Why are some System Preferences icons "Generic" in macOS 10.15 Catalina?

The icons are present: they're just not being picked up by the Finder. That could be a caching problem (of the Finder's).
In the 10 months since this question was asked, it's possible that a system update may have fixed it (by clearing caches as part of the installation, rather than any pro-active fixing).


Create global shortcut to run command line applications

Without knowing the specifics of what you are looking for, I'd suggest creating a new Service through Automator. Services can be bound to keystroke triggers, and can execute shell scripts (among other things).

To set up the keyboard shortcut, go to System Preferences -> Keyboard -> Shortcuts -> Services, select the service you just saved, and then click the "Add Shortcut" button.


FFMpeg access AVFoundation usb subdevice camera on OSX Mojave

I revisited this a year later.  An update of ffmpeg caused both devices to be seen normally.
==> Upgrading 1 outdated package:
ffmpeg 4.1.4_2 -> 4.3.1

..
ffmpeg -f avfoundation -list_devices true -i ""

[AVFoundation indev @ 0x7f85b2e00380] AVFoundation video devices:
[AVFoundation indev @ 0x7f85b2e00380] [0] Stereo Vision 2 #2
[AVFoundation indev @ 0x7f85b2e00380] [1] Stereo Vision 2
[AVFoundation indev @ 0x7f85b2e00380] [2] FaceTime HD Camera
[AVFoundation indev @ 0x7f85b2e00380] [3] Capture screen 0


Homepod is on same wifi network as my other devices but doesn't show up for airplay or personal requests

Went to Apple today This is a fix it worked for me

The phone you use needs to be on the same wifi frequency 2.4Ghz or 5Ghz
Set the frequency in the router settings to restrict devices to only one frequency not set to dynamic which allows alternation depending on circumstances
you can check which devices are connected to the frequency's in connected devices in router settings

I found that my devices such as phones connected to 2.4G when a few rooms away form my router but connected to 5G when close to the room with the router

because my Home pods stay in the same place they connected to the same WIFI frequency's all the time

if your home pod is on 5G  and then your phone switches to 2.4G the Home pod does not work as predicted

KC


could be a hdmi cable issue
maybe restart your computer. in OSX 10.9 Mavericks has some issue with dual monitoring, restart without the video cable plugged in . once its fully started, try plugging in the video cable again.


Change volume of airport using the master keys, not itunes volume slider

This might do what you wanted, however I did not test it my self.

https://github.com/alberti42/iTunes-Volume-Control


The VPN's DHCP server probably assigns hostname together with the IP address and the computer uses it instead of what you've set during setup and what appears in System Preferences -> Sharing -> Computer name.

To set a permanent hostname do
sudo scutil --set HostName DesiredHostname in Terminal.app (there are also ComputerName and LocalHostName that can be changed there).
Restart may be required.


How can I get Mac Mail to allow repeat of delete key or backspace key (Snow Leopard)

You might be able to find a high end keyboard that has hardware key repeat, but it'd probably be a high end mechanical switch keyboard and set you back a lot of money.

Instead you should just learn to hold down shift-arrow key and then press the delete key at the end.


My MacBook Pro mid-2010 won't recognize new hard drive

I'm not sure if this will work for you since you've got an error on boot, but if your OLD drive can get into recovery mode, I did a pretty extensive write up on swapping hard drives here: How do i install OS X on new hard drive? I have macbook pro mid 2010.

If it doesn't, based on my research, you'll need another Mac to create a bootable install from a USB device of at least 8 GB.

This question is really old, but just in case someone runs across it, I figured I'd put in my $.02. In addition sometimes this problem may occur due to the HDD cable itself failing a Apple known problem with this model. In which case a new cable usually allows communication with the HDD to work internally as it should. While many Hdd refused to work internally they booted externally just fine.  These cables run $30 to $60 depending on where you buy.


How to mitigate CVE-2015-1130 (Hidden Backdoor with Root) due to lack of Apple support?

I would say it's simply not possible.

It apparently took Apple months of effort to close this door. They specifically asked the reporter to hold long past the accepted announcement embargo period, in order to give them sufficient time to fix it before it went public. They say the reason for not back-porting it to earlier OSes is the sheer amount of effort involved.

If they can't do it, I doubt anyone else could.

If it could be even slightly mitigated by any action on your part, I'm fairly sure there would have been advice from them to that effect.


Move items from old keychain to new keychain

As a workaround, you can make the password of the old keychain empty. You can do that by pressing the OK button for a second time after this error message is shown:

You can then just click the allow button repeatedly without having to type the password every time.


Cannot disable option "Copy files to iTunes Media folder when adding to library"

Seems to be some kind of bug. Only workaround I've found is to also disable "Keep iTunes media folder organized."  When I untick this box, the other seems to stay disabled.  If I try to re-enable it, the "Copy Files..." re-enables as well.  They're linked somehow. Did you have any success deleting itunes plist?


Can I use Siri on my iPhone without having to speak?

You can do what you want with the Type to Siri option.

On your iPhone do as follows:

Open Settings
Tap on General > Accessibility
Swipe up until you see the Siri label
Tap on Siri and enable the Type to Siri option at top of screen
Exit Settings

Now when you hold your Home button down you’ll get a keyboard pop up from the bottom allowing you to type directly to Siri (see screenshot below):


Using iWork from the Up-to-Date Program on another Mac

Disclaimer: I'm not a lawyer.

There are two angles to this - the practical "Will it work?" angle and the legal "Is this legally allowed by Apple?" angle.

Short answers - it will work; but it's not legally sanctioned by Apple.

Will it work?

Yes, once you redeem the codes on the Mac App Store, these applications will be tied to your iTunes Store Account's Apple ID.
These apps will henceforth show up in the Purchases tab of the Mac App Store on every Mac that you have.
Assuming the other Macs you own run OS X Mavericks 10.9 (which is the minimum requirement for the latest iWork releases), you would be able to install the latest iWork on them.

Is this legally allowed by Apple?

This is a bit more difficult to answer accurately. I can only provide some pointers on the different aspects and will try to add a score to make it easier to understand (positive means it's legally fine and negative means it's legally not fine).
Score: -2

Apple tries to follow a "what's paid for with the original product" approach when it comes up with software releases and updates. This has meant that Apple has charged owners of older systems for things like enabling WiFi 802.11n, FaceTime on OS X, etc., while giving these free for purchasers of newer Macs (this is similar to newer iOS devices getting iLife and iWork apps free whereas older devices still have to pay for them). From this angle, no, you do not qualify to run this license of iWork that you have been given on other Macs you own.
On a related note, if you look at past up-to-date programs from Apple for OS X, for example, the OS X Mountain Lion up-to-date program, it clearly states

  The OS X Mountain Lion software content code must be used solely with the products that qualify for this offer.
  This offer is limited to one OS X Mountain Lion content code per qualifying computer purchased.

Score: 0

This recent article titled Apple Offering 'Free' Updates to All Owners of Aperture, iWork, and iLife; Not Worried About Unethical Users states that Apple has intentionally allowed users of older versions of iLife, iWork and Aperture (including trial versions or illegally acquired versions) to upgrade to the latest version for free. According to the unnamed source in Apple:

  ...With Mavericks, we have changed the way we distribute updates for legacy versions of our apps
  ...
  ...when Mavericks discovers legacy apps installed on your Mac, it provisions them as a Mac App Store purchase using your Apple ID. It saves us a lot of time, effort, and bandwidth. After the provision is complete, it will appear in your Mac App Store history as though you have purchased the Mac App Store version of the app.
  While we are aware that this enables piracy of our apps for unethical users, Apple has never taken a strong stance or action against piracy in the past. We like to believe that our users are honest, even if that belief is in vain.

Total score: -2 (against installing it on the other Mac).
To summarize, Apple's past bevahior and past terms state that this is not legally sanctioned by Apple. Even the article cited above states that "We like to believe that our users are honest, even if that belief is in vain."

So if you'd like the bitter truth, in my opinion, you are not legally allowed to install iWork from the up-to-date program on any of your other Macs that do not qualify for the up-to-date program, even though it would work practically.


How do you establish an area in which to search (restaurants, for example) for Maps.app

It’s simply a limitation of Apple Maps.
To find places around a certain area, Apple touts the “Nearby” feature supposedly which allows you to find points if interest nearby your current location.  If I search “pizza near research triangle  park, nc” it gave me pizza places near the closest city center to me - downtown Fort Lauderdale, FL.
I tend to use Bing Maps as my preferred tool followed by Google. I did the same search  in Bing and the search area was as you described - bounded by the visible area in the window. If I zoomed or panned the map, the results  adjusted accordingly.
I have found that 3rd party apps “force” Google maps regardless of what you want as your default - I suspect it’s to ensure a consistent and rich user experience.
While I’d love to recommend the native tool, I can’t.  I'd use the tool that meets your needs.


Why does Numbers hide a huge PNG file in exported Excel sheets?

I'm not sure why it's included in the export, but this is one of the default "Image Fills":


How is the iOS App Store Updates list organized?

Not to be flippant but I don't think anyone outside of Apple knows.  I've had Apple products for years and my only guess is they're rolled out within a specific time after their review has completed.  We don't know when the apps are reviewed, except for our own, so we don't know how we stack-up against the other apps that have been updated.


How can I delete contact relationships in Siri?

Tell Siri "My father is XYZ" and let it make the change for you.


Have a look at Gaia GPS app. It works offline and has a free version so you can do your test before buying.


It is well-known that any MacBook with battery removed will run at significantly lower clock speed, typically around 1 GHz. The reason is that the power supply is good enough to supply plenty of power for the average usage, but not for bursts. If your hard drive spins up while the CD drive spins up while all cores and the GPU work full blast and you are charging two iPhones then the power supply won't have enough power for that, but it can take extra power from the battery.

With no battery, the MacBook will turn its power consumption down so that it can guarantee to always have enough power, because otherwise you would have instant crashes at the wrong times.

Another reason to not remove the battery is that dust will have a chance to get deeper inside your MacBook that would otherwise be blocked by the battery. So unless your battery is swollen, leave it in, even if it only has ten minutes charge left.


El Capitan: Appstore says "downloaded" and "there's been an error" (stuck)

Apparently it downloaded the OS X El Capitan installation (under that name, or Install OS X El Capitan) in the Applications folder, which seems to be the download location. I could launch it from there.

