How to interpret outcome of Apple Hardware Test on Malfunctioning Macbook-Pro/Snow Leopard

I'm not sure if there's a way to get more information out of the Hardware Test (although I would suggest taking a picture of the screen if you're not able to write all the info down in time). However the symptoms you describe suggest that there's a problem with your memory — either the sticks themselves, or the memory controller.

I would suggest taking out your memory, then trying these steps:

Run the AHT with one memory DIMM only. Repeat with the same DIMM in the other slot.
Repeat the above, but with the other DIMM.
If neither of those work, try a known good DIMM from another machine, or a new one.

If you find that one stick works but the other doesn't, it's likely that you have a bad stick — replacing it should solve your problem. Likewise if new RAM works but the existing doesn't.

If you find that one slot works but the other doesn't, then you likely have a logic board or memory controller issue.

Finally, if none of those combinations work, it could be a logic board or memory controller issue, or something else.

Sorry I can't be more definitive, but hopefully that will help you to narrow it down.


Issue when typing some characters in OS X El Capitain

You seem have the US International PC keyboard layout active.  Go to system preferences/keyboard/input sources and make sure that US is the only one on the list.


Yosemite doesn't use mDNSResponder, it uses discoveryd - which has caused so many people so many issues that Apple have done an about face & are re-introducing mDNSResponder in Yosemite 10.10.4

You can sign up for the Appleseed Beta if you really want it early.


How can I use a university-linked Outlook account on Mail for iPhone?

Choose the Exchange service instead of Outlook. See Office support page Set up email using the iOS Mail app under the ‘Office 365 work or school’ tab instead of ‘Outlook.com’.


How do I add a user to Print Administrator group but not full administrator?

Run this Terminal command (as an administrator), replacing "usersaccountname" with the user's actual account name:

sudo dseditgroup -o edit -n /Local/Default -a usersaccountname -t user _lpadmin

When it prompts you, enter your password (it won't echo).  That user should now be able to administer printers.


Control of Audio Playback in Presenter View in Keynote?

To get full playback controls in Presentation mode in Keynote, all you
  need to do is make the placed audio icon larger, then move your mouse
  into that larger region while in presentation playback mode.

The controller is not visible while editing your presentation, so yust make it large square and then check in presentation view.

  As the size of the audio icon increases, you’ll see more and more
  control options when you hover over the region in presentation mode.
  Once you reach 400 pixels in size, you’ll see all the same controller
  features you get with a QuickTime movie.

  Note that when you’re in edit mode, you’ll see an increasingly-large
  version of the Sound icon as you increase its size. As with the
  standard-sized icon, though, this icon will not appear in presentation
  mode. To access the audio playback controls while in presentation
  mode, just move your mouse into the region of the large icon, and the
  controller will appear.

  Source: http://www.macworld.com/article/1142542/keynoteaudio.html


I can't check or uncheck items in Security & Privacy > Accessibility on macOS Catalina

Just try to delete that specific item you want to check or uncheck and then add it back again.


How can adding a new user bypass full Disk Encryption?

Normally, when you set up full-disk encryption on the startup volume, you use FileVault, which integrates the disk encryption with the user accounts, so any (enabled) user can start the OS and unlock the disk. It appears that what you've done is encrypt the startup volume some other way, giving it a disk password rather than integrating with the user accounts. But when you create a new user account, it goes ahead and sets that account up FileVault-style, giving it the ability to unlock the disk at startup.

Not what you wanted? You can remove that user from the unlock list with the fdesetup command:

sudo fdesetup remove userToDisable

where userToDisable is the new user's account name (aka short name). Note that sudo will prompt for your admin password, and it won't echo as you type.


Your solution is probably going to be two things:

Institute a regular inspection program - don't wait until things break. When you notice users bending the cables two months after you issue them is when you need to train the users to not crimp/bend the cables (to budget for users that are hard on the equipment so you have spares on hand when they break them).
There are no aftermarket MagSafe adapters made to better specifications or materials than Apple's  - only cheaper knock off and imitation or just less solid but well designed and built. You would need to armor or stiffen the cables before they fail with added material if you don't want to train users.

If your users are breaking the accessories, you'll want to train them and explain how tightly wrapping or always bending the cord in the same exact spot will break down the materials faster than if they spread the bends across a larger area or just keep the bend radius larger as opposed to a sharp right angle bend.

https://www.wired.com/2013/12/tnhyui-macbook-powercord-wrapping/

Note the loop and the straight cable on both the MagSafe end and the power brick end. Also, note that Apple has ditched this design in favor of easily replaceable USB C cords so people that are hard on cables won't need power adapters going forward - just cable replacements.


detect thunderbolt display connection and switch bluetooth accordingly

ControlPlane can do what you want. It's pretty versatile, but you can certainly build a rule that will turn on your Bluetooth when a specific display is attached.


iPhone 5s shows SIM Not Valid after sending it home from USA

Depending on which model you bought in the US, you may or may not have a sim in the phone.

Sounds as though you have a sim, you will need to remove the US sim, buy a sim from a provider in the country where you are going to use it (or enable roaming - although it does not sound as if you are having a roaming issue).

You noted in your comments that you used other sims, if so then:

YES, your phone is most probably locked to a US carrier.

To answer your question how to fix it. You need to buy a non carrier locked phone from Apple in the US, or jail break your phone.

This site does not condone jail breaking however I can point you to a very good site called google which will help you out.


"iTunes could not connect to this iPhone. This device is no longer connected."

I was getting the same problem yesterday with both my iPads.  Finally gave up and re-booted the Mac -- problem went away.  Might be worth a try.


Yes, you can absolutely delete the folder Developer-3.2.5 - it shouldn't effect your workflow in any way UNLESS you want to add an older SDK at a later date.

If you are interested in seeing more discussion about it, there is also an Apple Support Community thread that essentially says the same thing - that you don't need the folders.


Can I swap the SSD from mid-2013 Macbook Air and mid-2014 Macbook Pro?

It doesn't work

My Pentalobe and Torx bits arrived today and I tried swapping the drives. When I put the 256 GB drive in my Macbook Pro, it doesn't boot and displays this image

I tried holding down opt to boot to a usb drive and do a fresh install of Mavericks on the drive.

When I attempt to boot from the USB drive, the crossed out circle image is displayed again.

I've also tried holding down shift during boot to boot into safe mode. The neutral gray screen displays for a longer time, but eventually the crossed out circle appears again.


With MacOS Catalina, the default terminal shell switched from bash to zsh. It didn't migrate existing users, but when you reinstalled Catalina it took the opportunity to update your default. The default prompt for bash is '$', for zsh '%'. Use chsh -s /bin/bash to switch back to your old shell as default. Alternatively, change your prompt by setting the variable PS1. Note that if you stick with zsh, there are some changes like different auto-completion methods. Also, if you had any sourcing files for bash (like ~/.bash_profile or ~/.bashrc), you might have to update them to their zsh equivalents.


The only solution is to call Apple Support. Just go to the Apple ID support page and enter the information as it affects you. (I think going to "Apple ID" -> "Disabled Apple ID" would suit you best). I recommend calling telephone support, but you can also email them like suggested. Either way, it would be best to have a device connected to that ID.


How will Mail handle an SMTP server port number change?

There might be two things that you have to do:

It should work automatically without any intervention after the port upgrade. But to make it smooth, you might need to re-add your account in Apple Mail.

You can manually modify and add specified port too but it depends upon your email provider. However, in most cases, it should go automatically.


How to specify command to always run as root?

You could use a Run AppleScript action that runs do shell script "purge" with administrator privileges. It requires entering a password though.

If you don't want to enter a password, add %localaccounts ALL=NOPASSWD: /usr/sbin/purge to sudoers. (Run sudo visudo, press i, type or paste the text, press escape, and type :wq.) Then use a Run Shell Script action that runs sudo purge.


Video player for macOS with jumping by subs and speed control

I suggest you to check IINA. It's free and open source video player for macOS.

Stepping forward/backward through subtitles by default is with Shift+Left/Right,

but you could customize these keybindings in preferences.


Where to download OS X Mavericks out from Mac App Store?

The only way to obtain Mavericks legally is through the App Store, sorry.


This is a better question for Stack Overflow, but this should probably be done with CSS. For this simple example, I specified the width in pixels instead of a percentage. If you must override widths and have particular columns be different widths, then you should could do inline style for the table cells, or put <column /> tags at the top of the table, and specify the width with those (that part wasn't in the JSFiddle). Note that you may need to use CSS to help with line breaks as well if you don't have any spaces in your text.

Example JSFiddle


dsconfigad: Node name wasn't found. (2000)

It's caused by incorrect time, fixed by sudo ntpdate -u time.apple.com


I'm afraid this is one of those features that was just really badly thought-through from the outset, when the new fullscreen paradigm was added, & hasn't been fixed yet.

You can only use key commands to go directly to numbered Spaces.
Fullscreen Spaces don't have a number.
Catch 22

Best you can do is use the number keys to get to the last numbered Space, then  Ctrl ⌃   →  to get to the fullscreen Space you require.

Yet another reason I never use fullscreen.

BTW, according to your Shortcuts picture, you only have one Space set up. The  Ctrl ⌃   [num]  shortcuts are added automatically [but not activated by default] as you add each potential Space.

Compared to my 7...

Safari full-screened to the right, as an example. Spaces have numbers, fullscreens have names.


Can I charge my MacBook with a phone charger?

The reason you can't do this is a matter of input.

The 13" MBP has a 61W charger - a lot more than your typical phone charger brick. Check your phone brick and see how much of a difference there is.

Your Macbook would probably not even accept the charge because it would be so low


iTunes library incomplete on iPhone/iPad

You will need to go to Music, then select the drop down that says, "Songs" or "Albums" or whatever your current library view is. In the bottom of the drop down menu, switch off the option that says "Only downloaded music", then you can download the music that you're missing from there. If that fix doesn't work then you might have an iCloud syncing issue.


Realtime SCART input with audio on an iMac

For cheap & cheerful, maybe something like this - http://www.amazon.co.uk/ClimaxDigital-VCAP800-Capture-Mavericks-Mountain/dp/B00466VIB4

I've never tried it myself, so I've nothing to go on other than the reviews, which seem varied.


