Mount network volume as local drive for data recovery

Even if you could do this, the network indirection means the tool cannot read raw data and will almost surely not yield the results you would hope for. The data that was deleted exists only on unallocated blocks - not exposed through the NAS device and then sent over a network protocol showing the live state of the filesystem after the rm had done it's damage.

If you're serious about the data recovery, you'll stop using that volume (disconnect all clients) and call a professional data recovery firm that knows how to reconstruct various RAID situations by imaging each drive directly and then reconstructing things. A call or support ticket to the storage vendor is usual, but in this case, I don't see any "file recovery" info on the FreeNAS web site.

Knowing exactly the version of NAS controller will help you get a good quote on how much the recovery effort will cost. In most cases, their tools and knowledge coupled with drives that don't have failures and need a clean room resuscitation will reduce the cost of recovery to the time and tools needed for an expert to reverse the file deletion.

They will also be able to query you to see if you perhaps have overwritten all the data and perhaps want a quote before you commit to recovery.


Mail on iOS, like on OS X, uses multiple factors to determine whether two or more emails are part of a thread. By not relying solely on the subject, Mail is able to keep a thread together even when other email programs/servers modify the subject (for example, adding "RE:"). This is seen by Apple as a feature and is not able to be modified.

Enabling Organise by Thread is the best you can do. If the emails still don't group together, then Mail is determining that the emails are not part of the same thread and this can't be changed.


Text file line order messed up in terminal

You misconfigured your vimrc and a carriage return (CR or 0x0d) instead of a line feed (LF or 0x0a) is entered/read.

So modify the vimrc back to the standard behavior.

The missing shebang (e.g. #!/bin/bash) at the beginning is not the cause of the failing script. I would include it though - just for redundancy.


Encrypting using FileVault on an Apple original SSD - any likely problems?

I recently did some research on this topic because I want to install an SSD in my Macbook as well.
In my case it would not be a factory fitted one but I doubt that there are big technical differences between original Apple SSDs and custom ones, apart from TRIM being available by default vs. enabling TRIM on my own with a custom SSD.

The most satisfying answer I could find was this discussion in the Apple Support Community.
The interesting posting basically says that a user tested random sectors on a FileVault2 encrypted SSD and found some that were indeed empty (all zero). In a similar scenario on a classic magnetic HDD no empty sectors were found.
The user concludes that this means that unused sectors remain empty on SSDs and that TRIM will correctly work with FileVault2.

The conclusion seems reasonable to my understanding and after installing my SSD I personally will use FileVault2 in good conscience.
However, this is not an official answer from Apple and therefore should be treated with care.


Is Mac OS X required to submit an app to the iOS App Store?

No, the compiled code must be submitted via a Mac. One "workaround" is to install OS X into a virtual machine on Windows, but that violates the OS X user agreement. So yes, you'll need a Mac.


Can you recover a deleted message or chain of messages from iPhone?

If you have done an iCloud backup before those messages have been deleted then you can bring them back from iCloud backup with a restore from iCloud.


Your question is actually based on a misunderstanding of how deleting files works (not a criticism - many people get confused by this because the process can be different based on OS and the type of storage device).

In a nutshell, if your only concern is that you want to free up space on your startup disk, then emptying the Trash will have already done this (regardless of how you emptied it). This is because emptying the Trash means the OS no longer has a record of the data you emptied, and this means wherever the data was stored is now free for the OS to overwrite with new data. In other words, that space is now available (free) for you to use.

A bit more detail

Your comment that you emptied the trash "non-securely" actually has no bearing on free disk space. The option to securely erase data basically means that the data is actually overwritten with random data. This makes it a lot harder to recover the original data (hence the term secure) but it's still writing data to that space. However, once complete, as with a normal empty trash the OS has no record of that space being used and therefore it is now free space.

Trash keyboard shortcuts

The following keyboard shortcuts may be of interest to you:

CommandDelete - moves any selected item(s) to the Trash. (If you've selected an item already in the trash it'll then put them back to their original location.)
ShiftCommandDelete - Empties the Trash.
OptionShiftCommandDelete - Empties the Trash as above, but without a confirmation dialog box.


How do I Create a Macro or Shortcut to run a Command Sequence Terminal

You don't want the hard drive to show up in the Finder? I had a similar need in the past, and solved it by adding a line to /etc/fstab:

LABEL=<disk label> <mount point> ntfs auto,nobrowse

where:

<mount point> is the directory where you want to mount the hard drive, in your case /Volumes/Elements. I'd recommend, though, that you mount the drive elsewhere to prevent name collisions, as /Volumes is used by the Finder to mount removable drives. Let's say you choose /MyVolumes.
<disk label> is the hard drive name as it appears in the Finder, I guess Elements.

So, in your case, the line should read:

LABEL=Elements /MyVolumes/Elements ntfs auto,nobrowse

Now, /etc/fstab is a system file so care must be taken not to break anything:

Open Applications>Utilities>Terminal.
In Terminal, type:

sudo mkdir -p /MyVolumes/Elements

to create the folder /MyVolumes/Elements.
Now type:

sudo cp -a /etc/fstab /etc/fstab.bak
sudo cp /etc/fstab ~/Desktop/fstab.txt
sudo chown $(whoami) ~/Desktop/fstab.txt

Type your password when asked.

These commands: 1) create a copy of /etc/fstab you can fallback to if anything goes wrong, 2) copy /etc/fstab to your Desktop, 3) change ownership of the copy on your Desktop so that you can edit it.
Switch to the Finder, double click fstab.txt on your Desktop and add at the bottom of the file (the file is probably empty) the following:

LABEL=Elements /MyVolumes/Elements ntfs auto,nobrowse

Press ⌘S to save the file and ⌘Q to close the editor.
Back to Terminal, type:

sudo mv -f ~/Desktop/fstab.txt /etc/fstab

to overwrite /etc/fstab with your modified version.
Plug in your drive. Does it work? Great! It doesn't? Something went wrong... type in Terminal:

sudo mv -f /etc/fstab.bak /etc/fstab

to restore the original /etc/fstab.


EveryMac has some words of warning on trying to run 3 additional displays from a MacBook Pro…

  On a 15-Inch Retina Display MacBook Pro, site sponsor OWC briefly tested three external displays -- two iMacs used as displays at 2560x1440 via Thunderbolt and Thunderbolt/DisplayPort and an LG monitor at 1920x1200 via HDMI -- and shared that "moving images and media didn't create any lag and we were able to play video on all four displays simultaneously."

  However, in more detailed evaluation, a helpful EveryMac.com reader reported:

  I have a "Mid-2012" Retina Display MacBook Pro with two 27" Thunderbolt Displays daisy chained in clamshell mode. I tried adding a third 1920x1200 Dell monitor via the HDMI port, and it actually does work. But here is the catch: with no external displays, the system fans hover around 2600 RPM. With two 27" Thunderbolt Displays, regardless of what I do, the fans hover around 2800-3200 RPM. The GPU diode temp reads 69°C (156°F). If I force it via a fan control program to run at 2500 RPM, the GPU heats up. I was afraid of damaging my computer so I turned the fans back to auto-mode.
  Now the kicker. I tried with the three monitors and the fans go up to 4800 RPM. That's without doing anything. If I start running a YouTube clip, or do anything remotely CPU or graphics intensive, the fans max out at 5900 RPM (which is the max the machine will do). I exceeded that by having a few videos running at the same time, fired up 3 virtual machines, and had it compile some code. The whole system became choppy and it began stuttering.
  Since then, I've never used three monitors, just the two Apple Thunderbolt Displays. Apple probably doesn't officially recommend using three displays because it gets too hot.

  Ultimately, although the Retina Display MacBook Pro models are technically capable of running three external displays as well as the internal one, the above reader is highly likely to be correct. Although Apple does not formally provide a reason for why only two external displays are supported, it is clear that the system can overheat with three connected. Consequently, EveryMac.com does not recommend running more than two external displays on the Retina Display MacBook Pro models.


MacOS 10.10 on 4 GB memory bloat: which launch daemons/agents/services can I disable? And how to discover the names of the culprits?

In the hope that the following is enabling to disable.
Apple-Bloat is such a common concern, it should have its own trademark registered. Especially in circumstances or environments that require a maximum of CPU power, minimal latency or where users have to make do with what hardware they have. Audio related scenarios being the most common.

Not nearly enough can be disabled through the GUI-tools available. So this is an excellent question for a start. But these circumstances have to be clearly defined. Disabling almost everything can also disable the entire system. Prepare your bootable backups! Do not change anything before you know how to reverse it. Some of the following advice can be uncomfortable to deal with in its consequences.

It is of course the very first step to uninstall everything you do not need that is not from Apple – first. Every kext, every LaunchDaemon, every App, and every program not strictly needed has to go. Clean out the corresponding folders in /Library/ and ~/Library/. This also implies that Migration Assistant is now your enemy, and a clean install is your ally.

In very memory constrained circumstances it is also advised that you limit your use of the Desktop as a storage space. And your use of the Finder.app.
Having many icons on the Finder Desktop leads to increased memory consumption.
That means also the Finder has to go:
defaults write com.apple.finder QuitMenuItem -bool true
Do not worry. This is just adding a regular quit menu to your beloved file manager. When not needed, Finder can now be quit, stays quit, and releases memory. When needed for file related operations, you bring it back with simple click on the first Dock icon.

You have to make a complete list of things you know 'that are there' but you are sure you do not want.
You have to make a list of things and functions/services you really care for. Both lists have to be tested against later.

You will spend quite a time in Activity Monitor and Console. This is a tedious process.
After you went through the list of running processes you should investigate everything you either do not recognise or recognise as most probably unwanted. Look them up and net-search the process name.

Since this is not a wiki with unlimited space I cannot list every process judged by one or many as "bloat" or "can safely disabled if unwanted". That also depends too much on what else above "iCloud" should go.

Apple is really bad in documenting these things for the average end user just sitting at his system. It looks like macOS favours the "no user serviceable parts inside" approach. So you have to evaluate carefully what you find on the net. Try to spot glib analyses (or at least glib summaries / writeups) that contain little detail other than Apple-knows-best handwaving.

