Is there an image editor like Windows' Paint for OS X?

You could try Paintbrush (free).
As quoted from its website :

Paintbrush is a simple paint program for Mac OS X, reminiscent of Microsoft Paint and Apple’s own now-defunct MacPaint. It provides users with a means to make simple images quickly, something which has been noticeably absent from the Mac for years.


How can I stop MacOS 10.14.4 Safari from automatically logging me in when I select a password?

Background

Unfortunately it looks like Apple decided to change this behavior in Safari, at least according to this article titled: Safari: macOS browser now autosubmits logins. Here’s how to disable it:

  Apple changed the behavior of Safari in macOS 10.14.4, and you may
  have noticed it and thought it was a bug. Now, if you have stored a
  password for a website, when you select a login entry to autofill,
  Safari 12.1 for macOS automatically submits the login. Previously, it
  would fill the fields and still require you to click a Login or Submit
  or other button to proceed.

Apple mentions it here in their Mojave 10.14.4 Update release notes (2nd bullet):

  Safari

  Adds Dark Mode support for websites that support custom color schemes
  Streamlines website login when filling credentials with Password AutoFill
  Allows push notification prompts only after interacting with a website
  Adds a warning when an insecure webpage is loaded
  Removes support for the expired Do Not Track standard to prevent potential use as a fingerprinting variable; Intelligent Tracking
  Prevention now protects against cross-site tracking by default

Workaround

So it looks like your only recourse here is to disable auto fill under the  "User names and passwords" section of the AutoFill tab of Safari's preferences.

AutFill tab under Safari Preferences

Edit under User names and passwords

NOTE: That dialog is actually just the Passwords tab, so you can just navigate to it directly.


Does anybody know how long installing El Capitan onto a USB 2 pendrive from another USB 2 pendrive takes on a MacBook Air?

I've never done this before, but from the looks of it, the speeds will be limited by how fast your thumbdrives go.

If I remember correctly, an El Capitan install is around 8-10 GB in size, so the 16 GB one you're installing to should be sufficient.

USB 2.0 in reality can IO data at around 30-40 MB/s (although this depends on the make and model of your pendrive).

Using these factors we can calculate that an installation can take up to 6 hours for copying alone, not factoring the CPU overhead in installation.

Although 72 hours is a bit of a stretch, as long as your USBs remain flashing I would be fairly certain the system is doing something and not worry about it halting.


This software did work with versions of OS X beyond Lion. However, with El Capitan and newer versions of macOS, this software was replaced with createinstallmedia.
The original idea was to copy the recovery partition to a USB drive. This allowed older Macs, with firmware that was unable to boot to Internet Recovery, to boot from a USB drive and download and install OS X. Eventually, Apple decided to include the installation software on the USB drive. This is where the idea for createinstallmedia came from.


How can I download ipa file from ipad on El Capitan?

Sync your iPad with iTunes, which will download all not already downloaded Apps to iTunes - and then sync your iPhone with iTunes - that's it.

iTunes store the ipa-files in ~/Music/iTunes/iTunes Media/Mobile Applications


Fonts on external display (4k TV) look awful, sub pixel font smoothing gone haywire?

I have/had a similar problem with my MacBook Pro and now my newer MBPr with an Asus 27" monitor. I ended up finding a discussion about it and a script in a forum for Dell Monitors.  The script took the monitors EDID information directly and created a display profile for it that overrode what OS X was trying to automatically configure.

Here is the script on github along with a link to the original topic. https://gist.github.com/ejdyksen/8302862

This worked for me to make my fonts readable again on my Asus VE27q.


From:

https://discussions.apple.com/message/30929430#30929430

Once you've unenrolled, run this command in the terminal:

sudo softwareupdate --clear-catalog

This worked for me!


So I figured out in iOS 8.3 when you reset your keyboard it doesn't clear your recently used emojis. But it replaces them with random emojis.

Then try typing an emoji. Now it should be first in your recently used. So just pretend the default emojis aren't there.


How do I transmit video from my iMac wirelessly?

How about an Apple TV ($99) and Airflick (free), over WiFi?  It'll only be 720p, though.

http://ericasadun.com/ftp/AirPlay/

There are a number of solutions for transmitting high-definition video:
https://www.google.com/search?q=1080p+wireless

...but to be honest, they cost nearly as much (or more) than an AppleTV, which gets you way more functionality.  Unless you have an enormous TV and top-notch content, you're going to be very hard-pressed to tell the difference.


Windows 10 on external SSD - touchbar and track pad issues

The Boot Camp Windows Support Software contains files that should be exposed to the Windows installer early in the installation process. There is also software that can be installed after Windows finishes installing. You may have only preformed the after part. In other words, have you made sure all the INF-style drivers were copied to the driver store before the first reboot during the installation process.

When using the Boot Camp Assistant to install Window 10, the files contained in the Widnow 10 ISO files are copied to the same volume as the Boot Camp Windows Support Software downloaded from the internet. So when GUI Windows installer executes, the needed files (such as drivers) are extracted from Boot Camp Windows Support Software. There is no indication to the user that this happens. Also, when Windows finishes installing, the Setup.exe application included with the Boot Camp Windows Support Software executes. This is what users do see.

  Note: If the version of Window is sufficiently newer than the model Mac, then most likely the needed software will already be include with Windows. This is only a problem when the Mac is new enough that the needed software in only exists in the Boot Camp Windows Support Software.

You may want to try a normal install of Windows 10 to the external drive instead of a Windows To Go.


How do I transfer my iOS developer profile to another computer?

Import/Export works differently in Xcode 5+. This Apple Developer guide shows you how to do it.

Your account is shown under Xcode → Preferences → Accounts, and can be exported by clicking the gear icon () in the lower-left.


Replacing annoying hold music with my own?

This is not a way to replace annoying hold music, but is a potential solution to being annoyed by music heard when on hold.

WeQ4U

WeQ4U is an app for iOS and Android (with an ugly name). Basically, you route all your calls through its numbers (included as local-rate minutes in plans) and, when you get into a queue with music, you simply hit *9 and the app continues queueing for you.

While there is no protocol for saying when you're on hold and voice recognition is imperfect, I believe the app asks the call agent to use some touch tone command to indicate when you've left the queue and then the app reconnects you. You can see an example of it working in this video.

So you never have to hear the music at all and in fact you can listen to your own music or do anything you want in the mean time. It's a free app, the calls are normal rate (it redirects from premium numbers too) and you use fewer minutes as it calls you back once you're off hold. So yes, I'd have to say such an app or feature does exist.

I believe this only currently works for UK numbers but there's no technical reason why it can't exist worldwide.


internal SSD crash. macbook retina early 2016. Mac OS X el capitan

If you’re not sure you are doing the full erase correctly, you can follow this guide. It will repartition the drive erasing everything on it and let you attempt a clean os installation.

https://apple.stackexchange.com/a/354246/5472

If you’re not ready for that, consider installing on to an external drive to back up any files and make sure it’s not something other than the SSD failing or needing to erase everything first.


Problems with Apple's Security Update 2011-005 (Lion)?

The update replaces 3 files, all pertaining to your system's keychain. They are as follows:

/System/Library/Keychains/EVRoots.plist
/System/Library/Keychains/SystemRootCertificates.keychain
/System/Library/Keychains/SystemTrustSettings.plist

It is impossible that the update has caused your problems. Look elsewhere.


Good software for watching videos on Mac?

This answer will be short: VLC. Has everything you need except the rotation. It's a media player, not a video editor.

To alter the playback speed in VLC: Go to to Playback → Playback Speed. You can also alter the playback speed using ⌘= and ⌘-.

For rotation, as user Iwillnotexist Idonotexist notes in the comments below, you can go to Window → Video Effects → Geometry → Transform.

Bonus: A list of some VLC keyboard shortcuts for OS X.


change sudoers to stop asking for password when running a systemsetup comman

Was brave enough to do it myself. For future readers, add:

yourusername ALL=(ALL) NOPASSWD: /usr/sbin/systemsetup

after

## User privilege specification
##
root ALL=(ALL) ALL
%admin  ALL=(ALL) ALL


Yes, your iPad (any device with an LCD display) can get a dead (off) or a stuck (always on) pixel.

Is it bad?

No. It will not affect the the performance of the device.  It’s analogous to a blown light in your house; while not detrimental, it can be annoying.


How do I copy photos edited via the Camera app on my iPhone to my PC?

Okay. I've found it.

The easiest alternative to getting the edits onto your PC, instead of emailing them to yourselves is to upload it to Flickr.

Obviously, you'll need iOS7, as it has native Flickr integration.

You can upload 10 photos at once which is far better than emailing.

Moreover, if you're like me, who backups photos to a cloud, you can use IFTTT to create a trigger and upload it to your favorite service whenever a new photo is uploaded.


How do I move mp4 files from fotos to files on an ipad

One option is to do the following:

On your iPad launch the VLC app
Tap on the Network option
Enable the Sharing via WiFi option
This should present you with at least two http URL addresses
On your laptop, open your preferred web browser (Safari, etc)
Enter one of the URL addresses (NOTE: I find the numbered address is much more reliable than the one using your device name)
You browser will now open a Sharing via WiFi page
Use this page to directly upload/download files to/from VLC on your iPad.


involving the Return key in a System Preferences keyboard shortcut

Does anyone know a way to work around that?

Second place would be doing it using config files somewhere on the filesystem.

In macOS Catalina, it's the ~Library/Preferences/pbs.plist file that stores information about the services listed at: System Preferences > Keyboard > Shortcuts > Services
This answer is mainly focused on applying the ⌘↩ (commandreturn) keyboard shortcut to a service listed at System Preferences > Keyboard > Shortcuts > Services and without concern to the issues with creating an Automator Service/Quick Action and assigning it a global keyboard shortcut in reference to System Preferences > Security & Privacy > Privacy.
Having created an Automator Service/Quick Action and assigned it a temporary global keyboard shortcut of ⌘] in System Preferences > Keyboard > Shortcuts > Services, I then did the following to change it to: ⌘↩
Note: The name of the target Automator Service/Quick Action is: New Terminal Window
Closed: System Preferences
Opened: Terminal
% defaults read pbs | grep 'New Terminal Window'
        "(null) - New Terminal Window - runWorkflowAsService" =         {
%
% /usr/libexec/PlistBuddy -c "set :NSServicesStatus:'(null) - New Terminal Window - runWorkflowAsService':key_equivalent @↩" ~/Library/Preferences/pbs.plist
%

Then went to System Preferences > Keyboard > Shortcuts > Services and verified the target Automator Service/Quick Action had the ⌘↩ keyboard shortcut.
I then pressed the ⌘↩ keyboard shortcut, responded to the Security & Privacy dialog box, and now have a new Terminal window.