Is it safe to wrap Mac cord with a cloth?

I'm assuming that you are referring to a Macbook brick.

The thin (low voltage) side is either 14.5V (Air) or 20V (Pro). I don't know about the USB-C connector.

Cloth MIGHT be safe on the low voltage side if just the covering separated, but if it has to be in a specific position to work, you probably have a broken wire as well which could lead to sparking under the wrong conditions.

The only truly safe thing to do is replace your adapter. You can use proper electrical tape until then, but it should only be a temporary measure.

If it's on the other side of the brick, replace immediately.


Dead pixel with but with inverted color in rMBP

Dead pixels aren't necessarily "black pixels". Although it's common that the dead pixel stays black, they also come in different colors and, as in your case, they can change colors too.

The way to tell if it's a software problem is to check if the pixel appears dead right after turning on the machine. If that is the case, it must be a hardware problem because the software has not been loaded yet at this point.

Check this, and if it's a hardware problem, my guess is a failing graphics card or display. Time to take it to an Apple Store :(


How do I link an installed app in iBooks Author?

It is possible in WebKit so it is probably possible in iBooks too. The URL depends on the application, as it's the developer who chooses it. More info here, with the example of launch center, an app which is basically a list of URLs to apps.

Try it with the free app Twitterrific (make your link to twitterrific:// – no http://!).


Building a small network in Apple environment?

There are several ways to accomplish this. Let's list your requirements:

Multiple Macs.
Shared files between them.
Wired network.
Backups either online or local.
Remote access to files.

While OS X Server is certainly useful here (especially if you wanted a VPN), it isn't necessary. Assuming all of your PCs are on the network, I would set up a NAS (network attached storage device) and locate my files there. Many NAS also have the ability to share files out remotely.

Alternatively, you could load Dropbox, Box.net, or some similar service on each device, and share specific folders to each user account. This would allow you to more easily integrate devices external to your network into your file sharing system. Each such service offers varying tiers of free space, and you pay as you add onto them. An added bonus would be the ability to roll back file changes, or recover deletions (at least DropBox has this feature.)

As with any setup, your mileage will vary.


iOS 12 tapping on notification to open app not working

I had the same issue and then realized that after I’d reset my settings my Face ID wasn’t set up. After I set up Face ID, tap to open notifications started working again. Hopefully this helps.


Dual screens and maximized video on Yosemite

In short, no.

OS X has always behaved like this.
The only alternative is to use maximised rather than fullscreen, though that is app-dependent, especially when it comes to video playback…

For instance, VLC can do it, Youtube can't.

If the window has the traffic light buttons, top left, it can. If it doesn't - like a Youtube video where the main window has those but the video itself doesn't, you're stuck.


How do I change the location of macOS screen captures?

According to this page...

defaults write com.apple.screencapture location <path>

Also, to turn on/off shadow:

defaults write com.apple.screencapture disable-shadow -bool true
defaults write com.apple.screencapture disable-shadow -bool false

And to change file type:

defaults write com.apple.screencapture type <format>

You'll want to

killall SystemUIServer

to make the commands take effect.


How to change default path for photo booth?

I report here as an answer my comment above.

You can move the Photo Booth Library to the location you prefer, this procedure should automatically change the path of the Photo Booth application.

Note that the library is a package that keeps all the photos and the content of the application, if you delete it you will lose all your pics and data.


I found a couple options that should cover most applications. Either one of these could be used to create an Automator workflow to make running the script more convenient.

Option 1: Terminal command

The open command can be used to open an application using the -a option. You can add the -g option to open the application without bringing it to the foreground. This does not work for Slack or Google Chrome. I suspect it is because they are cross-platform applications that are built differently and aren't perfect macOS citizens. This solution is preferable if it works for the desired application.

open -g -a "Microsoft Word"

Option 2: AppleScript

You can use AppleScript to activate an application and hide it if it had not previously been running. The application will launch and still steal focus, but the script will delay a short time to ensure the application launches before trying to hide it. It's definitely not a perfect solution, but it works.

set appName to "Slack"
-- Check if the application is running
set appIsRunning to application appName is running
-- Activate the application
tell application appName to activate
if not appIsRunning then
    -- If the application is not running, delay and then hide the application
    delay 1 -- increase this value as needed
    tell application "Finder" to set the visible of process appName to false
else
    -- If the application is running, count the number of windows.
    tell application "System Events" to tell process appName to set windowCount to count of windows
    -- If no windows are open, open a new one.
    if windowCount = 0 then
        -- Open window command here. I could not find one for Slack
    end if
end if

See this answer for several commands for opening new windows if that is desired.


Does iTunes consider a one-star rating worse than no rating at all?

No stars is a lesser rating than one star.  This can be verified by sorting a playlist by rating, and having at least one song on it with one star, and at least one with no stars.  The one with one star will float above the one(s) with none.


Sharing music in the iTunes library with multiple accounts and iOS devices

Would iTunes Home Sharing work for you?

Basically, one of you would have all your music, but every device would have access to it.


The '.Trashes' folder is for OS X to remember that you moved files to the Trash but haven't deleted it. To remove the files from the '.Trashes' folder you need to empty the trash.

You can empty the trash by right clicking on the trash can in your dock and selecting 'Empty Trash'.


You could try booting into internet recovery (hold Command+Option+R during boot) once there open disk utility and try partitioning again.


Is it possible to use a SD card as virtual memory in OS X Server?

You probably can use an SD card as a backing store.

However: you should not expect a good result. See the up-voted comments.


Swollen battery for the past few days - MacBook Pro (Retina, 15-inch, Mid 2015)

You should definitely locate a service provider that can run a test today / tomorrow. Remote service is easy for this and quick and consider getting a backup and then take your computer to the Apple Store if they are open in your country.

https://locate.apple.com
https://support.apple.com/15-inch-macbook-pro-battery-recall

This is the battery airbag inflating to prevent a problem like fire or failure. Protect your data immediately, the hardware also needs attention. You may be covered by a safety program about the Apple batteries in the MacBook and it has precautions to take. In the past, these original batteries have exploded. I would take it to Apple Store immediately.
Also if the battery continues to swell it will eventually break something inside your computer. Others have mentioned that a swollen battery broke the trackpad on their MacBook Pro. All the more reason to take it to an Apple Store even if you think you are out of warranty. This design is like crumple zones in a car - the hardware is designed to save life in the event the design tolerances are exceeded. If the car is going to crash, it might as well do so safely. Same with a battery, if it’s getting over charged, it might as well let you know clearly and safely.
I also found this fairly recent (2019) article about Lithium Polymer batteries and off-gassing.


No, I wouldn't recommend using that method. At the same time, you're risking deleting too much, and not actually deleting the whole thing.
For quite some time now, Xcode can actually be uninstalled simply by dragging the Xcode app from the Applications folder and into the Trash. This will quite significantly delete most of its footprint.
On older systems, you could also open a Terminal and run the following command to uninstall Xcode developer tools:
sudo /Developer/Library/uninstall-devtools –mode=all


No package manager on brand new macOS Catalina

The only package manager that’s somewhat default is /usr/bin/easy_install for python. You have to choose and install any of the leading open source type package managers.

For brew, this has been the command to download and run code from the internet.

/usr/bin/ruby -e "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Homebrew/install/master/install)"

If this thought makes you cringe, alternate install paths are safer than trusting dns and scripts without having a chance to inspect them.

mkdir homebrew && curl -L https://github.com/Homebrew/brew/tarball/master | tar xz --strip 1 -C homebrew


Fix 'Home' and 'End' keys on non-Cocoa applications

You can do this with Karabiner's 'Use PC Style Home/End #2'.
This remaps Home and End to ⌘← and ⌘→ respectively.


What's a free/lightweight way to email a message to force an iPhone alert?

I'm not sure about Popups, but your iPhone can get emails pushed through gmail. Would that help?

Also, whatever forwards to SMS could trim the email so that each only takes 1 SMS to deliver.


Where can I find the system icons for Mail?

Obviously in macOS Sierra, Apple has changed how it packages some of the application resources and in this particular case the image assets that comprise the toolbar are still in Mail.app/Contents/Resources/, at least some of them, in the assets.car file as shown in the image farther below. Note that there are several .car files in the Resources folder, however looking at the open files for Mail.app in Activity Monitor, there are .car archives outside of the application bundle that are open as well, e.g.:

/System/Library/CoreServices/SystemAppearance.bundle/Contents/Resources/VibrantLightAppearance.car
/System/Library/CoreServices/SystemAppearance.bundle/Contents/Resources/SystemAppearance.car
/System/Library/CoreServices/SystemAppearance.bundle/Contents/Resources/Assets.car
/System/Library/PrivateFrameworks/AccountsUI.framework/Versions/A/Resources/Assets.car
/System/Library/CoreServices/SystemAppearance.bundle/Contents/Resources/FunctionRowAppearance.car

Note: Check in Activity Monitor on your system for a complete list of open files for Mail.app.

Doing a few Google searches, I found a few different apps, both GUI and CL, and had mixed results in both viewing and extracting assets from the .car archives. However, that was using only precompiled programs, and there are a few Xcode Projects I didn't test.

The one in the image below is ThemeEngine and while is actually showed more objects then Asset Catalog Tinkerer did, and opened some .car files that Asset Catalog Tinkerer couldn't, the drawback is ThemeEngine doesn't have an export function like Asset Catalog Tinkerer did. However, I could still copy and paste out of ThemeEngine though. Maybe the Xcode Projects would work better if I compiled then on my system, but just don't have the time to try.


Is there any app for reduce battery draining for ios 12?

No, there are no apps that generally lower power consumption on the iPhone.

You can enable power save mode in the Control Center to reduce power draw by background services, and you can uninstall or limit apps that use background services to stop doing that.

However it sounds like you only have the large power draw when you're actually playing the game. In that case it is the game using the power, and there's really not much to do about it. You can check the game for settings that allow reduced power usage, or write a bug report / complaint to the game developers.


