Possible to use iMac Pro as a monitor for a variety of devices?

I don't think you can use the iMac pro as monitor for other devices natively.

However there are ways that may achieve what you need.

Screen sharing. Macos has build in screen sharing capability. And Microsoft has free Remote Desktop in the app store.
Synergy keyboard and mouse sharing software from Symless. It works across Windows, MacOS and Linux. The core is free and open source, but you will have to paid if you want the GUI.


Delete photos from iCloud Photo Library faster

Login in iCloud.com (from a computer) with your Apple ID.
Click on Photos, then click on Albums at the top.
I'm not sure if disabling iCloud Photo Library on all devices causes your photos to be moved to Recently Deleted automatically or not, so if there are still items showing in All Photos, click on that. If not, skip to step 9.
Scroll to the top of the grid of photos.
Click Select Photos at the top toward the right side.
Click the first photo. Scroll to the bottom of the grid of photos. Press and hold the Shift key, and click the last photo.
Click the Delete button in the middle of the blue bar at the top.
Click "< Albums" at the top left.
Click on the Recently Deleted album.
Click Delete All at the top toward the right.


Alter cmd-tab behaviour on OSX to group Parallels applications?

You must deselect the "Share Windows applications with Mac" option in the Applications pane of your VM's configuration.


This isn't a feature in iOS 8 or iOS 9.

If you don't want a new number to be categorized as "home" you need to tap and change it. Luckily, third party apps can and do provide more customized interfaces to your contact database.

I would start with a tool like Interact for setting up a more flexible default contact addition interface as well as extending concepts such as groups and smart parsing of contact details.

The time you save with one-tap contact addition and share sheet access to this app will more than make up for the expense and effort needed to have a better tool for contact management than ships with the OS.


Advised setup for: Parallels, Time Machine, Security, Windows 7, and MS Visual Studio 2010

Yes, all of this is relatively easily done, if you're using Mountain Lion (which is free for you if your MacBook didn't come with it pre-installed).

What type of disk?

Since the new MBA has USB 3, I'd recommend a USB 3 drive. USB 3 has more than enough bandwidth for any hard drive, and all but the fastest SSDs. There's a large selection of USB 3 drives, and they're far cheaper than Thunderbolt drives.

Hard drives will definitely be cheaper and offer far more capacity per dollar, but if VM performance is very important to you, an SSD may be worth looking at, and SSD prices have fallen sharply lately, below the $1/GB barrier. An SSD will have minimal benefits as a Time Machine drive however. Depending on your budget and performance tolerances, you may want to get a hard drive, see how performance is, and if you find it's not sufficient, get a small SSD for your VM and use the hard drive for your Time Machine.

VMs and Time Machine on one disk

To set up one disk to use for your VMs and Time Machine, you'll need to partition it. Apple has a good guide on how to do this with Disk Utility. Make one partition with sufficient size for your VMs (you'll want to leave some room for expansion of course), then a second one with the remainder of your space for a Time Machine.

Once Disk Utility has partitioned these drives, it should mount them on your desktop and ask if you want to use them for Time Machine. Answer yes on whichever partition you intend to use for Time Machine (not both of course). There should be an encryption option during the setup process. If you're not prompted to use either partition for Time Machine, you can manually choose a disk in Time Machine preferences. See Apple's Mac 101: Time Machine article for more details.

Encryption

When you create a Time Machine backup, it will give you an option to encrypt the partition. However if you don't do that, or if you want to encrypt the other partition as well, you can do this directly from the Finder. Just right click on the drives you want to encrypt, and choose Encrypt from the context menu. It will prompt for a passphrase (don't forget it!), and encrypt in the background.

I think that should cover everything.


How to get the Dock to open the Documents and Download folder in Finder?

Right-click or Control+click on the Documents folder in the Finder, and click 'Make Alias'.

You probably want to move the alias somewhere else and rename it "Documents". Then, drag the Documents alias into the Dock.

Voíla, a link to the Documents folder instead of a Documents folder stack.


What are the ways in which installed software can negatively impact OSX speed over time?

One notable absentee from your list is the category 'plugins'. I.e. additional software that runs within existing software on your Mac. It could be browser plugins, plugins for Microsoft Office, or many other types of plugins.

Besides that there's not really supposed to be other ways if you're only installing "well-behaving" software.

If you install software that is more or less malware, it could wreak havoc with your system by modifying system binaries, system configuration, system firmware or by creating other ways like LaunchDaemons/LaunchAgents to ensure that its own software is run on boot and continues to run.


Looking at the install.log you pasted, one line jumped out at me:

  Jul  6 10:46:49 Olly.local installd[661]: preinstall: perl: posix_spawn: /usr/bin/perl5.18: Exec format error

I think that error says that the installer tried to run the preinstall script using the system Perl, but that the system Perl could not even be executed. Could you please run the command file /usr/bin/perl5.18 and tell us what you get? Here's what I get:

  localhost:~ user$ file /usr/bin/perl5.18
  /usr/bin/perl5.18: Mach-O universal binary with 2 architectures
  /usr/bin/perl5.18 (for architecture x86_64):    Mach-O 64-bit executable x86_64
  /usr/bin/perl5.18 (for architecture i386):  Mach-O executable i386

This is a basic hello-world program in Perl; once you get this working on your computer, I think your installer will work fine too.

  localhost:~ user$ /usr/bin/perl5.18 -e 'print "hello, world!\n";'
  hello, world!


How to re-download Yosemite for creating second partition?

When you go to the purchases-tab OS X Yosemite should show up with a Download button. When you click it it asks you if you want to re-download it event though it is installed. (Downloading from the purchases tab is different from downloading from the product page I believe.)


If you are happy using a toolbar button instead of the contextual menu, you can use New Text File Here from Jonas Wisser. Just drop it into Finder's toolbar.

Note: As of OS X 10.11.4 this program no longer seems to be working.


Does Frequently used Memoji History reset If not used

The Memoji stickers can be deleted in any app, tap the three dots, then tap the core Memoji and delete it. I’ve never seen them time out or go away, just new ones pile on top of the old as you use them.

Tap the Memoji identity you with to duplicate or delete.

As for the overall keyboard, you can reset all of the word suggestions, etc in the settings app. But you circled the Memoji which just exist until you delete the identities in the keyboard overlay itself.

Settings > General > Reset > Reset Keyboard Dictionary


macOS Catalina beta could not be verified

I just retied and it worked out of the box.
Don't know what the error was, I did not change nothing.


How can I tell if my iMac's hard drive is dying?

Short answers to your questions:

Some concern over the drive is good, noticing there may be an issue and proactively thinking about what could happen is a good place to start. If you don't already, I would make a backup/clone of the entire drive or at least a backup of all the files important to you. Think if the HD goes bad tomorrow and you could get nothing recovered from it, what would you say "I wish I had a copy of..."
If you have a backup and see no performance degradation I'd say use the drive until it dies. Unless the new drive is bigger and faster. Then, you are killing two birds with one stone. Getting rid of a potentially bad drive and upgrading.

Some background:

The folder with a question mark means that upon booting the iMac can't find an operating system. This can happen because the hard drive is going bad, is bad or it can't find a startup disc (HD or other). This can be related to physical hardware or software issues.

Had you done any recent system updates prior to the machine freezing up? Sometimes after an update, example 10.6.7>10.6.8 some corruption can occur. If not, it still does not 100% rule out some sort of OS/software issue.

Did you recently boot from an external HD, netboot or optical disk? Sometimes the OS cannot find the last disk it was booting from and you will quickly see the folder with question mark flash on the screen, but then the machine sees an operating system and boots from it. I would look in System Preferences>Startup Disk and make sure you select the drive you want to boot from. Most likely, Macintosh HD, unless you renamed your HD. Press the restart button and now it knows for sure to use that drive to start from.

Disk Utility is usually pretty good and seeing errors and then correcting them. This could be a simple directory issue that is now fixed and it won't happen again or it could be the early stages of a failing drive. You could purchase any one of many software disc checking tools to see if the drive is having hardware malfunctions or has bad blocks. Disk Warrior is excellent and so is Drive Genius. Unless you plan on using these utilities a lot, it may not make $ense to buy them and rather just use the replacement HD you purchased.


How to disable location services? (MacOSX 10.6.8)

How did it do that? Did it look up my IP address?

It uses a database of WiFi networks your Mac can see and their approximate locations to triangulate your position. This Apple article says:

  Your approximate location is determined using information from local Wi-Fi networks, and is collected by Location Services in a manner that doesn’t personally identify you.

The location of WiFi networks is determined primarily using the GeoIP database and but well-established WiFi networks can report more accurate information to the system. For example, in my neighbourhood where only private citizen WiFi networks are visible to my Apple devices, my location is very approximate. It knows the town, but that's it.

  How do I disable that? I definitely don't want any app to know my location (and send it back to god knows who), with or without my consent.

In 10.6.8, the only way to get location services is via Safari. The OS didn't have control over location services, it was just a browser feature. To turn off location services for websites in Safari:

In Safari select Safari > Preferences… > Privacy (toolbar).
Select the "Deny without prompting" radio button in the 'Limit website access to location services' section of that tab.

If you're running a new OS X you can also turn off location services for apps by doing:

Apple () menu > System Preferences… > Security & Privacy > Privacy (tab).
Select Location Services on the left.
Uncheck the 'Enable location services' option to turn it off for all apps or uncheck just the apps you don't want to have access to location services.


How can I free up storage on my MacBook Air?

Have a look in storage manager, Open spotlight (cmd + space) and type sm then enter. It will show you what's taking the most space and you can delete items there.

In High Sierra it looks like this...


How do I get my computer name to show correctly in the finder?

I solved this annoying bug by unchecking 'Back to my Mac' and 'Find my Mac' in System Preferences/iCloud.


Weird behavior of spotlight & program icons

Thread about this problem at Apple forum

This is open bug known by Apple, as mentioned by rei_vilo Mar 28, 2014

Temporary solutions might be:

Permission Repair with Disk Utility
Rebuild Launch Services Database sudo /System/Library/Frameworks/CoreServices.framework/Versions/A/Frameworks/LaunchServices.framework/Versions/A/Support/lsregister -kill -seed
Restart the SystemUIServer killall -HUP SystemUIServer
Rebuild Spotlight index sudo mdutil -E /
If installed Parallel Desktop turn off "Share Windows applications with Mac"


How can I get rid of the high pitched creak and squeak noises in the unibody Macbook Pro?