Problem solved…

UPDATE: if this would occur during you Mac OSX Sierra download, the file you'd be looking for is "(Install) macOS Sierra" in the Applications folder.


Can a Mac boot when the right shift key is broken in the pressed position?

Sadly, you might need to open the Mac and disconnect the keyboard.

Here is an image from iFixit.com's takeapart for the 15 inch model.

It is protected by a metal cage - but you won't need to do all the steps - just get the bottom off and disconnect the battery before working on the keyboard cable.

You will of course need a USB keyboard to work things temporarily and enable the bluetooth keyboard if you can't get there with a mouse or the trackpad only. Do read the cautions on the repair guide and be sure you are up to a delicate task. A proper Mac technician might charge $30 for this repair since it's quite easy for someone with all the tools and experience getting in to the Mac.


Use external hard drive to install applications to it

You can use an external HDD to install and run applications there. Make sure they support USB 3.0 or Thunderbolt. I use Mathematica on mine and it works fine. The preferences files will remain on your internal disk but they are very small.


Right click > customize toolbar.

Then drag in or out the buttons you want.


Terminal sometimes scrambles initial output

I would like to answer my own question, even though it is not an "answer," per se.

After testing on several different machines, I am confident that this is a bug with Terminal (and perhaps other virtual terminals on other operating systems). I have tested this on the following machines that are owned by separate users:

MacBook Pro (2012, 13-inch) running 10.9.4
MacBook Air (2012) running 10.9.3
MacBook Pro (2012, 15-inch) running 10.9.4

If someone would like to add to my list, please try running Terminal and quitting it in succession until you see the timestamp located on the same line as the initial prompt.

A friend of mine claims to have seen this on Linux as well.


terminal starts with `no such file or directory` message

You need to edit your profile (.profile, .bashrc, .zshrc, .tcshrc, etc… that is appropriate for your chosen shell) and remove any lines that contain "Enthought". It might be a bit more complicated than just deleting a couple of lines depending on what it did to your login file.


How to enable SSH via terminal without sudo?

I would hope not since that would be a huge security vulnerability in the OS. Remote executable access without end user approval would be a highly exploitable vulnerability in the OS.

That being said, I wouldn't presume it's not possible but if it were possible, I would expect that to be a very closely guarded secret and not shared publicly.

A "white hat" might disclose this to Apple, the vendor to fix and then announce.

A "black hat" might develop the exploit and then sell it for millions of $$ or weaponize it for their nationality / social group of choice.

At this point, the definition of who is wearing the white/black hats is going to be highly controversial and subjective. About the only thing everyone can agree upon is all hat colors gain/lose social status having found and chosen how they disclose.


What does it mean when an iMessage doesn't say "Delivered" nor "Not Delivered"?

The receiving device is probably off, in sleep mode, out of cell reception, flat battery - something like that.


Link Displays Between Two iMacs (Late-2015 Retina running Sierra and 2017 running Mojave) Using Thunderbolt-to-Thunderbolt

I'm afraid neither of those iMacs is capable of Target Display Mode
Generally it was iMacs between 2009 & 2014 that supported it, no retina iMacs were included.
See Lifewire - How to Use Your Old iMac as a Monitor
Unfortunately, Apple's own KB article on this seems to have recently vanished.


Front Row and iTunes "watched" flags out of sync

I cannot help with your original question, but you may be interested to know that Front Row was quietly removed from Lion, so if you have any imminent plans to upgrade, then it may be worth bearing in mind that you could be wasting your time trying to fix this.


How to open/use/enable Spotify Desktop Web Player on iOS?

Try iCab http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/icab-mobile-web-browser/id308111628?mt=8

It will allow you to set the "User Agent" of the browser to pretend that you are using a different web browser, so you can tell Spotify that you are using the "desktop" version of Safari on the Mac, or Firefox on the Mac, or even Chrome, etc.

You can check your browser's User Agent at http://ua.luo.ma/ too. If it says anything about "iPhone" then Spotify will probably give you the "Unsupported Browser"


Windows Server 2008 R2 Hyper-V on a Mac Mini

The short answer is yes.

According to the official Hyper-V system requirements page, in order to run it you need a processor that supports Intel-VT (Virtualization Technology). Most processors today support this, but to be sure I checked on the official Mac mini tech specs page as well as the Intel's list of processors that support Intel-VT.

From this, we can see that the i5 processor found on the Mac mini supports Intel-VT. I recommend upgrading the RAM if possible. Also, make sure that you are running one of the supported operating systems for Hyper-V. Hope this helps.


If you're running a system prior to OS X 10.9, you might consider updating it. Upgrading Apple's iApps from the 2011 versions to the 2013 versions requires either Mavericks (for version 10.0.5) or Yosemite (v10.0.6). The boilerplate message from the App Store has misled a good number of people.

If, on the other hand, you are using 10.9 or 10.10, first check the "Purchases" page of the App Store (Fourth icon across on the top of the toolbar) to see if the iApps are available for download. These versions replace--not upgrade--pre-installed iApps with bundles which tie them to a combination of your Apple ID and your computer's hardware ID.

If such isn't the case, contact Apple Support for Mac Apps, and explain your situation. You are entitled to an upgrade.


Where is the folder with color schemes used by vim?

I found the answer  here: color scheme's and syntax' files can be found in /usr/share/vim/.


In Numbers can you auto-populate a cell with a date when another cell is populated?

Unfortunately, even if you were able to reference your own cell in Numbers, there is no assignment operator.

Meaning that there would be no way to override the current value of the cell.


Control and see iPhone from Mac with broken iPhone screen

Just use QuickTime Player on your Mac.

Connect the Lightning port from your iPhone to the USB to your computer.
In QuickTime select File → New Movie Recording but don't start the recording.
Next to the record button select the down arrow button, then select your iPhone. This will bring the iPhone's display screen to your Mac within QuickTime.

You don't have to record anything, you can use your non-working display and look inside QuickTime to see your screen.


Repartition and reinstall on 2012 Air + Mavericks

The safest way to wipe your entire drive and do a clean OS install is this:

Remember to back up ALL of your data!
Open Boot Camp Assistant and select the "remove windows" option. Follow the steps to remove windows and resize your drive to only be MacOS.
After this is complete, shut down your computer.
Boot into recovery mode by holding Cmd + R at startup.
Open Disk Utility in recovery mode. Select the remaining partition (MacOS), then set a name for it in the box provided and wipe it.
After this is complete, close Disk Utility and choose the "Install Mac OS X" option.
Follow the steps to install Mac OS X on the new partition.


Can I access a secondary hard drive on another computer via AFP

Yes.

Set up sharing on REM to share the root directory of the second drive.

You can right click and do it from the Finder or go in and manage all shares from the sharing system preference.


"Application opened for the first time" warning after every reboot

It sounds like there is a permissions error somewhere. Run Disk Utility (from the /Applications/Utilities folder), select your boot drive and click on the "Repair Disk Permissions" button. I usually keep pressing the buttons until there are no errors left. Reboot and try running one of your problem apps. It may warn you again, but after that it should remember that you have run it before.

Good Luck.


How can I make my first generation iPad's battery last longer?

If you don't need to connect to a network turn off WiFi.  You will also want to go into the Settings:

turn down the brightness (Brightness & Wallpaper)
turn off Bluetooth (General)
turn off "Push" and set mail to fetch manually (Mail, Contact, Calendars) / (Fetch New Data)
turn off sounds (General)
turn off location services (General)
Turn off Notifications
and check any apps to see if any poll wifi (if you keep it on)

For additional help, I wrote up an article here with pictures:
http://www.squidoo.com/prolong-iphone-ipad-ipod-touch-battery

In the end, it really depends on how you use your iPad.  Good luck!--


I can't figure out how to download podcasts

What version of IOS do you have in your iPod?? (See comment)

The typical way in iOS 8 is

Go to the Podcaster app
A. In the bottom go to the search section (rightmost button). Enter a name of a podcast you know here or
B. Alternatively, got to "Top list" and read about existing podcasts, peruse the Categories (top left link) and find podcasts you want to try this way or
C. If you find a podcast on the web in your browser of choice in the iPod, click their podcast link, it should open in Podcaster. If you can't seem to find such a link, try option A above.
When you are at the specific podcast page in Podcaster, click the subscribe button

Once you're subscribed you can go to the local page for the podcast(bottom left link "My podcasts") to listen and to make changes.

To make changes, tap and hold to drag down a little when on the page of the podcast. You'll see the "Preferences" link where you can make changes to the subscription, like how many of existing episodes to download, retain and so on.

You can also start the subscription in iTunes on your computer and sync that to your iPod.

iOS 7

Follow about the same procedure but use the iTunes app there instead.


Wi-Fi slow on iPhone, fast on computer or tablet

The following observation indicates to a problem specifically for iPhones in contrast to e.g. iPad and maybe related to your problem.

I had problems to convince my iPhone 6s to use the 5GHz band. iPad and iMac did it at once after I switched off the 2.4 GHz in the router. The iPhone would not connect, even after resetting the network settings. The trick I used (not my own idea) was to use two different SSIDs for 5GHz and 2.4Ghz. Even then it took two or three attempts, but now the iPhone connects to the 5GHz.


How can I get my Mac to use the full resolution of my external monitor? "UI Looks like" half resolution

Go into System Preferences --> Display
Select Scaled
Pick one of the options - under the monitor icon it'll tell you the resolution. As others have said, Apple will automatically scale the display, but you can choose "More Space" to get a true higher resolution.


MacBook Pro flashing question mark but I can't repair because hard disk not found in disk utility

I'd say this is almost certainly a hardware issue. Likely something internal to the drive (if it sounds like it spins up normally, probably some part of the onboard electronics), the hard drive cable or the SATA controller on the logic board.

I'd advise taking it in to an Apple store if you can (especially if it's under warranty), but if you want to try it yourself, the first thing to do is try a different drive, and see if that gets recognized. If it does, your drive is dead, if not, it's a problem with the logic board or the cable. You can get replacement parts from iFixit, but if it's the logic board, then you're better off getting a quote from Apple for a replacement.


Big list of Portable Mac Apps here

http://www.freesmug.org/portableapps
http://osxportableapps.sourceforge.net/

And if you use Google, you'd find those, and many many other sites...


Blank rows/ spaces when copying and pasting from Excel to Keynote Chart

Found a simple workaround: just copy paste into Apple's Notes, then paste it into Keynote. Fast and easy.