GRUB 2 error – "fb: switching to radeondrmfb from EFI VGA"

There seems to be a problem with the radeon driver when booting. You can test a fix by doing this:

When you see the grub menu, press 'e', which will allow you to edit the entry.
Go to the line with "linux...." and look for where it says 'ro'.
After the 'ro', add 'nomodeset' (without quotes), and then boot (press F10).

If that works, you can make it permanent by editing your /etc/default/grub file, and changing the line to look like this:

GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX="nomodeset"

Then run:

sudo update-grub

This isn't the best solution, since it seems to put your machine into software rendering. I'm hunting for a proper fix.


How to launch Steam games from Spotlight?

You can make your Steam games appear under Spotlight as follows:

Open Steam.app, go to Library, right click on the game entry and select Create Desktop Shortcut from the content menu. An alias for the game is created on the Desktop.

After the shortcut is created, it can be moved to any location on hard disk (as long as the location is indexed by Spotlight) and it will appear in Spotlight search results.


Simulating copy and paste on applications that don't allow it

Turns out the problem was that the copied password (and the one with which I thought I registered) was longer than 20 characters. The input field on the application doesn't allow more than 20 characters long password and the website silently cuts them to 20.

By copying the first 20 characters of the password I was able to paste it in.


How to upgrade to latest OS on Macbook Air?

The new macOS is not displaying because you are not signed into the App Store with your AppleID.

Since you are in the category of "OS X 10.10 Yosemite or earlier" (10.9 is before 10.10), you might have some trouble signing in because your OS does not support two-factor authentication.

Use two step verification:

When you open the App Store and try to sign in, you may see some text in red saying "Please type your password followed by the security code".

Check your phone. Your phone may ask if you allow the login from a certain device; click "allow". It will then show you a pin number.

So if your password is "hushpuppies" and the pin on your phone is "123456", type "hushpuppies123456" in the password field.

After you have signed in, you still might not see anything in the "updates" tab. Try looking at the "featured" tab to see if the OS is there. Once you find it, (in my case, there was a banner in the featured tab for "Catalina") click the "get" button and the download will start.

Run the downloaded installer and follow instructions.


How do I deactivate the dialog that appears when you hold a number key pressed?

You need re-enable key repeat for this context menu to go away. It'll affect character keys as well as number keys.

Open Terminal.app
Enter the following to turn this context menu feature off and reenable the old key repeat behaviour: defaults write -g ApplePressAndHoldEnabled -bool false

And you're done. Holding down any key now should repeat that key in the text entry window instead of calling up that context menu to select alternate characters.

To turn the context menu feature back on enter: defaults write -g ApplePressAndHoldEnabled -bool true instead.


How do you create an archive file which unarchives into the current folder?

Unless I am mistaken (always a possibility), this behavior is set by the program extracting the archive file, not by the archive file itself.


Mini Ipad stolen. Have two iPads with the same iCloud

No - when iCloud sends an erase message, it is targeted to a specific device and not all devices in one account.


How to automate changing the settings when you connect the mouse?

You can use Keyboard Maestro:

Repeat script with 'is disconnected'.
You may need to change the USB device name.
AppleScript from shell script: Toggle Natural scrolling from command line with reload


How do I tell OS X to always mirror displays when I plug them in?

You didn't say what version of OS X you are using. Yosemite remembers your settings by default so just set it once.


Using Time Capsule to extend a BT HomeHub

Answer to:

  If this is possible and I reconfigure my Time Capsule, will I have to
  restart my Time Machine backups from scratch again?

Time Capsule settings and user stored data are separate things. You can erase the hard drive and keep the settings, and reset the settings while keeping your data.


24" Intel iMac (2006) date and time keeps resetting on boot, even after new battery and NVRAM reset

Because I had 1% uncertainty about how I had placed the new battery in its holder and because I wanted to make sure it was firmly in place, I reopened the iMac. And what did I behold? The battery holder is supposed to be connected to the motherboard on two places, the upper and bottom side. And the upper side was loose! This must have happened while prying out the old battery, that is an even trickier operation than I thought it was.

So that was the cause. Now I have the challenge of fixing this. Duct tape (to hold the battery holder down on the board) didn't help, I can tell you that by now. It should be soldered, but I have neither the equipment nor the skill to do that :-(


How can I access iCloud documents/files from an iOS device?

You can do so from the Numbers app on iOS. You don’t open it from manage storage. You open the app in which the document was created, on the iPhone.


Mail window doesn't appear until I enter full screen?

When you copy your Home folder be aware that there is a Mail folder in your Library folder.

/Users/yourhomefoldername/Library/Mail

You would not want to move that one to prevent problems.


There are many things that could be going wrong here. First of all, make sure that when you navigate to Finder > Preferences > General, the option "Always open folders in a new window" is unchecked. If not, there are many solutions to your problem listed below:

Naviate to View > Show Toolbar
Navigate to View > as List, as Columns, or as Cover Flow
Get TotalFinder (http://totalfinder.binaryage.com/), which adds many more settings to Finder

Good luck!


How to change Mission Control window highlighting

There is not an explicit Mission Control picker for the highlight, nor a slider to increase the highlight size.

However, if you go System Preferences >> Accessibility >> Display, then you will find a number of adjustments that can help you to distinguish the display elements.

The Increase contrast is a good one because it makes everything a little "sharper."

You can further increase the Display contrast, though a little goes a long way.

Increasing the Cursor size might also help, since you'll have an easier time spotting which window is beneath the cursor.

If this still doesn't help, then I'd recommend submitting a feature request to Apple.


Mac OS X 10.6.8 - Can't remove SophosUpdate Packages/Folders on Desktop

When I highlight it my trash can turns into an eject button.

This is a huge clue, because it indicates that this is a mounted volume (presumably a mounted image of the update package) and not an actual folder in ~/Desktop.

If you enter mount or diskutil list at a terminal prompt, does anything called SophosUpdate show up? If you see one or more of these listed, you should be able to unmount it with sudo diskutil unmount force /dev/diskN where N is the disk number. Alternately, sudo diskutil unmount force "/Volumes/Volume Name" has the same effect.


Display sizes being recognised incorrectly

The resolution is what determines the ‘size’ in the arrangement tab. In the photo, the middle monitor's resolution is so much less than the other displays. To adjust the resolution, go to the Display tab, then use the window on that specific display to choose a higher resolution.


If you're not using iCloud to manage your contacts you can sync the contacts manually with your computer.

Connect the device to iTunes over USB.
In iTunes, choose your phone from the toolbar and select the Info tab.

iTunes for Mac: Sync contacts, calendars, and other info with iPod, iPhone, or iPad
Check the box beside Sync Contacts and press Apply.


Bootcamp operating system missing error after resizing partition

Firstly - Sorry for bringing up an old question - I just spent a year trying to find the answers and only found questions so I figured I'd answer a past one with my solution

Resize Bootcamp partition:

Boot to MacOS and use disk utils to shrink OS X partition leaving unallocated space on hdd

<-- I believe you are at this point based on the empty space starting at 852326800 -->

Boot to GParted and use the copy/resize function to expand the windows partition to the left (this covers your extended space)
Boot back to OS X and use FDisk to mark the Bootcamp partition as bootable (Was partition 4 in my case and looks to be in your case)
Bless a Windows bootable USB before restart (with startup repair avaliable on it)

sudo bless -mount "/Volumes/**mountedusb**/" -legacy -setBoot -nextonly

Boot to windows usb and run startup repair
Restart and you should be good.


How willl a Mac Mini's SSD effect the maximum process size when use swap?

macOS does not limit the maximum process size (i.e. working set) according to total RAM and a fixed proportion of available disk. This is 100% not the case in any way at all.

You can set arbitrary limits on process size using the "ulimit" command in the Terminal, those are however limits chosen by the user - and thus can be changed as need be.

There are ofcourse actual, "physical" limits of a process size given by the hardware. Contrary to common belief, it is not actually possible for an ordinary 64-bit system to have processes that address 2^64-1 bytes of RAM. On macOS (and Windows other systems) processes are actually limited to 2^48-1 bytes instead. I.e. a given pointer only has 48 bits that are actually significant.

There are paging techniques to counter this, but in practice no ordinary program employs them.

In addition to the physical limits, there are other limits you'll run into. If you have meaningful data in RAM, the system needs somewhere to store it. The total RAM installed on the system as well as the free disk space available for swapping becomes a limit.

Note that this is not a fixed limit in any way. If your RAM contents are compressable (i.e. for example if it contains many repeated bytes), then you'll be able to have extremely large process sizes without problems. Much more than you have physical RAM and swap space.


Time Machine + FileVault on Lion or Mountain

Time Machine on 10.7/10.8 uses the same encryption as any other non-system disk. When you first enable it, OS X has to encrypt the entire disk, which takes a while. The status "Encrypting" just means that it's still working on that.

You can check on the status with diskutil cs list in Terminal. Mixed in with other info, you'll see something like:

Size (Total):       124190560256 B (124.2 GB)
Size (Converted):   2539913216 B (2.5 GB)

That's 2.5 out of 124.2GB complete. Once the disk is fully encrypted, it's done for good and you'll basically never see that status again.


How can I fix missing spaces when using Dictation with MacVim or Terminal?

TL; DR

This issue appears to be MacVim-specific. Try using Vim 7.4.889 or later instead.

Analysis and Work-Arounds

I have experienced this same issue on both Yosemite and El Capitan with MacVim-snapshot-77. For example, in MacVim:

  I pause hereAnd dictation doesn't add a space.

However, I only experience this problem in MacVim and the versions of gvim and mvim that the MacVim package provides. Vim 7.4.889 (as installed via Homebrew) and Terminal.app with various versions of Bash seem to work fine for me on OS X 10.11 (El Capitan).

In case your settings are different, I have enabled:

Dictation & Speech -> Dictation -> Use Enhanced Dictation
Accessibility -> Dictation -> Dictation Commands -> Enable advanced commands

This appears to be something hard-wired in MacVim. Even if you define a custom dictation command for MacVim such as "literal space" and assign it the space character, MacVim with Enhanced Dictation always seems to treat pauses as the start of a new sentence. I would recommend filing a bug against MacVim.

