Does iTunes Sound Check Lower Sound Quality?

No, it is not bad to have sound check enabled in iTunes.

Having it enabled does not make the sound quality of songs worse.

Sound Check works simply by dynamically raising or lowering the playback volume, just as you yourself can raise and lower the playback volume in iTunes without affecting sound quality.

iTunes raises/lowers playback volume according to the audio normalisation ID3-tag within the audio file. These tags are created automatically when you rip a CD with iTunes, and automatically added when you import files lackings these tags into iTunes.

The normalisation tag simply tells what the average volume of the song is. Note that iTunes recognizes albums, so that when playing back and album, it will adjust according to the average track volume of the album as a whole, instead of changing the playback volume for each song individually. Therefore your album listening experience is not harmed.

iTunes automatically ensures that the volume is not raised so high that neither clipping occurs or compression effects are introduced. Therefore your sound quality is not harmed.

All in all this means that enabling Sound Check is safe, does not change the audio content of your songs, thus not reducing their quality. It simply change the playback volume slightly so that you get an pleasurable listening experience without having to tweak your playback volume every time you select a new album.


Where is the power button on the 2016 MBP With TouchBar?

From the Apple Support Document, How to turn on or turn off your Mac:

  The power button is adjacent to the Touch Bar and integrated with the Touch ID sensor. Press Touch ID (power button) to turn on (or off) your Mac.


Sharing internet connection from WiFi to Thunderbolt Ethernet doesn't work - no DHCP addresses are given out

I was able to do this by manually configuring the address of the MacBook Ethernet port as 192.168.2.1 and manually configuring the device I attached to connect to 192.168.2.1.


Something you could try is installing LibreOffice and opening the Word formatted document there and immediately resaving it. I've found that LibreOffice is much more forgiving and saving a document through it will result in a file that Word will be able to open without issue. Same with Excel formatted spreadsheets that refuse to open in Excel.

I usually end up installing LibreOffice on every machine I use specifically for this reason.


Allow access to a single application only when accessing remotely

The closest I can think of in your case is to go to System Preferences > Parental Control and create a new account (or use the “Guest” account). Then, set the following restrictions (my OS is not in English, so the exact terms might be different):

Under Apps:

Use simplified Finder
Restrict applications, only checking Safari from the list.

Under Other:

Prevent password change

Then, log with the new account. Clean up whatever right-hand menu item you don’t want your friend to access by holding command while drag-and-dropping them out of the menu bar. Launch Safari (from the Apps folder in the dock) and log out without quitting Safari.

You might want to put Safari in fullscreen mode, but then it won’t appear on the first screen when people log in, they’d have to click its icon in the dock.

If you want to launch apps or scripts at startup, or if you want to edit any account preference, you can do the following:

Log into the controlled account
Inside the Finder, select Use the complete Finder under the Finder menu. The system asks for an administrator login/password.
Open a new window, go to Applications and launch the System Preferences. Select the Allow once button, then type once again your login/password.
Go to the Users and Groups preferences pane.
Click the lock, and enter administrator login/password (one last time!)
You can now edit this user opening items. You could add Safari or whatever script you need this user to launch at startup.

Alternatively, you can also create the controlled user, log in and setup the account to your liking, then log out and, from an administrator account, turn on parental control.


Changed developer account and now can't log in to it from Xcode

Silly me. I was having trouble adding my new account in Xcode. Once I did that, all was well.


PS: when I use my friend's magsafe it
  charges my MacBook Pro.

Sorry if this is too obvious, but if your friend's magsafe charger indeed charges the battery without any problems, then it certainly seems like the problem is in your charger. (Somewhere in it; the cord, magsafe adapter, or some other part.)


iTerm2's defaults for the Option keys are called “Esc+”, which basically means it will type an escape character (\033) before any character you type while holding down Option. To get the same behavior you see in Terminal, go to Preferences > Profiles > (your profile) > Keys and select Meta under both "right option key" and "left option key".


In iTunes...

Tap Featured at the bottom of the screen.

Scroll to the bottom and tap the account name then Sign out.

Tap Sign in and use the account you want.

Then tap Updates.

source: https://discussions.apple.com/thread/3078909?start=0&tstart=0


Update from os x 10.4 to 10.9 with time machine backup

You can create a bootable Mavericks USB flash drive or DVD on your Macbook Pro (the 10.9) machine using the steps in this Apple note

You can then boot your iMac off this media and install 10.9

You can connect the iMac to your Time Machine backup (e.g. plug the disk in or attack via network) and during the install tell the install to get data from the Time Machine backup.

You can't install a version of  OSX from a Time Machine backup you need to install OSX first.

An alternative is to create a bootable backup from the 10.9 machine using Carbon Copy Cloner or Superduper etc and then boot the iMac from that and restore from it.


To answer your first question, you hold control and option together and then double click on the Time Capsule in Airport Utility. On the summary page you will see a bunch of stuff, but under where it says "Version: XXXXX" you will see that it shows MAC addresses for all of the interfaces

Secondly, the TC by default restricts backups to only computers that have the password which can be set under the disk tab

I don't really understand your third question, but if it means what I think it does, you should connect over the LAN port because while using the internet jack does work, I found it causes instability within the network.


When I click ⌘+C on an email in Mail.app, why can't I paste it as plain text?

This is because of how you can program the pasteboard on Mac OS X.

Text editors expect the pasteboard to contain, well, text data. There are however several kinds of text: there's plain text, there's formatted (RTF) text, there's formatted text with embedded documents (RTFD), there's HTML-formatted text, and a bunch of others.

When you copy something, the application tells the pasteboard how this data can be represented. There are usually several suitable representations: for instance, copying your question exports data in the pasteboard that can be represented as a web archive, RTF data, and plain text in three different encodings. Plenty of types that applications are likely to support.

However, when you copy a mail from Mail, it exports only as two types of data: plain UTF-8 text and a RTFD document. Cocoa tries to paste as an RTFD document because it likes them better, but applications say "no no, I can't do that"; they usually support getting text from RTF, but not from RTFD since RTFD usually has embedded resources such as images, and you end up pasting nothing because the apps don't bother to look for the plain text data.

TextEdit, on its side, is able to edit RTFD documents, so it has no problem pasting the data.


Why not have your mobile company forward that number elsewhere, move the sim or set up a temporary device?

Apple’s FAQ covers what to do for recovering an account if it comes to that.

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204915


VLC for macOS is available and is regularly updated, just like VLC for Ubuntu. If you can play a file using VLC in Ubuntu, it can also be played by VLC on macOS.

You can download VLC for macOS here.

Clicking the download button will download a .dmg file in Downloads folder in Finder. To install VLC, simply double-click the .dmg file. A DMG file is identified as Apple Disk Image in macOS and is mounted as a volume in Finder. To install VLC simply copy VLC.app by dragging it into the /Applications directory.

Alternatively, if you have Homebrew setup (a popular package manager for macOS), you can install VLC using Homebrew Cask by running:

brew cask install vlc

VLC for macOS is not distributed via Mac App Store. Unlike iOS App Store, Mac App Store isn't the only option to install apps in macOS. A lot of developers choose to distribute their apps independently.


iOS will show all contacts under "My contacts" on Google / Gmail.
If you move contacts out of that group, they will not show on your iPhone.

To do that, go to http://gmail.com and login with your credentials.
Click on Mailon the top left and select Contacts.

There you can see which contacts are on which groups and move the contacts you'd like to hide from iOS (and OS X, by the way) out of "My contacts".

This has even helped me when deleting contacts by mistake, as they don't dissapear from your Google account, they just get moved to "Other contacts".

You can group them if you like but those groups will not be available or selectable for display / hide on your iPhone on the standard configuration. When you have multiple contacts lists from different accounts, a Groups option appears on the top left menu on the Contacts app, and Google Apps may show Address Book and Global Address Book as options, but the latter will take you to an empty list designed to search from the organization list of addresses. Or –as of right now on my iPhone after showing me those options– it may show you only one option per account (All (name-of-the-account)), to toggle on or off.


Use cmd + A to select all your mails, then right click on it => Apply rules

Or as Matteo point out : cmd+shift+L


What's the best way to manage iPhone (live) photos and videos on PC?

Install the web-based app in Google Play.
Go to web.airmore.com
Scan the QR code or click the device to build the connection.
Choose "Pictures" or "Videos".

Press "Export"


This issue is caused by League of Legends.

https://boards.na.leagueoflegends.com/en/c/bug-report/rA0p1rYx-client-updating-on-mac-high-sierra-messes-up-other-application-icons

Unfortunately there is nothing you can do until Riot acknowledged the problem and deploy a fix.


It might be good to not upgrade the system Ruby installed by Apple. Apple installs /usr/lib/podcastproducer, which uses that Ruby, and changing the files could cause it to break if there are version sensitive gems being referenced. In addition, other developers can write code knowing the Ruby is there.

Use locate *.rb | grep ^/usr | xargs grep require for a file list and the requires.

I prefer to install a new Ruby, either in /usr/local/bin, or by using RVM to install into a sandbox in ~/.rvm and leave my system version alone.

Similarly, Apple's Python and Perl installations are also used by some apps. There's a reason the languages are on there and it's not entirely for our convenience.


‘bin needs to download the font “Nanum Myeongjo”’

Nanum Myeongjo is a free Google font. When a program asks to download a font, it is because it is because it calls for it but it is missing from your font library. This is a normal behavior, but you can ignore it if you want.

The Adware.Spigot is most likely unrelated to the font and is not a virus, but it is Adware. Adware is not a virus, but it can be considered Malware, which is an unwanted program. I would recommend removing it.


mdfind query on kMDItemFSTypeCode can't find some type codes

You have to translate the type code string into an actual type code (a number).

For your '3DMF', that number is 860114246. Thus, this will work:

mdfind kMDItemFSTypeCode == 860114246


ios push practicaly equals frequent requests to the servers? How iMessage push works?

About Push Notifications

As its name suggests, Apple Push Notification service (APNs) uses a push design to deliver notifications to devices and computers. A push design differs from its opposite, a pull design, in that the recipient of the notification passively listens for updates rather than actively polling for them. A push design makes possible a wide and timely dissemination of information with few of the scalability problems inherent with pull designs. APNs uses a persistent IP connection for implementing push notifications.

iMessage uses the same protocol as APNs (source), so it is pushed from the server, and does not use GSM.


Any reason not to change the root shell to bash?

