0.0.2


As long as you have two different Apple IDs, I don't think there should be anything against registering for example two personally owned businesses (or sole proprietorships) with seperate developer accounts - even though both are owned by the same person. It might depend on the legal situation in your country/state.

The best way to find out is to contact Apple and ask them if they see any problems with having two accounts.

However I must note that there is no problem in releasing multiple apps on the same developer account. You can mix games and business apps in the same account without any problems.


Why do I see words when I press shift+esc on Chrome address bar?

That is normal, I think this was added when yosemite was released. Its basically predictive text for the mac. That shows up every time you press the esc key in a textfield. Hope this helps :)


Software to A) merge two faces into one and B) morph one into another for Mac?

A quick search gave me two promising applications:

Commercial: Creaceed Morph Age
Freeware: Norrkross MorphX

I believe that both do what you want.


Place page number in a Pages document using AppleScript

The pages are stored in ‘pages’. You can iterate over this with ‘repeat’.

tell application "Pages"
    activate
    tell document "Untitled.pages"
        repeat with i from 1 to number of pages
            set thispage to item i of pages
            (* do something
            -- variable i is the page number
            -- variable thispage is the page itself
            *)
        end repeat
    end tell
end tell


Shortcuts for # and $ not working on Turkish keyboard layout

A brief look around and it seems as though an third party application like Ukelele should help you map keys correctly for your keyboard.


Why is Adobe Acrobat using only one core for a heavy task, and how can I make it perform faster?

This is an Adobe issue. Namely, Adobe Acrobat Pro is not multithreaded and therefore cannot take advantage of multi-core CPUs.

Unfortunately, Adobe has been rather slow in implementing this across most of its software. For example, I refer you to Why is Illustrator throttled to 2% speed when it's in the background? in which Allan provides a great rundown on this (although in relation to Illustrator).

In terms of Adobe Acrobat, I refer you to Acrobat and multi core cpu support. Although this is nearly a couple of years old, it is still indicative of the current state of affairs.

In summary, there really isn't anything you can do except submit feedback to Adobe about this and hope they implement this soon.


If I understand your question and your comment correctly you are trying to achieve something like a local captive portal.

This can't be done with pf and a simple redirect. A lot more stuff and configuration is involved. Here (the link to bsdguides.org in the github readme doesn't work: correct link) you find an example how to do this in OpenBSD. The solution there may be adapted to OS X under certain circumstances.

The rule rdr pass inet proto tcp from any to any port 80 -> 127.0.0.1 port 8080 does the following:

rdr pass inet proto tcp from any to any port 80 -> 127.0.0.1 port 8080
|   |    |              |
|   |    |              #from any IP (all source IPs) to any IP (all destination IPs of the local machine)
|   |    |              from any to any
|   |    #IPv4 Protocol TCP
|   |    inet proto tcp
|   #allow
|   pass
#redirect from port 80 to localhost:8080
rdr                                     port 80 -> 127.0.0.1 port 8080

Or: any incoming (rdr only redirects incoming packets) IPv4 TCP traffic (on any interface) to port 80 from any IP to any IP (on any interface) of the local machine is passed and redirected to 127.0.0.1:8080.

The rule doesn't redirect requests from a local client machine for google.com:80 (i.e. 216.58.201.206:80) or 175.68.9.102:80 to 127.0.0.1:80 because neither of these IPs is an IP of the local (www-)server machine nor does the local (www-)server know of the requests.

This doesn't apply to outgoing traffic of the local machine because that's no incoming traffic. You have to loop this traffic first:

pf (Mac OS X) rule to redirect all traffic to a specific ip/port
OS X 10.8: redirecting locally initiated ssh connections to localhost:22


Auto-Populate A Pop-Up Menu in Numbers 3.5

I had the same sort of problem and with some help from people within the Apple Support community I came up with this solution. Hopefully it will work for you.

This is my list of players in sheet 1. In your case, the Players name would be the item codes.

Here is sheet where I want to information copied to.

The P# corresponds to the number next to the Players name in Sheet 1. If I enter a 1 and a 2 the names are filled in to the column to the left of the box.

This shows the formula required to transfer the players name from sheet 1 to sheet 2.

To take it a step further, when I fill in the Players winnings in Sheet 1 it also fills it in all the "Earnings" cells for that player in Sheet 2 using the formula shown below.

My list of players goes to 300 but the last 20 or so are empty. That way I can still add more names or in your case, item codes, to it.

This may be more complicated than you require but hopefully it helps you.


Cannot rename bluetooth device on my mac

It looks like this is bug that show only up for few users.
There is no current solution, I event tried manually changing alias name in plist file but it is short term(until you connect next time).

There is more and more people that are having this issue.

In my company we use Macs mostly and I am the only one having this issue.
There are already some support questions opened on apples forum:
https://discussions.apple.com/thread/7904717
https://discussions.apple.com/thread/7927709

I have even spent 2 hours on phone with apple and they are saying it is not a bug XD


Set Default Finder View and Arrange By Options

I can submit to you this partial answer, which achieves some of what you want, but not all.  No matter what combinations I attempted, Arrange By refuses to take on any initial default value other than None.  I tried for a couple of hours to solve this one, but gave up.  However, I thought you might still benefit from what I did manage to achieve.

The following steps set all folders to list view, and sort by Kind.  Although you wanted to have them sorted by Name and arranged by Kind, in the absence of being able to set a default value for Arranged By, what I found was that sorting them by Kind will do just that, whilst using the filename for secondary sorting.  That is, the files will be listed by file type, such as JPEGs, TIFFs, MP4s, etc., but within each group of, say, JPEGs, the files will be sorted by name.

