Folder Action for automatic file name cleanup

Using Automator, in macOS Sierra 10.12.5, I created a Folder Action with a single Run AppleScript action, using the AppleScript code below, and set it to run on my Downloads folder. (It has also been tested and works on OS X 10.8.5 and OSX 10.11.6.)

Open Automator and select File > New, then Folder Action.
Add a Run AppleScript action, replacing the default code with the code below.
Modify the set theBlackWhiteList to POSIX path of ... line of code, accordingly as necessary.
Set the Folder Action receives files and folders added to Choose folder list box to your Downloads folder.
Before saving the Folder Action, create the plain text data file that will be used by this Folder Action.

It's not absolutely necessary to do it before, however, if you are going to save it in Downloads, I would create the file first.

Save the Automator Folder Action workflow.

Read the comments, included with the code, for what's necessary to use this code in the Folder Action.

To test the Folder Action, open Terminal and cd Downloads, then create  the test file with, touch 'Youtube_MyVideofile_(1080p_30fps_H264-128kbit_AAC).mp4', which will create a zero length file that will be processed by the Folder Action and be renamed to MyVideofile 1080p H264.mp4 as shown in Downloads in Finder or Terminal with: ls -l My*.mp4

AppleScript code:

--  #
--  #   The AppleScript code of this Folder Action requires a data file, which is laid out as follows:
--  #
--  #   Lines 1 and 3 state what are on lines 2 and 4 respectively. (These lines are just reminders.)
--  #
--  #   Line 2 must start with a single space character ' ', followed by the comma delimiter ','!
--  #   Line 2 must also not contain an underscore character '_' as it's used as a 'text item delimiter',
--  #   and all of them will be removed and replaced with a single space, as appropriate, in the last
--  #   part of the processing to form the final filename.
--  #
--  #       This is used as part of the overall logic applied to creating the finished filename, so as to
--  #       only have a single space character between words of the filename, while ensuring the finished
--  #       filename does not start with nor have directly before the filename extension, a space character.
--  #
--  #   Line 2 is a list of strings that will be removed from the filename. (The Black List.)
--  #   Line 4 is a list of filename extensions of the file types that will be processed. (The White List.)
--  #
--  #   Modify lines 2 and 4 as appropriate, while leaving the single space character at the start of line 2,
--  #   and do not include an underscore character in Line 2.
--  #
--  #   Example contents of the plain text data file:
--  #

--  #   # Do Not Remove This Line!: The next line contains a comma-delimited list of strings to be removed:
--  #    ,Youtube,30fps,128kbit,-,AAC,(,)
--  #   # Do Not Remove This Line!: The next line contains a comma-delimited list of file extensions to process:
--  #   mp4,mkv,avi,flv,flac

--  #   For the purposes of testing this script, the name of the data file used is
--  #   "FileNameExtensionBlackWhiteCleanupList.txt", and is in the User's Downloads folder.
--  #   Obviously you can name it whatever you want and place it where appropriate access exists.
--  #   Modify the 'set theBlackWhiteList to POSIX path of ...' line of code, accordingly as necessary.

on run {input, parameters}
    try
        set theBlackWhiteList to POSIX path of (path to downloads folder) & "FileNameExtensionBlackWhiteCleanupList.txt"

        --  #   Make sure the data file exists and set its contents to the target variables.

        tell application "System Events"
            if (exists file theBlackWhiteList) then
                tell current application
                    set theBlackWhiteList to (read theBlackWhiteList)
                    set AppleScript's text item delimiters to {","}
                    set theStringsToRemoveList to text items of paragraph 2 of theBlackWhiteList as list
                    set theFileExtensionsList to text items of paragraph 4 of theBlackWhiteList as list
                    set AppleScript's text item delimiters to {}
                end tell
            else
                tell current application
                    activate
                    display dialog "The required file, " & quoted form of theBlackWhiteList & ", is missing!" & ¬
                        linefeed & linefeed & "Replace the missing file from backup." buttons {"OK"} ¬
                        default button 1 with title "File Not Found" with icon 0 -- (icon stop)
                    return
                end tell
            end if
        end tell

        --  # Process the target file(s) added to the target folder, that have the target filename extensions.

        tell application "Finder"
            set theFileList to input
            repeat with thisFile in theFileList
                set theFileName to name of thisFile
                set theOriginalFileName to theFileName
                --  #   Get the filename extension of thisfile.
                set AppleScript's text item delimiters to {"."}
                set thisFileExtension to last text item of theFileName as string
                --  #   Only process if thisFileExtension is in theFileExtensionsList.
                if theFileExtensionsList contains thisFileExtension then
                    repeat with i from 1 to count of theStringsToRemoveList
                        set AppleScript's text item delimiters to item i of theStringsToRemoveList
                        set theTextItems to text items of theFileName
                        set AppleScript's text item delimiters to {"_"}
                        set theFileName to theTextItems as string
                        set AppleScript's text item delimiters to {}
                    end repeat
                    --  #
                    --  #   Using the example filename in the OP, 'Youtube_MyVideofile_(1080p_30fps_H264-128kbit_AAC).mp4',
                    --  #   at this point in the processing it would be, '__MyVideofile__1080p___H264_____.mp4', and while one
                    --  #   probably could continue to use AppleScript 'text items' and 'text item delimiters', nonetheless I can do
                    --  #   it easier using 'sed' to finish getting the final filename. This is also part of the reason I started the
                    --  #   'theStringsToRemoveList' with a single space character and do not allow an underscore character in Line 2.
                    --  #
                    tell current application
                        set theFileName to (do shell script "printf " & quoted form of theFileName & " | sed -E -e 's/[_]{2,}/_/g' -e 's/^_//' -e 's/_\\./\\./g' -e 's/_/ /g'")
                    end tell
                    --  #   Only change the filename if it has actually changed by the processing above.
                    --  #   There's no sense in telling Finder to name a file the same name it already is.
                    if theFileName is not equal to theOriginalFileName then
                        try
                            set the name of thisFile to theFileName
                        end try
                    end if
                    --  #   At this point the final filename, using the example filename, would be 'MyVideofile 1080p H264.mp4'.
                    --  #   This assumes this filename didn't already exist and why the 'do shell script' command is within a 'try'
                    --  #   statement. Additional coding and logic could be applied to increment the filename if it already existed.
                end if
            end repeat
            set AppleScript's text item delimiters to {}
        end tell

    on error eStr number eNum
        set AppleScript's text item delimiters to {}
        display dialog eStr & " number " & eNum buttons {"OK"} default button 1 with icon caution
        return
    end try
end run

Example contents of the plain text data file used by the Folder Action:

# Do Not Remove This Line!: The next line contains a comma-delimited list of strings to be removed:
 ,Youtube,30fps,128kbit,-,AAC,(,)
# Do Not Remove This Line!: The next line contains a comma-delimited list of file extensions to process:
mp4,mkv,avi,flv,flac

The logic behind the renaming process:

Using the variable theStringsToRemoveList, which starts with a single space character followed by the comma-delimiter, in conjunction with the underscore character as the text item delimiter, turns all spaces along with all other strings to be removed, into underscores during the AppleScript's text items and text items delimiters portion  of the code.

This is done so sed can be used to replace all concurrent underscore characters with a single underscore character, then remove the leading  underscore, if it exists, followed by an underscore preceding the dot before the filename extension, if it exists, and finally all remaining single underscore characters are replaced with a single space character.

set theFileName to (do shell script "printf " & quoted form of theFileName & " | sed -E -e 's/[_]{2,}/_/g' -e 's/^_//' -e 's/_\\./\\./g' -e 's/_/ /g'")

set theFileName to - The variable theFileName will contain the output of the do shell script command.
do shell script "_command_" - Runs the command in a shell.
printf " & quoted form of theFileName & " | - Prints the value of the variable theFileName, and pipes | it to the sed command.
sed -E -e 's/[_]{2,}/_/g' -e 's/^_//' -e 's/_\\./\\./g' -e 's/_/ /g'
sed - Stream EDitor.
-E - Interpret regular expressions as extended (modern) regular expressions rather than basic regular expressions (BRE’s). The re_format(7) manual page fully describes both formats.
-e command - Append the editing commands specified by the command argument to the list of commands.
s/[_]{2,}/_/g

s - Substitute pattern flag.
[_]{2,} - Match a single character present in the list, matches the character _ literally (case sensitive).
{2,} - Quantifier — Matches between 2 and unlimited times, as many times as possible, giving back as needed (greedy).
/_/ - Replaces matched pattern with a single character _ literally (case sensitive).
g - Global pattern flag g modifier, matches all occurrences of the pattern, (doesn't return after first match).

s/^_//

^ - Asserts position at start of the string.
_ - Matches the character _ literally (case sensitive).
// - Replaces the matched pattern with literally nothing.

s/_\\./\\./g

_ - Matches the character _ literally (case sensitive).
\\. - Matches the character . literally (case sensitive).
/\\./ - Replaces the matched pattern with the character . literally (case sensitive).

Note: The double back-slash \\ is necessary when use in a do shell script command, however, from the command line a single back-slash \ would be used to make the character that follows a literal . character, in this case.

s/_/ /g

Replaces the character _ literally, with a character  literally (case sensitive).

Note that the info above is abbreviated in places, however, it should provide a bit of an understanding of what's happening.

On a added note, if you want to also ensure capitalization of each word in the filename, then replace the existing do shell script command with the do shell script command below, which has an added awk command that receives the output from sed to preform the capitalization. Note that I found this awk command on the Internet and tested it that it works, however, will not be adding an explanation of how it functions for lack of time.

set theFileName to (do shell script "printf " & quoted form of theFileName & " | sed -E -e 's/[_]{2,}/_/g' -e 's/^_//' -e 's/_\\./\\./g' -e 's/_/ /g' | awk '{for(i=1;i<=NF;i++){ $i=toupper(substr($i,1,1)) substr($i,2) }}1'")

Update to address .'s in the filename, per the comments.

In the plain text data file, on Line 2, add a ., after the leading space and its comma-delimiter. In other words, the first item in the list on Line 2 is a blank space followed by a comma-delimiter followed by . followed by a comma-delimiter and so on.

Add the following lines of code after the repeat loop that directly before the comment starting with --  #   Using the example filename in the OP. ... which is above the tell current application ... do shell script block of code.

            set AppleScript's text item delimiters to {"_" & thisFileExtension}
            set theTextItems to text items of theFileName
            set AppleScript's text item delimiters to {"_"}
            set theFileName to (theTextItems as string) & "." & thisFileExtension
            set AppleScript's text item delimiters to {}

By adding the ., to line 2 in the plain text data file, all . in the filename are replaced with _ in the original code. Then with the extra lines of code above, it replaces e.g. _mp4 with .mp4, or . and whatever the actual filename extension is.