The path of the shell is the only substantial difference I can see between sh and bash - if you look carefully at /bin/sh on OS X, it's really bash (perhaps compiled with a flag to make it know it's filling in for sh since the binaries are slightly different).

mac me$ md5 /bin/sh /bin/bash
MD5 (/bin/sh) = 2cc3c26641112c1bd0173f396b7d7662
MD5 (/bin/bash) = 5d7583d80e5314ac844eedc6d68c6cd7
mac me $ ls -l /bin/sh /bin/bash
-r-xr-xr-x  1 root  wheel  628496 Aug 28 02:02 /bin/bash
-r-xr-xr-x  1 root  wheel  632672 Aug 28 02:02 /bin/sh
mac me $ sh --version
GNU bash, version 3.2.57(1)-release (x86_64-apple-darwin15)
Copyright (C) 2007 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
manoa mac me $ bash --version
GNU bash, version 3.2.57(1)-release (x86_64-apple-darwin15)
Copyright (C) 2007 Free Software Foundation, Inc.

So, if somehow iTerm is barfing on /bin/sh even though it's already bash, you could change shells. I'd say running things from your user with sudo -H is always better than enabling root, but that's a discussion for another thread:

Is it 'OK' to use the root user as a normal user?
OSX Mavericks Root User

If you want to test the change:

Change my shell to a different bash version at /usr/local/bin/bash?
chsh doesn't change $SHELL


Restoring an SD card using a multi-partitioned DMG

Use the dd command-line tool.

Mount the SD
Use "Disk Utility":  Select the top level of the SD
card and "Get Info".  Note the "Disk Identifier" (example disk13)
Unmount all of the volume on the SD, if they are mounted, but do NOT removed the SD card.  This is important because the dd will fail if it detects any mounted volumes.

In the Terminal:

If you are not in an Admin account, use "su (admin account name)" to gain admin authority
sudo dd if=/path/to/DMG/file of=/dev/(disk identifier from above) bs=16k

Then wait a long time for the operation to complete.  In a 4 GB copy I performed recently to a CF card, it took 21 minutes to finish.

You will eventually get 3 lines stating records in & out and bytes copied.  Example:

243528+1 records in
243528+1 records out
3989970432 bytes transferred in 1278.252950 secs (3121425 bytes/sec)

In my case I have been copying .img files to CF cards, hopefully it works just as well for DMG's


Verify code signature of a package installer

There is no current way to verify the signature using Installer.app before accepting the pre-flight script. This is a long standing oversight by Apple's engineers.
Please provide feedback or, if you are a developer, formally report this problem to Apple.


How to force the items of a window to be well-formed, like in Windows?

Perhaps Finder menu > View > Show View Options > Sort by: > Snap to Grid is what  you're looking for:


Time Machine keeps excluding my hard drive

Why it was possible is strange in the first place. The change may caused by a decision of Apple, packed in an update.

Reformat the NTFS partition to HFS+, will include your drive in Time Machine.

Note: also FAT formatted drives will not be backed up by Time Machine.

Update: Time Machine offers to use an NTFS volume if a write-enabled driver for NTFS is installed before a physical disk with NTFS is introduced to OS X. [source: Enabling Time Machine for a USB HDD with NTFS


Is there a way to lock your Apple device against syncing on other computers?

Unfortunately, no.  That's a flaw of the iPhone that is designed to help you, in case you ever forget your passcode.


Terminal won't find command of custom script since Catalina update

The directory ~/bin/ (e.g. /Users/alice/bin) is no standard path for executables. It has to be added to the PATH variable.

After changing the default login-shell from bash (-10.14) to zsh (10.15-) any customizations of the PATH-variable in .bash_profile/.profile/.bashrc to add custom directories (e.g. export PATH=/Users/alice/bin:$PATH) or other variables (and aliases etc.) won't work anymore in your login-shell.

But you can simply create/modify a similar file for zsh (.zprofile/.zshrc):

touch .zprofile
echo 'export PATH=/Users/alice/bin:$PATH' >> ~/.zprofile

Personally I soft-linked .zshrc to .zprofile:

ln -s ~/.zprofile ~/.zshrc

Afterwards either source this file or close and reopen the Terminal window to make the changes of the PATH variable effective.


Automatically press a key every 60 seconds

You can do this in AppleScript, iff you've enabled access for assistive devices:

tell application "System Events" to keystroke "," using command down

This will (obviously) invoke cmd-,.

If, for some reason, you can't enable access for assistive devices, then it's pretty easy to do this in code (by creating a CGEventRef and then posting it to the system, essentially).  If you'd like help with that, then head over to stackoverflow.com, where that question has been asked a few times.

As for getting this to happen every 60 seconds, you could turn it into a launch agent and let launchd do it for you:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN"
 "http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd">
<plist version="1.0">
<dict>
    <key>Label</key>
    <string>com.stackexchange.apple.12692</string>
    <key>Program</key>
    <string>/usr/bin/osascript</string>
    <key>ProgramArguments</key>
    <array>
        <string>osascript</string>
        <string>-e</string>
        <string>tell application "System Events" to keystroke "," using command down</string>
    </array>
    <key>ServiceDescription</key>
    <string>Auto Keypress</string>
    <key>StartCalendarInterval</key>
    <dict>
        <key>Second</key>
        <integer>0</integer>
    </dict>
</dict>
</plist>

Toss that in ~/Library/LaunchAgents and you should be good to go (once you load the plist and/or log out and log back in).


The problem comes because the VPN server is killing the connection sometime after the mac goes to sleep.

Try disconnecting the VPN before going to sleep, automatically, using sleepwatcher as described in this Q&A.


If I install High Sierra on a 3rd party SSD, will it be APFS?

An SSD is a drive regardless of who makes it and will be compatible APFS.

In this article, about SSD support for OWC (3rd party) SSDs, there are two main take aways:

OWC shows up as both a rotational drive, which won't convert upon setup and as a RAID 0 array which won't convert at all.
A user in the forum confirms that the Crucial M4 in a 2012 MBP works without issue.

So, the issue is (IMO) not a High Sierra one, but one of the manufacturers in how they implement their SSD and present it to the OS.


Do you look at the iPhone 3GS at the back when making video call?

Correct. Since the iPhone 3GS has no camera on the side of display, you have to turn it around and talk to the non-display side to have your face show up in a video chat. Less than idea, for certain.


How to remove my Photo Stream from my phone without losing any photos

What happens to my photos if I turn off My Photo Stream?
If you sign out of iCloud or turn off My Photo Stream on an iOS device, all the images in My Photo Stream are removed from that device. The images in My Photo Stream on your other devices are not affected. Images added to My Photo Stream are saved on the iCloud server for 30 days from the date you added them to My Photo Stream. If you sign in to iCloud with the same Apple ID and turn on My Photo Stream on another device, those photos will automatically download to this device. Before turning off My Photo Stream, it's a good idea to save any photos that you'd like to keep to your Camera Roll. Learn more about saving your photos to your Camera Roll.

source


Is it possible to a full system Copy and run it in Parallels?

I don't have experience with Parallels, but if you own an external hard disk, you could clone your Mac Server to this hard disk (e.g. with Carbon Copy Cloner or also OS X Disk Utility).

Then boot from the external disk and try whatever you want to try/install - it will not affect your Mac's internal disk. So once you disconnect the external disk and boot from your internal disk again, everything will be as it was before.


How many fans does a MBP 13" late 2013 have?

The late 2013 Macbook Pro 13" only has one fan. You can see here in iFixit's teardown.

Apple don't publish figures for normal working range temperature for their devices, and unfortunately you'll find many and varied opinions online. Apple do publish a short guide if you are concerned that your Macbook is overheating though.


iMac install Java, webpage test succeeds, `javac` fails

You installed a JRE instead of the JDK. The JDK can be found here.


The emojis sent by the iPhone are particular characters (cf Emoji on Wikipedia)

If you see a smiley, it means that the android phones is probably converting the smiley into images on the phone directly but it seends only the text corresponding to the smiley to the reciever.

Since the iPhone does not change the smileys into emojis (at least without jailbreak), you will not be able to see the emojis.

NB: You can also make a test by sending emoji between an iPhone and a Windows Phone. You'll see that each phone will display its own emojis, since it's the system who has a set of images corresponding to the emoji characters.

TLDR : Your girlfriend's phone doesn't seem to send emojis characters but simple smileys.


My fonts are sometimes displaying as Chinese/Japanese?

Sometimes this kind of problem can be solved by going to system preferences/language & text/language and using the Edit button to uncheck the box for Japanese,  and then restarting.


llw is a WLAN low-latency interface, and llw0 is simply the first of those.
The llw interface is a network interface that comes from a nexus defined in the Skywalk system. You can look it up like this:
skywalkctl list-providers | grep llw

You'll see that it is handled by a BCM "driver" (i.e. an IC in your computer manufactured by Broadcom).
The interface is supposed to be there - it is not a bug.
Similar to how awdl (that you mention) is a special kind of WiFi connection that is peer-to-peer and low-latency (used for AirDrop for example) - llw is also a special kind of WiFi connection that is low-latency (no power saves allowed), but with an access point.


You will have an email invoice from Apple for the purchase. That email contains a "Report a Problem" link. But you can only report problems within 90 days of purchase.


As far as I can tell there is no macOS driver available for this printer, so it's unclear from your question what driver you're actually using.

However, the first thing to try is to totally reset the printing system on your Mac and then to use the driver for the Samsung ML-2240 printer instead.

Before commencing, download and install the version 2.6 Samsung drivers directly from Apple.

Then follow this process:

Go to Apple > System Preferences
Click on the Printers & Scanners preference pane
Right-click on the list of printers on the left-hand side and select Reset printing system...
At the next prompt, click on the Reset button
Now go through the process of adding your printer - feel free to choose “Samsung ML-2510 Series” but then use the following steps to add the Samsung ML-2240 printer driver

Click on the “Choose a Driver” dropdown list and choose the Select Software option
Go through the list to select the ML-2240 option

Complete your setup and test to see if this rectifies the problem

Hopefully this will solve the issue for you. However, if it doesn't, you can also repeat the first four steps above and then try setting up the printer using the CUPS option.


What does "Service exited with abnormal code: 1" mean?

When you run a program (such as your script that deletes user profiles) - it will leave behind an exit status code when done executing.