Is there a way to configure password auto-generation in Safari?

I'm not aware of any way to do this in Safari, but you can always generate new passwords in System Preferences instead:

Open Users and Groups preferences.
Go as if to change your password.
Click the key button next to the "New password" field. This will open the password generator.
It generates a password for you, but you can edit it or even type in your own password, and it'll give you an estimate of how strong it is.
Drag the password into the text entry field. (You can copy and paste it if you're not concerned about clipboard managers storing it, or clipboard-sniffing malware, but drag-and-dropping isn't any harder anyway.)

You can actually drag and drop text like this in almost any app! You need to click and hold for a moment before you start to drag, or it'll think you're trying to select.

You can also do this in Keychain Access – just hit ⌘N to create a new keychain item and click the key button, and it shows the same password generator.


View in Mac App Store button does nothing

In Chrome, go to Settings > Show advanced settings... > Privacy > Content settings... > Handlers > Manage handlers... and a window will pop up showing active and ignored protocol handlers. The macappstores protocol handler should be in the "ignored" list. Hover over it and click the X to delete it.

An alternative: try downloading and installing RCDefaultApp – it's a preference pane that lets you adjust protocol handlers, default apps for certain file types, etc. Once installed, go to System Preferences > Default Apps > Apps and you should see "App Store" in the list. Select that and make sure that all of the checkboxes in there (for macappstore, macappstores, etc.) are checked.


El Capitan "Create NAT64 Network" - connection issues

If I get your network configuration correctly, your setup is completely hosed.

You need two separate (physical) networks:

one with IPv4 only (e.g. ethernet)
one with IPv6 only (e.g. local Wi-Fi)

Depending of the capabilities of your machines, the machine with two interfaces (ethernet and Wi-Fi) should be the server (DNS/DHCP etc.)/NAT64-router (= macsrv).

Since the iDevices don't have an ethernet interface and you try to test their IPv6/IPv4 functionality they should reside in the Wi-Fi section, which should be dedicated to IPv6 then. This local Wi-Fi network is not your Fritz!Box' Wi-Fi! You have to setup a personal hotspot on the NAT64 router!

To access a IPv4 server from your iDevices you may either use your normal router connection to the WAN or a dedicated IPv4 "server" (= macmedia) - both of them reside in the ethernet section "behind" the NAT64-router (= macsrv).
If macmedia doesn't have an ethernet interface just connect it to the Fritz!Box Wi-Fi, because technically the Fritz!Box Wi-Fi and the Fritz!Box ethernet are both in the ethernet section.

To access an IPv6 server use a web server on macsrv.

Since you don't need IPv6 on your Fritz!Box router, simply turn it off.


How to automatically highlight and save the search keyword in a pdf?

Preview already highlights all the words it found using search.

You can not save the document as such (showing the found words).


Is MacBook Pro 13 2015 able to run YouTube’s 4k 60 FPS videos?

I'm under the assumption that you may have stumbled across reports such as this one in a casual Google search. I quote:

The Air correctly identified the attached monitor at 4K resolution, switching the user interface into HiDPI mode.
Subsequent refresh rate tests confirmed that it was running at 60Hz, and the publication said that interface components were "more than smooth enough for desktop use." Problems cropped up when performing animation-intensive actions, like entering full-screen mode, with "clearly visible" frame lag, showing that the display pushes the Intel HD 6000 graphics chip near its limit.

Notice that the first emboldened snippet says that you have to switch the user interface. This likely means usage of 3rd-pary software, such as SwitchResX, to enable changing system setting and entering this configuration. This is not recommended. Changing the resolution settings to something that cannot be enabled via System Settings can cause problems. Trying to push your hardware over the limits set by Apple can cause the system to overheat and consequently be damaged. Your MacBook is not ventilated very well and you have an integrated GPU which relies in part on the CPU. The additional overhead will cause complications.

I've read that full 4k at 60 fps is supported over DisplayPort. –  Šime Vidas 3 hours ago

Refresh rates in the article above confirmed 60Hz. Is it able to play videos at 60Hz? The answer is likely yes. It is officially supported? No, their support page shows a limit of 30Hz at the resolution you stated.
As per your quote, can DP support 4k @ 60Hz? Yes, the DisplayPort 1.3 standard supports it. Does Thunderbolt 2 support DisplayPort 1.3? No. Remember that through the Thunderbolt port there is backwards compatibility with a mini DisplayPort cable, but with Thunderbolt 2 there are still some limitations as it uses the DisplayPort 1.2(a) standard.

To summarize this:

Is the latest MacBook Pro 13 able to play such videos smoothly?

Objectively speaking, yes, it is able to.
Will the system play it at 60Hz on a 4k 60Hz monitor? No, it will not. It does not natively support it.
Also see DisplayPort 1.3 and Thunderbolt 2 on Wikipedia for sources and more detailed info.


Running shell commands with Automator: how to create a droplet launching an "exec" command?

In the Run Shell Script action, change Pass input:, (upper right hand corner of the action), from to stdin to as arguments. Then you can get the result of the previous action passed to a shell script as an argument. Example:
lpr -o ImageableArea=DS_8x6 -o PageRegion=DS_8x12 -o
PageSize=DS_8x12 -o media=DS_8x12 $1


Selectively installing MS Office 2011 components

You can customize the Office installation, but I do not recall if that includes the ability to not install specific applications or not. Look for the "Customize..." button in the installer.

The installer does require your admin password because it writes to specific system folders (as appropriate) which require administrator access. There is no avoiding that.

However, there is good news: Office for Mac does not store your password, and will not install any background processes that would slow down your computer. Despite its reputation and many people's inherent dislike of anything Microsoft, Office for Mac is a relatively good "citizen" of the Mac community.


Maps app on iPad-mini wifi only without internet

Make sure you enable WiFi all the time. Even if you don’t have cellular data or connected to Internet, the device can still estimate your location based on the surrounding WiFi source.

Update: Maps will use the surrounding WiFi (protected or not)  to pinpoint your position. That might explain why it only occasionally works. If your iPad can’t find any WiFi available, then your position can’t be estimated.


iOS 8.1..camera roll and photostream / deleted pictures

Apple apparently didn't realise just how many photos people were going to want to keep online, so they've dramatically reduced the retention.
If you want to keep photos, don't keep them on iCloud, keep them on your computer.


Can i store and access iphotos library on external hard drive (and still have it backup to my cloud network)?

This is one of those "fun" non-discoverable Apple settings that you would only know if you knew about this setting already. Yah catch-22. Anyway.

Copy the photoslibrary file to the drive you want to store it on.
While holding the Option key, launch the Photos.app

Instead of Photos.app opening, you will get something like this

Click on the Other Library button and point it to the photos library you just copied to your external drive.

It will open that file and set it as the default, so that the next time you open photos.app it will open that file again. You can verify that by renaming or moving the one in the old default location and launching photos.app normally.


OSXFuse & VeraCrypt on Big Sur: OSXFuse seems to be missing on your machine

This seems to be a general problem, see https://sourceforge.net/p/veracrypt/discussion/general/thread/b7cd930cf7/?limit=25#6cb4 and https://sourceforge.net/p/veracrypt/tickets/400/. A new version of VeraCrypt will be required which references the correct path and addresses any other issues related to Big Sur.


My Macbook falls asleep everytime that I pick it up?

It sounds like it might need repairs; there could be a loose ribbon cable inside that's disconnecting when you move it.

That said, the whole scenario sounds mysteriously uncommon.


Bootcamp Not enough space but nothing helps!

This answer is in respond to you post comment which I have repeated below.

  In that case I will go and look for other ways to install windows, I have seen some stuff about installing it without bootcamp.

The basic steps needed for your 2017 Mac have been post as the accepted answer to this question: How to install Windows 10 into a 2013 iMac without using the Boot Camp Assistant, USB flash drive or third party tools?

If you edit your question and include the output from diskutil list, I could post the steps for your particular situation.

The numbers do not look good. If you shrink your macOS partition to the minimum recommended size of 95.6 GB, then you can create 25.5 GB of free space for Windows 10. (In other words: 121.1 GB - 95.6 GB = 25.5 GB) This Microsoft website states you will need 20 GB to install Windows 10, but the Boot Camp Assistant creates a temporary partition to hold the Windows installation files. This additional space is larger than the difference between 25.5 GB and 20 GB. The Boot Camp Assistant will not install Windows because there really is not enough free space.

One possible solution would be to use a 16 GB or larger flash drive to hold the Windows installation files. Once the files are transferred to the flash drive, you could delete them from the macOS volume and thus create more free space.

One possible procedure to install Windows 10.

Use the the Boot Camp Assistant to download the latest Windows Support Software for your Mac. Look for the "Action" pulldown on the Boot Camp Assistant menu bar. On my Mac, these files were downloaded to the ~/WindowsSupport directory.
Create a FAT32 formatted volume labeled "BOOTCAMP" on the 3rd partition of the primary disk. Basically, enter the command below in a Terminal application window.

diskutil apfs resizecontainer disk0s2 96G FAT32 BOOTCAMP 0

Use the Disk Utility application to erase a 16 GB or larger flash drive. Choose the parameters shown in the image below.

Mount the Windows iso file and copy the contents to the "WINSTALL" volume. In my case, the label "ESD-ISO" was used to identify the Windows iso. To perform the copy operation, you will need the enter the cp command from a Terminal application window. Below are the commands I usually enter. If necessary, make the appropriate modifications.

cd  /Volumes/WINSTALL
cp  -Rv  /Volumes/ESD-ISO/  $PWD

  Note: This command will take a while to complete. Be patient!

Copy the Windows Support Software to the "BOOTCAMP" volume. Below is the command I usually enter. If necessary, make the appropriate modifications.

cp  -Rv  ~/Downloads/BootCamp5/  $PWD

Next, you need to boot from the flash drive. Hold down the option key immediately after restarting your Mac. Release the option key when the Startup Manager window appears. Select the icon labeled "EFI boot". Next, select the arrow below the "EFI boot" label.
Install Windows. When asked: "Where do you want to install Windows?", proceed as follows. First select the "BOOTCAMP" partition. Next, click on the "Format" button. Finally, click on the "Next" button.
If the Mac boots back to macOS, goto the Startup Disk pane of the System Preferences application, unlock, select Windows and click on Restart button. Windows will continue installing.
When Windows finishing installing, make sure the Windows Support Software is installed.