While it won't fix the underlying problem with MacVim, you can work around the issue by doing your dictation in a Terminal-based Vim session using a different build. Since the problem appears to be MacVim rather than Vim, this seems like the most pragmatic short-term solution until MacVim is fixed.


Browse iPhoto library in photoshop or bridge

I also thought Photoshop CS6 had an little iphoto panel or something but this solution may be just as good.

It's easy to overlook but you can actually see your iphoto library when you are in the file>open... (or place...) window browsing files.

If you look on the left of the window where your home folder and other directories are, you'll find at the bottom there's a section called "MEDIA" that should have Music, Photos, and Movies. Click the photo section and the browsing window will change to a little mini iphoto browser.

I hope that helps. I'm not sure about what versions of Photoshop/iphoto this works for. I'm running Adobe CS5.5 (photoshop v5.1) and iPhoto 2011. I just upgraded to Mountain lion from Snow Leopard and it works with both those operating systems.


How to sync photos+videos to both iCloud and Google Photos while simultaneously deleting from iOS devices?

The following worked for me. For my current purposes, 'iOS device' = iPhone8 running iOS 11.4.1.

Procedure:

Confirm iOS device has uploaded all photos+videos to iCloud Photo Library. (How does one explicitly confirm this?)
Deactivate iCloud Photo Library
Execute Google Photo's "free up space on my device" to remove photos+videos from iOS device.
Permanently delete photos from Photos.app on iOS device; excerpt:

Delete photos permanently

If you want to permanently delete your photos or videos within 30 days, you can remove them from the Recently Deleted album. When you delete a photo from this album, you can't get it back. (An aside: this procedure can be quite cumbersome for thousands or more of photos+videos.)

Open the Photos app and go to the Albums tab.
Open the Recently Deleted album and tap Select.
Tap each photo or video that you want to permanently delete.
Tap Delete.

Reactivate iCloud Photo Library.
Future-captured photos and videos are now both synced to iCloud and Google Photos, while perviously-captured-but-now-deleted-from-iOS-device photos (prior to #2) are all retained in iCloud and Google Photos (?).


How can I get my browser to remember a password it doesn't offer to remember?

Depending on HOW they ask for the password some browsers dont recognize the request. However it is also possible that this website has a little bit of code in it to tell the browser to NOT remember the password. Banks often do this and I gather it is pretty trivial to turn off "remember passwords" on a web page.

I use a little javascript that will (sometimes) bypass this:

Create a bookmark of ANY page (it doesnt matter which page as we will be replacing the URL and name)
Go into Show All Bookmarks and select the bookmark you just made.
In the Address field (where the URL is) click and remove ALL of the url and replace it with this:

javascript:(function(){var%20ca,cea,cs,df,dfe,i,j,x,y;function%20n(i,what){return%20i+%22%20%22+what+((i==1)?%22%22:%22s%22)}ca=cea=cs=0;df=document.forms;for(i=0;i%3Cdf.length;++i){x=df[i];dfe=x.elements;if(x.onsubmit){x.onsubmit=%22%22;++cs;}if(x.attributes[%22autocomplete%22]){x.attributes[%22autocomplete%22].value=%22on%22;++ca;}for(j=0;j%3Cdfe.length;++j){y=dfe[j];if(y.attributes[%22autocomplete%22]){y.attributes[%22autocomplete%22].value=%22on%22;++cea;}}}alert(%22Removed%20autocomplete=off%20from%20%22+n(ca,%22form%22)+%22%20and%20from%20%22+n(cea,%22form%20element%22)+%22,%20and%20removed%20onsubmit%20from%20%22+n(cs,%22form%22)+%22.%20After%20you%20type%20your%20password%20and%20submit%20the%20form,%20the%20browser%20will%20offer%20to%20remember%20your%20password.%22)})();

Now edit the NAME of the password and change it to something like "Remember Password."

I put this bookmark in the bookmark bar, so you can drag it there if you like.

Now when yo go to a page that won't remember your password, click that bookmark and then enter your username and password. If Safari then asks if you want to remember the password: SUCCESS!

If not then I don't have a solution for you. However I use 1Password to fill in most password, but that ain't free...


That makes sense. The USB adapter has a driver and is active.

Thunderbolt isn't getting a network address since you don't have a direct network on that port. You would have an active connection if you went thunderbolt to thunderbolt on another Mac or PC or a direct thunderbolt to gigabit ethernet adapter.

Don't over think the network pane - as long as the end device is listed, you are good to go without worrying about what's between it and the CPU.


You cannot change that function of Full Screen button to, but there is simple workaround. Go to Keyboard Preference Pane > Shortcuts > App Shotcuts > + > All Applications, and Menu Title to Zoom/Maximise, choose a shortcut of your preference. Now you can use that shortcut to mimic the behaviour of "old" Maximise button.


How can I duplicate a pdf page without doubling the file size?

You can do that by turning the page into a Template, and then spawn it with the XObject parameter.

You will need Acrobat Pro for that, and you will use Acrobat JavaScript, which means you should have a good look at the Acrobat JavaScript documentation.


How to get installers not to hang on "Waiting for other installations to complete..."?

"fPermittedFrontASNs" points to the new Gatekeeper Function Apple introduced in 10.8 and which changes the way background processes behave and are able to launch child processes that interact with the user interface.

The Gatekeeper-Rule "Allow Applications downloaded from: Anywhere" still has some restrictions, as an example at this Apple Support Page points out:

  "Anywhere – Allow applications to run regardless of their source on
  the Internet; Gatekeeper is effectively turned off. Note: Developer
  ID-signed apps that have been inappropriately altered will not open,
  even with this option selected."

I don't know if that specific note applies to Hotspot Shield, but i have seen similar Problems with other VPN-related Software.

I suggest you deactivate Gatekeeper completely for the Installation of HotSpot Shield. You can do that in the Terminal with:

  sudo spctl --master-disable

After that a restart might be necessary. You can activate Gatekeeper after the Installation with:

  sudo spctl --master-enable

For more Options look at 'man spctl' in the Terminal. Please tell if that solved your problem.


APFS and HFS+ volumes on the same partition

Well, you would need a separate partition for each volume type. In other words, APFS type partitions can hold multiple volumes, but each must be a APFS volume. HFS+ type partitions can hold a single volume which must by HFS+ type.

In addition the first partition is usually a EFI type partition which contains a single volume of FAT32 type. So, you would need at least a total of three partitions on the drive.

  No single partition type can support both HFS+ and APFS volumes.


Do all magsafe power ports have the same form factor?

Yes - the computer side of things is the same, but the newer cord layout is needed for Airs or when the space around the port is restricted.

The 'L-shaped' MagSafe adapters were just a newer design which meant the cable went backwards instead of outwards.  They should fit just fine and I've used one or two third-party ones in the past.  Just as long as you pick the right power-output you should be fine.  Here's a TUAW article on the matter


Now that disablelocal is gone, how to stop local (internal drive) TimeMachine backups?

Keeping an external drive connected cleans up snapshots in 24 hours. There’s no real need to disable things in my experience, other than let the hourly backups run and prune.
I would also upgrade to 10.15.7 and then report if you have some specific issue once a day passes on the new system build.
With APFS on SSD I can’t measure any performance issue since copy on write is basically handled at full speed via non-blocking IO.
The old mechanism absolutely had a performance impact so strategic cases, disabling made an effect. If you are on a hard disk and APFS, you have much bigger performance problems in general with APFS than managing the snapshots.


How to know app(from AppStore) is still installing and didn't just hang?

One good way to tell, especially for large apps like Xcode that take some time to install / upgrade, is to open the Activity Monitor (under Applications > Utilities).   You'll find a process called storedownloadd.   You can check to see it's CPU usage to give you an idea that it's happily working away.

You can see in my screenshot, I just started an upgrade of Xcode, and my process is running around 60%.   After a couple minutes (after this screenshot), the process dropped down to 5%, but it still working away...   as long as there is CPU usage here, you know it's still in progress.


That's not a search window, that's just a regular Finder window.

Hit  Cmd ⌘   F  (which will open a new Search window), or start typing something in the Search box, top right, & your filters will appear.

If you still don't see it, click the + top right - highlighted in green below...

You can also use it to add more filter criteria...
(Note that "no query should be required" only applies if you start from  Cmd ⌘   F  not from a regular Finder window, as your first example.

Late discovery
It doesn't work if you start from "All My Files"
I have no idea why.


I was told this was not the correct way to do.

But does it work?

Generally it sounds like what you did was correct, but just to be sure:

Open System Preferences and select the "Mail, Contacts & Calendar" preference (soon to be more sensible titled "Internet Accounts"
Click the "+" button to add an account.
Select "Gmail" as that account type.
Enter the Credentials for your Google Calendar.
Profit.


removing write up protection from micro sd card

Golden Rule #1

As soon as an SD card [or USB stick] starts to play up - bin it.
They're not worth the effort once they error.

I go through literally hundreds of them for work. Low write count, high read count.

If they error once, they will error again. Quality control on them is, let's say… variable.

Some of them have a controller chip that will permanently lock them to read only if they detect a write error, as a preservation measure. There is no way to unlock them once this happens.

Golden Rule #2

Don't use them to store anything valuable.

Edit:
If the data on an SD card was truly valuable, it is theoretically possible to replace the controller chip, or even directly access the memory itself. This service can be performed by data recovery specialists, but they charge a lot for their efforts & still can make no guarantees.

Rules 1 & 2 are still 'best practise'

Verbatim from my answer at https://superuser.com/a/854645/347380


Why does High Sierra remove my Login Items?

I have lost all my login items too after upgrade to macOS 10.13.1.

You could take a look the plist file at ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.loginitems.plist, it may still contain names of login items, then add them back manually. I recovered mine in this way.

I guess 10.13 has moved login items config to somewhere else but failed to migrate old ones.


APFS container over multiple physical disks

There is no official documented way to add another physical storage to an existing APFS container.

I tried several possibly "undocumented" apfsVerbs like addPhysical, addPhysicalStorage or addStorage without success.