Now when it gets to the do shell script command there is only the . for the filename extension and all the underscores are process out of the name as they should.

Obviously the way the original code is coded, underscores cannot be a part of the final filename, and this modification to the original code doesn't change that.


Turns out, I have an intel graphics card and CUDA only works with nvidia....


There are several choices :

Folx :

  Folx is a free download manager for Mac OS X with a true Mac-style
  interface. It offers convenient downloads managing, flexible settings,
  etc. Folx has a unique system of sorting and keeping the downloaded
  content.

iGetter:

  iGetter is a full featured download manager and accelerator. With
  iGetter you can get the most out of your Internet connection be it
  dial-up, wireless, cable, DSL, T1 and other high end broadband
  connections. iGetter can greatly improve the speed of your downloads
  using segmented (accelerated) downloading.

Leech (paid one) : clean UI.

  Every modern browser has its own download functionality, so why should
  you use a separate application for handling downloads in the first
  place? Because Leech works better than any built-in download manager.

jDownloader 2

  JDownloader is a free, open-source download management tool with a
  huge community of developers that makes downloading as easy and fast
  as it should be. Users can start, stop or pause downloads, set
  bandwith limitations, auto-extract archives and much more. It's an
  easy-to-extend framework that can save hours of your valuable time
  every day!

 - Fat Pipe: (free)

  Most servers and internet service providers limit the speed a single
  connection can have. We can bypass these limits by splitting a
  download task up into many smaller chunks. This guarantees that you
  will fully saturate your internet connection.

http://fatpipeapp.com/media/demo.mp4


There is a link in the article you mentioned where it says the following:

  "The Google Drive app for iPhone and iPad lets you view items you've stored in Google Drive with your device even when it isn't connected to the Internet or a mobile network. Offline editing isn’t currently supported."

Emphasis added

http://support.google.com/drive/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=107975


How to write in Georgian on your iPhone?

If you do a search for "Georgian" in the App Store you will find any number of apps, both free and paid, for adding a Mkhreduli keyboard to your iPhone.

Only having a passing familiarity with the script I couldn't give you any expert recommendation. Try a couple of the free ones.


macOS Catalina 10.15 onwards

Go to System Preferences -> Keyboard -> Shortcuts -> App Shortcuts
Click on the '+' icon
Set the fields to tile a window to the left or right. For eg:

Application: All Applications
Menu Title: Tile Window to Left of Screen
Keyboard Shortcut: Shift + ⌘ + L

Your newly created shortcut is now visible in the dropdown menu over the full screen button!

Note: You need to exit fullscreen to be able to use the split screen shortcut.


Mac Sierra won't boot - SmartBattery: finished polling type 4

Had the same issue and found the solution here: https://discussions.apple.com/thread/7787207?start=0&tstart=0

Quotes:

  Now that I look a bit more closely, the issue may be a corrupt .kext
  file as I get two busy timeout [x] (60s)  kextd wait(1): messages with
  corrupt garbage characters listed just at the start of the infinite
  SmartBattery messages.

  Not convinced the battery is really the issue as the machine will boot
  quite happily when using another boot disk or USB drive and the
  SmartBattery checks in those boot logs are really no different. To me
  it looks like the boot process has hung at the kextd and the endless
  SmartBattery messages are the OS just passing the time waiting for a
  response to the kextd daemon its never going to get.

  Your (and my) problem is because auf a KEXT file which is not
  compatible to 10.12.2 - the software isn't clever enough to ignore
  this, so you have to do it yourself. There are some ways. I made it
  this way:
  Start into Recovery HD, Open Terminal, write down:

mkdir /Volumes/"Macintosh HD"/kextbackup
cd /Volumes/"Macintosh HD"/System/Library/Extensions

  look for .kext files which are not part of the normal system

mv KEXTNAME.kext /Volumes/"Macintosh HD"/kextbackup/

  I removed the following and after this the system booted again.

Belcarra.USBLAN_netpart.kext
Belcarra.USBLAN_usbpart.kext
HuaweiDataCardDriver.kext
JMicronATA.kext
RemoteControl.USBLAN_usbpart.kext
UsbEthernetGadget.kext
USBExpressCardCantWake_Huawei.kext
vecLib.kext

  Of course everybody
  has his own not compatible kext files in this folder. Actually you
  can't do anything wrong by just moving them to another place... But I
  would recommend you not to move any of the APPLE*.kext files and the
  IO*.kext files. Other files with not that normal names, I would move
  and try to start.... At the moment my Sound is not working.. So I
  moved one kext too much, but anyway... I can write this.. in Safari on
  my Macbook Pro Retina....

EDIT: This worked for me. Note that I also had no sound but got it back after moving back "vecLib.kext" (by again returning to recovery mode and moving it back from the kextbackup-folder), so try to keep that in place from the beginning :)


Why is my iPhone prompting me to install an update meant for iPhone XS?

This is not an indication of an hacked iPhone at all.

The screenshot contains a description of the bugfixes included in a new iOS update from Apple. You do not get a personal description of only the changes that are important to you, rather they write one description that everyone gets.

For example: If you happen to be using an iPhone XR in Turkey, this change is important to you. If you don't - just ignore it.

In general updates could contain more fixes than the ones that are explicitly highlighted, so you'll want to install them even though the explicitly detailed ones aren't applicable to you.


Merging screen recordings without resampling

There is a command line tool called ffmpeg, which can be installed with any package manager such as brew or macports.
You can use concat option of ffmpeg like this:
ffmpeg -safe 0 -f concat -i listofvideos.txt -c copy output.mov

Contents of listofvideos.txt:
file 'movie1.mov'
file 'movie2.mov'
file 'movie3.mov'

-c copy makes sure the codec is copied and nothing is resampled.
More info about concat can be found here


If you want to use a non-root MacPorts installation you will have to configure your installation to do that by installing from source and specifying --with-no-root-privileges as argument to ./configure. Note that you might have to set --prefix, too, if you want to do that.

I would encourage you not to do that, for a couple of reasons, though:

Directories listed in multiple users' $PATH that are writable without superuser privileges can be used for attacks (e.g., by placing a sudo binary that will log the password there). The same can be done by malicious software running as your user in order to get your password – although one might argue it's already too late when this happens.
MacPorts can not use privilege separation without root privileges. Normally, MacPorts will drop privileges to an unprivileged "macports" user while building software to avoid rogue Makefiles to wreak havoc (or even read files) in your $HOME.
MacPorts as of version 2.2 uses OS X sandboxing capabilities to prevent ports from installing files outside of the locations MacPorts encourages. These default locations are:

/opt/local
/Applications/MacPorts
/Library/LaunchDaemons/
some locations necessary for some special ports to work, e.g., /usr/lib/pam for PAM modules.

So, in conclusion, I think a MacPorts installing using root privileges is actually safer and more secure than one not using them.

Disclaimer: Since I'm a MacPorts Developer, I might be biased.


Can't enable RemindersDebugMenu in High Sierra

The debug menu can no longer be enabled in Reminders with High Sierra.


When I send iMessages to my wife they go to either her Mac or iPhone but not both

On her iPhone and iPad both, she will need to go to the Settings App > Messages > Send & Receive. Then make sure to select her phone number on her iPad, and her associated iCloud emails on her phone. For the least amount of confusion, the selections should match.

You can configure FaceTime the same way.


You probably have a folder named /Volumes/Drobo, so it has to pick a different name to mount the drive under.  In one sense, this is fairly easy to fix: just rename/move/delete that folder, remount the drive, and you're set.

But it's probably more complicated than that because you probably have something set to automatically access something in /Volumes/Drobo, and when that doesn't exist it'll recreate it (which is probably what caused the problem in the first place -- after the port failure, the Drobo didn't remount in time, and whatever it was created an empty folder where it should've been).  So, you'll need to figure out what's recreating that folder, and get it to stop long enough to do the rename and remount operation.


Signposts is a developer feature created by Apple to help developers diagnose performance problems in applications.

Essentially developer can create a “signpost” marking the beginning and end of performance critical operations. The signpost system then automatically times these intervals and makes them available to profiling tools on the local machine.

The signpost_reporter program is used to report these timings back to Apple. I.e. it allows Apple to monitor performance on non-developer machines by sending the telemetry data from the signpost feature to Apple. For example Apple might be interested in knowing how often customers experience problems with a specific feature being too slow.

Without seeing the actual log entry, it’s not possible to say why you got a log entry for it. However rest assured that your system works just as well with and without the signpost_reporter.


homebrew: how to tell if a formula is binary

You could use brew edit ${formula_name}. That will open an editor with the formula contents. If there is a reference to a "bottle", then installing it with default settings will use that.
However, if you add an option, then homebrew will compile the software for you.


First, a few things to note:

On the Mac the files /etc/passwd and /etc/master.passwd are only consulted when the Mac is booted into single user mode.

I'm not sure what you mean by "set the master password" for the Mac. Do you mean set the password for the account 'root'?

Usually you use the passwd command to change passwords from the command line (there is no master.passwd command) but you can't use it from a script as it requires input.

To change a password in a script you need to  use the dscl command.

Here is an example :

dscl . -passwd /Users/tonyw newpass

Note that the above would have to be run as root, which means your script would have to be run by root. Otherwise you have to add authentication to the dscl command thus:

dscl . -u Admin -P adminpassword -passwd /Users/tonyw newpass

The user Admin must have administrator privileges for the Mac.

(All of this is incredibly insecure as you have passwords in plain text in a script.)

Of course to set the password for 'root' just change the tonyw to root in the above.

Have a good look at dscl(1) to understand the options in the above.


Often issues like this can be corrected by deleting the email account:

settings -> Mail, Contacts, Calendars -> [EMAIL ACCOUNT]

then scroll down and delete the account.

Then just re-add it. That usually works for me.


Restore Time Machine backup from Mac Mini to Mac Pro?

Yes, you can just use Migration Assistant to transfer your files from the old computer to the new. There's no need to create a Time Machine backup first in order to migrate data and settings.
It does not matter that one is a Mac Mini and the other is a Mac Pro.
Migration Assistant will be default allow you to transfer the data over the network. Both computers need to be on the same local network. It doesn't matter if it is a wired connection or a WiFi connection - however a wired connection is often fastest.


