MacBook detects a 4GB DIMM as a 1GB DIMM?

You have a late 2008 MacBook Unibody (aluminum) aka MacBook5,1?

Your second link is pointing to an article about a different model.

According to Apple your computer supports up to 4GB ram (total), but people are running successfully up to 8GB.

Reputable RAM vendor such as OWC offers 8GB kit for your MacBook, however you should upgrade your EFI (quote from OWC):

  How to you ensure your MacBook/MacBook Pro can address 8GB of RAM

  Check the Boot ROM Version in your System Profiler at this link:
  http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1237

  MacBook Pros with a Model ID of MacBookPro5,1 should have a Boot ROM Version of MBP51.007E.B05.

  MacBooks with a Model ID of MacBook5,1 should have a Boot ROM version of MB51.007D.B03

  Machines with other Model IDs are not affected and don't need an update.
  If your Boot ROM version does not match the numbers above, download the appropriate
  For MacBook Pros (MacBookPro5,1)
  MacBook Pro EFI Firmware Update 1.8 (Apple.com Download)
  For MacBooks (MacBook5,1)
  MacBook EFI Firmware Update 1.4 (Apple.com Download)
  Once you have ensured that the Boot ROM is the correct version,
  make sure your Operating System is updated to Mac OS X v10.6.6.
  You must be running Snow Leopard to address 8GB on these systems.

Once you upgrade your EFI, you should be fine.


See failed login attempts on OSX Maverics

Without administrator permission you cannon't view that information.  It is held in /var/log/system.log which you can't access with a standard user.  You will need to obtain admin privileges to see that information.

Once you have permission you can search through the log using the Console.app for "Failed", to see the failed attempts.


Why does look-up not work on every webpage in Chrome?

This bug is known to the Chrome developers and has been filed under...
Issue 90461: Dictionary keyboard shortcut doesn't work in Lion
Basically the problems are timing issues for some websites which take too long to respond to information needed to show the dictionary.
This is what @resek@chromium.org says:

There's likely not much that we can do here. We have to block the UI
thread to implement this feature, which is bad and so that's done on a
timeout. If the web page takes too long to respond for the information
we need to display the popup, we give up and unblock the UI. If we
didn't do this, Chrome would look like it's hung, waiting on the web
page to respond.
We collect timing information about this, and most pages succeed well
below the timeout, but there's also some class of pages that do not
respond in time (more than 1500ms, which is what starts to be
perceived as sluggish/hung).


Program, or workflow to update a single file and update all instances of it everywhere else

What you are describing might be accomplished with a hard link.

Hard links mean that one file on the drive is seen as a file in multiple folders.

So, if you had a file recipe.doc and stored in your ~/Documents folder, you could hard link it elsewhere - perhaps /Users/Shared and ~/Projects/Cooking/Pasta/recipe.doc

So, the link count would be 3 for that file and only one recipe would take space on the disk. If you deleted the file in /Users/Shared - rather than deleting the file, it just removes that one link and decrements the file counter to 2. When the last link goes away, you have a link count of 1 and the file remains, but no copies in other folders.

If you want to learn more, the link command is a terminal command written as ln.

Also, you could check that file into some sort of code control system like git and script the checkout in the folders of your liking. It really depends on how much time you'll save or if you just want to write a quick and dirty shell script to push the changed file elsewhere (or use rsync to copy just the changed bits and be über efficient).


what is the new iOS 7 feature called "swipe to capture"

The iOS7 update enabled Swipe to Capture – allowing you to switch between camera modes like Photo, Video, Square and Panorama with a swipe.

The iPhone 5, iPhone 4, iPhone 4S, iPad 4, iPad 3, iPad mini, and 5th-gen iPod touch have this feature, while only the iPad 2 does not.


Is there a dock for switching between windows?

You can use ⌘` to switch between windows in the current application and ⌃F4 to switch between windows on the current space. And you can use an application like Alfred to assign shortcuts to applications.

Witch is one of the most popular window-based Dock / command-tab alternatives. See these questions for other options:

Best app to switch between all open windows (alternatives to Witch)
Switch between windows on Mac OS X?


Can't merge "Free Space" with Macintosh partition

diskutil apfs resizeContainer /dev/disk1 0

The command above fixed it :)


How do I point Sonos to my music on an Airport Extreme connected hard drive?

A Sonos requires that shared libraries are accessed over CIFS/SMB. From your path it looks like this link is for a share over AFP. Can you find a link for the SMB share from the airport extreme ? Looking at the Airport Extreme docs it seems that if you have an HFS formatted disk mounted then it will share over AFP and SMB

you could try (just a guess) as a link

  \MyName's Airport Extreme._smb._tcp.local\MAC FREE\free agent backup\FreeAgent GoFlex

You might also consider removing spaces in the paths as these tend to cause pain if the software is not expecting them


Getting 2 error messages when trying to download previously purchased, or free, apps from the Mac App Store

I found there were now 2 HD's on my desktop, Macintosh HD and Macintosh HD Data. I'm not sure what this is about, so if anyone has an info - it would be appreciated.

This is expected behavior in macOS Catalina. Refer to the Apple Support document, About the read-only system volume in macOS Catalina

  macOS Catalina runs in a read-only system volume, separate from other files on your Mac. When you upgrade to Catalina, a second volume is created, and some files may move to a Relocated Items folder.

  macOS Catalina runs on a dedicated, read-only system volume called Macintosh HD. This volume is completely separate from all other data to help prevent the accidental overwriting of critical operating system files. Your files and data are stored in another volume named Macintosh HD - Data. In the Finder, both volumes appear as Macintosh HD.

  I went to the Mac App Store to download previously purchased or free apps that I had, like Keynote, Pages, even Solitaire, I get these 2 different messages.

This is apparently a server side message from Apple. Try again after some time and make sure you have an active Internet connection.


Viewing Composite Document File V2 Documents

Based on the output from file I'd suggest that you try unoconv to convert it to something your system can open.


My bluetooth keyboard and touchpad seem to be interfering

I've had this same exact issue with a Bluetooth apple magic mouse. The culprit for me was the rechargeable batteries that I was using. Before I changed the batteries it would constantly lose connectivity and then connect again a few seconds later. It was very frustrating.

Did your keyboard and touchpad come with any drivers? If so are the up to date?


If you installed Homebrew with standard install directories, i.e. relatives to /usr/local,
there are 2 commands to register the binaries and man files to be used:

/usr/bin/sudo -s
echo /usr/local/bin >/etc/paths.d/homebrew
echo /usr/local/share/man >/etc/manpaths.d/homebrew
exit

If you are using bash or zsh as your actual shell, you will have to enter one simple command to take into account these 2 environment modifications:

. /etc/profile

If you want to learn more how these 2 directories are used under
MacOS X, read:

man path_helper


How do I burn a bootable CD from a .toast file?

Yup, just use Toast Titanium and burn the .toast file to a CD. That will create a bootable CD that will be usable on your G3.

Burn is a free application for burning CDs/DVDs. I don't know if it supports .toast files, but give it a try if you don't have Toast, since it may save you from buying it. I couldn't find online documentation for it, so let me know how it works.


iPhone stolen, Activation Lock was turned off but iPhone is still iCloud device list. Can it still be used by the thief?

Yes. The finder / thief can use your phone unless you protected it with a passcode lock.

If you cannot use the iCloud find my iPhone app to remotely lock the device, your data is at risk.

If you chose a passcode, hopefully the finder can't guess it. Apple does limit the wrong guesses, so the casual thief can't brute force it.

If you can't secure the device remotely, start on changing all the passwords and monitoring all the services and apps you stored credentials on the phone.

banking
social media
email
work apps and files
things like contact lists and social security numbers

Going forward, get an app like 1Password so you can easily change all your compromised passwords and limit the damage that losing control of your email entails.

See: Wiping a stolen iPhone that wasn't connected to iCloud and Stolen iPhone: what is the security risk? for more tips.


My mac is starting slow. I know login items, CleanMyMac. What else?

CleanMyMac should be used with caution, or not at all. It is not recommended as a general trouble-shooting step. I would recommend EtreCheck , which provides you with a useful report about problems, incompatible software, and other concerns. You could edit your question to include any items that it flags. (Don't just copy and paste the whole thing, as it's quite long.)

Firstly: What's your storage like? Mechanical hard drive? How old? How full? What model of Mac, e.g. "Late 2012 13" MacBook Pro". What MacOS version?

Are you seeing slowness at any other stage? Problems that early are unlikely to be caused by user software.


Play audiobooks with chapter selection on iOS

Yes, you can use either Audiomark or Bookmobile.


Did you have htop open? You might be experiencing this issue https://github.com/hishamhm/htop/issues/682


iMessage Crashes and Causes my iPod to Shut Down

I would try and go on contacts and try to send a message from there. Also, you could always use a font app and send a text. (It worked when my iPhone did the same thing)


How do I install Intel's ifortran and MKLs on Mac OS X?

The non commercial tools all appear to be for Linux ony so you will need to use the VM.

Although TBB is available for OS X.


Is there a way of "re-locking" an internal FileVault 2 encrypted partition?

Due to the limitations, you might want to use an encrypted disk image rather than whole disk encryption.

Come to think of it - why not use both?

You could always turn off FileVault if you felt it too much a hassle, but to get around the limitation you caught (thank goodness you did catch it),  consider using Disk Utility to make secure the parts of your data you need to force into a locked state when that disk image is unmounted. This will let you sleep your mac and not compromise that data by allowing it to be re-mounted without the appropriate passcode being supplied.


Midnight commander freezes when lynx navigation is used in a quick fashion

The solution is describe here: https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/57439/slow-start-of-midnight-commander For me the mc --nosubshell worked.
Both problem are solved. MC starts verz quickly and no sign of freezes when I use Lynx-like navigation quickly.


iPhone 4 died and need to know how to retrieve data on flashed phone

Did you open iCloud on the iPhone 4 and backup your data there? If so, it is pretty easy. Just enter your icloud on your father's old phone using the same Apple account, download data to it, things done.


You can answer this question for yourself. In the All My Files view, right click one of the files and choose Get Info. The window which opens when you do that has a Where: field. For a file in iCloud, the Where: field says iCloud Drive.


Using Audacity to Record Skype with External Mic

For me sometimes Soundflower (i think is made to just do simple matching of one input to one output) alone just wasn't enough, specially when it comes to audio routing.

Then i use Jack jackosx.com, there i can also do things like route one input to two or even more outputs.