The feature may still be implemented later, since creating APFS FusionLCs is possible already:

diskutil ap createContainer [-main] device [-secondary] [device]

Example:

$ diskutil ap createContainer disk1s2 disk2s2
Creating container with disk1s2 disk2s2
Started APFS operation on disk1s2 Data
Creating a new empty APFS Container
Unmounting Volumes
Switching disk1s2 to APFS
Switching disk2s2 to APFS
Creating APFS Container
FusionLC autodetect: LC Fusion
Created new APFS Container disk4
Disk from APFS operation: disk4
Finished APFS operation on disk1s2 Data

$ diskutil ap addVolume disk4 APFS Data
Exporting new unencrypted APFS Volume "Data" from APFS Container Reference disk4
Started APFS operation on disk4
Preparing to add APFS Volume to APFS Container disk4
Creating APFS Volume
Created new APFS Volume disk4s1
Mounting APFS Volume
Setting volume permissions
Disk from APFS operation: disk4s1
Finished APFS operation on disk4


This is indeed the normal response if the variable has not been set.
Example commands and output along your line of inquiry:

$ nvram boot-args
  boot-args serverperfmode=1 -v

Whereas:

$ nvram bootargs        # missing character results in: non existing variable
  nvram: Error getting variable - 'bootargs': (iokit/common) data was not found

This is the same state for this variable you get after deleting the whole variable or after clearing all variables with an NVRAM reset.

And if nvram -p does show nothing but what you posted then such a procedure was quite recent.

To test for 'normality':

$ nvram -p                        # print all nvram variables
boot-args serverperfmode 1 -v     # output if only boot-args is set
$ sudo nvram -d boot-args         # delete nvram variable for boot-args
$ nvram -p                        # print all nvram variables
                                  # nothing to output
$ nvram boot-args                 # try to read only boot-args variable
nvram: Error getting variable - 'boot-args': (iokit/common) data was not found # your error message
$ sudo nvram boot-args="-v"       # set boot-args to verbose boot mode
$ nvram -p                        # print all nvram variables
boot-args -v                      # output for nvram variable boot-args shown
$ nvram boot-args                 # print only boot-args nvram variable
boot-args -v


How to automatically add file location while printing

As automagic as it gets:

Using the add on service from http://www.devontechnologies.com/download/products.html

Example -total of 37 choices)

WordService provides a large number of commands for working with selected text:

Reformat text paragraphs
Clean up tabs, quotes, line endings
Remove unwanted text parts
Sort lines or paragraphs
Change case
Shift paragraphs right or left
Obscure using Rotate 13
Insert date, time, or file path
Get text statistics

Download from App Store for free.

https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/wordservice/id899972312?mt=12

you select Insert File path and voila.


After upgrading to iOS 5, I lost my all calendars, contacts, and message data

This is what you do:

Go to settings
Click on Mail, Contacts and Calendars
Scroll down and go to Calendars
Open the Sync screen
Check the box which says All Events
In about five minutes time, go back to your calendar which should have all of your previous events restored.

Happy days.


Siri says "speak you like to"; is there something messed up with my phone?

No, there's nothing wrong with your phone.

Yes, Apple messed up.

Ever wonder why you have to have an Internet connection to use Siri? All the voice-to-text transcribing is done on Apple's servers - and those servers tell your phone exactly what to display and what to say.

So, you should probably tell Apple about it - post something on their support forums, file a Radar, something. Most likely, it can be fixed server-side.


How to downgrade iOS to previous version?

Unfortunately, the firmware signing window has since closed for iOS 8.4.1 (as well as all earlier iOS builds for your device), so it should not be possible.

Source: https://ipsw.me/8.4.1


Bootcamp says "insert windows 7 install disk"

No, there's no need to buy a physical install disk. You can certainly purchase Windows 7 online to get a product key. The ISO file containing Windows 7 can be downloaded from Microsofts web site, allowing you to install via BootCamp.


How to remote desktop to Windows 8 with email login?

Try adding .\ in front of your email address. I'm not familiar with Windows 8, but with previous versions this directs Windows to perform authentication on the local system, rather than on the domain in which it resides.

If this doesn't work, try also hostname\, where hostname is the name of the computer you are trying to log into.


Both of those usually update almost instantly. Sometimes it may take a few minutes, but I've experienced instant results from people posting ratings and reviews.
Thanks!


Mac is really slow and I can't get Apps to open

Open Activity Monitor and see if something is using an excessive amount of CPU.

Open disk utility and mark your volume.
Check how much Space is available on your drive.
Verify hdd and volume.


Standard Windows Keyboard - wrong keys recognised

Delete the keyboard prefs file at /Library/Preferences/com.apple.keyboardtype.plist & reboot.
That should allow you to try again with the setup.

The layout you're looking for [I think] is this one for British PC, which looks correct for my standard UK PC extended keyboard.


MacBook DNS works behind some routers, doesn't behind others

You have statically set network adapter settings (IP address, DNS server, etc.) and you are moving between different networks.  Keep in mind, though many networks are similar in configuration, no network is exactly alike.

There are many different reasons why you experienced what you did, and it would be impossible without actually looking at your individual configuration, but suffice to say the static setup you had working in one network wasn't exactly right for the other network and may have been good enough for the third network, and so on.

This is why it's good (among other reasons like IP address conflicts), when going between various networks, to obtain the network settings via DHCP.  This way, there can be no conflicts.


What does it mean if I have lots of "Inactive" memory at the end of a work day?

OS X, like most modern operating systems, uses a virtual memory system for managing memory. Among other purposes, this allows the operating system to treat the computer as having an unlimited pool of memory. To achieve this, the OS will page unused parts of RAM out to a disk store known as the swapfile.

Of course, RAM is not unlimited, so OS X groups RAM into four categories: wired, active, inactive, and free. Wired memory is required by the operating system, and can never be paged out of memory. Active memory is memory used by currently-running programs. Inactive memory was used recently by programs which have now been terminated (or haven't been unused in a long time). Free memory is, as the name suggests, RAM that is not being used.

When you launch a program, it gets loaded into active memory. When you quit a program, however, it doesn't get removed from RAM; rather, it gets bumped into inactive memory. This is why it is often faster to re-launch a program -- it is still in RAM (try this with a big program like Firefox).

Once all your memory is used (free memory is 0), the OS will write out inactive memory to the swapfile to make more room in active memory.

If a program gets paged out to the swapfile, and you re-launch it, it'll get pulled from the swapfile into active memory.

So in short, you actually shouldn't care if your free memory is low. In fact, you want it to be low -- free memory is wasted memory (as the OS isn't using it for anything).

When examining how much memory your computer is using, you actually want to pay attention mostly to Swap used, which tells you the size of the virtual memory swapfile, and Page ins, which tells you how often the OS has to pull memory from the swapfile into active memory.


The cmdpack you downloaded are command line tools. If you have a recent mac, you should have downloaded the Mac OS X (64-bit, x86_64) version.

To use these tools, you'll need to venture into the UNIX command line. This is analogous to the command prompt of Windows, and can be accessed using the Terminal application in /Applications/Utilities.

Once you've downloaded the cmdpack.gz file, uncompress it to a directory by double-clicking it. For ease of explanation, then drop the .ecm file you want to work with into that directory. Open Terminal (either find it in Utilities or Spotlight search for it) and then navigate to the cmdpack directory (the easiest way to do this is to type cd followed by a space, and then drag the directory to your terminal window--the path of the folder will be inserted--then hit return).

When you're in the appropriate working directory, you can type ls to list its contents. The executable you want to run is most likely unecm. The easiest way to run an executable in your current working directory is by prefixing it with ./. If you type ./unecm, the command will run and show you usage information. If you already dropped your .ecm file into this directory, unencoding it should be as simple as ./unecm myecmfile.ecm

To recap:

Download the Mac OS X (64-bit, x86_64) command-line pack and uncompress/ungzip it.
Open Terminal and navigate to the uncompressed directory (for me this command was cd /Users/nreilingh/Downloads/cmdpack-1.02-macosx-x86_64)
Run unecm as necessary with ./unecm after cding to the ungzipped directory.


Does Time Capsule automatically backup to the cloud?

AirPort Time Capsules do not come with any cloud-based storage. They are an entirely network-local backup and storage device. Whomever told you it it had storage "on the cloud" was not being truthful. You can see the full specs for the AirPort Time Capsule on Apple's web page. As you will see: there is no mention of any cloud-based storage at all on that page.


First select the table by clicking on the table-select circle in the upper left.

Once selected you can grab the right edge of the table at the center select point to adjust the width left and right.

See screenshot.


How can I keep my Macbook Pro cool and avoid fan noise?

Fan speeds are related to the temperature of your laptop.  If you're just interested in monitoring the temps, iStat Menus ($16) has an excellent temperature monitor that sits in your menu bar and can track any of the dozen temperature sensors built into your MBP.

There are a few apps which purport to allow you to control your Apple laptop fan speeds.

EDIT: Updated Aug 2018

Macs Fan Control -- $15, last updated Mar 2018
smcFanControl -- Free, last updated Oct 2016, many users report that they can set fan speeds high, but not low

I've found that the best solution to keeping my computer cool and the fans off, even when really tasking the processor, is to put it on a little stand to allow plenty of airflow underneath.  The one I swear by is a Podium Pad from 2004 which was discontinued long ago -- but there are many alternatives.  If you keep your laptop on your lap, almost any simple lap desk can help a lot, keeping the computer on a firm surface to let the fans do their work without smothering them with fabric/skin.  There are also active cooling pads with fans in them, some of which are very well-reviewed.

Finally, I'm not sure what you're recording, but you could try using a directional USB microphone to eliminate extraneous noise from your recording environment.  There are many excellent options on Amazon for under $100 (be sure it is Mac-compatible before purchasing).


Yes, in the Apple's iOS 6 What's new page, the iPhone 3GS is listed with any kind of restrictions.


Is it fine to update my phone to 9.3.2 iOS if I'm using iPhone 4s

You didn't indicate if your iPhone is jailbroken or not so I'm going on the assumption that it's not.

My recommendation to all questions like this is to say 'yes, you should always upgrade to the most recent iOS version'.  However, only you can decide if it's worth the upgrade or not.  If you do decide to upgrade, be sure to do a backup first.  If you don't like it, you can go back to what you have.