The exit status code is 0 when everything has gone according to plan. Anything other than 0 is an "abnormal code", usually indicating some kind of error or warning.

The exit status code 1 is just a "generic error" - it could mean anything. You'll have to look into the script you have to see which exit status codes it uses, and what the causes of them are.


Change shortcut to change input source (keyboard language)

Here are Apple's instructions for changing shortcuts found in PH21531:

Choose Apple menu > System Preferences, click Keyboard, then click Shortcuts.
Select the action (Input Sources in your case) in the list that you want to change.
Double-click the current shortcut, then press the new key combination you want to use.

You cannot use each type of key (for example, a letter key) more than once in a key combination.

Quit and restart any apps you’re using for the new keyboard shortcut to take effect.


The iTunes Connect review process for submitted apps is not simple and linear

Maybe apple prioritises new apps over updates.

If your update contains major bug fixes you can request to get it expedited.

You can checkout recent review times here: http://appreviewtimes.com


Skype switches to discrete graphics card and shows blank settings

After disabling acceleration in Chrome, it stopped switching graphics.


Macbook Pro Retina 13 (late 2012) SSD replacement, putting in a SATA 2.5' SSD drive?

Just managed to upgrade my Late 2012 Retina Macbook Pro using a Samsung mSATA 512GB SSD and an 7+17 pin adapter like this one:

http://www.aliexpress.com/item/New-Lightweight-mSATA-to-17-Plus-7-Pin-SSD-Adapter-for-MacBook-Pro-Retina-OS/32429243180.html?spm=2114.01020208.3.2.huLuZr&ws_ab_test=201556_2,201527_1_71_72_73_74_75,201409_2

WORKS!

PS. Use "sudo trimforce enable" in the Terminal, to get trim and full speed.

PS1. Newer Retina Macbook Pros use the 18+8 pin adapter like this one (don't know if they fit, late-2012 Retinas have a lot of room unlike the newer models):
http://www.aliexpress.com/item/New-Lightweight-mSATA-to-18-Plus-8-Pin-SSD-Adapter-for-MacBook-Pro-Retina-F-OS/32420956007.html?spm=2114.01020208.3.2.hligL2&ws_ab_test=201556_2,201527_1_71_72_73_74_75,201409_2


Safari app is not opening from dock icon

You should try to launch the app with command line.

/Applications/Safari.app/Contents/MacOS/Safari &


How do I install sv.net/classic with wine on macOS?

Download and install the current version of XQuartz (as of this writing, it is version 2.7.11).
Download and execute the "Installer for Wine staging" from the wine macOS download page.
Execute “Wine Staging” and execute the next steps in the console which opens.
Get winetricks

wget  https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Winetricks/winetricks/master/src/winetricks
chmod +x winetricks

Install cab extract, which is required by the installation of jet40 afterwards (this assumes that you already installed the packet manager brew):

brew install cabextract

Install the dependencies mentioned on the sv.net support page:

sh winetricks mdac28
sh winetricks jet40
sh winetricks vb6run
sh winetricks ie8
sh winetricks wininet

Download Setup.exe from the sv.net download page on the ITSG web site.
cd into the directory where you downloaded the installer and run the installer in wine, keeping the default settings :

 wine Setup.exe

Configure wine:

winecfg

In tab “libraries”, add ole32, oleaut32 and olepro32
Start sv.net:

 wine "C:\Program Files\svnet\svnet.exe"

In sv.net, under the “Info” menu, click the “Einstellungen” button to set up the network connection and select the “Direct” connection mode. The network test will fail, but it’s OK, the further operations will work.


Is there a good SQL Diagram Editor/Drawing Mac App Tool?

MySQL Workbench is good enough for most programming demands. You can create EER Model and can also synchronize the model with DB Changes or vice versa. You can use it with no cost as it's a open-source application. I have been using MySQL for a year and it is very useful for me. I recommend it to you if you don't need any enterprise features and performance.


For my iPhone, why is the "restore from backup" option not available in iTunes?

Apologies - to get the picture in, I need to 'answer' rather than comment...

I'm really not certain whether it's because you're on an old version, or that your machine can see no backup, but I get a totally different Backup section

I'm not sure I can contribute further, sorry - because I don't remember how iTunes 10 looked & I'm on iOS 7 myself.

There is the possibility that Apple has essentially locked out iOS 5 now - but please don't take my word for it; I've seen posts about it but have no authoritative answer.

(Please don't -1 me for this 'non-answer', folks ;-)


how to rotate the orientation of my monitor in OSX 10.8?

After some research i found this blog, which perfectly detailed explains how to get this hidden setting:

Open the system preferences
Hold down the command and option keys while clicking the display
icon
Next locate the screen adjustments on the external monitor and you
will notice now there is an option called "Rotation".
Choose 90 Degrees and now your monitor is in portrait mode.

Thanks roadzy and OSXdaily!


-bash: alias: /path/to/folder: not found

You are mixing bash alias, macOS alias and (soft-)link.

The bash alias requires some executable to be called but a path to a folder is no executable.

So use alias myfolder='cd ~/path/to/folder' in your .bash_profile to change to the desired directory. ~/path/to/folder has to be a valid path of course - or it won't work.


I've got the same problem and tried and searched a lot, but no solution in the horizon.

But Chrome seems to be not affected by this problem, so you can use it when in no-net mode.

I'm hoping for a better solution.


How to play .m3u playlist on iOS, given its URL?

You can download following app; add your m3u list to app content; watch what you want :)

https://itunes.apple.com/tr/app/iptv-m3u-player-ip-television/id1368623943?l=tr&mt=8


Is it possible to upgrade iOS without connecting the device to a computer?

Devs still have to upgrade through iTunes, Xcode only lets you put other apps on your phone. So no, there really isn't another way.


Not getting developer option on iPad air

The developer item in settings (called "ontwikkelaar" in the screenshot) will become available when you have installed an app you created with xcode. Creating a simple empty app with xcode, connecting your ipad and then tun it on the device should be enough to display the developer item in your settings.


Any way to know what causes allocation of wired memory?

I found a webpage which has this definition for wired memory:

  Wired memory is used by the OS and is pretty much untouchable. Another
  application can't "borrow" wired memory

If you want to know more about how applications and frameworks are using memory on your system, try /usr/bin/allmemory. You must run it as root; sudo /usr/bin/allmemory is one way to accomplish that. When you run it, it will perform analysis for several seconds before showing output.

Here is a short example of the output:

                           Process Name [ PID]  Architecture    PrivateRes/NoSpec   Copied    Dirty    Swapped   Shared/NoSpec
                           ===================  ============    ================= ========= ========= =========  =============

                             WebProcess [ 317]:    64-bit        74126  /   73588      2102     48868       403  32777 / 30757
                                  Xcode [ 368]:    64-bit        55780  /   55711     25228     45570       595  43660 / 41720
                                 Safari [ 315]:    64-bit        25087  /   25087      2251     17647        52  35197 / 33513

See the allmemory man page (with the command man allmemory) for more details; here's an explanation of some of the columns:

PrivateRes: the number of pages resident in physical memory, not shared with other processes

Copied/Dirty: the number of resident pages that were copied or are dirty (non-exclusive)

Swapped: the number of pages that were in memory but have been swapped to disk.

Shared: the number of shared pages


iPhone 4 - photos are chopped off on the side

I don't think this is an issue at all. In the Photos app, all pictures are slightly zoomed in on by default to fill the entire screen. If you zoom out on each picture using your fingers, you will notice that they are all the same size.


Unable to re-purchase an app after reporting and getting refunded by Apple

It appears that this is by design. This is likely to avoid potential gaming of the App Store where users purchase an app, ask Apple for a refund and continue using the app.

Apple disallowed to update or re-download refunded apps on both App Store for iOS and Mac App Store. While this may hurt genuine use cases like yours where an app update has potentially fixed the problem.

Both pros and cons of the approach has been discussed. A few articles are linked below:

Apple makes it impossible to get updates for refunded apps
Apple now makes it clear you’re not allowed to update or redownload refunded apps

In case like yours, the recommended approach to take would be to file a bug report with Apple. It would also make sense to bring this to the developers attention.


You could install it using Homebrew.
It is part of the brew ex-vi package, e.g.:

brew install ex-vi


Duplicate entries in "Open With" menu in Finder even after rebuilding Launch Services

I have found a Terminal command that works in Mountain Lion. It gives the correct sequence of commands for lsregister to correct this problem:

/System/Library/Frameworks/CoreServices.framework/Frameworks/LaunchServices.framework/Support/lsregister -kill -r -domain local -domain system -domain user

This was provided by one Dr. Drang on the blog at LeanCrew.com in a post called Getting rid of Open With duplicates. It was posted on February 16, 2013.

You can read the blog post at the link above for all the details.

Presumably, until Apple fixes this known bug, it may be necessary to re-run this command every time a new version of an app gets installed on my system, causing new duplicate items in the Open With menu.

I must admit that this string was suggested by bmike on January 12, 2013. But for some reason I overlooked it earlier. So thanks, bmike.


Large dropdown menus (off expected location)

This is a bug in Google Chrome or a compatibility issue between Google Chrome and macOS Sierra 10.12.4.

Safari uses the WebKit engine and Firefox uses the Gecko engine to render web pages, and I've tested each and they load the hiking-biking page you reference just fine in macOS Sierra 10.12.4.

I also tested Chrome visiting the same page and it worked fine in El Capitan but not macOS Sierra 10.12.4.

I'd suggest you send feedback via the Help > Report an issue option.


Why is this custom Mac Keyboard Shortcut not working?

It seems you need to have a folder selected in Finder to make it work, it won't if you've got an empty selection or a file selected.

Also make sure that your keyboard shortcut is not used by any other function, it doesn't warn about it. (I tried CMD+CTRL+X, which seemed to work, but had trouble with many other combinations.)


How to show all running processes on macOS/OS X?

Inside Terminal, you can type ps aux

Terminal is available under the utilities folder in the App folder.


Safari (macOS) does not play sound for web push notification

The setting in System Preferences → Notifications → Safari for ‘Play sound for notifications’ allows sounds to be played for notifications.

It's then up to the website to decide to provide a sound for Safari to play on a notification.

You can configure this for Slack in your preferences on slack.com.


Privent Auto mount a partition on 10.7.4

Add the following line to the /etc/fstab file:

  LABEL= none hfs ro,noauto

Being <label>the name of the encrypted volume.