Sometimes i also use a combination of both.


Very slow file copy to encrypted disk image

Finder needs to encrypt each file before copying it to the disk.

No, there is not a way to speed it up without removing drive encryption.


Fundamental Difference Between Charging An iPhone At The Mains & Via USB Cable Linked To An iMac?

According to Apple's support document on the subject:

  For the quickest charge, connect the device to a power outlet using the USB cable that came with the device and an Apple USB power adapter.

The USB spec limits the amount of current that a device may draw from a USB port (500 mA); the included Apple standalone power adapter can supply double that (1 A). The difference is even more dramatic for devices that have higher current draw to recharge (newer model iPads, for example).

Generally speaking, charging from your computer won't affect the performance of your computer at all as long as you aren't syncing or otherwise interacting with the device. USB can supply power without requiring data transmission (such is the case for wall adapters).


Is Spatial Audio used while listening to music on AirPods Pro?

Spatial Audio is only used for video:

Spatial audio with dynamic head tracking brings a theater-like surround-sound experience to the movie or video you're watching...

You can confirm if the content you're listening to supports spatial audio by toggling it off and on:


Do you fulfil these requirements?

Apple Music Radio requirements

To listen to Apple Music Radio, you need:

iOS 8.4 or later on your iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch. Update your iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch.
iTunes 12.2 or later on your Mac or PC. Get the latest version.
An Apple ID.

Apple Music Radio is available only in select countries. Find out what's available in your country.

Apple Music Radio features vary by country.

In some countries, an Apple Music membership is required to listen to Apple Music Radio.

Source: https://support.apple.com/en-gb/HT204944


"You can't resize the partition on this disk because it uses the Master Boot Record partition scheme

You should be able to delete the partition, and you would be able to re-use the space to create a new partition (of the same size).

For some reason (not technical) OS X (lion or later) won't let you resize partitions on MBR disks. You could delete using gparted from a Linux live CD or many partitioning tools.

You don't say what you are proposing to use the partition for, or what is on the "Files" partition. You won't be able to boot from a MBR disk, but you can backup an OS X partition. NOTE I haven't tried this on Yosemite which now creates Core Storage partitions.


How to focus on list of found files after search in Finder using the keyboard with full keyboard access activated?

An ideal solution would be a single key press that is relatively intuitive and consistent with other keyboard interface rules. Nonetheless, I have found a couple of hacks that seems to work.

Cmd+[ then Cmd+]: This navigates back then forward. After this has occurred the focus is on the file list. A mild nuisance with this option is that the search is refreshed, which can lead to a brief lag.
Cmd+Shift+G followed by escape: This opens the go to folder dialog box; escape exits the dialog box and returns focus on the file list.


QuickTime Player won't save edited file: The operation could not be completed

I had a similar problem when I downloaded a youtube video, opened in Quicktime to "trim" the video and quick time would not complete the operation.
I ran the youtube video through Vlc Crunch (free video converter)as mp4 again and then Quicktime worked fine.


How can I create a stand alone APP to run a terminal command

Create an Automator application that calls up an AppleScript. You will need to enter administrative credentials each time still, as I'm sure the password could be different on each system you use.


Move existing USB Time Machine backup to OS X Server Time Machine

You will need to enable and configure the Time Machine service on the Server as per this set of instructions. Pay attention to any size limits you may want to enforce for the Time Machine backups when creating the destination location.

Turn off Time Machine in System Preferences. Copy your existing Time Machine backup structure to the new location. Open Terminal and use tmutil to re-associate your backups on the new location. Use the instructions here for doing this with tmutil. Restart the Time Machine service and you should be set to go.


Macbook Pro Ram and/or Processor broken?

While hard drives are the most likely component to die in any computer, memory can and does fail from time to time. An "Early-2011" model will be nearly four years old now so it's worth considering an HDD replacement at some point (these were some of the first systems to feature SATA-III controllers so you will be able to take full advantage of current SSD speeds).

However, if AHT is detecting memory issues then that's the area to focus on. Booting from USB is obviously independent of any potential hard disk issues and boot failures are nearly always guaranteed to be down to memory issues.


What will registering an apple device a developer device do to it?

Still works fine. This will allow you to install you own Apps on the device for testing. Otherwise the only way's to get apps on you iOS device is Jailbreak or App Store.


Removing gray part of BBEdit/TextWrangler

It is called the page guide. You can hide it in TextWrangler in two ways:

For a single document, select "Hide Page Guide" from the "View -> Text Display" Menu.

To hide it for all documents, there is a setting in the "Text Status Display" category.


Is it possible to create a user without a home directory?

Yes you can, using the following code.  Note that the UniqueID, if less than 501, may not list the user in the Accounts pane of system preferences, depending upon the OS version.  Be careful that it is not already assigned to another user account.

sudo dscl . -create /Users/ThisUserName
sudo dscl . -create /Users/ThisUserName UserShell /bin/bash
sudo dscl . -create /Users/ThisUserName UniqueID 505
sudo dscl . -create /Users/ThisUserName PrimaryGroupID 20
sudo dscl . -passwd /Users/ThisUserName Pa55w0rd

You can assign a home folder outside of the normal /Users/ hierarchy with:

sudo dscl . -create /Users/ThisUserName NFSHomeDirectory /path/to/your/home

If you want a clearer name to show up in the accounts preference:

sudo dscl . -create /Users/ThisUserName RealName "This User Name"

If you su to the new user without having set a NFSHomeDirectory, the $HOME defaults to /var/empty.


Network scan shows several linux-related security vulnerabilities on a Mac. Do I need to wory?

Rather than fight your security team or do their job I suggest you turn on your firewall and block all traffic, and ask them to rescan. That should fix their bad detection problem. Unless you’re running docker or another actual Linux VM, their fingerprint detection is incorrect or the scan isn’t of your machine. I would even offer to connect to their network with VPN so they can be sure they are scanning your hardware directly and not some NAT device or router between you and them.

How do I close a port on a Mac?

Also, don’t blame security too hard - this security theater happens in most organizations. They likely didn’t even bother to check your network address and could be blaming you for the last person to be assigned that DHCP address on your network. They are likely as under funded, over worked as you are. However, security is something you’d hate to not do your part so engage them to be sure they are correctly mitigating the threats they received - if it’s not you, they need to focus their efforts eleswhere as something they scanned needs patching.
Also, if they continue to pester you, figure out how much you value your time and buy this firewall so you can confirm they are scanning your device.

https://obdev.at/products/littlesnitch/index.html

I think just running little snitch is one of the most effective deterrents in a corporate setting as much malware checks for it. They won’t even install or run since they don’t want to get caught by the snitch.


Can I set Hide Sidebar as default in Preview

In Full Screen you can hide the sidebar by unselecting View>Always Show Sidebar (shortcut optioncommand1):

To get rid of the side by side view you need to select View>Single Page (shortcut commmand2) instead of View>Two Pages:


How to get rid of ios beta update messages?

I’ve been getting this too. I fixed it by removing the iOS beta software profile by going to Settings → General → Profiles, select the Apple beta profile and hit remove. Restart your phone once removed.

Of course doing this removes the phone from receiving further beta updates, but retains the current iOS installed. You shouldn’t need minor iOS updates for development anyways.


AppleScript / Shell Script to read 'curl -L' data

As coded, versionFile is a variable that contains the contents of the file not the file itself and you're using the read command improperly, as it reads data from a file, not a variable.

Change:

set lineDelimiter to read versionFile using delimiter return

To:

set lineDelimiter to paragraphs of versionFile

set versionFile to do shell script ("curl -L 'https://www.dropbox.com/s/5eugzgr1alfgsp9/version.txt?dl=1'")
set lineDelimiter to paragraphs of versionFile
repeat with oneLine in lineDelimiter
    if length of oneLine is greater than 0 then
        set variable to oneLine
        log "variable: " & variable
    end if
end repeat

Results:

tell current application
    do shell script "curl -L 'https://www.dropbox.com/s/5eugzgr1alfgsp9/version.txt?dl=1'"
        --> "1.0.0.2
www.example.com/download-link-here"
    (*variable: 1.0.0.2*)
    (*variable: www.example.com/download-link-here*)
end tell

Since the versionFile variable contains the text contents of the file, then in this case to work with it, use the elements of text objects, one of which is paragraph and in the context defined as:

  A series of characters beginning immediately after either the first character after the end of the preceding paragraph or the beginning of the text and ending with either a carriage return character (\r), a linefeed character (\n), a return/linefeed pair (\r\n), or the end of the text. The Unicode "paragraph separator" character (U+2029) is not supported.


You can't extend the downloads pane per say, but you can download more tools from the same location by going to Xcode → Open Developer Tool → More Developer Tools….

Upon logging in with your Developer ID, you can see the full list of tools, including the Command Line Tools.

I would list them here, but they're behind the developer login so can't be posted publicly.

There are even more Developer downloads, relatively unrelated to Xcode, accessible by removing the for Xcode - search criteria:

https://developer.apple.com/downloads/index.action


OS X Private Folder - Runaway file "crash recovery" 126.61GB!

Yes.  You have enabled auditing somewhere along the line, being  a wise person, but you have not trimmed the file, being a human, like I.  Note the instant edit ;)

man -k audit

if you can get a shell will show you where you need to go

( look at them on the apple dev site )

i think here you want

audit -e

to get rid of your old audit files.

From the man page:

The audit utility controls the state of the audit system.  One of the
     following flags is required as an argument to audit:

 -e      Forces the audit system to immediately remove audit log files
         that meet the expiration criteria specified in the audit control
         file without doing a log rotation.

 -i      Initializes and starts auditing.  This option is currently for
         Mac OS X only and requires auditd(8) to be configured to run
         under launchd(8).

 -n      Forces the audit system to close the existing audit log file and
         rotate to a new log file in a location specified in the audit
         control file.  Also, audit log files that meet the expiration
         criteria specified in the audit control file will be removed.

 -s      Specifies that the audit system should [re]synchronize its con-
         figuration from the audit control file.  A new log file will be
         created.

 -t      Specifies that the audit system should terminate.  Log files are
         closed and renamed to indicate the time of the shutdown.