There are not many general user enhancements in this version (here is the list of changes), but there are many security and bug fixes that you should have (as documented here).  Most of the issues being reported in this version reference the iPad Pro.  If you have an iPad Pro, I recommend not upgrading right now.


Can I make certain menus always show ⌥option + click results?

I don't know if there's a way to do exactly that, but if you can't be bothered to use the option key when clicking (maybe you're holding an instrument with the other hand or something?) then a keyboard shortcut to an AppleScript to change audio devices is probably even better.

Here's another question that addresses this approach, and if it's not quite what you're looking for, there are plenty of other people out there talking about this as well.


As johnfinn68 answered in this Apple Discussions post:

  To determine [the bus speed of HDD and SuperDrive slots], go to the apple icon, about this mac, more info,select Serial ATA, then look at the (on mine) Nvidia AHCI and see the Link Speed and Negotiated Link speed.  The default one shown is the HDD, you need to click on the other AHCI channel to see the optical drive specs.  This will help you determine where to put the SSD.


Both deleted and new audiobooks show in iTunes, but not on iPhone

Found some old (iphone 8) information that suggested it's a syncing problem related to manual syncing, and led me to figure out this answer for the iphone X.

Disconnect iPhone from iTunes.
In iTunes, delete the unwanted book from the library and move it to the recycle bin. (Note: This step might not be necessary, but I did it as an extra precaution/preemptive step. If I wanted to keep the book, then I'd just have to remember to retrieve it from the recycle bin.)
Still in iTunes, go to Edit > Preferences > Devices
Uncheck "Prevent...from syncing automatically"
Reset Sync History
Click OK.
Reconnect iPhone to iTunes. Wait for the synching process to complete.
In iTunes, edit preferences to manually sync again (assuming this is the state you want to revert to).

Note: I was nervous about auto syncing because I thought it might transfer all music and all audiobooks to the phone, which I definitely did not want. Am happy to report that in this case, the only audiobook synched to the phone was the one I'd already transferred.


FusionDrive + Encrypted CoreStorage Volume - Problems writing to volume

It happens to me when I have the SSD at the second bay, all was fixed when I put the SSD at the main bay in order to be shown as disk0


In Finder and Terminal — can not delete a folder, (Error = "Directory not empty")

Hi David and Igor — Issue is resolved, but the solution is not something I'd have considered as even being a relevant one, but I wanted to post it here for whoever this might help in the future (as well as put closure to Igor's / Dave's possible curiosity. And once again, thank you guys for all your suggestions.

For a completely different (separate) reason, I logged out of iCloud (on the Mac — not iPhone or iPad). Went through all the usual items (saved my stuff locally), etc., and somehow - when I logged back in, my trash was empty!

One of the things I wanted to share here with this forum / group, is that I learned something I hadn't known previously: Since the incarnation of iCloud, the PATH to my "Trash" folder no longer is (what it's always been)... /Users/myHomeDir/.Trash — instead, it was now: myHomeDir$ /Users/mike/Library/Mobile\ Documents/com\~apple\~CloudDocs/.Trash/  — and I only learned this after searching that first path several times, both while logged in as myself (in Terminal), but also, while booted into Single User mode. Nowhere in either of those means, was my Trash directory located. But when I drag and dropped that  from my trash... to my terminal - that was the path it gave. (and confirmed this while logged into Single User).

Go figure... sorry for the lengthy post, but wanted to be thorough in my resolution for anybody this might help. But all this said, I guess that since the advent of iCloud, this is now the default location for everybody's Trash folder? This presents an entire new thread of questions for me (Apple's implementation of their folder hierarchy, since iCloud) - but no questions specifically at the moment.


Is there a way to record my iPad screen for free?

There used to be some free apps, but they stopped working because the devs didn't have time to update them to work with the latest changes to airplay.

If you are willing to pay a bit of money you can get apps which turn your Mac into an Airplay server. You can then mirror your iPad's screen to your Mac, and record it there.

Reflector is $12.99
AirServer is $14.99
X-Mirage is $16.00

Check them out, and work out which one is best for you.

EDIT:

X-Mirage has a 7-day free trial, so I think it's the closest you'll get to a "free" solution.


How can I prevent my Mac from selecting my Apple TV as an audio source by default

If you use airplay then this might work for you.

Change your Apple TV Name (Apple TV software version 6.1 and later)

Go to Settings > AirPlay > Apple TV Name > Custom.

Use this setting to change the name of the Apple TV to distinguish it from other Apple TVs on the same network.

Or in iTunes select the output


How to share an iTunes library with other user accounts on the same machine?

I was going to start explaining you what you can (and can’t) do or how hard was this going to be, but a single google query lead me to this excellent thread an Apple forum.

I’m going to quote the relevant part, but I suggest you read it all because there’s more information there and more “why” questions.

We assume you have copied all the music to a Central location (be it a machine or a NAS drive or whatever), so somewhere in the network or your harddrive all your music files (library) are accessible to your wife and you (and theoretically both can write to that location, important when adding files).

It doesn’t matter if they are in different computers or just accounts.

With that in mind:

Each future user of the library should launch iTunes with the Option key held down and Create Library. (A blank one).
With this new iTunes window open, go into iTunes Preferences and UN-check "Keep iTunes Music folder organised" and "Copy files to iTunes Music folder when adding to library".
Then, they must add the music to the Library, selecting the tracks from the folder where all the music is stored (the common place mentioned above), which will import all the tracks into this new Library without copying the files again (hence why step #2).
From this point they can create their own playlists and stuff and they can even check the things they unchecked in step #2, in case they decide to add new tracks (see drawback), you’ll want to have them in the central location.

From this point they both have a Library.XML (stores playlists, tracks location, etc.) and that library.xml points to the physical mp3/4 on the “common location” (tracks are not duplicated as you requested).

DRAWBACK (and the fact that there’s no better solution):

If either user of the library adds new music, regardless of the “keep music organized” and “copy files” checkboxes, the other user(s) are not going to see the changes. The reason being that they are modifying their local copy of the library “xml” (which is where all the playlist and stuff is stored).

If USER1 adds 1 track, USER2 will have to find the track in the library and manually add it to his/her own library.

As you can see, iTunes was not really designed for multiuser.

Go ahead and read the post, it will give you more pros/cons and maybe other ideas.

EDIT: one way to know “what is new” in the library folder (where the music is actually stored) would be to create a smart folder that shows files added in the last “xx” days (for example). :)


Blurred Effect option for Portrait Mode on iOS11?

I think the default option (pre iOS 11) was changed to "Natural Light" in iOS 11. Try that option...


Using Mission Control to switch between Safari and a full-screen Keynote presentation

Make sure you have "Allow Exposé, Dashboard and others to use the screen" in keynote preferences under Slideshow.

Then, before you slide over to Safari, press the "F" key to pause the slideshow. This prevents the slideshow from disappearing.

You can then slide over, or use Mission Control, etc without affecting the slideshow.

There is a bug here, to go back to the slideshow you have to slide back to it or click on the desktop in Mission Control; you can't click the Dock icon or Cmd-Tab back to it.
(Clicking the dock icon / cmd-tabbing will just hide the dock and menubar but not take you back to the presentation)

Also: When you get back to the slideshow, the first key press or mouse click unpauses the presentation, so you will have to click / press again to advance to the next slide.

Side note: instead of having keynote and Safari on separate desktops, you can have them both as fullscreen apps. This hides the Dock and Menubar, so when you show the web page, there is more room for it.


iPhone 11 with Exchange accounts does not have the "Never" option under "Auto-Lock"

I logged into my AWS WorkMail dashboard and noticed that there is a "Mobile policies" menu item.

When I chose this, one of the policy options was "Enable screen lock" with a value of 300 seconds - or 5 minutes, co-incidentally the maximum value in the iPhone's Auto-Lock drop-down.

After I disabled this and cycled the exchange accounts on the iPhone, the "Never" option re-appeared.


Which iOS app will let me paste an image?

Since you're able to copy the image, open up the Messages-app, open a new message to your own iMessage-address, and paste, then send. You should be able to save the image to the camera roll from there.

On newer iOS like 10 and higher, the ubiquitous share sheet function lets you move documents around so much easier, that third party apps aren't needed for this basic function anymore.


Macbook mid-2010: no power after ssd upgrade

No light on a MagSafe adapter means it's not seeing the (one wire) charging circuit of your MacBook Pro.

So, this is unfortunately not a battery issue.  It's further confirmed by no fan spin and the fact that you eliminated the charger from the equation by testing it (successfully) on a different computer.

You may have shorted something during your swap or it could be just coincidence.  However, there are a couple of things to check before resigning it's a logic board issue:

check/clean your MagSafe port.  It could be just coincidence that your MagSafe port is dirty/blocked and preventing you from powering/charging your MacBook
double check your connections; you may have missed one or more or may have accidentally disconnected something.
check your DC In board. It's a relatively inexpensive part that's fairly easy to swap out.  If anything was going to "go" this would be the most likely part


Yes, when you set up family sharing it will ask what you want to share. You can share iCloud storage space without enabling purchase sharing, which does still require the family account organizer pay for the family purchases.
Here you can see I’m sharing iCloud, Apple Music, and Apple TV+, and Purchase Sharing is not enabled.


Option to use AirPort Express with 1 TB harddrive for Dropbox equivalent

You can surely do this but please not that doing so will void your Apple warranty with the Airport Extreme.

What you need to do is:

Pull the HDD out of the Time Capsule (take it apart)
Install the HDD in an enclosure or caddy
Connect the enclosure to your Mac
Use Disk Utility to create a 100GB partition
Reinstall the HDD in your Airport Extreme and you are good to go!

When you partition the drive anything stored on it should not be affected since it is only resizing the current partition.