What you're describing is a split-horizion DNS setup.

There's a pretty good walkthrough on how to do exactly what you want to do, but it will require root on your laptop and some command line patience to setup.  In a nutshell, you'll be configuring your own DNS server on the laptop to forward your DNS requests to the right server.

If you're on Mavericks (not sure yet about Yosemite), it looks like bind isn't installed anymore.  You'll want to get it with homebrew or similar.  Check out this stack overflow Q/A. It should also have a default named.conf that you can just edit, but YMMV.


Any risks/disadvantages of using MacBook Pro as a desktop?

You really hasn't stated you workflow but here is my thought:

The main disadvantage to me in this scenario is total cost by which I understand less powerful CPU/smaller screen for more money and also higher risk of getting into problems with GPU since it is the most failure prone component in notebooks as we see for years. And don't forget that a cup of coffee can cost as much as new Logic Board, Topcase and Labor.

For this scenario why don't you look at Mac Mini (preferably older 2012 Server QuadCore one with Intel HD4000) and as small monitor as you like? Or a smaller iMac with integrated Iris Pro and Quad i5? If you are so keen on Keyboard and trackpad being together look at Magic Wand and that trackpad is bigger than in Macbook.


Camera Roll vs Photos App, what name is correct?

The app has been Photos since the original iPhone OS release, although there has been an album named "Camera Roll" as long as I can remember (iPhone OS 2.0 was my first). See http://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/0163/8048/files/iOS-Evolutionjpg.jpg?1903

Update: The app can be called Photos or Photos.app or Photos on iOS. Apple seems to just call it Photos, though. The Camera roll refers to the default album within Photos. Photographs taken from your camera default to that album—it's the "roll" of images captured by your phone. If you sync photos from another device, they'll be in Photos, but not on the Camera Roll (they'll have their own album(s)). If you have other apps that interact with your photos on-device, they may read from the Camera Roll or may interact with other albums.

2nd Update: Having now updated to iOS 8, I now realize that "Camera Roll" has been re-termed "Recently Added" in Photos. This is a better description of what it is, since not all of its entries get there via camera. For example, a photo saved from Facebook's app will on iOS 7 and earlier appear in the "Camera Roll" even though it's not a photo from the camera.


It seem like this is, in fact, hardcoded in mDNSResponder.
╰─ grep -A5 -B5 "Register localhost" ./mDNSResponder-1096.40.7/mDNSMacOSX/mDNSMacOSX.c
        const domainname *const localHostName     = (const domainname *) "\x9" "localhost";
        const domainname *const broadcastHostName = (const domainname *) "\xd" "broadcasthost";
        const mDNSv4Addr        localHostV4       = { { 127, 0, 0, 1 } };
        mDNSv6Addr              localHostV6;
        // Register localhost 127.0.0.1 A record.
        RegisterLocalOnlyARecord(localHostName, &localHostV4);
        // Register broadcasthost 255.255.255.255 A record.
--
--
        // Register broadcasthost 255.255.255.255 A record.
        RegisterLocalOnlyARecord(broadcastHostName, &onesIPv4Addr);
        // Register localhost ::1 AAAA record.
        mDNSPlatformMemZero(&localHostV6, sizeof(localHostV6));
        localHostV6.b[15] = 1;
        RegisterLocalOnlyAAAARecord(localHostName, &localHostV6);
    }


How to use Time Machine backup when hard drive is broken?

The basic TimeMachine recovery procedure boils down to:

1) boot from Recovery/Installation media
2) make use of the Disk Utility (I recall under the tools menu option of the installation USB/DVDs) to format/partition the new disk
3) Then select/choose the Restore/transfer option where you can then select the TimeMachine (Or Migration Assistant) to restore from.

The problems I don't have an answer to as I've never done that in my setups:

a) recovery of the Recovery partition... I usually were doing "upgrades", thus I did fresh installs, and then I restored the TimeMachine specific files, or I used the "Migration Assistant" to restore the applications/users as need be

b) You didn't specify the version, which might mean different issues w.r.t. the medium, ie. USB/DVD/etc. Creating a USB boot image is outside the scope of this question and answer ;)


Can I create a formula to provide a value depending on when a timestamp falls in the day?

Assuming you have a normal Numbers Date/Time 2/11/2016 12:00:00 AM, then a simple IF() statement can be used combined with the HOUR function.

=IF( HOUR ( A2 ) < 12, "Good Morning", "Good Afternoon")

To add more than just 2 options, nest your IF statement.

=IF(HOUR(A3) < 5,"Early",IF(HOUR(A3) < 12,"Morning",IF(HOUR(A3) < 17,"afternoon",IF(HOUR(A3) < 20,"evening","night"))))

Numbers will return the first TRUE value.


How can I run an application which is outside Applications folder?

It's not quite that easy.

Typical structure of an app:

MyApp.app
  Contents
    _CodeSignature
    Frameworks
    Helpers
    info.plist
    MacOS
      MyApp <<<<<<<<
    PkgInfo
    Resources

So in terminal you would open

/Path/To/MyApp.app/Contents/MacOS/MyApp

This doesn't work for all apps, but will work for most that are installed by a drag and drop.

If you want to launch them from finder, and associated them, but you just don't have the room  then in a terminal window:

sudo ln -s /Path/To/MyApp.app /Applications

This constructs a symbolic link in /Applications to where MyApp.app really lives.

Indeed if you are booting from a small disk, you may be able to move some applications off of the boot volume and put them on an external disk, replacing them with symbolic links.

Some applications install stuff into /Library.  To get these apps to run in different places takes a lot more work.

Be cautious doing this with anything required for routine running.  You can get your mac into an unusable state.  If you want to play around with in a serious way, install Virtual Box on your mac, install another copy of MacOS in your virtual box, and play there.  (Give it half your ram)

The performace is pretty sucky, but it's a safe way to play.


Move referenced iTunes Audio files to another drive/folder

Easiest way I think is to use the built in iTunes setting for choosing a library location.

First make a copy of your library on your external drive
Then change the settings in iTunes to reflect the new location
Profit

Apple also has support documents available to describe the required steps in more detail, both for Mac and Windows.


How can I put my iPhone 4 in DFU Mode if the Home button is broken and it is turned off?

If the home button is non-functional, and the device requires a working home button to even power up, then it seems you're in a chicken-egg situation.  There is of course software that lets you remap some other button or UI action to correspond to the home button, but if you can't get the thing turned on you're out of that realm.

I suppose you could open it up and try shorting the contacts of the home button assembly, but once you're that far into it you may as well just replace the home button or the front panel.  The home button replacement part is only a few bucks, and the whole front panel is under $20 [in the US].


I’ve put together a little AppleScript for you. If you use the Script Editor to save it as an applet you can drag & drop folders on it. The script will first ask for the destination folder and then scan the dropped folders for any aliases contained. If it finds any it will copy the original items to the destination folder specified.

Here’s the code:

on open droppedItems
    try
        set destinationFolder to choose folder with prompt "Select destination folder:"
    on error
        return
    end try

    repeat with itemCount from 1 to length of droppedItems
        set theFolder to item itemCount of droppedItems

        tell application "Finder"
            if folder (theFolder as string) exists then
                set folderItems to list folder theFolder without invisibles

                repeat with folderItemCount from 1 to length of folderItems
                    set filename to (item folderItemCount of folderItems)
                    set theAlias to ((theFolder as text) & filename) as alias
                    try
                        set originalFile to original item of theAlias -- is Finder alias?
                        duplicate originalFile to destinationFolder
                    on error
                        display dialog (theAlias as string) & " doesn't seem to be an alias. Skipping."
                    end try
                end repeat
            else
                display dialog (theFolder as string) & "is not a folder. Skipping."
            end if
        end tell
    end repeat
end open

It is neither pretty nor feature complete but rather meant to show you a possible way to go. I. e. it doesn’t traverse any subfolders. Also, there’s no checking of file existence before copying. Anyway, it might still be what you need. Have fun!


Why iMessage generate a lot of Encryption and Signing keys?

There is no problem in deleting those. Just close your messages app, remove all of those from keychain and reboot your mac. It will create a fresh pair for use.

PS: Log in and use it! It is one of the most secure IM services in the world, works seamlessly and allows you to send SMS from your mac.


Where can I find the official OS X 10.10 documentation?

Here is the OS X Yosemite v10.10 Documentation.

You can always find developer resources on the Apple Developer sites. You can find other OS X documentations there, as well as iOS documentations. Other resources, such as feature descriptions, revision histories, upcoming changes, and user agreements can be found there, also.

The best of luck in your programming endeavours!


Assuming your shell is bash edit the /etc/bashrc file changing PS1='\W\$ ' to:

PS1='\h:\W \u\$ '

You'll need to use sudo, e.g., sudo nano /etc/bashrc

On OS X 10.11 you might also need to disable SIP in order to make the edit.

Otherwise setting it in your ̃/.bash_profile or ~/.profile file, either of which, you'd not have to use sudo or disable SIP to edit.

Explanation:

PS1='\h:\W \u\$ '

PS1 The value of this parameter is expanded (see PROMPTING below) and used as the primary prompt string.
=   equals
'   single quote
\h  the hostname up to the first ‘.’
:   colon
\W  the basename of the current working directory, with $HOME abbreviated with a tilde
    white space
\u  the username of the current user
\$  if the effective UID is 0, a #, otherwise a $
    white space
'   single quote

Examples:

MacBookPro:~ user$
MacBookPro:Documents user$
MacBookPro:~ root#

See the PROMPT_COMMAND and PROMPTING sections in the OS X Man Pages for BASH(1) for more information on the subject.


The trick with iTunes is that you don't directly manage files on the device, you manage them on your desktop, and choose what is synced.

Normally, iTunes syncs your entire library, only avoiding this when your device is full, or when you manually choose what to sync.

Your question is a tad ambiguous, so I'm going to give two answers.

If you want to remove a song from iTunes outright, deleting it from your computer and your synced devices, you must remove it from the "upper" Music selection, not the one listed under "On your device". The "on your device" list is read only.
If you want to keep songs on your computer but only sync certain ones, open the summary view on your iPod, select the "Sync" menu, and hit the "Selected playlists..." option. You can then create a playlist of the songs you wish to sync, and only sync that list.

Further detail from Apple


What the difference and usage of encodings UTF-8 and UTF-8-MAC in iconv?