What's funny about this? Apple indeed knows best. They just choose to hide that knowledge away. It is in parts on their website instead of giving you tooltips and installed documentation. Those parts that are accessible there are further in a format that needs some processing by the end user. Try your luck at Apple at for example: Daemons and Services Programming Guide.
 You can and should of course double check at their user forums (prepare a large salt shaker to have an adequate supply of grains ready). Or this very site or the others. Just keep the presumed quality level of each source in mind.

Most of the processes running and displayed in Activity Monitor can be (force) quit. This is generally quite safe to do in a testing setting when no important work is open in the background or things like that. (Caveats apply!) That way you can test one by one and empirically see what happens:

do they respawn immediately or after some time or not until after a reboot?
is something unexpected not working after you disabled the process?

If nothing unexpected happens, you can then go the next step.

There was an excellent list of known processes and a brief explanation of them
called “Know your Mac OS X processes”. This is very sadly gone but still visible at archive.org: https://web.archive.org/web/20170222052540/http://triviaware.com/macprocess/all
That means of course that it is a bit outdated to begin with, but still more up-to-date than most of the top search engine hits today. Since you are on Yosemite this is less of a concern for the current situation.

Now make yourself familiar with launchd and launchctl.
The first is the daemon that loads all "this crap" (your words) and with the second you can interact with launchd and control it.

Seeing that killing a process is without ill effect for your needs means you can instruct the system to disable that 'service'. You might use launchctl to do that or any of the programs available to accomplish this with a gui, like

Lingon https://www.peterborgapps.com/lingon/ or
LaunchControl http://www.soma-zone.com/LaunchControl/

Look at the job and try to understand what it does.
Stop a job and see what happens. Then disable the job and see what happens. Make pauses in between and reboot often to see you didn't mess up too much that might be needed at boot time or only once.

Dealing with completely unexpected consequences can be hard, since sometimes there are really weird connections to be made. No need for Airplay? Uncheck all the boxes in the GUI. Disable everything that has airplay in its name. Easy. Everything works as expected afterwards. Except after a while you notice that iTunes keeps crashing on launch. No need for iTunes also? Good. Still want to use iTunes? Bad, bad. Too bad. Go back to your list of deliberately disabled services, re-eanable them one by one; to finally find out that iTunes insists on a SystemDaemon called com.apple.AirPlayXPCHelper. Expect the unexpected.

To give you a head start for things considered bloat: There are many collections on the net that try to accomplish what you want. The following is meant as a source to be read and analysed for inspiration. Do not just apply them! Read the docs for them! Pick what seems needed one by one. (Since you should be documenting your own findings anyway—why not publish them?)

They are not completely applicable to every version of OS X or macOS, some of them have differing revisions still online. But it seems that only removed or newly introduced daemons are to be watched for.

Minimal systems, optimized for audio:

http://www.co-bw.com/Audio_OS_X_Shell_Script.rtf
http://www.computeraudiodesign.com/computer-setup/

"Disable bunch of #$!@ in Sierra (Version 2.1):"
https://gist.github.com/pwnsdx/d87b034c4c0210b988040ad2f85a68d3

A practical guide to securing macOS:
https://github.com/drduh/macOS-Security-and-Privacy-Guide

Up to date successor to osxlockdown:
https://github.com/kristovatlas/osx-config-check

"Simple shell script to fix macOS privacy issues and remove mostly useless macOS calls to cupertino":
https://github.com/karek314/macOS-home-call-drop

Only small portions really applicable here but still some unique items:
https://gist.github.com/brandonb927/3195465

Also of note, "Unload and Disable unwanted Agents and Daemons on OSX":
http://tech.masterofsql.com/os-x/unload-disable-unwanted-agents-daemons-os-x.html

Now let the downvotes come. Hope this helps.


tl;dr

If you are an end-user needing a free-of-cost JVM to run a Java app on your Mac (rather than a developer), my personal recommendation is to download an .pkg file from AdoptOpenJDK.

Open that file to run a macOS installer.

You will then find a JVM installed in /Library/Java/JavaVirtualMachines. Later, you can upgrade in the same manner, deleting the old JVM from that folder.

Details

Yes, there have been several major changes to the evolution of Java in recent years, and they can be a bit confusing.

Multiple vendors, both free and paid

First, know that there are new options available for those wishing to pay for commercially supported implementations of Java. And know that Java is still available freely without cost. For both a summary as well as the gory details, read this white paper published by major figures in the Java community: Java Is Still Free

OpenJDK

Secondly, know that all releases for Java 11 and later for macOS are based on the same codebase, the open-source project known as OpenJDK.

Apple contributes Mac-specific code to this project, and has staff working on this to make sure that Java continues to work well on macOS.

IBM, Oracle, and many other companies have contributed code and testing as well. Oracle has recently announced their intention to reach feature-parity between their own Oracle-branded Java releases and the OpenJDK product; this even included the donation of some of their previously-commercial tools such as Flight Recorder to OpenJDK.

The upshot is that you should see very similar behavior and features across the various sources of Java for macOS.

JVM bundled within desktop apps

If you make desktop apps to run locally on a Mac or other computer, you may continue to do so, and keep on using Swing and/or JavaFX as always. But the delivery of your app will change.

Java Applet and Java Web Start technologies are being phased out. Oracle will no longer encourage end-users to have a JVM by itself installed. Instead, Oracle advises building your app as a standalone executable with a JVM bundled inside. This has already been commonly done on Macs, especially so if delivering an app through the Apple App Store. That approach is the new normal, to be done across all platforms including macOS, Windows, Linux, etc.  The new Java Modularization technology that began with Java 9, including the jlink and jpackage tools, make it easier than ever to bundle a down-sized JVM with your app.

For more info, see the white paper Java Client Roadmap Update of 2018-03.

So, for the purpose of bundling with your app, you will need to consider redistribution/deployment rights when choosing a JVM vendor and product.

Choosing a vendor

Some major vendors of Java to consider for Java 11 and later:

Azul SystemsOffering two product lines, Zulu based directly on OpenJDK with possibly a few tweaks, and Zing a specially-enhanced version of the Java platform.
OracleOffering their own commercial product Oracle JDK and the quite-similar free-of-cost and GPL-licensed jdk.java.net.
AdoptOpenJDK.netOffering free-of-cost builds of Java based on OpenJDK. Choose between with the usual HotSpot engine (just-in-time compiler & optimizer) or the OpenJ9 engine from Eclipse (previously from IBM).

Here is a diagram chart that may help guide your decision-making. This chart is not necessarily complete or accurate. It is simply meant to help get you oriented. You should research further your options.


How do I force a "Waiting" file to upload to iCloud?

I was concerned I'd have to save these documents to my local filesystem, delete them from iCloud, and then perhaps save them to iCloud over again, but it turned out that simply re-opening the "Waiting" documents, making a trivial change to them (such as deleting a character and then adding it in again), and then saving the file caused them to be synced successfully.


Where does OS X store my Adobe product keys?

There's no generic OS X place for storing product keys. It is up to each individual software supplier to decide where they want to store the products. Usually it is done in ordinary files stored in the file system.

For Microsoft they reside in /Library/Preferences/ under a name such as com.microsoft.office.licensing.plist.

Similarly for Adobe I think they are in /Library/Application Support/Adobe/<product>/<product> Registration

As a user you don't really need to know where it is stored as the programs handle product key management themselves.


I just experienced the same symptoms. I resolved it by deleting ~/Library/Application Support/Amazon Music. The only file in that directory was a file called i18nUpgrade.txt with the contents Upgrade to i18n build.


How can I connect two DELL monitors to macbook air 2014

This link from EveryMac.com will help you:

http://www.everymac.com/systems/apple/macbook_pro/macbook-pro-unibody-faq/macbook-pro-air-how-to-connect-a-second-external-third-display.html


Do you have the following files?

/System/Libraries/Extensions/HighPointIOP.kext
/System/Libraries/Extensions/HighPointRR.kext

If so, copy both of them to your desktop, then:

Open those kexts and edit the Info.plist. Change all the 'External' references to 'Internal'
Copy the modified kexts back to '/System/Libraries/Extensions/'  from your desktop.

Reinstall the kexts:

sudo chmod -R 755 /System/Libraries/Extensions/HighPointIOP.kext
sudo chmod -R 755 /System/Libraries/Extensions/HighPointRR.kext
sudo chown -R root:wheel /System/Libraries/Extensions/HighPointIOP.kext
sudo chown -R root:wheel /System/Libraries/Extensions/HighPointRR.kext
sudo rm -rf /System/Library/Extensions.mkext

After this:

go to your Disk Utility App and Repair your filesystem permissions.
Reboot.


How do I change the icon of Emacs installed via Homebrew?

I found a way to change Emacs GUI dock and other icons.

Download png files from http://emacs.sexy/#icons, or use your own.
Take the largest png and convert it to .icns file with an online converter (google)
Open Finder, go to Applications, and right click Emacs to Show Package Contents, then navigate to Contents - Resources
Replace the Emacs.icns file with your own from #2.
HERE's the tricky part - then I had to also do the drag-drop trick.

In a NEW Finder window, go to Applications, right click Emacs and click Get Info.
Then from the other Finder where you have the new Emacs.icns file, DRAG it to the TOP LEFT small icon in the Get Info window.

No restart required:


Should I delete pictures from Photo Stream or Camera Roll to free up space on my device?

If you haven't enabled Photo Stream syncing on your Mac/PC, you should keep the copy that is in your camera roll until you've copied it to your PC. That is the original copy, and it won't be deleted until you do it yourself.

If you have enabled it, and made sure the "automatic import" setting is enabled1, you can safely delete the photo from your Camera Roll after syncing with iCloud. Deleting a photo manually from the Photo Stream will remove it from the photo stream on all of your devices, but a Mac/PC (with the above-mentioned "automatic import" setting) will have copied the photo into its library when it synced with the Photo Stream.

The Photo Stream photos are transient copies of the photos in your Camera Roll; photos older than 30 days will be deleted, and if you have more than 1000 photos the oldest will be removed to make space for new ones. If you are using Photo Stream and syncing to a PC, I would just let iCloud manage the Photo Stream, and manually delete photos from the Camera Roll.