Installing Windows XP via Bootcamp no longer supported?

I will try to answer your question as best that I can. It is a question of timing. By 2009, Apple was shipping Macs with firmware or offered firmware upgrades that allowed Windows to be installed in BIOS/MBR mode. This firmware is stored in your Mac. The firmware does not change when you upgrade to a new version of OS X. Therefore, the version of OS X currently installed has nothing to do with whether you can run Windows on your Mac. In fact, it is possible to run Windows on your Mac without any version of OS X installed.

To install a particular version of Windows on a Mac, a few timing aspects need to be considered. The Windows installation DVD needs recognize your Macs hardware in order to install the drivers needed to install and boot to Windows. Since Windows XP was released in 2001, one should not expect the DVD (or maybe CD) to contain the drivers for the 2009 Mac models. Granted, to a certain extent, hardware can be designed to operate in a legacy mode in order to install an older operating system. When the difference is 8 years, this is difficult to do. Also, Microsoft installations allow for newer drivers to be introduced during the installation process, but this was never employed for Windows installations on Macs in 2009. Instead, Microsoft released Windows XP DVDs with Service Packs already installed. These newer DVDs contained the drivers need to allow Windows to install and boot on Macs. Once, Windows was up and running, better drivers could be installed to upgrade existing drivers and support other hardware such as the camera and sound. These drivers were part of a package referred to as "The Boot Camp Support Software". This software also provided a way to boot back to OSX and a utility to update Apple software such as iTunes. When "The Boot Camp Support Software" installs, the Windows partition is renamed BOOTCAMP. For this reason, it has become customary to refer to the Windows installation on a Mac as Boot Camp. In fact, you can rename the partition to anything after installing "The Boot Camp Support Software".

Apple's web site says you can install Windows XP on your Mac. Whether you need SP2 or SP3 included on the DVD is just a matter of timing. I do not have an answer. SP2 was released in 2004 and SP3 can out in 2008. Since SP3 was the last offered for XP, such a DVD should work for you.

Although your question did not ask about installing a newer version of Windows, I will include my thoughts anyway. Generally, Microsoft does not require new drivers for each release of Windows. For example, when upgrading Windows, the newer version just adopts the drivers from the previous version. Also, Microsoft may offer new drivers though Windows Update. Windows 10 appears to have he ability to connect to the internet and download drivers during the installation process.

Apple's web site reports your Mac can only run 32 bit XP, Vista and Windows 7. This probably is not true. You have a 2.0 GHZ Core 2 Duo 2.0 processor. I am writing this answer on a 2007 iMac with a 2.4 GHz Core 2 Duo processor. The operating systems is Windows 10 Pro 64 bit. Apple is not entirely wrong. The Boot Camp Assistant will not let you install the newer Windows operating systems, but you don't have to use the Boot Camp Assistant. I guess your complaint is the Boot Camp Assistant version that comes with El Captain OS X 10.11 will not let you install the older XP operating system. Again, the Boot Camp Assistant is just an assistant used to make windows easier to install. It does not have to be used.


What's the fastest charging power adapter for an iPhone 7 Plus?

For some reason, Apple often chooses not to include the best charging option with its devices. This is particularly odd with 9.7” iPads, which ship with a 10W power adapter. Those haven’t been available for sale from Apple since 2013.

According to the Apple Online Store, the 12W USB Power Adapter is compatible with the iPhone 7 and 7+.

Both 4.7” and 5.5” iPhones can use up to 10W power adapters to charge faster, as measured by an ammeter and System Information.

Either way, power is drawn by the “receiving” device, so there is no risk in using an adapter that provides more power. If the charger can provide the requested wattage, it does; otherwise, the highest power output is negotiated.

If you plug into a Mac’s USB port, your Mac will deliver 2.1A (10W) to iPads and to the larger iPhones (6 and above). It will deliver 500mA to WATCH and 1A to smaller iPhones (SE and lower).

I have tested this with a 2013 iMac. It is possible that newer Macs are able to provide 2.4A to iPads.

Update 2017/03/22: iPad 5 and iPad mini 4 now ship with a 12W power adapter. According to the chosen verbiage, this may be the standard going forward.

  Which power adapter should I use to charge my iPad?

  The 12.9-inch iPad Pro, 9.7-inch iPad Pro, iPad (5th generation), and
  iPad mini 4 come with a 12W USB Power Adapter. Some previous iPad
  models came with a 10W USB Power Adapter. If you need to purchase an
  additional adapter, choose a 12W adapter because it can charge all
  iPad models.


Fill handles do not operate with merged cells. You can use a formula to achieve the same effect.

Insert the following in these cells:

A1 (the merged cells A1 and A2)

1

A3 (the merged cells A3 and A4)

=A1+1

Copy and paste A3 for the rest of the column.

The following animation shows the entire procedure:


When did Apple add support for 3D models in Quick Look and Preview?

Quicklook 3d file preview was available since Mac OS 10.5 Leopard as far as I can remember. Common 3D files like OBJ and Collada DAE works out of box for quicklook and preview, Finder too will generate a nice icon for them. Pretty neat!


Why doesn’t screen capture videos doesn’t show up in Video app or any other video players in iPad?

Currently there is no way to change the default app that opens a particular file type, hyperlink, etc.

However, many 3rd party apps allow you to import and/or open photos, videos etc directly from their default locations without first having to transfer the files via iTunes or an online cloud service.

With regard to VLC, if you don't want to connect your iPad to iTunes, then your best bet is to go into the Photos app and save the videos to Files, Dropbox, Google Drive, etc. One saved, go into VLC and access the sidebar, tap on Cloud Services, and then select the appropriate option to access the video.

For example, to access a video capture on VLC, you could:

Go to Photos
Tap the video
Tap on the Share icon and select Save to Files
Navigate to where within Files you want to save the video and proceed to save it
Open VLC
Access the sidebar
Tap on Cloud Services
In the next screen tap on Cloud Services again
Open the video capture


What's the best way to deal with wmv files on iPad

Did you tried Oplayer ?

Didn't tried it with wmv but works perfectly for me on my iPad 1, with mkv and other formats, even with subtitles. I would love to try it on iPad 2 to see if the new CPU handles 720p videos :)

VLC for iOS was promising before it was removed... sigh. :/

Update 2018: VLC for Mobile is available in Apple Store.


The history is shared between my iTerm2 terminal tabs: how can I switch that off?

Executing the following should do the trick (use setopt to reenable them):

unsetopt inc_append_history
unsetopt share_history


I have used FastScripts to assign a keyboard shortcut to this script:
screencapture -i /tmp/tesseract.png
tesseract /tmp/tesseract.png stdout|tr -d \\f|pbcopy

brew install tesseract installs tesseract. tesseract prints to STDOUT when the output file name is specified as stdout. tesseract adds a form feed character to the end of the output.
Edit: tesseract isn't very accurate, so I now use Google's Cloud Vision API instead:
curl -sH"Authorization:Bearer $(gcloud auth application-default print-access-token)" -HContent-Type:application/json\;charset=utf-8 https://vision.googleapis.com/v1/images:annotate -d@<(printf %s '{"requests":[{"image":{"content":"'"$(base64 path/to/input/file.png)"'"},"features":[{"type":"TEXT_DETECTION"}]}]}')|jq -r '.responses[0].fullTextAnnotation.text'

Demo: https://cloud.google.com/vision/docs/drag-and-drop. It even works with Japanese and Chinese text.


Bottom row of system preferences (third party apps) not showing

I installed homebrew http://brew.sh/ and osquery https://osquery.io/. Then did

select * from preferences where domain like "%system%";

which showed a list of preference settings that might be interesting. ThirdPartyCount was 0, which I thought was wrong. So I backed up ~Library/Preferences/com.apple.systempreferences.plist and used XCode to edit the value to 3 (which is the value I expected). After a reboot it went back to zero.

After more googling, I found /Library/PreferencePanes contains third party preference panes. The aliases in there were all broken: because I'd manually deleted browser plugins from "/Library/Internet Plug-ins". So i deleted the really-dead aliases, re-installed Java and now the bottom row is displaying as expected. Thanks for all your help.

(footnote: AirDisplay used to have a prefpane i think but the latest version not longer has it)


iPhone 5s - receiving sound notifications at random times with no alerts, emails, ims, etc

One application you have, you set to not show any notifications, and just play sound. Go to Settings>Notifications. In the 'INCLUDE' list, disregard all that already show notifications. Check out the notification settings for the other applications. One of them is set to notify only by sound.


How do I use the record button in AppleScript?

Apparently, the Message system is not recordable in MacOS AppleScript Editor.

There is no error message, or any other feedback.  It's just a fail.
Comments from others: That being said, most people don't use that record button. You'd be better off trying Automator, or getting a utility like Keyboard Maestro that has a recording function that works better. - ChrisNorman
Very few applications are “recordable”. Messages is not one of them. Finder is one of those recordable applications. – wch1zpink


how to make everything open on external monitor

Apple has a support page which describes how to set the external monitor as your primary display.
Alternatively you can attach an external keyboard/mouse and just close your laptop.


Difference between "diskutil unmount" and "diskutil unmountDisk"?

From man diskutil:

 unmount | umount [force] device
     Unmount a single volume.  Force will force-unmount the volume (less kind to any open
     files; see also umount (8)).

 unmountDisk | umountDisk [force] device
     Unmount an entire disk (all volumes).  Force will force-unmount the volumes (less kind
     to any open files; see also umount (8)).  You should specify a whole disk, but all
     volumes of the whole disk are attempted to be unmounted even if you specify a parti-
     tion.

So diskutil unmount just ejects a single volume/partition, diskutil unmountDisk the whole disk (including all volumes/partitions).


How do I run virtual machines in Parallels Lite on Mojave?

According to this Parallels forum, Parallels no longer offers free Linux, even though their Help document says they do...


iCloud just display the photos and do not download them as the iPhone does

Photos is designed to either download every photo to your Mac when using iCloud Photo Library  or "Optimize Mac storage" which stores fewer photos on your Mac based on the amount of space you have.


RE: Can't install BASH patch: OSX 10.9.5 update installed, but system still says it is 10.9.4-Still need help

My guess from the details provided is that you don't need to apply any patches since Apple has patched bash as part of 10.9.5. If you really aren't on 10.9.5 yet, then keep reading...