On my system:

ls /var/audit
20110414160828.20110415024057 20110420155533.20110421134946
20110415024148.20110416200834 20110421140348.20110421151928
20110416200951.20110417013744 20110421152018.20110422125418
20110417014358.crash_recovery 20110422125606.20110422205003
20110417024720.20110417120347 20110422205003.20110423102007
20110417135346.20110419142539 20110423102114.20110423204207
20110419144659.20110419150605 20110423204320.20110424094847
20110419150626.20110419201121 20110424094940.not_terminated
20110419201223.20110419225009 build
20110419225100.20110420153215 current
[root:8va:0:~ ]# du -h /var/audit
4.0K    /var/audit/build
6.0M    /var/audit

Yes.  It's audit -e

[root:8va:0:~ ]# audit -e
Trigger sent.
[root:8va:0:~ ]# du -h /var/audit
4.0K    /var/audit/build
6.0M    /var/audit


How to "Undo" further steps in Final Cut Pro X

You can undo whatever you did since the last time you have opened the app. Further than that you will need to get a backup version of that "library" (meaning the file project in Apple's brain) located in your backups folder, defined in the Library Properties panel. Also it is a good idea to snapchat your "projects" (meaning the timeline/sequence) from time to time, so you have older versions.


How to restrict OS X video output to a specific part of the screen

What you're looking for is called adjusting the overscan; this doesn't technically exist on an LCD screen.

However, I think you can probably manually adjust the usable area of your screen using SwitchResX.
If you're running El Capitan, you have to do an additional step to enable custom resolutions called disabling System Integrity Protection (SIP); search their website for a detailed how to.

SwitchResX has a demo version you can test out before buying.


Daemons or other processes responsible for dictation in 10.8?

"kill -HUP" on DictationIM should reload the configuration ;)


How can I `brew prune` multiple entries?

Just run brew prune — this fixes them all in one go.

Run brew prune -v for verbose to see what it's doing.


How do I repeat a calendar event every x seconds in macOS Sierra?

I know this won't be the answer you were looking for.

In your question you stated:

  I then exported an event as an ICS file, and then edited the ICS file in TextEdit, but I must've got the code wrong, as it didn't re-import
  into macOS Calendar with the correct repeat interval.

Unfortunately you probably didn't get the code wrong.

While you are correct that the ICS specification does indeed support intervals down to the second, the problem is that the default macOS Calendar app doesn't support this (at least not in terms of repeat or recurrence values). So, what you want to do is not possible with the default macOS Calendar app. In fact, the problem you have is twofold, as the Calendar app does not recognise intervals:

shorter than a day
not represented as whole numbers

To explain this further, the first problem above would not necessarily be an issue if the Calendar app accepted a decimal value to enough decimal points, because then you could enter an event that repeated every 29.53 days.

However, even if the app did accept a decimal value, it'd likely be limited to no more than one decimal place, which won't be precise enough when dealing with days.

Unfortunately, MS Outlook won't work for you either (it doesn't accept anything less than daily intervals and even though you can enter decimal values, it just rounds them up or down).

And Fantastical, while an excellent calendar app for macOS, is as limited as the default calendar in this regard.

Instead, what you will need to do is:

find a solution that registers intervals shorter than a day, or works with decimal values, or
download one of the existing astronomical calendars for this purpose and then manually edit the ICS file to change the time zone to suit the various Australian ones you need.

Sorry this isn't what you were looking for, but maybe the second 'download and edit' option will work for you without too much effort.


Try this. Turn off the controller on the midi track. It will disable any controller for that track, but if that's OK, this might work
1. track editor (the scissor icon)
2. track edit tool (the line with dots on it
3. Push off the button right below the word "controller"
4. wish for luck


How do I subscribe to podcast in iTunes remotely?

I don’t know of a software that can do that automatically, however you have two choices:

1) If you want the podcast to be downloaded and ready, you will have to remote control your home PC and do it normally as if you were sitting in front of your computer. (Either through VNC or Windows Remote Connection)

2) If you don’t mind doing it when you get to your home, you can use a service like Dropbox and have a text file with the URLs. Since Dropbox will sync automatically, you can open the file when you get home and the urls will be there. Or use a service like Instapaper to save the URLs that will be ready when you get home to be added to your home iTunes.


Preventing files from being renamed when camera uploads to Dropbox is enabled

With current version of Dropbox client you can't.
If you want your photos to be uploaded to Dropbox and not renamed you have to rely on different solution than Dropbox.app

You might go to their forum though and request this to be available.


Internet speed getting slower over time on MBP

In my case this was caused by the Juniper/Pulse Secure VPN client's kernel extension, which was active even when not connected to the VPN. Unloading the kernel extension restored speed without a reboot.

Short term fix is to unload the extension, command copied from linked kb article:

sudo kextunload /Library/Extensions/PulseSecureFirewall.kext

Long term solution is to upgrade pulse secure client. I was experiencing this problem with pulse secure 9.0.3(1599). I upgraded to 9.0.3(1667) and the kext is no longer loaded by default. I can connect to the vpn without the kext loaded, and speed is no longer tailing off. Solved!

With pulsesecurefirewall.kext loaded:

Without pulsesecurefirewall.kext loaded:

If your VPN security policy requires "Lock Down Mode" or "Traffic Enforcement", you may need to downgrade instead of upgrade the client.

For future reference, you can view loaded non-apple kexts with:

kextstat |grep -vi com.apple

Edit: What is a kernel extension?
A kernel extension is a program that runs within the macOS kernel. Running within the kernel can give performance improvements for certain applications, and also access to APIs that aren't available to normal (user space) programs.

In this case, the pulse client included a kernel extension which provides firewall functionality by inspecting packets as they pass through the kernel. The provided extension is buggy and performance drops over time (maybe it keeps a list of something, and as that list grows, the length of time taken to scan the list increases, so the time to process a packet increases, leading to a drop in throughput??)

Unloading the kext removes the buggy code from the kernel, so that it doesn't affect performance.


Need a bit of help running a couple lines of bash in applescript. Maybe straight bash is best?

As @laaph mentioned, if you just want to run bash commands, use a bash script.

There are, however, a few issues with your commands.

Your script has to look like:

#!/bin/sh

pushd ~/Library/Vidalia
rm vidalia.conf
unzip vidalia.conf.zip
popd
open /Applications/Vidalia.app

If you didn't change to the correct directory, unzip would unzip the file into your home directory, or wherever you launched your script from.

There are ways to look for when an app quits, but in your case this seems useless, you're removing the .conf whenever you launch the script anyway. But if you really want that, you could simply do:

#!/bin/sh

pushd ~/Library/Vidalia
rm vidalia.conf
unzip vidalia.conf.zip
popd
open -W /Applications/Vidalia.app
pushd ~/Library/Vidalia
rm vidalia.conf
popd

(This would make the script wait until you close the app, and then it'd delete the configuration file. Again though, this is useless and redundant if you'll be only launching the app with the script.)

Also, you could try a simpler solution: I assume that what you want is just to have the same vidalia.conf whenever you start the program. If that's the case, try just making the .conf read-only.


Script or workflow to modify find and replace backslashes in clipboard

Using an Automator Service and AppleScript code, here are two examples of how you can change backslashes to slashes in a string.

The first one takes the selected text passed to the Automator Service, makes the replacements and sets the output to the Clipboard. Which from there you can manually paste wherever you desire that can accept pasted text.

The second one takes the selected text passed to the Automator Service, makes the replacements and then replaces the selected text passed with the modified text in place, that is providing the source selected text is editable.

There is a slight code difference between the two, in the on run subroutine and a single setting difference between the services. Both require first selecting a text string and then either a right-click to select the service from the Context menu or accessing the service from the Application_Name > Services > menu. The on replaceText(find, replace, textString) subroutine is the same in both examples.

AppleScript code for the Clipboard method service:

on run {input}
    set the clipboard to replaceText("\\", "/", input as string)
end run

on replaceText(find, replace, textString)
    set prevTIDs to AppleScript's text item delimiters
    set AppleScript's text item delimiters to find
    set textString to text items of textString
    set AppleScript's text item delimiters to replace
    set textString to "" & textString
    set AppleScript's text item delimiters to prevTIDs
    return textString
end replaceText

AppleScript code for the replace selected text method service:

on run {input}
    set input to replaceText("\\", "/", input as string)
    return input
end run

on replaceText(find, replace, textString)
    set prevTIDs to AppleScript's text item delimiters
    set AppleScript's text item delimiters to find
    set textString to text items of textString
    set AppleScript's text item delimiters to replace
    set textString to "" & textString
    set AppleScript's text item delimiters to prevTIDs
    return textString
end replaceText

To use the AppleScript code in an Automator Service:

In Automator, create a new Service with Service receives selected text in any application and Input is entire selection, then either leaving unchecked the [] Output replaces selected text check box for the clipboard service (AppleScript code for the Clipboard method service:) or checking the [√] Output replaces selected text check box for the for the replace selected text service (AppleScript code for the replace selected text method service:)
Add a Run AppleScript action to it and delete the default code.
Copy and paste whichever code for the method you choose to use.
Save the Service with an appropriate name, e.g., Replace backslashes with slashes on Clipboard for the first one and or Replace backslashes with slashes in selected text for the second one. Or of course whatever you prefer.

Now select some text that has backslashes in it and then select the service's name from the Services Context menu (right-click) or the Application_Name > Services > menu.

If using the Clipboard method, then paste the now modified selected text wherever you want or if using the replace selected text method, it's already replaced having selected that Service.


AppleScript: Select a specific drop down menu item?

As far as I can guess at your "structures", code to select a specific font might look like this:

-- insert after: click menu item "Set Font..." of menu "Edit" of menu bar 1

click pop up button of group of window "Set Font"
click menu item "[someFontName]" of menu of pop up button of group of ¬
   window "Set Font"

Depending on dialog window's "surroundings" s.th. like "group 1 of..." may be necessary.


You can use open’s -a option:

open -a Mail

You can specify the application path instead:

open /Applications/Mail.app

If you want to use AppleScript (osascript from command line), open app isn't quite equivalent. Instead, you can either use

osascript -e 'tell application "Mail" to activate'

or

osascript -e 'tell application "Mail" to launch'

You can see this question for the difference between the two.


This temporary fix worked fine for me and is the easiest to apply:

  Change the timezone to one zone further west until Nov 4, leaving the time as is.


How to automatically tag file by name or extension

Apple offer Folder Actions to attach AppleScripts to folders. You can attach an AppleScript to perform any task with incoming files to a specific folder.

See Folder Actions Tutorial: Automation, Meet the Filesystem for a tutorial and step-by-step guide.