Notes:
If after running the PlistBudy command and then checking System Preferences > Keyboard > Shortcuts > Services to see that ⌘↩ was assigned to the target service's keyboard shortcut and testing... If the ⌘↩ keyboard shortcut doesn't work, try the following before rebooting:

Try the the service from the Services menu, then try agin with the ⌘↩ keyboard shortcut.
If that does't work, execute the PlistBudy command again while appending ; killall cfprefsd to the command. Then repeat the step above.
If nether of these steps work, execute the PlistBudy command again and immediately reboot.

This was done from an Admin account.
This was done under macOS Catalina with Language & Region settings in System Preferences set to English (US) — Primary and worked for me without issue1.

1  Assumes necessary and appropriate setting in System Preferences > Security & Privacy > Privacy have been set/addressed as needed.

The AppleScript code used in a Run AppleScript action of the Automator Service/Quick Action was coded to work whether or not Terminal was already running.


As per the comment from user3439894 the issue was that I had

  System Preferences > Security & Privacy > General > Allow apps
  downloaded from:

set to

  Mac App Store and identified developers

Once I set it to be

  Anywhere

Then I could run the installer.

The error message I received was disingenuous and did not inform me of what the actual problem was.

Protip - Even though Adobe wouldn't tell me what my CS5 license number was there are ways to extract it from OS X.  It just took some googling.


how to turn on hardware virtualization on Macbook pro with BootCamp with no OSX

After getting on Internet recovery mode and just restarting from there (nothing else done) then virtualization got enabled in BootCamp!


How to have Spaces display desktop contents instead of desktop name only?

One workaround I've found is to create 16 desktops (the max number allowed to be created explicitly) then to maximize a window.


How to make ntfs-3g drive visible in Finder

I finally got it working. I used the info at this site. The instructions are now included in brew installations.

Basically use brew or macports to install ntfs-3g, fuse4x, and fuse4x-kext.  If you have an icon in System Preferences for fuse or macfuse, remove those, you don't need them. Follow the instructions after you finish installing them. You can also use brew info to see those instructions if you missed them before.

When I did brew info ntfs-3g I found this.

To replace the default Mac OSX automounter:
    sudo mv /sbin/mount_ntfs /sbin/mount_ntfs.orig
    sudo ln -s /usr/local/Cellar/ntfs-3g/2012.1.15/sbin/mount_ntfs /sbin/mount_ntfs

I also did brew fuse4x-kext and found this.

  sudo cp -rfX /usr/local/Cellar/fuse4x-kext/0.9.0/Library/Extensions/fuse4x.kext /Library/Extensions
  sudo chmod +s /Library/Extensions/fuse4x.kext/Support/load_fuse4x

After running those commands I got the ntfs drives to automount and be visible in Finder with read/write access.


Where do my apps go when I run out of screen space?

The iPad can contain up to 11 pages on its home screen, each page containing up to 20 apps (not counting folders). If all the spots are full when a new app is downloaded, the app will download and install, but not have a spot on the home screen. You can run it through search, the fast app switcher, etc., but not from the home screen.

If space is cleared on the home screen, it appears Apps don't fill in automatically. Rebooting has been known to help.

Now that folders allow more than the 220 apps, I'd recoommend making sure you have an empty spot for the app to appear before purchasing.


If you don't want to use Disk Warrior or something similar to get your volumes back, there is a small chance to recover your partitions manually:

You'll need some tools and luck to accomplish that:

Install a full vanilla system (Mountain Lion or Mavericks should work) on a thumb drive. A recovery system will not work. Boot to the thumb drive, download and install wxHexEditor. Enable the root user and log-in as root.

A classical partition map of Mountain Lion without any Boot Camp partition would probably look like this on your Mac:

sudo gpt -r show disk2
      start       size  index  contents
          0           1         PMBR
          1           1         Pri GPT header
          2          32         Pri GPT table
         34           6
         40      409600      1  GPT part - C12A7328-F81F-11D2-BA4B-00A0C93EC93B
     409640   998536000      2  GPT part - 48465300-0000-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC
  998945640     1269536      3  GPT part - 426F6F74-0000-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC
 1000215176           7
 1000215183          32         Sec GPT table
 1000215215           1         Sec GPT header

A partition map of Mountain Lion with a Boot Camp partition would probably look like this (sizes may vary in your case - i have chosen a ~50 GB partition for Windows):

sudo gpt -r show disk2
      start       size  index  contents
          0           1         PMBR
          1           1         Pri GPT header
          2          32         Pri GPT table
         34           6
         40      409600      1  GPT part - C12A7328-F81F-11D2-BA4B-00A0C93EC93B
     409640   898536000      2  GPT part - 48465300-0000-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC
  898945640     1269536      3  GPT part - 426F6F74-0000-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC
  900215176      204800      4  GPT part - C12A7328-F81F-11D2-BA4B-00A0C93EC93B
  900419976    99795200      5  GPT part - EBD0A0A2-B9E5-4433-87C0-68B6B72699C7
 1000215176           7
 1000215183          32         Sec GPT table
 1000215215           1         Sec GPT header

Now we try to search for a specific text string of your Recovery HD-partition on your disk. In the example above this is the partition with index number 3.

Open wxHexEditor. In the menubar go to "Devices" -> "Open disk device" -> choose the appropriate diskNummber. Probably it's disk1 or disk2. The disk shouldn't have any further partitions like disk1s1 or disk1s2.
Try to arrange the windows like in the example below with straight red lines  and scroll to the very end of the disk (your visible offset number is approx. 51211000000):

Now hit the search button and enter manually:

/private/var/tmp/efiboot/efiboot

and enable "Text Search", "Match Case" and "Search Backwards" like in the example below:

This may take a while. Please check the position of the scrollbar indicator if the finding is realistic. If you've split your disc in 375 GB (Mac OS X) and 125 GB (Windows) then the string match should be at the beginning of the 4th quarter.

Make a note of the first offset number of the block containing the string.

Additionally scroll to lower offset numbers. It should be filled with zeros except the block directly preceding. If you find anything else than zeroes stop here.

In my example it's 68195037696. Divide that number through 512 to get its block number: 68195037696/512 = 133193433

Remove 244921 from the number found above to get the starting block of your Recovery HD.

In my example 133193433 - 244921 = 132948512.

Remove 1 from the number found above to get the ending block of your main volume.

In my example 132948512 - 1 = 132948511 (*)

With the starting block of the Recovery HD found, we may now add the different missing partitions:

You may have to unmount the device with:

diskutil unmountDisk diskNumber

(with the diskNumber you found above: probably disk1 or disk2)

First we recover the EFI partition by entering:

gpt add -b 40 -i 1 -s 409600 -t C12A7328-F81F-11D2-BA4B-00A0C93EC93B diskNumber

(with the diskNumber found above: probably disk1 or disk2)

Then we recover your main partition by entering:

gpt add -b 409640 -i 2 -s SizeOfPartition -t 48465300-0000-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC diskNumber

(with SizeOfPartition = (*) - 409640 +1)

In my example that would be: 132948511 - 409640 + 1 = 132538872

Then we recover your Recovery HD by entering:

gpt add -b EndblockOfMainVolume+1 -i 3 -s 1269536 -t 426F6F74-0000-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC diskNumber

Then you may label all the partitions with gpt label -i IndexNumber -l "Name" diskNumber:

gpt label -i 1 -l "EFI" diskNumber
gpt label -i 2 -l "Macintosh HD" diskNumber
gpt label -i 3 -l "Recovery HD" diskNumber

(with the diskNumber found above: probably disk1 or disk2)

Now restart your Mac to the thumb drive again. Open disk utility and check the restored volume for errors.

If everything is fine, backup the content of your main volume, partition the SSD, reinstall Mac OS X Mountain Lion and migrate your apps and users.

Good luck to recover your disk - i hope it works like that. If you are unsure or have any questions leave a comment here starting with @klanomath


How can I change the list of "Open With" applications?

So one way would be to manually remove the association of these apps for the specific file type.

Basically for this you have to edit the "info.plist" file contained by the specific app package and remove the file type associations.

  Go to the app you want to ban and right-click on it.
  Click on Show Package Contents.
  Open the Contents folder.
  Open Info.plist with any text editor, like TextEdit.
  Look for CFBundleTypeExtensions, which should show up several times. Under that, you should see a few lines that have file name.
  Once you find the suffix you want to take off (in my case. it's the png line), delete it from the text editor and save the file.
  Lastly, open Terminal and enter the killall Finder command. [to restart the finder]

(Source: https://mac-how-to.gadgethacks.com/how-to/remove-duplicates-customize-open-with-menu-mac-os-x-0157100/, point "How to Delete a Specific App from 'Open With'")

There may be another easier way to do this.


How to make Macbook Pro recognise gigabit speed of ethernet adapter dongle via USB-C connection?

Judging from your screenshots it seems like the LAN cable is not directly plugged into your Mac, instead:
LAN cable → USB 2.0 Hub→ 4-port USB 2.1 Hub → USB 3.1 MBP Controller
USB 2 spec does not allow for high speed data connection like 1GBit/s. As mentioned in the system report, the maximum speed is 480MBit/s. Therefore you can't establish a 1000MBit/s connection.
As long as you have one device in this connection tree that is not at least capable of USB 3.0 speeds, you will not get the faster 1GBit/s speed on your LAN connection.

Edit: There is another faster 4-port USB 3.1 Hub being mentioned in the system report. I think that since your dongle has so many ports, it also has two different controllers that are being recognized by the Mac and shown as separates Hubs, although they are one dongle.


