How safe is it (and what precautions should I take) if I want to transport my Macbook from class to class?

Macbooks are designed to be transported around in sleep mode. When the machine enters sleep mode, the hard drive stops spinning, and because the hard drive is basically the only mechanically moving part in the Macbook Pro (aside from the optical drive which shuts off as well), there is no risk of damage to the computer.

Here are some other questions that you may find helpful

Does closing the lid put a MacBook Pro to sleep? Would it hurt the computer if I carry it around without shutting it down?
Transporting from home to work (~10 min by car), should I just make my MacBook Pro sleep, or shut it completely down first?
https://superuser.com/questions/449629/is-sleep-mode-harmful-for-a-computer


What Thunderbolt hard drives support daisychaining?

The drives with two thunderbolt ports are intended to work in a chain as opposed to the drives that only have one port. By necessity, these can only exist at the end of the chain.

Armed with this knowledge, you can always look at whatever models are for sale when you are considering a purchase and decide whether the added cost to have two ports outweighs the need to have a chainable device or buy a hub should one be eventually produced as a stand alone device.


Attempting to play video on iOS 7 shows play button with line through

Well, on an adult website I've been on, i just refreshed the page or went back a page, went back to the same video and it played again. It only gives me that when I turn my phone off and its on the video player. Tried the same thing with my old 4g IPod. Just go back a page and reclick the video., Only if we're on teh same website....


Unfortunately, there is no way to define the resolution of the photos in the camera settings.


Mac virtual memory: how to make OS X create swap (page) files as freely with a normal boot as it does with a safe boot (swapfile1 etc)

AFAIK the reason all those swap files were created so quickly in Safe Mode is because dynamic_pager fell back to an initial swap size of 64MB.  How many swap files did you see?  How many do you want to see?  How many are you seeing?

Right now on my Mac Pro (desktop) running OS 10.8.3 I have 7 swap files (numbered 0-6).  Is that what you want?  Actually, since you've pointed this out, I'm going to try to reduce that to 2.

If you really want to create a lot of swap files, just set -S 67108864

BTW, 1073741824 = 2^30 = 1 GiB

Followup

Turns out there is a bug in dynamic_pager (at least under Mountain Lion 10.8.4) where setting -S 2147483648 (= 2 GiB) fails because of some sort of 32-bit conversion error.

Cannot extend paging file size /private/var/vm/swapfile0 to 18446744071562067968!

2147483648 as a 32 bit signed in is actually -2147483648 or 0x80000000 which gets extended to a 64 bit number by extending the MSB and turned into 0xFFFFFFFF80000000 which is then converted to a 64 bit unsigned which is 18446744071562067968 or 2 GiB * 8 GiB.   Crazy.  So after you mess with the dynamic pager options, look for error messages in the console logs.


How do I insert the cursor after the last word (that is misspelled)?

Press on empty space after any text until a sort of magnifying glass appears over your finger.

Move your finger to the cursor and keep going.  The cursor will follow you in the center of the magnifier.  When you get it where you want, let go.


Turn off pinch to zoom in preferences, then turn on again. This has worked for me before. If that doesn't work then doing a reboot will usually fix any and all trackpad issues. Problems after a reboot? Check out the above slightely more extreme ways around the problem..


Use Network Utility to look up the site:

Verify you can reach ports 80 and 443 (and only use http for when port 80 is open and https for port 443)

Then enter the IP address instead of the DNS name in safari (or whatever browser). If your DNS is not working on the Mac, you can get the IP from another computer and verify the rest of the Mac works and focus on DNS.


You might have invalid Yosemite Installer package.

Try the Command+Option+R during boot to recover it from Internet.

To check the flie run following in the Terminal

shasum /Applications/Install\ OS\ X\ Yosemite.app/Contents/SharedSupport/InstallESD.dmg

The result should be:

eebf02a20ac27665a966957eec6f5e6fe3228a19  /Applications/Install OS X Yosemite.app/Contents/SharedSupport/InstallESD.dmg

Do this before running the Install.


How can I change the length of photos in iMovie '13?

⌘-click on all the pictures that you want to adjust the timing of in the timeline.
Go to Window → Show Adjustments Bar or press 3.
Select the info button on the adjustments bar.
Enter the duration into the box on the right and press Enter.

This will change the duration of all the selected clips (or in this case, pictures).


Apps keep asking for Apple ID info after backup

You say the apps were downloaded under your friend's account, and they are paid.
Paid = You pay for it -- not friend pays for it.
There is a limitation in iOS preventing this from happening - you will need to know your friend's Apple ID and password to open the app - to prove it was you who bought them.
But why?
Without this limitation, there would be an epidemic of groups of college students using one Apple ID to 'split' the cost of apps, and have them on a lot of different people's devices. This is stealing from both the developer and Apple (Devs get 70% of app sales, Apple gets 30%), and Apple doesn't like to have it's cash stolen. Devs don't either. I'm one of them.


How to find files in different specific folders?

I don’t think this is possible in Finder.

You can get the desired search result using HoudahSpot. HoudahSpot is a third party file search tool that uses the existing Spotlight index. Full disclosure: I am the developer of HoudahSpot.

With HoudahSpot you can search in several folders at once. This would however require that you list all “auto_saves” folders you want to search.

I recommend, you search for image files in HoudahSpot and then use the “path filter” feature to show only search results where the file path contains “/auto_saves”. In HoudahSpot you will find the filter field right above the list of search results. Set it to “Filter by Path” and enter “/auto_saves”.

You can save your HoudahSpot search as a template so you can return to it later.


Finding an SSD that's compatible with a late 2007 MacBook?

I upgraded a similar era Macbook a while ago.  In all likelihood you are unlikely to be able to buy an SSD that will not max out the BUS speed available to it on a machine that old.

That particular Macbook has a SATA I (1.5Gbps) interface for it's existing hard drive.  SATA III (6Gbps) SSD drives have been the standard for many years now, although you may be able to get a bargain bucket SATA II device (3Gbps).  Basically, I would get the cheapest SSD you can for the capacity you require that is at least SATA II (you don't need it for the speed, but a SATA I one will be based on older technology that may have a shorter lifespan than a newer drive).  It is almost certain to be faster than your machine can handle, so there is no point getting a particularly recent or fast one.


Strangely but possible, that Battery is End of Life.

I know it is only 3 years old and has only Cycle Count: 564 it should last longer but it shows :

  Full Charge Capacity (mAh): 1708

Which is extremely low and indicates it is over for it.

I have seen batteries with cycle count of only 100 but still needed to be replaced. So the cycle count is not absolute indicator, it is more ment for us Humans to easy understand. While the "Full Charge Capacity" is the real indicator of battery age.

You should know, a new battery comes with >8000 mAh !

Once it reaches <4000 you get the Replace now message for obvious reasons.!

  Also it clearly says "Condition: Replace Now"!


For photo organization, you can't go wrong with Sort Shots. It brings the power of tagging to your photo collection; once you get everything set up you'll be able to find exactly what you're looking for in just a couple of taps. I highly recommend this app to anyone trying to get their photos organized.


How to copy plain text from web pages in Safari?

Whilst copying from Safari as plain text is not possible as far as I know, the OS X system shortcut for pasting as plain text is ⇧⌥⌘V.

For Microsoft Word, go to Edit → Paste Special → Unformatted Text or Edit → Paste and Match Formatting.


Is my new Time Machine backup okay if my MacBook went to sleep during encryption?

Your Time Machine backup is OK!

The encryption process is completely resumable, and it does so automatically.


Using VoiceOver to a braille display fails to output some formatting in Pages

It's tough to tell where the problem lies. I don't have a perfect software recommendation, since Apple's tools generally support accessibility on par with the best third party apps around.

How much research have you and your friend done on making sure your display is configured correctly in VoiceOver?

I'd start with this support article to see if the display you have chosen is even supported but do know from past experience, that you will face many many little issues like this where voiceover is skipping some little element of formatting and can't convey all of the nuance of a document that is kerned, font tweaked with ligatures, variable line spacing, etc...

Usually this is something you can adjust the documents or the VoiceOver software to accommodate better, so the next step might be to flatten the document to a plain text file and compare how Text Edit works as opposed to Pages.

You may need to reach out to Apple directly (their discussion forums like here are not official support channels) and ask if the accessibility team needs you to file radar (Apple's name for bug reports) if you find a fairly common item that is not being supported correctly by the software (Pages / Text Edit / VoiceOver in your case). By sticking to Apple software, they might have a better chance of fixing some little omissions that could help you with your choice of braille display. Some of the retail stores have knowledgable people that you could arrange a short workshop or troubleshooting session with and AppleCare is available at cost once the free support window has passed for your hardware.


Which Macs support macOS internet recovery?

Mac computers have had this ability since around 2012.

Works out of box

One of the earliest Mac laptops to support this by default was the MacBook Pro Mid-2012 (MacBookPro9,2).

With a firmware upgrade

A few Macs from 2010 and 2011 can have their firmware upgraded so that they gain support for internet recovery.

MacBook Pro (13-inch, Early 2011)
MacBook Pro (15-inch, Early 2011)
MacBook Pro (17-inch, Early 2011)
iMac (21.5-inch, Mid 2011)
iMac (27-inch, Mid 2011)
MacBook (13-inch, Mid 2010)
MacBook Pro (13-inch, Mid 2010)
Mac mini (Mid 2010)
MacBook Pro (15-inch and 17-inch, Mid 2010)
iMac (21.5-inch and 27-inch, Mid 2010)
MacBook Air (11-inch and 13-inch, Late 2010)


Pasting clipped screen capture into osx email can't be seen by recipients

The default file type for screencaps in OS X is .png format. Perhaps your recipients' email readers cannot process .png files.

You can change the default file type by executing these commands in Terminal.

To change the default format to JPEG, for example, use these commands:

defaults write com.apple.screencapture type jpg
killall SystemUIServer

Other formats you can choose: gif, pdf and tiff.


Make display in yosemite / el capitan look like Mavericks

I though initially you meant you wanted the old skeuomorphic UI back… but you just mean that the display has changed or lost its colour profile. There should be no automatic change in your colour settings between Mavericks & Yosemite or El Capitan, so the first thing I'd check is whether your correct profile is still present & active.

Check the profile exists & is active in System Prefs > Displays > Color

If not, or if you can't quickly find one that suits you, then hit the Calibrate… button & attempt to recalibrate manually. It will talk you through the process quite comprehensively, but it isn't a hugely accurate process - sometimes going through it a couple of times you get a better result.