Reinstalling OS X server on headless Mac mini

Start the Mac Mini in Target mode. You'll need a keyboard, hold down the "t" key as it boots.
Connect the mac mini to your MBP with a firewire cable.
Boot the MBP and hold down the option key.
Select the  macmini as the startup disk. You should be able to install and configure the mac mini. Then just shutdown and disconnect everything. then restart the mac mini on its own.

Make sure the mini is set to connect to your wireless. So when you boot the machine on its own it connects right away. Also be sure to enable remote desktop access.

This is how I setup my macmini recently.


What would be a good SSD drive for a MacBook Pro mid 2010?

I recommend the Crucial M500 SSDs. They're solid, reliable, and fast. I've replaced the OEM HDD on both my 2008 aluminum MacBook and 2011 MacBook Pro with them and have had 0 issues so far, they work great. Below are some links for your perusal.

Buy them on Amazon

Manufacturer Information


is there iOS maps app in which i can download full city map?


How to get rid of extra top bar in safari

This is toggled via the menu item View > Show/Hide Favorites Bar, accessible by pressing the shortcut ⇧⌘B.  It's the third item down in the View menu.


Can I transfer everything I have stored on my phone to iCloud storage?

No - not directly, iCloud is not general purpose storage like Amazon S3 or Dropbox offers where you can push files to the store and then delete them and transfer back.

Yes - indirectly, you could ensure your iCloud backup holds everything you care about, turn off backups, delete enough things to run the update and then immediately erase all content and settings to restore the entire backup to your device.

There isn't a good way to actually test that your iCloud backup is complete other than restoring it to a new device since you have to erase your primary device to then get to the restore.


If this is a newer MacBook Air (with a Force Touch trackpad), changing the pressure required to "Click" should help fix this. I experienced similar issues on my MacBook Pro.

Go into System Preferences, click the Trackpad icon, and select the "Point & Click" tab. On the left you should see a "Click" slider with "Light", "Medium", and "Firm" options. If you shift it over one setting, you might find that's enough to fix the issue.

Alternatively, disabling Force Click and haptic feedback (unchecking the checkbox at the bottom), may also stop peculiar behavior from happening. That's ultimately what I ended up doing and it made a world of difference in my case.


Adding to Mac OS X contextual menu Templates like on Linux Ubuntu

There are a number of ways you could do this.

You could use Automator to create new documents through a Service:
http://pauloppenheim.wordpress.com/2011/06/03/mac-finder-add-new-file-context-menu-item-open-source/
Use a context menu plugin, but these are less common on 10.6 and 10.7. You may need to run them using Shortcuts:
http://www.abracode.com/free/cmworkshop/macosx_10_6_snow_leopard_and_contextual_menu_plugins.html
Best of all, in my opinion, you can use a little known OS X feature called Stationary Pad. It's on the Get Info dialog of any file. The way you would go about using it is to create your template file, mark it as a Stationary Pad and then every time you double click it a new copy of that template will be created. Read more:
http://ignorethecode.net/blog/2009/05/31/creating-new-documents/


No, this will not harm your device or SIM card. Although Apple mentions it in their manual and theoretically you can short-circuit your device (I have no clue how, but theoretically...), in practice, when done with common sense, this should not harm your device. You do need to be careful with static charges and dust.


You can use a tool that is very comfortable to change the default app for specific URL handlers.

Change the ssh URL scheme with RCDefaultApp

Download RCDefaultApp Version 2.1
Install the Preference Pane
Go to System Preferences > Defaults Apps > URLs
Go to "ssh"
On the right side, select your preferred application

It will look very similar to this screenshot:


The string "pal-nat184-103-166" is your computer's hostname, which can be changed dynamically by routers or other network devices through DHCP.

If you want to set it to a static string, you can do so by adding the following line to /etc/hostconfig

HOSTNAME=Nicholass-MacBook-Pro


Aligning, moving and enlarging partitions seems impossible

So, I've solved my problem in a destructive way: I've connected the SSD to my Linux machine, launched GParted, deleted the Macintosh HD and the recovery partition and created a new Macintosh HD partition, aligning it to the MiB.

After that I've put the SSD back in the macbook, launched disk utility and formatted the partition as HFS+ journaled, then launched the installer from an USB stick and reinstalled MacOS.

The installer had recreated the Recovery partition while keeping the Macintosh HD alignment to the MiB.


When I switch to one of my workspaces with Chrome, it jumps to the other Chrome workspace

The only work-around I've found for this is to move the window that keeps stealing focus to another workspace. If I move it back to the previous workspace it will exhibit the same behaviour, so I need to delete that workspace and create it again, and then move the window back to it.

Upgrading to 10.13.2 didn't fix it for me.

Update: Upgraded to 10.13.3 and the issue is still there.


Before you go all the way to wipe, try

sudo rm -r /var/root/.TotalResults

in Terminal, followed by a restart.


How to change computer name so terminal displays it in OS X?

sudo scutil --set HostName your-hostname


"Allow Payments on Mac" missing from my iPad

It appears that it is not possible to use Apple Pay on a non-touch ID Macbook with an iPad.  Per this post linked below as well as Apple who specifies "iPhone or Apple Watch" and does not specify iPad at all in relation to older Macbooks being compatible with Apple Pay.


What are some good sources for Pages and Keynote templates?

The best commercial packages of themes for the iWork apps, in my experience, are those from Jumsoft.(under Design) They produce themes for both Pages and Keynote, as well as animation and art packs.

For free templates, iWorkCommunity has a ton of Pages templates, and some decent Numbers templates as well for basic use. KeynoteUser also produces commercial themes, in addition to having some freebies, and an excellent blog and collection of links for other sources of high quality stuff.


Where is Java installed in OSX Mavericks?

George Garside's path is correct. Latest JDK released today from Oracle. I advise downloading directly from Oracle's Site. Use the symlink to create your JAVA_HOME variable.
Add the following to your .bash_profile or .bashrc profile.

export JAVA_HOME=$(/usr/libexec/java_home)

Just downloaded the kit and added the above to my .bash_profile.
As you can see, variable is now clearly defined:

Macbook-Pro:~ njboot$ echo $JAVA_HOME

Returns:

/Library/Java/JavaVirtualMachines/jdk1.8.0_20.jdk/Contents/Home


I recently ran in to a similar issue when trying to squeeze a little more life out of an old iMac. I could only get 800mhz DIMM's but the specs say it needs 667mhz. I can interchange 1x 667mhz DIMM with 1x800mhz DIMM but a single 800mhz DIMM or two 800mhz DIMMs result in a failure to boot.

My hunch was that the motherboard thinks it can run at 800mhz so doesn't downclock it to 667mhz unless there is a slow DIMM in one of the slots forcing it to.

I did some research, and discovered the timing information is set in the SPD data stored on an EEPROM on the DIMM. I booted an Ubuntu 16.10 liveUSB on the iMac, apt-get installed i2c-tools, modprobeed the i2c-i801 module to enable the SMBus (which talks to the DIMM EEPROM) and read out the SPD of a working and a too-fast DIMM with i2cget. After a lot more research, I merged the timing information from the working DIMM in to the SPD of the too-fast (but larger) DIMM. decode-dimms can calculate the correct CRC. I then wrote the modified data back to the fast DIMM with i2cset.

I can now pair that down-clocked DIMM with an unmodified 800mhz DIMM, and the system correctly downclocks  the memory bus to 667mhz and boots.

FULL DISCLOSURE: After about a month the upgraded machine started hard-crashing and was replaced by a 2017 iMac ;)


New Photo app - upload speed to iCloud photos really so slow?

Just realized, it is on my side and my upload is saturated since I installed Photos - so it is not Apple's fault:

If I am not mistaken, it should be done in about 12-15 days.


Is it safe to `rm` folders from the .Trashes folder on an external drive?

I actually do this a lot, especially if there is a huge number of files and folders in the trash. Works like a charm, and in case you empty all trash folders Finder will even update the icon to show an empty trash bin again afterwards.


How can I move Macintosh HD out of container disk1?

A couple of misconceptions to clarify first:

It is correct that Macintosh HD is in a container, since it is an APFS volume since High Sierra. This is the title of your question, so the answer is here first. It is not possible to move an APFS volume out of any container. It is correct that the startup volume, an APFS volume, is within an APFS container.
It is correct that Windows cannot see Macintosh HD any more. Apple have not provided APFS drivers for Windows and the Boot Camp Control Panel cannot see Macintosh HD.

With that out of the way, we can deal with removing Boot Camp. Make sure you have a backup.

You should be able to open Boot Camp Assistant and choose Remove Windows.
This automates the process for you.

Alternatively with Disk Utility:

In Disk Utility, select APPLE SSD. Click the Partition button on the toolbar.
You should see a pie chart of the partitions on your disk. Select BOOTCAMP and click the – button to remove it from the pie. Repeat this for OSXRESERVED.
Expand the size of the container (Macintosh HD) to fill the rest of the disk, otherwise you will be left with free space not assigned to any partition.
Confirm that the rest of the disk partitions look correct, then choose Apply.


OS X Server 5.2 only supports L2TP/IPSec VPN.

Apple has dropped support for PPTP for security reasons. PPTP is known to have a number of significant security vulnerabilities.

Apple started to warn their users in OS X El Capitan and iOS 9 during VPN client setup not to use PPTP any more. With macOS Sierra and iOS 10, Apple has removed PPTP client support.

If, for some reason, despite of the security problems, you need to continue to use PPTP, you will probably need some third-party software. But you should not.


Triple boot macOS High Sierra, Ubuntu, and Windows without rEFInd

Alternative Second Answer

This second answer differs from my first answer in the following ways.

The second EFI partition is replaced by a HFS+ partition.
The label displayed in the Startup Manager will be "Ubuntu" instead of the generic "EFI Boot".

I will assume the following:

You have install Ubuntu to use the EFI boot method.
You are using grub to boot Ubuntu
Grub boots from the EFI partition.
There is only one EFI partition.
The EFI partition is the first partition on the Disk.
There is only one disk involved and the disk is internal.
rEFInd is installed in the EFI partition.

I will offer two ways to solve your problem. Each has it pros and cons.

The Mac Startup Manager will display an operating system if you place the .efi file in the right location. This location is the System/Library/CoreServices folder of the volume in a HFS+ partition. The file name must be boot.efi. Furthermore, you can customize the icon displayed for the operating system by placing a .VolumeIcon.icns file in the root folder of the volume in the HFS+ partition.

The First Way.

  Note: Here, rEFInd is still being used, but not as a replacement for the Startup Manager. You will be able to use a firmware password. In fact, no rEFInd menus are displayed. The rEFInd boot manager just silently boots grub (which boots Ubuntu).

