Error "The Apple ID has not yet been used in iTunes Store"

Download the latest version of iTunes for your Mac or PC. Install it and log in with your Apple ID. If it presents the terms and conditions for Apple ID, accept them and follow the instructions on the screen.

If you are asked for credit card information, and you don't want to provide it (maybe you will only be getting free apps), you will have to register for a new Apple ID, this time creating it directly in iTunes. That is, the iTunes program on your computer, not on the phone.

Note! Do not use a web browser to navigate to https://appleid.apple.com and create your Apple ID. You must create it inside iTunes, and you must click on one of the free items (like a free song). Sadly, that's the only workaround in case you don't want to provide credit card information.

These two web resources might be helpful.

http://support.apple.com/kb/TS5366
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT2534

Excerpt:

  If you haven't created your Apple ID, follow these steps to create an
  Apple ID and store account at the same time, without adding a payment
  method.


Which MacBook Pro configuration is best suitable for Iphone/Ipad App development?

Unless you're planning on working with an external monitor I'd always go at least with 15" Pro or the 13" Air. Both are fine machines for coding iPhone apps. Working in Xcode on an 13" Pro (1280x800) is doable, but rather unpleasant.

If it'll be your only machine I would recommend the 15" MBP, as you might need Photoshop (or similar) for UI design. At that point you would notice the weaker CPU and graphics in the Air or 13" MBP.


Apple's iCloud SMTP Server For Old Devices Does Not Work

Well it recently started working, so let's hope it stays that way!


Keep iCloud from syncing tags across machines?

There seems to be no setting for selective tag syncing through iCloud. Any tag that is either created, deleted, enabled, or disabled is automatically synced to all computers on that iCloud account.


How to export a slo-mo video with the slow motion intact and without losing quality?

The reason importing it directly onto your computer doesn't appear to work is due to the way the iPhone plays back slomo videos.

The video itself isn't shot in "slomo", so to speak. Rather, it's shot at 120 frames per second, a typically higher frame rate than normal video recording.

This is significant because if you were to playback that video at 30 fps, the videos would appear to be playing in smooth slow motion because there is 4 times the frames to display. So, when you playback a video the iPhone is converting the selected section of the 120fps video into 30fps, giving it the slow motion effect -  the whole video COULD be watched at a normal speed with no problem. When you import the file onto your computer, it is just a 120fps video file - it doesn't know when or where to convert it to 30fps, which is why it appears as if it "lost" the slomo when really it's playing in its native 120fps.

You can easily restore that slomo effect with almost any video editing software by slowing down the video (to 30fps, or any other speed for that matter) , just as your iPhone would do - you just have to do it manually (which could be better in some cases).

Alternatively, you should be able to imessage your video from your phone to your Mac without any considerable quality loss.


Pages '09 flags file as modified after printing

Since the file is being modified, there's no way to suppress this.

You can notify Apple that you would like this feature implemented using their Pages feedback page:

http://www.apple.com/feedback/pages.html


I can't offer much advice about the SSD in question given the very limited information you've shared about it.

However, I suggest you try installing OS X onto a USB key (preferably a fast USB 3 one) or SD Card (slower; don't recommend). It'll make migrating your files to your new SSD easier. Just be careful of the protruding hardware!


Does iTunes WiFi sync communicate with the Internet?

If you iPhone talks to the internet while connected to WiFi, then yes, it costs your home internet bandwidth.  If it talks to the internet outside of of WiFi range, it costs your mobile internet bandwidth.

Syncing your phone with iTunes does not use the internet, it only uses the local network.  If your phone is configured to sync with iCloud, then it is using the internet.


Give assistive access to a single applescript

"Is there a workaround?"  I'd call it the "right" way.

Use the script editor. save the script as an application.  Thus, the script becomes a full fledged  application.  Give the app assertive capabilities.   should you want to start the app from the terminal, open your-app.

What to worry about:
"Effective defenses against malware and other threats" by John Galt
https://discussions.apple.com/docs/DOC-8841


Itunes wireless sync between iPad and Macbook Air

From the Apple support page: iOS: How to transfer or sync content to your computer

Syncing over Wi-Fi requires iTunes 10.5 or later and iOS 5 or later. Also, your computer must be connected to the same Wi-Fi network as your iOS device.

Open iTunes.
To set up Wi-Fi syncing, connect your iOS device to your computer with the included USB cable.
Click the device button in the upper right corner. (If you are viewing the iTunes Store, click the Library button in the upper right corner. The device button will then be visible.)
In the Summary tab, select "Sync with this [device] over Wi-Fi".

Whenever the computer and the iOS device are on the same network, the iOS device will appear in iTunes, and you can sync it. The iOS device will sync automatically when all of the following are true:

The iOS device is plugged in to power
iTunes is open on the computer
The iOS device and the computer are on the same Wi-Fi network

While the iOS device appears in the upper right corner of iTunes, you can select the content tabs and configure sync options.
Click Apply or Sync to sync the iOS device.


iPad Pro 9.7-inch model and Apple Pencil

is this supposed to happen?

With regular pressure of the hand against the screen, no it shouldn't. However, if the way you are writing -- the palm may be directing all pressure to one focused area which may cause this to happen.

Is it detrimental to consistently do it?

Many sources on Google say it's common to see the distortion with pressure but none mention long term functionality issues. I would, however, take it to the Apple store if you have Apple care (or warranty) and get it confirmed by them because:

One site - a user did mention that he got distortion and Apple replaced the iPad, and he didn't get distortion on the new one. (I highly doubt it'll vary with the different devices but its an option).

Also make sure your hands are dry and cool. Heat, moisture, etc. are not good for any screen.

am I just paranoid with my new toy?

Nope! Enjoy your new Apple Device!


accidentally deleted the admin account on my MacBook

The steps you list are for OS older than 10.13. Follow the Apple reset password steps for good results.

How do I recover the administrator or root password on OS X?
https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201573

Also, I would consider fixing the actual problem. macOS will not let you delete the admin account. You have to have a broken system or run some scripts that could damage anything in addition to the account. Unless you know precisely how you lost your account, it would be better to just back up and reinstall a clean system over top of the existing data and programs.

Same advice when you reset the password, get a backup and be ready to reinstall - perhaps an erase install - your system wasn’t healthy before and getting admin won’t remedy that unhealthy system.


Is it possible to add background music (with or without video) to the login screen on a Mac?

That is a nice idea !
I have just seen that you can play sound with the program afplay, you can look how to use it here : https://osxdaily.com/2009/10/27/play-mp3s-and-other-music-from-the-command-line/ .
One way to do it could be at startup at the first login screen, you can look how to do it here : https://superuser.com/questions/245713/whats-the-easiest-way-to-have-a-script-run-at-boot-time-in-os-x .


What could be causing the user interface to freeze?

Could be anything, unfortunately.  Is the mini in a well-ventilated area?  Could be overheating.  The hard drive could be dying.  Could just be a corrupted OS install.  You'll have to start trying things to eliminate possibilities.  (eg: install OS an external drive, boot from that drive, see if it still hangs.)


How can I find all selfies taken on my iPhone when on my computer?

You should give a try to the Google Photos Apps. I use this app, and it's so good because all the photos are automatically classified. And you will have a selfie Album that will gather all your selfies ;)


iCloud for Windows can't upgrade, uninstall, or repair. How can I proceed?

Try to remove manually all the file in:

c:\program files x86\common files\apple\internet services
or
c:\program files\common files\apple\internet services

Then, via https://discussions.apple.com/message/29281327#29281327 -

Press Win + R (the "Run" prompt should appear)
Type "regedit" (for the registry editor) & press enter.
Make a registry backup first: press File > Export and save current state of registry
Find and delete all folders containing "icloud"

Finally, you should be able to restart the computer and download iCloud from the Apple Web Site

iCloud for Windows

Reinstall the program.


iPad photos missing from folder view in Windows

You can only access photos in your camera roll via USB, I suspect you added those other albums via iTunes (as opposed to created them on you device with iOS 5). There is no official way to get those photos off your device.

You can try to find an app that can access your photos and save them to your camera roll (e.g. Photoshop Express, free). This might be a lot a work depending on how many photos you need to copy.
You could use Dropbox to upload your photos to their servers and download them on your PC. You'll need an dropbox account, but up to 2GB is free. Dropbox allows you to select multiple photos to upload at once.
If your device is jailbroken you can get access to the filesystem and copy your phones that way.


Is there any way to stop the auto-reloading tabs in Safari 5.1

I believe (for clarification) that you are referring to the behaviour whereby a page currently open in a tab will be "flushed" from memory, such that the tab and it's title remain but when you switch back to it will have to load the page again in order to show it to you.

This is new to Safari 5.1, and mirrors the similar actions that happen in iOS devices with mobile safari.

Unfortunately there is no way to stop this short of reverting to a previous version of Safari, or using a different browser.  You may have plenty of memory, but with Lion Apple seem to have gone down the road of trying to make things as efficient as possible.  To use a car analogy, just because you have loads of fuel in the tank, doesn't mean they can't change the engine mappings when you are idling at stoplights to save even more.

That's not to say that it achieves its aims all the times, as the page reloading may be more of an issue to you than the internal efficiency of the OS, but it's how they are doing it right now, and it's similar in other areas, such as programs that can be automatically closed if they are considered to be inactive.  Some of it is bringing across some of the "anti bloat" methods over from iOS, some of it is change for changes sake.

So, in summary, you can see why they might want to do this, but it doesn't quite work as seemlessly as it needs to for people not to care, but there's nothing you can do about it without you change your choice of browser.


Connection Apple TV to the analog audio stereo speakers

HDMI to VGA + Audio:
http://store.apple.com/us/product/H9139VC/A/kanex-atv-pro-hdmi-to-vga-adapter-with-audio-support

Digital Coax / Optical Toslink to Analog Audio:
http://www.amazon.com/Digital-Optical-Toslink-Analog-Converter/dp/B004C4WPXA

I like the HDMI solution - it's an unpowered device; however it's considerably more expensive.  Maybe try dx.com for a slightly cheaper alternative (search hdmi vga audio).


How to synchronize iPhone with new Mac without losing data?

You can move your iTunes library from your PC to your Mac.  As long as the persistent id is the same it won't erase the iPhone.

You could also just edit the Mac iTunes library to have the same persistent id your PC library did.

http://www.iclarified.com/entry/index.php?enid=2137


AppleScript: How to create a file that contains a forward slash in its filename?

You should never use the forward slash (/) in your filenames.