Here is what an Apple-patched as of October 8, 2014 Mac should show from terminal:

mac:~ mike$ sw_vers
ProductName:    Mac OS X
ProductVersion: 10.9.5
BuildVersion:   13F34
mac:~ mike$ which bash &&  `which bash` --version
/bin/bash
GNU bash, version 3.2.53(1)-release (x86_64-apple-darwin13)
Copyright (C) 2007 Free Software Foundation, Inc.

(If you are new to terminal, just type the parts after ** mac:~ mike$** so:

sw_vers
which bash &&  `which bash` --version

After you've compared your values, you can quit the terminal app.

If your versions are not as above, I would delete your update files and start over. Download a new patch from http://support.apple.com/kb/DL1760 and then open the console app. Look on the left for a toggle button "show log list / hide log list" and show the list. Open the triangle under /var/log and click on install.log - set a marker and then run the installer package.

Watch that log for any errors relating to the manual patch.


can't update my macbook to any version later than 10.7.5

There are several resources for determining if your system will take 10.8 or newer. I did a search for "minimum system requirements for 10.8" and found plenty of sources stating that your 1.8GHz Core 2 Duo powered MacBook missed the mark. So did my MacPro1,1.
This does not mean your system has reached its end. It'll still run fine with 10.6 or 10.7.


iOS 7: How can I disable ringer for all phone numbers but one?

Try Do Not Disturb settings.   Only allow calls from Favorites and set the number you want to allow as Favorite.   Have not checked how that works with text, but will probably be handled.


Auto Pairing of iPhone with Toyota Prius

(Our Toyota RAV4 is not at home right now, otherwise I would go look in the manual to see what I did).

I know for our Toyota RAV4, that I was able to automatically pair my wife's iPhone with the car so that each time the car is turned on (and the iPhone is in range of the car), the bluetooth system takes over and lets us answer the phone through the car.

My suggestion is to look in your owner's manual and look up how to affect a default pairing. When my RAV4 comes home in a few hours, I can look up the steps we used.


How to emulate Mac OS 8 (in a way that supports CD-ROMs)

You need to use a CD/DVD Authoring software like Toast to mount the image inside the emulated classic Mac (SheepShaver). The CD mounter that is built in is not good enough to trick software that looks for the original disk. Software like Toast Mounter can though.


Error 3194 while restoring jailbroken iPod touch 4g

Make sure that all Apple-related entries are removed from your hosts file in C:\Windows\System32\drivers\etc\hosts, then put the device in DFU mode and restore it.

Connect the device to your computer and turn it off.
Hold the power button and the home button together for 10 seconds, then release the power button but keep holding the home button.
Keep holding home further and a message should appear in iTunes telling you that the connected device must be restored.


What are the software differences between a standard and plus version of an iPhone? (e.g. 7 vs 7+)

iPhone X Plus vs. iPhone X features:

Horizontal rotation on home screen, which can speed up folder browsing.
Uses regular horizontal size class when device is rotated to landscape orientation. This allows apps such as Notes to display the list of notes on the left hand side and the note details on the right-hand side in a split pane view.

iPhone 7 Plus vs. iPhone 7 features:

Bokeh effect as @tetsujin mentioned.


Dual booting Mid 2012 Macbook Pro multiple SSDs Errors

If you can't confirm your hard drive and don‘t want to overwrite you OS X drive.
You can unplugged one driver to test boot into macOS,leave only one empty hard drive on the Mac then start install.
Use option to enter the boot manager.
And you can choose 'Erase disk and install Ubuntu'.


Windows has MS Word. What does Mac have as a word processor?

Unless I’m missing something, Microsoft Word is also available for macOS. For more information, visit Welcome to the new Office for Mac!.

If you’re looking for Apple's main word processor then Pages has most of the commonly used features of MS Word. It's free from the Mac App Store. For more information on Pages generally, visit Create and collaborate on documents that are beautiful beyond words.

A couple of other options are OpenOffice and LibreOffice (both free). There's also NeoOffice (which does have a small cost but offers a number of improvements over OpenOffice and LibreOffice).

As an aside, if you’re interested in a bit of history, Microsoft Word was originally available for the Mac before it was available for Windows. More specifically, it was available for Mac in 1985, four years prior to the release of the Windows version in 1989.

If your boss or professor (or other person grading your work) uses Word, then using Word yourself can help avoid grief from possible compatibility issues that can arise when other apps export to Word format.


DVD stuck in player, doesn't show in Finder or Desktop


Deleting iCloud account with no password entered on the iCloud page

You could reset your apple id password at appleid.apple.com. After you did this you should be able to turn off "find my iPhone" in icloud's settings


Why does my iTunes play count indicate certain tracks have been listened to hundreds of times when I've only played them a few times?

Playcounts are embedded persistently in the media files.
When you share audio files, you also share their play count.


Mounting a "Mac OS Extended (Journaled, Encrypted)" drive formatted in Lion on either Mac OS X Leopard or CentOS 6

Unfortunately, Apple introduced a new technology called Core Storage to handle the new full disk encryption.  You can read about it in John Siracusa's review of OS X Lion.  This new type of volume cannot be read yet by other OS versions, but I'm sure some third party will eventually create some software that will enable reading these volumes on other operating systems.


Why sh -c 'echo -n 1' is different from bash -c 'echo -n 1'

Because apparently Mac OS is one of the systems which responds to the xpg_echo option when run in POSIX mode. Running bash as /bin/sh is equivalent to running with either --posix or setting POSIXLY_CORRECT.

The solution is to stop using echo except in cases where there can be no ambiguity. printf is the portable replacement. Never use option flags to echo, (and use printf if you do).

There are multiple incompatible historical implementations of echo which break its specification in a way that can't be fixed, and the option flags are therefore non-portable. I'm not aware of anything that currently implements POSIX echo correctly.

shopt -u xpg_echo should modify this behavior. Also as you've already discovered, not running in POSIX mode.

Also you might want to upgrade... bash 3 is getting a little crusty. Many bugs have been fixed since.


Is RAID1 volume usable while rebuilding RAID after disk failure?

Yes, rebuilding happens in the background and the volume can be accessed normally.

I/O performance might be affected, but in my own experience it's more likely the rebuilding process that takes the performance-hit—i.e. rebuilding would be faster if the volume wasn't in use.


Does iPad battery charging utility like Battery Boost Magic pro really make a difference in prolonging iPad's battery life?

No it really can't. What it can do, is show you how much battery the device has left, and hence motivate you to conserve battery with dimming the screen, and perform activities that are less battery intensive.

Apps in iOS are sandboxed heavily and consequently can't perform system-level functions that might possibly be used to conserve battery. The other problem with this sandboxing is it would likely mean any battery conservation would have to happen while the app is open, and the device unlocked. iOS 5 allows certain processes to continue running in the background, but those include things like using the accelerometer, GPS, and such. This again comes back to iOS apps not allowing access to many system-level processes.


Messages AIM account regularly stops working

I too have the same problem? MY fix? I use message with MSN, FB chat, Gtalk. I have installed Adium for AIM alone.


Multiple GUID_partition_scheme, cant boot MacOS High Sierra, and gpt command resource busy

The partition types got hosed by removing Kali Linux. Disk0s2 and disk0s3 got the wrong types. I would expect some Apple partition type for disk0s2 (HFS+/CoreStorage/APFS) and a Linux partition type for disk0s3. Disk0s4 is probably some dispensable Linux boot/swap partition.

To regain access to macOS you have to modify the partition type of disk0s2.

Boot to Internet Recovery Mode
In the menubar open Terminal.app and enter:

diskutil list
gpt -r show disk0

to get all partition and volume details of the internal SSD
Unmount all disk0 related volumes and disks (in your example that's disk2 (based on disk0s3), disk0s4 and finally disk0). Examples: diskutil unmountVolume disk0s4 or diskutil unmountDisk disk0.
Remove the APFS container disk2: diskutil ap deleteContainer disk2
Remove disk0s3 and disk0s4 (either with diskutil or gpt).
Example: diskutil eraseVolume "Free Space" Nil disk0s4
Determine the partition type of disk0s2 (How can I make my Mac partition bootable again?) and remove and re-add disk0s2 using gpt with the same size but the proper type. Considering the macOS version (10.13) and the hardware (SSD) the proper partition type is probably 7C3457EF-0000-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC (APFS) instead of FFFFFFFF-FFFF….
Expand disk0s2 with diskutil ap resizeContainer disk0s2 0.

Under certain circumstances you have to disable SIP to edit the partition table with gpt!


Keychain Won't Remember Router Administrative Password

The 'forgetfulness' is likely to be intentional.

Safari won't offer to remember any passwords etc if the page tells it not to.
I don't know the technical details of how this is accomplished, but banking pages etc won't do it either.
The 'remember' box on the page is not for Safari to remember, it's for the remote device.

There used to be a freeware extension called 'autocomplete' that would disable this [lack of] functionality in Safari, but it hasn't worked so well in recent years.
I just discovered the author now has a paid version, called StopTheMadness, still fully supported, which might do the same thing. I haven't been able to fully test it yet - just got it 5 minutes ago.


quad boot MacBook Pro (Retina, 15-inch, Mid 2014) -- will 10.11.6 -> 10.12 affect boot/partitions/etc?

You do not have Window Recovery Environment partition so you probably deserve to get clobbered during your next major Windows 10 update. Also, there is no Microsoft Reserved partition, but that is not unusual on Macs.

Installing Linux Mint without a swap partition seems like a dangerous move.

I would assume gdisk would display type 8300 and 8200 for linux and swap. You show the legacy value of 0700.

I assume you using GRUB as your boot manager. I would recommend the Mac built in Startup Manager. This would require multiple EFI partitions. Or a better alternative would be multiple small HFS+ partitions, each with a silent rEFInd installed.

Before any major upgrade, I suppose backing up the values in the GPT is a good idea. You could use the gpt command to write the GPT to the EFI partition as a text file. Also, I suppose you could copy the files in the EFI to a dmg file.

An upgrade fro 10.11.6 to 10.12.x would probably not present any major problems. Upgrading to 10.13.x can cause issues if your /dev/disk0 is a SSD. It has been reported that the macOS boot partition is converted to APFS when /dev/disk0 is a SSD.

Also, keeping a USB Windows 10 installer handy is a good idea. You never know when a change to hardware or software to require a rebuild of the BCD file.

If you need further clarification, please comment.