As explained here, utf-8-mac is the utf 8 version of a text after application of Unicode normalization NFD (e.g accented characters are represented by the base character plus a combining accent character), with certain codepoint ranges excluded from the decomposition operation.

For example character é can be represented in two different equally valid ways in Unicode:

"\x{00E9}" - single codepoint, LATIN SMALL LETTER E WITH ACUTE, utf-8 C3 A9, "composed".
"\x{0065}\x{0301}" - two codepoints, LATIN SMALL LETTER E and COMBINING ACUTE ACCENT, utf-8 65 CC 81, "decomposed"

UTF-8-MAC will ensure that the second, decomposed form is always used.


How to prevent iTunes 12.2 from automatically uploading sound tracks to iCloud Music Library?

To turn off iCloud Music Library on your mac, you need to go to: iTunes>Preferences>iCloud Music Library


Can Time Machine back up different data (or different exclusion lists) to different drives?

The short answer is no, but here is why and how the exclusions work when you pick different rules for two accounts.

Whether you have one backup destination or two, the rules for multiple users is to combine the exclusions for each user with the exclusions from the system so that each user can exclude different things, but there is no "inclusion" mechanism to add something back that another user has denied.

There is a nice article on having multiple users and goes into more details on setting up multiple exclusion lists:

http://pondini.org/TM/10.html

It's not going to save backup time or space as you asked, but perhaps drives can get larger and you could just have both drives hold the same content since incremental updates mean that unless a file changes, it only gets copied once to each destination, speeding backups for subsequent backups to each individual drive when it's connected.

Pulling one drive from rotation with two works well as the system just carries on with the drive connected and then when the further out of date drive mounts again, one of the next two backups will catch it up with all changes since it was last mounted during a backup.


Skype continutes to crash with SIGSEGV error (OS X 10.9.5) (Skype 7.2.412)

This not a answer to your actual problem, but a guide how to completely remove Skype.

Following  are the files and Folders to remove:

Since you mention it, the Open broadcast install, it could be interfering with Skype, so try removing it to see if it fixes that problem.


Is there any way to print to an old Diablo-command-set parallel printer from a modern Mac?

I figured out how to make it work from the terminal using a standard USB/parallel adapter. Instructions here: http://www.wheels.org/monkeywrench/?p=909


You will receive the notification on all devices that have a connection and have notifications for Facebook enabled, regardless of whether you have since cleared the notification on another device.


Used Air Drop to move a folder with mp3 files in it to my phone. Where are they now?

You can add a 3rd party app that supports mp3 playback to the iOS device and if they support AirDrop you will get a prompt after AirDrop of mp3 from computer to iOS device asking which program to open the mp3.  My prompts include iMovie, Evernote and Google Drive.  I use Evernote.  This does not put it in iOS iTunes.  But I'm not always near the computer that hosts my main iTunes and I use Evernote for the immediate need and then add to iTunes from Evernote on the iTunes main host when the opportunity arises.


El Capitan Mail.app iCloud email account default email address

Wow...found an answer elsewhere.  Basically, sign out of iCloud (System Preferences --> iCloud), restart, sign in to iCloud, restart, open Mail.  Everything seemed to reset just fine, and I could save changes to the account in Mail Preferences.


Crash/restore renamed SSD system disk and emptied

Both the directories you lost indicate you should pretty much immediately boot to recovery and re-apply the OS version you had.

You can't trust any tools if frameworks are damaged and you can't trust the apps to fix things if they're compromised.

Boot to recovery and verify you have a good recovery (internet or otherwise) and have internet while in recovery.
Run Disk Utility (from recovery) to repair the drive until there are no errors.
Confirm your backup mounts while in recovery so you know you have a good backup before proceeding. Back anything up that's not good before proceeding.
Run the OS installer to write known good new /Applications and /Library - that will run migration after the blank /Application is run to copy over all the apps / users / settings you have.
Consider checking the install.log for errors and then test the machine to be sure you don't need to recover things from the backup.

Pretty clear case where you'll have to do this eventually - so I wouldn't waste time on not verifying your backup and not reinstalling a known good system. Trying to figure what happened will just delay getting a known good set of apps and frameworks re-installed - then you can look over what failed if you care to.

You can also make your Recovery HD on another computer if needed. 2008 MacPro likely can't internet recovery and any recovery will let you reinstall 10.11 but you may have to choose that if you can't just install the latest OS your hardware supports.


How to get rid of "application downloaded from the internet" message when installing homebrew casks?

Wohoo! I just realized that there is apparently now a built-in solution to the problem! Homebrew offers a --no-quarantine flag. That means one can now install casks without the annoying message, by using
brew install --no-quarantine calibre

or
brew reinstall --no-quarantine calibre

Update: There is currently a bug in Homebrew that prevents the latter command (reinstall) from working.


All user accounts on iMac running OSX 10.10.5 vanished on login screen

Backup first, via a second Mac if possible:

If you have a second Mac, you can put the troublesome one in Target Disk Mode:

During startup, hold the "T" key.
Connect the two devices with Thunderbolt cable, or Firewire
The Target Mode device should mount like an external disk on your second Mac.
Make your backup.

After you have a backup (or choose not to make one)...

Try to create a new (admin) user:

Boot back into Single-User Mode (CMD-S) during startup.
Mount the drive: /sbin/mount -uw /
Remove this file: rm /var/db/.AppleSetupDone
Restart the computer: reboot
Go through Setup Assistant

Once you have a new Admin user, see what you can do with the accounts.


Move mail message back to inbox of Exchange account

I figured it out:  It's 'Inbox' for Exchange, and "INBOX" for GMail.  (How annoying.)


How to fault find MacBook Pro that shuts down very soon after boot?

Sounds like your hardware is fine and you have a brand new SSD.

Steps to heal it.

You can double check your hardware using the Apple Hardware check.

Press D during startup (for Hardware test) you might no longer have it on your hard drive so do not worry for now)
Disconnect all external devices to make sure they do not do something stupid.
Start in Safe mode to eliminate other programs interfering.

Press Shift during startup

If you mange to start open Console and look for logs before this start, and for reason why it shut down.

If the safe mode fails then try the Start up in Verbose mode.

Press Command-V during startup

This is line by line mode showing you each step. Sometimes it will show your where it got hung up.

In any case your best source of information is the Console (but it requires a running computer)


How do I restore iPhone 6s stuck on connect to iTunes screen/Apple logo

The network error means iTunes can't get the files it needs from Apple so there's nothing to do on the phone at this point.

The fastest way to sort any iOS device that says “connect to iTunes” and your preferred iTunes isn’t working is to take your iOS device to iTunes on a computer that you know works. Apple stores maintain multiple installations of iTunes ready to restore devices. No data sync happens when you are at the “restore screen” but you can check for local backups in iTunes when you’re done if you like.

As to fixing your specific error, can you take your PC/Mac to a different network or take the phone to a different computer? Sometimes that's far easier than diagnosing one iTunes that isn't working for a rare event like a DFU restore.

If you want to troubleshoot your iTunes, I would start with:

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204770

It's quite detailed, so you will want to make note of the exact error message and be sure to follow steps like updating the computer and iTunes as well as making sure anti virus and other security software and network blocks aren't the cause of network errors.


you can use KeyRemap4MacBook

http://pqrs.org/macosx/keyremap4macbook/

there are also predefined settings to achieve what you need:


why apple hardware test doesn't see my network?

I figured out that temporarily removing the WEP encryption allows access to the tool via the Internet and solved this issue.


You may need to join the Apple MFi Program, however this does require you to be a registered company that can pass a credit check.

Who should apply to the MFi Program?
Developers who wish to develop electronic accessories for iPhone, iPad
or iPod using licensed components and/or software should join the MFi
Program. Companies, organizations, government entities and educational
institutions are eligible to apply.
Case developers, app developers
and developers of accessories that only use standard technology (e.g.,
Bluetooth Low Energy or standard Bluetooth profiles) do not need to
join the MFi Program.

If you just connect your device via Bluetooth then you do not need to join the MFI program.
All you will need to do in this instance is join the Apple Developer program for iOS devices, the cost for this is $99 a year.
To be able to develop the iOS app to communicate with your device, you will need an Apple Mac capable of running Xcode and costs will vary.


Can I download the Yosemite install "app" on a MacBook Air, move it to an install USB drive, and install it on a MacBook Pro?

The Install App that you download from the Mac App Store is a universal installer that isn't tied to a specific model/build.  Similar to the retail installation discs from earlier operating system releases.  It will install properly on any supported systems that meet the requirements.

So yes, as long as the installer is from the Mac App Store then you should be able to copy it to a thumb drive and install it on any supported Macs.


Can i charge mag safe 1 laptop via external portable battery ?

The short answer is yes.

You just have to make sure that the battery is putting out between 12 and 18 volts.  Be aware, though that the 20000 mAH is only 2AH (2 amp hours or provide 2 amperes in one hour).  At that rate, you'll only get 36 watts (assuming 18V).

Will it charge?   Yes.  Very slowly.


How can I tell if the fans are operating correctly on my MacBook Pro 17" (2010)?

You can use the freeware application Macs Fan Control to monitor both your current fan speed and your internal temperature. It also allows you to set a minimum speed for your fan(s), which you could use for stress testing your fans by temporarily jacking up the speed, or for permanently increasing the minimum fan speed somewhat if you feel like your Mac is running a little too hot.

It also has a diagnostics mode, which I haven't used yet, but which could be useful in your situation.


Securely deleting emails from Apple Mail

I take it the core of your question is how to securely delete an email which you received via an IMAP email account, and read using your local Mac OS X ''Mail'' application.  You ask other interesting questions along the way, to which I'll give only brief answers.

First, it's important to understand the IMAP account, and how it affects deleting messages. The essence of the IMAP approach to email is that mail resides primarily on the mail server. The email client (the Mac OS Mail application in your case) temporarily downloads a copy of the message to your local Mac for you to read. If you were then to feed your Mac to a gigantic crushing machine, the local Mac and its copy of the message would be destroyed, but the original copy of the message remains intact on the IMAP server. When you tell Mail to delete the message, Mail tells the IMAP server to delete its copy of the message, and Mail deletes its own copy of the message. Thus, you might want to concern yourself with how securely the IMAP server deletes its copy.