More accurate calibration, of course, would require a hardware colorimeter, which would probably be a different question. I put a couple of budget recommendations at the end of this answer - https://apple.stackexchange.com/a/185936/85275


200GB unused, but can't change APFS container size due to minimum requirement

Again, yes, you have deleted all the local snapshots. But you clearly have an external Time Machine drive. And Time Machine snapshots (local or remote) place certain requirements on the source drive.
From man tmutil:

BACKUP STRUCTURE
     Throughout this manual, specific language is used to describe particular
     "realms" associated with Time Machine backups. It is important to under-
     stand this terminology to make effective use of tmutil and its manual.

     backup source
             A volume currently being backed up by Time Machine.

     backup disk
             The HFS+ volume that contains Time Machine backups.

     backup destination
             In the case of a local destination, a synonym for backup disk.
             For network destinations, this is the AFP or SMB share on which
             the backup disk image resides.

     backup disk image (or backup image)
             A sparsebundle that, when mounted, is the backing store for a
             volume that is a backup disk.

     backup store
             The top-level "Backups.backupdb" directory at the root of a
             backup disk. E.g.,

             /Volumes/Chronoton/Backups.backupdb

     machine directory
             A directory inside a backup store that contains all the backups
             for a particular computer. For local destinations, a backup store
             can contain multiple machine directories, all for separate com-
             puters. E.g.,

             /Volumes/Chronoton/Backups.backupdb/thermopylae

--

Remember the error?

E.g., (perhaps caused by APFS Snapshot usage by Time Machine)?

Read this one:

     snapshot
             A directory inside a machine directory that represents a single
             initial or incremental backup of one computer. The word "snap-
             shot", in most contexts, is a generic term and is not to be con-
             fused with a "local Time Machine snapshot", which is simply a
             snapshot stored locally on the computer. E.g.,

             /Volumes/Chronoton/Backups.backupdb/thermopylae/2011-07-03-123456

     snapshot volume
             A directory inside a snapshot that represents a single initial or
             incremental backup of one backup source. E.g.,

             /Volumes/Chronoton/Backups.backupdb/thermopy-
             lae/2011-07-03-123456/Mac HD

VERBS
     Each verb is listed with its description and individual arguments.

     destinationinfo [-X]
             Print information about destinations currently configured for use
             with Time Machine. For each backup destination, the following
             information may be displayed:

             with Time Machine. For each backup destination, the following
             information may be displayed:

                 Name          The volume label as shown in Finder.
                 Kind          Whether the destination is locally attached
                               storage or a network device.
                 URL           In the case of a network destination, the URL
                               used for Time Machine configuration.
                 Mount Point   If the volume is currently mounted, the path in
                               the file system at which it was mounted.
                 ID            The unique identifier for the destination.

             When more than one destination is configured, the most recent
             backup destination will be marked with the > indicator.

             When the -X option is provided, output will be printed in XML
             property list format.

     removedestination identifier
             Remove the destination with the specified unique identifier from
             the Time Machine configuration. Requires root privileges.

             To obtain the unique identifier for a destination, see
             destinationinfo.

A. The error:

Error: -69521: Your APFS Container resize request is below the APFS-system-imposed minimal container size (perhaps caused by APFS Snapshot usage by Time Machine)

B. Your response:

  I have removed all local time machine snapshots but I am still getting the same output.

C. The documentation:

The word "snapshot",  in most contexts, is a generic term and is not to be confused with a "local Time Machine snapshot".

Capisce?

Yes, you have deleted all your local snapshots. But you also have another backup drive. In the example you linked, there was no such drive.

You need to remove all Time Machine backups stores, disable all destinations, etc. You can reassociate your backups later. But following this, you should be fine; worst case, decrypt your drive too (APFS encryption is complicated and has a lot of overhead due to the drive-key/user-key system).


Get Number of Screens Using system_profiler

This can be achieved by parsing the output of system_profiler SPDisplaysDataType with this line.

system_profiler SPDisplaysDataType | grep Resolution: | wc -l

As fd0 mentioned, this can be shortened to this.

system_profiler SPDisplaysDataType | grep -c Resolution


Password protect MacBook while keeping iTunes running

To keep any application active but to lock the machine you can try the following steps.

Launch the “Keychain Access” application located in
/Applications/Utilities.
Choose “Show Status in Menu Bar” from the View menu.
Now you have a lock in the menu bar. Use this menu to:
Click on the "lock icon" in your menu bar
Select "Lock Screen"

This activates Screen Effects which requires your password to unlock screen, but does not stop what is currently active on the OS

  Another way to keep any application active but to lock the machine you
  can try the following steps.

Open System Preferences

a. Select the Preference Pane "Security"

b. Choose the "General" tab

c. Check "Require password"

d. On 10.6 & 10.7 you can also set the time in which you would like
to wait prior to initiating the lock (in this case you may want to
choose "immediately")
Select "Show All" Preference Panes
Select the Preference Pane "Desktop & Screen Saver"

a. Set the "Start screen saver" at its minimum (3 min)

After 3 min of no use your machine will start the screen saver and when the screen saver is stopped you will be prompted to type your Username and Password.

  HOWEVER: (Though I like JW8 slick use of Hot Corners you do not need to set them up nor do you need to wait 3 minutes for the
  Screen Saver to begin, you can simply use the following
  key-combo

Crtl-Shift-Eject

  You could also try the following commands if you have ambitions to
  create a short script.

  NOTE: If a script sounds like something you would like to create you will need to ensure root privileges.

For 10.6 & 10.7 use the following command to make the security immediately follow the Screen Saver's launch:

defaults write com.apple.screensaver askForPasswordDelay 0

For 10.5, 10.6, & 10.7 use the following command to turn on Security Preferences for your Screen Saver:

osascript -e 'tell application "System Events" to set require password to wake of security preferences to true'

To force the screen to lock

open "/System/Library/Frameworks/ScreenSaver.framework/Resources/ScreenSaverEngine.app"

  NOTE: You may notice that regardless of how the screen is locked you may be immediately be prompted for your Username & Password as
  the running app is attempting to stop the Screen Saver/Lock.
  However, your application (iTunes in this case) will continue to run
  even while your screen is locked. :–)


Since Apple publishes the source code for launchd, you might have better luck just attaching a debugger to the process to inspect or set breakpoints.

That and changing the log level might also be overkill. You can inspect the loaded jobs quite easily and disable them / change them to call debugging scripts or even set another job to dump status or log messages when another process starts or stops.

I'd be interested in more specifics of what you are doing - this seems like a great example of an XY problem. You're asking about the solution you see as the best way forward and not about what the actual problem / issue is.


Why is "Send Movie to Final Cut Pro" completely missing from iMovie 10.1.3?

Aha, figured it out: Had to quit and restart iMovie. Now the menu option is there. Weird!


Can I set Dark Mode dynamically on my iPhone like I can in macOS?

Assuming you have iOS 13 installed, follow these steps:

Go to Settings
Tap on Display & Brightness
Enable the Automatic option (it’s just below the Light and Dark images at top)
This will reveal the Options setting - tap on this
You can now choose between Sunset to Sunrise or setting a Custom Schedule
Selecting the:

Sunset to Sunrise setting will mimic what macOS does with its Dynamic Desktop (i.e. change from Light to Dark mode based on your location)
Custom Schedule setting means you can manually select the exact times you want it to change from Light to Dark and back again

NOTE:

Since you're also wanting your iPhone background image (or Wallpaper) to change dynamically, you will need to go to Settings > Wallpaper and toggle the Dark Appearance Dims Wallpaper option. This doesn't work in the same was as it does in macOS, but your Wallpaper's appearance will change somewhat whenever your iPhone changes from Light to Dark and back again


Change primary display through command line

cscreen actually runs on Intel-based Mac as well. You should be able to change primary display through it.


Is there a way to tell a Macbook to bump up the clock speed of the processor?

The Intel Turbo Boost feature will decide by itself when to switch to a higher CPU clock. There is no way to manually activate overclocking. See also Intel's FAQ on the matter:

How is Intel® Turbo Boost Technology enabled or disabled?
Intel Turbo Boost Technology is enabled by default. You can disable or enable the technology with a switch in the BIOS. No other user controllable settings to change Intel Turbo Boost Technology operation are available. Once enabled, Intel Turbo Boost Technology works automatically under operating system control.

You can use e.g. Turbo Boost Switcher to turn Turbo Boost off, but as stated above, it is enabled by default.
That being said, you can create optimal conditions for you CPU to decide to overclock. According to the Intel's support document, the following factors influence clock speed / activation of Turbo Boost:

Availability and frequency upside of Intel® Turbo Boost Technology 2.0 state depends upon a number of factors including, but not limited to, the following:

Type of workload
Number of active cores
Estimated current consumption
Estimated power consumption
Processor temperature

When the processor is operating below these limits and the user's workload demands additional performance, the processor frequency will dynamically increase until the upper limit of frequency is reached. Intel® Turbo Boost Technology 2.0 has multiple algorithms operating in parallel to manage current, power, and temperature to maximize frequency and energy efficiency.

Therefore you can try the following:

Turbo Boost will only activate if thermals allow it. So making sure your MacBook is sufficiently cool can lead to higher clock speeds. You could even use an app to manually increase the fan speed, such as Macs Fan Control or iStat Menus, to decrease CPU temperature further.
Especially for single-threaded applications you can make sure you have no other (background) tasks running. This will, again, improve thermals, reduce power consumption, and also allow the CPU to overclock.

To learn more about your MacBook's behaviour and clock speed you can use utilities to monitor clock speed, power consumption, and temperature, such as iStat Menus or Intel Power Gadget.


How do I put music not eligible for iCloud on my iPhone without turning off iTunes Match?

I made the file kind "audiobook," and then they seemed to sync fine, as audiobooks. Since they were lecture files, that's just fine with me.


How to change one person's name in Messages?

Add the contact to your contacts, then edit their name in your contacts. The change is reflected in the Messages app.


brew install bash
sudo nano /etc/shells

# add to last line
/usr/local/bin/bash

# save and quit via kntrl + x

Now, you need to see something like this:

cat /etc/shells

# List of acceptable shells for chpass(1).
# Ftpd will not allow users to connect who are not using
# one of these shells.

/bin/bash
/bin/csh
/bin/ksh
/bin/sh
/bin/tcsh
/bin/zsh
/usr/local/bin/bash  # we added this!

Now set your default shell:

chsh -s /usr/local/bin/bash $USER # this will set for the current user.

Now quit Terminal and re-open it! Check if all ok?

echo $BASH_VERSION # 4.3.42(1)-release


Tracing real-time filesystem calls by process?