I believe this is what you want. Run the code in a Cocoa/AppleScript applet template in Script Editor and try it out.

set a to do shell script "echo monkey"
set window_rect to current application's NSMakeRect(40, 40, 500, 500)
set window_1 to current application's NSWindow's alloc's initWithContentRect:window_rect styleMask:15 backing:2 defer:false
set text_field to current application's NSTextField's new
text_field's setEditable:false
text_field's setDrawsBackground:false
text_field's setStringValue:a
window_1's setCollectionBehavior:(current application's NSWindowCollectionBehaviorFullScreenPrimary)
window_1's setContentView:text_field
window_1's setBackgroundColor:(current application's NSColor's blackColor)
window_1's makeKeyAndOrderFront:(current application's NSApp)


How can I expose the faces data from macOS Photos to iOS Photos?

Kind of.  The metadata is there and can be read by Photos on the iOS - I'm just not sure that there's a good way of automatically doing it and grouping them as you want.

But try this: launch Photos on your phone, hit the search magnifying glass, and start typing someone's name.  It'll give you a menu list of all of the people, locations, albums, keywords etc that match your search.

My guess is that 'smart searches' will be coming soon, where you can then save that search and then later just pull it up as though it were an album.  You can do the same in Photos on OS X but it doesn't sync that album over to iOS ... yet.


Forgot Mac password, don't have apple keyboard

See this link from Microsoft on how to use a Windows keyboard on a Mac. It is very useful for this exact issue and helps me a lot at times. To boot into recovery with a Windows keyboard you will need to hold down Ctrl and R at the start chime.


Apple's 2FA and the notion of "trusted device" and "trusted browser"

A device is trusted if it holds the token string given out by Apple. For browsers this means that the browser has a cookie stored with the string. You're asked when logging in whether or not you want to trust that browser, and that will trigger storing the cookie.

If you clear the cookies, then obviously the browser will not be trusted anymore. Just because you have an habit of clearing your cookies on a regular basis, that does not make Apple's choice "awful" in any way. Technically cookies are probably the most secure way of storing this possible with standards compliant browsers. At least it is a very strong choice.

In order to avoid the browser loosing the trust, simply stop clearing that one specific cookie. There's no point in religiously removing every cooking, if you do not have a purpose for doing that - and especially not if it directly works against you.

In regards to SMS messages: You do not need to receive an SMS message in order to add a new trusted device. You can simply use the 2FA code from one trusted device to add a new trusted device. This is handled automatically by the system.

Regarding the many other questions you have put into your quite broad question: No, updating Xcode won't invalidate the trust. No, having changing IP address won't invalidate the trust.


What version of OpenSSH is included with macOS Catalina (10.15) beta?

Lastest macOS Catalina Beta shows the identical version to the current Mojave ssh

$ sw_vers
ProductName:    Mac OS X
ProductVersion: 10.15
BuildVersion:   19A536g
$ /usr/bin/ssh -V
OpenSSH_7.9p1, LibreSSL 2.7.3


Can I boot Mac from an external hard drive (internal hard drive+hard drive closure)

Connect the external drive or device to the Mac
Reboot the Mac and after the startup chime hold down the OPTION key during boot until you see the boot selection menu
Click the external volume to boot from it

After this steps, you will find that external drives typically are shown with an orange icon, with their interface printed on the icon itself. Similarly, CD’s and DVD’s are shown with a disc icon. In this screen shot example, the right-most orange boot drive is a USB flash disk.

This works for quite literally any boot volume, whether it’s an external USB drive of any sort, a Thunderbolt hard drive, boot DVD, CD, the Recovery partition, even in dual-boot environments with other versions of OS X, or a Linux or a Windows partition with Boot Camp, if it’s bootable and connected to the Mac it will be visible at this boot manager.

Though boot DVD’s and CD’s will be visible through the aforementioned boot manager, you can also start the Mac directly to DVD or a connected disc by holding down the “D” key during restart after you hear the chime. This is fairly uncommon these days, but it was the primary method of accessing recovery partitions before OS X became a download from the App Store, and before USB installer drives became more common.

Additionally, Macs with recovery partitions can be start directly into Recovery HD by holding down Command+R during system start.

Though recovery and discs can be booted with their own commands, it’s ultimately easier to just remember the Option key method since it is a single key and because it’s universal. The only exception is with target disk mode, which requires a different sequence to use.


How to Use Cancel Button in Osascript to Stop Running Script

How about this?

It works on my 10.6 Macbook.
It is cleaner than having to escape quotes etc...
osascript returns a status like normal unix programs.
Bash script aborts on a status 1 from osascript.
No unnecessary messages from osascript - >dev/null 2>&1

I don't have anything else to test it on. You may need to adjust for other versions of OSX.

#!/bin/bash

osascript >/dev/null 2>&1 <<-EOF
tell application id "com.apple.systemevents"
   set myMsg to "Do you want to continue?" & return & return & " Please wait..."
   set theResp to display dialog myMsg buttons {"Cancel", "Okay"} default button 2
end tell

# Following is not really necessary. Cancel returns 1 and OK 0 ...
if button returned of theResp is "Cancel" then
   return 1
end if
EOF

# Check status of osascript
if [ "$?" != "0" ] ; then
   echo "User aborted. Exiting..."
   exit 1
fi

#-- other bash stuff here
echo "All good, moving on...."

HTH


How to ensure separate pathways of each instance of Python

You should set up virtual environments so each python version will be independent of others. Setting these up is fairly easy and you can find instructions on the internet here and  here as well as many other places.  I run virtual environments and this allows me to run 2.7.13 or 3.6 without any problems. I just activate wich environment I want and then start running that version of python.


Can I receive messages in my iPhone as iMessage if it's turned off or out of battery?

This may be helpful:  from PC Pro blog: How iMessage works:

  If you send a message to a fellow iMessage user who has their data
  switched off, the phone attempts to send it via the data channel at
  first, but if it can’t get through after five minutes or so, the
  message turns green and is sent via the traditional SMS channel
  instead.  [emphasis mine]

See the article for more details.

This next might also be relevant if you have another iOS device you'd like to receive at instead, when your phone is off: gigaom - iOS 5: iMessage:

  To ensure your Message is received on all your connected devices, you
  must have them sent to your Apple ID email address. In limited
  testing, if someone sent me a test message to just my phone number, I
  only got the text on my iPhone. However, if they sent the message to
  my me.com address (which is my Apple ID address), I got it on all
  devices. This is because Apple can’t associate your phone number
  (assigned by your carrier) with devices other than your iPhone.


MacBook Pro 2017 daisy-chaining with DisplayPort

No, there's no third party driver or other software available to make this work. You say this is the way it was intended to work, but as far as Apple's documentation goes, it is not intended to work this way on macOS. MST is simply not supported, and you'll need to use Thunderbolt 3 for display chaining.
You do not need a 200 pound dock in order to use multiple monitors and power the MacBook. Various smaller and larger docks in different price ranges exist for Thunderbolt 3. Usually they have a combination of a Thunderbolt 3 port and a DisplayPort or HDMI port for connecting two monitors simultaneously.


How do I know what iTunes credit is for?

From https://discussions.apple.com/message/11510256#11510256

  It means that your next two purchases of that type won't be charged to a credit card or count against a gift card balance. They are sometimes granted by the iTunes Store staff.

Screenshot:

From https://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20100207142341AA3Kh6k

  It means you can get one[in your case 2] song download using that credit.

Screenshot:

From http://forums.macrumors.com/threads/itunes-is-displaying-5-credits-next-to-my-email-address-in-store-what-does-it-mean.1478823/

  5[in your case 2] free downloads. Did you report any problems with a purchase to them recently? They give them out for that kind of thing sometimes.

Screenshot:


I'm not sure why, but your file icons, and other various things shown in the screenshots are not what I see on my system. I run a 10,1 model so perhaps its just my system being old and boring looking. If not, I feel like some configurations you've changed might be the issue.

I honestly suggest reinstalling. You don't need to wipe any data, just re-download the installer for macOS 10.13 High Sierra A (Or the most recent downloader for Sierra, you don't specify which OS you have) from the Mac App Store and start the installer. Installations and updates will re-write all System information when installed which should restore your notification center files completely.

I understand this is a cliche and over-suggested method of fixing macOS issues, but no one is going to be able to figure out exactly what went wrong without detailing everything.

If you don't want to do that, we can go through a whole series of commands to validate your system. Starting with codesign validation.

You can use the codesign command to check if system resources have been altered and are valid.

codesign -vvv --display /System/Library/CoreServices/NotificationCenter.app

Copy and paste into terminal for various Apple (or non-apple) applications, frameworks, etc, to check code signatures and for valid or broken resources.


Trying to upgrade, OS X installer can't find hard drive

I got it to work by booting my mom's computer in target disk mode and attaching my Mac with a firewire cable and rebooting my computer with the installer cd.

The installer, running on my computer, was able to recognize her disk and I was able to install the update.

Unfortunately this solution required a second mac to work, and both macs need to have a firewire port (which are quickly disappearing from Apple's products).


.DS_Store creation disabled on network shares, but I want them enabled for a specific share

I don't think you can have it both ways.

I can imagine a bit of a work around that involves the Mac knowing what network it is on, and then changing the defaults write command to match the network.
Something like http://www.controlplaneapp.com/about/ would help you get that done.

(not the simplest solution I'll admit)


If you open the folder in finder such that your sub-folders are displayed you can click on size at the top of the list. If the folder sizes are not displayed, open finder and under the View menu select "Show View Options". This brings up a pane like an image shown below.

At the bottom of the pane is a checkbox to determine folder size. Check the box and folder sizes will be displays. Then by clicking on the size near the top of the Finder window. the contents should be sorted by size.

You need to make sure size is shown in the Finder window. To ensure this is the case, in the pane we just looked at, be sure to check "Size".


How do I scale everything up on my Mac Screen without decreasing resolution?

On retina Macs it is in System Preferences > Display (see this article). Switch it to "scaled" and it should show multiple choices that look like this:


Time Machine - Is it backing up system files, preferences, etc?

Question 1
Yes, all Time Machine backups are full directory structures of your entire disk (minus backup exclusions). Each backup is made up of hardlinks to unchanged files so each backup appears to be a "full" backup from Finder.

Open your Time Machine volume in Finder (may be within a sparsebundle if you backup over the network) and you should see a folder called Backups.backupdb and under that the machine's hostname. Each backup has a folder in the format YYYY-MM-DD-HHMMSS.

System files are under Library and System. All of your user preferences will be under Users/Username/Library.

Question 2

For user data you can just back up the Library folder. For system stuff you can copy /Library (note that this is separate to the Library folder in your home directory), but it might be better to use a product such as SuperDuper! or Carbon Copy Cloner.