Can the OS X keychain juggle two accounts for the same site?

No - you'll want a more full featured password manager like the one gentmatt recommended in the comments.

You could do some kludgey web proxy to give the subdomain a separate top level domain, but that's way more hassle than most would consider appropriate for solving the problem you pose.


How do I copy all photos from Photos App to an external drive?

Is your Lightroom installation also on your Mac OS partition?

If you want to edit the files in Lightroom without having to "extract" them into a separate folder, you should:

Open the folder containing the Photos library in Finder.
Right-click the Photos Library and click "show package contents".
Open the Masters folder and right-click on a year folder and select "make alias".  (This is necessary, since the "make alias" option doesn't exist when you right-click on the Masters folder for no apparent reason.)
Command+I on the new alias and click "choose destination", then drag the Masters folder into the dialogue that opens.
Rename your alias and drag it wherever is best for you.


No.

iPhoto is designed to make non-destructive edits, preserving the original photo file. Overriding this feature is rather contrary to the basic nature of the program, which attempts to be careful to preserve, and never to modify the original photo files.


How can I activate the 'say' command from the keyboard?

Go to System Preferences, click the "Speech" icon, then click the "Text to Speech" tab. Then simply check the "Speak selected text when the key is pressed" box.

Text you have selected will be spoken when you press the selected key combination.


It appears you specified the of parameter twice. For Mac OS you probably don't want /dev/sdb2 (that's more likely a Linux device).


Using a macbook pro keyboard for developing software. Typing square brackets and curly braces

Navigate to /System/Library/Input Methods/PressAndHold.app/Contents/PlugIns/PAH_Extension.appex/Contents/Resources/.
  Make a backup of the relevant keyboard file for your locale. In my case, this is Keyboard-en.plist or Keyboard-en_GB.plist.
  Add custom characters or change the characters that you wish, then save the file.
  Log out and back in for the changes to take effect in all apps.

For example, you can add the following:

<!-- language: xml -->

    <key>Roman-Accent-0</key>
    <dict>
        <key>Direction</key>
        <string>right</string>
        <key>Keycaps</key>
        <string>{ [</string>
        <key>Strings</key>
        <string>{ [</string>
    </dict>

Files in /System are protected by System Integrity Protection. If you wish to edit the file, you will need to disable this if you haven't done so already.

  To disable System Integrity Protection, you can do the following:

  Boot into the Recovery HD by restarting whilst holding ⌘R.
  Open Terminal (from the Utilities menu).
  Run the following command in Terminal:

csrutil disable

  Restart.

Disable OS X El Capitan Rootless and permit write actions to System Integrity Protection locations

You can re-enable it once you've edited the file.


Why does deleting a Mac OS X app leaves its shortcut in the Launchpad?

It may be a bug, but I am thinking it may mean your Spotlight index is corrupt.

I just tried deleting Evernote from my Applications folder. After authenticating, it moved it to the trash. I then checked launchpad again, and it was no longer there. Then, when I dragged it back out of the trash and placed back into Applications folder. Relaunched launchpad, and it was there again on the last page. As in, worked as expected here.

Launchpad keeps its own plist of what files there are, etc, and thats why there are some modification tools to allow to you to edit it. But I am assuming they would use spotlight to 'watch' your Applications folder to add new items not through the Mac App Store. I assume Spotlight because its a great tool for the job, installing Lion does a huge spotlight re-index, and they do use spotlight often behind the scenes.

First, the GUI way I have seen online is to do this (I do the command line way below):

In system's preferences -> spotlight -> Privacy add the drive you want to re-index
Quit System's preferences
Logout of your sessions
Login again :-)
In system's preferences -> spotlight -> Privacy remove the drive you want to re-index
Wait.. a faily long time. You should see mdworker and/or mds running

Personally, I have always done it through the command line.

Launch ‘Terminal’ (located in /Applications/Utilities/)
At the command prompt, type this exactly: sudo mdutil -E /
You will be asked for your password, provide it, as this command requires
administrator privelages to run
You will receive a confirmation message saying that index will be rebuilt
Wait until index is finished rebuilding, this can take a while depending on the size of your hard drive, amount of files, etc.

While I can't find any documentation online that 100% confirms that Launchpad uses Spotlight for this, this would be the first place I would look for the problem you are having.


Time Capsule supports copying backups stored on it to an external USB-disk (put in the USB-port on the device).

You need to trigger it through the Airport Tool.

After copying the copy can be used as a Time Machine disk when restoring files or reinstalling OS X.

(I do not use the TC as a network disk, so any files stored there, must be manually copied)


I just encountered this same problem: I don't know why it's happening but I was able to install the update by launching the downloaded package manually:

open "~/Library/Application Support/Java/Java 1.8.45.14 3/JavaAppletPlugin.pkg"


How can I get a standard (non-phonetic) Russian keyboard to map "/" and "?" to "." and "," or otherwise allow their entry?

Look at the keyboard map in System prefs>Keyboard>Input sources, or from the language menu bar (flag icon) from which you'll find them on Shift 6 & 7


iOS 10.3 and Audi, Bluetooth audio no longer works. Anyone else?

Well, Aren't I a fool! It seems that the iOS update for some reason decided to reset the system volume to zero (but only when connected to that Bluetooth device).

The apps that I used to test didn't have the volume slider visible on screen and the car volume controls don't 'pass-through' so it only appeared silent.

Adjusting the iPhone system volume via the physical buttons on the phone brought the audio back....


Kernel Panic when booting into Mac OS. iMac 27 2017

First you should try removing any third-party, external peripherals you have connected to your iMac. If the problem persists, and your observations are correct, then you have a hardware error with your iMac. You should contact Apple or the dealer for repairs. You can also use the built-in hardware test to search for errors, but be aware that it only catches a small subset of possible errors.

The reason I say this is that when you boot into Internet Recovery, it is not using any information from your macOS installation or from your hard drive in general. If that kernel panics during boot, you have a hardware problem.

There are many possible reasons as to why this seems to only affect macOS and not Windows in Bootcamp. You could be lucky that you're not hitting the faulty hardware, and it could be that Windows in general does not use that portion of the hardware - or that flaws in that piece of hardware is inconsequential for Windows (or at least you haven't noticed the problem yet).

The actual defective hardware could be many things, but it is often faulty RAM or similar component. The hard drive is not used for Internet Recovery, but there's a small chance that a defective hard drive could interfere anyways - however, in that case you shouldn't be able to run Windows from the same drive.


Can I use Airplay without Apple TV or Airport

Rogue Amoeba has a few applications that work together for this sort of thing. Check out Airfoil: http://www.rogueamoeba.com/airfoil/


Not sure the double click on empty space can be done, but I'm sure it would be kinder to ask the Finder to quit rather than kill it... Finders have feelings too ;-)

You could always save it as an app & put it in the Dock.

tell application "Finder" to quit
-- /*give it time, otherwise it will try to activate before it's quit & this simple version won't check if it relaunched.*/
delay 2
try
    tell application "Finder" to activate
end try
--my testFinderRunning() --/*uncomment to add the belt & braces method*/

Add this routine to make sure it relaunched

    on testFinderRunning()
    set test to 0
    repeat while test = 0
        log test
        tell application "System Events" to set test to count (every process whose name is "Finder")
        delay 2
        --/*we do this even if active because it doesn't naturally come to front.*/
        try
            tell application "Finder" to activate
        end try
        if (test > 0) then exit repeat
    end repeat
end testFinderRunning

You can put the Applescript menu in the menu bar - http://thepoch.com/tumblr/enable-the-script-menu-in-mac-os-xs-menu-bar.html
short version... launch Applescript, get Prefs, set 'Show script menu in menu bar'

That may allow you to assign Key Commands from System Prefs/Keyboard, but I haven't had time to test yet.


Safari searches in the title bar require tapping "return" twice

I've been having this issue and it's started to drive me nuts. I think I've solved it by altering the search preferences for Safari and disabling most of the 'smart search' options. I've not spent the time going through each to determine which particular option caused the issue. I'm just glad I don't have to keep pressing return twice.


Since it's a wedding, the only recommendation I can make is to hire a professional DJ that can work the crowd. Predefined playlists might be fine for ambience music during dinner etc, but they'll never get the real party started. You need some interaction with the crowd if you ever want to get them on that dance floor. Also don't assume timing of a wedding party goes exactly as planned when you think of automatically announcing speakers etc, it just doesn't work out that way.

There is quite some DJing software available however. A popular choice is djay (also available for iPad). But a good set-up goes further than that. You can have a look at this page for a more extensive guide on DJing on the Mac.

But again, please go for an experienced DJ. It's worth it. I'm sure he has his own set-up, wether it be digital or analogue.


What's the easiest way to transfer photos from Google Photos to iCloud Photos?

You can download the photos from Google to your PC and then upload them to icloud.com


Can't save files in my own directory due to insane permission error

I had the same problem.  I tried what Matt Love has suggested and still had the problems.  I then downloaded Cocktail and ran permission repair, rebooted and all worked again.


iTunes 11 - Difference between "Play Next" and "Add to Up Next" buttons

'Play Next' adds the song/album to be played directly, 'Add to Up Next' adds the song/album at the end of the songs/albums that have already been added to Up Next. For the first song/album, this will make no difference, but try adding a couple more and you'll see the difference.

In other words, 'Play Next' works as a stack - Last In First Out, while 'Add to Up Next' works as a queue - First In First Out.


Insert the Snow Leopard DVD into your DVD drive. Reboot the computer and hold down the Option key (newer keyboard call it "Alt"). After a few seconds, the screen will show your hard drive(s) and the DVD. Select the DVD, this will start the Installer.

If your previous installation of Leopard was corrupted by a failing hard drive, you will not be able to install Snow Leopard though (the Installer won't let you). In that case you must first replace the drive.


One way to do this is to put the following command in ~/.profile:

export PAGER="col -b  | open -a /Applications/Safari.app -f"

The PAGER environmental variable controls what program man uses to display man pages. the col command removes all of the backspace-formatting from the man page. The open command saves the output as a temporary text file and opens it with Safari.app.