1. Backup com.apple.finder.plist

cp ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.finder.plist ~/Desktop

2. Set top-level defaults using the defaults command

Default to list view:

defaults write com.apple.finder FXPreferredViewStyle Nlsv

Default Arrange By flags that don't seem to be effective:

defaults write com.apple.finder FXArrangeGroupViewBy kind
defaults write com.apple.finder FXPreferredGroupBy kind
defaults write com.apple.finder "FK_ArrangeBy" kind

3. Use PListBuddy to set nested defaults

/usr/libexec/PlistBuddy -c "Set :\"FK_StandardViewSettings\":ExtendedListViewSettingsV2:sortColumn kind" ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.finder.plist
/usr/libexec/PlistBuddy -c "Set :\"FK_DefaultListViewSettingsV2\":sortColumn kind" ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.finder.plist
/usr/libexec/PlistBuddy -c "Set :StandardViewSettings:ExtendedListViewSettingsV2:sortColumn kind" ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.finder.plist
/usr/libexec/PlistBuddy -c "Set :StandardViewSettings:ListViewSettings:sortColumn kind" ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.finder.plist

/usr/libexec/PlistBuddy -c "Add :\"FK_StandardViewSettings\":ExtendedListViewSettingsV2:arrangeBy string kind" ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.finder.plist
/usr/libexec/PlistBuddy -c "Add :\"FK_DefaultListViewSettingsV2\":arrangeBy string kind" ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.finder.plist
/usr/libexec/PlistBuddy -c "Add :StandardViewSettings:ExtendedListViewSettingsV2:arrangeBy string kind" ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.finder.plist
/usr/libexec/PlistBuddy -c "Add :StandardViewSettings:ListViewSettings:arrangeBy string kind" ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.finder.plist

/usr/libexec/PlistBuddy -c "Set :\"FK_StandardViewSettings\":ExtendedListViewSettingsV2:arrangeBy string kind" ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.finder.plist
/usr/libexec/PlistBuddy -c "Set :\"FK_DefaultListViewSettingsV2\":arrangeBy string kind" ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.finder.plist
/usr/libexec/PlistBuddy -c "Set :StandardViewSettings:ExtendedListViewSettingsV2:arrangeBy string kind" ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.finder.plist
/usr/libexec/PlistBuddy -c "Set :StandardViewSettings:ListViewSettings:arrangeBy string kind" ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.finder.plist

I initially had the first four set to name in an attempt to achieve the original objective.  Upon failure, I set them to all to kind to achieve the result I described.

Ignore any Entry Already Exists reports when running these commands.

4. Clear the .DS_Store files

sudo rm /.DS_Store
find ~ -name .DS_Store -type f -delete

5. Restart cfprefsd and Finder

killall cfprefsd
killall Finder

That's the best I can achieve for now.  Hopefully, someone else can build on my answer and give us the missing piece.


How to examine disks and their partitions via terminal?

Examine with

diskutil list
diskutil info /dev/disk0 (disk0s1 etc.)
sudo gpt -r show disk0
fdisk /dev/disk0 (make/change partitioning with MBR)
sudo gdisk -l /dev/disk0 (make/change partitioning with GUID)
refit Partition Inspector / gptsync

diskutil is the OS X program to get info on and change partitions.

$ diskutil list
/dev/disk0
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      GUID_partition_scheme                        *4.0 TB     disk0
   1:                        EFI EFI                     209.7 MB   disk0s1
   2:                  Apple_HFS iMac HD                 4.0 TB     disk0s2
BVs-iMac-3:~ bvimac$

gpt is the OS X program specialized for GUID partition tables (in contrast to MBR)

$ sudo gpt -r show disk0
       start        size  index  contents
           0           1         PMBR
           1           1         Pri GPT header
           2          32         Pri GPT table
          34           6
          40      409600      1  GPT part - C12A7328-F81F-11D2-BA4B-00A0C93EC93B
      409640  7812237856      2  GPT part - 48465300-0000-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC
  7812647496     1389639
  7814037135          32         Sec GPT table
  7814037167           1         Sec GPT header

fdisk is a program for several operating systems that manipulates master boot record partitioning tables.

$ sudo fdisk /dev/disk0
Disk: /dev/disk0    geometry: 219051/255/63 [3519069872 sectors]
Signature: 0xAA55
         Starting       Ending
 #: id  cyl  hd sec -  cyl  hd sec [     start -       size]
-----------------------------------------------------------------------

 1: EE 1023 254  63 - 1023 254  63 [         1 - 4294967294] <Unknown ID>
 2: 00    0   0   0 -    0   0   0 [         0 -          0] unused
 3: 00    0   0   0 -    0   0   0 [         0 -          0] unused
 4: 00    0   0   0 -    0   0   0 [         0 -          0] unused

gdisk is a program for several operation systems that minipulates GUID partition tables (like gpt, but not just OS X). It can be downloaded here.

$ sudo gdisk -l /dev/disk0
GPT fdisk (gdisk) version 1.0.1

Warning: Devices opened with shared lock will not have their
partition table automatically reloaded!
Partition table scan:
  MBR: protective
  BSD: not present
  APM: not present
  GPT: present

Found valid GPT with protective MBR; using GPT.
Disk /dev/disk0: 7814037168 sectors, 3.6 TiB
Logical sector size: 512 bytes
Disk identifier (GUID): 5782184C-C4EA-47D2-9039-F1564F7735F3
Partition table holds up to 128 entries
First usable sector is 34, last usable sector is 7814037134
Partitions will be aligned on 8-sector boundaries
Total free space is 1389645 sectors (678.5 MiB)

Number  Start (sector)    End (sector)  Size       Code  Name
   1              40          409639   200.0 MiB   EF00  EFI System Partition
   2          409640      7812647495   3.6 TiB     AF00  iMac HD

diskutil can be ised to get more information on the whole disk0 and its subsequent partitions disk0s1 and disk0s2.