However by default Time Machine will be backing up the entire disk so you should be fine. When you reinstall your OS, you'll get a chance to restore the entire system from a Time Machine backup. If you choose not to do this, when you first boot the new OS you get another chance to restore applications and user data.

On a personal note, I use a combination of SuperDuper! (weekly full system backups to a bootable firewire drive) and Time Machine (incremental backups).


How can I prevent OS X from resetting/disconnecting from wifi when left idle?

Goto System Preferences -> Energy Saver -> Check "Prevent computer from sleeping automatically when the display is off"

The options may be slightly different depending on what generation macbook you have, but this should help point you to the right place. :)


Change text message forwarding from a device other than iPhone?

Is there any other device I can change text message forwarding option from to make SMS go to my iPad mini?

No.

You need a working iPhone, connected to cellular network and Wi-Fi to enable text message forwarding to your other iOS devices (iPad, iPod touch) or your Mac.

In your current scenario, there is no way to configure SMS forwarding to your iPad mini as your iPhone is not active. Even if SMS forwarding were configured previously on your iPhone, with it not being active, you won't be able to receive the SMS messages on your iPad mini.

However, you can continue to receive and send iMessages with your iPad mini as long as it is connected to Wi-Fi (active Internet connection).

(In case you are not aware, SMS messages can be distinguished from iMessages, by looking at the colour of the message bubble. SMS are shown in green while iMessage are shown in Blue. SMS are sent over your carriers cellular connection and iMessages are sent over the Internet using Apple's servers)

More details can be found in the Apple support article, How to forward SMS/MMS texts on your iPhone.


Notification when a special AppleID/device connects to internet?

By default, iOS devices only connect to Apple's push notification servers when they connect to the network, so you would need to interact with that system as a paid developer or consumer of a MDM solution that allows you to send notifications and retrieve status when messages are sent and received to that phone.

It's not a hard engineering problem, but you need to get software installed on her device by jailbreaking or by means that Apple approves. An app that registers for a local notification and attempts to send a http request to your web server is all you'd need to track each poll interval that she has an internet connection.

Realistically, you will probably end up asking here to reply to a message you send and trusting that iMessage will send a "delivered" message to your phones promptly after her phone registers to the APNS servers and gets the messages that are queued for her device/account.


My Macbook storage is full even after deleting all my photos

You may find your answer here.

To summarize there is no empty trash like there was in iPhoto. Deleted pictures are moved to a recently deleted album and then automatically deleted permanently after 30 days. They can be manually removed or recovered at any time during these 30 days.


Using OIKWAN usb-c to ethernet cable on catalina

You’re not going to find it in Networking, because it’s a Cisco console cable and USB to RS-232 UART all-in-one.   The Cisco console cable is a serial cable, with a DB-9 on one end and an RJ-45 connector on the other - it’s not Ethernet.
You will need an application like screen (comes with macOS), Minicom or iTterm2  that allows you to connect to the serial console.  Most importantly, when you plug it into the router, you cannot plug it into any of the network ports - you need to plug it into the console port.


Editing war file with Midnight Commander

Midnight commander tries to open war files as tgz files. Is should open them as zip files instead.

To fix this open "Edit extension file" in "Command" menue (F9, C, e). Search for ".war" and delete it from the listings. The modified listing should look like:

# .tgz, .tpz, .tar.gz, .tar.z, .tar.Z, .ipk, .gem
regex/\.t([gp]?z|ar\.g?[zZ])$|\.ipk$|\.gem$
<------>Open=%cd %p/utar://
<------>View=%view{ascii} /usr/local/Cellar/midnight-commander/4.8.7/libexec/mc/ext.d/archive.sh view tar.gz

Then add the following snippet somewhere in the file:

# .war
regex/\.war$
<------>Open=%cd %p/uzip://
<------>View=%view{ascii} /usr/local/Cellar/midnight-commander/4.8.7/libexec/mc/ext.d/archive.sh view zip


What's the terminal command to see how network shares are connected?

For a more detailed listing of samba connections including the protocol in use, try:

smbutil statshares -a


Saving space by thinning universal intel/arm binaries

That's just how other tools do it, like CleanMyMac does with Universal apps (not sure if it's been updated for Universal 2 yet). There doesn't appear to be a better solution than manually removing the other architecture from each app, which can be done with some tools (see Is there any free solution to remove unneeded architectures from Universal binaries?) and these can be made to loop over a given folder of applications.
There are more steps required than just disabling SIP to do this with Big Sur's own applications now that Big Sur boots from a sealed APFS snapshot. Can I mount the root (system) filesystem as writable in Big Sur? goes into the steps required to make a modification to the bootable snapshot, but the modification you make to remove the other architecture is the same.


SMS not working from MBP with Yosemite and iOS 8

According to this blog post sms relay will be available with iOS 8.1


OSX Mail reply with highlighted text as quote

I was googling for the same problem and bumped into here. For people who don't know how to mark a piece of text as a quote in OSX Mail 10.1 I accidently found the way to do it.

You should:

Highlight the text you want to mark as a quote
Hit Command + '

The whole line will be converted into a quote.


Can't assign keyboard shortcut to service

One possible reason is that your user account has lost rights to change services preferences file (some buggy installers can cause that). Open Terminal and type

ls -la ~/Library/Preferences/pbs.plist

If you see that the owner is root, that is the problem:

-rw-------    1 root  wheel    1407 Jan 16 13:40 /Users/me/Library/Preferences/pbs.plist
                  ↑
                 incorrect!

In that case, you can fix the problem by typing this command (replace me with your user name; you will be asked for your password):

sudo chown me:staff ~/Library/Preferences/pbs.plist


Removing Files after Successful Extraction unrar rm shopt globstar

It should work with removing the double quotes:

shopt -s globstar
for f in **/*.rar; do
    dir=`dirname "$f"`;
    unrar e "$f" "$dir" && rm -frv ${f::-2}*;
done

Bash expansion of the star char * doesn't occurs inside quotes.

For example:

echo dir/*.rar might give:

dir/file1.rar
dir/file2.rar
dir/file3.rar

But echo "dir/*.rar" will give:

dir/*.rar

(rm command will try to delete a filename which contains literally a star character.)


iOS devices can output either digital or analog audio through their dock connectors. Your hi-fi is only compatible with digital audio. But your Bluetooth dongle outputs analog audio to the hi-fi, which it can’t play.


Can I download updates for another computer?

A lot of software updates (particularly OS, driver and firmware updates) can be found on Apple's Support Downloads page. You can download them like any other file and just transfer them to your Mac Pro at your convenience.

For software on the Mac App Store (including bundled apps like iPhoto), there aren't separate downloads. You could try downloading the full apps on your MacBook then copying the application bundle over.

For third party software, there are often separate patches available for download from the developer's site.


When I try to open System Preferences from the dock it opens directly into the iCloud pane

Does System Preferences have a badge (red 1) on it? This might indicate that iCloud is prompting you to turn on two-factor authentication. If that is the case, go to System Preferences > iCloud > and where it says “Two-factor authentication” click Continue to the right of it and then select your preferences.

For screenshots of this process and more discussion of it, see Apple Discussions – “System Preferences Dock Icon has red circle with 1”.

I would recommend doing research into two-factor authentication or two-step verification before turning it on. It is a high level of security that comes with greater responsibility for you to go through the steps to validate trusted devices – all of which use iCloud and need manual steps.


Reinstalling the OS will fix /private/var and may well be needed. I’d start there, and test sudo again.

Next consider booting to single user mode and make a new admin user by removing one file only - rm /var/db/.AppleSetupDone

Then you’ll know if sudo and your admin account and system are operational or you need to erase and start over to restore files from a backup.

Neither of the above steps will erase any files you have - just will correct system files and create a new user with clean admin permissions and home folder. That doesn't mean if your drive is failing, this won't erase everything or your drive is immune to failure - just that Apple macOS install doesn't erase any user data or settings - it's designed to upgrade everything in place and fix things. You have to jump through lots of hoops with warnings to erase and then install. A normal install is designed to be safe to your data.


How to extract all pages of a PDF into individual PDF documents

I remember looking to do the same thing a few years ago and lo and behold, I still had the link in deep archive: http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=1354754

A MacRumors Forums member named Oligarch put together a bunch of command-line pdf tools, which can be downloaded from this link: http://users.skynet.be/tools/

The pdfburst command is what you need:

NAME
     pdfburst -- burst (split) PDF documents into single pages

SYNOPSIS
     pdfburst file [path]

DESCRIPTION
     The pdfburst utility bursts (splits) the PDF document file into single
     pages which it writes to path, appended by an underscore character and
     zero-padded page numbers.

     If file is a single dash (-), the PDF document is read from the standard
     input.

     If path is omitted, the base name (last path component) of file is used
     and the single page files are created in the current working directory.

     If path ends with a slash (/), it designates a directory and the single
     page files are named with just the page number.

     Missing directories along path are created.


How to configure a non-Safari browser as default on a jailbroken iPhone XR?

You can use the BrowserDefault tweak:

 BrowserDefault

Unfortunately, there is no way to delete Safari as it is required by the OS.


How to retrieve backed-up game data from iCloud after reinstalling a game?

According to the Apple Support topic on the subject, your only option is to restore your entire phone from a recent backup.

The article does not explicitly report that there is not a way to selectively restore data, but it does explicitly state the way in which data is restored to a phone--all at once from a backup.


How to make a duplicate of a photo on iPhone before I crop or edit it?

As of iOS 9.3 you can choose to Duplicate photo directly. Pretty convenient.


Solved!

The solution is about as weird as the problem. To enable 60Hz in clamshell mode, I had to Option-click the "Scaled" radio button on System preferences' Display resolution screen, then the Refresh Rate option became available and I could switch from 30 to 60Hz. For some reason it wasn't enabled by default when lid closed.

EDIT: Also found out that for some reason this issue is directly connected to my old USB hub. When the display is connected and working at 60Hz clamshell mode, just touching the computer surface with the USB connector lights up a small white spark and the display immediately switches to 30Hz and the option disappears. And this ONLY happens when the lid is closed.

This is easily the most interesting problem I've had with a mac in many years.

*throws the USB hub to trash immediately*


Trying to reinstall macOS on a 2009 MacBook Pro

Just to clarify the terminology used: If you ask about "reinstall macOS" that would mean macOS "Sierra", at least, strictly speaking, older versions of the Macintosh operating system are called Mac OS X.

