How to find out the TeamID of installed apps in macOS High Sierra/Mojave

See this site and this one for some background.

If you’re trying to find out this info to create profiles for managed Macs to handle new security restrictions when installing kernel extensions, there are numerous discussions on JAMF and Meraki user and support fora.


How does an iOS device (iPad or iPhone) receive “push” notifications?

From the Apple Push Notification Service documentation:

  Each device establishes an accredited and encrypted IP connection
  with APNs and receives notifications over this persistent connection.

This means it uses some sort of socket-based persistent connection. It could be its own proprietary protocol, or WebSocket, etc. The "periodic actions" you're asking about are usually implemented in these protocols at the lowest level possible using TCP/IP sockets and are being constantly polled for new data on the socket. When the data is finished being read off the socket, an event is fired off to go perform some action such as display a notification on the device.

To further explain, the way sockets work is your device makes a connection to a remote server, the remote server pushes data to your device and gets put into the socket's buffer, then your device reads the socket's buffer and does something with the data. The moment the data gets pushed to your device, your device will process it. This is because your device is checking for new data on the socket's buffer all the time. It tries to read data, and if it gets data, it sends it off to get processed and then tries to read data again; if it ever doesn't get data, it just tries to read data again - forever. If the connection to the remote server ever gets disconnected, it just tries to connect again until it succeeds.

The code documentation I linked earlier is taken from Boost's ASIO library which is widely used for sockets in C++. It's implementation and usage can be simplified as follows:

01 start program
02 try to connect to server by using a socket
03 if not connected to server, goto 02
04 try to read data on socket
05 if data was read, process data
06 goto 03

In step 03 above, the device knows when you're offline and won't attempt to connect again until you get back online (the device sends out an event when you connect to the internet, so it will all happen instantly).

When no data was read in step 04 above, it immediately tries to read it again without waiting (assuming you're still connected to the server). It takes a very small amount of processing power to repeatedly try to read data on the socket, so there's no need to worry about battery or wasted resources (see @malhal's answer here for a better explanation on this and also how it works when the device is sleeping).


Delete the JAMBOX from the Bluetooth Prefs Pane in System Preferences.


How can I abort a stalled in-progress app update?

This is addressed several times on the Apple Forums.  It is a common problem.  I will list a few of the answers that have worked for others. Before starting, do the obligatory iPad reboot.

1) From the iPad desktop click the stalled app. It will either restart the update process or report the "update failed". If it fails you will then be able to restart the update from within iPads App updater.

2) If you have a desktop Mac, from iTunes go to menu Store > Check for Available Downloads. This should download the updated App to your iTunes. Then re-sync with your iPad.

3) Delete the app from your iPad then reinstall.

I found that option 1 worked flawlessly for me.


Very Slow Download Speeds from Apple Applications (Safari and Mac App Store)

Seeing as others are mentioning this issue might be related to a specific ISP, try enabling a VPN and re-running the download.

This mightn't be a long-term solution, but it should help you identify if the issue is the ISP performing traffic shaping App Store packets.


Can't get picture from my mid '09 13" MBPro to a Vizio TV using a display port to HDMI adaptor

I have MBPro and MacMini with some noname (fitTek) DP to HDMI adapter and it works fine.

Try to configure resolution to be optimal for External display or to extend it (use as two monitors).

To be honest I always tried over my Onkyo Receiver- never tried directly into TV


You should have one AppleID per person that you use for iCloud, Notes, Contacts, Mail, Calendar and to-do's. You then pick one of these ID's to buy things in iTunes and the App store. You probably want to use the ID you have used to purchased music and apps with up until now.

So setup your wife's iDevice(s) with her new AppleID. When you are done, go into Settings/Store and change the AppleID you to your existing ID (only in the store).

Now you each have your own iCould but everything you buy can be shared between the both of you.


Query Apple's Servers for Update Using Script?

Apple has pages up beneath https://support.apple.com/en_US/downloads/ios for each major iOS release. Looking at About iOS 13 Updates one can see an overview of all available iOS13 versions.