Second, concerning strictly the way Mail deletes its messages, we can tell that the local copy of the message exists as a file on the local Mac. Telling Mail to delete the message makes it disappear from the Mail window, but might not delete the local file containing the local copy. The Mail command "Erase deleted items..." does reliably delete the local file with the local copy.

You ask, "If I delete an email and empty trash in the client then is the deletion done securely, using srm or in a non-secure way?" I don't have access to the Mail source code, so I don't know how securely it deletes the file. We have to assume that it deletes files using the most fast, easy, and insecure method available from Mac OS.

So, the most secure way I know of to delete the email message from the client is:

In Mail, delete the message
In Mail, erase deleted items. Control-click on the mailbox which had contained the message. A pop-up menu appears. Select "Erase deleted items...". A confirmation dialog appears. You are about to delete files related to not just the message you just deleted, but other deleted messages also. Click "OK".
Using Disk Utility, erase free space with either 7 passes or 35 passes. This too will erase more than just the local copy message you deleted.

If you care this much about security, you should also think hard about how your IMAP server deletes messages, and how vulnerable you are to an attacker seeing a copy of the message on your IMAP server's disk. You should also think about whether you should be sending such messages unencrypted, where an attacker monitoring the data flowing through the public Internet could read it.

You ask, "Is there a way to pinpoint the exact file location of an email in the client?" Yes, but it's not fast and not programmatic. You already figured out that the messages are stored in

~/Library/Mail/V2/IMAP-@mykolab.com@imap.mykolab.com/INBOX.mbox/...

My impression from looking at my own file system and thinking logically is that the local copy of your email message will be one of the files matching:

~/Library/Mail/V2/IMAP-@mykolab.com@imap.mykolab.com/INBOX.mbox/*/Data/*/*/Messages/*.emlx

(This pattern is not the only one Mail appears to use; messages stored "on my Mac", and attachments, will have different patterns describing the file path names.

Each email message appears to be stored as a plain text file with a name like number.emlx, e.g. 55219.emlx. One way to find the appropriate file is find a distinctive phrase in the message, and to use grep from the command line to find a file containing this phrase. Thus, [linebreaks added for readability]

% grep -l 'Repair Cafe January 18' ~/Library/Mail/V2/IMAP-@mykolab.com@imap.mykolab.com
    /INBOX.mbox/*/Data/*/*/Messages/*.emlx
/Users/myuser/Library/Mail/V2/IMAP-@mykolab.com@imap.mykolab.com
    /INBOX.mbox/393BA6E1-145B-E29D-536F-306645CA9917/Data/3/5/Messages/53938.emlx

However, don't assume that you can safely delete these files out from under the Mail application. It might get confused by the unexpected absence of the file. It might simply recreate the file from the copy on the IMAP server.


Execute command on launch of custom Terminal Window in OSX10.5+

ExecutionString was changed to CommandString
Use it in the same way. When you do a Shell > Export Settings… it outputs a .terminal file. In my file it is located immediately after

<key>BackgroundSettingsForInactiveWindows</key>
<true/>
<key>CommandString</key>
<string>/blah/blah/blah/blah.sh run</string>

(MountainLion 10.8.5)

So then you would run the following command from terminal or a script…

open ~/Documents/blah.terminal


What does a family do for charging and storage of multiple Apple devices?

I find the cables die pretty frequently. The kids always get them knotted, or stress them. So, I buy a lot of cheap ones. Something like these. At $4 for 5 I tend to buy 15-20 a time. Takes months to run through them and I don't fret about it. We have a huge stock of the actual little bricks from the many iPhones we've had.

I've also seen a lot of interesting little projects for charging and cable management:

DIY Charging Cell Phone Holder
Desk Phone Charger Holder

The neatest/simplest being:

Neatly Organize USB Cables and Charging Cords on your Desk

Also several items like this on the market:

Bamboo Charging Station

And finally, I'm putting these by the bed so my phone can charge over night:

U-Socket USB Wallplug


I have the same issue. The DNS name doesn't exist, so changing browsers is of no use.

Apple needs to either publish the domain name in DNS so that it resolves to an IP address or they need to update the HTML to use the correct name that does exist.

It appears that either Apple's DNS broke and they either haven't realised, don't care to fix it, or it is very difficult to fix and they haven't put a workaround in place (improbable IMFO).

Unless you know what the IP address should be and it's just a DNS issue, you could add a host entry as a workaround. However, if the IP address is unknown or if the server/infrastructure is down in addition to DNS then there is nothing we can do except wait for Apple and hope they fix it.


My mac mini is not getting the FullHD Resolution for my FULLHD LED

Try using the alt/option button while you change the settings for your display; i could upgrade to 1600/900; still no max resolution though cause i also have a full HD display


Is there a way to recover a word document password?

There is good software for this (not free though): http://elcomsoft.com/aopr.html
You can also google for some online services in addition to what Tyson said.


Brand-new MacBook pro shows grey screen with throbber in installation

In verbose mode, I managed to find out that the Macbook's boot process froze at some point in the boot process. We were unable to find out why exactly - the last message logged was a complaint from SSH that it can't create a socket, which according to Apple's support resources is owed to an not yet existing internet connection.

We tried all reset steps (Safe boot; Verbose boot; PRAM/NVRAM reset; SMC reset) without success, but we managed to reinstall OS X from the DVD and it seems to be running fine now.


I followed this tutor here and got success: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hE8If6gabUI.

The "Create a Windows 7 install disk" option is hidden because your system's capabilities are limited. For instance, older Macs can not boot from external USB disks, therefore creating an installer onto a USB disk would make no sense.

Still, if you want to create an installer on an external disk regardless, all you have to do is edit Boot Camp Assistant's "Info.plist" file:

  Open Package content of Boot Camp Assistant app, backup Info.plist file somewhere, then open the old one with XCode.
  Edit file:

  Edit section's title: PreUSBBootSupportedModels to USBSupportedModels (if it's already USBBootSupportedModels -> skip
  this step)
  Add your System's model identifier(Find it by System Information app) into USBSupportedModels section.
  Add your Boot ROM version (Find by System Information app) to DARequiredROMVersions section
  Save.

  Restart BootCamp

A comment of @dusanvf:

  If your Bootcamp crashes after this, write this into terminal:

sudo codesign -fs - /Applications/Utilities/Boot\ Camp\ Assistant.app/


Open application from terminal and remain linked to the process (like Linux) so when CTRL+C is sent to terminal the application closes too

Rather than use the Unix command open.

You can execute the executable file of the applications directly.

For example for TextEdit.app

Running the command in Terminal.app

/Applications/TextEdit.app/Contents/MacOS/TextEdit

This will open TextEdit using a process from Terminal.app

When you close the terminal window or use Ctrl  + C

TextEdit will quit.


Will an iPad mini purchased in the US work well once it returns to live in England?

The LTE choice seems fairly clear as the Spring and Verizon models match the LTE coverage that EE has in the UK. O2 isn't listed, but you can see the information yourself here:

http://www.apple.com/ipad/LTE/

Further information is available from the iPad specifications page - but the GSM/EDGE and UMTS/HSPA+/DC-HSDPA capabilities of both models are the same. The Verizon/Sprint models have more LTE bands and CDMA as well but in Europe, the LTE situation isn't totally clear yet.

If you get an Apple ID in the US - you will be restricted to the content in the US store. The same for choosing the UK store. Since it's a hassle to juggle accounts and you can't get updates from an old country if you move accounts to a new one - it's better to pick one account unless you intend to maintain and juggle both going forward perpetually.

I would buy from Apple if you can since their holiday return policy is very lenient and you could return things in January if you choose poorly or learned more after buying. Also consider, AppleCare is tied to the country where you buy so if AppleCare plus isn't available in the UK and you are OK shipping it here for service, you might let that affect your buying choice if you want that coverage over the standard AppleCare.

The good news is you can easily use her UK account here in the US and all her apps will work on the US device. The only problems would be radio (not a problem on the mini hardware) and warranty support. Since you live here, you can get her a pay as you go month of data with no commitment or long term contract. She won't need to unlock it and can work with her choice of carriers to serve it in England. No carrier lock, no hassle, no jail breaking needed.


How to fix "You are not allowed to use "Application""

Old question, but I'll answer it anyway:

This message is from JAMF's Casper Suite. You can remove all the JAMF nonsense with either sudo /usr/sbin/jamf removeFramework or sudo /usr/local/bin/jamf removeFramework (depending on the version installed).


What are the pro's and con's between Yabai and Amethyst window manager

Yabai's wiki has a comparison table of yabai and amethyst.

However, they do consider this table incomplete and ask for contributions to the wiki to make it a good comparison table.


Reset 'Top' command default view on Mac OSX

top will generally display as many columns as the width of your window will allow. But to change the sort to cpu (high to low), you can type the following within top:

o to select primary sort

-cpu to sort by decreasing CPU usage

You can add a secondary sort if desired:

O to select secondary sort

-mem to sort by decreasing memory usage

? will show you all options, along with the current sort selections - see below image:

You can also call these options explicitly from the command line, if desired, like this:

To see your longest running processes

top -o time -user $(whoami)


Running filemaker pro 6 on an Intel-based Macbook Pro?

According to this article in the Filemaker support database, you should be able to recover your data by converting the v6 database with FileMaker Pro 11 first.


Update to Apple TV 6.0 has stopped certain movies from being shown from my itunes

I figured it out. I've made a blog post about it to help anyone with the same issues:

Apple TV 6.0 missing movies


Booting an iMac using a Macbook Pro's internal disk

Depending on your Macs you might use the FireWire/Thunderbolt target-disk mode.

Apple-KB:

  If you have two Mac computers with FireWire or Thunderbolt ports, you can connect them so that one of them appears as an external hard disk on the other. This is called “target disk mode.”
  1. Connect the two computers with a FireWire or Thunderbolt cable.
  2. Start up the computer to be used as a disk in target disk mode:
  - If the computer is off, start it up while holding down the T key.
  - If the computer is on, choose Apple menu > System Preferences, click Startup Disk, and then click Target Disk Mode.
  When the computer has started up, a disk icon appears on the desktop of the other computer.
  3. Transfer files by dragging them to and from the disk.
  4. Eject the disk by dragging its icon to the Trash.
  While you drag, the Trash icon changes to an Eject icon.
  5. On the computer you used as a disk, push the power button to shut it down, and then disconnect the cable.