If you are just wondering, ro means read only (you should use rwinstead, if you want to read and write after mount).

Note that the file could not exist, therefore you'll have create it. To do so just open /Applications/Utilities/Terminal and type:

sudo vi /etc/fstab
This will prompt the password. Type it. It won't be shown, don't worry.
Add the already mentioned line.
Hit Escape, type :wq, and hit Enter


iPhoto 10 : is there still a way to subscribe to rss feed?

This appears to have been removed. There's no mention of it that I can find in Apple's support documentation or iPhoto help (⌘?) and the only reference to subscribing that I can find is subscribing to a Shared Photo Stream.

You can provide feedback to Apple regarding this here:

https://www.apple.com/feedback/iphoto.html


Mid-2012 MBP -- put a 16GB SODIMM in one slot?

From Intel's website: 7th Gen (U/Y) and 8th Gen (U Quad-Core) Intel® Processor Families Datasheet for the i7 mobile processor.

Unlike the desktop counterpart that has support for 8 channels it (mobile chip) only has 2 channels with a maximum of 2 DIMMs per channel

Further in the datasheet, Intel specifically notes the maximumm amount of memory that can be addressed:

16GB is your max.


Restoring `System.keychain` from a Time Machine backup without access to system `/var/db/SystemKey`

Yes, unfortunately for all practical purposes the keys are gone for good.
You need the SystemKey file corresponding to that System.keychain in order to restore anything from it. If you haven't got a backup, you'll have to resort to bruteforcing the contents of the SystemKey file - which is not practically possible.


how would I set the default web browser for the root user

Launch this from the terminal:

sudo -u root /Applications/Google\ Chrome.app/Contents/MacOS/Google\ Chrome

It will ask you whether you want to set Google Chrome as your default browser. I assume the same technique works for Firefox and most browsers.

I had the same problem when running Skype as root and it fixed my problem (it opens links in Chrome instead of Safari now).


No, on the newer MBPs, the display cable is basically integral to the "Display Assembly" part, even if it is just the cable that was damaged it is not replaceable on its own, not "easily" by any reasonable standard.
Realistically if the display cable is seriously damaged you need to replace the entire display half of the laptop.
If it is only the display connector that is damaged, it may be possible to repair but the smt soldering needed for such a job means it would not be easy either, though you might be able to find a third party repair shop that could do it for you without replacing half the laptop.
Though I don't think it is likely, if the problem is that the display cable connector simply came loose, then that would be an easy fix. But I feel that would just be wishful thinking.


I figured it out by
1) double clicking in the footer
2) going to the design tab that pops up
3) in the header and footer section of that tab clicking on the page number style that looks like the one that was showing up everywhere else in the document.

I did this and the number was correct because it was already linked to previous page.

FYI, if you don't know what style page number you have going on throughout the rest of your doc, you can't copy/paste the format of a page number you have on another page. Tried it, failed, worked around it.


How do I get my iPhone to type the word "Period" instead of the punctuation while dictating?

I have the perfect solution, and it goes as follows.

Create a new contact with the first name of what you want to be dictated, as you want it dictated exactly. (e.g. Contact first name "period" without the quotes.)
Down at the bottom select add new field and add the phonetic first name field.
Go back up and type out the phrase you'd like associated with the word. I like to use the word "literal" space then the word. (e.g. "literal period")
Force quit all apps. and reopen the one you are using to dictate to.
make a new sentence and say the phrase "literal period" and you should now get the word "period" in the sentence instead of "."

To conclude, this works for EVERYTHING. Proper Names, fantasy/sci-fi content, technical terminology, etc.


How can I determine the invoking user in an Apple installer postinstall script

After some testing, I believe I have found that one of the best options for this is

INSTALLER_USER=$(stat -f '%Su' $HOME)

I have found that the $HOME environmental variable of the user installing the package is passed through, even after elevating for Installer.app or using the installer command.

The previous answers are assuming some things about the environment that may not always be true.

For example CONSOLE_USER=$(ps aux | grep console | grep -v grep | cut -d' ' -f1) does not work in there are multiple users logged in, as may be the case in a computer lab environment.

As for ps aux | grep "CoreServices/Installer" | grep -v grep | awk '{print $1;}'; this only works if the user is actually running  Installer.app and would not apply to someone running it with the installer command in a shell.


iPad mail shows a copy of sent mail in inbox

Are you sending yourelf a bcc: of all mail?

Check your: settings > mail, contacts, calendar > always bcc myself

See if that slider is turned on.


Is there a way to display the date of the scheduled event on the calendar immediately following adding a date to the calendar?

Not currently. You have to manually find the event in context to check for any double-bookings.

You can provide feedback to Apple here:

https://www.apple.com/feedback/iphone.html


How to make NumLock/numpad cursor keys work on an external USB keyboard?

OS X does not understand 'Num lock'. There's no on-off state for Num lock in OS X and as such can be thought to be always on.

The Num lock button itself on a Windows keyboard is interpreted as Clear in OS X. You are able to bind this to actions in Keyboard Maestro, but a 'state switch' would essentially require saving a variable in Keyboard Maestro to be checked when a button is pressed, then intercepting the action and providing its own key press.


Creating Pinned Tab Icons

  Pinned Sites allow your users to keep their favorite websites open,
  running, and easily accessible. You can set the icon that the user
  sees when they pin your site by providing a vector image.

Providing the Vector Image

  Use 100% black for all vectors with a transparent background in SVG
  format and add the following markup to all webpages that the icon
  should represent (replacing "website_icon" with your own file's name).

<link rel="mask-icon" href="website_icon.svg" color="red">

  In the example, the color attribute sets the display color of the
  image. That attribute can specify a single color with a hexadecimal
  value (#990000), an RGB value (rgb(153, 0, 0)), or a recognized
  color-keyword, such as: red, lime, or navy.

So if Wix is not providing the option, you have to set it programmatically by editing your HTML code ;)

https://developer.apple.com/library/prerelease/ios/documentation/AppleApplications/Reference/SafariWebContent/pinnedTabs/pinnedTabs.html


How do you bind a key sequence to shell command?

Add a newline character to the end, for example:

bind '"\C-s": "ssh hostname\n"'

Another thing is what key sequence you want to bind the command to, and if it's not already handled by the system. For example, for F12, which is available, you'd use:

bind '"\e[24~": "ssh hostname\n"'


The following solution assumes some comfort with the command line - if you aren't comfortable with it, let me know and i will provide a GUI method.

Referring to your picture,

click on the line that says "Container disk 1"
make a note of the value in the field "physical stores" (let's
assume it says disk0s2)
In spotlight type 'terminal' and hit return to bring up the command
line
become an administrator (either su to the administrator or login as
one)
type the command 'diskutil apfs resizecontainer disk0s2 0' (change
disk0s2 to your value).

When the prompt returns, you should have the whole disk back. If not, please make a note of the result and publish it here.


Coincidentally I had this exact problem on the same type of macbook yesterday.
As Tetsujin correctly states the mac is too old for internet recovery, and since the drive is probably empty, there is no recovery partition aswell
If you have the original grey install discs that came with the mac, you can boot from those by holding the "c" key during startup.
If you don't have them, you'll need an other mac and an external hdd case.
You can than connect the ssd via usb to the working mac, and then use internet recovery on that mac to install osx on the usb connected ssd.
Sources: did it myself yesterday


Is it possible to set touch bar in F1-F12 mode for a specific app?

Yes:

System Preferences -> Keyboard -> Shortcuts

Select "Function Keys" and hit the plus sign.

Select the app you want to have the function keys display for as default.


What's the easiest way to automate logging into a website?

There are commercial tools that do this very well. Each is a drop in the bucket if you depend on them, but are in the $25-35 range since they do many things other than just this one single task. 1Password might be better at a single key command to fill in both a username and password, but TextExpander is also very awesome at what it does and might be more useful in the long run if you don't need a password generation/wallet replacement.

1Password - from where I sit, the best tool for improving web form management securely. It integrates with just about every browser and it very actively being developed.
TextExpander for Mac - also, the best of class for taking short snippets and expanding them no matter what app you need the typing assistance.

They do different things and are both on the App Store. Check the developer web sites to see if they have free demo versions - especially if you don't feel you will need them or have concerns about buying without seeing them.


You (or your friend) will need to delete all the apps you downloaded to your friend's iPad. The iPad is likely attempting to download updates to the apps you downloaded with your Apple ID, which your friend cannot do with her AppleID.

There's no great harm in leaving your apps on the device other than they won't back up for your friend and the nagging password prompt.

If your friend wants to clear out all of your apps in one step, they can back up to iTunes, transferring all purchases and then restoring the device. No apps locked to your password will make the jump to the backup and your friend will be left with the device cleaned of all of your apps.


The Mac 101 on Apple website seems like a good place to start.

And of course, Ask Different.


How to dim (and un-dim) display in automator

Where did you install the “brightness” command? Even if you've set up your PATH in the shell rc scripts, it may not take effect for these commands because Automator isn't run from a shell. (You can set environment for all programs including GUI using ~/.MacOSX/environment.plist, but I wouldn't recommend fiddling with PATH just for this.)

I suggest changing your Automator workflow to use the full path to where it's installed, e.g.

/usr/local/bin/brightness 1


macOS Sierra : dd to USB is very slow and can't seem to use /dev/rdisk

I installed the same image last night on a RPi3.

You need to unmount the disk first. Then you can write to the disk using sudo.

diskutil unmountDisk /dev/rdisk2
sudo dd bs=1m if=~/Downloads/your_image.img of=/dev/rdisk2
diskutil unmountDisk /dev/disk2

I'm on macOS Sierra, too.


Each time do you a migration, it will make a new account on the new machine.

I can only assume to get 3 separate accounts you started with a brand new user on the new Mac, then did two separate, possibly partial, migrations.

It is possible to manually merge them, [I also learned the hard way how to do this] but in all honesty, & especially as you claim to not be a power-user, it will be simpler to wipe the Mac & start over. It may not actually take any longer than trying to merge what you have currently & is likely to be less 'hazardous'.
Do a full single migration as part of the initial setup. When the machine first asks you who you are, there is a point at which you migrate instead of making a new user.

Apple have a step by step procedure to "sell" your Mac & set up fresh for the "new owner". I would follow that. What to do before you sell, give away, or trade in your Mac As it reboots once more as a "new Mac" then follow the Migration guide - How to move your content to a new Mac which should then Migrate to one single new account, matching the one you had on your previous machine.