This was, ultimately, the best way I could find to do it:

sudo fs_usage -f filesys | grep backupd

If I wanted to stop the flow:

sudo fs_usage -f filesys | grep backupd | more

And if I wanted to output to a text file:

sudo fs_usage -f filesys | grep backupd >output.txt

I largely found this information here at AskDifferent. I then used the manpage for the command to piece together my commands above.

Hope that helps someone.


If you have Open_Term or another app that you can use the command line on, go to that app and cd into your directory. Then type ls -laRt. That will list all the contents of all the folders. You can then search the output for the app you want.

It's a lot to do for what you want. There should be an easy and automatic way to do this.

You can also use the spotlight search which should give you the folder the app is in. From your home screen slide the desktop to the right to get the window where the widgets are are accessible. At the top of that window is a search bar. This is the spotlight search. Type the complete name of the app in the search box and hit return. If there is only one match it will list the folder where the app is stored.


How do I stop Safari on my iPad from reloading tabs once they are already open?

Probably not.  You need to think of the nature of the iPad.

It is RAM constrained (and battery constrained, but that probably doesn't affect this as much as RAM), so it often suspends apps so they can be "reconstituted".

Depending on what you do in the week (a long time in app land) the pages would be suspended and removed from memory.  Reopen the browser (and this would be any browser on the iPad, not just Safari) it has to get the pages again to show.

So.. this is what iPads (and to some extent android devices) do.  It remembers where you were and re-gets the page.  Now you could do a Reading List, or even use Pocket (I think Pocket takes a snapshot in time, so may work better).  Those may bring you closer to where you want to be.  But the tabs will be reloaded, because they were gone way before you re-opened safari


AppStoreConnect - Disable "following build has completed processing" email?

Got an answer from the Apple support, there is no such option.


Pulling files off of Time Machine Back Up After Full Reinstall

I would try Back-In-Time.

Yes it cost $30 but there is a demo and the couple of times I have needed to dig stubborn files out of a Time Machine backup it worked.


Yes you can.

Simply use Chrome's profile feature in Settings to configure multiple profiles.
For different versions of Chrome, download them and rename them, then turn off automatic updating.
Chromium does not interfere with Chrome, in the same way that Chrome Canary does not interfere with Chrome either.


Side key button which is used for Mute/Unmute in iPhone. That key is used in iPad for orientation Lock/Unlock. Try it once.


Why does location service turn itself off?

Not sure if this is new to iOS7 but the "Background App Refresh" setting under

Settings -> General -> Background App Refresh

needs to be on for the specific application to receive background location updates.

Hope this helps.


Use AppleScript to find the currently playing song (and other metadata)

This is a very useful tool and I have a recommendation on the best place to learn how to use AppleScript to interact with media.

https://dougscripts.com/itunes/index.php

This is 100% possible and you might even find the exact script you need, already written. Worst case, you can see the code and hopefully adapt one to your needs.


Permanently set microphone input to MBP Mic

Introduction
Right now, to the best of my knowledge, it is not possible to prevent the input/output switching between external devices and the onboard instruments using built-in features from the Operating System. I have added a simple trick (that you may already be aware of) to switch between input devices quickly and given an explanation as to why macOS behaves this way. I may not be the answer you are looking for but I wanted to share this information with you anyway, in the hope that it shows the problem from a different perspective or somebody is able to add to my thinking.

TL;DR
Input switching occurs when the new input/output device has microphone capabilities, which (in theory) gets the mic closer to the user thus produces greater audio and reducing background noise through less distance between the source and the mic - as the majority of headphones/earphones do with a built-in mic. This is how Apple views it and most customers don't want to put up with picking the right source every time they connect a pair of headphones.

Why might it be a positive?
Unlike in the Windows world, where a Default Device can be set in the Sound Settings, Macs (unlike PC's) have a built-in speaker and microphone in pretty much every single (recent) computer ever released. Microsoft does not restrict Windows to a select group of systems (the way macOS only works on an Apple device, with the exception of unsupported Hackintosh builds). That is a major factor in the lack of flexibility when it comes to different ways of settings the input devices because if Apple knows an interface exists, it becomes the default (and fallback) interface - there would be no reason to think otherwise.

Apple, known for its user experience, has decided that for the majority of its customers, the headphone goes into the socket, it detects whether it has microphone capabilities, switches inputs accordingly and is in that way able to deliver and send clearer audio between the mac and the headset (the headset presumably being closer to the user now than the onboard microphone).

A Common Workaround
The most common (and simplest) trick is to adjust the sound I/O interfaces themselves by switching to the desired device(s) through the menu bar.

Find the Speaker icon in the menu bar (if not present, go to: System Preferences > Sound > Check/Enable: Show volume in menu bar.
Hold the Alt/Option key and click on the Speaker icon in the menu bar.

You will now be able to switch between the devices as required. It may cost you a second or two of your time but it is by far a better alternative to messing with the system in other ways that may produce unknown side effects.

Conclusion
I hope I was able to shed some light on Apple's way of appealing to the majority and the reason why they believe auto switching is better than the manual way. I understand this is a rather long-winded explanation of a simple no but it was important to get the point across anyway.
Maybe you, like me, are able to forgive Apple for making an inflexible choice in their OS design that disregards a portion of the market's needs. I never found a reliable piece of software to prevent the switching so I learned to live with the quick menu bar trick and never let it bother me again. Maybe one day Apple adds a preference for preventing auto-switching of inputs.

Let me know if that was helpful in any way or if you have any other questions, I'd be more than happy to follow up with you on this.

Is there a way to switch inputs via AppleScript?
Absolutely, there is! Let me show you how.

AppleScript

tell application "System Preferences" to activate
tell application "System Preferences"
    reveal anchor "input" of pane id "com.apple.preference.sound"
end tell
tell application "System Events" to tell process "System Preferences"
    tell table 1 of scroll area 1 of tab group 1 of window 1
        select (row 1 where value of text field 1 is "Line In") --> Or change to "Internal Microphone"
    end tell
end tell
quit application "System Preferences"

What next?
You will need to allow the ScriptEditor to control your computer. Go to System Preferences > Security & Privacy > Privacy > Accessibility, then add the ScriptEditor/Compiled script to this list. This is an essential (security) step because your script is manipulating the GUI and in a way intercepting the window events. If you have no clue what any of that means, don't worry now, just paste the code into your ScriptEditor and run it - an error will tell you if anything was not done properly.

Potential Improvements
I'll leave you to your imagination but you could very easily make a toggle switch script (although the before mentioned menu bar trick pretty much does this already). One suggestion might be to find the Terminal equivalent and simply run a do shell script command through AppleScript. Such would involve looking for the .plist file which contains the current state (input selection) of the Sound Preferences and manipulating it to your choice. This is highly OS-specific and has a tendency to require the user to log out for the changes to take effect. With that method, I think we are simply looking for trouble where we don't need it. As the age-old KISS principle states: "Keep it simple, stupid" - sometimes it's just better to do the simplest task that anyone without the technical knowledge (AppleScript/Terminal) can achieve.


Which folder can I find cache files for Safari?

Safari stores caches in a variety of locations.

~/Library/Caches/com.apple.Safari/WebKitCache/Version 4/Blobs/

/Users/grgarside/Library/Caches/com.apple.Safari/WebKitCache/Version 4/Blobs
├── 0021FEDCF99DEF9CF6541CFD0452506088B12852
├── 004089E39B7864F9F59CDDD6A6F9DD367B04D0F8
├── 006E98D122D8E9C45F00B5C4A593E7724D63DC36
└── …

~/Library/Caches/com.apple.Safari/WebKitCache/Version 4/Records/

/Users/grgarside/Library/Caches/com.apple.Safari/WebKitCache/Version 4/Records
├── georgegarside.com
│   ├── 12E9261CD298A4DD2A040FC876282A3C85482568
│   ├── 1508307FB54D5E0C7B12B652D3346456BF60516E
│   ├── 1C59CCC7FBA99C7A0FA1628F21298C7FD5D3BFCC
│   ├── 1C59CCC7FBA99C7A0FA1628F21298C7FD5D3BFCC-body
│   ├── 49C6B9C71D1DFD0B1D162E4E9A76724E67CD9FED
│   ├── …

~/Library/Caches/com.apple.Safari/fsCachedData/

/Users/grgarside/com.apple.Safari/Cache
├── 01151514-275B-4649-AE99-6C572F07A05D
├── 0531E0C2-2270-41D6-BD17-165882859A4B
├── 13E52A0F-0E47-4106-9E43-D0DA78AA78B7
└── …

~/Library/Caches/com.apple.Safari/Cache.db
~/Library/Safari/WebpageIcons.db


iTunes Home Sharing on Apple TV drops after a few minutes on Belkin N750

Working with Belkin we found an update to the Belkin router that fixed the issue. You may want to update if you are not up to date, version: 1.00.49. The standard update check in the router settings did NOT find this update.

en-us-support.belkin.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/5359


No email notifications when Mail.app isn't running?

I can only say that this is true. Mail.app has to be open to get notifications.

  A workaround: Open Mail, and close it with the red dot (or command+w). So the blue
  point under the icon in the Dock is still there. So you have no window
  open but mail is still getting emails.

There is no app or anything there yet to fix this "problem".


Mac Pro 3.1 for Xcode, coding or programming?

The machine itself is quite up to the task.

However, it is limited to El Capitan 10.11, so whilst you could use it for learning, to publish Apple usually require you have the very latest Xcode; which is incapable of being run on an older OS. For instance, Xcode 9 requires macOS 10.13.2 minimum.

If you can find the next model up - the 2009 4,1 can be upgraded by a Firmware hack to become a 5,1* & then be capable of running at least Mojave.

*It can be hard to tell the difference between a true 5,1 & upgraded 4,1 - but this is the giveaway...

A 'true' 5,1 would say 2010 or 2012. A non-upgraded 4,1 couldn't be running even Sierra, so this has to be an upgraded 4,1
I know this for sure - it's my machine ;-)

Additional note: Whichever you decide on, the first thing to do is add an SSD as boot drive. The difference in performance cannot be overstated. Recent versions of macOS expect you to be running from SSD.


Will I be able to use Find iPhone if my battery is dead?

On iOS 7 and a newer version of Find My Phone/iCloud, the battery level is reported so you can know approximately how much longer the tracking might be active without a recharge.

When this question was asked, the battery level was not shown so the answer then was no.

Either way, once your iPhone runs out of power, it will shut itself off. There is residual power left in the phone to run the screen and respond to buttons for a while, but once that last remaining power drains, eventually the voltage in the battery is not sufficient to run even the button sensing part of the device.