I'll list some general things to check in the order I would isolate them.

The bottom case itself is bent slightly compared to the frame (you should see wearing of the cases and brown dust where the parts rub)
The plastic clips that hold your bottom case to the topcase are bent, not engaged, loose or damaged.
A screw is not seated and rubbing. (and replace screw with cable, connector, lever, or cage - all of them are in there)
Foreign debris came in from the exhaust vents and is stuck between parts where normal flex is causing a noise.
Fan or blower bearings (unlikely - but I've seen/heard them make the darndest noises some times)

A great place to find pictures of your model is the iFixit repair guide - I'll use the Early 2011 15" iFixit guide for some tips below:

Look over your bottom case very carefully - you should see wear marks or fine dust or scratches where it is hitting the insides. If the noise is coming from the bottom case contact - you should see physical evidence of wear. If not, then focus on the other parts (fans, hidden debris stuck under the battery, board or other parts near the keyboard side of things, etc...)

It's probably from the bottom case, so look at all potential contact points where the bottom case can rub. When putting the bottom case on again, remember where these inserts are so you can press them and hear a click for each before screwing the fasteners. When open, inspect the clips very well - a broken clip or not getting the insert into the snap is a big cause of the bottom case moving around when in use.

Similarly, pay attention to the clearance between the battery indicator, keyboard ribbon ZIF socket and trackpad connector cage as well as the clips under the left hand side of the mac. Even a battery screw could be too high and scraping the case. Once you have exhausted the easy things, you may even need to remove and re-seat the components on the left hand side of the mac to ensure nothing is stuck under the topcase and between the components.

Unless you are a very good tech and know what things cost should they break, it might be better to take it in for service - especially if you can show the tech how to reproduce the noise. There are so many components, any one of which could be harboring a loose screw or piece of debris that made it's way in the heat exhaust vents - it's hard to guess what exactly is making your mac squeak.


Can I run MacBook Pro Retina 13 inch early 2015 without a battery?

Most Apple laptops will work safely, but slightly less reliably, with the battery removed. They will behave like a desktop computer that possibly has an inadequate power supply for full load conditions: remove the power, and everything goes poof, which is not ideal, given the ease with which a MagSafe or USB-C connector can disconnect. Repeated 'shocks' of this kind to the circuitry may cause damage to the filesystem.  So remember to Shutdown before removing the cable and keep good backups.

Some people say that the Mac may run at a lower clock speed, to reduce power load, though this may depend on model.

However, removal of the battery in this model is not easy. If you're planning on replacing it yourself, then crack on. Otherwise, you might just want to leave it alone until the repair is carried out.


Can a wired (ethernet) Mac act as a WiFi access point?

Yes, you can do that. When Ethernet is connected, go to Sharing System  Preference Pane. You can share the Internet there by selecting Ethernet as a source.


The first thing that I would do is open up the case and use a can of air to blow out all the dust bunnies that have likely accumulated since the Macbook was first put into service; that will probably help quite a bit.


How can I erase the data from my Macbook without losing my recent OS?

Apple provides instructions on erasing and reinstalling OS X, so the system will be as it was when it came from the factory: http://support.apple.com/kb/PH4439

These instructions guide you through reformatting the drive and reinstalling OS X via Recovery.


Log in to a monitor-less Mac over the network

My mac mini is shutdown at 01.00 and restarts at 06.00 every day.
It starts without a monitor and the tv it is connected to is off.
I can them remote login using the remote server menu & browse which shows all the macs I have that are connected to the network and even thiugh it has not been logged into directly yet, I can login to it from any of the other machines.


Comparison of Microsoft Word to Apple Pages

I was recently in a similar position because I needed something for school, and I went with Pages, pretty much on price alone. A 5-license family pack of Pages costs a whole third less than the Home & Student version of Word, so I can put Pages on both home and work laptops and still have extra for my wife's and mum-in-law's Macs.

The article linked in @mybrainishuge's response is pretty much spot on in comparing the two. Each application does the same thing just in different ways. Some good, some not so much, but then all word processor apps have their quirks. Since my needs are humble (I have easy access to InDesign for any heavy page layouts) I figured how bad could Pages be compared to the bloat and "kludginess" that is Word these days; fifteen years I've been working with Office and I can safely say I genuinely don't like Microsoft products, so Pages it was.

YMMV, so I suggest working with the demos for each (I know Pages has a demo, but I'm not sure about Word as the companies I work for always just gave it to me) and see which one meets your needs.


Bluetooth Automatically Pairs with "Broadcom Bluetooth Device"

Running Mojave 10.14.5 and also experiencing the EXACT same issues as described.

Currently tried deleting bluetooth preferences files, resetting the bluetooth module, and restarting my macbook to see if I run into the same issues.

If same issues persist, then hotel rooms may be a pain in the a** till a concrete solution is found.

UPDATE

Followed answer in this post to add a MAC address to the "IgnoredDevices" in the bluetooth.plist file and it seems to be working.

Using the terminal, Type sudo defaults write /Library/Preferences/com.apple.Bluetooth.plist IgnoredDevices -array-add ''

Good Luck!


Why are my menu bars always on my left monitor?

It depends entirely on one pref...

System prefs > Mission Control > Displays have separate Spaces.

This will, however, completely change other aspects of your workflow.
The dock will always be present on each screen; you can no longer use screens in pairs, each is independent, so changing Spaces on one screen doesn't take the other with it; you can't have the same Space on both screens at once, but you can invert the left/right order of Spaces by swapping each on the other screen, via a 3rd Space.

Personally, as you can probably tell, I hate it ;-)


Where to find the service manual for Early 2008 Mac Pro 2008 (A1186)?

Web search for mac pro a1186 service manual file:pdf yielded this as the first result:

http://tim.id.au/laptops/apple/macpro/macpro_early2008.pdf


Free up disk space during Catalina update

So, after a few hours of working on this (mainly making rsync backups) I have it working.

What was crucial was creating a new macos installation and mounting the old disk on that. I didn't really delete any files and df kept showing the same amount of free space, but after a reboot to the original disk the install passed.

I think it has something to do with things being purged by the new macos install (Mojave on an external drive).


Image capture opens after iPhone is connected

The preferences you are looking for are located in Image Capture itself.

Here is what to do:


There is no Wine or similar for iOS. Besides probably being in conflict with Apple's Guidelines iPhones/iPads are not running on Intel chips so the Windows binaries wouldn't be usable anyway.

Having said that, there are apps like Hipmunk, Kayak etc. available for iOS which provide flight search functionality.


You mean besides the "System Preferences > Keyboard > Keyboard Shortcuts" settings? (Click on the ? button in the bottom-right for more info.)

The Mac has dictionary (.dict) files for configuring parts of apps, system services. There are .dict files for the keyboard layout that can be edited by the property editor app, which is part of Apple's XCode development environment. Be very careful to understand that messing with them without knowing what you are doing can, and most likely will, break stuff.

/System/Library/Frameworks/AppKit.framework/Versions/C/Resources/StandardKeyBinding.dict is an example. If you have TextMate, /Applications/TextMate.app/Contents/Resources/KeyBindings.dict is another. TextMate's site has a little write-up about how it uses the key bindings.

Also, look to the right at the "Related" section. There are some similar questions that might give you more ideas, such as "Best key remapper tool?".

That should be enough to get you started.

Apple's Technical Note TN2056 "Installable Keyboard Layouts" is something you should probably read, then search for more info from that point. You're messing with stuff that can make your machine hard to work with if it isn't done right, so arm yourself with enough information to know what you are doing. Apple's Technical documentation is the top-level for their developer documentation. Their support forum would be another good resource.


This creates an x264-encoded mov file with image.png as the background:

ffmpeg -loop 1 -i image.png -i audio.m4a -c:a copy -c:v libx264 -crf 20 -pix_fmt yuv420p -shortest output.mov

You can use mp4 or mkv as the container by just changing the name of the output file.

-c:a copy disables re-encoding the audio.

-loop 1 loops the image infinitely so that it is not shown for just one frame. It also makes the video stream infinitely long, so -shortest is needed to finish encoding after the audio stream finishes. -shortest has to be after the input files in new versions of ffmpeg.

-crf (constant rate factor) can be from 0 (lossless) to 51 (lowest quality). If you remove -pix_fmt yuv420p, ffmpeg uses yuv444p, which is not supported by many video players.

You can use a black background by replacing -loop 1 -i image.png with -f lavfi -i color=c=black:s=1280x720. You can resize an image by adding an option like -filter:v '[in] scale=-1:720, pad=1280:720:640-iw/2 [out]'.

More information:

https://trac.ffmpeg.org/wiki/EncodeforYouTube
https://superuser.com/questions/98980
http://tdb0.wordpress.com/2012/03/10/how-to-upload-a-song-without-a-music-video-to-youtube/


Restoring Yosemite server after unloading launch daemons

The command sudo launchctl unload -w /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/ disables all launch daemons residing in /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/ by adding a key with the name of the launch daemon followed by true in the file /var/db/com.apple.xpc.launchd/disabled.plist. Even if the launch daemon had an entry set to false (like com.apple.emond in the examples below) in the file previously, it will be set to true. The disabled.plist overrides all settings in the individual plist files. The single launch daemon plist files in /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/ won't be altered.

Example before the above command was issued:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN" "http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd">
<plist version="1.0">
<dict>
    <key>com.apple.AppleFileServer</key>
    <true/>
    <key>com.apple.hdiejectd</key>
    <false/>
    <key>com.apple.emond</key>
    <false/>

Example after the above command was issued:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN" "http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd">
<plist version="1.0">
<dict>
    <key>com.apple.AppleFileServer</key>
    <true/>
    <key>com.apple.afpfs_checkafp</key>
    <true/>
    <key>com.apple.AirPlayXPCHelper</key>
    <true/>
    <key>com.apple.applessdstatistics</key>
    <true/>
    <key>com.apple.auditd</key>
    <true/>
    ...
    <key>com.apple.emond</key>
    <true/>
    ...