$ diskutil info /dev/disk0
   Device Identifier:        disk0
   Device Node:              /dev/disk0
   Part of Whole:            disk0
   Device / Media Name:      ST4000DX001-1CE168 Media

   Volume Name:              Not applicable (no file system)

   Mounted:                  Not applicable (no file system)

   File System:              None

   Content (IOContent):      GUID_partition_scheme
   OS Can Be Installed:      No
   Media Type:               Generic
   Protocol:                 SATA
   SMART Status:             Verified

   Total Size:               4.0 TB (4000787030016 Bytes) (exactly 7814037168 512-Byte-Units)
   Volume Free Space:        Not applicable (no file system)
   Device Block Size:        512 Bytes

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

   Whole:                    Yes
   Internal:                 Yes
   Solid State:              No
   OS 9 Drivers:             No
   Low Level Format:         Not supported

$ diskutil info /dev/disk0s1
   Device Identifier:        disk0s1
   Device Node:              /dev/disk0s1
   Part of Whole:            disk0
   Device / Media Name:      EFI System Partition

   Volume Name:              Not applicable (no file system)

   Mounted:                  Not applicable (no file system)

   File System:              None

   Partition Type:           EFI
   OS Can Be Installed:      No
   Media Type:               Generic
   Protocol:                 SATA
   SMART Status:             Verified

   Total Size:               209.7 MB (209715200 Bytes) (exactly 409600 512-Byte-Units)
   Volume Free Space:        Not applicable (no file system)
   Device Block Size:        512 Bytes

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

   Whole:                    No
   Internal:                 Yes
   Solid State:              No

$ diskutil info /dev/disk0s2
   Device Identifier:        disk0s2
   Device Node:              /dev/disk0s2
   Part of Whole:            disk0
   Device / Media Name:      iMac HD

   Volume Name:              iMac HD
   Escaped with Unicode:     iMac%FF%FE%20%00HD

   Mounted:                  Yes
   Mount Point:              /
   Escaped with Unicode:     /

   File System Personality:  Journaled HFS+
   Type (Bundle):            hfs
   Name (User Visible):      Mac OS Extended (Journaled)
   Journal:                  Journal size 311296 KB at offset 0x3a3c000
   Owners:                   Enabled

   Partition Type:           Apple_HFS
   OS Can Be Installed:      Yes
   Media Type:               Generic
   Protocol:                 SATA
   SMART Status:             Verified
   Volume UUID:              1819AB9E-CACA-3408-8F03-B3ADBEEABC5B

   Total Size:               4.0 TB (3999865782272 Bytes) (exactly 7812237856 512-Byte-Units)
   Volume Free Space:        3.8 TB (3820305375232 Bytes) (exactly 7461533936 512-Byte-Units)
   Device Block Size:        512 Bytes

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

   Whole:                    No
   Internal:                 Yes
   Solid State:              No

refit is a bootmanager (that is currently not maintained any more) that comes with a tool, which is called gptsync or Partition Inspector. Its output looks like this:

*** Report for internal hard disk ***

Current GPT partition table:
 #      Start LBA      End LBA  Type
 1             40       409639  EFI System (FAT)
 2         409640     98749479  Mac OS X HFS+
 3       98749480    100019015  Mac OS X Boot
 4      156317696    234440703  Basic Data

Current MBR partition table:
 # A    Start LBA      End LBA  Type
 1              1       409639  ee  EFI Protective
 2         409640     98749479  af  Mac OS X HFS+
 3       98749480    100019015  ab  Mac OS X Boot
 4      156317696    234440703  0c  FAT32 (LBA)

MBR contents:
 Boot Code: Unknown, but bootable

Partition at LBA 40:
 Boot Code: None (Non-system disk message)
 File System: FAT32
 Listed in GPT as partition 1, type EFI System (FAT)

Partition at LBA 409640:
 Boot Code: None
 File System: HFS Extended (HFS+)
 Listed in GPT as partition 2, type Mac OS X HFS+
 Listed in MBR as partition 2, type af  Mac OS X HFS+

Partition at LBA 98749480:
 Boot Code: None
 File System: HFS Extended (HFS+)
 Listed in GPT as partition 3, type Mac OS X Boot
 Listed in MBR as partition 3, type ab  Mac OS X Boot

Partition at LBA 156317696:
 Boot Code: None
 File System: Unknown
 Listed in GPT as partition 4, type Basic Data
 Listed in MBR as partition 4, type 0c  FAT32 (LBA)


Open iTunes, go into preferences, Devices tab , and make sure that the prevent iPods, iPhones, and iPads from syncing automatically! Checkbox is not checked


Why does Airport Extreme disable LAN interfaces in client mode?

Short Answer

This is a security-related limitation of the 802.11 standard. The 802.11n-capable AirPort Express has a fancy feature to work around this limitation, but the AirPort Extremes and Time Capsules do not.

Long Answer

The IEEE 802.11 standard requires the Access Point (AP) to require each wireless station (STA) to authenticate and "associate" to the AP before the AP can process real network traffic from the STA. STAs are identified by their wireless Media Access Controller (MAC) address (a.k.a. "AirPort ID", hardware address, etc.).