Plugging it into power will re-start your phone and once it establishes a network connection, find my phone will resume.

In your case - if Find My Phone says your device is not found - you can't really tell if it was turned off by intention or automatically or has lost network connectivity (by having a SIM removed or just being out of range).


xcode-select --install doesn't finish, macOS Sierra running in a VM

I found the problem...

Previosly I had reduced the Memory from 2048MB to 1536MB.

I know the minimun requirement is 2048MB.

I tried creating a new Virtual Machine using 1536MB, but it was very slowly...

Then I need to restore the memory from 1536MB to 2048MB.


Had the same issue after accidentally hitting deny.
After repairing keychain, repairing permissions and touching the keychain file. I finally locked the keychain then unlocked it. That seemed to do the trick.


OSX Photos is Forcing Me to Optimize Storage With Plenty of Free Space

Two things to note:

the small print under "Optimize Mac Storage" states that "Originals will also be stored on this Mac if you have enough storage space", so hopefully the fact that you have plenty of space to spare will qualify as "enough storage space" and nothing will be deleted immediately (hopefully!)
even though you're not offered the option in the dialog, once you select "Optimize Storage", you can immediately switch the radio button back to "Download Originals to this Mac"

Neither of these things necessarily guarantees that the originals won't be removed and re-added, but at least you will end up with all the originals on your Mac once it has had a chance to synchronize everything to its satisfaction.


Internet connection in Germany for iPad 2nd gen

Forget AT&T in Germany!
Go to any local store (in Germany) and buy Prepaid Internet service SIM card. For that your device has to be UNLOCKED. That means the AT&T is not longer the sole provider (ask them). If you do not understand the Unlocking stuf, just ask.


Hard drive defect? Help me recover my music!

You could try running SpinRite on the disk, then trying again to get the files off.

SpinRite (among other things) talks the drive's internal error correction into working better so Windows or the iPod's OS can more-easily read the files.


Keychain error -25308 while trying to add drive to Time Machine

I was having this same problem. According to discussion at this thread on Ars Technica, it’s caused by a bug in iStat Server. Are you running this?

I was, and can confirm that the work-around solution posted there of removing iStat Server and deleting the iStat Server entry in /Library/Preferences/com.apple.security.plist has worked for me.  The relevant entry looks like this:

<key>DefaultKeychain</key>
<array>
   <dict>
      <key>DbName</key>
      <string>/Library/Application Support/iStat Server/iStatServer.keychain</string>
      <key>GUID</key>
      <string>{87191ca3-0fc9-11d4-849a-000502b52122}</string>
      <key>SubserviceType</key>
      <integer>6</integer>
   </dict>
</array>

Bjango, the developer of iStat Server, has further posted on the Ars Technica thread that a new version of iStat Server is now available.  I have not independently verified that this addresses the problem, since the above work-around had already taken care of my issue, but their release notes say simply “Fixed a Keychain issue.”  Both the new version and the release notes can easily be found at the iStat Server link above.


Is there a way I can obtain Mavericks without having to download?

Yes, you can purchase directly from the apple store, If they don't have a physical Device to sell, you can take your device and get it upgraded for free.


Is there a better way to put videos into the ipad?

I have created separate playlists for my devices (one for music and one for video). I just sync those playlists instead of manually maintaining the Sync Movies list. This is much easier since you can use the deeper integration of playlists in iTunes to manage the contents. (drag/drop, popup menu, ... etc).


How to use Boot Camp Assistant to create a dual OS X, Ubuntu system?

Personally, I would avoid using BootCamp altogether.  I would look at VirtualBox as a free solution to run Ubuntu on your Mac.  If it does not provide everything you require, you might try a demo of VMWare Fusion for OS X.  It will support things like KVM Hypervisor in a VM, which VBox will not.

If you insist on a native Ubuntu running on bare metal, just use Disk Manager to resize your system partition, add a second partition and install Ubuntu on the second partition.  You will likely clobber your apple boot record, but you should be able to restore that by using the Recovery Boot Partition and repairing your OS X installation.

After you have Ubuntu installed on a partition, try to use the boot menu to select the partition from which you wish to boot.  You get the boot menu by pressing and holding the option key after the boot sound and before the grey screen.  It will present a list of system devices that are detected.  It will also include USB drives, if that is a path you wish to take instead.  Select the one from which you want to boot, and hit enter.

That should/might work.  I haven't used a dual-boot Mac in some time as I use VMWare instead.


Installing OS X Yosemite from compressed DMG file in VMware Fusion

It doesn't matter what type the DMG is as VMware Fusion cannot install OS X Yosemite by booting it or even booting the Install OS X Yosemite.app downloaded from Apple as that's not how it works in VMware Fusion.  VMware Fusion must first make an Installer Image from the Install OS X Yosemite.app and install from the Image it creates.

Have a look at: Installing OS X 10.10 Yosemite as a guest operating system in VMware Fusion (2082109).

  To install Mac OS X 10.10 in a virtual machine using the Yosemite app
  download:

  Select File > New from the Fusion menu bar.
  Select Install from disc or image and click Continue.
  Drag and drop the Install OS X Yosemite application into Use operating system installation disc or image dialog box.
  Click Continue.
  Fusion should automatically discover the Guest Operating System. If not, ensure that the Operating System is set to Apple Mac OS X and
  that the version is set to Mac OS X 10.10. Click Continue.
  If you want to modify any of the settings, such as memory (RAM), CPU, or hard disk size, click Customize Settings and specify the
  non-default values.
  Click Finish. The installation starts.
  When prompted, select Reinstall Mac OS X and click Continue.
  Click Continue.
  Agree to the license agreement and follow the prompts to begin the installation.

  After the installation completes, you must install VMware Tools on the
  virtual machine. To do this, first eject the Mac OS installation disc
  image from within the new virtual machine. For more information, see
  Installing VMware Tools in a Mac OS Guest
  (1032440).


Access to ~/Library/Containers/com.apple.mail/Data/ denied

The DataVaults directory has to do with entitlements. Access is prevented unless the owner of the entitlement grants the access. The entitlements for Mail.app can be listed as follows and provides an XML plist.

codesign -d --entitlements - /Applications/Mail.app/

At this time, the only other method to acquire access to the directory is to turn off SIP.

For more details on DataVaults see No Entry ⛔: access controls in Mojave. The section on DataVaults starts off with

  Introduced in later releases of High Sierra, and used more in Mojave, are folders to which only Apple’s software has even read access, DataVaults. My account here is largely based on comments generously provided here by an anonymous source, as these don’t appear to have been mentioned anywhere by Apple (not even at WWDC 2018), nor can I find other descriptions.

so it all seems to be kind of mystery still.


How to remove security notifications about unapproved software after upgrading to macos High Sierra?

It appears you have an anti-virus application called Bit9. If it is causing more difficulty than help, you can always deactivate or uninstall it. If this is a institutionally managed machine, contact your system admin or help desk.

If you feel you need to have an anti-virus application, be sure to confirm that it will run correctly with macOS High Sierra. You may need to disable the anti-virus' blocking of scripts if you are intentionally running scripts for what you are doing.


There's literally dozens of calendar apps in the App Store that do the same thing. For instance, I use Fantanstical and use that method to enter all my events. What have you tried already and why didn't it meet your needs?
  —-From comment by @fsb


I would start with the following:

Go to Apple > System Preferences
Select the Trackpad preferences pane
Check your various settings under each of the tabs

If nothing there resolves the issue, then try booting into Safe Mode to see whether booting into Safe Mode makes a difference, either during or afterwards.

NOTE: Before proceeding below I recommend disconnecting any external devices (e.g. keyboard, mouse, etc). This also includes Bluetooth devices as well as USB.

Boot into Safe Mode

Follow these steps to boot your Mac into Safe Mode:

Fully shut down your Mac
Restart your Mac
Immediately press the Shift key and keep it down
Let go of the Shift key when you see the login window (NOTE: If you have FileVault enabled you may need to log in twice).
Take a note of what happens (i.e. does your trackpad work, etc)
Exit Safe Mode by restarting your Mac as normal
Again, take a note of what happens (i.e. does your trackpad work, etc)

Now, if after you've gone through the above steps you find that:

your trackpad works during Safe Mode but not when you're logged back in normally, let me know.
it isn't working during Safe Mode at all, then it's time to test your hardware with Apple Diagnostics (see below).

Run Apple Diagnostics

Follow the steps below to run Apple Diagnostics:

Fully shut down your Mac
Restart your Mac
Immediately press the D key and keep it down until you see the Diagnostics screen appear
Wait for Diagnostics to finish (this typically only takes a few minutes)
Once complete, one of two things will appear on the screen:

a No issues found message
a brief description of any errors found plus further instructions

If the diagnostics test does find errors, take a note of what they are

Note: If pressing and holding the D key at Step 3 doesn't work, start again at Step 1 and, at Step 3 press and hold both the OptionD keys instead. This will try and run diagnostics from the internet instead, so you will need to allow more time for it to complete.

Regardless, take a note of what happens and let me know how you went.


How can I automatically launch an application whenever the Mac goes idle?

This is a very hard feat to accomplish, primarily because there is no specific definition of "Idle". The only programs I've seen to actually have idle features are Instant Messaging Clients and the recent Mac App Store releases of Growl. And those simply have a configurable time that goes off after the set number of minutes when there's no mouse/keyboard activity occurring.

There's been similar discussion on the Macworld Forums some years ago, and a specific post that essentially entails creating and running an AppleScript that will monitor your usage and launch an application when you go "idle".

property idleCheck : 20 as integer
property idleCheck_usr : 120 as integer
set timer to 0
on idle
    --Check idle time
    set idletime to do shell script "ioreg -c IOHIDSystem | awk '/HIDIdleTime/ {print int($NF/1000000000); exit}'"
    set idletime to idletime as string
    set idletime to idletime as integer

    tell application "System Events"
        if idletime is less than idleCheck then (* 20 is 20 seconds. If a key was tapped within the idleCheck seconds, it quits the app. *)
            tell application "TextEdit" to quit

            return idleCheck -- checks again in ... seconds
        else
            if idletime is greater than idleCheck_usr then (*  If a key was tapped after the idleCheck_usr seconds it opens the app. *)
                tell application "TextEdit" to launch
            end if

            return idleCheck
        end if
    end tell
end idle

In this case idle is only after 2 minutes, but you can easily change that to be longer if necessary. You will also want to modify the line to open Transmission instead of TextEdit.