In the HTML source this is coded as

iOS 13.4.1

 &nbsp;&nbsp;

iOS 13.5

 &nbsp;&nbsp;

iOS 13.5.1

 &nbsp;&nbsp;

So if you are willing to adapt your script with each major release of iOS/iPadOS you could use

curl -s "https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT210393" | \
    sed -n '/\/library\/content/s|.*width="76">\([^<]*\)<.*|\1|p' | \
    tail -1

to get the most recent version available (iOS 13.5.1 right now).

sed -n runs sed suppressing any printing output unless specifically told so
/\/library\/content/ applies the following command to all lines matching /library/content
s|STRING-TO-MATCH|REPLACEMENT| does pattern-based string replacement
.*width="76">\([^<]*\)<.* takes the whole line and puts the part between width="76"> and the following < into \1
\1 just replaces the whole line with the content of \1 (which in this case is the version number)
p prints the result to stdout

This obviously matches (and prints) every line (just leave out the tail to check) so at the end we just take the last line.

What changes for sure with each major release is the URL, what might change is the code to find and extract the relevant content from the page. The sed/tail combination above works for iOS12 and iOS13 at least.

PS: You could avoid tail by running

curl -s https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT210393 | \
    sed -n '/\/library\/content/{s|.*width="76">\([^<]*\)<.*|\1|;h;}; ${g;p;}'

but this makes it hard to read for most people :-)


Use password window with script code in Terminal on macOS

You can use AppleScript to perform a sudo with a GUI.

do shell script "…" with administrator privileges

In ‘…’ insert a command to be executed as sudo, for example a path to your script.

To run this from Terminal, you can use osascript.

osascript -e 'do shell script "…" with administrator privileges'


How do system services modify protected directories with system integrity protection

Time Machine backup protection isn't related to System Integrity Protection — SIP is for protecting system files. Instead, TMSafetyNet.kext is responsible for enforcing protection of backups and permitting Time Machine to make changes only.

You can edit backups using the ‘bypass’ CLI tool.

sudo /System/Library/Extensions/TMSafetyNet.kext/Contents/MacOS/bypass

Append the tool you want to use at the end as if you were using it normally, for example:

sudo …/bypass rm -rf /Volumes/Backups/Backups.backupdb/path/to/folder

This protection of backups predates the introduction of SIP, but I imagine the file protection feature of SIP was inspired by how the Time Machine backups protection works, so they have their similarities.


Accept/Maybe/Decline Missing in Apple Mail

Open the Contacts app, select your own email address in the list of contacts. In the menu on top of the screen, go to "Card" -> "Make this my card". Reload calendar. Then it should work, you will get a notification popup with accept/decline buttons. (I just had the same problem, on a Mac running Yosemite)
Source


Facebook will actively terminate your connection if you log-in from any other client like the Facebook web, or your mobile phone.

Even with just one client logged in, you should expect Facebook to close the connection anyway. This happens with everything I've tried, libpurple based clients (Admium, Pidgin on Linux...) gets disconnected now and then. Those clients do silently reconnect. For iChat, as you suggested, chax can accept the dialog for you.

IMHO, It seems to me that Facebook is still struggling to make their chat service stable.

EDIT:
IF you want to reconnect without using chad, you can edit your crontab (using crontab -e) and add:

*/5 * * * * osascript -e ‘tell application “System Events” to if (processes whose name is “Messages”) exists then tell application “Messages” to log in’

This will make sure iChat stays connected, telling it to reconnect every five minutes.


How do I close a Safari alert that's taller then the screen?

Sorry, but there are very few things you can do:

Force restart safari and hope it doesn't re-open this page.
Try disabling Wi-Fi and keep pressing enter.

Also, I believe the latest Safari updates contain a fix for this type of malware.


How can I install Mac OS 10.4 (Tiger) on a Mac without a DVD drive?