This 2009 MacBook Pro should be able to boot anything from Leopard, Snow Leopard, Yosemite to Sierra. That translate into version numbers as anything from 10.5.7 (9J3050) to 10.11 (and with caveats: also 10.12) can be installed.

To install any version of OS X/macOS it is strictly speaking not necessary to provide or even have an AppleID. But you need access to an ***Install.app that is usually downloaded via the AppStore. Once that is downloaded or came otherwise into your possession in full then the app is transferable to other Macs.

For the actual install it is possible to create a real external install medium, most users opt for a USB-stick.
An application that greatly simplifies the task is DiskMakerX.

Sierra is not officially supported on that machine you have now. It might also be a challenge to request that download from a machine that Apple is no longer supporting or if you want to use the AppStore and have not previously downloaded the installer with the AppleID currently in use. (And now that High Sierra s released a re-download of the Sierra installer seems impossible…)

That sign you see on screen when booting an installer with the official version of Sierra shows you that Apple has blacklisted this machine from receiving this upgrade. But Sierra can be installed and works for many more Macs than Apple allows. (Which would be self-evident if the terminology used in the OP's question is accurate.)
See this Sierrapatch to help you with that. A 2009 MacBook Pro is listed there as a supported machine, in principle.

But be sure to verify your WiFi card is supported before you go that route. That might be the only real deal breaker for Sierra on this hardware. If it had Sierra previously installed and WiFi was working you are good to go with it.

"If I buy Snow Leopard[…]?" As stated above Snow Leopard should work. But there are now certain downsides to be considered for this approach. In terms of performance, security and support, whether from Apple or third party developers, Snow Leopard is not that good of a choice, especially if this machine is going to be used on the net. [Currently Yosemite would be the best pick as it has recently received at least some security updates.] Update: Since the release of High Sierra it has to be presumed that also Yosemite is now some kind of abandonware. A recommendation would therefore move up to 10.11 El Capitan.


Can I record my Mac screen via a keyboard shortcut?

Included is the source for an AppleScript droplet that can be used to transcode video files.

You'll need a modern installation of ffmpeg, such as the one you can get by installing HomeBrew and running "brew ffmpeg".

This conversion has not been optimized for speed, but rather for quality.

No deletion of source files has been included in this configuration.

You won't need the autocropping. You probably won't want the conversion to 6-channel AC3 audio.

Most things you drop on this will probably end up with a greater file size after transcoding, but this will show you how a droplet for converting video might be configured.

I've got a bunch of these, but this will process most anything you download from YouTube, I think. If you can get hold of a non-copy-encrypted .m2ts file from a Blu-Ray (like the one MakeMKV can give you), that may best show you what this can do.

property temppath : "/private/tmp/"
property startnum : 0
property newline : ASCII character 10
property tmpfile : "/tmp/execme.command"

on open the_items
    my convert_Video(the_items)
end open

on convert_Video(the_items)
set theshellscript to ""
repeat with the_item in the_items
    set the_item to the_item as alias
    try
        tell application "Finder"
            set sost to (container of the_item) as string
        end tell
        set pos_filepath to POSIX path of sost
    end try
    set this_filepath to (the_item as string)

    if last character of this_filepath is ":" then
        tell me to set it_is_a_folder to true
    else
        set it_is_a_folder to false
    end if
    set thesourcename to (name of (info for the_item))
    set namepart to (name extension of (info for the_item))
    set the_source_file to POSIX path of this_filepath
    --display dialog the_source_file
    --set thesourcename to replace_chars(thesourcename, " ", "_")
    set newname to replace_chars(thesourcename, namepart, "m4v")
    set autocrop to (do shell script "/usr/local/bin/ffmpeg -i" & space & (quoted form of the_source_file) & space & "-t 44 -vf cropdetect -f null - 2>&1 | awk '/crop/ { print $NF }' | tail -1")
    try
        set theshellscript to the theshellscript & "/usr/local/bin/ffmpeg" & space & "-i" & space & (quoted form of the_source_file) & space & "-pix_fmt yuv420p -c:v libx264 -preset slow -tune film -vf \"" & autocrop & "\" -c:a ac3 -ac 6 -ab 640k -crf 18 -x264opts keyint=40:bitrate=2400:qpmin=8:qpmax=28:qpstep=4" & space & (quoted form of (pos_filepath & newname)) & ";/bin/echo '

==========================

" & newname & space & "FINISHED!" & "

==========================

';"
            on error onerr
                activate
                display dialog onerr
            end try

end repeat
set theshellscript to theshellscript & "mv" & space & (quoted form of tmpfile) & space & (quoted form of (POSIX path of (path to trash)))
do shell script "echo " & quoted form of theshellscript & " > " & tmpfile
repeat
    try
        do shell script "chmod +x " & tmpfile
        do shell script "open -a Terminal.app" & space & tmpfile
        exit repeat
    on error
        delay 1
    end try
end repeat
end convert_Video

on replace_chars(this_text, _bad, _good)
    set AppleScript's text item delimiters to the _bad
    set the item_list to every text item of this_text
    set AppleScript's text item delimiters to the _good as string
    set this_text to the item_list as string
    set AppleScript's text item delimiters to ""
    return this_text
end replace_chars

on run
    set the_items to ((choose folder) as list)
    convert_Video(the_items)
end run


Is there a one-time physical damage policy for cracked ipad2 a week after warrenty ends?

I can't comment on consumer law but I am familiar with Apple's warranty agreement in the US.

AppleCare plus would cover physical damage by extending the normal one year manufacturer's warranty both in time to two years and in scope to actually cover physical damage.

The normal consumer warranty runs one year from purchase and does not cover accidental damage such as a drop. That being said, you could visit a store (or call AppleCare on the phone) and ask them if it could be covered, but I wouldn't expect coverage due to a drop one week from purchase or one week past one year under the normal manufacturer warranty. Be nice if you ask, they could say yes or they could say no but at least you tried.

You also could get a quote to repair and decide what makes the most sense for a repair / sell / replace decision on your part.


Are there any security vulnerabilities that would allow an attacker to change the admin password?

CVEdetails.com currently lists 783 vulnerabilities in Mac OS X, of which over 100 allow remote attacks, and many allow Admin access to be gained.

If you do want to ask about specifics, http://security.stackexchange.com welcomes a wide range of security questions.


Tagging is supported since LaunchBar 6, released June 11, 2014.

You either send a file or a selection of files from Finder to LB
(alt + holding space) or select a file (or – with nightly build
6.1 – a selection of files) within LB.
Then press tab, type a part of the Finder tag name and add the tag
by pressing return. You have also the option to replace existing tags with the new tag.

You can display a file’s tags by pressing → after selecting the file in LB.

LaunchBar 6.3 added support to work with multiple tags at once.


VLC Stuck in playlist mode. I hear audio but no video!


"The name you entered can't be used. The name is not available. Enter a different name."

I ran into this issue today. Apparently the error message is trying to tell you that there is an existing person with the same "Full Name" as you. Hence it cannot let you add another username with the same "Full Name". In my case, I was recovering from Time Machine and getting this error msg. So I just changed the full name to my last name. Was able to create an account using that and proceed further.


MacOS High Sierra: Remove the lag when resizing a window quickly

That response looks entirely proper and the only thing I could see would be to have chrome somehow do less calculation of the content inside the frame and just resize the window and redraw / re-layout the text and content at a lower rate.

This seems like an intentional tradeoff - you can see the content is responding almost as fast as the mouse pointer. I'm not up on css / html enough to know if there's a hint you could embed to tell the web layout to not worry about layout changes so much and instead wait for you to pick a window size and then refresh.

My guess is the software isn't optimized for your use case at all. If chrome and safari and Firefox all work the same, you might simply see a decision to use CPU and cap frame rates due to energy consumption considerations and not for inherent limitations in the hardware. It could also be that all the responsiveness and resources are committed to making the content move inside the window so you know you are dragging and less about trying to track a window size change.

Dissecting this would make for an interesting research project or possibly a thesis for someone on software design tradeoffs and implementations. Which is a long way of saying, I don't think there's an easy solution for you to make a meaningful change other than use another browser or OS.


How to mount /dev/disk1 with write permissions from Recovery Mode?

When started in the Recovery Partition, choose Disk Utility from the list and click Continue. I'm assuming you are using 10.8.5 Mountain Lion.

Select Macintosh HD in the list of volumes on the left side and click Mount button on the toolbar. The volume will be mounted read-write and you can close Disk Utility, open Terminal and type:

cd /Volumes/Macintosh\ HD/etc

and work on files in that folder as you please.

Note that /private/etc and /etc are the same folders.


Keyboard shortcuts for dynamic menu items (Keynote)

This doesn't solve the general case problem of how to assign a keyboard shortcut for any dynamic menu item, but it does solve the specific problem of having a keyboard shortcut to hide or display slides in Keynote.

We can work around the shortcut problem because Keynote is AppleScriptable.

Create a new service in Automator.

The service takes no input in Keynote.app.

The service has a single action: Do AppleScript. The script (in all its one-line beauty) is:

tell application "Keynote" to tell current slide of the front slideshow to set skipped to not skipped

Save the service as "ToggleSkipped".

Use the Keyboard Shortcuts tab within the Keyboard pane of System Preferences to bind the service to an unused keystroke.


iPhone 6s Plus Home Screen rotates on tilt

Only the iPhone 6 Plus and iPhone 6S Plus rotate in the Springboard like an iPad. Smaller iPhones do not rotate like that. There are no settings on the small iPhone models to get this behavior.


A workaround would be:

Create a temporary calendar from File>New Calendar.
Mark the calendars you want to export:

Depending on the time range you want to export select week or month view:

Go to the week or month you want to export, press ⌘A to select all events and ⌘C to copy them.
Select the temporary calendar:

and press ⌘V to paste all previously copied events.
Export the temporary calendar as an ics file:

Delete the temporary calendar with Edit>Delete.


OSX- Not able to open root directory in SAMBA file share

At the university I work at, I ran into the issue with Mac users where they could connect to a SMB share folder within a shared directory, but not the root of the drive until I set the user permissions on the share's root to at least RO for the credentials they used to connect. Are you sure that you have the correct user and share permissions set on the root to connect at that level?


Does Apple allow developers or testers to install previous versions of an App?

No, this is not allowed.  You can only have 1 version available for download in the App Store at a time for a specific iOS version (users with older versions of iOS can download the last compatible version of your app but I don't think that's what you're looking for).