Source

1) To quote this Apple support article:

  You can choose to download all of your photos from My Photo Stream to your Mac and PC automatically.
  Photos 1.0 or later: Open Photos and go to Preferences > General. Select Copy items to the Photos library.
  iPhoto or Aperture: Go to Preferences > Photos (or Photo Stream) > My Photo Stream > Automatic Import. All of your photo stream photos will import into your Events, Projects, Photos, Faces, and Places folders in iPhoto or Aperture.

Regarding iCloud on Windows: When I last used it 2 years ago, the photo stream folder would save photos in perpetuity, ignoring any size limit. I'm not sure if this is still the case with the latest version of iCloud.


How to convert synced photo folders to camera roll folders?

There is no supported way to do that, for two reasons:  the backup would grow huge, rapidly consuming iCloud space, and non-camera-roll photos are resized to display well on the iPhone while taking minimum space. As such, they're not the "original" photos any more. Backing them up would be a false sense of security.

The best solution is to back up the PC.  The My Pictures folder will get backed up with the rest of your PC data, and you'll have copies of the original, non-resizd images should disaster strike.


What is the difference between App Store Connect and iTunes Connect app?

iTunes Connect is the marketing name for the originally released, Web based tool to manage app distribution on the App Store (iOS) and Mac App Store.

In June 2018, Apple rebranded iTunes Connect to App Store Connect and provided it as a separate tool:

Introducing App Store Connect

iTunes Connect is now intended to be used by content creators and distributors to manage media distributed via iTunes Store such as music, films, TV programmes and books, while App Store Connect is intended solely to manage app distribution for iOS (and by extension watchOS and tvOS) and macOS.

The separate iOS apps you see on your iPhone are focused on individual tools. You are able to see the app analytics in iTunes Connect apps as it was originally/previously used to manage app distribution.

This may remain so, till Apple completes transition to App Store Connect (or upto Apple's discretion).

Apple removes certain apps from search listing, (while still keeping them available on the App Store) while making transitions. You can still access the iTunes Connect app in the App Store using this link on your iPhone.


So long as memory pressure looks OK, there's nothing to worry about.
macOS keeps things cached in RAM as long as that RAM is not needed by anything else - that gives it a tendency overall to look like it fills up & never empties.
The same can be said of swap. It fills, the contents may change, but the swap figure displayed is always a "high tide" figure. You never see it go down until you reboot.
It doesn't serve you or the OS well at all if it were to periodically flush unused RAM or swap just to "look tidier". Its purpose is best served by it just hanging onto it all in case it's needed again.


Is retina text in a non-retina OS X Application possible?

Applications using standard Cocoa APIs should get retina text for free.

This was the same way it was released with the iPhone 4 in iOS. If you used standard UIKit, you basically got it all for free, and just had to update resources, etc.

So, with a Retina MBP as of right now, many apps need to add @2X resources (for things like images, etc), but otherwise standard applications should render all other content as retina.


The Air will make a great machine to throw in a bag and just get out of the house for a bit.

Depending on how much you need to keep in sync the way I prefer is to use Dropbox with symlinks to the relevant areas, lets me keep stuff like my Coda sites in check across my machines.


Mountain Lion: can no longer change certificate trust

Same here. Very frustrating - I've followed all the steps to include the offending certificate in Keychain Access but in the end am only left with one option - Deny.


Can I have a custom desktop wallpaper 'Change Picture' interval?

I found this Apple scripts web page with examples.

There is a line in this script for the change of interval time allowing you to specify it, and you can customize the rest of the script to your needs.

tell application "System Events"
 -- RANDOM ROTATION OF A FOLDER OF IMAGES
 tell current desktop
 set picture rotation to 1 -- (0=off, 1=interval, 2=login, 3=sleep)
 set random order to true
 set pictures folder to file "Mac OS X:Library:Desktop Pictures:Plants:"
 set change interval to 5.0 -- seconds
 end tell
end tell


What's the easiest way to get contact info from gmail into Mac's Address Book?

This may be broader than what you are looking for, but in gmail you can go to Contacts -> More -> Export and make sure you select vCard Format.
 Then just open the file that downloads to your computer and it should add the contacts to your address book!


How can I import my contacts and data from Basecamp to Proofhub?

You can perform following steps to import data from basecamp to your proofhub account.

Go to

Settings tab
Proofhub settings
Import tab
You have an option there whether you want to import from basecamp next.
After selecting the appropriate option fill your basecamp details and then click on import project.
All your data will be transferred to your new home for project management. For more information you can follow at http://help.proofhub.com/account/import-basecamp/


How can I mount an ext4 file system on OS X?

The answer depends on you willingness to invest in commercial software:
If you don’t mind spending some money on a commercial product, Paragon’s extFS for Mac will give you read and write access to ext2 / ext3 / ext4 file systems. The current version supports all versions of OS X / macOS from 10.10 upwards.
If you are looking for a free solution, you can setup a Linux virtual machine, mount your volume(s) there and share it / them via Samba or (S)FTP. This post has some details on how to achieve this using VirtualBox, a free virtual machine application. Note this is not exactly a lightweight solution, even if using a prebuilt VirtualBox VM will spare you installing and configuring a Linux distro from scratch.


MacBook Pro won't find network boot disk

You need a network boot server to be running somewhere on the network as Macs can't just see another CD without more help. Internet recovery is Apple's way of solving this on the newer hardware.

Something like DeployStudio would be my first recommendation for a modern, free, and all in one setup. This tool will handle the network request from the Mac and provide it with software to run so that you can then start an installation. I don't know of a boot image that is capable of doing a remote disk installation so you might do some learning with net boot, but ultimately just go get a USB drive or get help from someone with the setup ready to do a restore. Many Apple Stores are set up to image a machine while you wait through the genius bar.


Installing macOS on a new HDD from USB drive stuck on grey screen with Stop sign

My old MacBook Pro is a mid 2009 model which is not supported by macOS Sierra.  - Only MBPs Mid 2010 and later are supported.

I created an bootable USB disk from El Capitan (which I re-downloaded from "My Purchases" in AppStore) and that is booting up on my old MBP. Installing it now.


Actually, it turns out, when backing up to iTunes, the *.ipa file is copied from the iOS device. This file is simply a *.zip with a different extension. Using a tool like 7-zip allows One to examine the contents after the back up to iTunes. A checksum can be run on the individual components in this archive, verifying a lack of tampering.


How to replace mp3 files with m4a versions in itunes?

I dissected the XML file a bit and it turned out to be a XML property list (sort of a XML-based JSON equlivant), so it becomes easier to handle. If the files affected have the same name not counting its extension, some Objective-C can be laid down to change it. Do you have Xcode installed or should I prepackage it for you?


How to remove partition on SD card using a Mac?

The diskutil command on macOS is incredibly powerful and can do all that you need. (You can run the following in the Terminal app.)

Find your SD card:

$ diskutil list

...or:

$ diskutil list external physical

On the right, under IDENTIFIER, you'll see your disk labeled like disk2 or disk3, etc. You can use that label to reference your SD card from now on. I'm going to use disk2 for my example commands, but make sure you use your actual identifier.

For a board like the Raspberry Pi, you'll want FAT32 with MBR (Master Boot Record). Run:

$ diskutil eraseDisk FAT32 RASPBIAN MBRFormat disk2

...making sure disk2 is your SD card identifier from earlier. RASPBIAN can be anything. It'll name the Volume, which is what you'll see once it's mounted. The eraseDisk command will handle unmounting and remounting of the disk, so you don't need to worry about that.

That should be all that you need. You will end up with one FAT32 partition. It will look something like the following if you run diskutil list external:

/dev/disk2 (external, physical)
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:     FDisk_partition_scheme                        *15.8 GB    disk2
   1:                 DOS_FAT_32 RASPBIAN                15.8 GB    disk2s1

You can then copy over the Raspbian NOOBS files to the SD card.

If you want to fully zero out or randomize your SD card, you can run:

$ diskutil unmountDisk disk2

...and then:

$ diskutil zeroDisk disk2

...or:

$ diskutil randomDisk disk2

(The zeroDisk/randomDisk command seems to prefer an unmountDisk command beforehand.)

Afterwords, you'll need to run that eraseDisk command from earlier to format it in order to be able to use the SD card.

Many other commands are available. Run man diskutil to see them all (q to quit the manual page).


In my case, it was nsurlsessiond (by sudo lsof | grep -i nsurl)

Fired up Charles with https MITM'ing, but didn't find anything talking to Apple (but it wasn't making any new connections to intercept).

It seemed to go away after a little while.

EDIT: After sleeping and waking it up with Charles running, xpcproxy showed it was downloading pictures from iCloud ([redacted].icloud-content.com).

(xpc services need some better monitoring tools and/or they're not well-known.)


If you force quit Mail (double-tap the home button, swipe the app up) the embedded image cache seems to be cleared when you relaunch it.


Spoofing the OS version to trick a buggy installer

Assuming that it's not baked into the installer, you can edit the version requirements for the app bundle.

Right click the app, hit Show Package Contents and open Info.plist. Look for a LSMinimumSystemVersion key, then change the value to your version of macOS.

You can also use Xcode's visual editor

It's possible you may need to do some more work though.

  NSBundle and CFBundle aggressively cache the contents of
  application bundles to improve performance. Although you edited the
  Info.plist, the Finder and Launch Services don't yet know that the
  application is any different.

  Running the following command in Terminal to touch the application
  bundle will force the Finder (and Launch Services) to re-register the
  application, thereby noticing the changes you made to the
  Info.plist:

touch "/Applications/My Cool App.app"

  After running that, deselect the application, then reselect it in the
  Finder, and then try launching it.

  Note that this won't necessarily guarantee that you'll be able to
  launch the app.

In the case that it's baked into the app more deeply, you can edit your macOS version at a system level. Note you'll also need to disable SIP if you haven't already.

  Boot in single user mode (hold down s during boot)
  Make file system readable:

  /sbin/mount -wu /
  Go the /System/Library/CoreServices directory:

  cd /System/Library/CoreServices
  Edit SystemVersion.plist

  nano SystemVersion.plist
  Change the version strings (note that there may be two of these in the .plist), e.g.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN" "http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd">
<plist version="1.0">
<dict>
        <key>ProductBuildVersion</key>
        <string>14E46</string>
        <key>ProductCopyright</key>
        <string>1983-2015 Apple Inc.</string>
        <key>ProductName</key>
        <string>Mac OS X</string>
        <key>ProductUserVisibleVersion</key>
        <string>10.10.4</string>                // <<<
        <key>ProductVersion</key>
        <string>10.10.4</string>                // <<<
</dict>
</plist>

  Save and exit (Control-OControl-X)
  Reboot:

  reboot


What is the best app for controlling the time of kids spend on iPad?