If you are looking for old MacOS Versions you can go to the download site of https://developers.apple.com and get an old version of MacOS. I didn't see your particular 10.4 Version, but I did see 10.3.9 and 10.5 Leopard.
The different downloads can be found here. You can download them to your desktop and install it.


This answer applies to Yosemite (OS X 10.10). If you are using El Capitan (OS X 10.11), then you would be better of installing rEFInd in a EFI partition.

In your example, the command would be as shown below.

./install.sh  --alldrivers  --ownhfs  /dev/disk0s5.

I assume disk0s5 has been formatted "Mac OS Extended (Journaled)". I don't think I would use a 17.1 GB partition. The rEFInd partition on my Mac is 134 MB in size.

If you need to write to disk0s5 while booted to Ubuntu, you may have to disable journaling. This usually happens when you need to modify refind.conf.

To turn journaling off, do the following using the Disk Utility application.

Highlight the partition.
Press and hold the "alt/option" key.
From the menu bar select "File->Disable Journaling"
Release the "alt/option" key.
You may have to quit and reopen the Disk Utility to see the change.

To turn journaling on, you need to highlight the partition and click on the "Enable Journaling" button. To see the change, you may have to quit and reopen the Disk Utility application.


Transfer app and data from iphone 5s to iphone 6s

Given the way online banking is designed you shouldn't need to copy local data for the app, as the app is usually just a client for their website. You should be able to simply download a fresh copy of the app on your newer iPhone, sign in to the app, and load all of the necessary data from their servers (recent deposits/withdrawls/transfers, share account info etc. would all be kept on their end and simply sent to your phone temporarily over the network when the app requested it, unless that is your bank uses a very unorthodox device-locked system, which seems both unlikely as well as unreasonable behaviour for a bank.).


Why do all of the .dmg files I download end up on my desktop?

If you mean volumes that are shown after you mount dmg files, you can uncheck this checkbox:

You can eject volumes from Finder's sidebar or by selecting their icons and pressing ⌘E.


Windows 7 Bootcamp not recognising devices

Is your Windows 7 64-bit? If so, you might want to install the drivers in the Mac OS X DVD.

D:\Boot Camp\Drivers\Apple64.msi


File transfer between iPhone XR & USB flash drive using lightning cable & female-to-female USB connector?

This is not likely to work.  The Lightning port on Apple devices work in many ways like the mini-USB On-The-Go ports from older phones and USB-C ports on newer phones.  This means it can act as a USB host or device, just the means by which an iPhone determines which mode it should be in is different than how devices with USB-OTG ports do.

In USB device mode, which happens with a Lightning to USB-A male cable, the iPhone provides no power to the cable.  This means that a female to female adapter which connects the data and power lines will not power the flash drive, and the flash drive will not have power to do anything.  Connecting both to a powered hub so that both the phone and flash drive have power will still leave this USB bus with no host to initiate any communications.

It's unlikely any software on the iPhone will resolve this because the hardware on the phone is simply not made to act as a host when the hardware tells it to go into device mode.

USB from 1.1 on up was made to allow for host-to-device communications and what you describe is a device-to-device connection.  USB 2.0 allows for ports to be switched into either host or device mode, but this is done in hardware.  If there is a means to override this in software then it is violating the spec and could result in damaged hardware, if someone could find the software for this then you run the risk of damaging your iPhone the next time you try to charge it.  USB 3.0 allows for host-to-host communications with the right kind of cable and software but the flash drive is simply not going to act as a USB host.

To make this work will mean violating the USB spec, and running the risk of permanent damage to your phone.  There's going to be at a minimum software checks in the iOS to stop this from working, and quite likely the hardware in the iPhone simply will not enter host mode if it sees a USB-A male cable connected.


Set Spanish Layout to an external keyboard

Usually, to make the OS match your keyboard, you go to System Preferences / Language & Text / Input Sources and check the box for what you want, in your case you should try Spanish ISO or perhaps Spanish.

Checking Show Input Menu in Menu Bar will display a Flag menu at the top right of the screen, under which you'll be able to select between your preferred keyboard layouts.