I'm not sure if you can upload a lower version to TestFlight as I've never tried it.  If it works, you can limit the ability to download it to specific users.  That might achieve what you're looking for.  Maybe someone can [edit] this answer if they know this is allowed.


Under the iPad's "Settings," there is a OneNote tab which offers a "Reset Application".  Using that seemed to have fixed the problem.


What kind of SSD is compatible with the 2010 Unibody MacBook?

You're looking for any 2.5" SATA drive. I'm not sure if the MacBooks came with SATA 3 (6 Gb/s) or SATA 2 (3 Gb/s), so you should match whichever the installed drive is. (There's no harm in putting a SATA 3 drive in a machine that only supports SATA 2, you just won't get the speed and you'll pay more.) You should be careful of 12.5mm height drives - they won't fit in some Macs. Anything smaller should be fine.

Some references:

mid-2010 MacBook manual – look in Chapter 3 for specifics on hard drive replacement
iFixit's MacBook repair guide – has better pictures than Apple's manual (I think this is the right one)


How do I move all my apps, and my Apple ID to another iPod that has already been used?

Best way is to do a restore, when the ipod touch boots back up do a restore from iTunes and enter your appleID and you're good to go.

Back up her ipod touch to her iTunes though she'll miss having one in a few weeks and probably end up buying one again :).


Which iOS presentation/slideshow app can be controlled by a Trust Wireless bluetooth remote

As of March 2012 there doesn't seem to be a real presenter app for the iPhone, which supports the Trust Wireless Remote Control (or generic bluetooth remotes, that do work with music apps) and offers VGA-out.

I really hoped I didn't search thoroughly enough but it seems such an app has yet to be made - and I bet it would sell well.

So, if anyone happens to find such an app for the iPhone or something that supports QuickTime movies with manual advance: please post it here and I'm gonna reward a bounty of ≥150 points.

The best way to go till then: Use a collection of pictures in slideshow mode of the "Photos" app (supports both VGA-out and bluetooth remotes)


com.apple.IconServices taking up large amounts of disk space - why?

To be frank, I wouldn't worry too much about it. You have plenty of space left. My IconServices folder was about 4 GB large and I had 3 GB of space left on my 160 GB SSD.

I can't tell you why Apple is creating or caching those files on OS X, sadly it seems to be a kind of mystery. I wasn't able to find out anything.

Anyway, after booting my Mac in safe mode (holding down the shift key on startup until the progress bar appears) and then booting up again, I ended up with 13 GB of free space. Try this to free up more space.


MBP Battery Consumption and Charging Speed app?

Your best bet would be to try coconutBattery. It provides a whole heap of information that you'll find useful, and from memory includes both Discharging with and Charging with measurements in watts!

As for your other questions, it's really best to just ask one question per question, even though they may be related. However, in a nutshell:

No, you cannot assume the 87W USB-C Power Adapter will charge a 76 watt hour battery in less than an hour. There are a lot of factors that can affect charging times, and typically this means you'd be waiting longer than an hour. However, in theory and under the best case scenario (e.g. your MBP is powered off and the charger is working at the optimal 20.2V and 4.3A and has absolutely no efficiency loss) it could in theory be fully charged in about 52 minutes. If we assume the same scenario but with a typical efficiency loss of 20%, it will take a little longer than an hour (63 mins to be exact) to charge your battery. Of course, in real life many factors can affect this.
I would not recommend using a smartphone charger to charge your MBP. Yes, in some cases this will work, in many it won't. However, while it may be okay to do this on a one-off basis because you've forgotten your MBP charger, it is not something I would recommend doing on any sort of ongoing basis. Eventually it will most likely damage your smartphone charger, although this will depend on its quality and design.

NOTE: Calculations used in my answer assume a 2016 or 2017 15" MacBook Pro.


Moving mail to folder removes it from mail account

It seems you created a local folder (On your Mac). If you create a folder in your Gmail account and point your rule to that folder. Every message will stay in your Gmail account.

You can also make rules in the Gmail interface. Then those rules will be followed on the server. If your Mac is turned off it will also move those emails to the right folder.


I-Beam insertion curson goes missing occasionally

This is standard macOS behaviour.

The I-Beam cursor ought to go invisible as you start to type & only reappear if you stop typing & move the cursor.


TextEdit not closing without asking me for a file name

Found the culprit. This box was turned on.


Can 2 separate macbook Pros work on one imovie project at the same time?

“Collaborate with Others” function()   I think it is on right top corner of app. ;)


Keyboard shortcut to lock the screen on macOS 10.14 Mojave?

You can use the built-in keyboard shortcut Control + Command + Q to lock the screen.

The command is also accessible via  → Lock Screen in the Menu bar.


What causes repeating push notification alerts on iOS 7?

What happened is somehow the authentication token on your device that should be installed on OS upgrade got corrupted/deleted. I believe currently, the only fix is to restore and restore backup. I haven't seen a way of getting back that token without doing a restore.


Is it bad to leave the Macbook Pro Retina 13inch charging all the time?

The battery charging automatically stops when battery is full.

So you can leave it plugged in as long you wish.


Time Machine often says, "No Backups for # Days" even though it should back up every weekday

Are there any console errors?

I would start with removing the plist, reboot, try again
/Library/Preferences/com.apple.TimeMachine.plist


From iMac (Mid 2010: Memory specifications):

  The iMac (Late 2010) computers have four SDRAM slots in the bottom of
  the computer and come with at least 4 GB DDR3 SDRAM installed as two
  2GB DIMMs into two slots.

  The maximum amount of RAM you can install in your computer is 16 GB (a
  4 GB SO-DIMM in each slot).

  You can use any Small-Outline dual inline memory modules (SO-DIMMS)
  that meet all of these criteria:

  PC3-10600
  Unbuffered
  Nonparity
  204-pin
  1333 MHz
  DDR3 SDRAM

  You can use RAM module sizes of 2 GB or 4 GB in each slot.

And from iMac: How to remove or install memory:


That's a kernel panic, and from the error message, it seems like you're having issues with NVRAM. If this keeps restarting itself, I'd suggest you bring it in to an Apple store for a Genius to take a look at.

Resetting the NVRAM may also help, link: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204063


Can a Mac OS X DVD that came with a computer be used to upgrade another computer?

Generally and legally no, since the installer on the DVD is checking for machine specific model identifier for the MacBook Pro that the DVD came with as shown in this workaround .

  Once the file is opened, scroll down about ¾ of a page and you will come across a series of strings named hwbeSupportedMachines.

Now, technically the DVD's that came with Macs included a standard Mac OS 10.x.x Install plus new drivers for hardware specific features for that new model, stuff that would not be known about or included in the 10.x retail install DVD Mac OS X versions (builds) for computers. Which means the OS that came with your Macbook Pro once its installed on the Mac Book Pro should include all it needs to run on the iMac too. You just have to get it there, which you could do via cloning a 10.6 install from the MacBook Pro to the iMac or maybe via installing OS X 10.6 on the iMac via the MacBook Pro using FireWire target disk mode.

Untested Solution if you want go the Upgrade path of 10.5 to 10.8 wihout erasing the iMac

Backup important Data on iMac
Boot the iMac into target disk mode, by holding down the T key while boot the iMac.
Connect iMac to the MacBook Pro via FireWire
Boot the MacBook Pro from its 10.6 Installer DVD
Try to select for installation of OS x 10.6 the hard drive with 10.5 installed on it in the iMac.
Note: This is the untested part, the Restore / Install DVD may not allow upgrades from prior OS X versions.
Boot up the iMac and then upgrade to latest version of OS X 10.6
Install OS X 10.8

Recommended Solution:

This will promote better performance via a clean install to a blank disk thus reducein legacy cruft and other left-overs from old OS X installs and old Applications, etc.

First thing upgrade the MacBook Pro to Mountain Lion, if you have not done so already.

Next back up all your files you want from the iMac, since OS X Lion / Mountain Lion will not be able to upgrade users from Mac OS X 10.5 to 10.8.

Create a boot able Mountain Lion install disk(using a hard drive or usb thumb drive)

Open the Mac App Store, go to purchases and re-download the Install Mountain Lion Installer.
Create a boot able disk drive by extracting the InstallESD.dmg from it to a external drive or partition. See How to create a bootable, backup Mountain Lion install disk
Connect the external drive to the iMac
Start the iMac while holding down the option key. Select the MTN Lion installer to boot from.
Once the MTN Lion installer loads open Disk Utility and Erase the Hard drive in the iMac
Quit Disk Utility
Install OS X 10.8 by selecting Reinstall Mac OS X


Black Screen Failure, requires forced reset restart Macbook Pro 15"

It seems that you are getting black screen when opening a GPU heavy app or Flash. I am sure that this is a GPU failure. You will also have difficulty at startup later. Try one thing. Download a software called gfxCardStatus. Install it and set the GPU to Intel only. Do not play any games or use Flash. You should be okay.


Mac terminal command: how to 'ls' for some specific files?

ls *.jpg # files whose name ends with .jpg
ls [ab]* # files whose name starts with a or b
ls [a-c]* # files whose name starts with characters sorted between a and c in the current locale
ls|head -n100 # first 100 files
f=(*);printf %s\\n "${f[@]:0:100}" # first 100 files
ls|sed -n 101,200p # files 101 to 200
find . -name \*aa\* # files whose name contains aa in the directory tree
find . ! -type d # all files except directories in the directory tree
find . -type f -maxdepth 1 -mindepth 1 # regular files in the current directory
shopt -s extglob;printf %s\\n !(*aa*) # files whose name does not contain aa
shopt -s extglob;printf %s\\n @(aa|bb)* # files whose name starts with aa or bb


Timemachine backups to Encrypted APFS partition. Checkbox turn off encryption

Time Machine cannot backup to an APFS disk, because APFS doesn't support hard-linking, which is essential to Time Machine's operation.

From Apple KB - Types of disks you can use with Time Machine on Mac

  Important: You can back up from an HFS+ or APFS-formatted disk to an HFS+ disk; however, Time Machine can’t back up to an APFS-formatted
  disk. If you select a back up disk formatted as APFS, Time Machine
  offers to reformat it as HFS+.


How to choose personal credit card instead of family credit card for app purchase?

If Purchase Sharing is enabled in the Family Sharing options, it will indeed charge the organizer when a family member makes a purchase. If Purchase Sharing is disabled, each account will be charged for their own purchases. I understand initially they were bundled together but it’s now possible to enable Family Sharing without sharing purchases.