Note that you will have to open this AppleScript and leave it running in order for the action (launching an application on idle) to ever occur.


Upgrading from Parallels Desktop 5 to 6 caused DNS query resolution "slowness" at Mac OS X level

Start by making some tests in your Terminal:

Use nslookup and try to lookup certain stuff (www.google.com, www.ibm.com, etc) See how it works from there.
Use ‘dig’ (another command) to do the same. Dig will be much more verbose and will show you more information about the Lookup per se.
Make sure your DNSs are correct in /etc/resolv.conf (try google’s 8.8.8.8 if unsure).
Check your Console for possible messages related to Network adapters or loops going on.

Edit: It all seems “normal”. Do you use Shared networking? Can you try disabling vnic0 and vnic1 (those are the parallels ones). I recall having slowness problems (back in parallels 3.x) which I fixed by using Bridged Networking instead of shared. I didn’t think the issue was still an issue a few years later!


Is there a way to auto-upload photos to Flickr on Mac?

For an OS-independent solution, the following IFTTT recipe looks like it will do what you need.

Upload to dropbox - push through to flickr

In a nutshell, the recipe monitors a specific folder in Dropbox (the recipe uses "/Flickr", but you can change that) and uses the "Upload public photo from URL" action on the Flickr channel to upload the image.

There are a number of recipes that use Dropbox and Flickr, so even if this one isn't exact (and you don't want to customize) you should be able to find one you want. Here's another possiblity: Move Dropbox photos from Camera Uploads folder to flickr gallery.


Some books are appearing pink in Preview.app

To solve the red/pink background follow these steps:

Open the existing PDF in Preview.app
Select File > Export as PDF...
Save the new PDF in a different location.

The new PDF will have no red/pink background anymore.


Disk encryption format for external drives that works on both macos and linux

Veracrypt+exFat works on Mac/Linux/Windows. The problems with mounting on MacOS were caused by configuring veracrypt encryption for the entire disk rather than a single partition. As a result the partition table was encrypted too. While this worked fine on linux it caused problems on MacOS. Creating a normal unencrypted partition table with an exFat partition and then encrypting that partition with veracrypt works fine cross-platform.

The downside is that Apple's exFat driver does not always cleanly unmount the partition which in turn unconditionally triggers exfatfsck on the next mount attempt and that can take hours to finish for large size disks.


How can I restart the smart card service since OSX Yosmite without rebooting?

Do you know what the process is for the Crypto Token Kit? Most likely, the answer
 would be similar to the one you linked, i.e. kill it and then restart it. The only thing is that any startup arguments may have changed.

I used to do something similar at times in that I would kill pscd to clear a situation, but I don't recall ever having to start it manually. I believe it either came back to life itself after a few moments or perhaps I triggered it by unplugging the smart card reader and then plugging it back in.

I would suggest trying to kill the process first and give it a minute or re-plug the reader. If that doesn't work, let us know?


Watching a rented iTunes movie on my iPad mini

The rented tab is not in the iTunes Store. It is in the Videos app. If you downloaded it to your iPad successfully, there should be a rented tab in Videos. Otherwise, something went wrong, and you may need to contact iTunes support.


All photos are gone after updating my iPhone to iOS 5

According to Apple, iTunes should automatically backup your photos and videos:

  Backed-up information includes purchased music, TV shows, apps, and books*; photos and video in the Camera Roll; ...

However, the format of the backup doesn't make it easy to access those photos. Therefore, you can use a program such as iPhone Backup Extractor which should make it a lot easier to recover data from the backup, including photos. I haven't tried the app, so I can't personally recommend it, but it did get good reviews on CNET.


lsd in iOS is the LaunchServiceDaemon.
It provides according to Apple

  support for launching apps and matching document types to apps. As a result, the keys recognized by Launch Services allow you to specify the desired execution environment for your bundled code.

Despite the name nothing to worry about.


A Smart Mailbox displays messages that are stored in other mailboxes
  and that meet certain criteria you specify.

Smart Mailboxes aren't really moving the messages anywhere. They're just referencing messages stored in other mailboxes.

I think what you should be using here are rules instead of Smart Mailboxes.

  You can create rules to help manage incoming messages and automate
  some tasks, such as replying to or forwarding messages. For example,
  you could create a rule to highlight messages from a specific person,
  or automatically move messages from your inbox to other mailboxes.

Use the same criteria you've specified for your Smart Mailboxes in the new rules to move messages from your inbox to other mailboxes.

Read more at Mail for Mac: Use rules to manage your inbox


When iTunes offers to update, tell it to download only.
If that is successful, at least you have the download on your machine, instead of trying to re-fetch it every time there's a fail.

If you have to reset the phone in order to restore, then you will lose any data since your last backup.

If regular Recovery Mode doesn't work, then try DFU (Device Firmware Update) mode.
'Connect to iTunes' is Recovery, black screen is DFU.

To force the phone into DFU mode for restoration

Plug into iTunes
Turn the phone off
Hold power & home for 10 seconds
release power but continue to hold home
wait for the computer to recognise the device
if the screen lights up while you're doing this, you didn't get to DFU mode & will have to try again; reports say the 10 seconds needs to be fairly accurate

iTunes should recognise it has a device in DFU Mode & restore should now work.

BTW - Golden rule for OS updates is…
 in iTunes

Sync
Backup
if you really want to be thorough
Download all app updates
Sync again
Backup again
Download update file
Update

That way if anything goes wrong you can be back where you were in minutes.


Change to QuickTime player in Mavericks?

The option to export the audio only has been moved to File → Export → Audio Only…


Screen flickers, stops after brightness change

From my experience this could either point to a defective inverter board or a simple short-circuit on the cable that runs from the logic board to the display through the display hinge. I´d suggest visiting your nearest Apple Reseller / Apple Store or (if you´re technically experienced) trying the repair yourself (a new Inverter Board will set you back around 50$, but the do-it-yourself-repair is really not that easy).


Corrupted .mp4 File from iPhone 4 Weather Balloon Launch

Good news! It's repairable.

I ran it through this repair utility:

http://grauonline.de/cmsimple2_6/en/?Solutions:HD_Video_Repair_Utility

I only have the demo version so I could only preview about 3 minutes of the video, but it looks like that tool will work well with your file.


macOS: Disable promiscuous Wi-Fi scan and/or display of unwanted list of Wi-Fi networks?

Is there a setting to disable detection of new/unknown networks?

No.

Entering password to connect to known access points is a one time activity. May I ask, apart from aesthetics, what's your rationale for suppressing the display of the list of discovered networks?

There is no built-in setting to suppress the display of list of discovered, non-hidden Wi-Fi access points in iOS. But ever if it were there, it will only make things hard when you'll wish to connect to a new network (which, varying from person to person can still be a common use case). You'll have to manually enter the SSID and password for the access point.

Also, if it were possible, you won't be able to benefit from the Wi-Fi password sharing feature available since iOS 11 and macOS High Sierra, which lets you quickly join Wi-Fi networks your contacts present nearby are already connected to.


mSATA SSD via IDE-adapter in PowerBook G4 12”

Those adapters should work in principle for PowerBooks of that glorious PowerPC era.

Although you might want to doublecheck your exact model.

Apple PowerBook G4 1.0 12" (DVI - Al) Specs
Identifiers: 12-Inch DVI - M9007LL/A* - PowerBook6,2 - A1010 - 1986

Apple PowerBook G4 1.33 12" (Al) Specs
Identifiers: 12-Inch 1.33 GHz - M9183LL/A* - PowerBook6,4 - A1010 - 1986

Initially I thought those models would still be limited to 120GB supported capacity, but some vendors offer up to 480GB for a model of that range.

You might also want to check whether it fits into your machine. But that shouldn't be a real problem. This one is reported as being used just the way you intend to: in a PowerBook G4, but sitting a little tight

  adaptare 46235 mSATA-SSD 2,5 Zoll IDE-Controller 44-Pin Adapter

Or as experienced and friendly commentator John Keates says:

  I can confirm those adapters work. Also used a 1.8 to 2.5 adapter, a CF adapter (but that is easy) and SD adapter. Also one m2 adapter but only the sata variant; have not seen a NVMe to IDE adapter yet.

  Most issues were with unstable power for the adapter (resets during bootup) if it didn't have good DC-DC circuits on-board. There were a few where the adapter chip wouldn't allocate beyond 137GB, this is mostly because they completely emulate a disk and fake the on-disk format (but do pipe the data to the underlying disk just fine). There is an issue with some chipsets that don't do the right protocol switching on the IDE side, like going through PIO and DMA modes, but I haven't seen that type of issue for years. Note: last time I used such an adapter was about 4 years ago on OSX10.3 (iBook G4)


How to iterate over Reminders using AppleScript

Your understanding seems on point, apart from two small items.  As you already know, notCompleted contains a list of reminders that are not completed.  The variable currentReminder in each iteration of the repeat loop will therefore contain a single reminder object.  Therefore, firstly, you don't need to (or rather, you ought not to) use the reminder specifier in name of reminder currentReminder.  Instead, just use name of currentReminder.

This doesn't entirely solve the issue as the name of currentReminder is returned in a partially de-referenced format (which is something I won't go in to here, but is a consequence of how the items are enumerated under the hood).  This means that to access the actual text data, you either have to coerce it to text like so:

display dialog (name of currentReminder as text)

or use the get command, which basically does the same thing:

display dialog (get name of currentReminder)

So it's nothing that you're doing wrong in a strict sense, just quirks of AppleScript.


File sharing between Mavericks and non-Macs

Thought I threw my two cents in.

Being both a Mac and Linux user - I find that once a SAMBA share is created on a Linux machine (browseable option on Linux samba turned on with or without a login - you can "connect as" from the Mac to the Linux machine), my Mac would pick it up and list in on Finder's left pane. Here's a quick SAMBA setup for the Linux machine.

Its pretty simple to setup a public share folder (or even a private one) on the Mac. Here's one guide


How do I disable/configure macOS Sierra's auto throttling of the CPU for processor intensive tasks

Here are a few broad steps from a post on "Disable OS X kernel_task throttling" which you will need to try since I don't have an iMac on hand. Strongly suggest you read the post in detail and also understand potential risks before executing this sequence.