If neither Spanish ISO nor Spanish match your hardware, you can make a custom layout using Ukelele

Whatever layout you choose, it applies to both internal and external keyboards.


Contacts diff between iCloud and Google / Merge contacts into Google

So apparently You can just export your iCloud contacts in Contacts.app (CMD+A then Export → Export vCard…) and then import this file into Google contacts.

Import is done from Other → Import… . This will create a lot of duplicates, which you can resolve by Other → Find and Merge duplictes… . I don't have the UI in English, so I translate name of the UI buttons from my head.


How to add BlockComment extension for Xcode 11?

I found this link to app support at the bottom of the app store page you linked. That should be a go-to place always.

https://github.com/superk589/BlockComment

  from mac App Store

  Run the application at lease once, then close it.
  Go to System Preferences -> Extensions -> Xcode Source Editor and enable this extension
  Reopen Xcode and you can find this extension from Xcode menu.


Playing music from the iPhone wirelessly to a stereo that doesn't support Bluetooth

The Sony Ericsson MBR-100 is a bluetooth adapter that should work.


Line Height with the built in OSX Font Panel

This is Fontbook. It is simply a font library, not where you manipulate fonts. You do not define font properties there:

  The Font Book application lets you install, remove, view, organize,
  validate, enable, and disable fonts. Fonts are styles of type that
  your computer uses to display and print text. OS X comes with many
  preinstalled fonts.

The programme you are using will (or will not) have the tools to format fonts. If your programme does not have this, you cannot set this in Fontbook.


You need temporary disable SIP (boot yo single mode by press CMD and R when reboot the system). Run the Terminal and enter

csrutil disable

Reboot and reinstall, in your screenshot, allow it!


Trap closure of app when its closed in the Multi-Tasking view

It depends on the state your app is in:

If your app is suspended (i.e. it is in the background and not currently executing), there's no way of detecting the user closing the app.

If your app is backgrounded (i.e. it is in the background and executing), then your applicationWillTerminate method will be called.


iPhone in Lost Mode Can I use same apple id on new phone

You can set up your new phone using a previous backup! You’ll need to use your same Apple ID and password, however I highly recommended you change your password once you set up the new phone, just Incase they do get into your old phone they would be able to mess a lot of things up!


Most effective way to backup contacts from iPhone to plain .csv - format

If your contacts are stored in iCloud, use this method:

Go to iCloud.com and log in with your Apple ID
Click the Contacts web app
Highlight all contacts (click the first contact entry, scroll to the
bottom of your list, hold the 'shift' key and click the last contact
entry)
Click the 'Settings' icon in the bottom left hand corner of the page
Select 'Export vCard'

The vCard should now be in your '~/Downloads' folder (if you haven't changed the filepath for new downloads from your web browser settings)

If you own a Mac (and it appears all of the contacts from your iPhone are also accounted for on your Mac) use this method:

Launch the Contacts application
Highlight/click a contact
Select all ('Edit > Select All' or press 'command + A'
Click 'File > Export vCard' and save it somewhere safe

Now you will just need to find a conversion tool to convert the vCard (*.vcf file) to a *.csv file. There are many free online options such as this one but I cannot attest to whether or not the online tools are secure (as in, I don't know if they store your file on their servers somewhere after the conversion process and if they can access the information for your contacts).

A safer option would to go with an actual application that doesn't send the information to any website servers to convert it. If you have a Mac I found one on the App Store that looks promising called vCard Editor for $5.49CAD but I personally have never used it to know how well it works.

As for backing up the Notes, you're not going to like the answer. Just remember - don't shoot the messenger!

There isn't a way to backup all of your Notes at once from an iPhone or iCloud.com. (What was Apple thinking?!) The 'Apple approved' method of backing up your Notes is to either email or text (SMS) each individual Note to yourself from your device. Yes, I'm being serious. This is even the method they walk you through if you call Apple Support for assistance.