Here are a few:

ParentKit
Parental Timelock
TimeLock (I couldn't post link)

You can also restrict and block internet usage during certain days and time blocks for each device in your home that uses your wifi. You can do this through your wifi router.


Running

file signal-desktop-mac-1.24.1.zip

in the Terminal outputs:

  signal-desktop-mac-1.24.1.zip: Zip archive data, at least v?[0x314] to extract

indicating that there's some issue with how the zip file is encoded. That explains why unzip may have failed to extract the files from the compressed archive.

However, when attempting to extract via built-in Archive Utility by double clicking, or right clicking and selecting Open, the archive extracts successfully.

I tried it, successfully extracted Signal.app and was able to run it.


TextMate is a good editor on its own right, and has been open-sourced with an active development community.


So, fortunately I found where the problem was - it was the desktoppicture.db file located in ~/Library/Application Support/Dock/. Probably a corrupted one. Removing it made the macOS replaced it automagically with a new one :)


Is there a way to assign a keyboard shortcut Outlook 2011 to move email to a specified folder?

By default there isn't a shortcut to move an email to a specific folder. You can use SHIFT+⌘+M to choose the folder.

However, you can create an Applescript and then map that to a shortcut through System Preferences > Keyboard. Here is a sample script that will move emails to a folder named Processed (here is the original source if you would like to learn more).

You can save the file wherever you'd like, but the default Outlook scripts are saved in:

 ~/Documents/Microsoft User Data/Outlook Script Menu Items/

Note: as of Office 11 SP2, this location has been changed to:

 ~/Library/Application\ Support/Microsoft/Office/Outlook\ Script\ Menu\ Items/

To create the shortcut, open up the Keyboard Shortcuts panel, and under Application Shortcuts hit +. It will give you a list of applications to choose from (Outlook 2011), and then for the menu title make sure you choose the name of the name of the script as it appears in the menu.


How do I bring my Quicktime DV from 2013 to life?

Apple fully rewrote iMovie in version 10.x. For iMovie 2014 to open projects of iMovie versions 7.x, 8.x, and 9.x (iMovie '08, '09, '11) you have to use iMovie's 'update' feature which changes previous project files into the new format. To do that, you place the old folders named 'iMovie Projects' and 'iMovie Events' into your current 'Movies' folder. More details here:  https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT202853

For even older iMovie project formats ('iMovie HD') one would have to use  import them in iMovie '11 first (File > Import > iMovie HD Project) to bring them into that format, then 'update' the imported projects in iMovie 2014. However, when importing these very old formats into iMovie '11, they get stripped of added audio files, transition effects and titles.


If you want the new style, then you need to put your notes into the iCloud Notes account, because it is a must that the server support this rich text format.


You can't, as the 'selected text' is your search parameter, not your document contents.

You'd need to use Replace & set your desired capitalisation change in there - for which you could copy paste into replace & use the very function you're trying to use in the main text.


How to convert Keynote to PowerPoint online

Here is how you can do this...

Sign in / up for iCloud at www.icloud.com
Open the online "Keynote" app
Drag your Keynote file onto the browser window
Keynote browser app will open your presentation
Make any changes etc.
Click the wrench icon on top right, and select "Download a copy"

7. Keynote will prompt you with option to download a PPT / PDF / Keynote file

8. Select PPT and ye shall receive a Powerpoint version :-)


How to remove the ‘VPN is not configured’ icon from the menu bar on macOS?

You can usually (but not always) remove a menulet icon by holding down the Command key and dragging it off.


Spotify Premium account price on App Store

It's a simple marketing ploy.

Apple Music is $9.99 a month

Spotify is $12.99 a month, through the Apple Store.

Spotify want to match Apple's price, but don't want to cut their revenue to 70% of $9.99, so they're offering you $9.99 direct, rather than $12.99 through Apple.

That means for every person who changes to the direct method, Spotify actually receive more than they used to through Apple.


How can I use siri to add tick box items to a note?

I'm not aware of any way to have Siri add a checkbox to a note.  You can use Siri to take notes or add Reminder items.  There are probably free apps on the app store that will do something similar but since most of them rely on Siri in the background, if they don't use Google's interface, you won't get much more than regular Siri.

I did find a nice site that lists dozens of things you can do with Siri, maybe that will help: https://techranker.net/how-to-use-siri-siri-commands-list-questions-to-ask-siri-app/


Where do I find the full man page for afplay

No afplay comes with a short (incomplete) man page.

You could open a bug report request but I doubt it will taken into consideration or you could use the content of the afplay -h to re-write the man page.


My icloud account was hacked, I changed the password, what else should I do?

Yes, if they activated "Keychain" using another device you should change your passwords.

Keep in mind that activating "Keychain" in the iCloud preferences should require you to confirm the device using another device.

Please check to see how your account's authentication is currently set up (e.g. log out of your Apple ID on your Mac (iCloud), turn on iCloud using your Apple ID and try to activate "Keychain". Now your Mac should prompt you to activate Keychain using on of your other devices.


Extremely slow 'processing file' times for Apps in iTunes 10.6

I too have seen this on multiple macs with multiple OS / iTunes versions in the last few days. No amount of client changes seem to resolve it (the downloads themselves don't need to be cleared, clearing them doesn't help, and the situation does resolve itself in time with no user intervention. Usually the wait is 5 to 15 minutes to clear in my experience.) It seems to happen at the same times when my iOS devices struggle to re-download past purchases from the store.

My guess is you are seeing a delay in the code signing checks which are being queued on the server side to wait for their turn. It's clear that the download is very rapid and the app is done downloading the app.

My guess is Apple now serves identical apps (unsigned to your account) to iTunes on your computer. Then your computer requests that that app get signed to run under your Apple ID and those requests are queued and that is why nothing is happening on iTunes while "processing" is taking place.

I have seen this come and go and presume it's a capacity issue on the Apple server side and not anything new or changed on our iTunes computers.

Anecdotally, there have been all sorts of errors and slowness in reaching the store lately. I would love to see the server logs for loads and error rates to know if this suspicion is correct. If my guess is correct, this will only happen when the download volume exceeds the servers that are running to do the signing. If so, it will be easy for Apple to spin up more signers as needed to meet demand in the future (as well as scale back to save costs when demand is lower than say iPad launch weekend).


Control–Space bar is used to either turn the Auto-Complete ON/OFF. You can read more about it here


I'm guessing here, but it your network settings may have the ethernet interface prioritized above the AirPort (this is the default setting), meaning that when both are connected it'll try to reach the internet through the ethernet connection.  You can check this easily be looking at the order the network "services" are listed in the sidebar of the Network system preference pane.  If Ethernet is prioritized above AirPort, change it by selecting Set Service Order from the action (gear) pop-up menu below the service list, then dragging AirPort above Ethernet.  Note that you need to click the Apply button for the change to take effect.


Are there any iPhone apps which can display/edit OPML documents?

Depends on what you want to do exactly but since OPML is just another Markup Language you can use any text editor or maybe one that's also able to highlight XML. You could also try online tools such as google docs, tho I couldn't myself. Here's another way to read only OPML using iGoogle.

I'll also give a shot and guess what kind of OPML you'd be using and suggest this app.


Unable to move Mouse VirtualBox Snow Leopard Server Install

If you exit out of the keyboard pop up and let the mouse pop up display you can successfully control the mouse after the boot screen appears.


How to unbind from active directory while preserving a user account?

Login to a different admin account.
Delete your account, choosing "Don't change the home folder" option.
Open Terminal and rename your home folder, eliminating the " (Deleted)" part -- sudo mv "/Users/yourshortname (Deleted)" /Users/yourshortname
Unbind your machine (Login Options tab, at the bottom)
Create a new account with the same short name.
Use the existing folder, when you're prompted.

An update to my comment of Sep 6 at 15:24 and part of #4 -- Apple has just issued a supplemental update that fixes this loophole. The text of their security announcement is:

  APPLE-SA-2013-10-03-1 OS X v10.8.5 Supplemental Update

  OS X v10.8.5 Supplemental Update is now available and addresses the
  following:

  Directory Services Available for:  OS X Mountain Lion v10.8 to v10.8.5
  Impact:  A local user may modify Directory Services records with
  system privileges

  Description:  A logic issue existed in Directory
  Services's verification of authentication credentials allowing a local
  attacker to bypass password validation. The issue was addressed
  through improved credential validation. CVE-ID CVE-2013-5163 : the
  rookies of 42


Script or App to auto write URL of browser-downloaded files to their respective Comments field (metadata) in the files Get Info sheet?

I'm not sure what you mean by 'automatically' but this script will take the 'where froms' URL and stuff it into the Comments of (single) selected file's Finder Info window (i.e. when you type command-i on a file).

property fPath : path to downloads folder
tell application "Finder"
set aFil to selection as alias

set AppleScript's text item delimiters to {"\""}
try
    set sCom to do shell script "/usr/bin/mdls -name kMDItemWhereFroms " & quoted form of (POSIX path of fPath & (name of aFil))
    set rUrl to second text item of sCom

    set comment of aFil to rUrl
end try
set AppleScript's text item delimiters to {""}
end tell

Essentially, this runs the 'mdls' command, greps the result for 'kMDItemWhereFroms'  and then grabs the URL from that key's value, which is then set into the 'comments' field.

Some considerations:

If a file doesn't have 'kMDItemWhereFroms' then nothing happens
If file isn't in 'Downloads' folder then probably nothing happens
Existing 'comments' are replaced. If you want the URL appended or whatever, then more scripting would be required.
It's conceivable that the structure of the mdls output could be different which could break the grep. It works for me on 10.12 using Safari. Not sure if other browsers reliably provide 'where froms'. The text item delimiters separate at the '"' and the text between the first two quote marks is deemed the URL.
If you want it to 'automatically' occur upon the file's download, then you'd need to do something like 'folder actions'.


Is there a way to immediately exit a hanging connection in Terminal?

You can type

~.

which ends the SSH connection. Normally it works immediately, but sometimes you may need to do it a few times.