So essentially you have to remove /var/db/com.apple.xpc.launchd/disabled.plist on your main volume or replace it by a backup copy:

Replacing the file by a backup copy is preferred because it may already have some non-default entries for some launch daemons set to true or false.
If you don't have a backup copy of the file boot to Recovery or Internet Recovery Mode
Open Terminal
mount your main volume if it's not already mounted
enter cd /Volumes/[Name_Of_Your_Main_Volume]/var/db/com.apple.xpc.launchd/ to change to your main volume
enter pwd to be sure about your working directory
remove disabled.plist with rm disabled.plist
To rebuild the (hopefully) standard disabled.plist write or copy and paste the following using nano or vi into a new document at the same place after executing touch disabled.plist:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN" "http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd">
<plist version="1.0">
<dict>
    <key>com.apple.emond</key>
    <false/>
    <key>org.postfix.master</key>
    <true/>
    <key>com.apple.ftpd</key>
    <true/>
    <key>com.apple.usbmuxd</key>
    <false/>
    <key>com.apple.emlog</key>
    <false/>
    <key>com.apple.mrt</key>
    <false/>
    <key>com.apple.stackshot</key>
    <false/>
    <key>org.apache.httpd</key>
    <true/>
</dict>
</plist>

You may do this later also, after rebooting to your main volume with:

sudo nano /var/db/com.apple.xpc.launchd/disabled.plist

After the reboot the file should have been rebuilt automatically (but almost empty) and you don't have to create it first.
Enter exit
Reboot to your main volume

This worked for me (explicitly not executing the command launchctl load -w /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/ as proposed by Graham). So your mileage may vary, because you executed the command earlier.


Is there better third-party scanner software for OS X than Preview?

You may also want to look into the excellent VueScan. I haven't had a need for it in several years but back in the day it was really one of the best there is. Looks like it is still updated regularly.


Why is my Hard-Drive filling up quickly?

A few possibilities:

You're running into memory pressure and are creating a lot of swapfiles. This scenario is likely because the 2017 MacBook Air only has 8 GB RAM, which is not a lot by today's standards and definitely insufficient for any video editing in Final Cut Pro. You can check if this is the case by running /Applications/Utilities/Activity Monitor.app, clicking on the Memory tab, and looking at the Swap Used field at the bottom. If you're seeing many gigabytes, reboot your system. Note that this situation may be unavoidable if you try to do video editing on such a low-end machine.

A process is creating a lot of cache or tmp files. A reboot may clear these.

There are background downloads occurring, possibly for OS updates or possibly for other apps you have installed. A reboot probably would not clear these.

In short, try rebooting. Before you do, though, it would be wise to Get Info on your hard drive in the Finder and see how much space is available, and then compare it after the reboot. If you find yourself still low on space, you'll need to start diving into subdirectories to see where the space is being used. There are also third-party tools that can help with this.


How do I find the windowid to pass to screencapture -l?

For some applications you can use AppleScript:

screencapture -l$(osascript -e 'tell app "Safari" to id of window 1') test.png

It doesn't work with Chrome though.

The IDs are also shown in Quartz Debug (available from developer.apple.com/downloads) if you run defaults write com.apple.QuartzDebug QuartzDebugPrivateInterface -bool true.


I haven't used Sketch, so can't comment on how well it may work with Automator, but one option would be for you to create an Automator workflow to try and replicate your actions.

There are many online resources that can help you get started. Below are three of them:

Automator Help (Apple's official Automator guide)
MacOSXAutomation.com
Automator World

You can also use Automator’s ability to record what you’re doing to create the basis of your workflow and then modify it to meet your needs. To do this:

Open Automator
Press commandN (or go to File > New)
Select the Application option
Click the Choose button
Click the red Record button (located at top right of the toolbar)
Now carry out one of the tasks you want to automate (i.e. switch over to Sketch, click on the Plugins menu, etc)
Automator will record your actions to try and copy your workflow
Stop the recording
Now back within Automator save your workflow

NOTES:

Recorded Automator tasks are far from perfect and often require you to manually edit them to work the way you want, but it may be a way for you to get started.
Depending on what you're doing, you may need to give permission for things to work. For example, if you create an application you may need to go to System Preferences > Security & Privacy and within the Privacy tab select the Accessibility option in the Sidebar and then give permission to what you've just created so that it can control your Mac.


Nothing as nice and easy as Windows provides, however you can get the info you require if you enable verbose logging on your PPTP connection:

Open System Preferences → Network.
Select your your VPN service from the list of services on the left.
Click Advanced….

Then tick Use verbose logging and click OK, then Apply.

In Terminal, run the following command:

tail -f /var/log/ppp.log


How do I automatically kill processes that leak memory?

I would create a simple script which would filter process any process with a resident memory size (or perhaps total vm size, so including any paged out pages) bigger than a threshold that I define (depending on the amount of process, total memory available and perhaps also CPU availability). One can use a bit of bash script with either top or ps to dig out the list of process and memory size.

From this filtered list, I would use the leaks command (see man 1 leaks) per process PID. If the total amount of leaked memory reported by the command is higher than yet another threshold, I would then kill and respawn it.

NOTE: You should take care not to kill any OS/System processes without knowing what you do. To avoid this situation, you should perhaps filter out the list using a "white list" approach.


Re-sync messages between iPhone and computer after period of not syncing them?

No. Only iMessages sent from the time you set up Messages on your Mac can be received.

Note that you are not actually syncing between Messages on iPhone and Messages on Mac - you are adding a new device to receive a copy of each message sent. When you register a device for iMessage, a set of keys (a public key and a private key) are created. The public key is sent to Apple, while the private key remains private and known only to your device. When someone wants to send you a message, their app contacts Apple and requests your public key(s). If you have four devices registered, they will receive four public keys.

At that point, their device encrypts the message once for each public key. Only your private key for a particular device can open the encrypted messages intended for that device. So if (by some technical problem) the copy of the message intended for your iPhone was sent to your Mac by mistake, it won't be able to be opened, even though it's for you and was encrypted with your public key.

Hopefully this makes it clear why messages sent prior to registering your MacBook with iMessage cannot be retrieved - simply put, they don't exist in a form that can be read by your MacBook. Even if Apple kept a copy of the messages at the time they were sent (which they for up to seven days, or until the message is received by the intended device, whichever comes first), only your iPhone can decrypt them.

This page has a good overview of iMessage encryption (which goes into more detail on what I've outlined above).


Get a menu of windows that are open with command-` like you have with command-tab

See the Mission Control System Preference for options to display windows.
"Application Windows" shows you just the windows for that application. The default key is either F4 or CTRL down.
Mission Control shows you all the windows in each Desktop Space, which you can select to be grouped together by application or not.


The new 450 megabit per second (a.k.a. 3 spacial stream, 3x3) flavor of 802.11n on the Thunderbolt MacBook Pros is very nice, especially when combined with the latest AirPort Extreme and Time Capsule revisions from June that have modern 450 megabit per second 802.11n radios.

The plastic MacBooks and the MacBook Airs are still running the older 300 megabit per second flavor of 802.11n from 2007.


How to use /etc/paths.d to add executable files to my path?

Have you started a new login shell since adding the new file for ImageMagick? The setting of the path from paths.d entries is done in /etc/profile and /etc/csh.login, so you need to start a new shell for the new entries to take effect.

OS X uses path_helper to set the path based on the files in /etc/paths.d - you can always call it manually (assuming a Bourne-like shell here):

$ eval `/usr/libexec/path_helper -s`


A Way to Save Desktop Layouts with Multiple Presets

I can recommend Moom. You can have different presets for different display configurations.


How to set system-wide environment variables on OS X Mavericks

The correct file, prior to Mavericks, was ~/.MacOSX/environment.plist. This is no longer supported.

In Darwin, and therefore in Mac OS X, the proper place to set these is in /etc/launchd.conf to apply to all processes; if relating to user shells specifically, use the appropriate shell files instead, depending on the shell in question. See the launchd.conf and launchctl man pages for more.

That said...

If you're goal is specifically to see these applied for ssh sessions then you need to be aware that ssh, for security reasons, doesn't apply environment variables in this manner. In fact a ssh session normally receives a much more restrictive set of environment variables from the OS as it's not what is known as a "login" or "interactive" shell, it's classified as an "non-interactive" shell. (See man bash for more on shell types.) The way ssh handles environment variables is well covered in the ssh/sshd docs and man pages.

For ssh -- which is it's own shell, akin to bash -- environment variables for the session are stored in ~/.ssh/environment as the per-user equivalent of setting these for bash or csh, etc in their relevant launch files. This is probably where you want to set your ENV variables for your user ssh sessions, though you don't detail why you're looking to assign ENVs globally in your original post, which would have been helpful in providing a solution. I'd suggest you set them explicitly on a user per user basis to maintain proper security based on each respective account following the least restrictive privilege/attribute best practice.

If for some reason you wish to ignore he security implications of this, then set PermitUserEnvironment in your ssh configs. Note that this is disabled if UseLogin is enabled. IMPORTANT: Realize that this means that user accounts set to use /bin/false as their shell - the typical method for disabling a user account -  can now potentially get around this restriction and could now become active, which is dangerous. Many accounts are set to use /bin/false as their shell as a security expectation.

Bottom line is you shouldn't be doing this globally and expecting ssh to propagate ENV for security reasons. Your question is, effectively, purposely asking how to defeat several mechanisms that exist for security reasons.


How to see the current playback speed in VLC?

On the Mac version of VLC, to see the playback speed, you have to click the Playback menu. It won't be shown on the default window.


What caused iPad Air to go black screen and not power up?

It could be many things. I would go through this checklist and possible ask a follow on question when one item fails or you can't complete the checklist to rule out common reasons for this:

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201412


Mac/OS X AppStore 'buttons' inactive, not showing screenshots

Unless you want to try turning on the store debug menu to muck about, Here are some general tips that might help narrow down the causes.

The Mac App Store app loads in two phases.

The first just brings up whatever cached data was saved the last time the app quit.

The second actually paints in the artwork and may refresh the app with current data, updates, whatever else it cares to do in response to the servers on the internet.

This second part is taking between 10 and 20 seconds for me lately.