A software update is required to use this startup disk - does not update

I faced this problem yesterday (and I solved it), here's the context:
TLDR; On the "Startup Disk Selection Screen", that appears after holding Option, connect a wifi network by searching for yours on the dropdown list).  Doing this when the "it is necessary to make an update" screen appears and the computer will download the updates, make the update, automatically reboot, and you will be able to proceed with the installation without any problems.
Full Context:
I wanted to have 2 different MacOS versions on my computer, so I created a Bootable USB with BigSur Installer (did all of this on my Catalina OS).  I also partitioned my HD to install the other MacOS version of the mac but this is not relevant.
After creating this booable USB, I restarted my PC and held the Option key so I could see my bootable USB in there.
I tried to install my new macOS Big Sur but I faced this same message "A software update is required to use this startup disk".  I couldn't update choosing this option, I was stuck on the "try again screen".  I solved this by doing the steps in the "TLDR" section above.
Hope it helps someone!


When Time Machine says it's 'Verifying Backup...' what is it actually doing?

If it's your first backup in Lion, you need to leave the computer awake and connected to the Time Machine volume and let it do its thing, perhaps overnight. Once it makes an initial backup it has to construct an elaborate index database so that the Time Machine restore functions can work correctly. If you interrupt or cancel the process, it will have to start over from the beginning again at some other time, and this will indeed take up time and system resources. I have heard complaints from others that the initial backup, verifying, indexing, etc. takes a great deal of time in Lion, but you need to allot the  time necessary to let the system do its thing in order that it work correctly.


Submit iOS app to app store on behalf of the team

No, there's no way to do that. You'll have to either create a company (which is quite easy most places) - or use one of your names with Apple. You can mention both your names in the description of your app if you want to.

Most users probably couldn't care less who created the apps they're using. So in practice it is normally not a big deal to be listed as the developer or not.


Why do I get no text alert for one contact only?

Your phone may not be on "Do Not Disturb," but that conversation is - it's a separate setting from your phone's "Do Not Disturb" setting.

Just go into that conversation -> Details -> toggle the Do Not Disturb switch and you should have your notifications back.


How do I perfectly sync my contacts with gmail?

The best way is to stop syncing contacts via iTunes and do it all over the air:

On your Mac: go to Contacts.app (or Address Book.app if you're not on ML) > Preferences. Under Accounts tab, tick the checkbox "Synchronize with Google" and add your gmail info.
On your iPhone: setup a Google Exchange account in Settings > Mail, Contacts, Calendards. Google has a good guide for that.

After that all your contacts are synced over the air and iTunes will stop syncing those when you attach your iPhone.


How to install iDVD on OS X Yosemite or Mavericks?

iDVD still runs on Yosemite. I haven't tested to see whether it still actually functions correctly, as I have no DVD video player to view the result on.

Edit 2017: This method apparently still works on Sierra, but I haven't tested.

I would go for the 'sneaker-net' method of install…
copy the app to a USB key & carry it over to one of the other machines.  Will take 2 minutes to discover if that works.

Edit
I trawled my boot drive for associated items for iDVD

It appears that the themes, which would be installed by the installer live in
/Library/Application Support/iDVD/Themes & ~/Library/Application Support/iDVD/Installed Themes In folders by version, iDVD 4, 5, 6, 7 etc

It would be a simple-enough task to carry these over in the same way.


Banning domains temporarily from local access

I highly recommend the app SelfControl:
http://selfcontrolapp.com

You can use either a whitelist or a blacklist of websites and you can set it for a specified time limit. It's great for either blocking the sites you know will tempt you, or allowing only certain sites you know you'll need.

You can also edit the hosts file at /private/etc/hosts to block sites. Here is a site with instructions:
http://www.mactip.net/how-to-edit-the-hosts-file-on-a-mac/

  Similarly, it’s possible to block a harmful domain by mapping it to the localhost. Thereby preventing the computer from reaching the domain. In this situation, map the bad domain to 127.0.0.1. It will not be able to connect.

So all you have to do is add a line like this:

127.0.0.1    badwebsite.com

to your hosts file.


How often should a RAID consistency check be done?

A RAID consistency check will verify all of the blocks in the volume so there will be  a significant hit to operational read/write  performance.  That means you want to run this test ideally during off hours.
That said, how often you run it will depend on  its use.   Typically, in an IT department with a typical file server and lots of reads and writes, a consistency check every week is advised.   If this is for archival access - more reads than writes - a less frequent consistency check is fine. On the other side of that coin, if it's a file server with more writes, you'll want to check it more often.
Three file system type really plays no bearing on it because the consistency is for the RAID array to ensure that it's consistent across the whole volume.


Cannot remove wrong autocorrect/predicitve text language

When I removed "French" from "Settings -> General -> Language & Region -> Other languages" then the problem disappeared.


How to apply a Category to an Outlook Email using AppleScript

Take a look here. It is a bit long in the tooth and I've moved on from Outlook since, but I'm getting ready to try this again and will post updates if needed.


Can Spotlight show results for disconnected drives?

You can't, Spotlight stores the search index in the root folder of the volume. When the volume is disconnected, you cannot get search results from it.


In Preview's Tools menu you will find Adjust size.... Will do everything you need. Even though you can not set the desired size (weight) directly, after you change dimensions it is automatically calculated so you can accept it or further adjust dimensions.


Why do symlinks in a duplicated folder turn into files after a few seconds?

I can't reproduce the observed Finder/Path Finder behavior in a vanilla Sierra install. I'd expect it to be some tweak, a 3rd-party app or custom file & folder permissions.

To avoid the inconvenience use hard links in the source folder.


How to use find to get only string sequence, not within other words

If you search for "a " (note the space after the letter), you'll get all words that end in  the letter a. You could also search for " a " which will show all the words "a" surrounded by spaces on both sides.


Phishing & Other Suspicious Emails

Apple offer the e-mail address reportphishing@apple.com for this purpose:

  Reporting Suspected Phishing Attempts

  If you receive what you believe to be a phishing email purporting to be from Apple, please send it to reportphishing@apple.com, a monitored email inbox, which does not generate individual email replies.

  Forwarding the message with complete header information provides Apple with important information. To do this in OS X Mail, select the message and choose Forward As Attachment from the Message menu. For other email applications or webmail based services, consult your provider’s support information to determine how to forward messages with complete headers.


Airdrop not working in mac ( OSX 10.11.6 El Capitan ) with iPhone 6s (iOS 9.3.5)

I would not expect AirDrop to work in SafeMode as most kernel extensions and features are hobbled / disabled. I also wouldn't reinstall unless you feel that's needed for another issue.

I don't see a good troubleshooting article from Apple - but this has some hints: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT203106

Specifically - when you have hotspot enabled on iOS - AriDrop doesn't work.

Additionally, if you have any internet security, firewall, vpn software installed, that can cause problems on the Mac side.

The initial discovery of devices happens over bluetooth - so if you don't see other devices - look for bluetooth interference or issues with that hardware. If you see the other device, but the transfer is slow or fails, you can track that on the Mac side:

netstat -nr | grep awdl0

That will show all the IPv6 network connections and you can run sudo tcpdump -i awdl0 to trace the network traffic that is used to transfer files over AirDrop.

You are on the right track - powering off bluetooth and wifi, restarting both devices, powering on bluetooth and WiFi and then retesting. Worst case, you need a third device to see which of the two works with another device that you know works with AirDrop.

If that doesn't work - look at this answer on the thread below for more in-depth tools to debug AirDrop using graphical tools and the command line:

Debug AirDrop between MacBook Pro and iPhone 6s Plus


I have not found an automated way to do what you are asking in Microsoft Outlook for Mac 2011.

A (very) manual way would be to create a category named Read and assign it a color that contrasts well with black. As you read your email, categorize each as Read. Then the text of your read email would be colored to match the category color. Again, this is not the optimum way to manage email.

If someone knows a better way I am interested to read it.


How to download roblox without being caught by auburn school district iPad 6th generation

There isn’t a good way to get around MDM restrictions, especially if you remove the profile, the MDM will have proof of when you made a change to the restrictions which would then have other repercussions.

Ask the staff or trainers if you can help them manage apps and test them.
Find out which MDM you are using in case they will let you (and authorize in writing) you can try to learn how to bypass this and let them know so you don’t get in trouble.
Stay curious and learning - this is more of a people problem than a technical problem, to be honest and your curiousity to learn the technology will be much enhanced when you learn the people skills necessary to renegotiate an agreement and gain consensus that you’re trustworthy and helping the overall mission to teach and secure and manage apps and devices.

Basically, reframe your participation as part of the solution and not another problem to be dealt with.


Apple Watch is not recognising any activity. What is the problem?

Unpair your watch from your phone and re-pair it. It will reset the watch.

Go into the Watch app on your phone, tap your watch at the top of the app screen, tap the "i" button, then tap Unpair Watch.

After this is complete, re-pair the watch to your phone and see if your issues are resolved.

If that doesn't work, you may need to call Apple support or take it in to the Genius Bar.


Sending commands from TextWrangler to the terminal

You must put the script in the "/Users/yourName/Library/Application Support/TextWrangler/Scripts" folder

After that:

Open the preferences of the TextWrangler
Select "Menus & ShortCuts" --> "Scripts" --> "your script" to add
your shortcut to the script
TextWrangler accept the (cmd + enter) keys as shortcut


How do I access previous workouts recorded via Apple Watch?

The historical data (other than the last summary data for each activity) is available in two places by default:

On the paired iPhone - you can use the activity app to review your workouts as well as going into health app to review data.
On the watch itself - you can look at today's workout(s) in the Activity app, but not go back in time as of Watch OS 2.0


How can I back up my iphone if my touch screen is broken?

Assuming you have made an backup to iCloud before and it's still turned on.

Backups made to iCloud run only automatically when the following criteria are met:

Your device is connected to a power source.
Your device is connected to a Wi-Fi network.
Your device's screen is locked.


Sierra stuck at boot screen, upgrading to mojove will create new bootup files?

I also suggest better to upgrade and mostly it might fix your issue. Kindly use the following keyboard combination as per your requirements.

Basically, as per Apple Guidance:

Command (⌘)-R Install the latest macOS that was installed on your Mac.

Option-⌘-R Upgrade to the latest macOS that is compatible with your Mac.

Shift-Option-⌘-R Install the macOS that came with your Mac, or the closest version still available.


Can I share files from my external hard drive across my PC and Apple laptop?