DNS settings different between Chrome and Firefox

They use different DNS servers. A similar question was asked on the 'Super User' site of Stack Exchange. The answer explains why there is a difference and how to handle the DNS settings. The question can be found here.


How do I enable automatic capitalization in OS X?

You can use a third party such as TextExpander ($35) for this. Paired with the right third party dictionary (TidBITS Autocorrect Dictionary), which is downloadable from within TextExpander, it corrects most of my typos that Mac OS X misses, as well as providing shortcuts for frequently typed snippets.

Using TextExpander just for sentence capitalization is a bit of overkill, but if you embrace it, you wind up with an excellent tool that you can easily adapt to your needs.


Remove 3D shadow on vertical Dock in Yosemite

I'm trying out cDock, and so far it seems to do the job.


Disable spell checking only for specific section of text in Pages '13

No, disabling the spell check will disable it globally — there is not currently a way to specify a section of text to disable or enable the spell check.

You can provide feedback to Apple regarding this on the following page:

http://www.apple.com/feedback/pages.html


Messages won't let me sign in to iMessage

How to Fix Messages
The following steps worked for me:
Update December 2016 - this happened once more - this fixed it again, so I'm even more certain of it now.

Clear PRAM (NVRAM)
Hold Cmd ⌘+Opt ⌥+P+R at the chimes until they are heard for a second time, then release

Start in Safe Mode
As soon as you hear the second chimes hold  Shift ⇧  & keep holding until you see the regular startup progress thermometer

Attempt to login to iMessage.
Mine at this point appeared to fail & the iMessage login screen just went grey.
I stared at it for 5 minutes, then rebooted.

Done.

Recommended but Unsuccessful
These things were recommended elsewhere but they did not work for me:

Checking Firewall settings til I was blue in the face.
It worked yesterday & still works for all other machines in the house...
Changing DNS provider.
Logging out of everything iCloud related then back in again.
Any amount of messing with the keychain - Repairing, Erasing[1]
Restoring random items in ~/Library/Preferences; including, at one point, the entire folder
'Repair install' using latest Combo Update.
Recovering entire drive from a day-old known-good clone.
Reinstalling entire OS from Time Machine.

I'm copying this answer to all relevant Stack Exchange questions, in case it helps others. You would not believe the amount of chasing round I did to fix this one ;-)

[1] Many articles (& Keychain Repair itself) claim that com.apple.security.plist ought to be owned by the user - in fact every time you fix that, next reboot it reverts to being owned by root.
I gave up trying to 'cure' that as it appeared to make no difference in the end.


A new device showed up on facetime which I don't own

The idea of those notifications is to alert you to the possibility of unauthorized usage on your Apple ID. Obviously, I get them any time I restore a computer, load up a new device, or just sign out of Facetime (or Messages) and back in, but for me it makes sense as I can relate it to a particular event.

Since you do not have a MacBook Pro, you certainly have reason to be suspicious. An Apple ID can expose a large amount of information to a nefarious user.

If I were you I would reset my Apple ID password and enable 2-step authentication.


How to remove a nonfunctional folder from the Finder sidebar with Paragon installed?

If you're running 10.6.7, dragging to remove from the sidebar changed: Try Cmd-dragging it off. (You've already tried other ways that should have worked and didn't, so I'm not hopeful, but it's worth a try).

This solution works for dead favorite folders in 10.7.2.

I have just fixed a similar problem: An OSX shortcut was pointing to a folder on an HP NAS box which had been deleted so right-click menu was only 1 item. I recreated the folder on the NAS box so I could right click on the Mac to choose from now multiple list 'Remove from sidebar'. Also install free NTFS 3G (linked on Apple site) to access native Windows HDD.


Upgrade MacbookPro (15' mid 2010), beyond 8G RAM

You're not alone in your confusion, and there's four good reasons for it:

Some MacBooks can only use Apple's "official" maximum RAM
Other MacBooks can actually use more (usually twice as much)
Newer MacBooks have their RAM soldered in and cannot be upgraded after being purchased
The answer differs depending on the model of mid-2010 MacBook Pro!

You were probably aware of the first three reasons, but the last one often catches people out. To clarify this:

13" mid-2010 MacBook Pro models can actually use 16GB RAM
15" mid-2010 MacBook Pro models cannot use 16GB RAM
17" mid-2010 MacBook Pro models cannot use 16GB RAM

Unfortunately, this means for you the answer is no.


How to import dashboard stickies from an old hard disk without using migration assistant?

You'll need to copy two files from the old installation of OSX:

~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.dashboard.plist
~/Library/Preferences/widget-com.apple.widget.stickies.plist

The first tells Dashboard which Widgets to show, the second contains your notes.

Copy these to your new ~/Library/Preferences and you should be good.

You'll need to restart, logout and login, or kill the Dock, for example by opening Terminal and running killall Dock.

It worked for me - but I should warn that my home path was the same on the old install and new install.


Implications of changed security for Apple ID?

This isn't new. While I can't speak to the exact moment this was added, you can rest assured knowing that your passcode/password is safe. What Apple is doing here is verifying your identity by taking advantage of the fact that you use iCloud Keychain. iCloud Keychain escrow is a fairly complicated procedure, but in essence Apple never sees your passcode, it can only see that their hardware modules granted you access to your escrowed bag which proves that you know the passcode to your devices. It's a really neat solution for account verification!
For more info, see page 86 of the Apple platform security whitepaper.


Best Practice for User Shell Scripts location and/or PATH

Put things in /usr/local is the best practice for global use

https://apple.stackexchange.com/a/98626/5472

Your individual user needing a separate playground / path / space is more tricky to solve.

How many users?
Where do they come from in terms of access / authentication?

Best practice (a.k.a workable and optimal) is not the same for three people that ssh in to a machine or you have thousands of students, faculty that leverage a mature file sharing / network home folder architecture or you all are developers and will check your code into source control and access many machines and want to sync things.
There’s likely no best practice than knowing your users, their skill level and preferred tools and working with your support budget. Things a professional IT team / dev team will engineer, provide and support will be far more powerful than a couple people sharing a Mac mini at the office. Those same tools are overkill for a small group or one person setting up several accounts.
Depending on your volume of items subdirectories in the local user folder can be very helpful. The only other suggestion I’ve seen that’s worth considering is /Library or ~/Library but those are further from the unix/shell heritage for my tastes.


How do I get information specific to CPU core via command

You can install the program htop from Homebrew, which will give you this information.

When you have Homebrew installed, run the following command to install:

brew install htop

Afterwards you can run the program like this:

htop

If you go into the Setup menu by typing S and select Display Options, you can enable detailed CPU information. The CPU usage bar then displays information about the CPU usage, system (i.e. kernel) time, io time, etc.


Mouse cursor jumps to top of screen at random times

In my opinion, you should clean your Magic Mouse and your desk (dust, hair, ...).
I don't think it is software-related.


Any app to locate or spy my lost iPhone device (didnt activate find mym iphone)

No, sorry, but your our of luck. Unless your phone was jailbroken and you had an app that allowed for what your explaining, theres no way to can instal and app on your device remotely, not to mention that you WILL need setup when you install an app like that.


If I understand correctly, you want to connect to your High Sierra machine from an external source via something like netcat (nc), send commands to bash, and view the response.

There are more secure and simpler ways to do this using ssh, but presuming this is some kind of experiment or development trick, here's how you can do what you're asking.

My answer is based on an answer I found elsewhere on SE (https://superuser.com/a/607855), which itself is based on other SO/SE answers.

First make a fifo:

mkfifo myfifo

Then start 'nc' using the fifo as its input, piping its output to bash, and redirecting bash's output to the fifo:

nc -l 127.0.0.1 8080 < myfifo | /bin/bash -i > myfifo 2>&1

(The '-i' flag for bash indicates an interactive shell, and may not be desirable for this use case.)

From the remote device (in my testing, myself):

nc 127.0.0.1 8080

If you want to reverse the roles, i.e. the High Sierra machine is establishing the connection to the remote device, and giving the remote device access to bash on the HS host, you would move the listen flag (-l). So, the remote device would start netcat first in listen mode:

nc -l 127.0.0.1 8080

Then the High Sierra host would connect to the remote device:

nc 127.0.0.1 8080 < myfifo | /bin/bash -i > myfifo 2>&1


It is a nasty bug of OSX 10.9 and 10.10 . Some workaround is described here: Time Machine is skipping files and folders. How to fix? by Pete.

... I see you are running 10.7.5. So maybe Apple ruined Time Machine already with Lion. I personally never had the issue with 10.6.8, then directly upgraded to 10.9 and then later discovered missing files in my backups. So you can confirm if the above workaround also helps with OSX 10.7.5 Lion.


Connect to Bluetooth device via terminal

As there are some upvotes and many views, I will answer my own question there:

Yes, it is possible to write some small application in Swift or ObjC which does this. And some people did that already:

BluetoothConnector
blueutil

BluetoothConnector is written in Swift, which does (currently) only support connecting and disconnecting (It seems to be pretty new, so more features may follow some day).

blueutil is written in Objective-C. In addition to (dis-)connecting it can also toggle power, discoverability, show if you are already connected, etc.

I tried both, and both worked well, currently I'll stick with blueutil - it has more features, which come in handy in shell scripts.


You'll find the appropriate folders at /Users/username/Library/Application Support/Gimp/. There go in the scripts folder
and the presets go in the gimpressionist folder

I found these locations by looking at the GIMP preferences, and clicking on Scripts. The locations cited above were listed there.


Does OS X process sound in any way other than volume adjustment before outputting it?

I believe the output is unmodified except for amplification.  For specific settings, you might find the Audio MIDI Setup utility useful as it includes per-speaker amplification settings.  As I'm not a big audiophile I can't attest to the specific settings you mention but that's where I would start to test things out.


Is Apple TV intelligent enough to stream directly from a NAS?

To answer the op's exact question, "No, ATV is not intelligent enough to stream directly from a NAS".  Others have pointed out some options, like using ATV2+Plex, or PlexConnect (which is VERY difficult to setup).