Or you can edit the PAGER variable in /private/etc/man.conf. You could also probably edit the NROFF variable and eliminate the need to use col -b. See the man page for man.conf.


Parrallels 10 and Windows 10 keyboard typing incorrect characters

Somehow Windows 10 set my language input to "English - United Kingdom" instead of "English - United States".

By removing everything besides "English - United States" under "Languages" in Control Panel it fixed the issue.


Microsoft Remote Desktop client failing to connect via Remote Desktop Gateway in AWS

I confirmed that the EC2 instance requires a security group that allows incoming traffic to the following ports for the Remote Desktop Gateway Service.

TCP/443
UDP/3391


I've managed to solve it quite o.k.

tell application "Contacts"
    tell application "System Events"
        set theName to full name of current user
    end tell
    set theNick to nickname of person theName
    if theNick is not missing value then
        return theNick
    else
        return word 1 of theName
    end if
end tell

It would be better to select the vcard associated with the user account and not just match the name. But I couldn't find out how to do this.


What is AKAuthorizationRemoteView (Messages) process and akd process?

akd is a background service created by Apple that runs on macOS as part of the AuthKit framework. It is used by other Apple programs to facilitate the process of validating Apple IDs.
For example when you login to iCloud from the App Store, System Preferences or similar, the akd background process is responsible for actually "talking" to Apple's servers. This approach makes it possible for Apple to centrally manage and update authentications on macOS, instead of having to bake that support into each and every app that needs it.
Note that when you log in to iCloud from a browser, akd is not involved.
Usually akd does not take up huge amounts of CPU time. The fact that it does on your computer, indicates that there was a bug in the program. For example it could be that there was some unexpected delay or break in the connection between the program and Apple's server, and that the program went into a never-ending loop waiting for something to happen.
That sort of problem is usually resolved by either "killing" (i.e. stopping) the program and letting it restart automatically, or by simply rebooting the computer.
AKAuthorizationRemoteView is part Apple's AuthKitUI framework. Similar to the purpose of AuthKit, the AuthKitUI framework contains the functionality necessary to provide a user interface for authentication with Apple's services. It is created as a framework that is shared by other applications so that Apple does not have to update each and every program when they make a change to how the user interface for authenticating with their server's look like.
The user interface would include things like a dialog for entering your Apple ID and password, dialog for entering the 6-digit 2-factor authentication codes, a password reset dialog, etc.
You do not need to be concerned about the AKAuthorizationRemoteView. "Remote View" does not mean that something or someone is remotely viewing the screen of your computer. In technical terms a "view" is something that is displayed on your display - like for example a button, a menu, a text input field or similar. A "remote view" is a view that is displayed by a different thread or process than the main process.
I.e. in this case it just means that you have a main program (Messages for example) that is using this external framework and letting it display an authentication dialog on its behalf. This dialog is then "remote" from the Messages program, although everything is contained and running on your own computer.


Do persistently incorrect disk permissions indicate a disk should be replaced?

Usually, you'd ignore the problem. It just means that contradictory permissions are specified for those files. It can't satisfy all of them at once.

  In Mac OS X v10.5 or earlier, when you verify or repair disk permissions Disk Utility reviews each of the .bom files in /Library/Receipts/ and compares its list to the actual permissions on each file listed. If the permissions differ, Disk Utility reports the difference (and corrects them if you use the Repair feature).

Source: About Disk Utility's Repair Disk Permissions feature

The problem here is that different receipts specify different permissions for a file. If it sets them one way, they're wrong according to the other.

I think Apple used to mention possible contradictions in permissions, I'll see if I can find it.

But in your specific case:

Looking at the specific permissions in your log, I doubt this applies to you. The d indicates a directory, which means a file has been replaced with a directory. Fixing permissions is not going to fix this; it can't transform the directory back to a file.

I suspect this would be fixed with a reinstall. I doubt the disk needs replacing, however.


From what you've described/tried so far this sounds like it's a RAM related issue.

Keep track of which RAM is which (label each stick) and experiment with different configurations. The most important thing to try out would be swapping the RAM between the reisers and testing. This should help you ascertain if it's the particular reiser that's at fault or the RAM in that reiser.

Also, make sure that the RAM configuration is correct!
Check that it is here

You may also want to consider the PSU, logic board or CPUs - really though only an Apple tech with access to known good spares can really confirm this.

Regarding the SMC; When you unplug the machine for more than 15 secs the SMC resets. This is the official way to reset the SMC, hence the lack of a reset button.

When you press the diag button you are doing nothing more than telling the system to light up some extra diag LEDs that are usually not lit during standard boot procedure.

See this table for a list of boot/diag LEDs

Note the LEDs which will not light unless the diag button is pressed

The system will boot when you press this button because the LEDs are used to check that the system is getting through the various POST (power on self tests) during boot. The LEDs can tell you where and why the boot is failing.


Free space in iCloud not less even after having deleted all files in iCloud Drive

open system preferences and click on icloud. a new panel opens as shown below. click on the option button next to icloud.

After clicking the Option button a new panel opens. At the bottom of that panel is a checkbox to optimize mac storage. Make sure that box is unchecked.  See 2nd figure below.

If the new icloud space doesn't look correct give it a few hours to update.


Unable to receive USSD sessions while iPhone 5s screen is locked

USSD session messages no longer turn on the screen. This was intended to save battery.

I for once had a problem that the USSD message would arrive when the iPhone was in my pocket and the screen would be ON until I manually dismissed it, which would drain my battery.


Complete list of App Store review rejection reasons

You really don't give us much to go on, like what the reasons where and such. BUT, when it comes to Apple, a lot has to come down to the App Reviewer and if they had a good day or not. I have had one rejected, and submitted it again, changing a font and color, and it was then successfully accepted into the App Store.
At the end of the day though, they are professionals, and if there is a reason they have given, fix it and move on. It could be something as simple as UI Design ?
You say they have given you 3 different reasons, but then say why are they not giving you all the reason ??
Apple ~ App Review Guidlines


what version of AppleConfigurator 2 is compatible with AppleTV 3rd gen?

I found this page with the following bullet list on it, titled: Apple Configurator 2 makes iPad and iPhone deploys even easier for SMBs.

  Requirements for running Configurator 2.0

  System requirements

  OS X El Capitan (10.11+) or later
  iTunes 12.3 or later

  Device requirements

  Apple TV (2nd Generation or later)
  iPhone
  iPad
  iPod Touch

  iOS requirements

  iOS 7 or later

The disconcerting part with much of what you'll find about 2nd and 3rd Gen AppleTV devices is that the official pages maintained by Apple all seem to redirect you now to a GiveBack page to trade in your device.

NOTE: One of the more useful pages was the actual Mac store landing page for AppleConfigurator2. On that page is a "Version History" link which details the various releases.

If you look in the Apple forums and search for 3rd Gen AppleTV you'll find others who have this version of the device and are struggling to get it to work as well.

For example - Purchasing used appletv

  The 3rd gen has long been discontinued, and hasn't received an update
  since 2016. It doesn't run apps, just preset content sent via server,
  and providers have started to drop support. You also wouldn't have
  access to things like iCloud Photo library, Apple Music, and airplay
  2.

  I would suggest to go for the 4th gen (now rebranded as Apple TV HD)

My advice would be to use this device for what it is, but if you want to do anything more with it, it's probably time to upgrade to a newer device.

References

tvOS


Deleting a user account from a OSX machine

It is safe to just use the System Preferences -> Accounts dialog to delete the user account. You always have to have one active account on the machine. You will need administrator access to the machine to delete the account. When you delete an account you'll be asked if you want to save the account's home directory or just delete them. Up to you which way you go there.

Now, if the user had administrator access to the machine, deleting their account may not remove all traces of the user from the machine. If they installed software in to /Applications or made system-level changes via /Library or any other means, those changes are going to persist on the machine. But if they weren't a privileged user, everything they could have changed on the machine was in their home directory and deleting their account got rid of it.

If you want to get rid of any trace a privileged user may have left on a machine you can delete the user account and then roll back to a point in time using your TimeMachine drive when that user didn't exist. Or, before deleting the user account, you can find all files that are owned by that user and manually deal with the ones that fall outside the user's home directory, then delete the user account. Or you can reinstall the entire OS -- but frankly that seems like a sledge hammer for a nail type of solution to me.


I had similar issues. Found a fix around. This app (Unshaky) will stop your mac from pressing keys multiple times (you have to configure the app, its pretty simple and straight forward). my problem was that my keyboard kept on pressing the option key instead of just holding. This app worked with me.. Hope it helps.

link found here

Hope this helps


I wouldn't imagine an inverter board would be relevant here, its sole purpose is to control power flow to the backlight.  If the screen flickered black or the brightness seemed to flicker then you might look at the inverter board but I highly doubt it could cause graphic anomalies similar to yours.

Your examples look more video related, which would point to either the logic board, LVDS (display) cable and/or LCD panel itself.  You can narrow it down using the following diagnostic steps...

Take a screenshot (commandshift3), do the video anomalies appear in the resulting screenshot picture?  If so then it's likely a failure with the video card/logic board or possibly RAM.  If not then it's possibly the LVDS cable and/or LCD panel.
Connect your Mac to an external display, do the video anomalies appear on the external display?  If so then it's likely a failure with the video card/logic board.  If not then it's possibly the LVDS cable and/or LCD panel.
Does the issue change at all when the display is tilted forward/backward?  If so then it's likely a loose or damaged LVDS cable and/or LCD panel.  I should specify, the LCD itself is probably ok but it's built in controller board could be damaged.  They ARE replaceable but it's likely a lot easier to replace the LCD itself, though thats still quite a task with the unibody MacBook Pros.
Remove and re-seat the RAM (iFixit has a handy guide), does the issue persist?  If so then I would doubt, but not rule out, that RAM is the culprit.
Run Apple Hardware Test (Insert the gray "Disc 2" that came with your Mac and hold D while powering on) and note any failures.
Try re-seating the LVDS (display data) cable as shown in step 8 of iFixits display guide.

Hopefully that helps and at least points you in the right direction, good luck!