As an experiment, I opened TextEdit and saved a file with a forward slash in the name

Listing out the directory comments we get:

$ ls
total 8
drwxr-xr-x   3 areed  staff   102B May  9 02:02 .
drwx------+ 29 areed  staff   986B May  9 02:05 ..
-rw-r--r--@  1 areed  staff   325B May  9 02:00 Test:this.rtf

It changes the forward slash out to a colon.

An interesting thing happens when you use bash's autocomplete function; hit tab more than once and instead of "stopping" when it has found the full match, it keeps going:

$ cat Test\:this.rtf Test\:this.rtf Test\:this.rtf Test\:this.rtf Test\:this.rtf Test\:this.rtf

In the above example, I typed cat Tes and then pressed Tab 5 times.  Instead of beeping and stopping, it kept repeating as if stuck in a loop; this is not correct behavior.

Doing a search on this behavior, I stumbled across this article from C|Net:  Do not use "forward slash" in Mac OS X filenames, Distiller 6.0 example.  The article is quoted as saying:

  The forward slash should also never be used in the name of a drive or
  partition, or virtually in any other name field in Mac OS X. The
  reason behind this limitation stems from Mac OS X's UNIX underpinnings

  In prior versions of Mac OS the location of a file was noted using a
  path, with the colon ( :) separating objects. Mac OS X uses the
  forward slash ( /) in place of the colon.

It seems that this behavior/limitation is still present in macOS.  Bottom line, don't use the forward slash in your filename.


Still shows 1GB of photos in usage after deleting all

Assuming you have IOS 8.x...

Go to Photos -> Albums -> recently deleted.
Tap on Select (upper right) then "Delete All" lower left. That should do it. My experience is that the space used will take a while to update to reflect the removed images.


I’m not aware of any autorun mechanism inside DMGs. You’re describing a scenario, however, which could probably be solved using a package installer. Packages can have file and folder payloads and may also contain pre and post installation scripts which are automatically executed as part of the installation process.

Have a look at this freeware tool which allows you to comfortably create packages using the GUI:
http://s.sudre.free.fr/Software/Packages/about.html


Check any automation triggers you may have such as IFTTT.

Specifically it seems that iCloud photos may wait until overnight to sync, thus causing the IFTTT to not trigger until overnight.


How do I fix my SSD after installing Yosemite and Enabling TRIM? No boot & can't erase

A clean install is not necessary, you simply need to reconfigure your NVRAM (nvram boot-args=kext-dev-mode=1) to disable the kext signing requirement for OS X.  (After which, you can remove your TRIM enabler and reverse this change or leave it until the next time your NVRAM is changed/resets)

A very clear explanation of OS X 10.10 Yosemite's new policy with Kernel Extension (kext) signing now being required from the creator of Trim Enabler, as well as simple steps to recover the grey boot screen after TRIM/Yosemite mishaps:

https://cindori.org/trim-enabler-and-yosemite/


Does the "purge" command damage any thing in my system?

No harm will come to your system through using the purge command. The purge command clears out pages which have been written to memory which the system thinks it may need again. Usage of purge can cause some applications to temporarily run slowly if resources need to be reloaded.
From the purge man page for Xcode 3.2.5:

DESCRIPTION
Purge can be used to approximate initial boot conditions with a cold disk buffer cache for performance analysis. It does not affect anonymous memory that has been allocated through malloc, vm_allocate, etc.


Can I disable macOS Sierra's sticky window edges?

Hold down option when dragging. Will disable "sticky" edges as needed, when needed, without disabling it all the time by default.


Why are DNS server addresses lost after reboot?

As an alternative to the answer in the comments attached to the question (which you have already stated is your solution), I can only offer to others that do not use DNSCrypt that find similarly described symptoms. What fixed the problem for me, which was exactly as you described: after adding DNS servers and closing and reopening System Preferences and the Advanced section of the Network Control Panel, the DNS server list would not retain its data, took me time and effort to discover. PEBKAC: I was closing System Preferences without clicking the Apply button, which you will only see once leaving the Advanced section of that Control Panel. Hope this helps!


How can I get old instruments on Garageband so I can play my old files?

The 4th column, Purchased. If it is empty that ends that unless you used a different Apple ID.


Skype video call taking a lot of battery power on mavericks

Video processing is a CPU intensive task. 18% for 30 minutes is within normal operating times, as far as I can tell.

To save battery, consider lowering the brightness of your screen during a video call.


calling open from terminal with smb file path and preview as application opens finder instead of preview

Just use /Applications/Preview.app/Contents/MacOS/Preview /path/to/file.pdf instead of /Applications/Preview.app /path/to/file.pdf and it should work.


Why it takes 19 days to erase a Time Capsule harddisk?

The time needed to erase a hard disk depends on the size of the disk, the erasure method (1-pass/3-pass/7-pass) and the number of bad blocks.

If your drive contains bad blocks and you try to erase them, the drive may try numerous times to reread/rewrite the entire block and often invokes the error correction to rebuild the data depending on the erasure method.

Examples:

4 weeks ago i had to erase a 320 GB HDD with (finally) 23 bad blocks. It took about 4 hours to finish the task (1-pass).
6 month ago i examined a breaking HDD. Every single bad block took 5-10 minutes to be validated.

Furthermore the algorithm estimating the completion time of the erasure will be misguided depending on the position of the bad blocks.


You can simply add Presentation to you keyboard shortcuts list in System Preferences and that should work.


mavericks appstore download starts installing unintentionally

Just upgrade as normal. Then if you need to do a clean install, use the recovery partition. Or is there something else you are after?


Optimal Mac setup for web designer/developer?

I believe that your third option will be easiest to work with, since you have the mobility that you desire (i.e., 13" model), which can be connected to the 27" display when in the office. In particular, the system should be responsive when hooked to the external display, even with all the windows and applications that are running simultaneously.

One thing I'd suggest is to get 13" model that can be upgraded to 1TB storage. You'll be getting years of usage out of the macbook, and you don't want to be starved for storage when undertaking new types of projects in the future, such as the iOS development that you mention (not to say there is huge overhead with iOS, just that you want to be prepared for something that wasn't anticipated).


I wouldn't solder a new cable as you may risk destroying the entire Mac.  It would be best to just buy a replacement battery.  They're around $50 on eBay, but that's a whole lot cheaper than a new Mac if the DIY power cable fries it.


You can always wrap in additional command substitutions to do this, for eg:

$ printf "%s  <-- some space after it" "$(echo -en " RC=${exit_code} "'\xf0\x9f\x98\xb1\x0a')"
 RC=   <-- some space after it

I'm not sure why you have that NUL character (\x00) trailing but with that I was getting this error message:

$ printf "%s  <-- some space after it" "$(echo -en " RC=${exit_code} "'\xf0\x9f\x98\xb1\x0a\x00')"
-bash: warning: command substitution: ignored null byte in input
 RC=   <-- some space after it

So I simply removed it.

Here I've wrapped your original echo command in a command substitution $(..command..) and then passed its output to printf to produce any additional formatting.

General structure:

$ printf "%s ...." "$(..command to produce output..)"

Additional Example

You could also use printf exclusively. I'm not entirely sure what your goal is here but you could do something like this:

$ printf "RC=${exit_code} \xf0\x9f\x98\xb1  <-- some space after it\n\n"
RC=   <-- some space after it

The UTF-8 code \x0a is a linefeed character, the above example removed it + the NUL, \x00 and added 2 newlines to the end instead, \n\n.


how can i subscribe to a podcast series from itunes on my ipod touch

As far as I know, you can't subscribe to them from your iTunes app on your iPod.

The easiest way I know of is to subscribe to whatever podcast you want to listen to in your preferred feed reader, and then whenever that podcast is updated you'll see it in your feed. From there you can just choose to play or download it. Hopefully this helps solve your issue.


Check Energy Saver

It may be worth checking your energy saver preferences:

Go to Apple menu > System Preferences
Click on Energy Saver
Click on the Schedule button at bottom right

Now check to see whether your Mac was scheduled to shutdown etc.

Boot into Safe Mode

Follow these steps to boot your MacBook Air into Safe Mode:

Fully shut down your MacBook Air
Restart your MacBook Air
Immediately press the Shift key and keep it down
Let go of the Shift key when you see the login window (NOTE: If you have FileVault enabled you may need to log in twice).
Leave your MacBook Air in Safe Mode until the next morning
Wake your MacBook Air and see if the issue is still present
Exit Safe Mode by restarting your Mac as normal

Once you've booted into Safe Mode, let me know how you went and we'll go from there.


Current passing through me from Macbook to iMac?

Usually, ground loop current is experienced on portables where often no ground wire is connected - just the neutral and live (or hot) wires.

If you are using a grounded plug and feel ground loop current you should either have the outlet serviced or the computer serviced.

It's normal (and safe) for ground loop current to exist and feel lightly tingly on Macs with magsafe connectors and only DC power going in to them. It's harder to be sure an iMac or other device that has 110/220 AC power directly into the case, so I would rather be too cautious and have you get an electrician to look at the outlet if your Mac works properly on other outlets or a technician to look at the Mac if it leaks current no matter which receptacle you plug it in to.

You might be able to find a grounding issue and solve this yourself, but if you have any doubts as to safety, I'd rather you chose to get expert help rather than trust our guesses based on how things should work.

See:

Is grounding important?
Electricity coming through screws, USB, and headphone jack on 2009 MacBook
How can I avoid my MacBook Pro giving me minor shocks?
Is it bad that my MacBook Air is passing me electricity?

And note that all the MacBook questions are low risk situations where any iMac one would be a little more danger (potentially).


JetDrive 725 - SHould I use TRIM enabler?

I've had a 960GB JetDrive 720 since September 2014 and have been running Yosemite since release. I found that enabling trim on Yosemite caused instabilities, and the system would lock up very regularly. I was in regular contact with Transcend about this for a while. I like to think that the removal of trim from the JetDrive toolbox on Yosemite was down to my insistence, but we will never know for sure!

Turning of trim has solved all my problems. I did that in January 2015, and have not had any issues since. I work with a lot of virtual machines and this can be quite I/O intensive and I have seen no downsides of not enabling trim. I do boot into the recovery console about once a month to run Disk Utility to verify disk but I've not had any problems so this seems overcautious on my part.

OS X 10.10.4 and later

Apple has included a command line tool that enables trim. If you're running 10.10.4 or later, be sure to save all open documents as the following commands will result in a system restart.

Launch Terminal
Type sudo trimforce enable. There will be some scary warnings about data loss, but this is standard CYA legalese. You will be prompted about whether you are sure twice.
This will reboot your system. After the reboot, TRIM is now enabled.


iOS VPN configuration: which ip do apps see?