The store isn't known (of late) for being particularly speedy when launching. You can fire up iTunes - that online store should paint in about the same time as the Mac App store if your app and account are working correctly. It's more like a thin version of safari that knows how to spend your money with a secure wallet. Any network filtering, proxy, date errors, or slow servers will cause your app to poke along.

You could try signing out of your account to see if that is delaying the response.
You could also try disabling OCSP/CRL in the Keychain Access preferences. That helped in some 10.6 slowdowns, but it's not making as much of a difference in Lion as far as I can tell.


On the upperright, click on the selected tab (probably the layout tab is selected) to make it go away


Can I connect an iPad and an Eye-Fi Card?

Apparently, it's coming soon to Eye-Fi cards, and they will have firmware upgrades for all existing cards..

http://www.eye.fi/press-releases/great-images-and-instant-gratification-with-eye-fis-direct-mode-the-mobile-solution


Uncompress (zlib) files that "S3 Backup" compressed to Amazon S3

To help figure out what these files are compressed with, you can try using the file command from the terminal. It should give you output like this:

% file archive.zip
archive.zip: Zip archive data, at least v2.0 to extract
% file archive.tgz
archive.gz: gzip compressed data, from Unix, last modified: Wed Aug  3 06:21:00 2005, max compression
% file srchive.bz2
archive.bz2: bzip2 compressed data, block size = 900k


Warning: "CSUserAgent wants to access data stored in your keychain."

In a nutshell, CSUserAgent is part of the core Mac OS X system where the security is handled. In this case, it seems like an innocent warning and intended ask to make sure you are intending the encrypted backup to be used now.

You can verify this by opening up Keychain Access and looking at the item in your keychain. Here is a view of one of my portable hard drives that is encrypted with FileVault.

The Access Control tab will show you if any apps have been signed and trusted to access this item without further prompting - so unless you have some odd problem, your system is prompting you for the normal and usual tool that reads items from the keychain since you haven't white listed the task that normally does that job.

You can learn a little about the infrastructure from Apple at the Core Services Layer documentation as well as by using mdfind CSUserAgent from the terminal to locate where this program really lives on your mac. The keychain help and support articles are nice as well for reference.


Yosemite's Preview.app goes to top of document when PDF changes

Please let Apple know about this regression in Preview.app's behaviour in OS X 10.10.

If you have an Apple Developer ID, you can also report this via bugreporter.apple.com.


Chances Migration Assistant will improve performance of Air-2011?

One thing you don't mention is how much RAM and how much storage you have.

The two things that effect the speed of a particular computer to a noticible extent are faster storage (moving from a rotational HD to an SSD, or to a faster SSD) and more RAM. The latter depends on how you use your Mac. If you keep lots of applications open and run applications that use lots of RAM (graphics, video and sound editing spring to mind) then more RAM will likely help.

Your Mac, however is configured from Apple and not upgradeable so those avenues are closed to you. That severely limits your ability to enhance the performance of your Mac via hardware solutions.

You can certainly try other ways of reinstalling the o/s and migrating the settings and doing so MIGHT have a small impact on the speed of your Mac, but it is unlikely you will gain much from those exercises.

I note that this Mac has either 2GB or 4GB of RAM. 4GB might be barely enough (depending on your use)  but if you have a 2GB model... well I'd probably sell it and get a newer one with 8GB of RAM. Again, a personal opinion, it might work for you but that is not a lot by today's standards.

Personally, I would recommend a couple of things.

A system cleaner app. I use Onyx that basically cleans out all the caches and runs all the maintenance scripts. It can help with system slowness, depending on where the slowness is coming from. I run Onyx every few months just to keep my bits and bytes sparkly clean!
Check your startup items (System Preferences > users & Groups > Login Items) and remove them. You'll lose their functionality but gain back some RAM and CPU cycles.

There may also be things that start up with the system that are not there in login items. A/V apps, do this as do VPN apps and also MS Office. These apps have things running in the background at all times. Some you may want to remove. You'll have to look at the developer's website for instructions how.

But regardless of all of this and even if you try the alternative clean reinstall you mentioned I doubt that any of them will result in a substantial improvement.


To connect using SSH keys you need to copy the key from your machine to the remote server using ssh-copy-id user@remote_ip_address.

You will be asked to enter the password for the remote server and the key will be copied.

If you generated a key pair using a password then you will always have to enter that password when connecting. If not, you can simply connect using ssh user@remote_ip_address and you will be connected to the remote machine.


installed amarok through macports - no playback

I know this is not a satisfactory answer, but at the moment, phonon seems to be non-functional when installed from MacPorts.  See https://trac.macports.org/ticket/36818 and http://mac-os-forge.2317878.n4.nabble.com/qt4-mac-and-phonon-td159474.html


Under Settings -> Messages, check "Receive At" - you are probably both using the same Apple ID for messages.  One of you will need to setup a separate Apple ID to use for Messages.  You should be able to do this while continuing to share the same iTunes account.


Firewall: Add command-line tool to rules (mosh-server)

I knew I was being dumb: in the Finder dialog that pops up, press Shift+⌘+G and enter /usr. From there I can browse to the binary.

Turns out this is a completely ordinary Finder shortcut for "Go to folder".


System Preferences -> Sounds, and set Alert Volume to the minimum. (I'm using Yosemite, and this might not exist in earlier versions.)


How to integrate Third Party Sign-in without getting rejected by Apple?

You have not specified why your app got rejected and you haven't linked to the app in question - so it is possible for anyone to say why your app got rejected.

However, I can say that third party sign-in is not in itself a reason for rejection. Lots of apps do this in the app store without problems.

By the description of your app it seems you could be in violation of the "Minimum functionality" clause of the review guidelines. If your app has no other functionality than being able to sign in and show third party web sites, your app probably hasn't got enough functionality.

You app needs to have features, content, etc. that makes it more than just a WebView for a third party web site.


How can I make reminders show on the lock screen on iOS 12.01?

A reminder automatically appears on the home screen if when you set the reminder, you select Remind me on a day in the info menu of that reminder shown as follows:

Then at the selected time it will appear on the lock screen as shown below:

This is the only way to let a reminder appear on the lock screen.


I have the same issue. As far as I can tell, it's an issue with High Sierra. and DisplayLink that's not fully resolvable other than through downgrade to an earlier version of the OS. Here's the notice from DisplayLink:

  Important Information about macOS 10.13.4 and later

  DisplayLink has
  worked for many months to maintain support for its users during the
  transition from macOS High Sierra to Mojave. While functionality such
  as Ethernet and audio or charging, where implemented, is unaffected on
  all releases, display connectivity has been limited on macOS releases
  from 10.13.4 through 10.13.6.

  Developers/users with access to Apple’s fifth developer preview of
  10.14 Mojave, released on 30th July, will see full support has now been restored for multiple extended DisplayLink displays where
  DisplayLink driver v4.3 beta 5 is installed. We are doing wide scale
  testing of v4.3 beta against this preview and will release a new
  driver upon general availability of 10.14.

  Users of 10.13.4-10.13.6 should also use v4.3 beta 5 as it contains a
  workaround to enable one extended USB display (720p or 1080p). An FAQ
  details how to enable Apple AirPlay with DisplayLink display for
  extend or mirror mode.

Their workaround kind of works, but it messes up the resolution of the primary monitor and causes periodic flickering. Here's a direct link to that workaround: support.displaylink.com/knowledgebase/articles/1854724.

After updating to MacOS Mojave version 10.14 Beta (18A384a) and DisplayLink v4.3 beta, I can confirm that the "Arrangement" tab comes back and that my laptop recognizes both external monitors and the laptop display at the same time. However, both monitors are always black. The cursor still moves across all three screens, but that's about it. In other words, functionally multiple monitor capability is still broken as of the above MacOS version.

If you select mirror mode, then select "Gather Windows," and then change the external monitors' "Optimize for:" option to "Built-in Retina Display," you can get mirror mode to work nearly properly (there's occasional minor flicker), but there's still no solution for other modes (e.g. where each display is independently able to host windows).


With the said configuration the HTTP traffic is routed to the proxy. But there is a catch, then DNS lookup which is not an HTTP protocol will fail.


How can I associate a file extension with a content type?

The Alternative to the Solution mentioned by Gerry is the RCDefaultApp Preference Pane. It's free and let's you set all Application->Content Type, Application->URL connection on your System.

In the "Apps" Pane of RCDefaultApp you can set what file Types a specific Applications Supports when you check "php" with your Editor it will also show in the "Open With" Menu.


Are Passbook Passes Available Outside the Sandbox?

I wrote to Macroplant, who make the iExplorer utility that I bought some time ago, and they pointed me to the fact that Passbook Cards are available in the backup data.

When using iExplorer, they're located in the 'Backup Explorer' section, under HomeDomain/Library/Passes/Cards, the Backup Explorer section is apparently a logical mapping of ~/Library/Application Support/MobileSync/Backup/.

That's good enough for me, since data is routinely backed up. I can backup and instantly access my current cards.

Thank you Mike, on the Macroplant Support Team!


Can I retrieve deleted photos (beyond 1,000) from Photo Stream?

The photos are deleted once they go beyond 1000. Unless the photos exist elsewhere, they are gone.


Would monitors attached to my USB hub make my CPU run hotter?

I found the answer:

USB graphics devices, like the USB-HDMI-DVI, are “virtual” devices where much of the heavy lifting is done by the CPU, by hooking into the graphics stack.

Even so, I'll keep this set-up and monitor things with iStat. All I display is MSFT Word documents and stupid web pages. I think I'll be ok?

Sorry I did not do more research!


You can still reboot your Mac even if the Shut Down prompt never appears: holding down the power button for at least 30 seconds will cause your Mac to force shut down, then releasing the power button and pressing and holding again until the Apple logo appears will allow you to start it up again.

If your Mac doesn't have a power button key, you can force  a shut down by pressing and holding control + option + command + eject .

Source and more info here.

tl;dr: Hold the power button for a while!


Tabs not reopening when closing Safari on iPad with iOS 13.1

While it’s not enabled by default, iPadOS has an option for Safari to automatically close open tabs if they’ve not been viewed for a while. Have you accidentally enabled that option and set it for one day? You’ll find it under Settings / Safari / Close Tabs.


Any way to send messages to Mavericks Notification Center from another machine on the local network?