Simple network bridge devices don't change the MAC addresses on network frames.  So if the AirPort Extreme tried to simply bridge traffic from the wired Ethernet devices on its LAN ports, those frames would still have those wired devices' source MAC addresses on them, and since those MAC addreses had never authenticated and associated with the AP, the AP would drop those frames for security reasons. Because this mode of joining an AP doesn't allow the Extreme to bridge frames from wired clients on its LAN port, the Extreme disables its LAN port to help users get the hint.

The 802.11 spec provides a standard way around this. It's called Wireless Distribution System (WDS). But WDS was under-specified in the 802.11 spec, lacks several important mechanisms, and various vendors' implementations aren't guaranteed to interoperate. So Apple chose to only officially support WDS between Apple AirPort Extreme, Express, and Time Capsule devices. So this isn't a solution for you if your AP is non-Apple. It's possible you could set it up manually and it may happen to work just fine, but Apple won't help you if it doesn't.

With the 802.11n-capable Extremes, Expresses, and Time Capsules, Apple provided an Apple-enhanced version of WDS that they just call "Extend the network", to provide the needed protocol mechanisms that bog-standard 802.11 WDS lacks. But again, no third party devices do this, so it's just and Apple-to-Apple thing.

The 802.11n-capable AirPort Express (note: not Extreme, just Express) has one special advantage here. It can do something an 802.11 engineer might call "Proxy STA" mode, where it not only joins a third-party AP was a STA, but it also spoofs the MAC addresses of all the wired Ethernet devices out its LAN port and performs 802.11 authentication and association as a proxy for those wired Ethernet devices, which allows the Express to bridge frames from those clients without the AP dropping them for security reasons. To the AP, all those MAC addresses looks like separate wireless clients; it has no idea that the Express is actually proxying for them all.


Yes - premature ejection can cause these ghosts.

You would need to script a cleanup that uses df and diskutil list and ls /Volumes to remove the ghost entries.

I typically do this by hand as it happens very infrequently to me.


Why are there so many Java files in my "All My Files" section in Finder

In Eclipse preferences choose whether to auto-save or not.

Instructions found here http://help.eclipse.org/luna/index.jsp?topic=%2Forg.eclipse.jdt.doc.user%2Freference%2Fpreferences%2Frun-debug%2Fref-launching.htm

and here
http://eclipsesource.com/blogs/2012/10/26/top-10-tips-how-to-be-more-productive-with-the-best-ide/


itunes software update ignore isn't working

Since iTunes uses web kit and html to work in the store, you might actually need it for the software to function.

If the app still works for your needs, you can safely ignore the message, but if you don't use that browser, why not just update it and let iTunes be happy?


Upgrading to OSX High Sierra breaks Terminal hot key functionality

The Terminal settings allow you to escape this hell.

Terminal > Preferences (or Cmd-,) > General:

Second to last item: "Use Cmd-1 through Cmd-9 to switch tabs"

Unselect this option and it all goes back to how it was before!


If you use contents, it will tell you where they are.


How to find the location of an icon file on OS X?

I couldn't find that exact icon because I wasn't able to produce such a certificate file. If you can tell me where to find such a file, I might have better luck.

I was, however able to find a similar image. It's located at /System/Library/Frameworks/SecurityInterface.framework/Versions/A/Resources/CertLargeStd.png (at least for Mac OS 10.8.2) and it looks like this:

(CertLargeStd@2x.png is the one used on Retina screens.)

This is the image shown when you view a certificate in Keychain Access or Safari:

To find this image, I opened up the Safari panel above. I examined Safari's open files via Activity Monitor, and the image in question was there.


How does iOS delete a file technically and can it potentially be undeleted?

I believe in Unix the file system is modified as you suggest (the entry is removed from the file system table). On Windows the file system table is modified, and the file is just flagged as deleted - data recovery tools can undelete the file. Having looked at Windows undelete applications I think the file name is also modified, so when undeleting, you need to supply the correct file name. Modifying the file name would mean if you created a file with the same name as the one you just deleted, the OS wouldn't have to reconcile there being two files with the same name.

MacOSX and Windows have a trash can (recycle bin) which I think is implemented a special folder into which the deleted files are copied. When you empty the trash, this folder is purged - by modifying the system file table. If you use NSFileManager, it circumvents the trash can (which doesn't exist on iOS anyway) so it's a real delete. likewise if you "rm" from a terminal window.

If you create a new file with the same name as the old one, in Unix it's just a new entry in the system file table, but since the old entry had been removed from the table, there wouldn't be an advantage to creating the new entry.

That's my belief, and I'm ready for the onslaught of down votes ;-)


Can I set up two Samsung monitors to my mac book air mid 2012?

No.

USB does not generally have the bandwidth for video data.

https://support.apple.com/kb/sp650?locale=en_US

This MacBook Air only additional supports one display via the thunderbolt port.

  Dual display and video mirroring: Simultaneously supports full native
  resolution on the built-in display and up to 2560 by 1600 pixels on an
  external display, both at millions of colors


By default, no.

But it wouldn't be that hard to record the name (or perhaps using the voices in VoiceOver Utility to speak them), turn that into a ringtone, and then apply it to the specific contacts you have via the Address Book as a custom ringtone.

It's a bit of legwork, but it's a clean way of doing it and won't require any outside software or hacking of the device.


Sierra 10.12.3 set default keyboard language input for whole OS

You can disable/enable the occurrence of the input menu in the login window in System Preferences > Users & Groups > Login Options > Show input menu in login window.

Admin privileges are required to change the setting though!


Internal Mic Option Disappears when using Apple Earbuds

As long as you don't plug the earbuds in all the way, you can still use the built-in mic. The catch is that you'll only get audio in one ear of the earbuds.