Disable System Integrity Protection so you can make system folder edits with steps at
How do I disable System Integrity Protection (SIP) AKA “rootless” on OS X 10.11, El Capitan?
Boot into single-user mode with Command-S sequence
Mount the filesystem:
fsck -y; mount -uw /
Backup the IOPlatformPluginFamily.kext extension
rsync -av /System/Library/Extensions/IOPlatformPluginFamily.kext /Users/Shared/
now delete the IOPlatformPluginFamily.kext extension and restart
rm -rf /System/Library/Extensions/IOPlatformPluginFamily.kext; shutdown -r now

If/when you want to restore the configuration,
rsync -av /Users/Shared/IOPlatformPluginFamily.kext /System/Library/Extensions

The /Users/Shared/ location for storing extension is a subjective choice. You can backup in any other safe place (even on an external drive). As long as you can retrieve it when you want to rollback this action.


Multi-monitor virtualisation with Parallels

I don't think so - even in Coherence mode, which would allow you to place different Windows apps on different spaces, they have a tendency to overlap each other, depending on which was actually last in front.

I think you might have to try using Sysinternals (Microsoft) own Desktops v2 tool - which I haven't tested in Parallels - but this guide may help - Unlock Virtual Desktops on Windows 7 or 8 With This Microsoft Tool


Moving Microsoft Office from one Mac to another

I am also using Microsoft Office 2008 on a new 5K iMac which is running Yosemite and I used Dropbox to get it onto the Mac –no key and no migration assistant.
It runs perfectly.
Microsoft tried to tell me that Yosemite was not compatible with office 2008 but that is not the case in my experience.


So I downloaded dyno marker software on my Mac for you and I found a simple solution to your problem but before I tell you the solution, make sure of the following:

DYMO label marker app should be quit
Make sure the app is in your Applications folder

After making sure then run the following in terminal app:

rm /Applications/DYMO\ Label.app/Contents/Resources/DYMO\ Label.icns

Then open the app and check if you are still able to see the icon in the menubar.


Black screen after High Sierra update, MacBook Pro w/user-installed SSD

Mikey_S has answered the question on his/her own:

  a pal suggested shutting the lid, waiting 30 seconds, then re-opening
  the lid. That powered it down...somehow. Then I held down the power
  button till it restarted, and all is (now, thankfully) well. Hope this
  helps someone out.


mp3s set as "Audiobook" have stopped showing up in iBooks

If I am understanding you correctly, you have MP3s which are audiobooks which exist in iTunes on a desktop/laptop and you want them to sync to a mobile device and be automatically available in iBooks the way they used to be, is that right?

Apple recently changed the way audiobooks sync between iBooks and iTunes. This support document lets you know how you can sync these files using iCloud which seems to be the way they are encouraging people to do this sort of thing now. In short

iBooks must be turned on in iCloud settings on your Mac and your device
in iBook's general preferences you have to makes sure "Sync bookmarks, highlights and collections across devices" is checked
Make sure you don't have "Hide iCloud Books" selected from within whatever Collection you are viewing in iBooks

And then when you sync you should see these files as "downloadable from the cloud" (i.e. with the little cloud icon next to them) and then you can tap to download.

I think this is sort of a nutty workaround for what used to just work but seems to be how Apple is trying to get people to do what you are tying to do here.


Why does my Mac have laggy/choppy Dock magnification effect?

Unfortunately, a lot of the graphics on the MacBook Pro with Retina Display are a bit choppy (for example, scrolling and window resizing). The new rMBP simply has a lot of pixels, and the graphics card is no better than the one in the regular MBP. In the next few years we can probably expect this to improve with further software optimizations and better hardware offerings.

See also:

Retina MacBook Pro Pushes the Limits of its Graphics Capabilities (MacRumors)
Driving the Retina Display: A Performance Discussion (AnandTech)


To enable CmdÖ -> \ just remap the key combo with Karabiner. The shortcut you need isn't pre-defined so you have to write your own:

Download, install and open Karabiner
Open in the menulet Karabiner -> Preferences
Open the tab Misc & Uninstall
Hit the button Open private.xml
Open the file private.xml with an appropriate editor
Enter the customized keycode

Example 1 (cmdÖ -> \):

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<root>
    <item>
      <name>Command-Ö to Backslash</name>
      <appendix>(Change Command-Ö to \)</appendix>
      <identifier>remap.command_ö_to_backslash</identifier>
      <autogen>__KeyToKey__ KeyCode::GERMAN_O_UMLAUT, MODIFIERFLAG_EITHER_LEFT_OR_RIGHT_COMMAND, KeyCode::KEY_7, ModifierFlag::SHIFT_L | ModifierFlag::OPTION_L</autogen>
    </item>
</root>

Example 2 (cmd_RÖ -> \ cmd_R is the right command key only, cmd_LÖ doesn't have an output!):

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<root>
    <item>
      <name>Command_R-Ö to Backslash</name>
      <appendix>(Change Command_R-Ö to \)</appendix>
      <identifier>remap.command_r_ö_to_backslash</identifier>
      <autogen>__KeyToKey__ KeyCode::GERMAN_O_UMLAUT, ModifierFlag::COMMAND_R, KeyCode::KEY_7, ModifierFlag::SHIFT_L | ModifierFlag::OPTION_L</autogen>
    </item>
</root>

Example 3 (cmd_R -> \ you can't use the right command key for any other purpose then):

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<root>
    <item>
      <name>Command_R to Backslash</name>
      <appendix>(Change Command_R to \)</appendix>
      <identifier>remap.command_r_to_backslash</identifier>
      <autogen>__KeyToKey__ KeyCode::COMMAND_R, KeyCode::KEY_7, ModifierFlag::SHIFT_L | ModifierFlag::OPTION_L</autogen>
    </item>
</root>

Example 4 (cmd_R -> \ similar to example 3 but you can use the right command key as normal command key-> hitting cmd_R yields \ but cmd_RS saves files):

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<root>
    <item>
      <name>When you type Command_R only, send Backslash</name>
      <appendix>(Change Command_R lazy to \)</appendix>
      <identifier>remap.command_r_lazy_to_backslash</identifier>
      <autogen>__KeyOverlaidModifier__ KeyCode::COMMAND_R, KeyCode::VK_LAZY_COMMAND_R, KeyCode::KEY_7, ModifierFlag::SHIFT_L | ModifierFlag::OPTION_L</autogen>
    </item>
</root>

Save the file
Open in the menulet Karabiner -> Preferences the tab Change Key
Hit the ReloadXML button
Enable the remapping. It should be listed at the beginning.


How can I make a Dynamic wallpaper (like the ones in macOS Catalina) in OS X Yosemite

I don't think there is a way to do this effectively because dynamic wallpapers were introduced in macOS Mojave (10.14) alongside dark mode. The dynamic wallpaper is reliant on that although you could try doing an AppleScript script that changes the wallpaper based on the time or whether you're in dark mode or not. Wallpapers are found at the path /System/Library/Desktop Pictures. You can try adding your wallpaper(s) there and then using AppleScript or Bash as a startup item that is always running in the background and changed the wallpaper based on the time.


Mac won't allow me to add any email account

Usually when this happens, it’s a temporary issue on the server side.

I would remove the account and do these three things:

Set your Mac clock to the internet to be sure ssl and certificate timings match.
Log into webmail and be sure your account is not locked. Look for two factor authentication or the need for a second password for that account. Those often cause a silent failure.
Set up only one item at first. Adding five items mail, contacts, calendars, notes, reminders means that all five of them have to be set up in the not time out.  If you can get one to set up and saying and then leave it for 20 minutes, you might then try to add the second and the rest one by one.


This post explains something similar to what you are trying to do. I think that you can easily modify the workflow so it fits what you need starting from there.

Quote:

  Set up your workflow Launch Automator and in the New Template sheet
  that appears, select Service and click Choose. Build a workflow that
  contains these actions: New Audio Capture, Start Capture, and Stop
  Capture (all under Movies). In the Start Capture action enable the
  Wait For Capture To Complete option. In the Stop Capture action enable
  the Close Movie After Stopping option. Configure the top of the window
  to read Service Receives No Input in Any Application. Save your
  workflow and give it an intuitive name such as Voice Memo.

  Voice memo window When you activate your workflow, the small Audio
  Recording window will appear. If you now click Automator’s Run button,
  QuickTime Player will launch, a new audio recording window will
  appear, and your Mac will start recording from the sound input device
  selected in the Sound system preference (from your iMac or MacBook’s
  microphone, for example). When you’re finished recording, just press
  the spacebar and your recording will be saved, the audio recording
  window will close, and you’ll find your voice memo saved as Audio
  Recording.mov in the Movies folder within your user folder.
  (Subsequent recording will be called Audio Recording followed by a
  number—Audio Recording 1.mov, for example.)


Allow applications downloaded from anywhere in macOS Sierra

Apple have removed this function on macOS Sierra, but you can re-enable it running this in terminal:
sudo spctl --master-disable

Additionally, as Jack points out:

Granted this is a little overkill, but it does the job reliably. It can be re-enabled immediately after launching the application with
sudo spctl --master-enable


How do I access an SMB Share being hosted on a Mac running OS X?

This should be all you need to create an SMB share point:

root@host:~# sharing -a /path/directory

It will also be available via AFP & FTP by default.

Alternatively, you can specify SMB only instead, like so:

root@host:~# sharing -a /path/directory -s 010

Check for success by listing all share point records:

root@host:~# sharing -l

It should now be discoverable & accessible to your local network.


How do I use iMessages without a sim card?

This is the same set of steps you would use if you had a sim card, it's more about clearing the account that device has registered with the iMessage service.

Try to turn off iMessage completely, totally log out of the system in Settings > Messages.  When you re-enable it, ensure you log in with your own Apple ID.  At this point, you should be able to message to your registered email address.

If that doesn't work, you may need to back everything up and restore the device. This is somewhat problematic without a SIM card, since you may get stuck at activation if you don't at least have an inactive SIM from the proper carrier.


Emoticons built in to the iPhone keyboard?

Click Settings > General > Keyboard
Click International Keyboards then select the Emoji keyboard.
Switch between the two keyboards using the little globe icon to the left of the spacebar.


How to do I save a file that has been put into the clipboard?

An easy way is to use the built-in Preview app.

Copy the image.
Open Preview.
Press: ⌘+N

A new window will open with your copied image.

On the menu bar, click File > Save, or press ⌘+S, and a Save As sheet will appear.


Which standalone player or system plugin works well for WMV media on Mac OS X?

I've tried them all flip4mac, perian... trust me, VLC is your simplest and most efficient solution. It handles almost every single video type known, including WMV. Perian with Quicktime would come a good second, but still doesn't beat VLC as it doesn't have VLC's codec coverage. So that would most definitely be the best solution.

But is there any specific reason you're looking for a quicktime based solution? If only "playing" a video, is your primary requirement, VLC takes care of that (and pretty darn well i might add).