Dictation not working in OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion

I had the same problem and it drove me crazy! This helped me:

Go to ~/Library/Preferences
( ⇧+⌘+G )
Locate com.apple.assistant.plist and move it to the Trash
Open Dictation & Speech preference panel, disable dictation
Reboot
Re-enable Dictation & Speech.

Voila!

PS This hint has the nicest side-effect: In Mail, all accounts used to be offline after sleep (Small triangle icons next to account), and would only come back on after quitting and restarting Mail.app. Now, all is well again. Ts!


How to enable “Siri Knowledge” suggestion in Safari?

On iOS11.1 you can control the display of “Siri Knowledge” in Safari by toggling:

Settings->Safari->Safari Suggestions


Types of memory: Why do private and shared not add up to real memory?

The answer to your question is given in Mac OS X Process Memory Statistics  by Mike Ash:

RSIZE: The total amount of physical RAM used by this process. (This is not equal to RPRVT + RSHRD because they measure address space, but this measures actual memory.)

Note :

RSIZE is Real memory
RSHRD is Real shared memory
RPRVT is Real private memory

You can find these abreviations by hovering the mouse on the Activity Monitor column headers.


How can I modify a DVD image (ISO) and then burn a new DVD?

I know of two techniques to modify readonly disk images - using either a sparse image or a shadow file.  Here is what to do using a shadow file:

Create an image of your cdr (which you have already done)- I will call this xxx.cdr.

Use hdiutil attach xxx.cdr -shadow which mounts the read-only xxx.cdr image along with a shadow file where all changes will kept.  So it behaves like a mounted read/write image.

Make your changes.

Unmount the disk - you will now have xxx.cdr and xxx.cdr.shadow

Now run:

hdiutil convert -format UDTO -o newxxx.cdr xxx.cdr -shadow

Then burn the newxxx.cdr to `DVD-R.

This is the method I have used to create a Snow Leopard image for use by Parallels or VMware. My posting in a MacRumors Thread is just part of a long discussion.

You may need to vary the above to suit your particular needs - I have no direct experience of working with PS2 images.


Mac does not support Ext4 file system. If you plug in a hard drive, Mac won't recognize it. Fortunately, there are several ways to handle this situation.
1. Temporary options: Use VM
Just install a version of Ubuntu, or whatever your Linux distribution of choice is, in a virtual machine host like VirtualBox, then mount the drive as you would any other and read away.
2. Add Ext4 support for macOS
If you regularly use Ext4 formatted drives and / or need to copy multiple files from there to the macOS drive, you need a better option.
You need to install some software, namely osxfuse and ext4fuse. The easiest way to install them is to use Homebrew.
After Homebrew is installed (or if it is already), run the following commands:
brew install --cask osxfuse
brew install ext4fuse

After installing the Ext4 support software, you now need to determine the hard drive you want to mount. To do this, run the following command:
diskutil list

Save the partition ID (will look like /dev/disk3s1). Then, run the following command to mount the hard drive:
sudo ext4fuse /dev/disk3s1 ~/tmp/ext4_support_PARTITION -o allow_other

ext4_support above can be any name you choose. Now, navigate to the '/ tmp /' directory in the Finder and you will see the contents of the partition listed. If your drive has multiple partitions, you can mount them using the same steps as above. Just make sure to use different directory names to mount them.
Warning
Although these tools can help you read Ext4 formatted hard drives, they are not stable. As long as you are mounting read-only drives, as what is being done in this solution, you will not have many risks. If you try to use these tools to write to an Ext4 drive, you may lose data.
If you need to move files back and forth on a shared drive with Linux, this method is not recommended. Instead, use another file system like ExFAT or try the commercial option listed below
3. Use Paid Software
Software such as Paragon offers a free trial version, but to be safe, you should back up your hard drive first, in case there is a problem. If you want to buy software, it is available for 40$
Note: I haven't used this tool and can't say anything about what they have promised.
Although reading Ext4 format on macOS is no longer an impossible task, it is frustrating when Apple does not support this format.
Try it on your own risk but I strongly recommend the first solution which is easy and convenient.


How do I create an encrypted APFS volume from the command-line?

It seems that the volume was created correctly, but hdiutil attach just provides misleading output when you try to mount a disk with an encrypted volume on it. If you use -nomount and then proceed with diskutil commands instead, everything seems to work.

Here's the flow (there may be shortcuts but this is running from a script, so sometimes it detaches and reattaches because that's how the script is organised):

>>> hdiutil create -megabytes 1 -layout GPTSPUD -fs apfs -volname encrypted encrypted.dmg
    created: .../encrypted.dmg

>>> hdiutil attach -nomount encrypted.dmg
    /dev/disk2              GUID_partition_scheme
    /dev/disk2s1            Apple_APFS
    /dev/disk3              EF57347C-0000-11AA-AA11-0030654
    /dev/disk3s1            41504653-0000-11AA-AA11-0030654

>>> diskutil mount disk3s1
    Volume encrypted on disk3s1 mounted

>>> diskutil apfs deleteVolume disk3s1
    Started APFS operation
    Deleting APFS Volume from its APFS Container
    Unmounting disk3s1
    Deleting Volume
    Finished APFS operation

>>> diskutil apfs addVolume disk3 APFS encrypted -nomount -stdinpassphrase
    Exporting new encrypted APFS Volume "encrypted" from APFS Container Reference disk3
    Started APFS operation on disk3
    Preparing to add APFS Volume to APFS Container disk3
    Creating APFS Volume
    Created new APFS Volume disk3s1
    Disk from APFS operation: disk3s1
    Finished APFS operation on disk3

>>> hdiutil detach /dev/disk3
    "disk3" unmounted.
    "disk3" ejected.

>>> hdiutil detach /dev/disk2
    "disk2" unmounted.
    "disk2" ejected.

>>> hdiutil attach -nomount encrypted.dmg
    /dev/disk2              GUID_partition_scheme
    /dev/disk2s1            Apple_APFS
    /dev/disk3              EF57347C-0000-11AA-AA11-0030654
    /dev/disk3s1            41504653-0000-11AA-AA11-0030654

>>> diskutil apfs unlockVolume disk3s1 -stdinpassphrase
    Unlocking any cryptographic user on APFS Volume disk3s1
    Unlocked and mounted APFS Volume

>>> diskutil mount disk3s1
    Volume encrypted on disk3s1 mounted

>>> hdiutil detach /dev/disk3
    "disk3" unmounted.
    "disk3" ejected.

>>> hdiutil detach /dev/disk2
    "disk2" unmounted.
    "disk2" ejected.

>>> hdiutil attach -nomount encrypted.dmg
    /dev/disk2              GUID_partition_scheme
    /dev/disk2s1            Apple_APFS
    /dev/disk3              EF57347C-0000-11AA-AA11-0030654
    /dev/disk3s1            41504653-0000-11AA-AA11-0030654

>>> dd if=/dev/disk3 of=encrypted.img

    1968+0 records in
    1968+0 records out
    1007616 bytes transferred in 0.049776 secs (20242977 bytes/sec)

>>> hdiutil detach /dev/disk3
    "disk3" unmounted.
    "disk3" ejected.

>>> hdiutil detach /dev/disk2
    "disk2" unmounted.
    "disk2" ejected.


To connect the sound card with the amplifier you have to use two jack to jack cable with diameter 6.35 mm.

The type of the cables should be with three pole to carry balanced signals (but it works either with two pole cables).

The connection must be made from the lines output placed on the rear of the audio interface to the input of a power amplifier or a mixer.


Will recompiling bash to avoid Shellshock cause more harm than good

Macs don't use Bash for DHCP, so that particular vulnerability does not apply. Unless you run a vulnerable web server or have restricted remote access accounts, it's not worth the trouble to recompile Bash on OS X.


Source:

To find your developer/team ID if you already have an Apple Developer account, you can go to https://developer.apple.com/account/#/membership.

Scroll down to Team ID and that's it.

If you don't have a paid developer account you will not have a developer ID.

Update based on comments:
Source.

To find the link for all your apps:

  There are three types of App Store Short Links, in two forms, one for
  iOS apps, another for Mac Apps:

  Company Name
  iOS: http://appstore.com/ for example, http://appstore.com/apple
  Mac: http://appstore.com/mac/
  for example, http://appstore.com/mac/apple

  App Name
  iOS: http://appstore.com/ for example,
  http://appstore.com/keynote
  Mac: http://appstore.com/mac/ for
  example, http://appstore.com/mac/keynote

  App by Company
  iOS: http://appstore.com// for example, http://appstore.com/apple/keynote
  Mac:
  http://appstore.com/mac// for example, http://appstore.com/mac/apple/keynote

  Most companies and apps have a canonical App Store Short Link. This canonical URL is created by changing or removing certain characters (many of which are illegal or have special meaning in a URL (for example, "&")).

  To create an App Store Short Link, apply the following rules to your
  company or app name:

  Remove all whitespace Convert all characters to lower-case
  Remove all copyright (©), trademark (™) and registered mark (®) symbols
  Replace ampersands ("&") with "and" Remove most punctuation (See Listing 2 for the set) Replace accented and other "decorated" characters (ü, å,
  etc.) with their elemental character (u, a, etc.)
  Leave all other characters as-is.


Upgrading OSX on a three partition hard without losing bootcamp

a) how to get bootcamp startup disk back?

You have an additional 24.9 GB partition between the "Mackintosh HD" and the "DATA" partitions. This means you have 5 partitions (if you include the hidden EFI partition). The "BOOTCAMP" partition is the 5th and last partition. The Apple software is designed by default to search for Windows on only the first 4 partitions. This is why you can not startup to the "BOOTCAMP" partition.

The easiest fix would be to delete this partition using the Disk Utility application. The space could then be added back to the "Mackintosh HD" partition. I have not used the OS X 10.6.8 Disk Utility application in a long time, but with the newer OS X versions, sometimes this application can fail to properly delete partitions. So, beware and you probably should have a backup of important files.

b) how to upgrade to el captain, maintaining three partitions and the windows installation?