How do I re-authorize Quicktime Player to use the microphone when once it has been denied?

Go to System Preferences > Security & Privacy > Privacy > Microphone, unlock the preference pane by clicking the padlock symbol at the bottom left of the window and tick "QuickTime Player.app", which should be listed without a tick mark in its checkbox.

If QuickTime Player.app is missing, you should be able to reset all decisions you made for the various applications that asked for access to your Microphone by quitting System Preferences, opening Terminal (to be found in /Applications/Utilities/, or search via Spotlight) and running the following command:

tccutil reset Microphone

...then press enter.

This should clear all applications from the Microphone section and after launching QuickTime Player, it should ask for permission to the microphone all over again.


Why is my MacBook Pro slow? (2010 model)

Aside of getting more RAM, you can do following.

Disabling the flash in your Firefox will save you some.

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/flashblock/

To your third question:
On my OS x 10.8 the "kernel" alone uses 1 gig already!! so you are definitely running short on RAM.

Just get another 2 Gig and see it fly.


I selected the "Table of Contents" in "View Menu" and searched again. It is working. Check the screenshot:

Anyway, make sure that your PDF contains texts and not the image of some texts.


Time Machine restore to new partition, different computer

By default, the Mac will always mount all non-hidden partitions - so both partitions will automatically mount to both OSes, whichever you boot from, even when each contains a different OS.
You can set each to not mount when the other OS is 'in charge' by tweaking a file known as fstab in each OS separately; but we'll come to that later...
First thing to ensure is that your two partitions have different, recognisable names - it will save a lot of trouble later.
Then you need to get Mavericks onto the new partition.
On first boot after installation it will ask if you wish to Migrate from another machine. That's your time to feed it the Time Machine backup of your MacBook Pro.
By the time it's finished, your Mavericks partition will be a usable 'copy' of your Macbook.
To determine which it will boot into at any given time, you can set that in System Prefs > Startup Disk. That will set the default OS that it will boot into.
To boot into the other on just a single occasion, hold  Alt ⌥  at the startup chimes & choose it from the drive icons that will appear [You may also see Recovery at that point too]
Once you are sure that each will boot when requested, then you can set your fstab file to not mount the other drive in each case.
Changing the fstab file to hide a partition is just a 'simple task' of adding one line of text to a text file; one on each boot partition. This 'simple task' is unfortunately complicated by a couple of factors...
Firstly, because you don't 'own' the file the system will try to stop you from writing to it.
To get around this, we drag the file to the desktop & work on the copy that is made there.
It's also in a hidden location, so it's not easy to get to, so we need to start by making it visible…
Late Edit: Since perhaps High Sierra, you can enable hidden file visibility simply by key command from Finder -  Cmd ⌘   Shift ⇧   .  (stop/period), thus avoiding all the defaults write below
If you need to use fstab frequently, add yourself to the ACL, which saves having to work on a copy each time

Open Terminal [Applications/Utilities]

Type
defaults write com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles YES
& hit Enter [You can copy/paste]
Right click the Finder icon in the Dock & select Relaunch. This will make the Finder disappear, then reappear showing all the hidden files [We'll revert this at the end.]

In Finder, navigate to *current boot drive*/etc/fstab
etc is an alias, & the fstab file may or may not exist. If it doesn't we can make a new one.
Drag fstab to the desktop, it will make a copy. If no fstab file exists, you can just make a new file from Terminal by typing
touch ~/desktop/fstab
& one will appear on the desktop.

In Terminal - Type
diskutil info *partition name of other partition*
& hit Enter
We are looking for the UUID of the other partition here - the one you want to hide when you are booted into this one, so for instance from Mountain Lion you're looking for
diskutil info Mavericks HD

Find the line that says Volume UUID & copy the long number that looks like this 20F8C09F-9609-39BD-9C47-D82DCC98ECDE [Ignore the one underneath it that looks similar]

Open your desktop copy of fstab in TextEdit

Add a new line to the fstab file like this, but using your copied UUID -
UUID=C126C736-1585-3D12-9CF1-F95EFF0CF744 none hfs rw,noauto
Ignore any existing lines that may be present, just add your new one underneath.
Save.

Fix the ownership on the new version of fstab by typing
sudo chown root:wheel ~/desktop/fstab
Terminal will ask for your password before proceeding.

Delete the existing fstab file from etc/ & then drag the new one into place. Password will be required.

Repeat that process on the other partition, first by finding its own fstab file, then adding to it the UUID of your current boot partition - so each boot drive will hide the other one.

Once completed & satisfied that it actually works, hide the 'invisible' files again -
defaults write com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles NO
then relaunch the Finder once more.

If you ever need to see the other partition later, you can always mount it manually from Disk Utility.


Cant buy new, download or update existing purchased free apps from cloud via iTunes 12.3.0.4?

The help article has several options - these are the ones you can check:

Set the date/time on your PC to match an internet time server
Check anti-virus / firewall software on the PC
Sign out of the app store on iTunes and then sign back in

Barring that, you might need to get at the debug or error logs for the App Store - http://www.apple.com/support/itunes/store/ or AppleCare can help. Maybe someone else can edit in where the logs are on a PC.


Does QuickTime automatically record stereo audio into mono?

I'm having the same issue (Scarlett i2i USB hardware):
Can't get QuickTime to record in stereo
I confirmed that Audacity records in stereo - even at the same time as QuickTime records in mono.
I called Apple and they were pretty clueless. It's possible (and painful) to detach the audio track from the QuickTime movie and attach the Audacity track instead - iMovie can be cajoled to do it reluctantly. I haven't found a better solution yet.