Cheers.

(I've written a post on my blog covering most of the "good" software that I use. You're welcome to check it out. VLC was my final vote there. Excuse the shameless self promotion. Ignore if offended)


How can I update homebrew and upgrade the new packages in one step?

Yes, by putting the following line in your ~/.bash_profile file:

alias brewu='brew update && brew upgrade --lock'

brewu can be replaced by whatever alias you want to use.


Dual monitor: losing focus on terminal app when using cmd+tab

You can press CMD` to switch between windows of the same application.

This doesn't fix the root cause of the focus issue, but does allow you to select the correct Terminal window via the keyboard.


How do I know if a time machine backup is running?

The canonical way to check status of time machine is to use the utility and check status or for newer os check the current phase only:

 tmutil status
 tmutil currentphase

Now, you have to process the text since it reports exit 0 when running and when it's not running since the status returned - not that there's a correct status.

I would use:

tmutil status | grep "Running = 0;"

That returns 0 if the system is not currently running and 1 if you are backing up. However, back up on High Sierra implies a non-snapshot event. The snapshots literally are to external drives which literally are not APFS. Only the internal SSD gets APFS treatment and the local snapshots are not something that "run" as so much as "just exist" and the "running" if anything is the thinning process - not the backing up process.

The thinning process calls backupd-helper which doesn't have a command line tool to check when done but you can time that running by issuing a blocking call like:

 tmutil thinlocalsnapshots / 1000000000

Above has enough zeros to thin one giga byte - add two zeros to ask for 100 GB back.

I do want to correct (or at least challenge lightly) the concept of too many snapshots. APFS is a copy on write filesystem and the only examples of this being bad seem highly contrived or non-default configurations. The files that are around are already written to disk. The system just is "lazy" about cleaning them up and doesn't expend any processing time until it knows the a) system is relatively idle b) storage is relatively idle and not yet running low on free space.

Apple is clearly still in flux with how many snapshots to keep mounted, how to set the cleanup thresholds, how many intervals to keep in situations where the external drive is not connected and the local snapshots exist.

You can dig deeper with:

tmutil listlocalsnapshots /
tmutil thinlocalsnapshots / 1
tmutil deletelocalsnapshots YYYY-MM-DD-HHMMSS

Again, I've yet to see a place where I needed to thin or delete snapshots out of the automatic process on local volumes. The delete can be handy when you want to purge a large backup from an external drive. The real lever we used to have was to use Time Machine exclusions to omit the backup of large files that had tiny changes. It remains to be seen how APFS reacts to these files - my guess is you may be able to placethose type of files on a different APFS volume and thin aggressively and periodically or continue to watch the backup exclusions to see if that saves you allocated space without slowing down the copy on write performance and storage benefits.


Can I get iPhone messages through my Mac?

Messages.app on OS X can sync messages from iPhone your to the app. This only works when your phone is on the same Wi-Fi network.

So if your phone is getting repaired, you will only receive iMessages (messages sent font an iPhone/iPad/Mac to another iPhone/iPad/Mac), and not SMS texts.


getting "out of memory" error when trying to load specific websites (am not out of RAM)

I wasn't able to get my network back by disabling and re-enabling TCP/IP or the Wi-Fi. It seems in my case the computer had gone to sleep with a Juniper VPN connection and when it woke back up the connection had timed out and the routes weren't cleaned up. For me, I had two computers, one working and one not, and so was able to identify the problem after running netstat -rn.

On the computer that wasn't working, I had a destination of 192.168.43.1 with a gateway of link#5. On the computer that WAS working, the gateway for that destination was the mac address of the wireless router, so I removed that route with:

sudo route delete -host 192.168.43.1

After this, I could ping my wireless router and also get back to the internet.

Some people claimed that going to Settings → Network → Wi-Fi → Advanced → Proxies and turning on Auto Proxy Discovery worked for them. I was not able to verify this as my connection was fixed by deleting the 'dead' route.


I heard about the new ZombieLoad vulnerability. How do I protect my Mac?

For the official word, and how to mitigate the Intel issues on your Mac, see https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT210108

Realistically, if you've updated to macOS 10.14.5, use Safari as your web browser and only run applications downloaded from the App Store, you have nothing to worry about. Otherwise, you may want to review this link: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT210119

Apple has moved EXTREMELY quickly to handle this situation. Kudos to them!

I suspect Chrome, Firefox and other browsers will be updated soon. If you're extremely paranoid, you will need to disable hyperthreading (at a 40% performance hit).


OS X unwanted shortcut: ⌘⌘ converted to ⌘C

You may get some luck if you download and install CheatSheet - it builds a list of shortcuts for the current application, so you may be able to track it down by working through your apps with that.


Open a Mac installation disk as if it were on a Windows computer

This old hint might work but I don't have a CD reader to test.

It requires using the Terminal which is not that hard.


Is /usr/bin/etags severely out of date in Yosemite?

Emacs from http://emacsformacosx.com/ comes with a recent etags:

$find /Applications/Emacs.app -name etags\*
/Applications/Emacs.app/Contents/MacOS/bin-i386-10_5/etags
/Applications/Emacs.app/Contents/MacOS/bin-powerpc-10_4/etags
/Applications/Emacs.app/Contents/MacOS/bin-x86_64-10_5/etags
/Applications/Emacs.app/Contents/MacOS/bin-x86_64-10_7/etags
/Applications/Emacs.app/Contents/MacOS/bin-x86_64-10_9/etags
[...]

It's the corresponding version to emacs:

$ /Applications/Emacs.app/Contents/MacOS/bin-x86_64-10_9/etags --version
etags (GNU Emacs 24.4)
Copyright (C) 2014 Free Software Foundation, Inc.


How to create OS X Server Admin firewall rules using ip address groups by command line?

After 12 hours of searching and and not finding any example for ipfilter:ipAddressGroupsWithRules this https://help.apple.com/advancedserveradmin/mac/10.7/#apdA0111C46-F018-4C2C-B8D1-EDAEF73AC27E brought a helpful insight.

The only thing that need to be changed to create a new rule, and not update an existing one, is a first line that creates the rule. For example:

ipfilter:ipAddressGroupsWithRules:_array_id:11-net = create
ipfilter:ipAddressGroupsWithRules:_array_id:11-net:readOnly = no
ipfilter:ipAddressGroupsWithRules:_array_id:11-net:allowAll = no
ipfilter:ipAddressGroupsWithRules:_array_id:11-net:addresses:_array_index:0 = "11.0.0.0/8"
ipfilter:ipAddressGroupsWithRules:_array_id:11-net:name = "11-net"

Now the output of $ sudo serveradmin settings < 10-net.txt is no longer:

ipfilter:ipAddressGroupsWithRules = _empty_array

but:

ipfilter:ipAddressGroupsWithRules:_array_id:11-net:readOnly = no
ipfilter:ipAddressGroupsWithRules:_array_id:11-net:allowAll = no
ipfilter:ipAddressGroupsWithRules:_array_id:11-net:addresses:_array_index:0 = "11.0.0.0/8"
ipfilter:ipAddressGroupsWithRules:_array_id:11-net:rules = _empty_array
ipfilter:ipAddressGroupsWithRules:_array_id:11-net:name = "11-net"

Which is the synonym for that entering the new setting succeeded.


Parallels taking up over 300GB but Parallels disk is only 128GB. Why?

After a long chat with Parallels support followed by my own investigation, it turns out that the mystery disk space is taken up by snapshots. But Parallels apparently has a bug where it's not correctly reporting the full disk space cost of snapshots.  By deleting some snapshots I was able to reclaim much of the mystery disk space.

Here's more details. Apparently Parallels stores snapshots in two places: inside your VM's .pvm file (go to /Users/YourName/Documents/Parallels, find the .pvm file, right click on it, and choose "Show Package Contents") :

in a Snapshots folder, which is what's measured by the green Snapshots area in the General tab of Parallels VM configuration.
inside the .hdd file  that contains the actual hard disk data. If you right-click on this file and choose Show Package Contents, you'll see one .hds file for each snapshot that you have stored. These files are not included in the green Snapshots area in the General tab of Parallels VM configuration.

I deleted several old snapshots using the Snapshot manager, and that freed up 100GB in just a few minutes. Removing each snapshot removed one 10GB+ .hds file from inside the .hdd file.

I did see cases in the Parallels forums where old snapshots didn't show up in Snapshot Manager but were still using up disk space. Apparently there's a Terminal-based way to fix that problem. I'm pasting links here in case others run across that variant of the problem:

https://forum.parallels.com/threads/what-are-multiple-hds-files-in-huge-pvm-file.327942/
https://forum.parallels.com/threads/problems-with-freeing-disc-space-after-deleted-snapshots.328099/

both linking to:

http://kb.parallels.com/9165

I was disappointed in Parallels for not accurately measuring the true disk cost of snapshots.  Had Parallels correctly noted that snapshots were taking up 200GB vs. 128GB for real disk space, the solution (delete some snapshots, dummy!) would have been obvious.  Instead I wasted hours trying to troubleshoot what could have been a simple problem to resolve.

The support engineer I worked with claimed that this incorrect measurement is not a Parallels bug. I'll leave it up to you to decide if you agree with him. ;-)


Dictionary lookup wider and taller (pop-up dictionary lookup styling) in OS X

First of all, find out dictionary path you want to modify. This is dependent on the dictionary you want to modify, but you path should look something like this:

/System/Library/Assets/com_apple_MobileAsset_DictionaryServices_dictionaryOSX/042bf65b3ae80e4564c339fcf00fa9924bd16dd3.asset/AssetData/Apple Dictionary.dictionary/Contents/Resources/English.lproj/AppleDictionary.css

Then open this file in any text/code editor you'd like, it could be even vim, like in the original question, and open it for modification, search for font-size parameter for body element, it could be defined in pt, px, em. If you want to deep into CSS details, you may read up tutorials or manual on the font-size. It appears to be regular CSS file, for definition of styles, so it's easy to work with it.

You may change the font-size, to make it bigger/smaller, it could achieved by modification of parameters in CSS:

body {
  ...
  font-size: 15pt; /* <== look for this parameter, and scale it up to your taste */
  ...
}

Or like this:

html.apple_client-panel body {
    ...
    font-size: 15px;
    ...
}

You may find some screenshots and additional explanation on apple.disscussions.

One also can play with line-height, if font-size haven't brought enough readability. If you want to change the window itself or spacing around text, then you may want to modify margin (margin-top, margin-bottom, etc) or padding (padding-left, padding-right, etc).