You could ssh to the destination machine and run the following for each notification.

osascript -e 'display notification "Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet" with title "Title"'

Alternatively, there are a number of ways of running AppleScript remotely. You can do it with Keyboard Maestro, which allows you to run macros (that can run AppleScript) over the network:


Are you referring to the list of sharing options presented at the bottom of the page when you tap the Share button?

Have you scrolled all the way to the right side of those icons and tapped the button with 3 dots with More underneath?

That will allow you to turn share sheets off, on, an rearrange them in the list.


Is it possible to hide dock on launch bar?

The easiest way to hide the Dock is to press Command+Option+D. Is there a specific reason you want to use a terminal command?


I believe you are referring to the new Raise to Wake functionality.

It can be disabled by going into Settings → Display & Brightness. Toggle Raise to Wake Off.


iPhone calendar alerts are not muted when vibrate switch is on

The calendar alert is something that you asked for so will not be suppressed by the Silent switch. According to the HIG the switch is supposed to indicate that you do not wish to hear unsolicited sounds such as incoming call ringtones.


Mac Mini keeps trying to mount encrypted DMG at login

Ok, finally I managed to solve it by myself. Probably there is a faster way to do this, but I didn't find it out, so I went the most obvious way:

Create a new encrypted disk image with Disk Utility, making sure of leaving the "Remember password in keychain" checkbox UNCHECKED (it seems to be checked by default), then I just copied everything from the old encrypted disk image to this new one and finally, I just deleted the old one.

That annoying dialog is not bothering me anymore.

I hope this is useful for someone else.


Pages: How to expand comments by default?

You can keep comments always on-screen by going into the menu bar and choosing View → Show Comments Pane.

This will open a sidebar with all her comments on the left.


Open Grab, go to Capture -> Timed Screen, then make sure the cmd+tab module is up on the screen when the timer runs out. Then open in Preview and crop as desired.


Using two 30" LCD screens with a MacBook Pro

The problem with the USB2VGA is that you won't be able to drive the full resolution of a 30 in, which is 2560x1600.

Technically, the 2011 MB Pro is capable to drive the 2 monitors, but since there is only one thunderbolt connector you can only connect one Mini Display Monitor. You can however connect two Apple Thunderbolt displays, since they connect to the MB Pro using Thunderbolt and not Display Port. Then you would have the use of the full resolution of both displays.

Sorry, but a 30 in monitor is the biggest one that can be connected to any computer, adding one is asking a lot from a connectors-limited portable...

Good luck!


Can I use my UK MAC desktop in the Cayman Islands

Without knowing the computer you're using it's hard to say, but probably Yes, there should be no problem.

Most Apple products have an auto-switching power supply which monitors the incoming voltage and automatically switches itself accordingly, others don't, and must be changed manually, and others, are regional specific.

Here you can find a list of the Apple products and whether if they've got this auto-switching feature.

Checking your computer's manual should shed some light on this, too.


2012 MacMini HDD died while installing Win 10 Tech Preview

I'm not 100% sure this will work in your case since I think your partition map got erased (or something similar) but try this TestDisk tutorial.

I also used to know the site of a really nice walkthrough that helped me fix something similar on a flash drive a little while ago, but unfortunately the tutorial was only for Windows. Here's a site I found with some similar information for both Linux and Windows. You might be able to get this to work for you if you can run Linux off a flash drive or something.

Since you mentioned TestDisk, here's another guide for fixing the partition table of your disk using TestDisk. Again, this article is for Linux, but I assume TestDisk will work the same on both operating systems.

If it works, the first link will give you the cleanest, most-direct fix.

Using the last two links, you should still be able to fix the disk by first formatting the partition table to some universal format like FAT and then running your OSX recovery program to reformat the disk as it sees fit.

If you do go with the last two links, I would recommend trying to run PhotoRec on it first just in case you're able to recover any useful data with it. PhotoRec is made by the same folks who made TestDisk, but it's easier to use and is designed to just bruit force scan the disk and automatically pick out files that it can recover — actually "bruit force" might not be the right word here since that's just one of the options, but you get my point. :)

Good luck!


How exactly does an App Store developer add support for earlier versions of iOS?

It doesn't mess something up that you have newer version numbers that support older iOS targets than older version numbers. That's perfectly alright.

Remember that the Deployment Target is the minimum version of iOS that user's need to have.

The optimal way to do what you want is to set the deployment target to iOS 11, and then in your app conditionally use features for iOS 12 and iOS 13 depending on their availability.

This means that you can compile one single archive that contains a single app that will install on iOS 11, iOS 12 and iOS 13, and will offer different functionality depending on the iOS version on the user's device.

If you're using Swift for example, it could look something like this:

if #available(iOS 13, *) {
  // new stuff
} else {
  // old stuff
}


How to speed up screen refresh on MacPro + Bootcamp?

I asked the same question at Stackoverflow and got an answer which appears to have fixed my issues. Hardware acceleration (paradoxically) is what was slowing down my VS.

HTH somebody.


Time Machine error code 21 and 19, "Failed to mount.... because the image could not be attached"

This turned out to be a keychain problem. Possibly I changed the NAS login password and never updated keychain.

Settings > Time Machine > Stop using "TimeMachine" for Backup
Keychain > search for NAS hostname and delete all matching passwords. I think the problem entries were in the System keychain, but I also deleted entries from the login keychain.
Settings > Time Machine > Add Backup Disk... > select "TimeMachine" > enter password

This situation was confusing because the messages from Time Machine didn't say anything about authentication, and Finder could connect to the NAS volume ok. But apparently backupd uses a different Keychain entry, which was bad or wrong.


Recommend me a productivity/workflow tool

I think you're looking for OmniFocus, which does (if I recall) everything you want, has a system-wide modal "inbox" tool as well as synchronizable iPad and iPhone apps.

Their price point is ridiculously high in my opinion, but people are fanatical about it.


Is it harmful for the battery to use a 60 W instead of 45 W charger?

Your battery will only take as much as it needs. Thus a larger charger will not harm it.


Can I disable receiving "effects" in iOS 10 Messages?

Disabling that feature will result in a text-only message accompanying the message where the effect was sent stating, e.g.

  (sent with Slam Effect)

This replaces the effect being generated.


If the old boss doesn't have your AppleID & password & you don't explicitly share the calendar, no-one can see it.

You could always change your password if you are in the slightest doubt over that & also sign in to https://www.icloud.com/#settings select Advanced/Data & Security, then Sign out of all browsers.


Create a Database Environment Mac OS/SQL Developer

The easiest thing to do is use Homebrew to install MySQL on your Mac and use that your database.

First install Homebrew:

ruby -e "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.github.com/Homebrew/homebrew/go/install)"

With Homebrew installed, you can use it to MySQL. First you'll need git installed:

brew install git

Because we want to make sure we've got all the latest Homebrew recipes next:

brew update

Installing MySQL is now as simple as:

brew install mysql

When that completes you'll have the MySQL database on your system and you can develop against it. All you need to do is start it with:

mysql.server start

If you'd like MySQL to autostart when you start your Mac do:

mkdir -p ~/Library/LaunchAgents
ln -sfv /usr/local/opt/mysql/*.plist ~/Library/LaunchAgents
launchctl load -w ~/Library/LaunchAgents/homebrew.mxcl.mysql.plist

You can connect to your MySQL instance using address localhost: 3306.


How to launch browser in iOS Simulator from command line?

/Applications/Xcode.app/Contents/Developer/Platforms/iPhoneSimulator.platform/Developer/Applications/iPhone\ Simulator.app/Contents/MacOS/iPhone\ Simulator -SimulateApplication /Applications/Xcode.app/Contents/Developer/Platforms/iPhoneSimulator.platform/Developer/SDKs/iPhoneSimulator7.0.sdk/Applications/MobileSafari.app/MobileSafari -u "http://google.com/"

Yes this really is one long command — make sure to run it all. Replace google.com with actual website, and iPhoneSimulator7.0.sdk with the relevant version of the simulator that you're using.


Different output for number of processors using system_profiler

To me it simply looks like the xml output is using the number of cores as the number of processors. You can see that the number of cores property simply disappeared from the xml. It is a common conception on Linux systems to call a core a processor. I'll even go further by saying that the "packages" value is the number of processors, and number of processors the number of cores.


Interaction between profiles of Terminal.app and environment variables

You can run shell command on profile launch. You can find it in:

Preferences -> Profile -> Selected Profile -> Shell -> Run command.

You can have separate files with PS1 variable and source them using this "Run command" option.


How can right click in Finder without using the trackpad or a mouse?

You can use Ctrl+F2 to move the focus to the menu bar and then use the arrows to go to the Open With menu item.


Download icloud photo library without paying?

Go to www.icloud.com, select the iPhoto library, and on the top right corner there is an option to mark photos you want to download and download them through the browser. Then you can read them to your photo library on your mac.

I could not find an option to download all the photos as a "Photos library file" so that one can switch the Photos library directly to it on the mac. But it's at least something.


Where can I find information on the licence(s) that govern use of the fonts that come preinstalled on Mac OS X?

From the os license:

E. Fonts. Subject to the terms and conditions of this License, you may use the fonts included with the Apple Software to display and print content while running the Apple Software; however, you may only embed fonts in content if that is permitted by the embedding restrictions accompanying the font in question. These embedding restrictions can be found in the Font Book/Preview/Show Font Info panel.

In FontBook Show Info for Hoefler Text it says "Embeddable: Yes".


Error Installing OS X El Capitan on Early 2008 Mac Pro from USB

Probably you got a faulty SO image. You should try to re download the installation file from the App Store and/or try some other method to put the installer on the USB.


AirPort Extreme: Keep IP address from changing

Your External IP Address (or, as you call it, the IP address reported by whatismyip.com) is not under your control and you can't simply set it to static. Your ISP gives you a new one when you reconnect, although there are chances that you might get the same, you should never count on it.

In order to solve this problem you have two choices:

Some Internet Service Providers (ISPs) offer you a "Static" IP service for a monthly fee. With the lack of IPv4 in the world, this service is unlikely to exist forever to individuals and it's usually reserved for companies and services that really need a static IP. Not all the ISPs offer this, you can always ask.
Use a Dynamic DNS provider. This will mean that although your IP address will eventually change when you disconnect (or your provider wants), you will always be able to get "back" to your Airport's IP by using a "name" rather than an IP. Any computer in your network will have a small piece of soft (some routers can do this automatically, I'm not sure about Airport Extreme, don't think so), that will periodically check your IP and if it has changed, it will inform the Dynamic DNS service that you use so it can update the value.