Apple doesn’t really tell applications much about vpn since there are other ways to check if a resource on the internet is reachable, so most apps just check what they want to access is available or try to request something and then indicate waiting or failure.

https://developer.apple.com/forums/thread/49581

It really depends how smart a programmer is if they track any or all interfaces and also match up your request to their server logs which will show your NAT address in all cases.
It also depends on the VPN if it’s app specific or system general and split tunnel exposes multiple network interfaces to each app in practice.


Deploy Studio Error - Network Unreachable

You should check to see if the network is available before entering Deploy Studio.

From the Recovery Boot Menu (CMD-R boot method) open the Get Help option (it has the Safari logo) and try to navigate to a webpage. If that is unsuccessful, you don't have network access at all.

In that case, one issue might be that you need to register your device/MAC address with your company's network infra before getting access. I worked at a University and this was the case there. If you need help getting the MAC let us know.

Additionally, you could try connecting via ethernet.

Best of luck.


Why doesn't Apple ship and support FOSS drivers for NTFS write capabilities?

I certainly don't speak for Apple, but to me a simple reason is that any code that Apple ships is installed across the globe and the code could have vulnerabilities, bugs or worse in it. Even perfect code has support costs associated with integration and end user support. Unless you want to pick a specific library, let's assume the popular OSS packages are no more or less buggy than OS X at this point to a first approximation.

There is a cost to even including the work even assuming no effort is made to test or support it. Apple provides free support to anyone at the genius bar, so there is a real business and opportunity cost for Apple shipping product that causes end users trouble. There also is a cost to train support personal to explain that OS X only ships with NTFS read support, but my estimate is that is trivial compared to what it would cost to even integrate the NTFS code let alone support it once it ships.

Apple doesn't go out of it's way to prevent users that want alternative filesystem code to run, but I can see many reasons why they don't incorporate even more open-source code then they do already on the ZFS/NTFS/extfs front.


Is there a music app that lets me start/pause playback by tapping anywhere on screen?

The CarTunes Music Player app does what you need - there are no buttons, just taps and swipes for all music controls.

Tapping is play/ pause, swiping is next/ previous track etc. Even volume can be adjusted by holding and dragging up/ down.

The app is not free at the moment but does fluctuate in price and is sometimes even free, as can be seen in the App Activity sidebar on App Shopper


dsconfigad returns error "authentication server could not be contacted. (5200)", but GUI domain join works without a problem

I have resolved this problem. I was specifying SERVERNAME in the command.

I used to enter something like: SERVER.DOMAIN.Local (as we have *.local domain). Turns out, I had to enter just DOMAIN.Local.


I can't boot into macOS Mojave on a Catalina laptop

You usually can't boot a Mac with an OS version which is older than the release date of the hardware. The old OS lacks some drivers required for new hardware.

You can still run Mojave etc. within a VM (using VMWare or Parallels).


Have you installed Flash Player recently? If so, it's just a harmless leftover. If not, it could be part of the Flashback Trojan.

Also keep in mind that programs like Google Chrome embed flash player, so you are correct to not trust dmg you don't really want to install. More digging might be needed if you don't want to make a backup and then just delete the files and see if/when they reappear.


Is it possible to get back one earlier "copy" to paste it back?

Not by default, no. The pasteboard is a temporary storage area, with no safety net. (One of the reasons that MacOS didn't have Cut and Paste of files in the Finder for many years, it is often said.)
There are plenty of apps in the Mac App Store, and elsewhere, that enhance the Pasteboard's capabilities by storing the pasteboard's 'history'.
I use Yoink, which does many Drag-Copy-Paste things, including this. Other more simple apps include things like CommandClip, which just keeps the last 10 text entries. Note that this may include passwords, so care should be taken.


I had the same problem. As I understand it, this is intentional behavior by Apple (they've been known to have additional delay on Caps Lock key to prevent accidental presses). Not many people notice this because it happens only when you type really fast (to reproduce just try spamming one key and press Caps Lock to switch the language at the same time – sometimes it would just be ignored).

There's a way to solve this – use Karabiner Elements. You can find how to set it up here: https://hybridtechcar.com/2018/07/01/turn-caps-lock-into-a-super-button-suitable-for-any-macbook/


Local WiFi sync in Mavericks 10.9.3 iTunes

Only the ability to sync via USB has been restored.


How to customize .inputrc to make Command-Delete and Option-Delete delete lines and words in iTerm 2?

⌘← can be assigned to \eOH and ⌘→ to \eOF. You could assign ⌥← to \eb like in Terminal, but it doesn't work in vi mode or nano.

In emacs mode you could also add this to .inputrc:

"\e[1;9D": backward-word
"\e[1;9C": forward-word
"\e[3~": kill-word

C-v shows the escape sequence for the next key combination. ^[ is ESC in caret notation. bind -p prints currently bound commands.


Concerning closing all alert notification via a keyboard shortcut, you have the options listed below available. Both use a bit of AppleScript to close the alert notifications by automatically pressing "Close" on each notification until there are no more notification available. The script has been extensively tested and should cover all edge cases with proper error handling.
Using an Alfred workflow
If you use Alfred, you have this workflow available: Notification dismisser. It will close all the currently displayed notifications with a shortcut or Alfred keyword. Super simple to use and works as expected.
Without using Alfred
If you don't use Alfred, you can take the main script from the workflow and using Automator save it as a "Quick Action". Then set a keyboard shortcut for it in System Preferences. Does the same as the workflow, albeit requires a bit more effort than clicking "install" as with Alfred.
Full disclosure, I'm the author of the workflow and script. Hope it helps someone to save a couple precious seconds!


Is cloud syncing possible with FileVault?

No, there's no possibility of FileVault suddenly "activating" and encrypted the contents of just one file. This is not at all how FileVault works.


Close window without closing application

Have you thought for a keyboard combination like cmd+w?

In Google Chrome you can close all tabs with cmd+shift+w, in Safari the same way.

Alternatively you can write an AppleScript like tell application "Terminal" to close front window or as terminal command: osascript -e 'tell app "Terminal" to close front window'.


Clock problems with dual boot mac system:- 10.6 and 10.8

The fact that it resets the clock is usually an indication that the PRAM battery needs replacing. Without the PRAM battery keeping things running right, the clock can get messed up plus there can be all sorts of other wierdness that can be difficult to track down. With a machine of this age, it is a good idea to replace it anyway, and it seems pretty cheap to do so:

http://www.newertech.com/products/pram_3v.php

As a short term work around, make sure that the "System Preferences" -> "Date & Time" settings are properly adjusted with your proper time zone and the "Set date and time  automatically" boxes selected. This should help with the clock, but fixing the battery issue will make sure nothing else is bad.

After replacing the battery, resetting the PRAM would be a good idea.

OS X Mountain Lion: Reset your computer’s PRAM
http://support.apple.com/kb/ph11243

http://thenextweb.com/lifehacks/2010/12/04/how-when-why-to-reset-the-pram-smc-on-your-mac/

http://www.macexpertguide.com/2012/11/18/reset-pram-mac-troubleshooting/

http://macs.about.com/od/usingyourmac/qt/Reset-Pram.htm


Get list of all fonts containing a specific character

It's still not clear to me how this is done by macOS itself, but in the meantime here's what I ended up doing.

The solutions I found all were of the following form:

Get a list of all fonts available.
Loop over the list to find fonts that contain the selected character.

Listing all fonts

As at this question, there are two approaches (plus a third one I found here):

system_profiler SPFontsDataType to which you can add -xml to get output in XML,
fc-list which can take a pattern (: is the empty pattern that matches all fonts) and a format specifier.
Instally python-fontconfig, then run import fontconfig; fontconfig.query() to get a list of font paths.

Comparing the two approaches (I wrote this before I had noticed the third one) is interesting:

Speed: On my computer and for my set of fonts, fc-list takes about 24 seconds the first time and 0.04 seconds each time after that, while system_profiler consistently takes about 3 seconds each time.
Comprehensiveness: On my current system, system_profiler lists 702 fonts while fc-list lists 770: all those 702 plus 68 more. On the one hand, system_profiler seems to be the "official" way, and matches the fonts visible in Font Book, the ones that show up in "Font Variation" in the character/symbol viewer (as in the question), the menu in TextEdit etc. On the other hand, at least some of the fonts that it misses are genuinely usable fonts. This includes not just the 5 fonts /Library/Fonts/{Athelas.ttc,Charter.ttc,Marion.ttc,Seravek.ttc,SuperClarendon.ttc} about which you can find some confusing pages online (e.g. this and this), but also /Library/Fonts/{DIN Alternate Bold.ttf,DIN Condensed Bold.ttf,Iowan Old Style.ttc} and 57 of the 177 Noto Sans fonts I have installed on my system. For example, I have Noto Sans Brahmi installed but this font doesn't show up in Font Book or in "Font Variation" when I search for a Brahmi letter (say ), but it does get used in TextEdit (and displayed in my browser).
Whatever the reason for this weirdness, I'm happy that I can get the full list with fc-list.
Ease of use: with either method a little bit of parsing the output is required. With fc-list I can specify the format (e.g. fc-list --format="%{family}\n%{file}\n%{lang}\n\n" but I couldn't find a reference for the names of the fields!); with system_profiler I can either just grep for Location: or output to XML and parse the XML (examples with xml.etree.ElementTree, with plistlib).

Does this font cover this character?