Update application install by another appleID

Have you tried just moving the application bundles to trash in Finder? If that doesn't work or you want to remove the support files as well, removing applications from Launchpad (by clicking the cross icons shown while holding option) should remove other files as well.


No - OS X older than Lion cannot read or comprehend/mount/use a Core Storage volume such as used with FileVault 2.

Someone could reverse engineer the protocol and write drivers for older OS or different OS, but I haven't even seen a start towards that effort in any open source project.


How can I stop my iPhone from “Cleaning” apps in the background?

You can't. It's up to the individual app to save the current context if the user switches to another app. Some apps handle this better than others, but in any case this issue needs to be addressed to the developers of the apps.


Assigning a keyboard to a specific app Sierra

I don't think that it's possible to type into an application that is in the background. The keyboard will type into whichever application or document is frontmost.
The keyboard shortcut cmd + tab allows you to cycle between the open applications in a left to right order. If you keep a lot of applications open simultaneously and the unidirectional cycling is unpractical, cmd + shift + tab allows to cycle backwards too.


Save/Don't Save Menus No Longer Respond to Tab and Spacebar (post Big Sur)

Have you checked whether following in System Preferences > Keyboard > Shortcuts is selected:


How to change Home / End behaviour on Yosemite

You might have to change the custom settings in the Terminal app. But it's quite straight forward. See here: http://fdiv.net/2007/05/12/keybindings-in-macosx-terminal-app

I also changed it for my Sublime Text 2:

   { "keys": ["home"], "command": "move_to", "args": {"to": "bol"} },
   { "keys": ["end"], "command": "move_to", "args": {"to": "eol"} },


Unable to mount Time Capsule from a Macbook when backups work

Re-adding the Time Capsule to Time Machine may work
I used to face problems with the mount. Removing the Time Capsule (TC) from A's Time Machine and re-adding helped.
Otherwise, the obvious ultimate solution would be to remove the A's backup from TC completely and take a fresh backup.


How to delete an app from device using iTunes?

Why are you trying to do this via iTunes? You should delete the app on the phone and use the app store on the phone to re-download it.

However if you feel you must do this via iTunes after you have deleted the app from the phone, go to:

~/Music/iTunes/Mobile Applications

…and delete the application from there.

You can then download it again via the iTunes store and re-synch the phone.


Increasing fan speed of macbook pro is harmful?

I’ve used smcFanControl when I had a 1st Gen Macbook Pro 15’’. It’s not harmful in the sense that the fan is designed to be on, but of course, like any other mechanical device, the more you use it, the faster it wears out. If your Macbook Pro is getting too hot, try one of those utilities to see if it helps. In any case, getting a cooling pad is not a bad idea. Depending upon the type of work and conditions that you have, a Fanless may be enough.

I believe the “best” fanless was the iLap. And for cooling pads with a Fan, you’ll have to see and trust the power of Google Shop. These generally use a USB port to drive a couple of Fans. Among the best features you can look for are the provision of an extra USB (so you don’t lose your port), portability if you move and sound level of the fans, whether they can be turned on/off, etc.


Mouse and Keyboard on MacBook Air mid 2009 don't work partially

I got a workaround to solve this error: Using CMD+R on Boot to access the Recovery Menu, i managed to check and solve Permissions on the SSD. There is one plist that says displayd should have 0 but has 244 (like that)

after solving, it seems to work... for half an hour again. Then i have to force-shutdown and boot into recovery again... The mac is virgin, theres nothing installed besides Firefox and Office '11.

that cant be it, anyone got a solution?


Did Apple shut down the Activation Lock checker? Why?

Apple has closed this tool. It is no longer available without being an employee of Apple or being a member of Apple's Authorised Service Provider Program.

As for why, Apple hasn't publicly given a reason, but I speculate that it is due to the ability to find serial numbers of devices which have not been registered with Find My iPhone.


Looking to create a keyboard shortcut to open the Share menu

macOS doesn't need to open a menu to find a sub-menu item, so long as the menu item is unique.
From your example, you can't open Share itself, but you can directly key command for instance "Messages"
In System Prefs > Keyboard > Shortcuts > App Shortcuts, select All Applications then click the + underneath, add the exact name of the menu item (this includes any ellipsis … if there is one, which is not the same as three full stops … ) then underneath, your trigger, which can be anything that doesn't conflict.
This requirement for a full exact name does mean you cannot use this method for any 'smart' menu item that changes its name depending on context.

If, on the rare occasion the same command appears in two places in any menu structure, then you can direct to the correct instance by using this syntax to follow the correct path Edit>Share>Messages but for normal use you don't need the path.


Why do I feel 'electricity' when bridging my macbook and a double insulated charger?

Most switching power supplies use an EMI filter on the front, that looks like this:

The "ground" is connected to the "ground" on the secondary side as well as the earth pin on the plug. If the plug has no earth pin (or the socket does not have it), then when you touch it and an earthed object, a small current flows trough caps C2 and C3.

In most power supplies there is also a small capacitor bridging the primary and secondary windings of the transformer (again, for EMI reasons).


What should I look for when buying an SSD for an iMac?

Your model iMac has a Serial ATA (6 Gb/s) connector for a 2.5" hard drive and a PCIe connector (PCIe 2.0 x4 NVMexpress interface) for the SSD.

For best compatibility I suggest you purchase your SSD from a reputable retailer. For example, the following are some well-regarded sites:

Mac Sales
Simply Mac
RAM City
Macfixit

By buying from a reputable store you'll be sure to get an SSD fit for purpose, regardless of manufacturer. Being reputable means they're only going to sell something that works and they'll stand behind the product they sell, regardless of the brand.

Also, many sites offer an easy interface to ensure you select the right SSD for your particular Mac.


Can you work with Vim on iPad Mini with an external keyboard?

I use Prompt 2 to connect over SSH to my server. It's a paid app, but I never had an issue with it, it's really reliable. If your connection is good enough you won't appreciate any lag. Vim works great with it.

Can't tell you about external keyboards.


Can I turn off display on my macbook when I'm using extended display, without closing the lid?

A hacky and simple way to achieve this: 1. Turn on "Mirror Displays" in display settings and 2. Turn down the brightness on your laptop all the way down to zero.


iPhone 4S OSX 7.1.2 Wifi switch greyed-out (disable)

If the Wifi switch is being displayed as greyed out that means that there is a hardware problem with the Wifi modem in the device. I had faced this with my device and Apple replaced it under warranty, I would suggest take the device to an Apple store and they should replace the device as you get 3 months support on replaced devices even if it was a paid replacement.

P.S: Rebooting, Resetting or any other changes can not fix this issue as it is a hardware issue, the earlier you go to the Apple support the better.


What worked for me:

Disable reminders in iCloud settings
Open reminders
On the default reminders list create a random task, e.g. "Test"
Re-enable reminders in iCloud settings
"Merge" reminders
Open reminders and wait for the sync to finish


Is the 20 cm Lightning to 30-pin adapter functionally different than the shorter all in one part?

Yes - they are equivalent in all measurable aspects other than length. Sometimes we find out things that don't make the public specifications about Apple products, but these two items don't seem to fall into that category.


How to take care of an iPod touch with a broken screen?

Unless you are going to never flex the device, you'll want a clear adhesive cover or clear tape to prevent the glass from easily falling out and cutting your fingers or lying in wait in a pocket or bag.

Something like a Otterbox case with a more substantial plastic barrier might be appropriate (or even both clear tape and a thicker plastic sleeve depending on how likely the glass is to fall out.

If you run your finger nail lightly over the surface, you should be able to tell if the underlying layers are cracked or if the surface digitizer layer is cracked and proceed appropriately.

In cases where the digitizer is intact, I have known people to baby a phone for 6 or more months without any glass pieces falling out, so it really depends on how bad your drop was.


Do any iPad e-book readers support sharing excerpts?

Amazon supports a "public notes" feature.  When you create a note or a highlight on a section using a Kindle or any of their apps, including the iPad app, it's uploaded to the Amazon servers and visible to you at https://kindle.amazon.com/kindle.   From there you can copy and paste into Instapaper or email if you wish.

On that site, you can make your notes public so that other people can see them.

For more information see https://kindle.amazon.com/faq


Office 365: Outlook — limit sync to 30 days

As of Outlook 16.23 (February 2019), such a feature to limit the email downloaded by date does not appear to exist. There's a feature request on Outlook's UserVoice forum for this functionality.

For an IMAP account, under the account's Advanced settings, you can configure Outlook to only download headers.

There is nothing similar for Exchange accounts.


In Mail app, how can I go (jump) to the folder (mailbox) of a selected message in a search result view or in a Smart Mailbox?

Solution using AppleScript

The solution I found was to create an Automator service and associate it to a shortcut.

Open Automator
New Document
Select "Service" for the type of document
At the top of the window, set the following options:
Service receives selected >> no input
in >> Mail.app
In the Actions library (left pane) find the action "Run AppleScript"
Drag and drop it in the workflow area
Copy the code at the end of this answer and paste it into the action "Run AppleScript"
Save your service (e.g. "Jump to Folder")

Test the service

No need to close automator or relaunch Mail.
Do a search and select a message (preferably a message filed in some custom folder).
Go to Mail >> Services. You should see your new service
Apply the service.

Your selected and active mailbox should be the mailbox of the previously selected message.

Optional

Assign a shortcut (e.g. CONTROL-COMMAND-J) to your service:

System Preferences >> Keyboard >> Shortcuts >> Services.
At the end of the right pane under General you should find your service.
Assign a shortcut to it.

The Code

set theDialogTitle to "Jump to Folder Script"

tell application "Mail"

    -- Get the selected messages and the count of them
    set theMessageList to selected messages of message viewer 1
    set theCount to length of theMessageList

    -- Error if no messages
    if theCount is 0 then
        display dialog ¬
            "No message selected." with title theDialogTitle buttons {"OK"} with icon caution
        return
    end if

    -- Error if more than one message
    if theCount is greater than 1 then
        display dialog ¬
            "Must select only one message." with title theDialogTitle buttons {"OK"} with icon caution
        return
    end if

    -- Get the message
    set theMessage to item 1 of theMessageList

    -- Get the mailbox object
    set theMailbox to mailbox of theMessage

    -- Select the mailbox
    set selected mailboxes of message viewer 1 to theMailbox

end tell


iPhone 5 not downloading apps from App Store

You should update your iOS on iPhone setting. Hope this work for you!