Download rEFInd from this SourceForge website. I assume the downloaded file is named refind-bin-0.11.2.zip and this file was downloaded to your ~/Downloads folder.
Create a new HFS+ partition. Instructions are given in the section "Adding a HFS+ Partition".
Mount the new HFS+ partition, by entering the following command.

sudo  diskutil  mount  disk0s3

The new HFS+ partition will have the volume name Ubuntu.
Install rEFInd into the volume on the new HFS+ partition.

cd  ~/Downloads/refind-bin-0.11.2
./refind-install  --ownhfs  /dev/disk0s3

  Note: The error message Could not set boot device property: 0xe00002bc was expected and can be ignored.

Configure the TextEdit application. Open TextEdit, then navigate to the "Preferences..." window. Uncheck all the "Options", as shown below. When finished, quit TextEdit.

Use the command below to navigate to the folder containing the refind.conf file.

cd  /Volumes/Ubuntu/System/Library/CoreServices

Make a backup copy of this file.

sudo  cp  refind.conf  refind.conf.orignal

Add write permissions to the CoreServices folder and the refind.conf file.

sudo  chmod  a+w  .  refind.conf

Open the file in the TextEdit application.

open  -e  refind.conf

In this volume, edit the System/Library/CoreServices/refind.conf file to silently boot grub (which will intern boot Ubuntu). This can be accomplished by adding the following lines to the end of the refind.conf file. You should be able to just cut and paste these lines. When finished, save the changes, then quit TextEdit.

#
# Added to make rEFInd silent.
#
menuentry "Ubuntu" {
    icon \System\Library\CoreServices\icons\os_ubuntu.png
    volume "EFI"
    loader \EFI\ubuntu\grubx64.efi
    ostype Linux
    graphics on
}
timeout -1
hideui all
scanfor manual

Unmount the new volume named Ubuntu, by entering the following commands.

cd  ~
diskutil  unmount  disk0s3

Pros: Ubuntu is unaffected, so any Ubuntu updates will not require attention.

Cons: You need to use the third party boot manager rEFInd.

The Second Way.

Create a new HFS+ partition. Instructions are given in the section "Adding a HFS+ Partition".
Mount the original EFI partition and the new HFS+ partition, by entering the following commands.

sudo  diskutil  mount  disk0s1
sudo  diskutil  mount  disk0s3

The original EFI partition will have the name EFI and the new HFS+ partition will have the name Ubuntu.
In the new volume named Ubuntu, create the folders EFI/ubuntu and System/Library/CoreServices, by entering the following commands.

mkdir  -p  /Volumes/Ubuntu/EFI/ubuntu
mkdir  -p  /Volumes/Ubuntu/System/Library/CoreServices

Copy the files grub.cfg and grubx64.efi to the new volume named Ubuntu. The commands needed are given below.

cp  /Volumes/EFI/EFI/ubuntu/grub.cfg  /Volumes/Ubuntu/EFI/ubuntu/grub.cfg
cp  /Volumes/EFI/EFI/ubuntu/grubx64.efi  /Volumes/Ubuntu/System/Library/CoreServices/boot.efi

Unmount the original EFI partition and the new HFS+ partition, by entering the following commands.

diskutil  unmount  disk0s1
diskutil  unmount  disk0s3

Pros: You do not need to use the third party boot manager rEFInd.

Cons: If the grubx64.efi or grub.cfg is updated, you have to manually copy these files to new volume named Ubuntu.

Adding a Custom Icon

The steps below will add the following Ubuntu icon to the Startup Menu.

Download a collection of icons from the sourceforge web site Mac icns.
Use the Finder application to open the downloaded file mac-icns.dmg. I assume this file downloaded to your ~/Downloads folder.
Mount the volume named Ubuntu by entering the following command.

sudo  diskutil  mount  disk0s3

Use the Finder application to copy the os_ubuntu.icns icon file to the root folder of the volume named Ubuntu. Alternatively, you can use the command shown below.

sudo cp  /Volumes/mac-icns/os_ubuntu.icns  /Volumes/Ubuntu/.

Rename the os_ubuntu.icns icon file to .VolumeIcon.icns. This can be accomplished by entering the following command.

sudo mv  /Volumes/Ubuntu/os_ubuntu.icns  /Volumes/Ubuntu/.VolumeIcon.icns

Note: Files starting with a period (.) do not normally appear in a Finder application window.
Use the Finder application to eject the EFI System partition with the volume name Ubuntu. Alternatively, you can use the command shown below to unmount the volume.

diskutil  unmount  disk0s3

Use the Finder application to eject the volume named mac-icns.

Adding a HFS+ Partition

  Note: Below is based on the output from diskutil list that you provided in your question.

Enter the command below in a Terminal application window. The will create a "Mac OS Extended" volume named "Ubuntu" in a new partition.

sudo  diskutil  apfs  resizeContainer  disk0s2  242300M  HFS+  Ubuntu  200M

Get the volume UUID for the volume named "Ubuntu" by entering the command below.

 diskutil info Ubuntu | grep "Volume UUID"

The output should be similar to what is shown below.

   Volume UUID:              795F14D2-ED1F-3CA0-A004-BD0A27000DC8

Next, prevent this new volume name "Ubuntu" from automatically mounting, by entering the following commands. Substitute your UUID for the one shown below.

sudo  bash
echo  >> /etc/fstab
echo  UUID=795F14D2-ED1F-3CA0-A004-BD0A27000DC8 none hfs rw,noauto >> /etc/fstab
exit

  Note: The correct way, to edit the /etc/fstab file, is to use the command sudo vifs. Using the echo command is just a quick shortcut.

Use the Finder application to eject this new volume. Alternatively, you can enter the command shown below to unmount this volume.

diskutil  unmount  Ubuntu

If you need me to expand on any of the above steps, let me know.


Wifi doesn't work: interface not powered

Interestingly it does show Connected but the WiFi settings are wrong and the Network settings are wrong?

Anyway, lets bypass the GUI and use Terminal for some direct commands.

In Terminal type (to turn it on)

networksetup -setairportpower en0 on

Next type (to scan)

/System/Library/PrivateFrameworks/Apple80211.framework/Versions/A/Resources/airport scan

Finally type (to connect)

networksetup -setairportnetwork en0 WIFI_SSID_I_WANT_TO_JOIN WIFI_PASSWORD


Found a solution, used this command in terminal chmod -RN ~/Library/


Migrating from Old to Less-Old Mac - any other specific issues?

Yes, if you're fresh installing the new Mac it will ask if you want to transfer information at the end of the install process - just have a firewire to firewire cable handy and have the old mac booted into target disk mode (hold down T while the old mac is booting up).

Just check you can boot the old mac into target mode first - I know some of those old macs weren't built with the capability. If you can't target mode just comment on the answer or your question, there are other ways around this.

The only gotcha I can think of is any PPC apps (ones that use the older Power PC processors) like AppleWorks will need to use Rosetta to run, which might make them run a bit slow or cause general funkyness with those apps. You'll want to upgrade your Dad's apps to their Intel versions if you can - using something like App Fresh after the migration would be a good idea.


Boot MacBook to Linux/Windows from TimeCapsule.

Apple TimeCapsule doesn't offer netboot/netinstall services. None of the essential requirements for such services like NFS (Linux/OS X), http(s) (OS X) or tftp (Linux/Windows) run on the Time Capsule.

You need Mac OS X Server, a NAS/Linux server or a Windows Server (I think some pimped Windows Client OSs will do it also) to accomplish this.


sudo ln -s /usr/local/bin/python3 /usr/local/bin/python

should allow you to run v3 by just calling python.


Launch an app upon certain external trigger

U.S. Patent No. 8,254,902, otherwise known as "Apparatus and methods for enforcement of policies upon a wireless device," was granted in late-August, and would allow phone policies to be set to "chang[e] one or more functional or operational aspects of a wireless device [...] upon the occurrence of a certain event."

Apple was awarded this patent over the summer. They are looking at ways to disable features like the camera when in range of a certain AP, for example a AP near a locker room or bathroom or at concert and so on.....

Hopefully third party apps can find a way to take advantage of this as well.

Apple Location Software

Link above explains it in much more detail.


Triggering an Automator script upon text selection

If the applications are scriptable like safari is, then you can possibly have a Applescript application running and checking if there is a selection. Then respond by running you task or calling the Automator workflow when there is.

Afaik Applications do not send out notifications when text is selected so this would have to work using a periodic check. Which means wthere ould be a delay in when you Applescript Application reacts

Example of Applescript App. (save as Application with stay open checked)

    property oldSelectedText : ""

on idle
    try
        tell application "Safari"

            set selectedText to (do JavaScript "(''+getSelection())" in document 1)
            if selectedText is not "" then
                if oldSelectedText is not equal to selectedText then

                    (* DO STUFF*)

                    set oldSelectedText to selectedText
                    display notification with title "Safari Selection" subtitle selectedText

                end if
            end if
        end tell

    end try

    return 5 -- seconds idle before next check
end idle


Keyboard shortcut for Spotlight doesn't work in full screen Google Chrome on Mac OS X 10.7 (Lion)

Chrome doesn't currently support Lion's full screen features. They are working on a version that does.

Until that is finished, you'll have to use Chrome's built-in full screen capabilities (not based on Lion's).

You can change the keyboard shortcut to enter that the same way you'd change any other (System Preferences-> Keyboard-> Keyboard Shortctus-> [+] button


Clear multiple entries form "Open With" context menu

You need to reset the Launch Services Database

Use the following command in the terminal:

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

Wait until the terminal returns you to a prompt.  You should now be all set.

My understanding is that this will work in anything from 10.5 and up.


Can an 'incorrect password lockout' be set?

It turns out that you can use a Terminal command to achieve this. Note that parts of this command are deprecated, but I tested it on macOS 10.13.3 and everything seems to work.

On the device that has the account you want to set a lock on, log
into the administrator account.
Open Terminal and enter the following command; pwpolicy -u testuser -setpolicy "maxFailedLoginAttempts=1". Assume that testuser is the short name of the user you want to apply the lockout settings to, and 1 is the number of failed attempts required to trigger the account lock.
Restart the device to ensure that the changes take affect.

If an account is locked, you can log into the administrator account again and unlock the standard account using the following command; pwpolicy -u testuser -enableuser.

Update:
I was able to test this with remote connections, and your device will not allow remote authentication with a locked account.