Some Dynamic DNS Providers (Mostly a free service) are (in no particular order):

DynDNS
No-IP (I use this)

Think of this as if instead of having a fixed phone number (static ip), a person could call you by "name" and the phone will check what is your current number (wouldn't that be great? ;) Nobody knows your number, only your name, because your number changes often (your ip!).

You haven't mentioned why you need a Static IP in the first place, but if you can't get it via your ISP, your only hope is to use Dynamic DNS. For what is worth, DDNS works really fine and it's very "fire and forget". Once it works, you no longer have to worry about IPs or anything, you just connect to: XXXXX.no-ip.org (for example)


While I cannot throughly test your issue, because I don't have access to your site, nonetheless, the following line of code is malformed:

set theURL to "http://mysite/testing.php?email=email&productKey=productKey"

It should be in the form of:

set theURL to "http://mysite/testing.php?email=" & email & "&productKey=" & productKey


Can't edit "Gmail SMTP Server" on iOS 10.3.1

Well I'm really not sure why this changed anything, but I logged out of my Google account from my desktop browser, then logged back in.  Immediately after so doing, I sent a new email on my phone from my GMail account, and it worked perfectly fine, without a hitch.  Go figure!


Select a menu item in AppleScript without using "System Events" in 10.9 Mavericks

I don't know how to click menu items without using System Events, but if others get here searching for how to click menu items with System Events:

tell application "System Events" to tell process "Finder"
    click menu item "New Finder Window" of menu 1 of menu bar item "File" of menu bar 1
end tell

tell application "System Events" to tell process "Finder"
    set frontmost to true
    click (menu item 1 where its name starts with "Compress") of menu 1 of menu bar item "File" of menu bar 1
end tell

tell application "System Events" to tell process "Finder"
    set frontmost to true
    tell menu bar item "File" of menu bar 1
        click
        click menu item "Open With" of menu 1
    end tell
end tell

You can allow all currently installed applications to use the accessibility API by dragging them to the list in System Preferences:


How do I make a mac have a faster boot time?

Here, I assume your iMac has a 21.5" screen and was original configured with a internal 1 TB HDD. In this case, your model does not have the PCIe connector for an internal blade SSD. Therefore, you could only replace the internal SATA HDD with an internal SATA SSD. Note, this SATA connector operates at a maximum of 6 Gb/s. So, instead of replacing the internal drive, you would probably be better off with an external 10 Gb/s USB or 40 Gb/s Thunderbolt 3 drive. Also, an external drive would be easier to try and if purchased properly, the drive could be returned if the performance is not satisfactory.
Your model Mac is not designed to be taken apart. Although, opening the Mac to replace the SATA HDD with SATA SSD would be possible. When I purchased my 2013 iMac, I had Micro Center open the tapped edge Mac and upgrade to 16 GB of RAM. Like your Mac, the internal drive is a 1 TB HDD. Upgrading to Catalina made this Mac unusable. APFS was not made for HDD. I added an external USB Samsung T7 SSD as the boot drive. Even though this Mac only has a 5 Gb/s USB type A port, the performance improved dramatically. This includes the boot time. Your Mac has 10 Gb/s USB type C ports, so I would expect even better performance. Evidently, Macs preform TRIM operations when booting, which can increase boot times. However, the Samsung T7 does not support TRIM, so this will not be a factor. There are reports stating the lack of TRIM will eventually slow down a SSD, but I have not noticed any slow down. I theorize that even at the drive's slowest speed, the drive is still operating faster than the 5 Gb/s USB interface. For reference purposes, below is the output from the System Information application. Your Mac would report a speed of up to 10 Gb/s.

Another possibility is to add a external Thunderbolt 3 Samsung X5 SSD as the boot drive. These drives are significantly more expansive that the Samsung T7, but the interface is 40 Gb/s. I have one of these drives connected to a 2018 Mac mini. The Mac reports that TRIM is supported and enabled when the Samsung X5 is connected. I have booted Mojave from the PCIe-based internal SSD storage and the external Samsung X5 SSD. I can report that I do not really notice any difference in performance. However, the specifications state the Samsung X5 should have a slightly slower transfer rate. For reference purposes, below is the output from the System Information application.

I should also note that the external Samsung X5 is also reported to be a NVMExpress device, just like the PCIe-based internal SSD storage. (Boot Camp was added manually. You can not use the Boot Camp Assistant to install Windows on external drives.) Note that the Thunderbolt drive is disk0 even though the Mac is current booted to Mojave from the internal drive.

References:
How do you upgrade the hard drive or SSD in the "Tapered Edge" Aluminum iMac models? What type of storage do they support? Is it even possible to upgrade the storage?


Lost audio while converting video files in OS X 10.7.4

Sounds like an issue with muxed audio. See here. Also, you might try converting them with Mpeg Streamclip, which is free software.


There is an option to start backup manually. Did you tried that? If so what it tells you.

Also, as far as i know you need to have a wifi connection for backup to work.

PS: i wanted to post this as a comment but dont have enough rep yet. So if someone put that on comment i can delete answer, since its really not an answer


Wrong email given when trying to update apps

Seems like the app was bought using a different iTunes account. You can display the buyer informations on your Mac using iTunes:

Open iTunes
Navigate to the "Apps" section/tab in the horizintal navigation menu
Search for "WhatsApp" and select it
Hit ⌘ + I or right click and select "Information"
Click on the "File" tab for the buyer information


Cannot unlock Users & Group in System Preferences

That fix is actually simpler than you might think, though it does call for a reboot, two if you want to be technical.

Reboot your Mac while holding CommandR This will boot you into recovery mode.
From the Utilities menu select Terminal
type resetpassword and press Enter
The password reset utility will launch. Follow the prompts to reset your password.


Using locate.updatedb doesn't work in Lion

Debugging pam can be tricky.

Have you tried making a real root shell with sudo -s and running the /usr/libexec/locate.updatedb command.

Alternatively, you could try making a new admin account to be sure your admin account has correct privelages/authentication. Any odd things like server or OpenLDAP that we should know of?


Receiving "USB devices disabled: Unplug the device using too much power" upon login. Built-in keyboard and trackpad sometimes become unresponsive

If there has been water damage that will have dried by now so the likelihood of water sloshing around causing this issue is near 0, however it may have caused corrosion to the trackpad, keyboard or main logic board.

You need to get Apple, or an Apple Authorised Service Provider to repair it. Alternatively you could seek third party service, or do the repair yourself.

The USB Over Current warning is associated primarily with the positive and negative rails having been short circuited (connected) causing more current than the allowed to flow, the USB chip puts that port into a disabled state to protect the computer from damage, this could be the result of corrosion inside creating particles that are shorting a component, or it could be that one of the connectors or wires has become corroded and has increased the resistance of that wire again causing a higher current draw and triggering the protective mode.

Self repair

If you decide to repair the computer yourself, you need to think about where the water was spilled, and how much, if it was only a small amount on the keyboard that could suggest that only keyboard replacement is necessary.

Anyway, first step is to backup data, and find a suitable take apart guide from a site such as iFixit, following these guides you can open the machine and look for signs of liquid damage on the keyboard, trackpad and main logic board.

Once you've identified where the liquid has damaged you can proceed to replace these components.


Can I invite to share my screen with iOS user?

I understood you wanted to show something on your screen to a lot of people that are using iOS devices correct?

You also don't want them to have to install another app.

The solution I've in mind is recording your screen with QuickTime. Save it as a small movie and send that movie by iMessage.


For Apple Watch + Cellular models, how do they manage active calls when going out of Bluetooth range from their paired iPhone?

More than likely it would be handled the same way a cellular phone transitions between cell towers while moving - hand off or handover. Basically while connected to one tower, it connects to another to make the transition seamless.

Now, remember, the iWatch has an eSIM attached to it which itself is linked to the iPhone’s account.  That watch simply has to connect to the cell network as the radio signal starts to degrade and the call is handed off.  More than likely, the watch is already connected to the call because it’s directly linked to the account.

Bluetooth Profiles

Most folks generally take "connected via Bluetooth" for granted that it's just "connected" and your iWatch likes your iPhone.  That's not the case.  When connected via Bluetooth, it must do so with a specific Bluetooth Profile, usually a headset profile because it's providing mic, earphones, hold, dial, volume up/down features.  It's acting exactly how a BT headset would work and would "react" the same way if it went out of range of the iPhone - it would disconnect.

WiFi

You can think of the WiFi connectivity between your iPhone and you iWatch as the same as the Apple Handoff works with your iOS devices and your Mac.  For example, when Handoff is enabled and my iPhone and iMac are on the same network, I can make and receive calls on my iMac.  What's happening is I'm making a call on my iPhone through my iMac.


Alarms not working for iCal calendar synced with Google account

On snow leopard I find that iCal drops alarms of type "message with sound", which I assume is because google calendar doesn't support them. It works ok for me with alarms of type "message". Could that be your problem?


Email migration from Mac Mail to Outlook 2011 for Mac

For transferring all your apple mail items in to Outlook 2011, there is a need of robust data format conversion process. This step helps you to migrate from one mail client to another. In this reference, an apple mail to Outlook 2011 converter is desired to fulfill to requirement. However, you can accomplish this task by manual method also but it faces some pitfalls.

So, check a review of required converter that i found as a resource on web mentioned below:
http://download.cnet.com/Mail-Exporter-Pro/3000-2369_4-75877193.html


What's the refresh rate/sampling rate for the sudden motion sensor?

The refresh rate of the sudden motion sensor is variable.

The supported bandwith depends on the hardware used; so you have to do some more research on the specific motion sensor used in your model. I've searched ifixit without much success.

According to SeisMac the motion sensor used in the first Macbook Pro is the KXM-52. The specifications state the bandwidth depends on the axis:

  x, y axis: 0 to 3000 Hz
  z axis: 0 to 1500 Hz

[source: KXM-52 tech specs]

SeisMac itself only allows to set refresh rates between 10-500 Hz in its preferences.