The target-mode-Mac will act as an additional external harddrive. You may use that as a start volume though and consequently have the MacBook Pro environment with a bigger monitor and better sound assumed the target-mode-Mac is your MacBook Pro.

But the environments on the two internal drives still differ. Example: If you add a user in the above case you will add it to the MacBook Pro System and not to the iMac System.

The only way to have identical environments is to clone one to another.


I'm a big fan of MAMP It's a self contained installation of Apache, MySQL, PHP and that you can hack around in to your hearts content and not mess up your system's configuration.

I've even hosted websites off of it. Highly recommended!


How is my iPod Touch able to determine my location when I'm offline?

Apple uses WiFi hotspots (and presumably the corresponding signal strength) to triangulate your position using a data from Apple.  Similar to how Google maps a hotspot using their StreetView cars, a 3rd party at one time scanned the area you travelled to and mapped the SSID and probably MAC address of the local hotspots.

Though I don't know if they still do, Apple at one time did not maintain this information internally but sourced it from a 3rd party.  Some of the initial privacy concerns about iOS regarded how this information was 'phoned home' to Apple without consent;  That is, when your iPod was connected and 'knew' its location, it would also scan the local SSIDs and send them to Apple to improve/update the database.

This data was sourced by Skyhook Wireless.

Based on my own inference from experience (though not 100% sure, and I no longer use an iPod, so even if this was true at one time it may not anymore be so), when you map a route in Maps, it caches the relevant SSID information for the areas to which you are travelling before it goes offline.


"Unchecking" tracks playing music on iPhone

In the Songs list or Playlist, just swipe it to the left, like you would an unwanted email, text etc

I haven't tested whether this 'reports back' to iTunes & unchecks it there - I'm running a sync now to see & will edit...

Edit:  it doesn't delete or uncheck the track from 'My Music', the definitive iTunes list; but it does remove it from an iTunes Playlist after sync.


How to show actual email address in iOS Mail app?

If you see the word 'Details' at the top of the message (near the right side), tap it.
Click on the persons name to open the contact card
Scroll to their emails
Look for the email with a "recent" tag above it.*

*In older iOS versions the correct email/phone number had a different color but in new versions it has a "recent" tag above the correct email/phone number.

See below:


How to make a Macbook Pro lock and not sleep when connected to power?

This can be done in Energy Saver:

Open System Preferences
Go to Energy Saver
Select Power Adapter
Check/mark the "Prevent computer from sleeping automatically when the display is off" option
[Optional] Uncheck "Put hard disks to sleep when possible".


Investigation about read errors on my SSD

End of the story: Samsung acknowledged that the unit was defective and replaced it under warranty.


I have much the same setup as you and therefore ran into much the same dilemma, so the following may not answer your question, but it might help!

I began by using Remote Buddy's "Virtual Mouse" function to use my Apple Remote to navigate around Skype using the directional buttons to move the mouse around (once contacts are set up, its mostly moving and clicking). However, I'm the first to admit this is a bit clunky and not exactly ideal. (I realise you're using a Harmony One, as opposed to an Apple Remote, which doesn't appear to be officially supported, but it looks as though its possible to pair it with Remote Buddy).

In the end, I gave in a bought a Logitech diNovo Mini which is good enough for when I need a keyboard and mouse. And you can also use it for some Couch-friendly surfing too :)


Afaik yes. This is normal.
You can drag n drop the plist onto Xcode and it should open it in a tree form


Terminal command to move a number of files containing brackets to another folder or trash

Simply use Spotlight in Finder to search for files with *(1).mp3 etc. Begin a new Spotlight search, add a Raw Query rule and use the following, then select all and delete.

kMDItemDisplayName=='*(1).mp3'


OSX / Chrome keeps jumping back to video when in fullscreen

I am not sure it will working?
Try to check the chekbox in screenshot below


download WineBottler with AdBlocker (Privoxy and Adblock Edge)

Adf.ly is basically an Ad page which will show the real link after some seconds. That's the direct link for the file you are looking for:

http://winebottler.kronenberg.org/combo/builds/WineBottlerCombo_1.8-rc4.dmg


backing up an OSX image to an NTFS drive?

If you use Disk Utility to image an HFS filesystem into one dmg file, the resulting file is portable no matter what filesystem you store it on.

Where things get complicated is incremental backups. If you want incremental backups and a DIY solution, choose a sparse disk image and use rsync to update the band files that you store on NTFS, just like Time Machine does to Time Capsule.

If you really just want a painless backup solution, you might select a professional tool set such as (in alphabetical order):

Arq
Backblaze
Carbonite
CrashPlan
Mozy

Since I listed some of the more popular incremental backup software packages (some are hosted, some you can self host), the one that seems to fit your requirement the best is the free CrashPlan software that would be self hosted and need a computer connected to the NTFS drive to host the Mac data as a backup destination.


Is it reasonable to buy a new Apple Watch even though you own an iPhone 8?

iPhone 8 supports iOS 14 which is compatible with watchOS 7, the latest OS available. Therefore all the features of the new watch will be available without compromise compared to a new iPhone.
Your iPhone battery will not have any noticeable impact caused by an Apple Watch. Bluetooth is required for phone/watch  communication, which can use some small amount battery on any phone, and may be more of an impact on an older phone with worse battery life due to age.


Screenshots from PDF without creating a new file

If you’re happy with a screenshot, there’s a screenshot-to-clipboard function built into macOS.

Use the keyboard shortcut Control + Shift + Command 4. (Try doing that with one hand! :-) )


Unusual problem with Swoop on Mac OS 9.0.4 under SheepSaver

Sorry it's taken me a while to respond, but as promised in the comments I've tried to replicate this problem at my end.

The good news is that I could in fact replicate the problem. The problem occurs on five separate SheepSaver installations on three different Macs (running Tiger, Snow Leopard and El Capitan). I've tried various preference settings, along with experimenting with Mac OS 8.6 and Mac OS 9.0.4 installations. I've also tried booting SheepSaver with extensions off, and tried playing Swoop without sound.

Long story short, I couldn't play more than two consecutive games before SheepSaver froze.

As a final check, I tested Swoop on a standalone 2002 Quicksilver PowerMac G4 running Mac OS 9.2.2. Swoop plays flawlessly! :)

So, in a nutshell, I know this isn't the answer you were looking for, but I don't think you're going to get Swoop to work properly in SheepSaver. You could try some other emulation software, such as Basilisk, or purchase an older Mac capable of booting directly into Mac OS 9 (or running the Classic environment under Mac OS X). If you happen to want to try the Classic environment, post a comment and I'll happily test this for you (I have a couple of Macs that can run Classic OS under OS X).

Either way, good luck!


How to sync folders between iPad and Mac?

You could install FTP on the device, and set up a AppleScript that copies the data from your iOS device every 15 minutes. Then, you could set up a folder action, and whenever your Mac's folder is modified, it copies the contents of that folder to your iOS device.

(Note: I can't give you any example scripts since I'm not on my Mac right now.)


Does iOS 13 (aka, iPadOS) provide better support for connecting a webcam to an iPad?

There has been no mention of enabling video or audio streaming over the usb-c connector. The two features they are adding is to allow your iPad as a monitor for your mac, and now you can use a thumb drive or external drive via a usb-c and access the files via the file browser on iPadOS.

"Connect an external hard drive, SD card reader, and, yes, even a USB drive." https://www.apple.com/ipados/ipados-preview/

You might be able to wire something up via homeKit. But you'd need to be doing wireless, and there may even be wireless solutions to this day. But they are no adding anything new for native wired audio/video over usb-c.


El Capitan Server using SSL on Apache - AH01276: Cannot serve directory

This is best done not by hand editing the *.conf files, but via the Server app, under Server > Websites > Server Websites (SSL) > Edit > Edit Advanced Settings > Allow Folder Listing


How to set Word default save location as "On My Mac"

If you're not using the OneDrive app, uninstall it, it will change the default save location for the other Office products to “On My Mac”.
I did not find any option allowing to do otherwise (tests done on the version 16.49 of Office).


Music on iPhone not showing up in iTunes on macOS

Follow the steps below to fix the problem of Apple Music not showing up in iTunes on Mac

Open iTunes on your Mac by clicking on the iTunes icon in the Dock of your Mac.

iTunes Icon in the Dock of Mac

Next, click on iTunes tab in the top Menu Bar of your Mac and then click on Preferences… option in the drop-down menu (See image below)

iTunes Preferences Option on Mac

On the Preferences screen, click on the General tab (in case it is not already selected) and then check the little box next to Show Apple Music Features and click on the OK button to save your preferences for iTunes.

Show Apple Music Features on Mac

In case “Show Apple Music Features” is already selected and Apple Music is not showing in iTunes, Uncheck the box and then click OK.

Do Not Show Apple Music Features on Mac

Next, click on iTunes tab in the top Menu Bar of your Mac and then click on Preferences… option in the drop-down menu.

iTunes Preferences Option on Mac

On the Preferences screen, click on the General tab, check the box for Show Apple Music Features. and click on OK.

Show Apple Music Features on Mac

Steps 4, 5 and 6 are applicable in case a software glitch or iTunes bug was preventing Apple Music from appearing in iTunes on your Mac.


iPhone: Settings > Safari > Databases no longer visible

I was getting a little frustrated... I knew there were local safari databases on my phone, even though they weren't shown in the Settings > Safari panel.

So - as a last resort - I powered off my phone, and restarted. Sure enough, there they were, right where I expected them.


Is there anything like /etc/hosts at user level in mac?

There is nothing you can do to block specific Youtube content from within the system. But you have two options to avoid the problem:

Option 1: If you want to completely keep your son from visiting Youtube, create a new user account for him. Enable OS X's parental controls on that account and block Youtube.com. You will still be able to visit Youtube from your account. Set a password for your account. You can find instructions for setting up parental controls in OS X here.

Option 2: If you want to keep your son from watching videos that have been marked by the Youtube community as inappropriate for children, turn on Youtube's parental controls. Refer to the following instructions: Youtube's parental controls

Note: Both options, specially the first one, will make your son be able to tell that you are using parental controls. If you don't want him to know the only option is editing /etc/hosts, but it'll be easier to just let him know that you don't want him to watch specific videos or spend so much time on Youtube.


Maverick's installation: Can i install Mavericks on a non-case-sensitive partition?

There is already a question on Super User on how to install Adobe CS products on case sensitives partitions :

you can copy over an existing install on a case-sensitive filesystem and rename all the folders so they match.
Or Follow this procedure which seems to work with CS5.5, CS6 & CC.