Rhythm Sight Reading Trainer seems to do the job.

It's able to use microphone as an input device and other apps like Beatly or CrossBeat offer tap input only.


USB keyboard temporarily not responding after wake from sleep

Since it’s intermittent, I would suspect a slow disk or just a lot of CPU and the bus is failing. Any chance you could move to an SSD for faster sleep wake or triage / isolate all other usb devices or check that device on another computer?


Can I have 2 different networking interfaces active at the same time to increase my available bandwidth?

Usually your NIC priority is in effect to determine which interface to use preferentially. So either your built-in ethernet or your wireless card leads depending on your gateway settings to a target. Both may be in effect but not at the same time to one and the same target.

However a second ethernet card added to an expansion slot (e.g. ExpressCard/34) may be bonded to your internal ethernet card. This is known as Link Aggregation or Port Bonding and Port Teaming. Both have to master LACP (Link Aggregation Control Protocol) or IEEE 802.1ax and IEEE 802.3ad though. And the switch at the other end needs to support it also and usually has to be configured for it on your two ports.

The latest Mac Pro as well as the older ones with 2 NICs are capable of doing such right out of the box.


Attaching files and not wanting them embedded into email body

Using the Terminal.app you can set a default to turn off inline previews of attached files. The command to issue is:

defaults write com.apple.mail DisableInlineAttachmentViewing -bool yes

You only need to issue this command once per user. Be sure to quit Mail.app first and relaunch Mail.app afterwards; otherwise the changed default may not be seen.


emond keeps me locked out of my server via SSH

emond (Event Monitor Daemon) is just a "proxy" here. Based on several rules the daemon initiates several actions like logging events, sending emails or blocking hosts or users with the help of afctl activating the pf-anchor here:
/Applications/Server.app/Contents/ServerRoot/private/etc/pf.anchors/400.AdaptiveFirewall.

The rule for the adaptive firewall is located at

/Applications/Server.app/Contents/ServerRoot/private/etc/emond.d/rules

and is named AdaptiveFirewall.plist.

To modify the rule afctl is the mean of choice.

To run afctl enter:

sudo /Applications/Server.app/Contents/ServerRoot/usr/libexec/afctl

The following list contains all avaible commands:

-a ip_address [-t ttl] adds the given IPv4 or IPv6 address to the blacklist for ttl minutes
-r ip_address          removes the given ip address from the blacklist
-w ip_address          adds the given ip address to the whitelist
-x ip_address          removes the given ip address from the whitelist
-d                     disables all firewall rules managed by afctl
-e                     enables all firewall rules disabled by -d
-c                     self configure, populates the whitelist
-T failure_threshold   sets the threshold of bad auth attempts for a single host
-H default_ttl         sets the default block time
-X                     disables the adaptive firewall
-f                     enables the adaptive firewall and forces it into an active state

To change the block time enter:

sudo /Applications/Server.app/Contents/ServerRoot/usr/libexec/afctl -H time

To change the failure threshold enter:

sudo /Applications/Server.app/Contents/ServerRoot/usr/libexec/afctl -T number

To whitelist an ip enter:

sudo /Applications/Server.app/Contents/ServerRoot/usr/libexec/afctl -w ip-address

To check if your whitelist is properly populated open /var/db/af/whitelist.
It should contain all IPv4/v6-addresses - 127.0.0.1 included - of your server as well as your DNS-server and all other IP which have to be white-listed.

You probably have to re-configure and activate it afterwards with:

sudo /Applications/Server.app/Contents/ServerRoot/usr/libexec/afctl -c
sudo /Applications/Server.app/Contents/ServerRoot/usr/libexec/afctl -f

All entered values don't seem to give precise results.
E.g. after entering

 sudo /Applications/Server.app/Contents/ServerRoot/usr/libexec/afctl -T 3

I experienced blocks after 1-4  failed password attempts and the real block time may vary widely.


Is it better for iOS to sync Gmail contacts using Exchange ActiveSync or the CardDAV protocol?

I used Active Sync since I got my very first iPhone, and switched to CardDAV the day Google announced support for it. I can say without a doubt CardDAV is the way to go

With CardDAV, you will get you much more accurate synchronization than with Active Sync. First, as has been mentioned, you can synchronize more than 3 e-mail addresses. In fact, I have 31 e-mail addresses myself, and they finally all sync up with my iPhone. Even more importantly, two-way sync works now. If you make an edit on your iPhone, it won't clobber the field in your Google Contacts. For instance, editing e-mail addresses on your iOS device won't change their labels in Google Contacts to Other instead of Home, Work, and whatever custom fields you might have had.

In particular, custom fields are preserved in both directions. This is especially important if you want to use Siri to "Send an e-mail to my brother". The Brother field in Google Contacts was not correctly imported into iOS through Active Sync, and if you allowed Siri to save who your brother was in your contacts, the import back into Google Contacts mangled everything up, including all other fields that you did not edit.

Finally, phone numbers also all sync in both directions without trouble using CardDAV.

To me, two-way editing (or the lack thereof) was the biggest problem with Active Sync. I never, ever edited any contacts on my iPhone using Active Sync because I didn't want to have to fix all the fields on a desktop later on. Now I can do it freely and haven't noticed any data corruption.

The main gripe people have concerning CardDAV is the lack of push. However, for me Active Sync push was so slow anyway that the slight delay of Fetch barely makes a difference. Plus, my experience with the reliability of Push has been less than stellar (connections that die and are never re-established, primarily). I've found the polling model to be far more robust.

What you may want to avoid while using CardDAV is updating a contact in Gmail or on your iPhone, then immediately updating the same contact in the other. This will likely cause one of your modifications to get overwritten by the modification made in the other direction.