Mac Pro + Dual 27" Cinema Displays brightness & brightness control

Just discovered a solution to Problem 1.

Control + (F1 or F2) adjusts the brightness of the secondary display.

Still working on problem #2


iPad stuck in boot up loop. 4013 error after multiple restore attempts

This may just apply to me, but I resolved this exact situation on my iPhone 5 by:

Replacing the screen on my iPhone 5 - I knew it had a faulty screen

It would them boot into the "plug phone into iTunes" screen. Each attempt to resolving using iTunes on Windows 10 resulted in the Error 4013.

I updated to OSX 10.11.3 (current version at the time) and the latest iTunes. It restored the phone successfully, and resolved the Error 4013 issue.


You are trying to create a launch agent with:

the wrong extension (plis)
in the wrong folder (/Library/LaunchAgents/ (suggested by the visible plists: java oracle/microsoft? updater, google keystone and teamviewer))
with the wrong app (TextWrangler)

TextWrangler isn't compatible with macOS 10.13. Download BBEdit or another compatible editor and try it again ;-)!


My Macbook Pro M1 suddenly isn't showing the correct resolutions anymore

I've solved the issue. Seems like SwitchResX for some reason messed up with the system resolutions. I've updated to the latest beta version of SwitchResX (4.11.1a4), opened SwitchResX Preferences and then, on the menu at the top of the OSX screen, clicked "Display > Restory factory settings". Then after a reboot it was back to normal. Geez

"Restore factory settings" is greyed out now, but it wasn't before. Clicking on it and rebooting solved the issue.


Difficulties with playing YouTube videos in Big Sur beta in Safari

Okay guys, I solve the problem. It was causing AdBlock extension for Safari, I uninstalled it and installed AdGuard and now it works like a charm.


macOS: why only few login elements are in System Preferences

The login items that you referenced are for your individual account.  The other “elements” you referred to are for all users and system wide daemons/services respectively.

~/Library/LaunchAgents per individual user
/Library/LaunchAgents for all users
/Library/LaunchDaemons for system wide services regardless of user (run as root)

Extensions are handled the same way, some are user only, while others are assigned to all users.  You can find a list of what’s being loaded with the launchctl command.


Hard Drive I replaced still showing up in Disk Utility and as a Startup Disk

It's actually not a phantom drive; there's a 128GB SSD that originally came with the Mac mini to be used in conjunction with the HDD as a "Fusion Drive."

From Everymac.com:

  This model also could be custom configured with a 3 TB hard drive for
  an extra US$150, a 1 TB or 3 TB "fusion drive" -- which combines a
  traditional hard drive with 128 GB of flash RAM -- for an extra US$250
  or US$400, respectively, or a 768 GB SSD for an extra US$1300.
  (emphasis mine)

You have a couple of options...

You could just format the drive to get rid of the boot partition and not use the drive - diskutil eraseDisk %noformat% disk0
You could format it FAT32 or HFS+ to make a separate drive for 128GB of storage to be used however you like - diskutil eraseDisk fat32 Untitled GPT /dev/disk0
You could re-do your installation and create another "fusion drive" that would be 1.13TB in size.  You will want to backup all your data, create the Fusion drive and then restore to the new combined drive. (I personally went this route)


Apple Mail on Yosemite not syncing with Exchange

There looks to be changes made on exchange accounts that seem to affect mac osx 10. Yosemite.  Those who has this have a older version of apple mail client installed and the solution is to upgrade your mac to the highest version of mac os your device will take and the version of apple mail installed will work again with exchange accounts


What do you mean by "I don't know how to unlock it and even if I did, I can't: half of the screen looks like a matrix" ?

Do you mean you actually do know how to unlock it but can't because the screen is damaged? Or do you mean you can't because you've forgotten your passcode? Or do you mean something else?

We may be able to help if you provide full details of your situation and what you've already tried.

For example, have you tried any of the following:

Restarting your device by holding down both the power button and pressing down on where the home button should be for at least 10 secs until the Apple logo appears?
Double tapping on the slider to see what happens?
Connecting your device to your computer after launching iTunes?
Connecting your device to your computer and running your photo software to see if you can transfer your photos?

Also, is your device set up to use photo stream on iCloud? If so, your photos may already be accessible via iCloud from another device, so you may not need to transfer them from the iPhone.

Please provide as much info as you can.


How do I write a Mail.app rule to mark messages as read in one mailbox but leave them as unread in my in-box?

It seems Mail 6.0 in Mountain Lion has fixed this for me. When I have new mail it shows as unread in both my in-box and my archive mailbox. And now, when I read it in my in-box it gets marked as read in both my in-box and my archive mailbox. Chalk one up for Mountain Lion.


Creating physical escape key on new MacBook Pro with TouchBar by altering .keylayout for § key

Install Karabiner-Elements
Run it form the Launchpad (obviously)
In "Simple Modifications" tab create a mapping "non-us-backlash" to "escape"
Enjoy!

BTW key code for "§" is 0A (as reported by Karabiner Event Viewer)


If a safe mode boot fails, you've got a damaged system.

Boot to recovery, internet recovery or external bootable media and reinstall the OS on top of all your existing apps and data. This preserves all data that's there.

If you suspect storage drive problems, you might check your last backup against another Mac to be sure it's up to date and restorable and possibly seek data recovery if you can't afford to lose the data before reinstalling the macOS.

I wouldn't do data recovery unless you have no backups and $300 or so for a professional service would be money well spent to safeguard your data. Most people recover from this with no data loss in about an hour or two after the reinstall starts,  but I don't want you to not have the chance to back up before using the drive more if you suspect problems with the hardware and not just a third party extension causing lots of crashes.


Sometimes Safari opens with blank/empty tabs with window titles of the previous session

It's a bug - I've reported it but can't force it to happen. If you find a way to trigger it with great reliability you could report it here or to the source at http://bugreporter.apple.com and it might get squashed sooner when the engineers can see exactly what is failing to cause it.


What are the implications of how versions are stored?

You should read the big Siracusa's Lion review in Ars Technica.

The gist of it is, no, every time another program tries to access the file (e.g. you're trying to send it in Mail, upload it in safari) what the other program will get is the current version you're looking at. Nothing else.

See more at this particular section.


Launching/showing calendar from the menu bar

Day-O

  Day-O is a simple menu bar clock replacement with a simple calendar
  for your Mac. It’s free, as-is (which means I’m not providing support,
  taking feature requests, addressing perceived inadequacies or
  releasing the source code).


How is the hidden interface bridge100 working?

(This is isn't a correct answer, but just a starting point.)

Not mandatory

This bridge interface is not at all necessary. Here is the way to inactivate it:

Stop Internet Sharing through the GUI.
Wait one full minute for all the processes to terminate their house keeping:

ps ax | egrep '[ /](PID|Int)'

modify the Internet Sharing plist:

cd /System/Library/LaunchDaemons
/usr/bin/sudo -s
# make a quick backup
cp com.apple.NetworkSharing.plist com.apple.NetworkSharing.plist~orig
vi com.apple.NetworkSharing.plist

within the ProgramArguments array, insert the 2 new arguments -B (disable bridge interface) and -v (verbose output), so that this array definition will look like:

<array>
    <string>/usr/libexec/InternetSharing</string>
    <string>-B</string>
    <string>-v</string>
</array>

save this new file and exit vi
start Internet Sharing through the GUI,
do a verification ifconfig -a.

Now Internet Sharing is directly working on en1 and all necessary processes are started correctly: pfctl, wifid, natpmpd, bootpd.


Troubleshooting a mac that won't go to sleep

pslog

Have you tried the pmset command for live debugging?

pmset -g pslog

  -g pslog displays an ongoing log of power source (battery and UPS) state.


If your goal is to install macOS Sierra, then your best bet is to boot into macOS Recovery using the ShiftOption⌘R keyboard shortcut. That's because your model MBP originally shipped with macOS Sierra and this keyboard shortcut is designed to install the version of macOS that originally shipped with your Mac.*

To do this:

Fully shut down your MBP
Power up your MBP again but immediately press and hold the ShiftOption⌘R
Keep the keys down until you see either an Apple logo or spinning globe appear on screen (Note: If you have a firmware password set on your system, then let go of the keys when the password prompt appears)
Once the Utilities window appears you'll be in macOS Recovery Mode

Now choose to reinstall macOS and follow the prompts.

IMPORTANT - If you already have data stored on your internal drive you should do a backup first!

* For users of older Mac models this option will install the closest version of macOS still available to the original that shipped with it.


prevent preview.app from automatically starting slideshow when switching to fullscreen view

This might happen if you are confusing the keyboard shortcuts in the Preview application: use Cmd-Ctrl-F (Enter Full Screen), not Cmd-Shift-F (Slide Show).


External monitor not detected with MacBook Pro

From Apple: Can the HDMI port drive analog displays (VGA displays, for example) using adapters?

  No. The HDMI port will only drive digital connections (such as DVI)
  using the adapter that came with the Mac. The HDMI port cannot be used
  for analog displays such as VGA. You can purchase a Mini DisplayPort
  to VGA adapter separately to drive analog displays.

In addition to the actual digital signal, an HDMI port has a few optional pins for legacy analog support. Apple doesn't bother sending an analog signal to HDMI, so an HDMI to VGA adapter receives nothing.


Can't select Photos library. Click Choose Library, nothing happens

That Library is showing as a .migratedlibrary file, which means it's already been 'translated' to Photos format & can no longer be opened in Photos.

The contents must be in one of your other libraries in the list, or if on a remote disk, you may have to open it fro the `Other Library…' button.
By default, the new Photos Library will be in the same location as the old iPhoto Library it was imported from.

From How Photos for Mac handles iPhoto imports

  So, when Photos migrates an iPhoto library, it changes the file extension on the iPhoto library package to .migratedphotolibrary and makes a hard link to all iPhoto media assets in its own library package, using the same directory structure as iPhoto.


Move external iTunes library files to different location without losing metadata

The locations are hard-coded, absolute not relative, so you need to find & replace
file:///Volumes/Macintosh HD/Users/[yourname]/Music/iTunes/
with the actual path - file:///Volumes/mountpoint...

This would have been a single step find/replace on the iTunes Library.xml [which it is far better to keep in its original location even without the added complexity of a remote write] using something like TextWrangler/BBEdit if the library was consolidated to start with. As it isn't, you might have multiple steps to do, depending on how broad your "path-scape" is.
.