Let me thrown my $0.02 in by saying that unless you're running your iMac over wi-fi, this will work fine.  Even with my older 802.11g network, my Mac mini (hooked up to Ethernet and thus hooked up "closely" to the NAS) could pull the files off the NAS and stream them (over wifi) to the ATV.  No issues at all.  I'm on 802.11n now, and it's handling 1080p streams no problem (don't remember if I tried that on the "g" wifi).  In fact, with the Mac on Ethernet, it can download new videos from the iTunes Store while serving up content from the NAS to the ATV.  It's really not a lot of bandwidth.  You can check in the Activity Monitor.  I'm always surprised by how little bandwidth it uses.

However, if your Mac is on wifi too, I could see that there could be some problems, but a "n" (or "ac") grade wifi should be able to handle it.


iOS Shortcuts restrict "Get Contents of URL"

I've sent a feedback to Apple about this, but haven't heard anything from them.


Multiple instances of installed applications and updates displayed in updates history

If you get it working just by redownloading, it's nothing to worry about.

As both a user and developer I can tell that these types of errors aren't uncommon (Often times caused by an unstable internet connection or if the Mac has been on standby for a longer period whereafter the download is continued). But it's decided by multiple factors including your router, signal strength, geographical location and so on.

The problem is that it can be hard to perfectly download every little piece of a large file. Sometimes it's read wrong or written wrong to the disk and this causes corruption and possibly confuses the part of App Store that displays progress and download items.

To Apple's credit, though, they seem to be able to "chunk" download effectively most of the time, where other apps (like Chrome for instance) just kills the download and makes you manually start over.
Personally, I rarely have these types of errors anymore (they were much more common in the "early days" of the App Store).


Installing ffmpeg from dmg and then running from a terminal, is there a better way?

You are supposed to copy the program from the disk image to your local folders. The usual place for these things is /usr/local/bin

So:

sudo mkdir -p /usr/local/bin
sudo cp /Volumes/FFmpeg\ 91200-g1616b1be5a/ffmpeg /usr/local/bin/
sudo chmod +x /usr/local/bin/ffmpeg

and all should be good to go. Disabling SIP not required.

No need for homebrew or any other package handler to install a precompiled binary. You do need to read up on basic UNIX though.


How can I do shift + slash on a French AZERTY keyboard?

As described in several posts, the Ukelele program works to redefine the keyboard if you don't like the default layout.

You can at least find the right key using the Keyboard Viewer - steps on that are here: Where's the # key in Lion


If I erase and sync my iTunes library on my iPhone will I also lose my pictures that are on iCloud?

The photos won't be deleted from iCloud, as re-syncing your device won't delete, nor reset the Photo Stream.

Photos are deleted from the Photo Stream just by selecting the one you want to get rid of and taping the trash can icon, on iOS, or clicking Delete on the computer. There is, too, a Reset Photo Stream button in you account at iCloud.com.

Just keep in mind that photos are stored in iCloud for 30 days.


What options exist to restore tab completion using libedit in PSQL on OS X Lion?

Install macports, and then install the postgresql83 package.

sudo port install postgresql83

The macports psql works fine. Make sure you get it first on your path, e.g.:

PATH=/opt/local/lib/postgresql83/bin:$PATH


Touch ID doesn't work on MacBook Pro 2019

I was going to take my laptop to repairs but accidentally discovered the offender is my LED desktop lamp. My laptop usually sits on a stand and there is a desktop lamp shining right on the keyboard from about ~50cm. If I turn the lamp on - Touch ID stops working, if I turn the lamp off - it does work flawlessly. It seems like bright LED light shining on my finger somehow interferes with Touch ID sensor. Go figure!


Restore iPhone SMS history from Mac Messages without iPhone backup

This will surely frustrate later arrivals who only have chat.db available, but I later realized I have other iOS devices with up-to-date Messages. I extracted sms.db and Attachments from those backups (using iPhone Backup Extractor), merged them into my latest iPhone backup (using iBackupBot), and restored the backup. I'd suggest turning on airplane mode to avoid receiving texts in the backup/restore interim.

This tutorial provides details on where these files go.


After my brother deleted some system files from my Macbook Air I can’t reinstall macOS

This is a pretty rare failure since the installers are signed. You would want to review a couple things:

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204904

If you have a backup - consider using Disk Utility to erase the internal drive - then the installer would have less work to do. - https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT208496
Consider your network - are you behind a proxy / firewall / or located a distance away from the main servers in US? Taking your mac to a new network might fix everything without needing to erase things.
Shut down any caching servers that are local to your network. This might be hard to figure out if you aren’t the network admin or don’t have a mac. If you have another Mac running - run the command AssetCacheLocatorUtil

In the end - your computer couldn’t get a good image to start the install. This is almost always a network / server issue, but you might be able to fix it moving to a new network, validating the date/time on your Mac before you install the OS or changing the version of OS you request.


Possible to use Apple Watch to adjust volume of TvOS or Safari on MacOS?

This or this might help.

You can change the AirPod volume from the now playing app.

If you're controlling your now playing on your MBP through the watch, the same might apply - otherwise I don't think it's possible at the moment.


Problem sending emails from specific gmail account

There are two places in Mail preferences you should look at.

One is the Composing Tab

In the make sure you do NOT have selected send from Account of Selected Mailbox, but have the Account of your choice selected.

The second one is in the Accounts Tab.

Again check your settings here, and once you have selected the right account then check the use only this account.

This you have to repeat for each account.


I guess you are using the Mail application by Apple.
In this case, you just need to press the "double arrow" button, rather than the "single arrow", to reply to all the senders, as you can see here:

Otherwise, you can use the shortcut Shift+Cmd+R to perform the same "reply to all" operation.


Why doesn't iPhoto show up in Spotlight search results?

Try rebuild index

From the Apple () menu, choose System Preferences.
Click Spotlight.
Click the Privacy tab.
Drag a folder or an entire volume (your hard drive) to the list.
If prompted for confirmation, click OK.
Remove the item or volume you just added to the list by clicking
it and then clicking the minus ("-") button.
Close Spotlight preferences.
Spotlight will re-index the contents of the folder or volume.

You can also use the command line to rebuild Spotlight’s index.
Open the Terminal application and enter the following command:

sudo mdutil -E /

Authenticate with your administrator password,
and a message appears indicating that the index will be rebuilt.
Spotlight rebuilds the index of your hard disk.
You can track the rebuilding progress by clicking the Spotlight menu.


Complete Time Machine restore is only partially recovering my files

Launch the Time Machine App, you may see the time line show you backup time, you can navigate the "important folders" at any backup time.

if you find the files you want, just restore it manually.


How to create backups of DVD software discs?

A good way to back up of software CD/DVD install media is to create a disk image for each disk you want to back up, then you can store those disks images on a backup hard-drives, etc. The '.cdr' format is essentially a .iso which is the industry standard way of representing software disk images, so its a pretty good universal choice, that works on many platforms.

To create a disk image for an optical disk using the Disk Utility Application:

Open the Disk Utility Program
Insert the CD/DVD you want to create a disk image for.
Select the mounted CD/DVD disk under the "Super Drive" dive icon.
Click the Unmount button.
Select the the unmounted CD/DVD disk, by clicking once on it.
Select "File" menu > "New" > Disk Image from  "YourCD/DVD Disk"
Set where you want to save the disk image and select Image Format: "DVD/CD master" plus any other options you would like, and the press "Save"


The best chance of success it to make a new user account and try syncing the phone to the new empty calendar. Just sync the iCal data.

Then back up the lion iCal data to one file in /Users/Shared and import that to your proper account.

Should that fail, trash that temporary user account and make another temporary admin account.

Turn off time machine ( to prevent an automatic backup slowing things down )
Set lion to back up to your snow leopard time machine ( stop any backup if it commences)
Start iCal
Browse backups from the iCal menu
Restore your calendars one by one
Back up calendar data to /Users/Shared
Set Time Machine to your preferred destination and clean up the temporary user.


Yes, since AirDrop is also available on the iPod touch and on the Mac which doesn't even have cellular options.

AirDrop is using an Ad-Hoc service for its communication.

This is a nice article on how AirDrop works.


You might try to hold home and lock buttons for a while until the device reboots the OS. This startup will require a little longer because it will be deeper than normal restart.

iOS 9.3 has brought many bugs, this should be one of them. I believe for now you should lock it with code time set to "immediately" (for safety reasons), make a YouTube video to explain the issue (I did a similar thing for a buggy update of PlayStation Vita, and it got fixed), report it to Apple and wait for 9.3.1 to come out.


First things first...

You can run the Apple Diagnostics.  While booting, hold down the D key.  Whatever errors are reported, make note of them and post them to your question.

As an alternative, boot into Recovery Mode (CommandR) or Internet Recovery (CommandOptionR) and try seeing what is happening to your screen.

Finally, You need to get that HDD fixed.  There is no point in trying to diagnose further when you have a critical failure taking place; it's the 800lb gorilla in the room.

I am assuming that you have a spinning HDD as these normally came with a 750GB HDD.  I am not going to get into too much detail on how to upgrade your drive, as there are many posts where the answer is very similar if not the same as the answer to (initially) to this question that I won't go into detail here.

Check out the answers to the questions below:

New SSD problem
My Mac is getting really slow, what should I do?

Suffice to say, the steps you will take are:

Download and create a installation USB flash of OS X El Capitan
Back up your data with Time Machine
Replace Your Drive.  I am partial to Samsung  I am using one in my iMac right now.
Do a clean Install OS X El Capitan
Test your video!

If your video problem persists, then we can start looking at what the cause could be.  Chances are, it will be fixed by this point

Once fixed, restore your files and data from the time machine back up and you will again have a working MBP.


Macbook pro 13" mid-2012 not turning on, no battery leds (battery ok)

Not sure how many other people will encounter this, but the previous owner of this MacBook made an error while replacing either the battery status led part, or the battery itself.

When I once again tried to re-seat the battery, I saw that the cable to the led indicator was damaged. Apparently it had shifted somehow and got damaged by the outside screw of the battery. After I disconnected the cable (and eventually snipped off the damaged part of the indicator to prevent it hanging loose), the MacBook booted and is running and charging it's battery just  fine. So, if the cable in the picture is damaged and shortcircuits to the case, your Mac may not boot or do anything at all.