However we get the list of fonts, next we have to check whether a character is covered in a specific font (given by name or path). Again, the ways I found:

Use one of the FreeType bindings. For Python, there is freetype-py but I couldn't figure out in a few minutes how to use it.
Dump the font's cmap table with ttx/fonttools, then loop over the table. This is certainly doable and I've used such dumping many times (one can just ttx foo.ttf to get the foo.ttx xml file which is even human-readable), but for this use-case (searching over all fonts), it's not the best as it takes seconds per font.
Look up the cmap table from a library written for that: use Font::TTF::Font in Perl, from fontTools.ttLib import TTFont in Python -- this would be something like:

def has_char(font_path, c):
    """Does font at `font_path` contain the character `c`?"""
    from fontTools.ttLib import TTFont
    from fontTools.unicode import Unicode
    try:
        font = TTFont(font_path)
        for table in font['cmap'].tables:
            for char_code, glyph_name in table.cmap.items():
                if char_code == ord(c):
                    font.close()
                    return True
    except Exception as e:
        print('Error while looking at font %s: %s' % (font_path, e))
        pass
    return False

Unfortunately it fails on far too many fonts to be useful.
If you use the python-fontconfig solution, there's a has_char, used like: font = fontconfig.FcFont(path); return font.has_char(c)

Summary

I ended up using the solution from here, which I've lightly rewritten to keep it minimal:

#!/usr/bin/env python

def find_fonts(c):
    """Finds fonts containing  the (Unicode) character c."""
    import fontconfig
    fonts = fontconfig.query()
    for path in sorted(fonts):
        font = fontconfig.FcFont(path)
        if font.has_char(c):
            yield path

if __name__ == '__main__':
    import sys
    search = sys.argv[1]
    char = search.decode('utf-8') if isinstance(search, bytes) else search
    for path in find_fonts(char):
        print(path)

Example usage:

% python3 find_fonts.py 'ಠ'
/Library/Fonts/Arial Unicode.ttf
/Library/Fonts/Kannada MN.ttc
/Library/Fonts/Kannada MN.ttc
/Library/Fonts/Kannada Sangam MN.ttc
/Library/Fonts/Kannada Sangam MN.ttc
/System/Library/Fonts/LastResort.ttf
/Users/shreevatsa/Library/Fonts/Kedage-b.TTF
/Users/shreevatsa/Library/Fonts/Kedage-i.TTF
/Users/shreevatsa/Library/Fonts/Kedage-n.TTF
/Users/shreevatsa/Library/Fonts/Kedage-t.TTF
/Users/shreevatsa/Library/Fonts/NotoSansKannada-Bold.ttf
/Users/shreevatsa/Library/Fonts/NotoSansKannada-Regular.ttf
/Users/shreevatsa/Library/Fonts/NotoSansKannadaUI-Bold.ttf
/Users/shreevatsa/Library/Fonts/NotoSansKannadaUI-Regular.ttf
/Users/shreevatsa/Library/Fonts/NotoSerifKannada-Bold.ttf
/Users/shreevatsa/Library/Fonts/NotoSerifKannada-Regular.ttf
/Users/shreevatsa/Library/Fonts/akshar.ttf

(Works with both python3 and python2, whichever python you have. Takes about 29 seconds on my computer, for the set of fonts I have installed.)


Why is brew always reporting success when failing to start a service?

Trying to debug Apache issues on any computer can be difficult, but you just have to know what commands and files to look at.  First, try to start Apache using the apachectl command and look for errors written to the screen.

$ sudo apachectl start

If there is an error in the apache conf files or some system issue, you may see it there.

Also, you need to review the log file and see what the service is writing about itself.  For homebrew, the log file is typically called -

/usr/local/var/log/httpd/error_log

Often, when I find that Apache won't start, it is because there is a pid lock file that makes Apache think another instance is already running and you will see this in the log file. Delete the lock file and try to start the service again.

/usr/local/var/run/httpd/httpd.pid

One final note, a great resource for using homebrew to get a LAMP environment up and running on OSX is from Andy Miller over on getgrav.org (https://getgrav.org/blog/macos-catalina-apache-multiple-php-versions). Follow those instructions and you're ready to go..


Based on that message I'm assuming you're attempting to run as your user. You need to start Apache with elevated privileges so that it can access the directory /private/var/log/apache2 and file /private/var/log/apache2/error_log.

Try running it like this instead:

$ sudo apachectl start

Or if it's already running:

$ sudo apachectl restart

Running as root?

If you take a look at the results of the above apachectl script it should look something like this:

The httpd process running as root is not the process that will be accepting connections, it'll start up more worker instances of httpd that'll do the actually servicing of TCP connections to access attempts on ports 80/443.

This will isolate any access so that it's through the worker instances which are running as the user _www, NOT root.

This type of interaction is typical with *ctl scripts which will require root privileges to access the filesystem for logs and require elevated privileges to bind a process to a port that's below 1024. This is a semi-magical number in TCP ports that denotes anything that's system's related whereas ports > 1024 any user can bind to.

What's _www?

This is what's traditionally called a service account or service user. This account's sole purpose is to own the processes that run as services, such as Apache webservers (httpd). Again this is for security/permission isolation on the off chance something bad happens, only the files and level of permissions granted to this user, _www, would be what's exposed to any break-ins.

You can use the id command in a terminal to see details about this service account.

$ id -a _www
uid=70(_www) gid=70(_www) groups=70(_www),12(everyone),61(localaccounts),701(com.apple.sharepoint.group.1),702(com.apple.sharepoint.group.2),100(_lpoperator)

References

Mac OS X Start / Stop / Restart Apache Web Server


AppleScript to repeat action in the next window

You can do this with the following Keyboard Maestro macro.


What do I do if Time Machine says "Waiting" to view a particular backup?

You can delete a backup via the sudo tmutil delete command. You'll need administrative privileges to do this:

Open Terminal
Type in sudo tmutil delete (including end space, but don't press enter yet!)
Go to Finder, open your TM Drive, and open the Backups.backupdb folder
Open your Machine
You'll need to find the folder containing the backup you want to delete.
Drag and drop the folder containing the backup you want to delete into Terminal.
Your Terminal should say sudo tmutil delete /Volumes/TM\ Drive/Backups.backupdb/Mac/2014... (backslashes are included before spaces)
Now press enter. You'll need to type you user password (it won't be displayed).


I am really not sure what your setup is, so my answer is pure guessing.

So it happened before when I was using ParagonNTFS to delete some files from NTFS filesystem. What you need to do is boot into your Windows (BootCamp), use its built-in partition repair tool to repair the partition. Then uninstall ParagonNTFS because it will damage your NTFS partition!


I tested this on Mavericks, but this method has worked as far as I can remember. Make sure "Show Time Machine in menu bar" is checked in Time Machine Preferences. Select the directory you want to go to as a Finder window and make it the active window. Select use "Enter Time Machine" from the menu bar Time Machine (small clock) drop down menu. Time Machine will open to your selected directory ready to restore files. If you start at a "hidden" directory you can restore from there.


Difference in executing a command line in a different ways

When you use sh with its -c option, the argument after -c is taken as the command string to run. Thus, when you run

sh -c /usr/sbin/installer -pkg 'path_to_stackexchange.pkg' -target '/'

sh will run the command "/usr/sbin/installer". It will not pass on the rest of its arguments, because they're not part of the command string. If you want to include arguments, you'd need to do something like this:

sh -c "/usr/sbin/installer -pkg 'path_to_stackexchange.pkg' -target '/'"

The double-quotes make that a single long argument to sh, so it'll execute the whole thing and pass -pkg etc as arguments to the installer command.

(BTW, in the shell, quotes don't nest. Nesting quoted strings inside quoted strings -- like the single-quoted arguments inside that double-quoted argument -- isn't really a thing. In this case it does work, because the inside a double-quoted string, single-quotes are just regular characters. In more complicated situations, things can get weird and confusing.)

So what's happening to those other arguments after the command? Well, the command string (the argument after -c) functions a little like a miniature shell script, and those are passed to that mini-script as arguments. But they're not passed to the commands in that mini-script, unless the mini-script explicitly passes them on:

sh -c '/usr/sbin/installer "$@"' installer-thingie -pkg 'path_to_stackexchange.pkg' -target '/'

Here, inside the mini-script, the "$@" expands to the arguments to the mini-script (i.e. -pkg, path_to_stackexchange.pkg, etc.), thus passing them on to the installer command.

But what's that installer-thingie argument? That's the name the mini-script is run under, so it'll show up as $0 inside the mini-script. Basically, it functions as a placeholder, and you could put pretty much anything there. "sh" is a common choice.

As for the pros and cons of using sh -c to run commands: unless there's some reason you really need to run another shell, just run the command directly. Running it with sh -c is more complicated and confusing, and (as you've experienced) easy to get wrong.

As @DavidAnderson pointed out, using sh -c is also less efficient, because it creates an additional shell process. If you look at the process tree for running installer directly (and assuming your interactive shell is zsh), it looks like this:

zsh───installer

But with sh -c, it's like this:

zsh───sh───installer

...it ran an sh process under your interactive shell, and then that ran installer as a subprocess.

On the other hand, if you prefer confusing complexity and inefficiency, there's no reason to stop at one unnecessary shell; why not add another sh -c to run the sh -c command?

sh -c "sh -c \"/usr/sbin/installer -pkg 'path_to_stackexchange.pkg' -target '/'\""

or even

sh -c "sh -c \"sh -c \\\"/usr/sbin/installer -pkg 'path_to_stackexchange.pkg' -target '/'\\\"\""

(did I mention that nesting quotes can get complicated?)


Migrating with different operating systems ... Issue?

No - Migration Assistant always supports taking an older system and/or backup and migrating those Apps, Documents and Settings to a newer OS.

You generally can't go the reverse direction so Yosemite to Mountain Lion wouldn't be a possible migration path.


Using an external microphone with iPad Air or the new iPad Mini

Theoretically, yes, it should still work fine. However, as I'm sure you're aware the iPad 3 does not have the Lightning connector. You will need to purchase a Lightning to USB Camera Adapter so that you can connect your USB device to the new iPads with Lightning connectors.


You need to escape the ? and = using backslashes:

youtube-dl https://www.youtube.com/watch\?v\=mkd6JkfI4yk


Is the 3.5 mm headphone jack of a Macbook Pro Retina also a line in port?

Yes, you can use the port as a line in. As detailed in Apple's support article,

Plug the input audio device into the combination audio port using
the proper adapter cable.
From the Apple () menu, choose System
Preferences.
Choose Sound from the View menu.
Click the Input tab.
Change the "Use audio for:" menu selection from Sound Output to the
Sound Input.
The device type should change from "Internal
Microphone/Built-in Input" to "Line In/Built-in Input."


Typing umlauts and accented characters without the one second delay

I don't know a direct solution to your question: Reduced delay. If your iPhone is jailbroken you might be able to find the preference file that sets the delay and reduce it.

One work around could be to not deal with the accents at all and have the iPhone insert them for you, as autocorrected words. You can now type full speed.

To add custom words to the dictionary:

Add the Japanese Ten Key keyboard: Settings > General > Keyboards > International Keyboards > Add New Keyboard > Japanese Ten Key.
Add words: Settings > General > Keyboards > Edit User Dictionary.
Have the Word be what you want to type w/o accennts, and the Yomi be the accented work.

For example, I added Word=fooxx and Yomi=föoxx, I then went to the Notepad and using the English keyboard I typed "fooxx", and the iPhone suggested föoxx. When I did this example without the "xx" it did not work, perhaps because foo is already in my dictionary.

Alternatively, if you iPhone is jailbroken you could try using Xpandr


Turn off auto-hyperlinking in Notes app for macOS

Here is the solution:

Open your note.
Go to Edit then Substitutions and uncheck Smart Links

It will resolve your open query.

Also, uncheck Smart Copy/Paste to be more precise and if necessary.


How to write an AppleScript that downloads Wi-Fi network status from router's web interface?