Running 10.11 in VM Ware Fusion with 10.10 Host

El Capitan is a beta software and VMware Fusion 7.1.2 doesn't support El Capitan officially.

Just download and install VMware Fusion Technology Preview 2015 and try your luck.

Improvements among others:

New OS Support including Windows 10 Insider Preview and El Capitan Beta
DirectX 10 and OpenGL 3.3 Support


Difference Between macOS Locking and a Kernel Panic

Panic is a guaranteed, deterministic dead end. The code literally cannot continue so the conditions that led up to it are documented (as well as they can on a system that is already broken) and aborts.

Hangs can be all manner of thing so the generalization is less possible or convenient to make.

One library of buggy program can cause both - so that’s a clue you might be able leverage in your investigation.

What is a Kernel Panic and what does it mean?
How can I troubleshoot Kernel Panics on my iMac
How serious are occasional kernel panics?

Since the panics have more diagnostic information and are more certain, I’d start with debugging and cornering those. For the hangs, you’ll need to trigger sysdiagnose and look over log files and collect the data and timing manually.


Apple recently discontinued Bento. It was an easy to use simplified version of their pro product Filemaker pro.

there are still copies of it around the internet for sale (Amazon, Ebay, etc.) That would be a reasonable choice.

But if you will be needing a current and currently supported product you may have to look elsewhere.

You could try OpenOffice, which has a DB module and is free. Also if you have MS Access you could use a VM (VirtualBox, Parallels, VMWare) with Windows or Codeweavers Crossover Office to just run Access without Windows.

A quick search of the App Store might give you something that works for you as well.


If you cannot unlock the keychain then its contents are lost, they're encrypted using the keychain password.

Your login keychain and password are linked, if the login password is changed via system preferences the keychain password is changed to the new password also. However, it is possible that the login password can be changed by other means whilst not changing the keychain password.

When the system logs in it will try to unlock your keychain with the same login password - if they don't match, you'll see the error message you're seeing.

If you manage to remember the keychain password and unlock the keychain you should change your login password to match. But, as I said initially, you're out of luck if you can't remember the password.


In System Preferences > Energy Saver, check the box for "Prevent computer from sleeping automatically when the display is off" (on laptops, this is under the Power Adapter tab)
In System Preferences > Security & Privacy, check the box for "Require password after sleep or screen saver begins" and set the delay in the dropdown menu to "immediately"

Now, you can hit command-option-power to turn off the display without sleeping the computer, and doing anything that turns on the display (like hitting a key or clicking a mouse button) will prompt you for your account password.

On newer macs without the eject key, please use control-shift+power instead.


Bootcamp installation of Windows 8.1 (High Sierra 10.13.6) audio driver doesn't work (iMac Mid 2011)

In 2012, Apple starting switching over from DVD installs of Windows to flash drives. In 2015, Apple again switched to installs of Windows where only the Windows ISO file was required. Your have a 2011 Mac and therefore were only suppose to install up to 64 bit Windows 8.1 by using a DVD. While by 2011 the industry had converted from legacy BIOS booting of Windows to the modern EFI boot method, Apple did start converting until 2012. When a High Sierra was installed on your Mac, the firmware was upgraded to allow EFI booting of a Windows 10 installer from FAT32 and ExFAT formatted flash drives.

Unfortunately, the Boot Camp Support Software for your model Mac contains drivers for the legacy BIOS booting of Windows. Therefore, if you attempt to install an EFI booting Windows you may encounter problems such as the audio not working properly. The same should also be true when installing Windows 8.1

  No Mac, regardless of model year, can BIOS boot from a flash drive.

In my opinion, Windows 8 and 8.1 were terrible versions of Windows. Therefore, you should consider installing Windows 10. Since the Window Support Software drivers are designed for a BIOS booting Windows, you should only install Windows to BIOS boot.

If you use a DVD to install Windows, then you should choose to BIOS boot from the DVD. This will automatically select Windows to be installed to BIOS boot. If installing the current version of Windows 10, then you will need a double layer DVD (DL).

If you choose to use a flash drive, then you can only EFI boot from the flash drive. The Windows installer will by default require you to install Windows to EFI boot. Instructions on how to install Window 10 to BIOS boot are given in the accepted answer to the question How to install Windows 10 into a 2011 iMac without using the Boot Camp Assistant, an optical (DVD) drive or third party tools?


-Bash command not found appearing every time I start terminal

It sounds like you have an errant command in a file like .bashrc or .profile. Try opening those files and looking for a command that doesn't belong. If something look suspect you might want to copy and paste it into Terminal to see if it runs correctly.

You might also check your prompt if you've customized it to see if you introduced an error there.


The problem was that the x forwarding is broken on my osx. I have disabled it and now I can connect again


Disk Utility reports "missing thread record" on my external HDD

That sound you hear is often referred to as "The Click of Death": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Click_of_death

Head reader errors, motor errors, anything of this sort indicate physical failure, and possibly imminent device death. Get your data backed up off of that disk NOW.

Afterwards, and only afterwards, check and see if it's still in warranty. :)


Mac OS X Yosemite using too much RAM... Why?

Free RAM is wasted RAM. It is electrically powered regardless of its contents.

Your screen shot shows 2.52gb of cache[1], 0.375gb of compressed memory and 0.574gb of swap.

The 2.52gb of cache will be assigned to processes that ask for more memory. The difference between the "new" way and the "old" way is that the contents of "freed" memory is tracked.

Apps that "free up" memory just flush the cache - meaning they cause the operating system to forget what was in memory (the actual contents are not cleared) and all requests for the previously cached items have to wait for the data to load from disk. You won't usually notice this penalty in a big way, but the system will feel slower.

Less than a gb of swap is nothing, but if you see this number increasing while cache memory is near zero (which should show yellow or red memory pressure) it is a sign that something is making heavy demands for memory.

As for compressed memory, CPUs are so fast now that its actually faster to compress and decompress data than it is to wait for data to load from disk. As memory pressure increases, the OS will compress the memory to meet demands instead of swapping.

For more information on understanding what Activity Monitor shows, see:

Activity Monitor: Determine if your Mac could use more RAM
Activity Monitor: View memory usage

1 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cache_(computing)


Solved by manually downloading latest Xcode from developer.apple.com/downloads/. Everything updated just fine.


Can I make mobile Safari open YouTube links in the browser?

Go to Settings > General > Restrictions and untick the Youtube button. After that Youtube links will open in Safari and the app icon will disappear from the home screen.


Run bash script at login stored in the home folder?

EnableGlobbing doesn't work on OS X Yosemite 10.10. It has been deprecated (ref).

You can see in logs The EnableGlobbing key is no longer respected. Please remove it. (from /var/log/system.log)

The problem is that launchd cwd (current working directory) is /, so you can't use ./ like some people said.

To run a script from your home the simple way is to use (bash|zsh|sh) -c. option. This way you will have the ability to use the tilde ~ or the $HOME variable.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" ?>
<!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN" "http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd">
<plist version="1.0">
  <dict>
    <key>Label</key>
    <string>org.your.stuff</string>
    <key>ProgramArguments</key>
    <array>
      <!-- here is the important thing -->
      <string>zsh</string>
      <string>-c</string>
      <string>~/you/script/in/your/home</string>
    </array>

    <!-- code below is just for the example -->
    <!-- Keep running... -->
    <key>KeepAlive</key>
    <true />
    <!-- ...every day. In sec, 60*60*24 = every day -->
    <key>ThrottleInterval</key>
    <integer>86400</integer>
  </dict>
</plist>


Based upon the specs on Apple's website, a new iMac would provide a significant boost over your older hardware, however whether it's enough to justify it is a personal decision. The new iMac maxed out would have a 3.4 GHz quad-core i7 (turboboost to 3.9) compared to 2.8 quad-core, 32GB 1600MHz DDR3 ram vs 14GB 800 MHz DDR2 (yours also maxes at 32GB), SATA version 3(6GB/s) vs version 2(3GB/s), USB 3.0 vs 2.0, Thunderbolt vs. firewire 800, and increased (depends on your card) graphics performance from the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 680MX. So yes all that will outperform your current Mac Pro in its current arrangement and in a nice compact package with a fancy new 27" screen. But...

While all this sounds great, it's as far as you can go with it of course. You can upgrade no more past those specs on the iMac unlike the Mac Pro. I'm of the opinion that a refreshed or new Mac Pro is coming soon, so if it was me I would wait if possible. Even it was 6 months or so, I would wait. Only you know what you need however. If those specs seem good enough to you then do it. But if you need to be able to upgrade the graphics card, add a PCI-X card, want more than 32GB of ram in the future, need an optical drive, firewire(maybe), RAID...the list could go on... then waiting for the next Mac Pro is your best bet, but you probably already knew that.

Another option is going ahead and buying the iMac how you want it, use it until the next Mac Pro is released, then sell the iMac to recoup some cost after purchasing the new Mac Pro. It's more hassle, but possibly worth it if your current set up just isn't cutting it anymore. And since they both would likely have Thunderbolt, transferring data should be relatively quick.

Also...On the topic of upgrading, I'm not sure, but it may be possible that the motherboard of your Mac has an open slot for another Xeon processor (although you'd need a matched pair). So with some work you could potentially upgrade your existing hardware to have 8 cores. Might be worthing looking into... I don't know.
Mac Pro specs at Apple

2012 iMac Specs at Apple


What type of provisioning profile is required for TestFlight external testing?

Since Testflight has been integrated in the App Store / iTunes Connect, you'll need to upload it to iTunes Connect, which means you need an App Store provisioning profile, not an Ad-Hoc one. I can imagine that older tutorials, made when Testflight was a stand-alone platform, still describe the situation were an Ad-Hoc provisioning profile was necessary.

As for the push notifications:

are you sure you use the Production environment of APN (the Sandbox environment only works for debug builds)?
do you get any error messages (on the server) when sending the push notifications?
if you call the Feedback service of APN, do the devices appear there?


Use rsync for this purpose since cp cannot faithfully reproduce all the files that exist on OS X. The benefits of rsync over ditto and cp are:

interrupted transfers can restart easily with very little cost.
restarts even resume part way through a large file.
file exclusion and --dry-run allow easy testing and iterative thinning.