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

Using the tail command in Terminal.app will follow a log file and print out in real time whats being written to just that log file.

tail -f /path/to/your/log/file.log

If your process has a common name that shows in every log file, like com.my.process you can tail the file and grep out for that keyword/process.

tail -f /var/log/system.log | grep "com.my.process"

tail command


Does iOS 5 have a SSL security bug that got patched on iOS 6/7?

ZDNet says :

  iOS 5 and Mac OS X 10.8 never had the bug


Kernel Panic and continuous beeping when restarting

The first step would be to check out About Mac computer startup tones and identify which one of these startup tones is the one you're experiencing with your Mid-2010 MBP.

Please do not guess. If your startup tone does not match exactly one of the ones listed, please comment back and say so and describe which one it is closest to and what the difference is. Unfortunately, not all of the possible startup tones are listed on that page.


Can I use an extra bluetooth with macbook pro retina?

Yes, as @Buscar웃SD said, you can use an external Bluetooth adapter. On my Macbook Pro 13" I had to use Apple's Bluetooth Explorer to set my USB adapter as the active controller. This page describes how to download and use Bluetooth Explorer.


How to get icons in Safari favorites (aka favicons) to display correctly?

Here's a hack that works very nicely (it takes a moderate amount of simple image manipulation though. Also, see a note at the very bottom of this answer in order not to completely lose this fix and have to redo it). it seems that the issue is that the the icons given by the websites were designed for the bookmark bar, which has smaller icons, and not the safari favorites screen, which has larger icons (at least 144 x 144).

The icons themselves are stored in ~/Library/Safari/Touch Icons Cache/Images/, with very long names (something like "908F6BBF6DA814ABAF917C4E7BB9E36F.png"). When a new Favorite is added (say New York Times, in the case of the original question), and the icon correctly displays in the Favorites screen, then a 144 x 144 png file appears in the aforementioned Cache folder, and everything's good and spiffy. However, if, say Gmail is added, and a big ugly, non-descript G appears instead of the nice Gmail icon, then that means a tiny png (designed for a bookmark bar instead of favorite screen) appeared in the Cache folder. (alternatively, if not even an incorrect tiny png appears in that folder, simply favorite another "decoy" site that does make a png file appear, perform the following, and then modify the Name and URL of the favorite later).

So in order to correct the icon, simply create another png that has the correct 144 x 144 resolution (see note below), then use that created png to replace the tiny "incorrect" file in the Touch Icons Cache folder, making sure to keep the long filename constant. Exit out of Safari (Command-Q) and restart, and the icon appears perfectly, as so:

Note that Gmail and Google Drive now have the correct icons. I had to do the same thing for The Economist as well, since that site also did not provide a proper 144 x 144 favicon.

For a very simple way of creating a 144 x 144 icon using just Preview, simply download a high-res image of the icon (Gmail, Google Drive), or whatever, open in preview, then tools->adjust size to 144 width. Now put this image aside and call it "image A". Note that transparency sometimes causes trouble for safari favicons (e.g. if a region of a picture is colorless, the color actually displayed in those regions might be inconsistent). If this happens, we can make a white background. To do this, simply do command-shift-4 and drag a rectangular portion of any white portion of the screen, then take the resulting screenshot and resize to 144 x 144. Finally, take "image A" from before, and copy and paste onto this white space. This usually creates a very nice icon.

Important note: If you happen to have the "Developer" menu item (e.g. at the very top of the screen, near "Bookmarks" and "Window") enabled in Safari preferences, make sure not to select "Clear Caches", or else this will delete all the icons you made too. Also, simply Clearing History does the same thing. Alternatively, if you really want to clear history or clear cache for more disk space, save the custom icons you created before you clear; that way you can put them back afterwards without having to create them again.

Caches can also be automatically cleared at times, so it is a good practice to create backups of icons.


How Would I Manually Uninstall Search Encrypt On My MacBook?

Try using AppCleaner (http://freemacsoft.net/appcleaner/). The Mac way of removing apps is to just move them to the trash, but that almost always leaves junk behind. AppCleaner helps gather that junk and send it to the trash, too.

Disclaimer: I'm not employed or endorsed my FreeMacSoft, the developers of AppCleaner. I'm just a fan. Good luck! :)


I was able to remove the directory in single user mode.

Before that i tried to remove the contents of the directory one by one and found that Spotify contained two Growl libraries one of which could not be removed. The library did not even show up with ls -l in single user mode.


Apple ID security questions: case sensitive, unicode and accents

From my experiments with the security questions:

Security Questions are not case sensitive. So "London" is the same as "london".
Indeed it's possible to add a words with unicode characters, e.g. greek words and most likely in other languages, spaces, dashes etc.
But the system will take in consideration any accents in the words.
When answering the security questions, you need to write the exact same word/phrase as it was typed - with the only exception of the upper/lower case.

So for example the greek word "Αθήνα" will be different than "Αθηνα", while the "ΑΘΗΝΑ Ελλάδα" will be the same as "αθηνα ελλάδα"

The above are what I have found out by experimenting with my security questions. Unfortunately, I searched and couldn't find any reliable sources to cite. It seems that there is nowhere this kind of information.

The only reference I managed to find is here:
http://www.reddit.com/r/applehelp/comments/31tquo/are_the_security_questions_case_sensitive/

So, I decided to call Apple Support and ask. The support representative confirmed to me that security questions are case insensitive, I can type in greek letters and that accents are considered.


The official system requirements from Apple state 2GB of RAM minimum. And as you have flash-based storage the paging to disk that many people see running RAM hungry apps will not be too bad. With any luck.

However I would be hesitant to recommend it as the newer the OS the more RAM hungry it seems to be. I would make a disk image of your current drive somewhere safe (external USB drive) so you can restore it easily if you don't like the results.


Will Macbook Air 2017 benefit from Catalina upgrade?

However, is it worth actually upgrading?

A newer macOS release always includes the latest security patches for any discovered hardware of software vulnerabilities. So generally speaking, it's a good idea to upgrade if your device supports running it, given you have no reason to refrain from upgrading.

I know I can't use certain features (such as the battery health or sidecar), but should I do it for security, etc?

Yes.

What are the experiences of other MBA 2017 owners after upgrade? Has anyone experienced slowdowns? Is anything actually better? Or should I just stick with Good Ol' Mojave?

This experience could be pretty subjective depending on the apps being used, but generally speaking, a newer release of macOS also often includes under the hood performance improvements which are also claimed about by Apple.


Is Siri is new for every device with iOS 5, or just for the iPhone 4S?

Siri is only available on the iPhone 4S and only fully supported within the United States at the moment.

Unfortunately the page here on Siri does not make that extremely clear, apart from only mentioning the iPhone 4S. I can't find an official source on the Apple site other then that page that specifically says Siri is only available on the 4S.

Siri supports various languages, however some functionality, like local business searches, will only work in the United States at the moment.


iPhone 7 Plus stuck at Recovery Mode after downgrading from iOS 11

Solved it with the following steps

Manually download the IPSW file corresponding to your iPhone model via the links found on Reddit.
Connect iPhone to Mac/PC
In iTunes, select the phone and click on "Upgrade" with either Opt/Alt (Mac) or Shift (PC) pressed, then select the IPSW file you've just downloaded
Installation will start and you will be back at iOS 11.


It is likely the issue explained on this page on apple.com. If so, it is a problem with your GPU.

Symptom wise the "trial and error" in trying to start up your computer corresponds to my own experience, which I have also seen online. I personally also didn't see any actual graphics glitches before experiencing my first trouble startup up my computer. Only when my computer was already in a pretty bad state, did I see them.

I am quite sure I have this issue on my other computer, because using a third party program gfxCardStatus I was able to avoid crashes when I switched to "Integrated Only", which is the internal GPU. That avoids using the GPU that has the problem.
Note that you may have to act quickly to get reimbursed for a repair. The final date is Februari 27 for this issue.

More info

http://mbp2011.org/


How can I detect which application was started most recently?

I'm not sure if this will suit your needs, but you could just look at the Recent Applications item stack located at the bottom right end of your Dock (assuming your Dock is located at the bottom of your screen).

If you don't have this stack visible in your dock, follow these steps:

Open Terminal (usually located in Applications > Utilities)
Type (or copy and paste) the following:

defaults write com.apple.dock persistent-others -array-add '{"tile-data" = {"list-type" = 1;}; "tile-type" = "recents-tile";}'; killall Dock

Press the Return key
The Dock will quit and relaunch
You should now see a new item stack with recently used applications (at left of the Trash can)
Clicking on this will display your most recent apps
You can right-click (or control-click) on the icon to change what is displayed and how it is displayed. For example, choosing to display it as a List will show the most recent app at the top, and choosing the Grid option will display the most recent app at top left, and so on.

Regardless, the advantage of this over the Apple > Recent Items option is that everything is listed in the order they were run/accessed, instead of being listed in alphabetical order.


What file sharing protocol should I use with an older Mac?

AFP is Apple File Protocol and has been the default for a long time, and will be the most compatible with your 10.6 computer, and probably the easiest to set up. If you are sharing files on your own home network, choose that. It is still compatible with 10.9, it's just not the default network protocol in 10.9. SMB, the common Windows protocol, is available, but does not support some of the "nice" features of Mac OSX; sometimes it won't display custom icons, and might not fully support some file resource forks. FTP is more common for internet based networking, and I see no reason to use that in a home-only setting.


Macbook Pro keeps shutting down even when magsafe is plugged

This could be a Hardware issue.

But you have these options that can help:

1) Reset your Mac's NVRAM or PRAM.

2) If you continuing experiences issues, try to reset the SMC of your Mac.

I hope that works.


How to fetch an AirPort/Wi-Fi password using /usr/bin/security

I got my password with

security find-generic-password -D "AirPort network password" -a YourSSIDhere -g

Main difference is -a SSID. I found that in which field it was stored by letting security take a dump:

security dump-keychain


The main Applications directory is in the root directory, so you need to type

cd /Applications
ls -1

to access it (the -1 option to ls will ensure that the applications are listed in a single column only).


Does saving photos on iPad from Photo Stream save the full resolution?

All photos on Photo Stream are stored in the cloud in full resolution.  When they are pushed to an iPhone, iPad, iPod touch or Apple TV, they are downsized to make the best use of bandwidth available to those devices.  So when you save a photo which was taken by another device from Photo Stream to your iPad's Camera Roll, it doesn't receive the full resolution photo.