Based on the discussions had, this should handle the original scope of the question.

Note: This is example code and does not contain much, if any, error handling. I'll leave that to you since this is only a portion of the overall script, once you put all the other pieces together.

--  #
--  #   Get the target information from theTargetURL in Google Chrome.
--  #
--  #   Do this in the background, so get the 'tab id' and 'window id' of
--  #   the target URL ('theTargetURL') if it exists, and process accordingly.

set theTargetURL to "http://192.168.1.1/0.1/gui/#/"

tell application "Google Chrome"
    if running then
        set theWindowList to every window
        repeat with thisWindow in theWindowList
            set theTabList to every tab of thisWindow
            repeat with thisTab in theTabList
                if theTargetURL is equal to (URL of thisTab as string) then

                    --  #   Get the targeted content of the web page which contains the information.
                    --  #   Note that document.getElementById(elementID) can only query one
                    --  #   element at a time, therefore call it twice, once with each elementID.

                    set rawWiFi24HTML to thisTab execute javascript "document.getElementById('wifi-24').innerHTML;"
                    set rawWiFi5HTML to thisTab execute javascript "document.getElementById('wifi-5').innerHTML;"

                    tell current application

                        --  #   Process the 'rawWiFi24HTML' and 'rawWiFi5HTML' variables.
                        --  #   Setup some temporary files to handle the processing.

                        set rawHTML to "/tmp/rawHTML.tmp"
                        set rawIP to "/tmp/rawIP.tmp"
                        set rawDBM to "/tmp/rawDBM.tmp"

                        --  #   Combine the value of  the'rawWiFi24HTML' and 'rawWiFi5HTML' variables into the 'rawHTML' temporary file.

                        do shell script "echo " & quoted form of rawWiFi24HTML & " > " & rawHTML & "; echo " & quoted form of rawWiFi5HTML & " >> " & rawHTML

                        --  # Process the 'rawHTML' into the 'rawIP' and 'rawDBM' temporary files.
                        --  # These files will contain comma delimited content of the targeted info.

                        do shell script "grep 'IP:' " & rawHTML & " | sed -e 's:</span>.*$::g' -e 's:^.*>::g' | tr '\\12' ',' > " & rawIP & "; grep 'device.parsedSignalStrength' " & rawHTML & " | sed -e 's: dBM.*$::g' -e 's:^.*\"::g' | tr '\\12' ',' > " & rawDBM

                        -- Process 'rawIP' and 'rawDBM' temporary files into 'theIPAddressList' and 'theSignalStrengthList' lists.

                        set theIPAddressList to my makeListFromCSVFile(rawIP)
                        set theSignalStrengthList to my makeListFromCSVFile(rawDBM)

                        --  #   Clean up, remove temporary files.

                        do shell script "rm /tmp/raw*.tmp"

                    end tell

                end if
            end repeat
        end repeat
    end if
end tell

--  # Handler used to create a list from a CSV file.

on makeListFromCSVFile(thisFile)
    set thisFilesContents to (read thisFile)
    set AppleScript's text item delimiters to {","}
    set thisList to items 1 thru -2 of text items of thisFilesContents as list
    set AppleScript's text item delimiters to {}
    return thisList
end makeListFromCSVFile

--  #########################################
--  #
--  #   Checking the output of the code:
--  #
--  #   The following commands are here just to show the contents
--  #   of the two lists displayed in a default list box, and then a way
--  #   both lists might be combined, the output of which is logged.
--  #
--  #   This of course can be removed after testing is finished.
--  #
tell current application
    --  #
    choose from list theIPAddressList & theSignalStrengthList
    --  #
    repeat with i from 1 to (count of theIPAddressList)
        log "IP: " & item i of theIPAddressList & " @ " & item i of theSignalStrengthList & " Dbm"
    end repeat
    --  #
end tell
--  #
--  #########################################

I do have to say that generally speaking, one is not supposed to parse HTML with tools like grep and sed, however, for certain pages, like in this use case, it's pretty safe to do. Although, if it breaks, it's not hard to fix.


Why would you compile the engine? It is not the full game, so you wouldn't be able to play after compilation.

Anyway, if you're still interested, there's a thread on Hacker News speaking about it, they also mention how to compile the project if you don't have Xcode 3.2

Edit: for what is worth, here the instructions for Xcode 4.


iPhone XR's screen triggers other devices

Typically, this kind of speaker interference happens when there is a large amount of cellular data transfer. If you keep your phone on WiFi and enable WiFi calling, you may experience it less since WiFi is a lower strength signal than cellular?
I don't know if there is another way to avoid this...


Failing Superdrive(?) and Problems with Bootcamp

Apple has a service provider lookup at https://locate.apple.com and I would start with an authorized service provider. Those era Macs aren't that hard to open and work on and the cost you might pay might make a DIY repair more likely than the more modern Macs that are designed more for factory trained technicians and have adhesive and very fragile connectors that you typically replace rather than reseat.

As to your failures, one bad drive can bring down the entire storage controller and/or bus, so you might open and just disconnect the superdrive to see if that helps the other storage devices work.

http://ifixit.com might be the best place for a take apart and quick quote on the parts you might need for that repair.


If you want to see the capture time on an image, select it and press ⌘ cmd+i or go to Window > Info to see the Info Pane.

If you want to change that information, select the image you want to correct and then at the top menu select Image > Adjust Date and Time

This menu will appear that lets you adjust said information.

Source and more info


Yes, Apple failed to include a multi-time snooze feature in the Mountain Lion version of Calendar.  LIke you, thousands of us would like to have this feature back.

Go to www.apple.com/feedback and tell them.  I did.  If enough people point out this omission, they will address it sooner than later.

Power in numbers!


It's a common problem.  Try a Safe Boot.  If that doesn't work, try the fixes in Apple's article on the topic.  See this page.


How to get automount and sshfs (osxfuse) working with yosemite

FWIW, if anyone else stumbles across this old question, the best guide I have found for mounting sshfs using apple's automounter is here -

http://virtuallyhyper.com/2013/07/mount-various-file-system-with-autofs-on-mac-os-x-mountain-lion/#mount-sshfs-with-autofs


Netflix interferes with Safari custom tab change shortcut?

Using hammerspoon. After installing hammerspoon (I used brew cask install hammerspoon), just edit/create the file ~/.hammerspoon/init.lua to include:
left = hs.hotkey.new({"cmd", "alt"}, "left", function()
  hs.eventtap.keyStroke({"cmd", "shift"}, "[")
end)

right = hs.hotkey.new({"cmd", "alt"}, "right", function()
  hs.eventtap.keyStroke({"cmd", "shift"}, "]")
end)

hs.application.watcher.new(function(appName, eventType, appObject)
  if appName == "Safari" then
    if eventType == hs.application.watcher.activated then
      left:enable()
      right:enable()
    elseif eventType == hs.application.watcher.deactivated then
      left:disable()
      right:disable()
    end
  end
end):start()

Then start Hammerspoon.app.
Then enable Hammerspoon control in System Preferences > Security & Privacy > Privacy > Accessibility. (Maybe you will need to Reload Config from Hammerspoon's menu bar item after this).


Time in milliseconds since epoch in the terminal

The date program in OS X is different than GNU's coreutils date program. You can install coreutils (including gnu-date), then you will have a version of date that supports milliseconds.

As the installation from source can be a hassle for native OS X users I advise you to use Homebrew.

To install these tools using Homebrew run this oneliner in your terminal:

ruby -e "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Homebrew/install/master/install)"

Homebrew is now installed (it is wise to follow the installer's suggestions after installation). Now we will install coreutils using brew.

brew install coreutils

As the installation says, all commands have been installed with the prefix 'g' (e.g. gdate, gcat, gln, etc etc). If you really need to use these commands with their normal names, you can add a "gnubin" directory to your PATH (~/.bash_profile) like:

PATH="/usr/local/opt/coreutils/libexec/gnubin:$PATH"

You can now run

gdate +%s.%N

and this will output your time since the epoch in milliseconds.


iTunes keeps losing iPhone wireless sync

I've been investigating this problem for a number of years now and I've concluded the following:

Most home wireless/wired routers do not support Multicast-DNS forwarding between wireless and wired network segments.
If both your server (iTunes) device and your client (iPhone/iPad,etc.) are on the same segment (i.e. wireless), then iTunes wireless sync should be more or less stable.
If your server and clients are on different network segments (i.e wireless and wired), you will have mixed success with running a stable wireless sync.

My solution was to buy an enterprise firewall (FortiGate) and create one virtual layer-two segment, encompassing all the wireless and wired interfaces on my home network.

This has stabilised wireless sync.


The file is the LauchServices plist file. It is at
~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.LaunchServices.plist

You can edit it manually, or is you plan to do this a lot, I'd suggest looking at RCDefaultApp which gives a preference pane for editing.


What are good travel game apps for iPad to entertain a 2-3 year old

This is an iPhone app, but will work on iPad, It is a game made for toddlers.

http://www.hogbaysoftware.com/products/bubbles


How would I identify what's causing my Mac to permanently hang on shutdown?

My first response whenever something is broken in Mac OS X is to try a safe boot. Safe boots perform several repair tasks in addition to safe booting your mac without extensions or startup items running.
Shut down your Mac. Power it up and begin holding down the shift key the moment you hear the startup chime. Keep it down until you see an onscreen progress bar. Eventually, you will get a login screen - Login and wait until your machine is fully started up. Now restart normally and see if problem is fixed.


Q: Cannot spoof MAC Address on Macbook Pro 2019 13.3 on Big Sur Beta 4

I had same issue, your solution actually works
sudo ifconfig en0 ether yourspoofedmacaddress

What you have to do is hit up arrow in terminal and keep reentering it rapidly about 3 times and then it changes.  I needed to do this to Login to a captive wifi and my IOT devices can't do that so have to spoof from my Mac.


Unusually long boot time in non-verbose mode - early 2008 MBP + SSD + Mavericks

Start in verbose mode and see what takes time. Here is how:

Shut down your Mac if it is on.
Press the power button to start the computer.
Immediately press and hold the Command key and one of the following:
...
the "v" key for verbose mode.  (Command-V)
You have successfully entered single-user or verbose mode when you see white text appear on the screen.

If it is "fsck", than you should start backing up your data – disk is most likely is failing.


Where are crontab files stored in OS 10.8

My current version is 10.8 after check :

  /var/at/tabs

and name of file is value of logged => $user .

For my comp :

  /var/at/tabs/nikola

Don't change permission use vim or nano ...


How to Eject All External Partitions Quickly?