I am not sure why El Captain would not install. Are you sure you first upgraded OS X to version 10.6.8? Also, I do not think shrinking the "Mackintosh HD" partition by 1.5 GB would help. If anything you would need to erase files to create more available storage. I believe you need 8.8 GB of available storage.

It is possible to maintain the three partitions, but requires an effort. The problem is Windows can only be aware of four partitions per HDD or SSD. For your internal drive, you currently only have four partitions. (The first partition is a hidden EFI partition.) Installing El Captain will introduce a fifth "Recovery HD" partition after the "Macintosh HD" partition.  There are three ways around this problem:

Delete the "Recovery HD" partition. You can optionally first copy
this partition to a flash drive if you wish. The problem here is
that some later update will probably recreate the partition, so you
will have to do this again later.
Use some free third party utility like gdisk to manual set which
partitions Windows can access. The problem is the Disk Utility may
reset the manual changes back to the defaults, requiring you to
manually set them again later.
Put the Windows and FAT32 partitions before the "Mackintosh HD"
partition. The problem here is that you need to reinstall Windows or
use a third party tool to move the partitions. If you reinstall, you
can not use the Boot Camp Assistant to create the Windows partition.
Personally, I chose this method. You can use the Snow Leopard
installation DVD to create the partitions.

Note: If during installation you are asked about Core Storage, I would advise to avoid using it. You do not need Core Storage unless you want to encrypt your disk.


How can I use an old mac as an external display using software?

It seems ScreenRecycler does what you need. There's a trial version available, so you can try it.


Iphone call forwards when using phone and someone calls

Depending on your carrier and the data connection used at the time a call comes in, it may not be possible to use both data and voice at the same time. This is a constraint imposed by the specific mobile protocol in use (Edge and GPRS for instance) and happens on all (smart)phones.


Is there any Mac software out there for scientific image management?

Metadata and smart folders are supported as part of OS X and integrated into Finder. Very basic example:

In Finder, pick any file(s) you want and select Get Info
In the Spotlight Comments field, enter tags, such as @fluid or @simulation (separate them by spaces).
From the File menu, select New Smart Folder
Click the plus icon to the right of Save
Select type Spotlight Comment (under Other...) and enter the tags you want in this smart folder, for example @fluid
Save and add the new smart folder to the Finder sidebar
Select the new smart folder and you will see all files with the @fluid tag

Preview.app can view all of the above file types you've mentioned (and Quicktime + Perian can do so for movies). Now you just need an image editor for the rest.


How do I do a right click on a 'magic mouse'?

There is no Control Panel like in Windows or the old Classic Mac OS systems of years ago. Instead, what macOS has are System Preferences. You can access this from the Apple Menu and selecting the System Preferences… option.

Once you do you’ll see a list of Preferences Panes you can access by using a single mouse click. There are two you can utilise to address your issue, because both the Magic Mouse and Magic Trackpad can be set up to do what you’re calling a right-click.

Below are screenshots of both the Mouse and Trackpad preference panes:

Note that when you look at both these preference panes you will see options for a Secondary click.  This is the setting that will enable the right-click you’re looking for.

I suggest while you’re in System Preferences you also have a play with what else is available.

Finally, you may find the Mac tips for Windows switchers site of great interest to you.


I tried to reproduce your environment using a VM (Mavericks 10.9.5).

I didn't get the same log errors as you did, but it didn't work neither: the (pre-)encrypted Logical Volume just doesn't mount properly.

I solved the problem in my VM by deleting the whole Logical Volume Group and rebuilding it but with an non-encrypted Logical Volume.

Then open the Time Machine preference pane, choose the Logical Volume as Time Machine backup volume and enable encrypted backups.

You will be asked to enter the passphrase twice and to enter a hint.

Alternatively you may try to mount the volume (after unlocking it) with

diskutil mount 37D10BDF-AF34-4252-AAD7-41D18AFFF9AE


Sorry but what you want to do is not possible.

iTunes can use AirPlay for music because it has been created to support AirPlay.  Game developers are unlikely to add support for AirPlay just for audio.  If they do support AirPlay, it would probably be to do screen mirroring or dual screen to an AppleTV.

Also, only one app at a time can use the AirPlay stream.  So even if there was a game that supported just audio to AirPlay speakers, you would not be able to have iTunes streaming to the AirPlay speakers at the same time.

This is documented by Apple for developers: https://developer.apple.com/design/human-interface-guidelines/airplay/overview/media-playback/

  Stream only expected content. Disable streaming of content like background loops and short video experiences that only make sense within the context of your app itself.

The breakdown between game sounds that play locally and soundtracks that are presented through AirPlay is here: https://developer.apple.com/library/archive/documentation/AudioVideo/Conceptual/AirPlayGuide/EnrichYourAppforAirPlay/EnrichYourAppforAirPlay.html

  Send Audio Where It Belongs

  Apps typically use two types of sound—app audio (such as ambient sounds, background music, and incidental noises) and system sounds (such as key clicks and alert sounds). AirPlay attempts to deliver the app audio to a remote sound system while keeping system sounds on the host, so that feedback sounds remain local to the input device.

  If your app uses system sound APIs for app audio, AirPlay does not redirect them to the AirPlay-enabled sound system. The result is a less-than-optimum user experience. It is important to use system sound APIs only for system sounds. For app audio, use APIs such as AVAudioPlayer.


How to record a audio with iPhone via input cable like AUX from laptop

Actually all you need is an adapter cable that will provide the proper signals to the proper pins of the headphone jack. Note that if you have a phone without a headphone jack you will, first, need that lightning to headphone jack adapter that Apple sells.

The first thing I found was this article. It is much more than you were trying to do but it should work, none the less.

That article points to Amazon.com and a device called the Headset Buddy, which is nothing more than an adapter to go from a standard mini phono jack to the iPhone (and Android phone) headphone/mic jack.

Actually it may have some circuitry in it that does more than adapt a line-level input to your iPhone, not sure. No actual experience with this device.

The only thing I would be careful with (if you get the device linked above or something else comparable) is to start the output volume of your other device very low. I have experience with plugging stereos and the like into a Mac and the input level that a Mac and iPhone expect from a microphone is a lot lower than the output from your average audio out port on a PC or a stereo


Setting up Airport Base Station with Uverse AND Sprint Airave

The definitive steps that worked for me. I would like to spell them out as much as possible, since many forum posts will say "Set this to that" but in no way tell you how to get to a setting screen.

Set Airport to use WPA2 security (not WPA/WPA2)

Airport Utility > Airport > Wireless > Wireless Security > WPA2 Personal
This may not work for everyone, especially if you have older devices

Set Airport to do DHCP and NAT

Airport Utility > Airport > Network > Router Mode > DHCP and NAT

Set Airport to reserve an IP for your AiRave/Airvana

Airport Utility > Airport > Network > "+" under "DHCP Reservations"
Choose a high number

Setup the Uverse Modem/Router

Turn off the wireless network

Settings > LAN > Wireless > Wireless Interface > Disabled

Verify your Apple Airport is the only thing using your Uverse Modem's Router

Settings > LAN > Status
Devices > Clear List
You want to only see one device.

Set Airport in the Uverse DMZ

Settings > LAN > IP Address Allocation

Firewall > Disabled
Address assignment > Public
WAN IP Mapping > Router WAN IP Address

Verify this worked

Settings > Firewall > Applications, Pinholes, DMZ
You should only see your Airport as the  'computer' in step 1.
Since it is selected, you see the radial button pressed for DMZ

Set up the Airvana/Airave

Manually set the IP to reserved

Advanced > LAN
(May not be necessary)

Set to use it's own MAC address

Settings > Status

Ultimately, I resolved the Airport/Uverse DMZ issue by switching the Airport Extreme from WPA/WPA2 to strictly WPA2. Initially, I didn't have much faith in this approach, but I tried it based on ouquinn's comment. This allowed me to set the Airport in the Uverse DMZ, which I had struggled for hours to do.


Clear Automatic Proxy Configuration box in MBP Network settings (El Capitan)

I just ended up going to the preferences.plist file and manually changing the settings, which worked.

Note that I had to disable csrutil (system integrity protection). I'm not sure if that is new to El Capitan or not.

Edit: Sorry for edit, just want to say that that seemed to mess up some stuff (for example it would connect me to a network but say I was not connected). I'm not sure how I messed up... but I just went with replacing the preferences.plist with a time-machine backup of it. I should have just don't that in the first place.


Booting from a cloned Windows 10 installation

IMO, flash drives are not designed to endure the amounts of writes that would be performed by having an operating system installed on the drive.
There are many different mechanisms which can be referred to as having cloned. Since you have not explained how you cloned Windows 10, I will assume you are confident Windows 10 was correctly cloned. Windows does have the ability to detect when being cloned and if detected, can result in Windows 10 not booting properly. The general solution to this problem is to rebuild the BCD.

I realize this answer is vague, but this is only do to the lack on details in your question.


Here's an iTunes Equalizer ON-OFF Script that toggles, so you can turn on/off just with the call of one script

tell application "iTunes"
    if EQ enabled is false then
        set EQ enabled to true
    else if EQ enabled is true then
        set EQ enabled to false
    end if
end tell


The Safari app has disappeared from my iPhone?

Sounds like you have got restrictions turned on, but that doesn't necessarily mean that it is these restrictions that are causing you an issue, you could have turned these on long ago and forgotten what password was setup (for sure, someone has turned this on and a password is required as part of this process).

If the missing safar is due to restrictions, then there is simply no choice other than recalling the password, or possibly restoring the phone from an old backup on the chance that the backup pre-dates the turning on of restrictions.

But icons often go missing for other reasons due to a particularly mean bug.  You can reset your homescreen layout to restore missing icons when this happens, (warning, it will reset the location and grouping of all your icons when you do this) by going to  Settings > Reset > Reset Home Screen Layout.

One final note, you may have simply moved it somewhere daft into a folder or something by accident - can you find Safari in Spotlight search?


NetRestore not working on new MacBook Pro with Thunderbolt Ethernet adapter

I NetBoot with those all the time (Thunderbolt mostly). This is an Apple dongle, right? As long as it's connected before you start up then it'll load the driver.

You can NetBoot in verbose mode. Set the Startup Disk in System Preferences then restart while holding Command-V (I usually set it permanently on test systems: sudo nvram boot-args="-v").