The simplest way to use rsync and preserve most things (permissions, symlinks, edit dates, etc) is to use the -a or --archive flag to archive. To see your progress use -P or --progress

Rsync works as:

rsync options source destination

In your case I would recommend the following:

rsync --archive --verbose --one-file-system --human-readable --progress /from/ /to

Or in short:

rsync -avxhP /from/ /to

Mind the lack of trailing slash in the /to location.

see comments for more useful flags


OneDrive files which appear in Finder but not in terminal?

Okay, same problem here.  I just installed a Go package library from github.com which resulted in $GOPATH/src/google.golang.org folder showing in Finder but not showing or accessible in Terminal.  I can even open the files in both Finder and in my JetBrains editor GoLand with no problem.  But I have no means of going to the directory in Terminal.

I also can confirm they are not symbolically linked either.  When I run ls -la on the $GOPATH/src folder I just get github.com but in Finder it shows github.com and google.golang.org as sub-directories under src directory.  I have Read/Write permission on both sub-directories.


You can't remove iCloud from your Apple ID. The best you can do is clear information from it and not enable the iCloud services on your devices.


Terminal app slows switching of desktops/Spaces

ok, funny, found out that changing Opacity back to 100% the switch goes just like a charm.
Leaving this for QoS in here.


While it may be true that the 5S has lower quality low-light video recording than other iPhones, there is a fundamental physics fact that you have to keep in mind: To get more light in a picture –controlling for other factors such as ISO and aperture– you need more time for each picture, more exposure.
I just did a test on my iPhone 6, and the "problem" persists.

The thing is, it is impossible for an image to look brighter with less exposure.
In the case of my pictures, the first picture is taken at 1/15 of a second, with an ISO of 500.
I can't find the ISO information on the video but I know the exposure: it has to be at the most 1/60 because I've setup video to have 60 frames per second. So it is 4 times faster -or 4 times less exposure- which explains the darkness.
Remember a video is just a series of pictures.
From the comments one of the links provided by Doc G.(emphasis mine):

When taking a digital image, there are 3 main factors - aperture (or f-stop), shutter speed and ISO (sensitivity). In manual mode on a 'proper' camera you can experiment with all of these to achieve a desired result. In automatic mode, the camera makes all the decisions hoping to manage a decent (fast) shutter speed to combat camera shake or motion blur, a low value ISO to reduce noise, and an appropriate aperture to get the best exposure.
Unfortunately, when shooting video one of these factors is set in stone. At 30fps your shutter speed will be set to 1/30th of a second, and at 120fps this will be 1/120th of a second. If you are talking about low light conditions, then you are required to open the aperture or increase the ISO to compensate. The iPhone 5s has an aperture of f/2.2, so that becomes another limiting factor. The only place left to go is an increase in ISO - meaning more noise.
Therefore the iPhone 5s is either hitting it's (reported) ISO 2500 maximum, or deciding on a compromise value to avoid excessive noise. In other words, if there isn't enough light to be shooting video, you shouldn't be trying to shoot video. At least not until sensor technology improves, which will happen eventually.


Automatically eject disk image x minutes after mounting

You can use a cronJob and an apple Script

unMount a disk with AppleScript :

set mountedDiskName to "AirPort Time Capsule"
set diskIsMounted to false

tell application "System Events" to set diskNames to name of every disk
if mountedDiskName is in diskNames then
    set diskIsMounted to true
end if

if diskIsMounted then

    //  put a sleep or a notification here, see explanation below

    log "Disk Found, unmounting now..."
    do shell script "diskutil unmountDisk" & space & quoted form of mountedDiskName

else

    log "Disk Not Found, mounting now…"
    mount volume "afp://AirPort%20Time%20Capsule._afpovertcp._tcp.local"

end if

https://stackoverflow.com/questions/29332873/os-x-applescript-to-check-if-drive-mounted-and-mount-it-if-not

Make a cronJob to run the Script :

* * * * * osascript ~/Desktop/theScriptToBeExecuted.applescript

How can I configure my computer to run an AppleScript at a specific time? Caveat: without using iCal

Put a sleep or a notification in "if diskIsMounted", because if you mount your disk at the cronTab start, your disk will be ejected before the end of your backup ;)

**I provide you a simple idea and some code to help you, you will certainly have to modify some code.


Where to find VNC access logs with IP addresses on Sierra?

Beginning with macOS Sierra, there is a new unified logging system, which requires a bit more work to access than the old system.log, but includes far more details.

Use this command to show the last three days of access logs:
log show --last 3d --predicate 'processImagePath CONTAINS "screensharingd" AND eventMessage CONTAINS "Authentication"'

This will show timestamps, IP, username, and authentication failure/success for both VNC and Apple Screen Sharing connections.


All you need to do is just toggle off time machine. The scripts are for people that want to inherit an old backup folder when they continue to use time machine.

See tmutil inheritbackup command line tool for details and the manual page.

https://developer.apple.com/legacy/library/documentation/Darwin/Reference/ManPages/man8/tmutil.8.html
Can I inherit a Time Machine backup if I clone my HD?

  Inheriting is typically only one step in the process of configuring a backup for use by a machine. You may also need to use setdestination, associatedisk, or both, depending on the situation.


Is the Original AppleTV (First Gen) compatible with iTunes 11?

I ended up testing this myself.

Syncing content works
Restoring the device works

I haven't exhaustively tested everything possible, but I did write up what I have tested in more detail on my blog.

iTunes 11 appears to work fine with first generation AppleTV


Dock is semi-functional after Mountain Lion upgrade

Other than a reboot, you can try the following in Terminal.app

  killall Dock


Is there a way to make the Enter key work with a Logitech K811 keyboard?

If you don't need to use fn otherwise, you could simply remap it to behave like Enter. This is easily doable using the free tool Karabiner-Elements — download and install it, then add a "Simple Modification" from fn to keypad_enter. If you want to only remap your external keyboard, then set the checkboxes in the Devices tab appropriately.

If you want to keep fn's functionality, you need a more advanced remapping/macro utility such as BetterTouchTool or Keyboard Maestro. I'm not aware of any free options in this realm (though they may exist) besides the full version of Karabiner, which doesn't currently work on Sierra.

fn is not a typical modifier key, so it can't be captured in the same ways that the others (e.g. ⌥ and ⌘) can. Because of this, there is no way I'm aware of to assign fnreturn to anything. However, using one of the tools I mentioned, you can easily assign another hotkey to do the same thing, for example, ⌥return.


How to decrypt the system keychain from another mac at the command line

You need the following things:

One dead Mac with a readable filesystem (called the Source machine from here on)
One new Mac or Linux machine (called the Target machine from here on)
The System.keychain file from the source machine.

This file is located in either /System/Library/Keychains or /Library/Keychains

The SystemKey file from the source machine. This contains the actual password.

Located in in /var/db/SystemKey

Internet access on the target machine.

Step 1: Recovering the encryption key for the source keychain

We can't use SystemKey as is - it contains random bytes that can't be entered into a password dialog or command line. Even better, we need 24 bytes out of the middle of the file - after the magic number that indicates a key file, but before the checksum bytes.

The proper command to get the right hex key is:

hexdump -s 8 -n 24 -e '1/1 "%.2x"' /path/to/SystemKey && echo

Explained: Skip the first 8 bytes from the beginning of the file, continue 24 bytes after that, and use the format string to dump the data out on one line (it's a C-style printf string, if you're curious).

The && echo is so we get a single newline afterward so the output doesn't run into the beginning of your shell prompt after the command finishes.

Copy this string aside. This is the decryption key for the keychain.

Step 2: Dump the keychain using the password

We need a third party tool for this. We're going on the assumption that the dead Mac can't be booted in such a way that we can use its Keychain Access app normally.

That tool will be Chainbreaker - a python script. You'll need to install the hexdump library for Python. Run the following commands on the target machine:

sudo pip install hexdump
git clone https://github.com/n0fate/chainbreaker
cd chainbreaker

Now we simply give chainbreaker the key you just found and the file:

python chainbreaker.py -f /path/to/system.keychain -k (the byte string from step 1)

You'll see the plaintext password of everything in the system keychain. For my use case, I wanted the Time Machine password, and this will be represented in the output as a Generic password record named Time Machine. The plaintext password will be below.

Now we can simply use the Finder to open the Time Machine .sparsebundle, give the password we dug out of the keyfile, and continue as usual.


"VPN is not configured" error on El Capitan

One workaround that I found useful was to use Tunnelblick rather than macOS built-in VPN networking. Tunnelblick is open source and generally respected, and if you are able to install this software on your machine, it is a more robust and permanent solution than macOS' Networking prefpane.


Why is my iPhone 5S battery draining overnight and very quickly?

In order for cables to smoke the current must have exceeded all limits of the design by 10x.

Since the battery is connected true it, it would have gotten a shock of its life, and now no longer been able to hold the charge.

The guy at Best Buy was right, it is not the cable any more since the damage was done.


Is there a way to make the iTunes Store faster in Windows?

No. The only way to speed up iTunes is to get a faster PC or Mac. It's a bloated program with a lot of legacy code in it. It's been needing a complete overhaul for years now (even on the Mac). And as time passes, it just seems to get bigger as more is continually added.

With that said, the speed of iTunes is dependent on your Internet connection but it's also dependent on the power of your PC. Having broadband allows data to transfer quickly from Apple's servers but crunching all that data requires CPU cycles and a lot of RAM too.


How to reproduce Windows Chrome BAT files setup in macOS 10.15

As a shell script or directly in Terminal it can be done with

#!/bin/sh

open -a "Google Chrome" --args \
    https://calendar.google.com/calendar/r/month \
    https://contacts.google.com/ \
    https://voice.google.com/ \
    https://hangouts.google.com \
    https://drive.google.com \
    https://maps.google.com \
    https://www.youtube.com \
    https://news.google.com \
    https://photos.google.com \
    https://one.google.com \
    https://classroom.google.com

In AppleScript you can use

tell application "Google Chrome"
    open location "https://calendar.google.com/calendar/r/month"
    open location "https://contacts.google.com/"
    open location "https://voice.google.com/"
    open location "https://hangouts.google.com"
    open location "https://drive.google.com"
    open location "https://maps.google.com"
    open location "https://www.youtube.com"
    open location "https://news.google.com"
    open location "https://photos.google.com"
    open location "https://one.google.com"
    open location "https://classroom.google.com"
end tell


How can I automatically add music from a playlist into a folder?

You could use an AppleScript to copy the music to a specific folder. iTunes and the Finder both support AppleScript.