Why is my Mac slow after the OS X 10.10.3 update?

Considering the limited information you provided, here are some generic steps.

Open the Activity Monitor (located in your Applications/Utilities Folder).

Sort by CPU and look who is the most active app in there.
Also take a look at your memory and your Disk activity.

Next open your Console log (also in your Applications/Utilities Folder) and look for repeating message.

Those two steps should give you some idea what is slowing it down.


How do I import an other family members photos to my iCloud account?

There is no direct way to do what you want.

You don't state if you use iCloud Photo Library. If you don't, you can enable that and select the Optimize Device Storage option as @JaimeSantaCruz suggested. That will reduce the amount of space required on the device but will not eliminate it entirely.

There are a couple of workarounds but neither are ideal.

You could create a shared album, have her share everything she has on her device, then remove her from the shared album (and she can delete all the photos on her phone). The problem is that shared albums reduce the size of the pictures, so you won't be getting the originals.

If you have a Mac, the Photos app could be utilized, but it depends on your current set up. If she uses iCloud Photo Library already and the Mac is set to use the same iCloud account, everything should be in Photos already. If not, you'll need to hook up her iPhone to the Mac, and import everything. In either case, once everything is in Photos, you could copy all of the items into a new, non-iCL library (or an iCL library in a different user account that's hooked up to your Apple ID).


Sharing single instance of iTunes with iPad and iPhone

If your iTunes library is small enough to fit completely on each device, then yes, you can manage and sync both devices to the same PC through iTunes on that PC and a sync cable.  You can even create separate playlists in iTunes on your PC and sync a specific playlist to each different device.

Another option that you would want if your music library is larger than your devices, is to invest in an "iTunes" Match subscription with Apple:

http://www.apple.com/itunes/itunes-match/

Then, your entire music library from your PC will be available from the Apple "Cloud" and can be streamed to any of your iOS devices.

Just make sure that your PC, iPhone, and iPad are all logged into the iTunes Store using the same AppleID and you should not have any problems.


iPhone 4S Gray Light in Middle of Black Screen Fix?

Tap it! I have one on my iPad. When you tap it it  brings up your control buttons, I.e. Home screen,notification centre or whichever you use for your iPhone. CAnt help with the charging noise, but perhaps it's incoming notifications?


Is there a way to limit Mail to only keep the last 50 mails?

Mail can do something sorta like what you want.

Mail > Preferences
Accounts tab
Mailbox Behaviors tab
Trash section

On the line that says "Permanently erase deleted messages when", you can select one month old or one week or even one day.  That will help get rid of old email and save you some space.


iPhone to make a sound when it shuts down due to low battery

No, there's no foolproof way of setting the iPhone to make a sound before it goes to sleep due to low battery.


A drop is a drop - 1 foot or 10 feet - you dropped it.

More than likely, you broke something on the I/O Board

This goes for around $70 on Amazon.  I just purchased one to fix a friends 2012 MBA and it was super easy to fix.  You just have to remove the back cover and one screw holds this board in place.  It removes pretty easily.


In my understanding, if you have Geo Fencing and Locating tracking enabled from your MDM, then your Single App mode or Kiosk option allows you to fetch the location from the background.

Just make sure the correct profile of MDM is installed on it with appropriate policy.


Is there an app to convert a video to HTML / JS / JSON?

I found one such app: Phosphor

It does what I required.


During Installation Yosemite also installs a Recovery partition on your disk.

You might be lucky and it has finished that job before the lights went out.

You could try to call it up by restarting while holding cmd + r

If that did not work, you will need a external Yosemite.

Using a USB stick with bootable Yosemite you can reinstall it on your Hard Disk.

How to get it?

From another Mac, from a friend, from Apple Store...


MacBook autofill name fields with someone else's name

This likely pertains to the Address Book card marked as "me". Launch the Address Book application (from Spotlight, Finder, Launchpad, or the Dock), create or locate your own card, and choose the Card > Make This My Card menu item.

This could've originally happened if you or someone else created an Address Book card for your brother and marked it as "me", or if you copied Address Book data from another computer belonging to your brother.


Apple macOS Big Sur / Apple Music / Bluetooth / Amazon Echo

If your echo is connected to your Mac you should be able to go System Preferences - Sound and one of the options should be Echo to play your music from your echo speakers. If you don't see Echo, go to Bluetooth under System Preferences and look for Echo. Beside this is a connect button.  Click on this and then go to Sound under System Prefs.


Make sure that iCloud backup is turned on.
(Settings -> tap on your name at top -> tap on iCloud -> tap on iCloud backup -> turn on.

iPad will now automatically back up daily when the screen is locked, wifi is on, and iPad plugged into power.

You can also backup manually from this screen by tapping backup now to iCloud.

If you don't have enough storage available on iCloud you will get an error message.

You can also backup to a computer by connecting through usb, then "trusting" the iPad (find the iPad in Finder) then the option to backup to computer will become available. Or use iTunes.


MBP'13 (Late 2011) Win7 (BootCamp) + iMac'27 (Mid 2011) as an external display?

Yes. You have to reboot the machine into boot camp with the display already connected.

See apples KB article here: http://support.apple.com/kb/HT3924 (bottom of the article)


Paid consumables and App Store Terms & Conditions

Out of the three, going with the first option would be your best bet.

  Only allow access to the content that has already been purchased, without any mention that more courses are available.

As mentioned in the first point 3.1.3(a), you can't directly or indirectly target users to an alternate mechanism to purchase content.

You can let the users view other available courses, and let them get info/sample of them, but can't hint about purchasing from an alternate medium within the app (if need to, you'll have to go via Apple by leveraging In-App purchases or subscriptions).

A good way to approach it would be to think of the iOS app as a client app for media consumption and not for content promotion. Your marketing efforts should be directed to the website with the iOS app simply acting as a consumption means.

Mention the iOS app on the website, with the App Store link (once approved). Apple provides marketing resource on its website where you can obtain official App Store badges and use them to link to your iOS app on the App Store.


Will I be able to test port forwarding to an iPhone behind a firewall

There's no reason why you shouldn't.  Technically, an iPhone is just another node on the network.

It appears that the tool will not be able to reach an iPhone behind a firewall. Is this assumption true?

It depends on how you configure the firewall.  The screen shot you posted "says" you've forward a number of ports, some of those related to Facetime.  For the record, you need to forward ports 53, 80, 443, 4080, 5223, and 16393-16472  (UDP).
The question is, where did you forward the ports to?  If nothing responds, whatever tool you use will assume the ports are not open.  Think of it as calling a phone number.  Whether or not the number is blocked, if the person at the other end doesn't pick up, do you know if they are home?
There's nothing in that screen shot that tells us how the port forwarding is configured.  It's just a list of ports at this point.

The person on the other side is using a tool like "what is my ip" to see their IP and I am using that, plus a port on that list to test.

Congratulations.  You just added your IP to a database of IPs that have some sort of web service running on it - in other words, an attack point.   If you're going to do a port scan, use a tool that runs locally on your machine and not on some unknown server.  I have seen many instances where unsuspecting system admins would utilize these sites to test their firewall only to be on the receiving end of endless connection attempts from around the world including Russia and China.
Could they have found eventually? Yes. But running a port scan, especially when it responds on well known ports like 80, 8080, 443, 22, etc, you're confirming there's a server there.
Bottom Line
This is actually a networking question and specifically how to configure a firewall and to test those ports.  The end device being an iPhone is really not germane here as this issue would exist with an Android or a PC. Your router manufacturer should have HOWTO guides on firewalls and port forwarding.  From there, take a look at https://networkengineering.stackexchange.com/ here on Stack Exchange for more in depth information regarding firewalls and port forwarding.


Can't open application from unidentified developer

There's a terminal command for this. I don't remember using it, and never wrote it down in my Sierra tweaks file. However:

sudo spctl --master-disable

From OSXDaily: How to Allow Apps from Anywhere in macOS Sierra Gatekeeper


Writing a shell script (or something similar) that will execute some commands

Yes, this is possible. The two best options for stitching together Mac applications are AppleScript and Automator.

Given your steps, consider exploring the included Automator application: Applications > Automator.app

Apple's Mac Basics: Automator support note is a good starting point.

The following Actions are likely to help:

Display Webpages for opening your default browser and showing a URL
Run Shell Script for interacting with node.js
Open Finder Items for opening documents in Sublime Text


Networking between 10.6.8 (Snow Leopard) and 10.12 (Sierra)

ChronoSync should be able to do what you want.  While they offer an older version that will run on 10.6.8, I would suggest that, instead, you run the latest version on your 10.12 system and use it to sync the files amongst all your systems.


Third party youtube app as default on iOS 5.1.1 (iPad1,1, jailbroken)

Just install any good third party youtube app from the app store, like Jasmine or Youtube Pro etc... Or since your iPad is jailbroken install a tweak called: older version of the app (if you can't find it on cidya try google), and find a version of official youtube app by google that supports ios 5.x.x


How to setup and backup in Time Machine when there is only one hard drive showing?

You need this:

http://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201250

Main thing: you need any other hard drive, whatever ssd, hdd, connected to mac by wi-fi, thunderbolt or usb.

Time Capsule is just one of the many variants.

You can make your backup on any device that you already have. But make a note that it better should be fully given for backup, no any other sided information on a drive, particularly when encrypting your external drive.


How can I view the items in the Spotlight cache?

mdfind is your friend here.

If you simply wanted a list of every file in your spotlight index you could do:

mdfind /

You can also get it to provide a count of the files.

mdfind -count /

On my system this returns 224353 which is a good reason not to run the first command!


There is a delay between notification sound and notification banner for mail app in High Sierra. How can I fix this?

Had the same issue on a 2017 27" iMac.
Spoke to Apple support....(I have APPLE CARE)

They had me do 3 things:

Upgrade to the latest version of macOS High Sierra 10.13.4 (That alone did not fix it).
Reset the SMC (for my desktop machine, they had me shut down and unplug the machine for 15 seconds instead).
Reset the NVRAM.


How to use Windows US-Intl keyboard layout on a Mac?

You can make the Alt/Option level of Apple's US International PC behave like the version you are used to by creating a custom keyboard layout with the app Ukelele.