It's been quite some time since I did this - the next step doesn't seem to work the same as it used to - see iTunes: Moving iTunes Files (Self Managed)

Breaking the .itl no longer works with recent iTunes versions - it just complains it's damaged & makes a new one itself, which loses everything.
I think last time I tried it I think I just left the .itl as it was & it ran OK (I'm open to correction on that if someone cares to try it, I'm not going to do it 'just to see' ;)

Related & possibly worth a read-through too, for general background & it also covers recent iTunes variations in method - How to share an iTunes library between Mac & Windows?

BTW, I think you ought to still be able to use 'Organise Media' using a remote library - though mine is just on a different drive, not a different server, so I haven't tested that scenario.


You can't. The API that the app uses is to be turned off and will no longer be able to be used to provide information to the app, thus making the app non-functional.


Reboot and Reinstall OSx Lion with Snow Leopard currently installed on my Mac

To boot from the DVD:

  Press and hold the C key on your keyboard immediately upon hearing the startup chime. Your Mac should start up from the OS X installer CD/DVD media.
  (source)


How to clean boot menu and check/clean mbr

Credit goes to @bmike for answering this one, but I wanted to answer it here so the question is closed. Marking as community wiki so that I'm not taking credit.

In this situation you will want to use the recovery tool built into the system's firmware, called "OS X Recovery". You can read Apple's documentation here. To start OS X Recovery, hold Cmd+R while you press the power button to turn on your computer.

This will download a full copy of OS X to install, so you'll probably want to hook your computer up to ethernet if it's at all available.


Finally got an answer from Apple:

Is this still not implemented 4 years later?

Yes )-: Please file a bug about this, describing the specific use case you have in mind.
http://developer.apple.com/bugreporter/
Quinn "The Eskimo!" eskimo1@apple.com
Apple Developer Relations, Developer Technical Support, Core OS/Hardware

Update: I raised the issue and got a reply saying it was a duplicate of Bug ID# 5553678, but I can't view this.


How do I work with (minimize/resize/un-float) a captive portal?

Because of System Integrity Protection (SIP), a feature introduced in El Capitan to protect system files from modification by malware, you can’t just move the file if you have that feature enabled (it’s on by default).

So, first, you have to disable SIP on this case

Follow these steps to disable SIP:

Restart your Mac.
Before OS X starts up, hold down Command-R and keep it held down until you see an Apple icon and a progress bar. Release. This boots you into Recovery.
From the Utilities menu, select Terminal.
At the prompt type exactly the following and then press Return: csrutil disable
The terminal should display a message that SIP was disabled.
From the Apple menu, select Restart.

After this,

In the Finder, select Go > Go To Folder.
Enter /System/Library/CoreServices and hit return.
Find Captive Network Assistant, click it, and rename it with an extra word, like Captive Network Assistant Do Not Launch and press return.
Enter your password when prompted to make the change.

After this again, enable SIP, following the first process shared on this comment just by typing csrutil enanble


How to display network statistics in the menu bar?

As you can see in your screenshot, that Mac has a number of applications that use the menu bar - I can recognise 1Password, Docker, Dropbox, CreativeCloud. But, in addition, an app can display changing information in the menubar. It can, like the one shown, collect system information and display it - in this case network stats and probably disk use/free information.
I don't recognise the one being used here, but I thoroughly recommend iStat Menus which as well as showing configurable statistics in the menu bar, shows further detail in dropdowns.
The application's home page iStat Menus shows dropdowns and menu bars.
This is the app against which all menu bar displays are measured.
I am an enthusiastic user.


How to setup mail when using iCloud plus 2 external mail accounts

What I do is forward my other mail accounts to my @me.com address.


Can I power on my old MacBook with a no-lights battery?

Normally you should be able to, and even Apple says so, by providing a warning and a CPU clock speed reduction.

If it does not work on your computer.....

You might be having a problem with the MagSafe adapter or SMC.

Your machine should turn on normally whether or not the battery is in it.

The only problem you'll have with the battery removed is that machine will run slower - but that's by design.

When you get the new battery, make sure you try another MagSafe adapter to be safe.

Try another SMC reset by Holding the power button for 5 or 10 seconds.


Incorrect external monitor resolution detected, true resolution not available

It might be the Monitor profile used by Mojave that needs repair.

Open the Color sync Utility in the Utility Folder

Verify you Monitor is showing correctly under devices.

Use the Profile First Aid.


Thank you for providing a picture. Unfortunately, based on the image, I can definitively tell you this is a hardware problem. Specifically, your GPU has failed.

If you wish to confirm this at home, you can do so by taking a screen shot the next time it occurs. If the distortion appears on your screenshot, then the problem is with your graphics processor and you to get your logic board replaced. If the distortion does not appear on the screenshot, then the issue is with your display and you need to get your display replaced. Either way, it's a hardware issue for which no online troubleshooting or solution exists*

*As a makeshift solution to failing/failed GPUs, many users have resorted to using gfxCardStatus to force the discrete GPU off.

Best of luck.


How to know the macOS version used for most recent clean install?

I've Looked for clues in /Library/Receipts/InstallHistory.plist

On a few computers I checked, they typically start with a "com.apple.pkg.OSInstall" package. It doesn't mention OS version, but scrolling down to most recently applied OS updates, and it may become clear what the OS version was by the updates.

BTW, all bets are off if the drive was cloned from another computer.


finder is slow, disk access is slow, 1.5 million files on disk

How much space is left on your harddrive?
Alway try te keep 15% free space. If for example you have 500GB, and you already use 470GB, this will usually seriously slow down your mac, there should at least be 75GB of free space.

More info: http://macs.about.com/od/faq1/f/How-Much-Free-Drive-Space-Do-I-Need.htm


Macbook Air hard drive - nearly full warning

I would recommend looking at using a utility like CleanMyMac 3 to go through and perform some system maintenance and free up extra disk space. The first time I ran it on my system I freed up about 20GB of hard drive space by getting rid of language packs that weren’t needed by my system. It will also go through and clean out duplicate and unneeded version of photos from your iPhoto library.

There are several other apps around that can do the same thing (MacCleanse, Dr. Cleaner), but I’ve found CleanMyMac to be the best of the bunch.

Also, make sure to reboot your system at least once a week. This will let the Mac OS do it’s own system cleanup that doesn’t happen until you reboot your computer.


How to use SSH keys and disable password authentication

I was editing the wrong configuration file! Instead of /etc/ssh_config, I edited private/etc/sshd_config. I think this probably would have also worked if I edited /etc/sshd_config as per the updated answer from @GhostLyrics, but I didn't test that yet so I can't say for sure. After that, I restarted the service with sudo launchctl stop com.openssh.sshd and then sudo launchctl start com.openssh.sshd and I was able to get my desired behavior. Here is the resource where I found the pertinent information: https://superuser.com/questions/364304/how-do-i-configure-ssh-on-os-x

Here are the config options I changed:

PermitRootLogin no
PasswordAuthentication no
PermitEmptyPasswords no
ChallengeResponseAuthentication no

After that I was successfully able to generate SSH keys on my client computer, moved the public key to ~/.ssh/authorized_keys on the Mac and set permissions for that file to 644.

It is important to note that those permissions are for my public key. My private key permissions are set to 600 on my client computer. This is really important if you have both your public and private key in your ~/.ssh folder and there are multiple users on the system. If your private key permissions are set to 644 then any user could read your private key and impersonate you. Also, the permissions for the ~/.ssh folder should be 700.


extracting multiple zips/rar into same folder

One real easy way is to use unzip on the command line.

1) If the ZIP file doesn't contain any folder hierarchy, simply files at the "root" level of the compressed file, do this:

open Terminal and cd to the folder with the ZIP file
unzip zipfile.zip

-> The files are extracted directly into that folder.

2) If the ZIP file does contain a folder hierarchy, but you still want to extract everything in the same folder (usually not a good idea, as the hierarchy is there probably for a reason), do the same thing as above, but with -j modifier for unzip, which means "junk paths (do not make directories)":

unzip -j zipfile.zip

Edit: the same approach works for RAR files, except you'd need to install the command-line unrar tool yourself (unlike with unzip), and I'm not sure what the equivalent for unzip's -j modifier is.


You need to understand how mounting works. In short what you want is to:

Mount your smb:// drive on a certain location.
Use your file:// command as you always do.

When you use 'Connect to Server' - ⌘K, your drive should be mounted somewhere in /Volumes/. So now you can use file://Volumes/drive-name.

For normal use, like this, a mounted network filesystems can be treated just like a 'local' file system. There is no difference in use.

How to mount network drives automatically is another story and can be found on SO, for example https://superuser.com/a/367730/246895


While this is theoretically possible, if you care about frame rates at all you would not do Remote Desktop for gaming. You would have a hard time getting frame rates above 15fps.

Remote Desktop is meant for logging into work computers from home, or controlling headless servers, not gaming.


The option specifies where the root certificates of the trusted issuers are located.

On OS X they are stored in the Keychain.

You can extract them with

$ sudo security find-certificate -a -p /System/Library/Keychains/SystemRootCertificates.keychain > /etc/pki/tls/certs/ca-bundle.crt

And then

smtpd_tls_CAfile = /etc/pki/tls/certs/ca-bundle.crt

Edit Keep in mind that when Apple updates the root certificates in the Keychain you will have to export them again.


Is there a way to see what time a message was sent?

Generally, no.
The only easy source of send times is visual inspection on the sending device.
Forensic analysis of the message database would be needed to get more precision or data that is not displayed by the iOS app.

https://blog.elcomsoft.com/2020/10/the-forensic-view-of-imessage-security/

There will be server logs in some cases (SMS being less secure / more logged than Apple as a carrier using iCloud and your AppleID for delivery) as well, but on the receiving device you will likely need to jailbreak it and dig into the database and log files.


The "spreadsheet" way to do this is to do the division in another column.

Lets say your data is column A, starts a row 1 and goes to row 10 (that's A1:A10 in spreadsheet reference language).

In a unused column, row 1, you could enter:

=A1/10

And the copy and paste that formula from row 2 down to rows 2 through 10 in that column. Numbers will automatically increment the A1 reference in the pasted cells.