The only caveat to "quickly ejecting" disks with any reliability is that they will not eject if there are files in use which reside on them. That said, you can force eject disks, but that would not be ideal if files are, in fact, in use.

Easiest way to instantly eject all disks is by invoking an Applescript (could also create a shell script, but Applescript is more easily turned into a one-click application solution).

So go to your Applescript Editor, paste in the following:

tell application "Finder" to eject (every disk whose ejectable is true and local volume is true and free space is not equal to 0)

and save the script as an application wherever you choose (do NOT use the /tmp folder as illustrated). Add the resulting application to your Dock, and you have a one-click Quick Eject.

Note: the and free space is not equal to 0 portion is so that the script doesn't eject the contents of your CD/DVD drive. Remove that if you would like any inserted disks ejected as well.


How to hide all file extensions in subdirectories of a given folder?

You can easily do this in Terminal with the SetFile command:

To hide file extensions in a directory and all sub-directories:

cd <path to directory>

find . -name "*.*" -exec SetFile -a -E '{}' \; | echo "hiding extensions"

(can change the second * to a particular extension type if you choose)

To show file extensions in a directory and all sub-directories:

cd <path to directory>

find . -name "*.*" -exec SetFile -a -e '{}' \; | echo "showing extensions"


Boot camp doesn’t recognize USB for LG Ultrafine 4k

Make sure these things work

displaying
charging for laptop
USB expansion ports
brightness adjustment (in BootCamp control panel)
speaker

Then nothing more could be expected from this display. The error might due to no driver for the ambient light sensor (macOS doesn't utilize it either).


It's still there but the new views in iTunes can be confusing.

connect your iPad to your Mac
in iTunes, select the device in the top row on the right hand side (beside the button for the Store)
select "Apps" in the top row (about the middle of the screen)
the same Apps install screen as in iTunes 10 should be displayed, with the document box at the bottom


How do I get Terminal to remember previous commands after closing window in SL 10.6.8?

I had the same issue on my new Mac, when I checked the history file ~/.bash_history I discovered that it was owned by root. I run sudo chown username .bash_history, now when I reopen terminal my history is preserved.


Error when importing photos from iCloud to Photos on macOS: "The operation couldn't be completed. (PHAssetExportRequestErrorDomain error 2.)"

Diagnosis

By trying to import small groups of photos and videos, I found out that there is one video in the middle of my shared album that doesn't display a proper preview, and it can't be imported to my library. Probably this video is corrupted somehow in iCloud. All other photos and videos can be imported properly.

Work around

Importing all photos and videos before this corrupted video works, and importing all photos and videos after this corrupted video works as well.


Fresh Install of OS but what about the apps?

Yes, dragging an .app file to the Applications folder of a different Mac will work. It may be easier for you to just sign in with your Apple ID on the Mac App Store and download the apps you have purchased from there (if you find it easier).

You will be able to move Microsoft Office 2011 apps to the Applications folder but upon opening them you will be presented with a registration page where you will have to input your serial number.

As detailed in Microsoft's Office page, you will obtain your serial number either from the orange sticker on your installation DVD, or from the email you got if you purchased it online.


Can I use Xcode to run previously purchased apps?

You can't run bought apps in the iOS simulator in Xcode.


This is likely a hard drive power management and sleep issue rather than an issue with the drive. When unused for a few minutes, the drive goes to sleep, possibly making a noise while parking the heads for safety. Your script accessing it in shorter intervals prevents it from going to sleep. You can confirm if this is the issue by observing how long it takes to access something on the drive after it makes the sound (and goes to sleep). If it seems slower than usual, it's because of waking up from sleep.

Firstly, you should confirm if OS X is making the drive sleep and/or if the drive's firmware is the culprit:

Disable your script.
Go to System Preferences > Energy Saver and see if Put the hard disk(s) to sleep when possible is enabled. If it is, disable it and observe the behavior of the drive.
If the OS X configuration doesn't help, check the drive's make and model and see how you can disable sleep from the manufacturer's support site.

On one hand, disabling the sleep behavior would increase the amount of power consumed (even if it seems insignificant). On the other hand, if you would be using the drive somewhat often while leaving it connected permanently, it may be a good idea to just having it running and avoid the lag of a sleep/wake cycle.


Pages 5.1 underlines some words as misspelled, but does not allow me to "Ignore/Learn Spelling"

I create technical papers, and many words are not recognized by spellchecker. Some words can be learned using control-click but most can't be used at all until added to the dictionary. This is very annoying and time-consuming.

The one things that helps me add words is to use the arrow cursor keys to move the insertion point to the end of the word or past the space and then back a space to "jog" the software into letting you add the word.

If that fails, quitting the app or restarting is sometimes effective.


By default this file does not exist on any version of OS X. And yes, it is up to you to create it manually:

touch ~/.bash_profile

Alternatively, you could use nano as well if you want to edit the file at the same time:

nano ~/.bash_profile

Do not monkey in /etc unless you know what you're doing.


I solved the problem with help from Apple support. The resolution in my case was simple enough, if perhaps a bit drastic: I had to reset the network settings.

Settings → General → Reset → Reset Network Settings

Warning: This reboots the phone, and you have to reenter any WiFi settings for networks you use. Be sure that you have the needed passwords before doing so!

This may not be the solution for you, if you have this problem. Be sure to consult the three articles linked from the question first! But the network settings reset is an option to keep in mind if all else fails, and before you contact Apple Support yourself. (I don't know why this is not listed on the Advanced … page.)


It doesn't seem so.

A workaround would be to turn off vibrations when on silent (Settings > Sounds), and have it set to silent (either by the button or a Do Not Disturb).

Maybe another app would do the trick.


Use SSD partition on Mac Mini Fusion Drive through Windows Bootcamp

Yes, you'll mess stuff up if you partition it. The fusion drive creates a partition on each drive, which is put together to create the fusion drive. Windows cannot read HFS, so it assumes the disk is empty. Just leave your Windows partition on the HD, and everything should work fine.


This can happen when the contact spring inside the headset jack is loose, cracked or broken, or maybe the plug or jack is just dirty and shorted out.  Perhaps try cleaning/degreasing the plug and then blowing out the jack with compressed air.  If that doesn't work, a visit to the Apple store is in order.

This same problem can happen on different models of other phones as well, any phone that has a headset jack.


switch input (language) quick with keyboard

To get different shortcuts for each input source, save something like this as private.xml in KeyRemap4MacBook:

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<root>
<item>
<name>test</name>
<identifier>private.test</identifier>
<autogen>__KeyToKey__ KeyCode::F1, KeyCode::VK_CHANGE_INPUTMODE_ENGLISH</autogen>
<autogen>__KeyToKey__ KeyCode::F2, KeyCode::VK_CHANGE_INPUTMODE_CHINESE_TRADITIONAL</autogen>
<autogen>__KeyToKey__ KeyCode::F3, KeyCode::VK_CHANGE_INPUTMODE_FRENCH</autogen>
</item>
</root>

⌥E would be KeyCode::E, VK_OPTION | ModifierFlag::NONE. The input source names are defined in inputsourcedef.xml. KeyCode::JIS_KANA also changes to Japanese and KeyCode::JIS_EISUU changes to English even if you don't have a Japanese keyboard.


Laptop shuts down instead of going to sleep when lid closed

The problem seems to have been some kind of issue in OSX 10.15.5.  Upgrading to 10.15.6 appears to have resolved the issue.


What's a good camcorder that will record video in any of iPad's supported formats?

According to Apple, the iPad is able to reproduce:

H.264 video up to 720p, 30 frames per second, Main Profile level 3.1 with AAC-LC audio up to 160 Kbps, 48kHz, stereo audio in .m4v, .mp4, and .mov file formats;
MPEG-4 video, up to 2.5 Mbps, 640 by 480 pixels, 30 frames per second, Simple Profile with AAC-LC audio up to 160 Kbps, 48kHz, stereo audio in .m4v, .mp4, and .mov file formats

This leads to the file formats that Flip cameras use:

  Video Format   H.264 video compression,
  AAC audio compression, MP4 files
  format

So with that in mind, I assume that Flip does it.

However if you’re looking for a more “camcorder” thing (which you don’t specify in your question), the Sanyo’s Waterproof Xacti Camcorder does record in “Apple Friendly” format. Other than those, Google is your friend, look for “Apple friendly” camcorders. There are others out there.

I’ve personally tried the Flip and it’s fantastic, but I don’t have an iPad.

A word of caution: the ipad is not submersible ;)


Can you still download Yosemite? If not can I clean install Yosemite from a USB stick made for another machine?

You should be able to download Yosemite from the App store if you login with an account that had previously acquired it.

If the USB stick was made with an App store copy of "Install OS X Yosemite.app", it will work on any hardware that existed prior to the release of the copy you downloaded.


How do I remove old employers mailbox from my i4 without losing anything else?

If you are talking about the Exchange link: All services bound to that account will be removed. For example, if you add a new contact, the iPhone should have asked you where you want to add them. Either in the Exchange account or in the iCloud. If you've selected Exchange for this all the time, the contacts are saved in the Exchange account and will be gone once you removed the company account.

Included in Exchange can be: Mail, Contacts, Calendar, Reminders and Notes.


Disable iPhone numeric keyboard auto-toggle

I only have experience with iOS 7 and iOS 8. Sadly I don't have any experience with iOS 6 or lower.

Ok I might have found a solution:

IOS 7, 8 AND 9 beta 1 and 2:

1) Go to settings, then keyboards

2) Uncheck ALL the options on that page.

3) Test it (in the app where it's affecting you)

OR:

Just uncheck split keyboard and see if that works.


can't use publickey authentication for ssh with sierra

The fact that the log shows the key in a first iteration of offering public keys (note that it says "offering RSA public key") indicates that it is coming from the ssh-agent or another source of keys.

Did you check if the old id_rsa key is maybe still stored in the ssh-agent?


How do I remove java version "1.6.0_65"?

Visit first this page: How do I uninstall Java on my Mac? and see that Oracle is offering a tool for uninstalling (here).


Reclaim lost disk space after deleting partition

From this article it looks like what you're doing is a 35-pass secure wipe of the unpartitioned space.

You might have better luck resizing the existing Macintosh HD to the full disk capacity.

If you try to resize Macintosh HD using disk utility and you encounter an error please update your question with a screenshot of the error, and the output of running diskutil list from a terminal window. Terminal can be found in the utilities folder.


AppleScript - Get every desktop including hidden Mission Control desktops

The following is a start until I figure out how to read the desktop count in Mission Control.  Right now for this to work you must be on the farthest left Desktop.