Update 1: The one oddity I've found in two-way syncing relates to the Google Voice phone number type. For some reason it doesn't sync correctly in either direction (it becomes "Phone" on your iOS device when entered in Google Contacts, and Other in Google Contacts when entered from an iOS device). My only guess can be that the field has a special meaning to Google.

Update 2: There is another strangeness with the iPhone phone number type. It will make it to your iOS devices correctly if entered as such from Google Contacts. However, if you specify iPhone as a phone number type from an iOS device, Google Contacts will change that to Mobile. The iOS device that originally specified iPhone will retain it as its phone number type until that contact is updated again from either Google Contacts (without first changing the phone number type to iPhone) or from another iOS device. I recommend only entering iPhone as a phone number type from Google Contacts. Contacts with that phone number type should also only be edited from Google Contacts if you care about listing iPhone as their mobile phone number.


Your trackpad is most likely bad.  It's not unheard of, after all, it is a mechanical device to some extent.

It could be either it's just worn out or there may have been some sort of liquid spill like juice that is causing it to become "sticky" (I personally repaired this condition).

There is the possibility that the battery may be swollen (you may have to examine it when the back cover is off; even remove the battery).  If that's the case, you will also want to replace the battery.  I recommend getting one with at least an 18 month warranty.

You can get a replacement trackpad fairly inexpensively, but it will take some effort - you will have to remove the battery.  Ifixit.com has an excellent step-by-step guide to walk you through.

As you can see in the pictures, once you have the back cover off, you can gain access to the battery.  After you remove the battery, you then have access to the trackpad.

This is not a difficult repair, but detail oriented.  If you take your time, you should be able to accomplish this.  If not, any reputable repair shop can tackle this for you.


How do I remove my birthday from Skype for iPad?

If Skype saved that data to their servers, you would need to contact them or delete that account.
If it only saved to the Skype app, you might be able to delete the app and hope it clears on reinstall.
More specific guidance will be challenging to provide since we don’t know versions of the OS or App or even which country your account is managed. Most big companies handle accounts differently based on legal requirements and whether you disclose you are a minor or adult, etc...


What does it mean when folder items are shown in bold lettering in Finder?

It makes it bold when the file name is truncated due to lack of space. If you move the horizontal bar to the right to see the full name it will un-bold.


This page suggests that the feature exists in Mail under Lion. The feature, however, does not appear to exist, either as a toolbar option, nor as a Message menu command, nor as a context menu command, nor as an item in the Help file for Mail. The aforelinked document says "Lion" in its title, but refers to Mail 4.0; the Mail program under Lion is Mail 5.1.

This may or may not have anything to do with Apple's acknowledgement that bounce does not always dissuade spammers.


⌥ + ⌘ + ⏏ will put the computer to sleep. Then, if you have "Require password [immediately] after sleep or screen saver begins" checked under System Preferences ➔ Security ➔ General, it will prompt you for a password when it wakes up.


Empty trash with open files, MacOs Sierra

VLC maintains its own cache of media that it is playing. This means if the original media is temporarily unavailable, such as on a network drive over a poor network connection, the file can continue playing for a while until the network connection is re-established. This also means VLC isn't accessing the actual file, meaning VLC can play partially downloaded media, but also means you can delete the file without Finder complaining that the file is in use.


Once you get your hands on the iPhone, put your SIM card in it, do a full reset, and after it restarts go through the initial setup phase - until you get to the main screen with the apps on it.

Make sure you have a mobile phone signal (3G or 4G or whatever). That will tell you that the phone will work with your SIM.

It will also have activated the phone during that initial setup.

If the phone was previously assigned to another iCloud account, it may prompt you for the password for that account during that process. If the seller does not have the password, hand the phone back because it's a brick. And probably a stolen brick at that.

After that, you're pretty much OK.


How to remove space character (whitespace) from end of filenames and foldernames?

Here's the script to find and remove trailing space from files and dirs:

#!/bin/bash

IFS=$'\n'
for file in $(find -d . -name "* ")
do
  target_name=$(echo "$file" | sed 's/[ \t]*$//')
  if [ "$file" != "$target_name" ]; then
      if [ -e "$target_name" ]; then
          echo "WARNING: $target_name already exists, file not renamed"
      else
          echo "Move $file to $target_name"
          mv "$file" "$target_name"
      fi
  fi
done


open http://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/210601/open-a-bookmark-in-safari-from-terminal

Will open this page (in the default browser).


How to force Pages to explain a grammar correction

Pages doesn't always give the best explanation but the explanation can be found in

Edit > Spelling & Grammar > Show Spelling & Grammar


The podcast app is displaying the incorrect subscribed podcast

Note that all the podcasts getting mixed up are hosted on Libsyn. There appears to be an issue with certain international CDN's caching rss feeds incorrectly, or so say Libsyn. They have got to fix this issue once and for all. It's still happening to us in 2018.


Using Find my iPhone to track my daughters phone

Only the main Apple ID on the device (the one that has iCloud backups available) is available to log in to Find my iPhone. Any secondary iCloud accounts added to the device can not be used to track the device.

If she doesn't mind that her Apple ID won't be the main one, then yes, you can set it up with your Apple ID as the main one and that will work fine.

Also, if she doesn't mind, you can log in with her Apple ID.

If not, you can use Find my Friends since this works across multiple Apple IDs.


Safari search bar searches with random search engines

Assuming that everything's on the up-and-up with your ISP, this kind of behavior typically is a result of some connection failure between your ISP and Google ("Hmmm, I can't find Google, so I'll route this to our search engine instead.") - and in my experience it's most often due to DNS issues.