An for your title question : Yes Mavericks can be install on non-case-sensitive partition. It't the default situation used by Apple on new Macs.


Sketch is my favourite vector editor, providing all the features you could want in a vector editor, supporting import and export of vector content in a variety of formats.


When did the colon character : become an allowed character in the filesystem?

This change appeared at the beginning of MacOS X (i.e. MacOS X 10).

Then the directory separator from HFS :
was changed to the directory separator of UFS /. Since then the Finder is in charge of making the following mapping:

/ → :
: → /


How often does Apple.com update their refurbished stock?

Apparently there's no schedule, it is all based upon product availability.As soon as the product has passed all the Refurbishing steps, it's posted. What's certain is that products don't last long, so keen buyers are suggested to check every day, or even every hour.


Did you try to change the Region Format settings in Settings > General > International ?

You should be able to change it to Italian.

Note : this is an iPhone capture but it is exactly on the same place on the iPad. It is easier to put an iPhone capture in a post.


AirPort Extreme Drops Out Periodically (Every 2-3 Days) Requiring Unplug/Replug to Restart

Make sure you don't have any 2.4Ghz cordless phones near your Airport Extreme. Some of this phone will tend to do what you describe when they interfere with your Airport Extreme, at least that used to happen to me with an Airport Express I had.


How do you activate an iPhone with broken home button iOS 10

You need to activate the accessibility function, Voice Over, on your phone.

Connect your iPhone, to a computer with iTunes installed.
In iTunes, select your device.
From the Summary pane, click Configure
Accessibility in the Options section at the bottom.
Select the Voice Over and click OK.
Double tap on the Press home to
    open text.

Once you’re pass the activation, you can disable Voice Over. More details on the fix.


Do we have to submit a Paid Application Agreement if I intend to fix a price for my app @ 0.99$

Yes, you have to submit the agreement no matter what the price is - as long as it is not free.
The agreement runs for a longer period, but Apple will periodically make updates and changes, and at that point you'll have to agree to it again.
You can update the pricing at any time both before it is listed on the App Store, and while it is listed on the App Store.


Messages app: I can't delete individual texts from conversation as the Trash icon disappears

Yes, I'm having the same problem.  IOS 8.1.3 on an iPhone 5.  But killing/restarting the message app will bring the trashcan back for "a while", then it disappears again.


What are the maximum temperatures for my MacBook Pro?

I have a pre-2009 Unibody MacBook Pro. My Mac went over 105°C and still worked.

Typing was about 200% slower—around one word per minute—but I was playing a Flash-based game and have noticed the game raises the temperature to around 90°C in about 5 minutes of playing.

So I think the maximum temperature is around 110–120. Then it shuts off automatically.


How to disable call notification on multiple devices?

For Mac:

Open the “FaceTime” application on the Mac
Pull down the FaceTime menu and choose “Preferences”
Under the primary Settings tab, uncheck the box for “iPhone Cellular Calls”
Quit FaceTime

For iPad:

Settings->Facetime->iPhone Cellular Calls on the iPad.


Does powertop work with Mac OS X Snow Leopard or are there other power profiling utilities?

Using dtrace and counting which processes wake and the reason and time, you might be able to get some of the information provided by powertop


Finder "Show Icon Preview" for certain filetypes?

It's really one way or the other as you have speculated.  Don't worry, it really shouldn't slow things down having these otherwise convenient little thumbnails created for everything you have.


Can there be different passwords for the same account that prompts a certain reaction from Applescript?

You could use the Guest account and Parental Controls.  Otherwise create a separate account for each user if thats manageable and setup custom parental controls that block what you want for the separate users.

Set up parental controls


Make a file a Stationery pad via command line

The SetFile utility is provided with Xcode, which Apple distributes at no cost. Once you have installed Xcode, you can issue the command

SetFile -a T /path/to/foo.bar


Unable to proceed Windows installation on Mac

Managed to get this working.

For the keyboard/mouse issue, this is related to the Windows support software download from Boot Camp. Boot Camp Assistant > Action > Download Windows Support Software. Mine was around 1GB. Be patient. Don't use direct links you might find from other posts linking you to Apple support downloads. The contents should be copied inside your bootable drive.

As for the black screen restart that I encountered, that was my fault. I was using a Windows 7 ISO instead of the Windows 10 ISO from Microsoft downloads.

Managed to complete installation. Able to boot to Windows no problem. Will just have to test if there are things which are not working.

By the way, I only went this route because Boot Camp is giving me issues and I had to retry a lot on Boot Camp. Would be good if they somehow cache the downloaded support software.


If you have it backed up. Restore it from the backup and then perform the update again. Following standard instructions for doing that.


Clicking on Activity Monitor's Dock icon won't maximize the window

I've confirmed this behavior as well on 10.10.4 on a MacBook Air.  Drove me nuts until I came across this post confirming others are experiencing the same behavior.

Fortunately there is a workaround.

If Activity Monitor has been minimized to the Dock and you need to un-minimize it, click its Dock icon to bring the app to the foreground.  Then, to actually reveal the Activity Monitor window, press Command-1.  Command-1 is a keyboard shortcut listed in AM's "Window" menu purposed to give focus to the "Activity Monitor" window.

Alternatively, instead of minimizing AM to the Dock, you could hide it with Command-h.  Unhiding by clicking AM's icon in the Dock doesn't appear to be an issue.


OS X stuck on reboot updating to 10.13.4

I had the same issue some days ago with my mid 2015 MBPr. I ended up launching in recovery mode and reinstalled macOS. That fixed it for me.

I tried several other things like disk diagnosis and check disk in terminal but no luck.

Apparently this happens to a lot of people currently.


What is the use of Login Window option in MAC after user logged in?

Well, locking the Mac is certainly one reason for it, and a good one.

Another reason would be if you (or someone else) needed to also log into another account without first logging out of the current one.

From your screenshot it appears that you do not have fast user switching enabled (probably because you may be the only user), but even if you had multiple user accounts and did have it enabled, the Login Window option would still be there as a way of locking your computer.


When syncing books on iPad, library shown in iBooks also contains books no longer in iBooks

Open iBooks, go to File and select 'Move Books from iTunes…'. This should fix the problem.


Has anyone had success uploading a video or photo to Google Plus from iOS?

No, but the app from the store is out and will let you embed media better than the web app can.


Is there a way to show if I have more than one Google Chrome window open in the Dock?

You can right click/control click on an app's icon in the Dock to determine the number of open windows for the app. Here's a screenshot from a Google Chrome session:

A list of all the open windows for the app are shown at the top in the context menu presented on right clicking/control clicking.


Which iPad devices support 3 apps on screen at once in iOS 11?

iPads with 2GB or more memory support split view and slide over (that is, running multiple apps up to 3 and a PIP video in iOS 11 at once). These device includes iPad Air 2, iPad Mini 4, and iPad Pro (all models). Older devices (in your case an iPad Air) doesn’t have that feature.


Can a jailbroken iPhone 3GS be safely upgraded to the latest iOS via iTunes?

Go for it! You'll lose the jail break (duh!) but it'll restore to a normal state like any other iPhone.


"Repair Disk Permissions" doesn't seem to repair the permissions

How do you know that your file's permissions are not OK?
What output does your repair permissions print? Any errors?

You could also try running the repair from the command-line if it would make any difference:
diskutil repairPermissions /Volumes/Macintosh\ HD/

Replace the volumes name.

You could also try running that with sudo or as root, to see if it changes anything.

Edit:
Actually, what you could be seeing is that some application is using the files that "need" to be repaired and thus Disk Utility can't repair them.
Try shutting all applications off and the running the repair


For macOS Clang is a more preferred option (Apple stopped shipping gcc with Xcode and replaced it with Clang and the last version of GCC they supported was 4.2.1, it'll overall be more intuitive.). I'd remove GCC and do the following:
Installation of Clang

Run brew update and then brew upgrade in terminal
Run brew install llvm to install LLVM and Clang

To put Clang within your PATH variables:
echo 'export PATH="/usr/local/opt/llvm/bin:$PATH"' >> ~/.bash_profile

I'm not too sure how different the two are when it comes to compiling (although they are probably very similar.) you can proceed with this link to catch up on the commands you'll need to use instead.


Get first item in list using AppleScript

Unless you have an explicit need for going about it in the manner shown in your question, I'd keep it much more simple and use:

tell application "System Events" to set isRunning to exists (processes where name is "Xcode")
if isRunning then set theWindow to (first window of application "Xcode")

Otherwise, modifying your existing code block in the following manner will get that same result as the two lines of code above:

tell application "System Events"
    repeat with theProcess in processes
        if not background only of theProcess then
            if name of theProcess is "Xcode" then
                tell application "Xcode"
                    set theWindow to first window of application "Xcode"
                end tell
            end if
        end if
    end repeat
end tell

If you want to use the first two line of code in my answer in a more tokenized manned, as an example, use:

set appName to "Xcode"
tell application "System Events" to set isRunning to exists (processes where name is appName)
if isRunning then set theWindow to (first window of application appName)

Then all you need to do is set appName to the target app in the first line of code and the two lines of code following it stand as is and do not need to be edited for use with other app names.


What happened to my Macbook Air's battery?

Third-party batteries are a bit of a lottery. There's no telling how closely the specification and quality matches Apple's own parts (which they do not sell on).
The cycle count is a guide to the life of the battery, but that's all. A four-year-old battery is still a four-year-old battery.
You can take it to Apple and get a proper Apple part fitted. It will cost 'some money', but of course part of that is getting a quality product, which will be under guarantee to work properly.
The alternative would be for you to replace it yourself. You can get 'genuine' Apple batteries on eBay and other websites: though as said, Apple don't sell spare parts on the open market, so these are either 'run-ons' from the factory that Apple uses, (or units that didn't meet Quality checks); or they are counterfeit. So again, a bit of a lottery. Or choose a third-party supplier that you feel to be trustworthy, with a reputation for Apple peripherals and parts, rather than someone just trying to cash in on demand.


You shouldn't be setting the resolution of Windows in Parallels.

Boot Windows and choose Virtual Machine → Install Parallels Tools and follow the instructions. This sets the resolution automatically according to the window dimensions.

If Parallels Tools doesn't set the right resolution in full screen, in Configuration set Full Screen: Scale to fit screen to Auto.