The divisor (10 in this case) can also be a reference if you like. Just make it a fixed reference so it doesn't automatically increment as you copy and paste. Lets say B1 holds the value you want to divide everything in column A by. You'd use:

=A1/$B$1

as the formula and copy and paste. The $ in front of the column name and row number tell Numbers not to auto-adjust those values as you paste the formula around to different cells.

Here is an example Numbers '09 file.

Column A is data
Column B is A divided by 10
Column C is A divided by whatever value is in E2, change E2 and you'll see the values in Column C change.


How am I supposed to install El Capitan on a new SSD without recovery partition?

You said you downloaded the installer. Did you download it to another Mac? If so, mount the .DMG, copy the install file to the Applications folder, then follow this documentation:

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201372

Once the new SSD is installed, and you've created the bootable USB drive - insert USB drive into the Mac, start it up holding the alt (option) key, and select the Install El Captian drive.

Format the SSD from Disk Utility, then install.


Is there a way to use an account for FileVault2 volume-decryption without logging it on?

I'm not aware of the key-combination.
However, here's how I did this on Mavericks (10.9.2):

Click System Preferences
Click Users & Groups
If the Lock icon is closed, click the lock icon and authenticate
Click Login Options
Locate Network Account Server and click Edit (if there is a network server) or Join (if there is not)
Click Open Directory Utility
If the Lock icon is closed, click the lock icon and authenticate
Click Directory Editor icon
Search for the user you want to restrict
Click the user name
Expand Authentication Authority
Click the + - to the right of Authentication Authority, not the one at the bottom of the window!
Change new value to ;UserDisabled;
Click Save

The user can unlock the FileVault, but cannot login.


Late 2013 Macbook Pro Versus a Later Build

Without knowing which i7, how much RAM, and what type of internal storage your 2013 system and the 2015 system you're looking at has, I can't really compare the performance of the machines. If you replace your old machine with a 2015 i7 and with at least the same amount of RAM and the same type of storage, the new one will be noticeably faster, particularly in GPU-intensive applications like Photoshop, Final Cut Pro, AutoCAD, video games, etc.

The new MacBook also has a Force Touch trackpad, which definitely feels different than the old style trackpad.

You'll also get improved battery life (from an improved battery, improved efficiency, and the fact that batteries lose capacity over time, so any new battery of equal or greater capacity will last longer than any old one.)


Time Machine in the "Cleaning Up..." state forever

I noticed that cleaning up old backups can be very slow. In my case, I can hear my external backup drive rattling along, so I know it's doing something.
You can check on progress by opening the latest backup log. Look for the directory with a name ending in .inProgress on your backup drive. Within it, open the log file with the most recent timestamp:
$ sudo less +F "/Volumes/MacBackup/Backups.backupdb/MacBook Pro/2020-08-05-163227.inProgress/.Backup.618330747.626060.log"

Substitute MacBackup, MacBook Pro and the backup/log path. If you're not familiar with less, press Ctrl-C, followed by q to exit.
The log file will tell you how much space needs to be cleared and which of the backups it's (very slowly) deleting. Looking at the amount of free space on your backup disk should give you an idea of how far along it is.


What is preventing my Macbook Pro 2012 from going to sleep?

Just found what was wrong. It was the connector to the mother base which wasn't well connected.


Is the "Battery Is Not Charging" state harmful?

The MacBook Pro (Retina, 13-inch, Early 2015) comes with a 60W MagSafe 2 Power Adapter and the MacBook Air (11 and 13-inch, Mid 2011) comes with a 45W MagSafe Power Adapter and according Find the right power adapter and cord for your Mac notebook "You can use a compatible higher wattage adapter without issue, but it won't make your computer charge faster or operate differently. Lower wattage adapters will not provide enough power."  So since the MacBook Pro (Retina, 13-inch, Early 2015) is designed for a 60W adapter the 45W adapter you're using isn't providing enough power to charge the battery is why you get the "Battery Is Not Charging" message however because its drawing enough to keep running without lowering the percentage of charge I don't see an issue although I personally would not make a habit of it.


File works manually; does not work with cron; setting PATH makes it worse

You do not need the glob (*). Try the following for the photoscript2.sh script.

#! /bin/sh
find /Users/username/Pictures/Photos\ Library.photoslibrary/Masters/2019 \
    ! \( -name '.*' -o -name 2019 \) \
    -mtime -7 -exec cp {} /Users/username/Documents/Recently\ Added/ \;


When do I need to create Apple Developer Account?

A free Apple Developer Program membership now allows you to develop apps and test them on your devices. A paid membership allows distribution.

A developer account is not required to start developing apps, however not having a developer account whilst developing the app can have the following downsides:

You will not be able to build the app on a real device (unless you jailbreak).
You will not have access to the latest developer builds of iOS and Xcode, or their documentation (a free account will only allow access to the latest public builds and their documentation).
You will not have full access to the Apple Developer Forums (a free account will allow this for certain sections).
You will not be able to create provisioning profiles for services such as PhoneGap Build.

As per above, certain features are accessible with a free Apple Developer Account. You can sign up at Apple Developer Registration.


How can I enter the found file finder in Spotlight?


(Re)install Mac OS and install default needed apps

I'd recommend looking into an MDM system, that is the way Apple expects fleets of Macs to be administered. There is a bare-bones version available in Apple's Server app, but there are also commercial solutions from companies like Jamf, Mosyle, or Cisco's Meraki.

With an MDM system you can have settings (including VPN and email) and application installs based on the individual machine or user, or groups of machines or users. Any changes you make are pushed over the network.

When a new person comes on board, you should be able to just wipe the old employee's device, give the new person a user name and password and let them go through the Apple system setup, which for a managed device includes any settings you have defined for that user or device.

Anything available in the App Store is easy to manage, Apple has a volume purchase program that allows you to assign App Store apps to either machines (no Apple ID required by user) or to the user (the user will need an Apple ID). It looks like Apple is going to start offering managed Apple IDs for businesses in the near future.

The commercial MDMs usually have a solution for non App Store apps, but I think Adobe Creative Cloud can be a problem for MDM systems (you may not be surprised to hear that). The solution for me has been to move to CC for Teams which gives you a admin account and a license pool that you can assign users to and then Adobe sends them an invite to install the software. It is more expensive, but is the best option for managing CC licenses in a business.

Getting setup with an MDM can be a little involved, but the commercial MDM providers should be able to assist you with all of the steps.


Ok I found out the easiest way, total time takes about 10 minutes...

First, move or delete all your old photo libraries in Photos app for Mac. I deleted mine because I had 3rd party backups, obviously you shouldn't delete them if you don't. If you move it and it still doesnt show up, just hold the Option key while you start Photos.

Open it fresh, and it will say it can't locate your library. Click "Create New".. name it something like GARBAGE or DELETEME.

Then, go to settings and click 'set as system library', and also enable iCloud sync in settings (make your settings look like photo below). This will download all the photos fresh to this library (which doesnt have existing files so you dont have to worry about duplicates and such).

It will say "Updating X photos", make sure you wait for this step to finish.

However, when it starts saying "Downloading 10,000 photos" then you can move to the next step, you dont have to wait as long as it gets past the 'updating' step.

Select all with command+A, then delete. Go to your trash and then delete again by clicking Delete All.

It will still be stuck saying "downloading 10,000 photos" although they should now start deleting from iCloud (It took about 5 mins for me before it started removing them)

Once its done removing from iCloud web, just close Photos, and delete the temp library on your harddrive. From there, hold option when you start Photos and choose 'create new'. Youll be starting with a 100% fresh iCloud now.


Watch YouTube without suggestions and ads on IPad

Yes (sometimes - and no, sometimes). Nothing will be able to block everything Google and YouTube throws at you long term. Short term, you can very likely get excellent relief from some and perhaps all that irritates you or erodes your privacy while you consume their content and avoid their advertising.
iOS has content blockers that work equivalently to an extension, but differently than extension due to OS architecture.
Since iOS is sandboxed and inter-app communication and code injection are much more restricted than on macOS, you’ll want to try a few of the commercially available blockers and perhaps try your hand at writing one if you are so inclined. It’s free to write these with Xcode and install your app on your device.

https://developer.apple.com/documentation/safariservices/creating_a_content_blocker

I use FireFox rarely on iOS and I pay for and benefit greatly from OneBlocker. Brave browser is great. Lastly, consider removing google as your search engine on every last device in your home network. Use Duck Duck Go for a while and you’ll see less targeted advertisements. You may or may not like that, tbh, but over time it can help immensely without resorting to something like https://pi-hole.net/ .

https://apps.apple.com/us/app/1blocker-for-safari/id1365531024
https://apps.apple.com/us/app/brave-private-web-browser/id1052879175
https://DuckDuckGo.com

It does a marvelous job on YouTube as does adding the request for no cookies to the URL for YouTube. Just keep in mind, google makes billions in getting you to see their ads, so it’s a bit of an arms race between people attempting to block and people attempting to track. The reality is the Surveillance-Advertising Complex is massively funded and has hired some of the best software minds of a generation to track you and boost their revenue. Until and unless regulation or cultural shift alters the balance of google, It will neither be easy nor completely effective to escape all of their efforts - but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try.

https://youtube-nocookies.com

https://www.cnet.com/news/youtubes-new-nocookie-feature-continues-to-serve-cookies/

Since you edited in some very specific information - here’s how I block hot network questions from the side bar here on iOS using 1Blocker. You can very well do the same in YouTube if you find the tag they use to serve sidebar ads. The developer of the extension you use might help you if you can’t figure out what they did, there.


How to back up two internal hard drives using Time Machine?

No, you cannot do this with Time Machine unfortunately.

What you can actually do is backup both internal SSD drives to the same external drives - or backup both internal SSD drives to two different external drives.

However, you cannot setup it up so that SSD #1 only is backed up to external drive #1, and SSD #2 only to external drive #2.


Extend wireless network with Airport Express or Extreme?

TimeMachine isn't supported and doesn't like to work with drives connected to non-TimeCapsule or non-Servers.
The express USB only works for printers, not drives. (no file server included)
Turning off WiFi on the ISP router and letting Airport run either in bridge mode (letting the ISP router handle everything) is the easiest option. I prefer to have my ISP router be a bridge and let the AirPort run the network to take advantage of it's software and logging / graphing tools. Some ISP don't like that and you need them to modify their upstream device - but most just work fine.

The benefits I see on AirPort are having one strong signal (turning off the ISP WiFi) and less interference as well as simplicity of managing the AirPort software.