One easy way to figure out if it is due to DNS issues is change what DNS servers your network connects to. Two options are Google itself (8.8.8.8 and 8.8.4.4 for IPv4 service or 2001:4860:4860::8888 and 2001:4860:4860::8844 for IPv6) or OpenDNS (208.67.222.222 and 208.67.220.220 for IPv4 or 2620:0:ccc::2 and 2620:0:ccd::2 for IPv6).

Depending on the current DNS servers your computer/network is currently using, you could even see faster lookup performance.


How to replace the System's Download folder with one in an external drive?

This is possible via symbolic link.

Move your existing data in ~/Downloads to the location you want, let's say /ExternalDrive/Downloads

Open Terminal and run:
This will remove the Dowloads folder and you'll need to type in your password to do that (you won't see *** when entering, just hit enter after you finish).
sudo rm -rf ~/Downloads

Create a symbolic link to your desired location:
ln -s "/ExternalDrive/Downloads" ~/Downloads

And voila! Dowloads folder moved.
A more detailed version of this process and be found here.
It's also possible to create a link to the iCloud Download folder. Using this command:
ln -s /Users/yourusernamehere/Library/Mobile\ Documents/com\~apple\~CloudDocs/Downloads  ~/Downloads


You can create a new library by opening iPhoto whilst holding ⌥ alt/option. This creates a fresh iPhoto library which you can import media into.


Make a single line of text bold in Mail message using Automator?

The following example AppleScript code is one way of achieving your goal:
set clipContent to (the clipboard as text)

set lineOfBoldText to "Line of text <---- I want this line in **BOLD**"

set myContent to linefeed & "Line of text" & linefeed & linefeed & ¬
    clipContent & linefeed & linefeed & linefeed & lineOfBoldText & ¬
    linefeed & linefeed & linefeed & "Regards," & linefeed & "Name"

set x to offset of lineOfBoldText in myContent
set y to x + (length of lineOfBoldText)

tell application "Mail"
    set myMessage to make new outgoing message at ¬
        the end of outgoing messages with properties ¬
        {subject:"subject", content:myContent}
    tell myMessage
        make new to recipient at ¬
            end of to recipients with properties ¬
            {address:"email@email.com"}
        set font of characters x thru y to "Helvetica Bold"
    end tell
end tell

Having copied to the clipboard "In this message, I would like a single line in bold as seen here:" from your OP and run the example AppleScript code, shown in my answer, in Script Editor, here is a screen shot of the results:


Why do I have to unlock an iPad to charge it?

The 'unlock to charge' is a new security feature since iOS 11.4. If you charge from a device that asks to communicate over USB you have to opt in.
Alternatively, just plug in to a 'dumb' charger or employ a USB data block dongle / condom to physically prevent “juice jacking”. If there's no potential data connection, there's no restriction on charging or prompt to unlock.

To elaborate a bit, this design prevents hardware USB devices read data from your device. Remember when the FBI wanted to get into some guy's phone & tried to force Apple through the courts to 'let them in'? This is the current state of play in the hacker 'war'.

It can be disabled if you don't think you have any data on there worthy of government or black hat hacker intrusion.

Apple KB - Using USB accessories with iOS 11.4.1 and later

Settings > Face [Touch] ID & Passcode > USB Accessories


iPhone 4S not syncing with my Google calendars

You'll need to make sure that your account is properly configured in Settings > Mail, Contacts, and Calendars.
Since you're using Gmail, make sure that Calendars are set to ON and then go to the Calendar app and make sure all the calendars are selected to be displayed by tapping "Calendars" in the top left corner and checking off all the calendars you want to see from your Gmail account.


Retrieving creation date of iPhone Reminders

You can open them on macos (osx) and export (file -> export). Then you'd get a raw version where you'd find CREATED field.


"Laptop Notebook Memory for Apple Mac Mini"? Does this sound right?

Despite this answer from a reviewer on the product that you mentioned:

  My 2011 Macbook Pro came with 4GB of memory. I usually run several
  (~10) apps simultaneously and need more memory. Even with fewer apps,
  I noticed that Safari's Web Process always increases in size and
  eventually leaves no free memory available. I looked at the choices
  for 2x4GB of PC3-10600 and Komputerbay's price was enticing. I
  installed them over two weeks ago and have not had a problem.

I would not trust buying this for a MBP. For a Mac Mini, that may be fine. But, it is always a good idea to stick with memory designed for your specific Apple computer.

Why don't you get this? It is from the same seller (Kcomputerbay) and it is around the same price. It also is for the MBP.


Cannot update macOS Mojave 10.14.2 to 10.4.4

Your 512GB HD is a SSD drive right?
APFS works only on SSD drives. (except for the Fusion drives)

The title of your question says: update macOS Mojave 10.14.2 to 10.4.4 => I think you meant 10.14.4 no?
So, do you really need your system to have that dual boot thingy?
Otherwise, I would recommend you to wipe you hard drive completely and entirely, but you'll loose everything. (that's why you have your backups up to date :-) I hope)
Once your drive is empty, start the installation of macOS Mojave from a USB thumb drive?!

Before doing all that, if your system is still working, first create a Bootable USB thumb drive with the macOS Mojave installation on it.

Don't forget that wiping your hard drive will WIPE all your data!


Given what you have said, the other people must be sending messages to your father from their email, so you will need to check what the other person's address/phone number is. If he wants to text them, and not email them, he will need their phone number and not email. I suggest you add a screenshot of the contact information of your father's friends, but it is likely the other person's Contact information includes an email but not a phone number.