For reference the Alt/Option behavior of Windows US International is here.

Note that on a Mac both left and right alt/option keys normally do the same thing, i.e. create special characters.

PS  If in fact your right alt key does not produce any characters at all, then something is broken with your keyboard or software.

An experimental keyboard that tries to conform to the Windows version can be found here.

Note:  If you want something like one of the Linux versions of "US International" which have a dozen or more dead keys for making a huge number of diacritic and other characters, then the Apple equivalent is ABC Extended, whose layout is however quite different.  For that see this earlier question.


SoundBunny is a new app that I have just learned about. There is a free demo available which will work for 15 days (I think).

The app window will show you every app which is makes a sound. That might help you track it down.

You can also tell it to ignore apps which you have ruled out, which should help you narrow things down a but too.

I hope that helps.

(n.b. I am not related to this app except as a customer. The purpose of SoundBunny is to let you set the volume for each app, but I thought it might help with this as well.)


Sync contacts with mountain lion mac contact list

This is explained in detail on the yahoo! help page.

I'll post the original text from the help page here:

  Description

  This article explains how to synchronize your Mac OS Address Book app to Yahoo! Contacts on your Mac for versions of Mac OS X 10.5 ("Leopard") and newer.

  Resolution

  You can sync Yahoo! Contacts with Mac Address Book.

  Note: Only Mac OS X 10.5 ("Leopard") and newer support the sync feature. To check what version of Mac OS X you've got, select the Apple | About This Mac.

  How to sync your contacts with Mac Address Book:

  Open the Mac OS Address Book app.
  Go to Address Book | Preferences.
  Select Accounts | On My Mac.
  Check the checkbox for Synchronize with Yahoo!.
  Tap Agree for the Terms of Service.
  Type your Yahoo! ID in the Yahoo! ID box.
  Type your password in the Password box.
  Tap OK.


Can't seem to install e2fsprogs properly

Usually brew executables (except brew itself) are linked to /usr/local/bin/ which is in the PATH already.

Since e2fsprogs executables are also installed to a subsequent sbin folder, force linking them with brew ln --force e2fsprogs will create a new folder /usr/local/sbin which contains the links to the sbins.

This new folder is not in the PATH. Simply add or extend an already existing  line

export PATH=/usr/local/sbin:$PATH

in ~/.bash_profile.

To update PATH in your current Terminal session immediately, simply enter:

source ~/.bash_profile

Or close your Terminal window and open a new one.


Why can't I find OS X Yosemite in the Mac App store?

Unfortunately the OS X Yosemite installer is no longer available on the Mac App Store.

If you have a paid Apple Developer account you can download it from https://developer.apple.com/downloads/


There should be an Add button in the top-right corner. It's called "Done" when you are editing an existing event. Those will save your changes and return you to the previous view.


No option to boot into windows now I've installed El Capitan

This guide will help you fix the problem. I had a similar issue on mine. Make sure to back up your entire disk (both partitions) before making any changes though. No joke. Believe me, it's important. Buy an external drive if you don't have any place to back it up. (When people used to warn me to take backups, I didn't listen, and I once lost 6 months of data because of that.)

Please also see this answer to find out how to turn off SIP protection in El Capitan. Without turning this off it won't be possible to repair the Master Boot Record.


Changed DNS server, now can't connect to internet on Safari, Chrome or App Store

I always use OpenDNS when troubleshooting DNS issues, try using 208.67.222.222 and/or 208.67.220.220 as your DNS servers on your computer. Alternatively, try setting the network interface on your computer back to auto-obtaining DNS servers from your router via DHCP.

System Preferences > Network > [Network Adapter being used (WiFi or Ethernet usually)] > Advanced > DNS tab > delete any manual entries under "DNS Servers" and you should see a few entries in light grey (those are given to your computer via DHCP) Then click "apply" and you should be all set


Is there a fan in the new Airport Extreme?

Yes, it does. See this article on ifixit.com for instance.


The following works for me on 10.9.5:

System Preferences > Keyboard > Shortcuts > App Shortcuts.
'+' to add a shortcut
Application: All Applications
Menu Title: Log Out [Your Name]…  Here, copy the exact text shown in the Apple menu, replacing [Your Name], and note that the ellipsis … must be typed with alt-;
Keyboard Shortcut: ctrl-shift-cmd-Q (or whatever you prefer: something different to shift-cmd-Q)
Log out and in again.
Note that the keyboard shortcut has changed in the Apple menu, and shift-cmd-Q no longer triggers the menu.


Ditch App Store and use the Apple Developer site to download the xip file and extract it to install Xcode.

Can't update Xcode

Alternative is to find the file App Store downloaded, and if it's an archive, expand it manually.
Since it's a huge file, it would be easy to find using any of the apps listed at

How can I figure out what's slowly eating my HD space?


Logitech C615 webcam not detected (Mac OS X 10.8.2)

I ended up installing the macam driver, which works but is not very stable.

  Macam is a user space USB Webcam driver, supporting Aiptek, 3com, Phillips, Creative, Dexxa, DigitalDream, Dolphin Peripherals, IDT, Intel, Kensington, Lifeview, Logitech, and many other Webcams.


Broken ipad power button? Or is this some sort of software problem?

That's not the way it works on my iPad Pro.  Pressing the Power button turns the iPad display off and on. Holding it down for a few seconds brings up the shutdown slider. If you can't turn the display off and on what do you do when screen turns off? Press the Home button? Really only thing you're missing, it sounds, is your ability to turn the screen off when you desire. Or did I miss something? You can turn the screen on with the Home button.
It sounds as if something may be wrong with your button.


How can I set Spotlight metadata to files?

You can always use the command line tool xattr, which lists/reads/writes/erases the filesystem's extended attributes of a file.

That's what spotlight uses to build it's index.

Note that spotlight information keys are prefixed with com.apple.metadata:

As quick example, to change the display name on spotlight of a file:

xattr -w com.apple.metadata:kMDItemDisplayName MyNewFilename.txt ActualFile.txt

to access xattr help, type on t:

xattr -h


Video out on iPod dock: pre-iOS versus iOS

Unfortunately, the old video output is not compatible with iOS devices, even with an adapter. To see, why, here's a diagram of the iPod dock connector pinout. Notice that there are some video output pins that are only used for older iPods.


Can I use the built-in camera of my Apple Cinema Display on Windows 10

I was facing the same issue. The problem was that although I had connected the monitor to my laptop using the mini display port, I had not plugged in the USB cable. The camera on the Apple cinema display needs the USB connection in order to be recognized and start working. I connected the USB cable from the monitor to my laptop, and everything works well.


You can remove the inertia for the two fingers scroll, just select "without inertia" under Trackpad inside the System Preferences :


Tethering SIM-disabled on iPad but SIM can be used to tether on Windows phone?

Yes, this is entirely possible. Your SIM card number is provisioned by the carrier to include features X, Y and Z based on your rate plan with them. This can include tethering by device type. If you have multiple SIM cards, it is possible they have enabled the feature for one SIM card but disabled it for the other, either by accident or on purpose.

You would need to contact your carrier directly to find out if they have disabled it.


How can I prevent the App Store from doing automatic update checks or notifications?

Sadly, it seems there is no way to do that.

I checked the AppStore panel in the preference app, and the notification panel. No trace of an option to do that.

Sorry!


Is it safe for me to delete this profile?

Yes it's safe, when you delete it and restart your phone, you'll just get into the normal update cycle.


How did you reset the SMC?

It's not clear exactly what model of MacBook you have, but the process for resetting the SMC can differ. I have included two sets of instructions below that could apply to you - select the one that matches your Battery type.

For MacBook Pros, MacBook Airs, and MacBooks where you can’t remove the battery on your own (i.e. it's a built-in battery), here’s what you do:

Shut down your computer
Keep the MagSafe adapter (power cable) plugged in.
Press at the same time shiftoptioncontrol (on the left side of the keyboard) and the power button
Let go
Turn your computer back on with the power button.

For MacBook Pros, MacBooks etc that you can remove the battery from, here’s what you do:

Shut down your computer
Disconnect the MagSafe plug (power cable) from the computer
Remove the battery
Press the power button for 5 seconds and release
Put the battery back in
Reconnect the MagSafe cord (or power cable)
Turn your computer back on with the power button


No you really need a Thunderbolt connection.

It wasn't until Thunderbolt 3 that the bandwidth of the protocol fully caught up with the idea. Realizing this, the group responsible for the spec created implementations with the possibility of some configurations being able to pass the video signal back to the computer it was boosting.

Using a External GPU with older Thunderbolt connections will not fully utilise the performance increase of an External GPU.


Usually this is an Alias of a folder. An alias is normally marked with a litte arrow a the left lower corner.

Example:

-rw-r--r--@  1 user  staff  1938832 31 Okt 16:54 Car
drwxr-xr-x   3 user  staff      102 31 Okt 16:56 Car1
-rw-r--r--@  1 user  staff      178 31 Okt 16:56 Car2

Car is an Alias, Car1 a folder, Car2 is a text file without suffix but with the icon of a folder though.

To enable cd'ing into an Alias I've found the following at Mac OS X Hints. Don't know if it still works.

  Here is the bash function I include in .bashrc. Note that the second elif       requires double brackets for the test, because it include the logical operator     or (||):

function cd {
  if [ ${#1} == 0 ]; then
    builtin cd
  elif [ -d "${1}" ]; then
    builtin cd "${1}"
  elif [[ -f "${1}" || -L "${1}" ]]; then
    path=$(getTrueName "$1")
    builtin cd "$path"
  else
    builtin cd "${1}"
  fi
}

  And here's the C source code for getTrueName.

A similar approach is available at superuser.com


Copy from `OS X` and paste using `OS X Screen Sharing` to a Raspberry Pi

The first thing to try would be installing autocutsel on the Pi.

You can find details at Raspberry Pi StackExchange.

Once you have that installed try both turning on shared clipboard and sending the clipboard from the Mac.

If that doesn't work then try a VNC client app such as Chicken.


Why does Find My Mac require a Recovery partition?

Find My Mac requires a recovery partition as it is this partition which is used to control the FMM status outside of the OS. For instance, Find My Mac can retain the ability to control the Mac even if OS X is removed and Windows is installed (for example).