Not knowing where your pic is located I'm targeting an image in Desktop Pictures with:

set thePic to file ((path to library folder from local domain as text) & "Desktop Pictures:Blue Pond.jpg") as text

I set a variable for the count of Mission Control Desktops:

set windowCount to 5

I build a repeat loop starting with the first number till it reaches the count:

repeat with X from 1 to windowCount

end repeat

I use key code to move right with control only when the count is greater than 1 and a delay:

repeat with X from 1 to windowCount
    tell application "Finder"
        tell application "System Events"
            if X > 1 then
                key code 124 using control down ## move right
                delay 1
            end if
        end tell
    end tell
end repeat

I then reference every Desktop and add a delay on the picture to be set:

tell application "System Events"
    set deskGroup to (a reference to every desktop)
    repeat with theDesk in deskGroup
        set picture of theDesk to thePic
    end repeat
end tell
delay 1

the complete code:

set thePic to file ((path to library folder from local domain as text) & "Desktop Pictures:Blue Pond.jpg") as text
set windowCount to 5
repeat with X from 1 to windowCount
    tell application "Finder"
        tell application "System Events"
            if X > 1 then
                key code 124 using control down ## move right
                delay 1
            end if
            set deskGroup to (a reference to every desktop)
            repeat with theDesk in deskGroup
                set picture of theDesk to thePic
            end repeat
        end tell
        delay 1
    end tell
end repeat

this is one way to do this hope it helps.  This works and was tested using macOS High Sierra 10.13.6


Prevent mobile Safari from loading the last page when started

You could save a bookmark to about:blank (or your desired home page) as an icon in your home screen. Then click that to launch Safari rather than the Safari icon.

To do this:

open Safari.
Type the url about:blank into the URL area and go to that page. The page will, unsurprisingly, be empty.
Press the share button, and select "Add to Home Screen"
Assign a name to this blank page. In your case, you might want to call it Safari.

(Dan Frakes of MacWorld spells out these steps at http://www.macworld.com/article/159303/2011/04/ios_safari_blank_page.html; thanks to Heng-Cheong Leong for point this out).

Alternately, you could close any pages you had open in Safari before exiting the program.


A blue bar is usually an indication something is using Location Services. It ought to say which app in the bar itself.

Check Settings > Privacy > Location Services to see which apps are allowed to do that & which have been checking recently.


How will Apple's Notarization impact programs written in Python?

I'm starting to research this to better understand its implications as well, since I installed a number of 3rd party apps on my laptop and never use the store. Everything I install is either DMG or via brew.

Background & Python

For starters I would suspect any applications that are in binary form would be what Apple's referring to when they executables have to be notarized. A Python script, though executable, is not technically a binary, the shebang, #!/usr/bin/env python at the top is what makes it executable, so I would expect that only the literal /usr/bin/python binary would need to be notarized to appease GateKeeper.

APIs

If you look through the documentation around Notarization, you're uploading your build artifacts from your project to an Apple server where they'll analyze it and then provide a will return a unique ticket that you'll need to "staple" to your application. This ticket will allow GateKeeper to later verify your application for authenticity with Apple.

So they won't be doing anything through high level APIs, but rather through forcing applications to use macOS 10.9 libraries or later SDKS, per this bullet:

  Link against the macOS 10.9 or later SDK.

So they will be restricting applications through low level libraries (APIs) that they may be using.

Plugins

By default plugins will inherit whatever notary their native application they're running in will provide:

Notarizing Your App Before Distribution

  Plug-ins don’t declare their own entitlements. Instead, they inherit
  the entitlements of the host process. Therefore, a host app must
  include all the entitlements that prospective plug-ins require, even
  when the plug-ins are notarized separately.

However, this paragraph looks to state that basic plugins should be able to just work through their parent, but if they're doing something low level themselves, perhaps in some C plugin to Photoshop, this extra level of capabilities will need to be addressed by the parent app as part of its entitlement on behalf of the plugins that may run underneath the parent app.

Notarizing Your App Before Distribution

  For example, if a plug-in employs deep integration with the host
  executable via C function pointer overrides, or uses a JavaScript
  engine for custom workflows, the host executable must declare the
  Allow Unsigned Executable Memory Entitlement or Allow Execution of
  JIT-compiled Code Entitlement, respectively. In some cases, a plug-in
  fails to even load if the host executable lacks the proper
  entitlement.

An author's perspective

I found this blog post from the author of Acorn, a commercially available image editor.

MacOS Notarization

  And automating the notarization steps weren't as bad as I thought they
  would be. I wrote a Python script which calls out to the notarization
  tools with the addition of having the response format set to xml (and
  it was in the plist format, which was then easily fed into
  Foundation.NSDictionary). The script analyzed the current state of
  things and either waited a while before querying the notarization
  servers again to see if it's done, or stapled on the notarization bits
  if it was. Then a new build of Acorn makes its way to the internet.

  Notarization adds a few minutes to the build time, but maybe it'll be
  worth it? I don't like having to depend on Apple's servers to put
  something up on mine. But if notariation prevents those "Foo.app is an
  app downloaded from the Internet. Are you sure you want to open it?"
  boxes from scaring customers unnecessarily, it will be worth the
  hassle. I can hope at any rate.

I felt like this author's perspective was reasonable. I've always just dismissed the warning when installing 3rd party software, but can understand some people's reluctance.

This article had some additional takes on Notarization that I found germane to you question but didn't want to overload my answer with too much more info. The article is titled: What the Apple Notarization Program for macOS Apps Means for You.

References

Notarizing Your App Before Distribution
How to notarize your software on macOS


cant get my number to change from email to my phone number

Even though the line is greyed out, the checkbox next to your phone number in Settings > Messages indicates it is being used for sending and receiving messages. The email address(es) listed indicate that iMessage also looks for iMessages sent to those address(es), and will deliver them as if they were sent to your phone number (so long as each one has a checkmark next to it as well).


Firefox 38 on OS X - there is no DRM - howto enable?

It looks like you downloaded the DRM-free version of Firefox. You don't have the addon that provides the DRM in the first place.


Using earpods from iphone5 with iphone 3g

Yes, they work as expected. I'm using them at the moment with an older phone.


What OS X Timer Application emulates the functions of iOS's stopwatch (clock) app?

I would say the Mac App Store has some awesome options - some free, the rest extremely reasonably priced.

Have a look at:

Menu Timer
My Alarm Clock (and it's free cousin, Alarm Clock)

Depending on how much timing and alarming you need, there are even amazing programmable timers like FlexTime


Did you try via the settings > iTunes and App Store? Click Apple ID and logout and back in.
Login again there, and that did the trick for me.

EDIT: My problem was solved when I removed iCloud from my iPad and iPhone and logged in with new credentials.


Why is my iPhone unable to connect to an ad hoc wifi network?

My guess is that the iPhone doesn't consider the connection valid because there's no DHCP service assigning it an IP or perhaps gateway allowing it access to the internet.

Try running a DHCP server on your laptop or enabling network sharing even if the laptop isn't on the net.


Keychain login password not working for Allow access

Ok, so there was a detail that I didn't think was important, and apparently I was I wrong. I was connected to the system over VNC.

When I opened the system log and tried to perform the action over VNC I saw the entry "SecurityAgent: Ignoring user action since the dialog has recieved events from an untrusted source".

When I tried to perform the action on the system it self I was successful.


Yahoo Widgets - crashing - clean uninstall

System Prefs > Desktop & Screensaver > Desktop can rotate pictures from any specified folder, natively - no widget required.

Tracking your IP can be done with many tools - this one from dynDNS might do the trick [not something I've ever used as mine is static]  Dyn Updater

Screen-fill options as below...


Can't load data from the Apple Software Update server

Please try this guide. At least it was useful for me.

By default, the built-in application firewall for macOS automatically allows applications signed by Apple to receive incoming connections. If you've adjusted the settings for your application firewall, you might need to allow incoming connections. If the issue persists, reset the cache of accepted certificates:

Click your desktop to make sure that you're in Finder.
From the menu at the top of your computer screen, choose Go > Go to Folder.
In the box, enter /var/db/crls/.
Click Go.
Drag the files labeled crlcache.db and ocspcache.db to the Trash.
If prompted, enter your administrator password.
Restart your computer, then try to connect to the iTunes Store, iBooks Store, or App Store.


Volume control sometimes stuck on MBP '18

First of all, restart your MacBookPro

If this doesn't work than try reinstalling macOS by booting into recovery mode by pressing command+r while startup, select "reinstall macOS". I recommend doing a backup first even you won't loose any of your files and settings.


Try:

tell application "Mail" to get content of (first message of drafts mailbox whose id = 123456)


Presuming that you are using the latest version of Celtx, I think that it's most likely that one of the Celtx preference files have become corrupted. You'll find them in two locations:

Preference file:

/Users/username/Library/Preferences/ca.greyfirst.celtx.plist

Preference folder:

/Users/username/Library/Application Support/Celtx

I'd do the following to troubleshoot:

Quit Celtx. Not a problem, since you can't open it anyway.
Move the above listed files/folders to your Desktop.
Try to launch Celtx. If things work, great. Celtx will recreate the preferences. You will need to reset any user preferences you made.
If things don't work, I'd Trash the application, redownload it, and reinstall.
After reinstalling, restart your computer before you try to open the app again, just in case anything's being cached

Oh, and best of luck with your script!


so, I bought a new hard drive. installed it today and brought my MacBook back to life finally.

Did already love the idea to own a new MB Air ... maybe next year.

thx for your help guys!


How do I switch to a completely new Apple ID?

When I changed my ID on my iphone, I didn't see an "edit" option either.  So maybe my experience will help you, I hope.  After going to Settings/iCloud, I was told to scroll down to the bottom of the page where it says DELETE ACCOUNT.  After deleting my son's account from my phone, I was able to enter my own ID.  It took a few tries and some time while it tried to validate the new ID and then it told me to go to my email on my computer to respond for verification.  Good Luck!


I purchased & downloaded Mountain Lion, and then...nothing happened

Check your /Applications folder. After downloading Mountain Lion, the installer is placed there (entitled Install OS X Mountain Lion).

It will be deleted after installation, but should still be present on your machine if you have not upgraded yet.


What is the user name associated with the Guest Account?

I think the easiest way to know Guest user name would be login to the system as guest and in terminal type id

My guess is that user name for Guest is guest


I had a problem similar to this and it was because of a bluetooth mouse which had been left switched on in a bag. The button was held down by something resting on it and it was overriding the trackpad. If you use the keyboard shortcut (usually cmd+spacebar) to bring up spotlight and type bluetooth you can use the down arrow key to select the bluetooth system preference and you will be able to see if there is a connected mouse there causing the problem.