Not seeing any entries from that adaptor's MAC Address in the server's system.log means the traffic isn't making it to the server for some reason. You can confirm by getting a server-side packet trace (assuming you're using en0):

sudo tcpdump -i en0 -s 0 -B 524288 -w ~/Desktop/NetBoot.pcap

I usually filter in Wireshark for bootp or tftp to see how far along things get.

You can get a client-side packet trace by using either a "dumb hub" (not as common these days) or mirroring a port on the switch (assuming your network gear can do this).


Hook up 3 monitors to Mac Mini Late 2014

Apple's specs show that the late-2014 (which is still being sold today, October 2015) Mac Mini can support up to two displays using its HDMI and thunderbolt ports.
I've confirmed this by trying to plug in 3 monitors directly into the ports on the Mac Mini (two via thunderbolt, 1 via HDMI), with the same results as the OP...one of the monitors is not driven.
The following 3-monitor setup worked for me:

Late 2014 Mac Mini with 8GB RAM (purchased Oct 2015)
3 monitors, each with 1920x1200 resolution
Monitor 1: driven by Mac mini HDMI port (HDMI-to-HDMI cable)
Monitor 2: driven by Mac Mini thunderbolt port (I used this thunderbolt-to-DVI cable)
Monitor 3: driven via USB 3.0 adapter (I used this one from CableMatters and have had zero issues with flicker/performance, although I am not trying to play games or watch video on it...I use it for work).

Some notes:

You can use a different USB adapter (there are several on the market) but make sure that it's Mac compatible.  I previously tried one that had "beta" Mac support and it was terrible.
Thunderbolt-to-HDMI and Thunderbolt-to-DVI cables are really mini-displayport to DVI/HDMI cables....the Thunderbolt ports accept mini-displayport connectors.
For the two natively driven monitors (#1 and #2 above) you can use any combination of HDMI<->HDMI/DVI or thunderbolt<->HDMI/DVI cables depending on what your monitor accepts.


How to deal with payment scam through apple calendar?

Part of the solution, which fights the consequences not the reason, is to create another iCloud calendar named, for instance, "Spam" and move scam event(s) there without accepting/declining it (them). Then just delete this "Spam" calendar choosing 'Do not notify' when asked.

I think all this is due to hack of Yahoo mail when some people got access to many Yahoo addresses (about 500 million) and now they are sending those iCloud calendar scams.


canon mg5520 can't connect to my MacBook pro no scan ability

Canon doesn’t have drivers for that past 10.14 and full functionality is only specified for 10.4 through 10.6.

https://www.usa.canon.com/internet/portal/us/home/support/details/printers/support-inkjet-printer/mg-series/pixma-mg5220?tab=technicalspecifications

Unless someone with more experience has an answer, donating that to someone running a compatible OS would be my best use of that gear for scanning. Many canon scanners work with macOS Catalina due to updated drivers, so you could also wait for the vendor to work on your scanner or request support from them. I wouldn’t rule out a community driver if someone decides to take that task on and then releases a third party driver.


Photo thumbnails remain in camera roll after moving photos to computer

A hacky and maybe risky workaround which worked for me was suggested here:

Go to PhotoData folder
Delete Photos.sqlite
Restart the iPhone


Unable to mount Ubuntu 12.10 install .iso or .img

From Ubuntu:
This is due to a bug (of sorts) in the package used to create the Ubuntu ISOs

Since 11.10, Ubuntu ISOs have been "hybrid", meaning that the ISO can also be written bit-for-bit to a USB device to make it a working Live-USB, without having to use StartUp Disk Creator, UNetBootin, etc.

Note that this "hybrid" is different from the OS X/Disk Utility definition of "hybrid", which simply refers to an ISO readable on both Mac (HFS+) and Windows (ISO9660).
Ubuntu's hybrid functionality is provided by the isohybrid script in the SysLinux bootloader. It works by encapsulating the standard ISO9660 CD filesystem within a partition, so that it will work unmodified if written to a USB/hard disk.

This patch/bug report discusses a problem in the way isohybrid sets GPT UUIDs, causing Disk Utility/OS X to fail to recognize the hybrid filesystem and consequently, failing to mount it. Hopefully it will be fixed at some point, making future Ubuntu hybrid ISOs compatible with Disk Utility.

Alternative to extract/explore Ubuntu ISOs on OS X: Keka

Keka is an open-source OS X frontend to the p7zip package, which is able to view and extract ISOs in addition to a myriad of other archive management features. While it won't let you "mount" the Ubuntu ISO on its own, it should let you view the ISO filesystem and extract what you need.


Brew won't uninstall a package because it can't find another formula

First steps would be to brew update (twice) then brew doctor to make sure all is good in brew. Then check that the XCode command line tools and Xcode itself are up to date.

If, after that, you still get the problem you may have found a formula bug so file an issue at https://github.com/Homebrew/brew


Can I use normal headphones in the iPhone 5S jack?

The headphone jack on the iPhone 5s can be used by any set of headphones with a standard 3.5mm jack. It will not damage or affect either the headphones or phone in any way.

The only difference is that some headphones have buttons that use resistance between the signal and ground wire in the headphone cable control the phone. That's what your Apple Earbuds are doing. Not having this on the headphones is perfectly OK.

Of course if you have a look around you can find excellent headphones that do have the buttons. I have two different pairs of headphones with good sound, a microphone and phone controls.


Nike+ is a step counter, so it's measuring steps. With rollerblades you're not stepping usually.

You can try to calibrate your device with your moves of your rollerblades, but I don't think it will measure it correctly.


How to extend a window over display/workspace in Yosemite

System Preferences -> Mission Control -> Untick "Displays have separate Spaces" and restart.

After restart, you will be able to have 1 window expand over 2 displays.


how to start operating system on a Samsung SSD when old hard drive was broken so had to replace

If you can get it online (for example, with an Ethernet cable), all you have to do is hold command-R at startup to enter recovery mode and install the OS over the Internet. You can also use it to format the disk if needed.

http://www.techradar.com/us/how-to/computing/apple/how-to-fix-mac-boot-up-problems-in-recovery-mode-1305641


iTunes Sync Calendars does not show Outlook

A partial answer to my own question in an issue opened in Apple Communites.

Basically it says that, when using iCloud to sync your contents across all your devices (which is my case), it is not possible to use iTunes to sync the Calendars and Contacts.

From https://support.apple.com/en-gb/HT201253 :

  If you use iCloud or other services like Apple Music to keep your content up to date across all of your devices, syncing through iTunes might be turned off.

So instead of using iTunes, I just use iCloud for Windows which synced Calendars, Contacts & Mail.
Below is an image of my work Calendar created in Outlook plus the imported ones from iCloud:


Why is macOS often referred to as 'Darwin'?

It isn't. macOS isn't Darwin and Darwin isn't macOS.
The history of macOS is long, convoluted, and complicated.
It starts with Steve Jobs (not entirely voluntary) "leaving" Apple and founding NeXT. NeXT wanted to revolutionize the Personal Workstation. They built both a powerful computer, the NeXT Computer (later NeXTstation and NeXTcube), and a powerful, modern Operating System, called NeXTStep. (Get it? The next step for the next computer. Really creative naming.)
The Operating System was based on porting BSD to a Mach microkernel, and adding object-oriented system libraries, frameworks, and toolkits (called "kits", which you can still see in Apple's naming today), with an object-oriented GUI framework and desktop, with object-oriented applications, all written in a modern object-oriented programming language (Objective-C) as the systems language, on top of the base BSD system. The display system was based on PostScript, and there was even an Intel i860 coprocessor running a stripped-down version of the OS, only for Display PostScript processing, plus a powerful DSP for video and audio processing.
NeXTStep pioneered many things we see in modern GUI programming. It had one of the first graphical GUI Builders, which still to this day is how you design GUIs for macOS, iOS, iPadOS, etc. (Today, it is called the Xcode Interface Builder.) It had the first ever App Store. When Tim Berners-Lee invented the World Wide Web, he chose NeXTStep as the OS to write the first browser for. Many game studios used NeXTStep and NeXT workstations for their development, e.g. id software for Doom, Doom 2, and Quake. Lotus Improv, still considered by many to be miles ahead of Excel even now, was implemented on NeXTStep.
Later, NeXT divorced the higher-level frameworks from the underlying OS and made them available under the name OpenStep for Windows NT, Sun Solaris, and under the name "OPENSTEP for Mach" still based on the same underpinnings as the original NeXTStep.
At this point, Apple had tried and failed multiple times to modernize MacOS, and they bought NeXT (thus bringing Steve Jobs back into the company) and all of its Intellectual Property and technology to develop a successor to MacOS based on OPENSTEP for Mach. They modernized the Mach kernel from 2.5 to 3 and extended it with concepts from the FreeBSD kernel to form a kernel known as xnu (a reference to the failed nuKernel project at Apple which was to develop a "new kernel"), and the BSD underpinnings from 4.3BSD to 4.4BSD and later FreeBSD.
Most importantly, they extended and expanded the OpenStep APIs and built new APIs on top. The collection of those APIs is known as "Cocoa". They also built an API called "Carbon", which was a close, but not identical re-implementation of a subset of the MacOS API on top of the new foundations. (The intention was that while it would not be possible to simply re-compile existing MacOS applications, it should be fairly easy to port them to Carbon, and then over the years rewrite them in Cocoa.)
The first prototype of this system was called Rhapsody. The full system wasn't finished in time, so a subset was released as MacOS X Server 1.0. And the rest is history: Rhapsody became MacOS X, then OS X, then macOS, and somewhere along the way, iOS was split off, and then further divided into iOS, iPadOS, tvOS, and watchOS.
Now, back to Darwin: Darwin is basically the underpinnings of macOS, from the xnu kernel, IOKit, drivers, etc. up to the BSD libraries and userland, plus some macOS-specific developments such as mDNSresponder and launchd. It does not, however, include any parts of what used to be OpenStep, Cocoa, Aqua, Quartz, QuickTime, or any of the other higher-level stuff. It does contain drivers and filesystems, although I am not entirely sure whether APFS is part of Darwin.
If you think back to the point in time where NeXT "divorced" the high-level OpenStep from its underpinnings, the low-level parts that are not OpenStep would be the ones that would later become Darwin.
In the beginning, Apple used to make Darwin available as a separate OS, including compiled binaries, installers, ISOs, etc. that you could install on Apple hardware. However, for many years now, Apple only provides a source code dump, every time a new release of macOS comes out. It isn't even possible to compile this source code, because it depends on Apple's internal build tools and build pipeline. There have been some projects trying to patch Darwin to compile it with publicly available tools, but those projects have all died from lack of interest.
Since all of the things you mentioned were born on Unix and use Unix APIs and Unix libraries, they actually typically don't even know about the "non-Darwin" parts of macOS, so it is only logical that they will consider the OS to be "Darwin". Note that "Darwin" is also what gets returned as the name of the OS when you call the Unix/POSIX int uname(struct utsname *buf) library function or the uname Unix/POSIX commandline utility.
So, to answer the question you didn't ask explicitly but is implicit in your question: why does Node.js return "Darwin" for the name of macOS? Because when Node.js asks macOS for its name, that's what macOS tells it its name is!


iCloud log in requires old phone number i neither have nor remember

You have to start an account recovery here : https://iforgot.apple.com/password/verify/appleid

However, they may also ask you to verify your phone number and in this case, only Apple support can help you. They'll ask you question about your devices, your credit card and will ask you your new phone number.