Tried to explain this to the guys, who are not web-developers themselves, hope this helps. Ask if you gotten additional questions to me, or search them on StackOverflow (it's for developers questions), but I think it will be straight-forward for you now.


Trouble with GUID HDD recovery in testdisk

Initially partitioned with Disk Utility (as GUID pt, 1 partition, HFSJ) I would expect the partition tables of your WD Red 4 TB disks to look like this:

     start         size  index  contents
         0            1         PMBR
         1            1         Pri GPT header
         2           32         Pri GPT table
        34            6
        40       409600      1  GPT part - C12A7328-F81F-11D2-BA4B-00A0C93EC93B
    409640   7813365344      2  GPT part - 48465300-0000-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC
7813774984       262151
7814037135           32         Sec GPT table
7814037167            1         Sec GPT header

with the EFI = 409640 blocks and the empty default Apple spacer of 262144 blocks. All aligned to the 4096 Byte physical block size the resulting HFSJ partition starts at block 409640 and has a size of 7813365344 blocks.

You may just test this by removing the current partition (below I assume the disk identifier of the external drive is disk2 - use the disk identifier you have found in your environment):

diskutil umountDisk /dev/disk2
sudo gpt remove -i 1 disk2
sudo gpt add -i 1 -b 40 -s 409600 -t C12A7328-F81F-11D2-BA4B-00A0C93EC93B disk2
sudo gpt add -i 2 -b 409640 -s 7813365344 -t 48465300-0000-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC disk2

If asked don't initialize any volume.

Now verify the volume:

diskutil verifyVolume disk2s2

After further investigations it turns out that one of the two external disks contains an additional recovery partition. After adding a 3rd partition like this:

     start         size  index  contents
         0            1         PMBR
         1            1         Pri GPT header
         2           32         Pri GPT table
        34            6
        40       409600      1  GPT part - C12A7328-F81F-11D2-BA4B-00A0C93EC93B
    409640   7812357952      2  GPT part - 48465300-0000-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC
7812767592      1269536      3  GPT part - 426F6F74-0000-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC
7814037128            7
7814037135           32         Sec GPT table
7814037167            1         Sec GPT header

and the help of Disk Warrior (to restore broken file systems) both main volumes of the external disks have been salvaged.


How do I record my iPhone's screen and sound whilst recording my mic

You can use the built in screen recorder in your iPhone. If you’re using iOS 11, it will record the sound from whatever source or website, and you can also select mic, and get both audio recordings.

To record your iPhone's screen. Go to Settings app → Control Centre → Customise Controls, and make sure to add Screen Recording to the include list.

Now to record your iPhone's screen, swipe up from the bottom of your screen (swipe down from top right on iPhone X) to open Control Centre.

There is a circle with a solid dot in the middle, just press and hold it, it will open and ask you to record screen and if you want to record audio from the microphone as well.

Once finished, swipe to open Control Centre and tap the same recording button to stop. The recording will be saved to your camera roll.


Using someone else's iTunes account, even when you have your own

Yes, you can listen to any of your family member's music, but not in the way you suggested. In fact, you can even use any of their purchases. To do that you need to have Family Sharing.

Go to https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201088 to setup Family Sharing.


How can I safely install applications which aren't distributed via the Mac App Store?

There can be many reasons for app developers to stay away from the App Store. For example:

Wanting to avoid paying fees/percentages to Apple
App has functionality not possible in the App Store due to its sandboxing requirement or Apple's review guidelines
Not wanting to spend time on getting in the App Store (usually for programs that have been on the market long before the App Store was a thing)

Checksums is definitely a very common way of validating downloaded files. Combined with a cryptographically secure certificate of authenticity for the checksum, and you can have a certain degree of trust in that the downloaded file originates from the app developer and is not tampered with by third parties.


How to install Snow Leopard from USB where USB disk is prepared using Linux?

Why use Linux for this? Just do it in OS X. To prepare the USB drive (e.g. 8-GB flash drive), you need to partition it using the GUID scheme and format it to the file system standard 'Macintosh Extended (Journaled)', also known as 'HFS+ (Journaled)'.

Then use Disk Utility's Restore feature to copy the contents of the iso image file (Source) to the USB drive (Destination). When done, restart the Mac keeping the Option key pressed – the USB drive should then show up in the boot volume lineup...

There are many tutorials for this process on the Internet, e.g., http://www.maciverse.com/install-os-x-snow-leopard-from-usb-flash-drive.html


The notifications come through 99.9%, I think the 0.01% is when your phone doesn't have network. That is the only reason it won't go through, unless you have a poor server with 10000 requests per second then yes that will fail.

So for best results just get a good server. I don't think you can help people with cellular coverage. Even if you did run in background they won't be able to pull data from internet if they don't have cellular network.

Apple just wants you to not rely on it 100%, so make a backup plan for it, let the user know the app can't connect to the server if there's no network. I'll say do push notifications, then if that fails try get from server manually and make local notifications, if the app can't make connection to the server fire up a local notification that says it couldn't connect to your server.

Hope this helps?


Any time Apple services a part under warranty, you get 90 days of warranty and the balance of whatever warranty was pre-existing. Both of these periods run independently (i.e. you have 5+ months left, so your original warranty end date governs and you don't add + 90 days to your term.)

In the case where hardware serial numbers change or a whole unit is swapped, the warranty transfers day for day and does not get shortened or extended.

Some locations have warranty tolling where you get credit for days where the unit is out of the consumer's hands for repair, but in the case of swap exchanged - that usually is zero days unless they don't have the part and need to order it.

You can look up your exact warranty based on where you bought your iPad from:

http://www.apple.com/legal/warranty/


Favoriting a song in iTunes scrolls to top and collapses album view

I think I might know the answer to this one: Go to the 'Albums' dropdown in the toolbar (nearly top-right) and turn off 'Show Recently Added'.

What might be happening is that a two-year old bug around one of the elements in the Recently Added section is getting focus, which scrolls the entire view to the top. It drove me completely crazy until I finally found this


Can Mac App Store purchased apps install Quicklook Plugins?

Yes, any application placed in the Applications folder can provide QuickLook support.

Sandboxing does not affect an application's ability to support QuickLook.

Mac OS X looks inside applications for a QuickLook plug-ins folder. The specific folder is:

MyApp.app/Contents/Library/QuickLook/

Support for Automator and Spotlight can also be provided using this per-application Library folder mechanism.

When you download an application from the Mac App Store you are still going through /usr/bin/installer. The Mac App Store downloads a flat-file installer package .pkg and then installs it on your behalf.

This allows the installation process to be more than just a single copy for complex applications; functionality that is only available to Apple software. For now, third party software can do no more than provide a single application to be placed within the /Applications folder.


Depending on the number of categories you require to handle, you could always use a combination of the finder with the built in label functionality, thus a movie can be held in one area (movies directory, for example), but "tagged" as something else.  Using smart directories and saved searches you can view your files by a combination of the attributes (location, label, media type) to create custom views.  All without purchasing software.  Cheap and cheerful, but may be suitable to your needs.


How to open a file in Excel from the command line

You can use the open command:

This will use the default application for the file type, which may not be the desired application.

open test.xlsx

or, to specify the application explicitly:

open test.xlsx -a /Applications/Microsoft\ Office\ 2011/Microsoft\ Excel.app/

or even,

open test.xlsx -a "Microsoft Excel"

A really useful way of doing this is to make an alias to Excel (in your .bash_profile)

alias xl='open -a "Microsoft Excel"'

Then you can just type the following to open an file in Excel:

xl file.csv


Can't download macOS High Sierra once again

You can use the link available on the Apple Support document, How to upgrade to macOS High Sierra to download the installer for macOS High Sierra 10.13.6.

  4. Download macOS High Sierra

    For the strongest security and latest features, find out whether you can upgrade to macOS Mojave, the latest version of the Mac operating system.

  If you still need macOS High Sierra, use this App Store link: Get macOS High Sierra.

The installer is downloaded in /Applications directory and is typically around 6GB in size. If needed, delete the installer currently present in /Applications directory.


You should restart your Mac system. this should fix the problem.


Target Display Mode between two MacBook Pro

Only some of the non-5k display iMacs have target display mode. No MacBooks have (yet) had that capability as part of their hardware.

You'll need to do screen sharing or some other software solution if you need it.


How to display iPhone/iOS device on Projector?

Three possibilities:

Use AppleTV.
Use an appropriate adapter, such as an Apple Digital AV adapater or Apple VGA adapter. (Works only if you have a 4th generation iPod Touch.)
Use a document camera to record and project your device's screen. For demos where you want to show interaction with the device, this is a common setup.


Yes, you need to set up a folder and then select the "Use as Defaults" button located at the bottom of the View Options window.

Once that is set, any new folder will adopt those settings. Note that any current folder view that has already been adjusted will ignore the setting and need to be re-adjusted. This is due to Finder saving view options instantly and not having the "Use as Defaults" option overriding them.


Trouble with Macbook display -- brightness cuts out or gets wavy if I move the screen around

As a former Apple technician in a retail store, I can tell you that if an SMC reset didn't fix the "stage lighting" display issue, we replaced the display assembly.  Probably not possible through Apple anymore since a 2008 MacBook Pro would be considered vintage...

For the keyboard/trackpad issue, you might try reseating the flex cables underneath the top case.  iFixit.com has great guides for opening up your Mac. You open your computer at your own risk. :)  If that doesn't change anything, could be a bad top case.  The keyboard assembly and top case are separate on the 2008, non-unibody MacBook Pro, so then it's up to component isolation.

Summary: Don't spend any money fixing this computer (unless you reeeeeally want to).  Like an older car, it can be difficult to find parts for older computers, but there are places that have them.  My advice would be to use it until 'till you lose it, then purchase a new computer.


2nd monitor is mirroring the first external monitor

I was using the Hyperdrive Pro Docking Station, and apparently its sharing the signal for its HDMI and DP port. I had to buy an adaptar (USB-C to HDMI) to attach the second monitor to the hub, and this solved the issue.


Not even root can `ls .Trashes` on external disk in MacOS

On my imac, I went to /Volumes/MyBook/.Trashes and I just tried sudo ls and it worked. It asked me for a password and then listed the contents. I was able to do sudo ls from then on without the password.


Transferring apps from computer to iPhone 4S

If you got them on the Mac app store, they're computer apps, and they won't work with your iPhone. If you're referring to iPhone apps purchased through iTunes, as long as you're signed in on the same Apple ID on your Mac and your iPhone, you can go to the "Purchased" tab on the iPhone app store and download you apps for free there. Sorry if I'm misunderstanding your question.