Use the included Script Editor.app in OS X to create your script. A starting point for your script is below:

tell application "iTunes"

    -- Get the recent purchases smart playlist
    set myPlaylistFiles to file tracks of playlist "Recent Purchases"

    -- With every local song/track
    repeat with i from 1 to number of items in myPlaylistFiles

        set localTrack to item i of myPlaylistFiles

        set myPathToTrack to location of localTrack

        -- Add copy to folder code here…

    end repeat

end tell

Feel free to ask more questions about finishing this AppleScript.


Screencasting in 1080p from a retina display without scaling, possible or not?

After much searching and toying with various programs I finally found one that did exactly what I wanted.

http://www.madrau.com/

Now I have this fancy menu that I can use to quickly change my screen resolution.

I record my screen at 1280 x 720 HiDPi (720p). It puts black bars on the top and bottom of my screen, but for recording purposes that's totally fine. You can also record at 1920 x 1080 if you need 1080p, but I find that text gets really tiny at that resolution; with 720p I only need to zoom my text editor in slightly.


Looking for tool/software to create HDR photos on OSX

Photomatix Pro is available for Mac.
Overall, it's the best HDR tool I've used. The UI is somewhat complex, but not obtuse. The results are consistently impressive.

Another app that I've seen used (but not used personally) is Nik Software's HDR Efex Pro.
This is a powerful app that seems to produce some very nice images.

Both of these are paid apps with free trials.


How can I reinstall an application that the Mac App Store thinks is installed already?

Awesome, I figured it out. Run this command, which rebuilds LaunchServices:

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

And everything should be back to good! Immediately after running, the App Store allowed me to re-purchase the app.

Source: MacLife Link


I found a solution to your problem here.

Using Terminal "How do I make Apache start automatically":

sudo launchctl load -w /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/org.apache.httpd.plist

You were close to the solution just needed the -w override.

the -w      Overrides the Disabled key and sets it to false.


"./synergys" is a path relative to the directory which you are currently in. To fix this you will need to specify an absolute path, for example:

  /users/chris/Files/synergys

Obviously change it to a path that actually exists :)

Might be overkill, but there is a wikipedia page about paths:

Path_(computing)


Where can I get a copy of Mavericks after Yosimite has been released?

Apple sells redeemable codes for all OS older than current release up to and including Lion from http://store.apple.com

Since the SKU change from time to time, you may need to talk or chat with a sales specialist online to get the correct item into your cart.

I've never had problems just reinstalling the original OS that came with your Mac and then using the App Store to upgrade to a now down-level version of OS X. Also, one you've "purchased" the free or paid upgrades, you can always re-download them from older clients in the purchased section.

Basically, the old OS even going back to 10.6 and earlier are all available for purchase and re-download by either contacting AppleCare or the Apple online / retail stores in your country.


How to find out what the Wi-Fi password is, of the network that I'm connected to, without the admin password?

You can view your own keychain via the /Applications/Utilities/Keychain Access.app

None of this is possible without an admin password.

The command line is accessible via /Applications/Utilities/Terminal.app


Command Line - How do I change the order of a user's group memberships?

The groups command is not showing the correct ordering of groups in your user context. It is sorting group ids by gid.

Use "id" the show your group set actually used by NFS.

See "man groups" for details.

Use the command "newgrp group" to change a group into the first place of the gid list.


Here are the instructions for Outlook for Mac 2011 and 2016.

Basically you have to select the folder or messages you want to apply rules to, then on the Message menu, point to Rules, point to Apply, and then click a rule or click Apply All. You can also right-click or use the toolbar to get to the Rules menu.

The problem I was having is this only works for client-side rules. From my link: "Manually applying rules works only for On My Computer rules. You cannot use Outlook for Mac to manually apply server-based rules." So if you have a server-side rule (which is the default and is probably what you want), you'll have to duplicate it as a client-side rule to get it applied to existing messages.


You'll need about 20GB free to do the install when you consider the space needed for holding/swapping files with the .dmg during the install process.
I saw this in the Apple developer forums:

Have a look at About This Mac → Storage tab.  You might see a purple
segment labeled "Backups."  That's the local Time Machine cache, and
it doesn't show up in the Finder's free space display because it can
theoretically be purged if that space is needed.

Update Sept 18, 2020: Since this answer was written, Xcode free space requirements have been increasing.  As of Xcode 12, I needed at least 49GB of space to complete the installation.


Cannot change login wallpaper in 10.15 Catalina?

Here's a simplified version of what you need to do (thanks to user3439894):

Put an image you want to use as login background somewhere in your file system (I used my Downloads folder in this example).
Reboot your Mac holding Cmd+R to boot into Recovery OS.
Open Terminal from the Utilities menu on the menu bar.
Backup/Rename Catalina.heic to e.g. Catalina.original.heic in  /Volumes/Macintosh\ HD/System/Library/Desktop\ Pictures/, e.g.:

cd  /Volumes/Macintosh\ HD/System/Library/Desktop\ Pictures
mv Catalina.heic Catalina.original.heic

Copy your desired image: cp /Volumes/Macintosh\ HD\ -\ Data/Users/[short_user_name]/Downloads/[image_from_step_1].jpg /Volumes/Macintosh\ HD/System/Library/Desktop\ Pictures/Catalina.heic

Note you can replace the destination path in the above command with just ./Catalina.heic as you should already be in the target directory if you performed the previous step to backup the original file.

Reboot into normal mode.
Change any option in System Preferences > Users & Groups > Login Options to change the cached image.


Silence calls from everyone but a defined set of numbers?

You could make a silent ringtone your default, and then assign other custom ringtones to each of that certain set of numbers.

See Apple's Purchasing and creating ringtones FAQ for a start.


Is it safe to delete .pkg/.dmg files after installation?

To answer your question(s), generally speaking, yes, you can delete the container file whether it be a .pkg, .dmg or .zip file. This of course assumes that all content of the container file has been installed. In other words, some .dmg files might contain extras in a separate folder within that are not installed when you drag and drop the app into Applications.

So use common sense when making the decision to delete the container. Obviously if the container contains a single file and you install it, then there is no need to retain it if you don't mind downloading again if for some reason it's needed again.


Yosemite OS: Turning a kext off and on -- consequences?

I do not know how you turn kext on and off instead load and unload.

But, if you want to know current loaded kext's use Terminal.

kextstat > ~/Desktop/kexts.txt

This will output a text file to your Desktop of currently active kext.


Can I receive local or push notifications to my email address?

The short answer is No.

iOS does not have any way for you to redirect notifications.

It may be possible to change how some notifications are sent, and have them sent to you via Boxcar or something similar, but that is going to be limited to a very small subset of applications or services which are designed to offer alternatives. Twitter and Facebook come to mind.


Best free application uninstaller on Mac

AppCleaner (free)

Delete applications using drag and drop. Protects system applications.

Smart Delete finds additional files when dropping a program to the trash.

You can also delete widgets and plug-ins using this tool.


Prevent automatic removal of the Spotlight index due to low disk space

mdutil is the command line tool that controls Spotlight.

Looking at the mdutil man page, there doesn't appear to be an option to make the index persistent regardless of disk space.  There is mention that "indexing may be delayed due to low disk space or other conditions".

One idea that comes to mind is that you can take away write permissions on your index files for all users, this should prevent them from being deleted, but it would also prevent them from being updated, and a static index is likely not desirable, and could cause errors.  This might be worthy of testing, but I don't expect it would go very well.

It doesn't appear that Spotlight is designed to work in the way you are looking for.  I would suggest submitting a feature request to Apple.


@Tetsujin is on the right track - iOS 9 was released with some bed bugs that caused iCloud backups of iPhones and iPads to fail, and often left junk around in iCloud.

In the bottom of your second picture this is confirmed in the graph - you can clearly see backup's (in yellow) are consuming the lions share of your storage.  The easiest thing to do is turn of iCloud backup on all your devices and then delete the backups if they still show up in the settings app before re-enabling iCloud backup.  Some people have had to open tickets with Apple to get them to clean out their backups.  Thankfully for me once I updated to the latest version of iOS 9 all I had to do was turn off iCloud backups and then turn them back on and my devices started backing up to iCloud again and my backup storage consumption on iCloud dropped dramatically.

Good luck!


Pages 5.2: How to insert date field in other language than system default?

Make sure your region is set to dutch in system-preferences, the language can be set to american but the region setting takes care of the date-format
like in this picture:


Damaged iPad - what do I need to back up?

To be safe, run two backups.

First connect to iTunes and verify that "Encrypt Backup" (on the left) is checked. That will backup some private data that otherwise would be lost from the back up to your computer. Specifically, keychain and passwords, Health data on an iPhone.
Then try changing the password for the backups. This lets you know now that you can enter the password if/when prompted. If you can't change the password, delete the old backup and make a new encrypted backup to iTunes.
Lastly, put a clear piece of plastic over the screen and carefully go to Settings app and sign in to iCloud or go to iCloud and force a back up to iCloud. This is encrypted with the AppleID password and backs up passwords and health data as well as application data and settings.

There are things that do not back up like pairing records to trust specific computers, but those are by design and unlikely to be something you even want to back up if you could opt in to them.

Your SIM will transfer most likely (all Apple iPads are not carrier locked) and the store staff can assist you if you should need some carrier activation step. I would arrive early (at least 15 minutes) for the appt and expect to be there 45 minutes. That way if the store is slammed, you won't be surprised by a delay. Most stores have a caching server and fast internet, so you might stay longer to get an iCloud restore going if your internet is more tortoise than hare.

Lastly, I don't know if cellular data boost works during an iCloud restore, so I wouldn't put the SIM card in the iPad while iCloud restore was running if paying for that amount of data is unwelcome.


Can't offer an Automator script but Jhead which is a command line Jpeg header manipulation tool.

Download jhead
Start Terminal.app and move the file to /usr/local/bin/ with

sudo mv ~/Downloads/jhead /usr/local/bin/jhead

and enter your password
Make it executable sudo chmod +x /usr/local/bin/jhead
Entering jhead -v -norot ~/Pictures/folder/subfolder/*.jpg should do the job and clears the Exif header rotation tag without altering the image.

Here is the manual. Make a test with some pictures in a subfolder before you rot your original pictures.


Why does my MacBook Air produce so much noise

OK, the Activity monitor does no show anything unusual.

You are a candidate for the SMC reset. SMC (system management controller) is responsible for fan control, the battery charging ect..

Follow the instructions here for how to.

Apple kb HT3964


'desktops' are 'monitors' not Spaces.
There's no programmatic way to count Spaces, short of using the GUI, which is very hit & miss.