Automator's "Combine PDF Pages" action doesn't preserve crop?

There is a package called pdfjoin which uses pdflatex to combine pdf files. You could try joining your pdf's in the following way:

pdfjoin 01.pdf 02.pdf

which will combine the files into a single pdf called 02-combined.pdf, in your current working directory.

If you don't have LaTeX installed you can follow this guide to do so.

This preserved crops for me when I tried. If you can get this working on your system, you could then maybe look at putting this together in a bash script.


What can cause the SMC to repeatedly need to be reset?

Repeatedly needing to reset the SMC indicates a hardware failure. Apple generally replaces entire components - so you'd get a new logic board / GPU / processor board and then that failing board would get analyzed / repaired as appropriate.

It could be as simple as some sensors that are bad and reporting continuous bad readings that the SMC can't handle. It also could be the SMC itself has issues. Without analyzing the logic signals of that processor - hard to guess. The main idea would to realize that a mail in repair for MacBook run about $300 and take a few days - so when your aggravation exceeds that cost to remedy - you can get it fixed. If you don't feel that computer is worth the $300 - you can consider a new computer once you can't rely on this hardware. Be sure to keep good backups, SMC and logic board failures generally leave the system unbootable so it costs more to recover data after it fails. On T2 Macs, you can’t get data off a failed SMC/T2 module as the decryption keys are exclusively stored there in a Secure Enclave.


MacOS Catalina terminal tab doesn't remember its own previous commands

Your question regards how the shell maintains its command history. In switching from El Capitan, to Catalina, you may have also switched your default shell from bash to zsh, and these shells have different defaults for maintaining their command history. This answer assumes your question is for altering the behavior of the zsh command history.
You have at least two choices:

Restore bash as your shell:
% chsh -s /bin/bash

This is easily changed if you decide to return to zsh:
chsh -s /bin/zsh

Configure zsh to disable the "aggregation" of command histories see APPEND_HISTORY
From man zshoptions:

APPEND_HISTORY
If this is set, zsh sessions will append their history list to  the  history  file,  rather than replace it. Thus, multiple parallel zsh sessions
will all have the new entries from their history lists added to the  history  file, in the order that they exit.  The file will still be periodically re-written to trim it when the number of lines grows 20% beyond the value specified by $SAVEHIST (see also the HIST_SAVE_BY_COPY option).

Accordingly, if you wish to continue using zsh as your shell, you can un-set the APPEND_HISTORY option, and the command histories from your various terminals/shells will not be aggregated into a single history.
You can check to see which options are set or unset as follows:
% setopt
...
# lists options that are set

% unsetopt
...
# lists options that are unset

% set -o
...
# lists all options w/ off/on status

NOTE: setopt only prints the options not enabled by default. The APPEND_HISTORY option is set by default - as designated by the <D> seen in the man page excerpt above.
Now, this is a bit obtuse (IMO at least), but notice that there is an option appearing in the unsetopt output named noappendhistory. This is explained in the zsh Options documentation as follows:

In the following list, options set by default in all emulations are marked ; those set by default only in csh, ksh, sh, or zsh emulations are marked , , ,  as appropriate. When listing options (by ‘setopt’, ‘unsetopt’, ‘set -o’ or ‘set +o’), those turned on by default appear in the list prefixed with ‘no’. Hence (unless KSH_OPTION_PRINT is set), ‘setopt’ shows all options whose settings are changed from the default.

(emphasis mine)
It comes down to this: the option to give you the behavior you want is set as follows:
setopt noappendhistory

Add this command to your ~/.zshrc file using your favorite editor. Once you've done that, source this file as follows:
% . ~/.zshrc
-- OR --
% source ~/.zshrc


Run siri commands in a shortcut, connect to airplay

Today, on iOS 12.2 it’s not possible to select the output of music from the shortcuts app, so you’re not going to be able to automate that via tap or via Siri shortcut.

The good news is if you already are using AirPlay - the shortcut to play something leaves that alone, so you could automate playing something else to the current sound output destination for music.

This function is so awesome, that I bought a HomePod so I could have Siri play music I can hear. That way my AppleTV and iOS devices can output sound there as well as it being the Siri that listens to what I want to hear.


How can I tell the address of the remote server an app communicates to?

This only applies to macOS and not to iOS:

You could use Wireshark or lsof which is already included in macOS.

With lsof you can type lsof -i | grep -E "(LISTEN|ESTABLISHED)" into your terminal and it will show you all connections that are actively communicating.

Edit: You could use a custom DNS like pihole to see which domains are requested by the app.


Problems syncing purchased music from iPad to Mac iTunes

Have you authorised your Mac's iTunes for the iTunes account used to purchase the Music?

Apple's KB article on transferring and authorising


help with Karabiner elements custom complex rule

Your sample appeared to be slightly different than other rules I've looked at.  Here's a version that works for me:

file: map_lctl_plus_open_bracket_to_close_bracket.json :

{
  "title": "Map Lft-Ctl+Open-Bracket to Close-Bracket",
  "rules": [
    {
      "manipulators": [
        {
          "description": "bracket rule",
          "type": "basic",
          "from": {
            "key_code": "open_bracket",
            "modifiers": {
              "mandatory": [
                "left_control"
              ],
              "optional": [
                "caps_lock"
              ]
            }
          },
          "to": [
            {
              "key_code": "close_bracket"
            }
          ]
        }
      ]
    }
  ]
}

I wasn't able to determine any way to install the script other than through the "Import more rules from the internet" option, but I did figure out how to launch the importer on my own files.

Assuming you copy the file into /tmp/map_lctl_plus_open_bracket_to_close_bracket.json, pasting the following url into Safari should launch the importer:

karabiner://karabiner/assets/complex_modifications/import?url=file%3A%2F%2F%2Ftmp%2Fmap_lctl_plus_open_bracket_to_close_bracket.json

I have fully tested both the file content and the import url within this post, and all worked fine for me.

Good luck !

EDIT: Immediately after making this post, I think I found where the local filestore is for manually adding rules.

https://github.com/pqrs-org/KE-complex_modifications#local-testing

This is the github repo for the rules on the "Import more rules from the internet" page.  It shows how to test the rules locally before submitting to the web repository.

TL;DR:

$ cp my_rule.json ~/.config/karabiner/assets/complex_modifications

The site also confirms the karabiner://... technique I mentioned above.


Best guess is Display Contrast.
That will affect the on-screen image, but will not translate to a screenshot. Screenshots are taken before that filter is reached. The on-screen image will be affected similarly to your Photoshopped version. [It will actually compress the blacks a bit too, so not exactly the same as your image.] Almost like putting a really agressive curve on it -

System Prefs > Accessibility > Display. [from Mojave, things may have moved a bit in Big Sur]
Set Display Contrast hard left for 'normal'. All other checkboxes in there should be off, except shake mouse.

There is a key command for it, though I would expect that by default this would be inactive…
System Prefs > Keyboard > Shortcuts > Accessibility


Python-based app requires bypassing 'unknown developer' warning

Sign up with Apple as a paid developer and you can use your Mac App signing certificate to sign that app before distributing it. Your Apple ID will then allow Apple to trace things back to you should you sign something malicious and it comes to their attention.

You're looking for the Mac Provisioning Certificate that Apple will sign and deliver you you from https://itunesconnect.apple.com

https://developer.apple.com/osx/distribution/
https://developer.apple.com/developer-id/

The alternative would be to disable gatekeeper, but I'm presuming you want to know how to have your app be accepted by many Macs without needing each one to bypass the settings globally or grant a one-time exception to your app each time you update it.


How to save a file quickly and no need to wait for the external hard drives to "wake up"?

The save button is checking all mounted drives, and will spin them up.

Your only way I can think of to do this is to prepare a couple of scripts.

See the man page for diskutil.  If the mount point (diskname) is BigFatDisk

then to unmount the disk it would be something like

diskutil unmount BigFatDisk

Now to keep everything sync'd to BFD you would run a script now and then

diskutil mount BigFatDisk
rsync flags local disk BFD
diskutil unmount BigFatDisk

A second option is to replace the disks in the BFD enclosure with hybrid disks.  These have an SSD chunk and a spinning rust chunk, and are ideally suited for this.

A third option is to let your disks spin whenever the machine is awake?  The amount of power they use is small, and increasingly MTBF times are being given as X spinups, not X hours.  A hard drive 2 years ago used 5-7 watts.  I'm sure it's better now.  So let's use 5.  That works out to 40 kWhr per year, roughly.  At 15 c per kWh that's 6 bucks/year.  Seems to me that this is pretty cheap compared to the hassles you have now.

I have set my computer to turn the screens off after 20 minutes idle time, but never to turn off the CPU or spin the drives down.