However, if you take a photo with an iPad (or iPhone/iPod Touch), you will have a full resolution version of the photo in Camera Roll.  You will also have a full resolution photo pushed to Photo Stream and on any Mac or PC which is synced with that Photo Stream account and a downsized version on any other iOS devices synced with that account also.

From Apple Support:

  On your Mac or PC, your photos are downloaded and stored in full
  resolution. On your iPhone, iPad, iPod touch, and Apple TV, your Photo
  Stream photos are delivered in a device-optimized resolution that
  speeds downloads and saves storage space. While actual dimensions will
  vary, an optimized version of a photo taken by a standard
  point-and-shoot camera will have a 2048 x 1536 pixel resolution when
  pushed to your devices.


How can root launch a regular Mac application from a cron job in /etc/crontab?

I figured out the key was to use su with -l, -c and single quotes:

su -l myloginname -c '/usr/bin/open -a [App].app'

In context:

*/15 * * * * root if { !  /usr/bin/diff  /var/tmp/foo /var/backups/bar >> /var/log/foobar-diff.log ; } ; \
then  /usr/bin/su -l myloginname -c '/usr/bin/open -a /Applications/iProcrastinate.app > /dev/null 2> /dev/null' ; \
/bin/date >> /var/log/foobar-diff.log ; fi


Just pressing optiona works for me as it produces అ (TELUGU LETTER A Unicode: U+0C05, UTF-8: E0 B0 85) not ఆ (TELUGU LETTER AA Unicode: U+0C06, UTF-8: E0 B0 86) on a MBP with US Keyboard , when set to Telugu - QWERTY for the keyboard layout.
Pressing w on the same keyboard produces అ also, when set to Telugu - QWERTY for the keyboard layout.


Can’t reinstall Mac OS el capital because Recovery HD disk is locked. Anyone know how to bypass this?

Do you have any data that you would like to keep? If not, then I would recommend erasing everything and resintalling macOS from Internet Recovery. If not, then try running First Aid. If none of these work, use fsck from Single-User Mode.


Is it possible to view the CPU/GPU temperatures **from the command line**?

It looks like a suitable solution might be in one of the less-voted answers on the question you linked:

  This open source command line utility worked for me:
  https://github.com/lavoiesl/osx-cpu-temp.

  M. Lavoie is using code Apple released a while back: Apple System
  Management Control (SMC) Tool Copyright (C) 2006 but it works fine on
  my 2011 Mini.

If smcFanControl is functional for you, but you dislike the display format, then perhaps this little C program is a better fit for your use case.


How to enable Chrome's "continue where you left off" for OS X El Capitan?

First, you want to make sure the setting is enabled in Chrome.    In the upper left corner of the screen, you'll want to click on Chrome -> Preferences and make sure the "continue where you left off" button is checked.

Next, please do understand there is a difference between closing a window and closing a program.   Command - Q is used to exit a program completely.    In OS X, if you close a window using the "red x" in the upper left corner, you are closing out a window, and not the program.

To see this work correctly...  try opening 3-4 tabs.   Then press  Command - Q.    Then relaunch Chrome.   You should see all your tabs there.


Lost my MacBook Air two weeks ago and it still says offline on Find My iPhone!

Find My iPhone on OS X doesn't require location services for locking/erasing the Mac, only to obtain its location. Therefore, next time the machine connects to the internet, it will lock. There's nothing you can do but wait until the device connects to the internet.


When, upgrading, I always just backup my old iPhone to iTunes and restore the iTunes backup.  That gets all pics including the camera roll.

I just recently upgraded from a 5s to 6, and I still have the very first pic I took with an iPhone on July 11, 2008 and that is how I've always done it.

Note: backup in iTunes is not the same as syncing with iTunes.  Click the phone icon to find the backup button.


Does the Mac support multitouch screens in any way?

One way to get something close, is to use your iPad as a secondary display to your Mac.  In this way you are able to extend your normal desktop onto the iPad and input using touch.

See this answer on a different question for more details


Spotlight Search: Show ALL FILES, and exclude ALL FOLDERS

You can set up some quite complex searches using  Cmd ⌘   F  in the Finder, rather than invoking Spotlight itself.

You can define many criteria & even save as a smart search for future use.
If you really want to get in-depth, you can use Spotlight's own query language, though the mechanics of that are well beyond my pay-grade.
I'll let Macworld - macOS: How to use Spotlight’s query language to create an All My Files-like feature - explain in detail.


How can I create a Finder alias in a bash script that reads arguments from the command-line?

With minimal error handling:

#!/bin/sh

[ -f "$1" ] || exit 1
[ "$2" ] || exit 1

alias=$(basename "$2")

/usr/bin/osascript <<EOF
tell application "Finder"
    set myapp to POSIX file "$1" as alias
    make new alias to myapp at Desktop
    set name of result to "$alias"
end tell
EOF

mv ~/Desktop/"$alias" "$2"


It could be a Windows global index file (.gid) or something else completely different depending on where it originated from. If indeed it is the common Windows type, it's used basically tell Microsoft help documents where to position the window on the screen, not much more.

If you want to open it
Control mouse-click > Open with... > Text edit

It might be gibberish or it might not; either way you could take a look if you're completely curious. Sometimes unknowingly, mistakenly, or haphazardly, software developers will use .(lll) whatever in relation to the software they've created while another application or computing platform also uses that extension; this can result in confusion, problems and conflicts.

Take a look at this document which lists the most commonly used extensions.


How can I back-up my OS X instance and Restore from mounted drive?

Yes, you can do this with disk utility.  When you try to access the FileVault encrypted disk it will prompt for a password. You can then select it as the source for a restore to another drive.


How to set up multiple phone numbers under text messages send/receive option

You can only assign 1 single phone number for sending SMS text messages (or iMessages), that of the SIM that is currently inserted.  You can assign any number of email address IDs that can be used for sender or recipient addresses.  You may be able to use an SMS forwarding system to allow receiving of message to multiple numbers, but you will only be able to reply from your own SIM number.

As a tangent, in the yet-to-be-released Yosemite version of OSX, it can pair to a phone and send text messages on behalf of it directly from the desktop.  Potentially it could pair to multiple phones to essentially have multiple sender IDs expressed as phone numbers, but that's not really what you are asking for and I include it only for observations sake.


Rename home folder to match account name (High Sierra)

Per Apple, assuming you're on OS X 10.7 or higher:

Delete the orphaned home directory.
Log out of the account you're renaming, then log in to a different administrator account.
Go to the Users folder on the startup drive. The Users folder contains the home folder of the account you're renaming. Rename that account's home folder.
Choose Apple menu > System Preferences, then click Users & Groups.
Click the lock, then enter the administrator name and password that you used to log in.
From the list of users, Control-click or right-click the user that you want to rename. Choose Advanced Options from the shortcut menu.
Change the “Home directory” field to match the new name that you gave the home folder in the Users folder.
Click OK, then quit System Preferences.
Restart your Mac.
Log in to the renamed account, then verify that your old files and folders are visible and the account is working as expected.


Unfortunately, it seems that you purchased a system that had Find My Mac enabled. This leaves you at the mercy of the iCloud account owner to not lock the system. I doubt there is anything Apple can/will do to help you unlock it. They may be able to help locate the account owner.

Advice for next time: Always check System Preferences to ensure that Find My Mac is disabled before handing over any money. To be completely safe, boot to Recovery Mode by pressing Cmd+r at the startup chime. Enter Disk Utility and format the Macintosh HD. Following that, use internet recovery to reinstall macOS.

That might seem like a lot of work, but it ensures that there is no malware on the system left behind by earlier users of the system, whether intentionally or otherwise.


What is the difference between FileVault 2 and Disk Utility Encryption?

Both, do the same thing, that is to encrypt your hard drive. However, the difference is in the approach and can be disastrous if you’re not careful with it.

Point 1:

When you use the Disc Utility to create an HD with Mac OS Extended (journaled, encrypted) - it will “Format” the drive (any data that you have on it will be lost, forever), it will then ask you set up a password. Once you’ve provided the info, and click Ok. It will format the hard drive within minutes (depending on the disk size of course). This is faster, but a destructive process.

When you use FileVault - it encrypts the hard drive while maintaining the data within it. This is a slow and reversible (i.e. You can turn FileVault ON/OFF as you choose) process, often takes a few hours. But, if you need to preserve the data on the HD, then this is the way to go.

Point 2:

FileVault can be enabled in System Preferences > Security & Privacy > FileVault to encrypt the existing data on the internal HDD on a Mac.

Disk Utility > Erase can be used to format an existing or new partition and encrypt the volume as Mac OS Extended (Journaled, Encrypted).

Conclusion:

If you’re concerned about the privacy of your files and user data, and your computer contains information that shouldn’t be seen without authorized access, you should absolutely use FileVault disk encryption.


Messages in iCloud on some devices, mixed with old devices?

That is exactly how it works. The devices that have Messages in iCloud enabled will sync amongst themselves, while older devices will keep working as they always did.

More precisely:

iOS devices with Messages in iCloud will no longer backup messages as part of iCloud Backup. This means that their backups should be smaller.
Devices that support Messages in iCloud will merge their messages with one another via iCloud, filling any “gaps” they may have had. Unsupported devices will neither merge their messages nor fill in any gaps they had.
If you delete a message/conversation on a device that supports Messages in iCloud, it will be deleted from all devices that support Messages in iCloud. That message/conversation will remain on unsupported devices.
Unsupported devices connected to your iCloud account will continue to receive iMessages just like before. There is no need for Messages in iCloud there.
Unsupported devices setup for SMS Forwarding will continue to receive and be able to send SMS/MMS messages like normal. No need for Messages in iCloud there either.


Internet recovery does depend on the network - so if your network was what made the first Command+R boot work, you will need to get back to a working network.

Most Macs don't erase the local recovery HD so you wouldn't likely have "shot a gun towards your own foot" if you simply erased the Macintosh HD and you would still be able to boot to recovery locally.

Only if you repartitioned the entire physical volume would you have erased your own recovery.

As to the fix - you could make a recovery drive on another Mac that is working and has an internet connection or take your Mac to a working network and try internet recovery.

How do I boot into Internet Recovery on a iMac?
https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT202481 - lists the network requirements for internet recovery
https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204904 - how to reinstall macOS