Possible Methods to Restore Speed of File Sharing (AFP) in OS X 10.10?

AFP is more so meant for a LAN configuration and not a WAN network. Instead you could try CIFS or another protocol and see if you see the same speed or an increase.

I would also try to use AirDrop and see how that works.


Command key keeps bringing up the Mission Control

OK, this one was just stupid.

In System Preferences ==> Mission Control, there is a section titled "Keyboard and Mouse Shortcuts".  For each of "Mission Control", "Application Windows", "Show Desktop", and "Show Dashboard", there is a dropdown where you can select which keyboard shortcut you want to use.

This is separate from System Preferences ==> Keyboard ==> Shortcuts ==> Mission Control.

In my case, it showed that "Mission Control" was mapped to <Ctrl><Up-Arrow>.

I changed it to F1, then changed it back to <Ctrl><Up-Arrow>, and now it works. Apparently, it had been mapped to  in a way that didn't update the GUI, and switching it to something different and then back fixed it.

I hate this kind of thing.


What happens when I reset the call statistics on an iPhone?

After a quick test, everything but "Call Time: Lifetime" and the statistics under "Time since last full charge" was reset.

It only makes sense that the field "Call Time: Lifetime" doesn't get reset since it shows the the total physical time the phone was being used to call.  If it was restored and set up as a new phone I believe that the setting will then be reset since it will be technically a new life for the phone.  Unless AT&T/Verizon keeps track of that data through your number.  Then you would change your number to reset that field.  Though I wouldn't be trying that anytime soon.


How can I sleep the display from Terminal?

In OS X 10.9, you can simply do pmset displaysleepnow. This will immediately turn off your display without changing any of your settings or putting the entire host to sleep.

Escalated privileges don't seem to be required (at least with recent versions of OS X), but if you get a message about inadequate privileges, you could do sudo pmset displaysleepnow.

Based on feedback from commenters, this is not available in OS X 10.8 or earlier.


How does memory management work in Mac OS X?

Apple documents the lowest levels of the Mach Kernel and the virtual memory subsystem fairly well on the web as part of it's developer documentation.

Kernel Programming Guide: Memory and Virtual Memory

Since that kernel was developed by Carnegie Mellon University, you can find dozens of papers describing it quite easily.

If that is too low level for your paper, we have easily 10 or more good questions covering more of a non-programmer's view of OS X memory management. You'll probably have to do the synthesis of how OS X compares to the other two OS as I haven't seen that answered here to date.

Focus on the virtual-memory and os-x tags for the best results in your searching:

What does it mean if I have lots of "Inactive" memory at the end of a work day?
Can I force my Mac to make better use of the inactive memory?
Why is my memory still inactive after purging?
Trouble Understanding Inactive Memory in MacOSX
Isn't Inactive memory a waste of resources?

By the sheer number of "inactive memory" questions, you can focus on the part of OS X's memory management that is most puzzling to people and hence gathers the most questions here looking for explanations.


The only media which can be added to a contact is as a profile photo. Notes only permits plain text, like other contact fields. Therefore unfortunately it's not possible to do this currently.


How to create an apple script that forwards a flagged email

Here is some code, with no references to your OmniFocus application, that forwards all flagged messages to a set address. Adjust to your liking....

Works like a charm on my Snow Leopard macbook.

set toAddress to "userx@mail.asana.com"
set toName to "User X"

tell application "Mail"
    repeat with _acct in imap accounts
        --Look For Flagged Messages in the INBOX
        set _acct_name to name of _acct
        set _inbox to _acct's mailbox "INBOX"
        set _msgs_to_capture to (a reference to ¬
            (every message of _inbox ¬
                whose flagged status is true))

        repeat with _msg in _msgs_to_capture
            set _fwdmsg to forward _msg with opening window

            tell _fwdmsg
                make new to recipient at end of ¬
                    to recipients with properties {name:toName, address:toAddress}
            end tell

            activate

            send _fwdmsg
        end repeat
    end repeat
end tell


How do I view negative reviews for a podcast in the iTunes store?

Not all reviews get posted and sometimes the delay is days or weeks for some reviews to show. I believe the stars get updates much more rapidly as a human doesn't need to review those ratings like Apple does for the word portions of reviews.

This is similar to app reviews:

Is there a standard delay for consumer ratings of apps on the App Store?
Why do iPhone App Store ratings and reviews seem to get processed so slowly?

I believe if you put star ratings in and feel they aren't updating, a request to the iTunes store support team might help unstick a podcast with problems updating. https://www.apple.com/support/itunes/contact/ and choose Store Support.


External HDD can be seen in Disk Utility but not in Finder

This fixed mine:

In Finder:
 Finder>Preferences>Sidebar>DEVICES>
Then I unchecked and re-checked (deselected and then reselected) "Hard Disks" and they came back. (even though they were external) Basically try unchecking and checking them all.

I'm also now running disk checks.


iPhone 4 doesn't prompt password verification when attempting to connect to AirPlay

I spent a while recently pondering what I think is the same issue.

Eventually I found that AirPlay Mirroring requires an iPhone 4S or later.

So audio should play wirelessly from the iPhone 4, but screen mirroring won't work.

Hope that helps.


SSH remote using XQuartz dosent work in Lion

As per this page, X11/XQuartz is deprecated from OS X now, and you will need to install it seperately in order to get any X-Windows display manager type stuff working:

http://support.apple.com/kb/HT5293

There seems to be another X11 download here which may also be useful.

http://support.apple.com/downloads/X11_for_Mac_OS_X_1_0


Is the bending issue a problem in iPhone 6 or just iPhone 6+?

If you apply enough force to an inch-thick solid steel rod, it will
  bend.

  Same goes for the quarter-inch-thick iPhone 6 and 6 Plus (which, I
  should note, have far less than a quarter of an inch of aluminum in
  any one spot).

  Aluminum is actually a fairly soft metal, ranking at 2.5-to-3 on the
  Mohs scale of hardness.

  That is to say, it's about as tough as a U.S. penny (which is actually
  97.5% zinc and just plated in copper).

Source: http://www.imore.com/yes-aluminum-iphone-6-and-6-plus-can-be-bent-if-too-much-pressure-applied

I would not recommend to stick it in the back pocket of a very tight jeans, and then repeatedly sit on it.


.DS_Store is a metadata file: it contains data about the files present in the folder.

You can delete the file without any worries, it will only delete some settings like icon position, file previews etc. But Finder recreates the file instantly.

Since 250MB seems to be way too much to me, even if Finder will recreate the file, it will most likely be way much lighter (<1MB).


No Flagged email folder on iCloud browser?

There is no Flagged mailbox in the Mail "app" of iCloud.com. It also does not appear after flagging a message.

At present, you can:

use Mail.app (or another computer mail client)
use an iOS device to see the flagged mailbox that was introduced in iOS 6 for iOS devices.
ask Apple to add this to iCloud at http://apple.com/feedback


When MouseKeys are on, how do I click or move the mouse using AppleScript?

There are tons of command line utilities to do this... and I'd reckon that going this route's your best bet... One benefit? is that these solutions should work, irrespective of whether or not "mouse keys" are on, right?  One of my particular faves is cliclick

Cliclick” is short for "Command-Line Interface Click". > It is a a tiny shell / Terminal application that will emulate mouse clicks or series of mouse clicks (including doubleclicks and control-clicks) at arbitrary screen coordinates.
Hence, it is a tool for automating / scripting things that cannot otherwise be scripted (for instance, using AppleScript). Other than GUI Scripting, it does not require "Access for assistive devices" to be activated in the System Preferences.

Usage:
$ cliclick c m

will "control-click" the current mouse location, but you can also specify the coordinates, shift-click, double-click, etc.  It can also return the coordinates of the mouse with a -q argument, and return the mouse to the original location (when specifying coordinates) with the -r argument.
In your case.. I guess you'd just...
do shell script "cliclick c m"
from inside your AppleScript / Workflow / whatever...
There's a GREAT post on this subject on MacWorld's site (née Mac OS X Hints) - that I've gleaned lots of good info from, over the years.  If you don't care for my answer you will surely find a solution you DO like, there... there's hacks to make everyone smile - from an Automator freak = to a grumpy C diehard.
Update:
There do seem to be some ways - to "do it" in AppleScript.. but they all seem to require knowing where your mouse is... which i assume you don't.  So in an embarrassingly nerdy play for some rep... I wrote this..
do shell script "python -c 'import sys, time; from Quartz.CoreGraphics import *;

def mouseEvent(type, posx, posy):
  theEvent = CGEventCreateMouseEvent(None, type, (posx,posy), kCGMouseButtonLeft);
  CGEventPost(kCGHIDEventTap, theEvent);

def mouseclickdn(posx,posy):
  mouseEvent(kCGEventLeftMouseDown, posx,posy);

def mouseclickup(posx,posy):
  mouseEvent(kCGEventLeftMouseUp, posx,posy);
  ourEvent = CGEventCreate(None);
  currentpos = CGEventGetLocation(ourEvent);
  print currentpos[0];
  print currentpos[1];
  mouseclickdn(currentpos.x, currentpos.y);
  mouseclickup(currentpos.x, currentpos.y)'
"

What the hell is it?

AppleScript calls 'do shell script'.
Which then calls Python - with a command line argument (-c) = that's been escaped and cajoled = to cooperate with A/S.
Python then "imports" CoreGraphics/Quartz, etc.
And defines some Cocoa-API/PyObjC methods for "dealing with" the mouse.
Python "figures out" where the mouse is.
And clicks! (down, then up)
As a bonus, it returns the coordinates of the mouse, 'if you were interested_.

Works 100% and isn't even THAT slow. Hope you like it!
Edit:
Here is the BASH one-liner, for purists / A/S haters.
echo -e "import sys, time; from Quartz.CoreGraphics import *\ndef mouseEvent(type, posx, posy): theEvent = CGEventCreateMouseEvent(None, type, (posx,posy), kCGMouseButtonLeft); CGEventPost(kCGHIDEventTap, theEvent);\ndef mouseclickdn(posx,posy): mouseEvent(kCGEventLeftMouseDown, posx,posy);\ndef mouseclickup(posx,posy): mouseEvent(kCGEventLeftMouseUp, posx,posy);\nourEvent = CGEventCreate(None); currentpos = CGEventGetLocation(ourEvent); print currentpos[0]; print currentpos[1]; mouseclickdn(currentpos.x, currentpos.y);\nmouseclickup(currentpos.x, currentpos.y);" | python


⌥ alt/option should be held right after pressing the power button including during the boot chime until Startup Manager is shown (https://support.apple.com/kb/HT202796). Holding the key only once the chime has happened may be too late.