It depends on the file system used by your external hard drive. Most likely, the file system is FAT which allows both Mac and PC to read from and write to it, so you would be fine to just plug it into your Mac.

It could however be NTFS which is Microsoft file system that PCs can read and write to but Macs can only read. In this case, you'll still be able to read all of the files on the drive and copy them to your Mac, you just win't be able to add any more files or alter the files while they're still on the drive.

To tell what file system the drive is, just right-click it in Windows and select Properties, the file system should be shown in the General tab.

If the drive is NTFS you have a few options:

You could format the drive to FAT32 or exFAT.
You could install Paragon NTFS on your Mac which allows you to write to NTFS drives.
You could share wirelessly from your Windows machine. You'll have to Google this yourself as it's different for each version of Windows and you haven't said which version you're using, but it's fairly easy.


In the File menu below Save... or Save a Version you have an option called Duplicate.
This opens a new window with the current state of the file you're editing and you can now use File > Save... to save it with different file name.


Month old iPad mini 4 has a yellow box outline on the screen! What should I do?

Make an appointment with a Genius in an Apple Store and they will swap it for a new one.


How can I copy photos from a Sony mobile phone to iPad?

AFAIK you can't use the adaptor/cable for this. Alternatively you can email the photos to an account configured on the iPad or install Dropbox on both devices and use this for syncing photos.


How to open files from unknown developers without a warning in OSX?

You can disable Gatekeeper in System Preferences:

This removes the warnings about opening files downloaded from the internet:

defaults write com.apple.LaunchServices LSQuarantine -bool false

It doesn't affect the dialogs about opening applications for the first time though.

You can run Finder as root with osascript -e 'quit app "Finder"' && sudo /System/Library/CoreServices/Finder.app/Contents/MacOS/Finder, but it's not really meant to be done permanently.


Clipboard survives a reboot. Is it secure?

You are correct that this information is not secured. This is a very common scenario across most apps on the system when you don't see the keychain dialog to access data. Luckily, there are simple countermeasures you can enact to secure your information.

Placing a password on your account so that it does not log in upon a reboot will protect your clipboard and all other files on the disk from an idle snooper.

Next, establishing FileVault encryption on the whole drive will stop almost all amateur and some professional attacks as long as your passcode isn't available or guessable.

Lastly, a screensaver lock and timeout will reduce the window of a sleeping or unattended Mac can be snooped on without knowing your account password.

There are also apps that clear the clipboard on timed intervals if that truly is your only security worry.


If this happened just recently as you describe, you may have an electrical issue; especially if it's happening only on certain electrical outlets.

What this sounds like is that something on your DC-in board has been shorted to ground (the whole case is grounded). The fix would be to simply replace this board.

iFixit.com has a guide on how to replace it.  It's rated as difficult because you have to remove the battery, so if this is not your cup of tea, it's best that you take it in for service.

However, before doing so, I would get the electrical system in your home/office (where ever you're having the problem) checked out because if that's the problem, you'll be doing this fix all over again.  If that's not an option, plug into a high quality surge protector or UPS (APC and CyberPower are two brands I recommend)


Find and replace literal control characters

Pages no longer supports finding and replacing "special" characters since version 5.1.

Just one of the features that disappeared not to come back again.


How to update Time Machine's recovery partition?

The hard way: Wipe the backup drive. Set up Time Machine again to backup to this drive. Wait for the backup to complete - and find a Mavericks recovery partition on it.


This is just a guess but perhaps it is to allow you to start documenting a bug but only make it visible when you have completed documenting it.

All Apple seemed to say about it is: "Hidden: these reports are hidden from view".

https://developer.apple.com/bug-reporting/using-bug-reporter/


I've added a comment to your question seeking some clarification on your issue.

However, in the meantime, I'd reset both the NVRAM and SMC again (and in that order) using the steps below.

Before doing so, ensure you have no external hardware connected and that you're using the built-in keyboard.

Reset the NVRAM

Reset the NVRAM on your particular MBP following these steps:

Shut down your machine. Yes, a full shut down, not just logging out.
Press the power button and then press the commandoptionpr keys. You have to make sure you press these keys before the gray screen appears or it won’t work.
Hold those keys down until your Mac reboots again and you here the startup chime.
Let go of the keys and let your Mac reboot normally.

Note: When you log back in you may need to readjust some of your system preferences (e.g. speaker volume, screen resolution, startup disk selection, time zone information, etc).

Reset the SMC

To reset the SMC on your particular MBP, follow these steps:

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

After resetting both the NVRAM and SMC, what happens? Does the issue still persist? If so, see if you can test your hardware as follows.

Run Apple Hardware Test

Your model MBP uses Apple Hardware Test. To use this, follow these steps:

Shut down your MacBook Pro
Restart your MacBook Pro
Press and hold the D key before the gray startup screen appears.
After a while, Apple Hardware Test (AHT) will start.
When prompted, select your language and click the right arrow.
When the AHT console appears, you can choose to run Basic tests by clicking the Test button. However, I suggest you select the "Perform extended testing" checkbox before you click the Test button.
Your test results will appear in the window in the bottom-right of the console.

Note 1: that the extended test will take some time. Take a note of the results and report back.

Note 2: If pressing and holding the D key at Step 3 doesn't work, start again at Step 1 and, at Step 3 press and hold both the OptionD keys instead. This will try and run diagnostics from the internet instead, so you will need to allow more time for it to complete.

Let me know if you can actually reset the NVRAM and SMC and test the hardware.


Yes.
The HDD in my fusion drive in my personal 2012 iMac died.  I decided to open the iMac (remove the screen) and replace the internal spinning drive with a Samsung 850 SSD to improve performance.
The job will take about 90 to 120 mins total.  Most of the time will be spent separating the glue between the aluminum housing and the glass.  Once you separate it, you can easily remove the glass and access to the drives are extremely easy.
iFixit.com has excellent instructions on how to do this.  A couple of items you will need are:

Pentalobe Screwdriver
Replacement Adhesive Tape
3.5" drive bracket

iFixit will recommend that you use one of those special tools to cut the adhesive.  I used a super sharp Exacto knife and wrapped some blue tape around the blade so that only a 1/2" of the knife was exposed.  I cut all around all three sides then used a plastic putty knife to pry it loose.
It is much, much easier than it sounds.  Read the iFixit guide 3 times carefully before starting.  It will make it go much easier.
One thing to note is that in my particular machine, what I thought was an Fusion Drive was actually two drives put together (a 128GB SST and a 1TB HDD) using CoreStorage (a DIY Fusion Drive).   I added the Samsung SSD to the one already there, combined them into one volume and I have a 1.12 TB HDD
If you can boot your Mac, issue the command diskutil list and if you get anything that appears to be 3 drives in total, you have a DIY Fusion drive.
If you can't boot, you will need to take a look at the SSD connector on the logic board (it's by the fan).


How to access GPS data from command line on jailbroken iPhone

I've come along something very similar a while ago but there was no package needed. I'll try my best to explain how it worked. Firstly, an iTunes backup is required. Next, you will need to access that backup on your computer. There was a program for OS X (and probably for Windows too) that could read these backups. In the backup, there is GPS data that can be accessed but is useless without the other program. It is called iPhone Tracker. Also, another option that I have not tried is this. Other than these two methods, I am not sure of any other methods. Hope this helps!


Command line argument to "find" and "grep" data inside "xattr -l" atrributes?

If you could be sure the file were JSON format, there might be a better way to do this, but you'd probably need to know something of the structure of the JSON records.
However, if I understand your question correctly, I think you can get what you want with grep if you use the -o or --only-matching option (see man grep for details)
# create a string 'STRINGX' to test a regex
% STRINGX='net.filebot.metadata: {"@type":"Movie","year":1983,"imdbId":85478,"tmdbId":38291,"language":"en","id":38291,"name":"Educating Rita","aliasNames":[]}'

# try a regex that includes '"@type": plus an alphanumeric string that follows
% echo $STRINGX | grep -o '\"@type\":\"[a-zA-Z0-9]*\"'

# which yields this as output:
"@type":"Movie"

# to print only the value of @type, one option is to use sed:
% echo $STRINGX | grep -o '\"@type\":\"[a-zA-Z0-9]*\"' | sed 's/^.\{8\}//'
"Movie"

So - pipe your xattr -l output to the grep command as shown above.
You may be able to do a better job on the regex as I don't know if there are any rules that define characteristics such as maximum length, or presence of special characters, etc.
Let us know how this works, or if you have questions & we'll try to answer.


What version of Bluetooth does Magic Mouse need?

According to this article, Magic Mouse uses Bluetooth 2.1.


OSX bluetooth private network between 2 macs

Bluetooth is PAINFULLY SLOW… maybe 80-100 KB/s if you're lucky. It really isn't suitable for this sort of use.

Perhaps you could create a network on a host machine, and use a client mac to connect to it for screen sharing. An ethernet connection to the host machine would also allow for internet sharing to both macs (since you'd no longer be connected to your router.)


You can't. I've been an iOS software developer for two years and I haven't been able to find a way do this. I have tried to find solutions to this but came up with nothing. I'd love to be proven wrong, but I'm 99% certain there's no way to do this.

When my screen is too small I use 50% scale window, which is ought to be enough until I hook up my big monitor again at home.

EDIT: As of Xcode 9, you can resize it to any way you want from the corner of the simulator.


Remote Desktop that doesn't go through the cloud

There are a variety of VNC clients in the App Store. If you put "VNC" in the search field, you should be able to easily see what's available in your geographic region and sort the wheat from the chaff.


Problems in using make - usb.h not found

You haven't told which program you want to compile, so it is impossible to give specific advice.

The general advice is to look at the program's README's, documentation and/or Makefile for ways to specify the include path.

For example you might edit the Makefile directly to identify where the include path is specified. In many projects the program is compiled by gcc/llvm and the include paths are specified using "-I" arguments to the compiler.

You could find that spot in the Makefile and add:

  -I/usr/local/Cellar/usblib-compat/version/include


How to enable Subscribed Calendar to be in read/write mode?

The owner grants & controls read / write access. You'd have to ask who owns the calendar.