Fortunately if you have a Mac and all of your iPhone notes appear to be accounted for on your Mac as well, there is a work around (although it will not be in *.txt format). On your Mac you can copy the '~/Library/Containers/com.apple.Notes/' folder to someplace safe in case you ever want/need to restore all of your notes at once.

Note: The copy/backup of that folder that you make doesn't update as you add new notes or delete some, so if you ever do need to restore that file you need to copy/backup all of your new notes first otherwise they'll get 'over-written' (for lack of better terms) upon restoration of that folder.


It looks like Carbon Copy Cloner cannot backup non-hfs+ volumes for you, which would be the main piece of software I would recommend for this. However, with the addition of Winclone, it seems you can do it without too much extra work.

I would first get an enclosure so I can work with both drives at the same time, but you don't actually have to, you just might need another Mac to be the middle man.

You will have to recreate the bootcamp partition on the new machine using the bootcamp assistant, but Winclone will automatically shove your Windows data back onto the volume, even if the sizes are different (of course, destination needs to be larger or same size as your previous boot camp partition).

So for the easy part:

Download CCC
Launch Carbon Copy Cloner
Choose the volume that you want to clone from the Source Disk menu
Choose a properly-formatted volume from the Target Disk menu
Set the Cloning method to "Backup everything"
Click the Clone button

This will put your Mac system on the new drive. Only use this method when it is staying in the same type of machine however, otherwise there can be issues.

Then, use Winclone to backup your Windows partition, and save it on the drive. The instructions below are lengthy so I didn't paste them that much, but overall its check 3 buttons, it will unmount the partition and save it as a file.

Next, switch the drive configuration, and boot into your normal system verifying all but the Windows partition is working. You then would need to run bootcamp, create a Windows partition, and follow the Winclone instructions to restore it from the file you created on your old disk.

https://www.macworld.com/article/131253/2007/12/winclone.html
https://gigaom.com/2010/01/12/how-to-image-os-x-and-boot-camp-to-a-new-mac/


Repair Time Machine sparsebundle that will no longer mount

I have a write up on how to try and repair NAS-based sparsebundle errors on my blog.  In summary:

hdiutil attach -nomount -noverify -noautofsck /Volumes/{name of your disk}/{name of}.sparsebundle

You will then see something like

/dev/diskx Apple_partition_scheme
/dev/diskxs1 Apple_partition_map
/dev/diskxs2 Apple_HFSX

Where x is the disk id for the external disk. x might be 2, 3, 4 or
higher. You are interested in the one labeled Apple_HFSX or Apple_HFS.
fsck_hfs -drfy /dev/diskxs2 using whatever relevant device was located in Step 1.

Hopefully, you will eventually see

  The Volume was repaired successfully

hdiutil detach /dev/diskxs2

However, since OS X 10.6.3, Time Machine will refuse to write to a destination volume that fails its verification.  Even if the process above succeeds in recovering the backup, you may still need to remove the black marks that Time Machine wrote when it failed verification.

Unlock the sparsebundle

chflags -R nouchg /Volumes/{name of your disk}/{name of}.sparsebundle

Move it back to its original location

mv /Volumes/{name of your disk}/{name of}_YYYY-MM-DD.sparsebundle /Volumes/{name of your disk}/{name of}.sparsebundle

At the top level directory of the sparsebundle, edit the file com.apple.TimeMachine.MachineID.plist.

Remove

<key>RecoveryBackupDeclinedDate</key>
<date>{whatever-the-date}</date>

Change

<key>VerificationState</key>
<integer>2</integer>

to

<key>VerificationState</key>
<integer>0</integer>


How to recover photos from an iPhone 3G?

Mac - iPhoto

Windows - Photo Gallery, part of Microsoft Essentials.

Both will offer to import photos from any connected iPhone

BTW, by default an iPhone will not appear as a device on the desktop, only in an app ready to 'talk' to it, iTunes, iPhoto etc.


The calendars are probably hidden.

Open Calendar.
Tap the Calendars button on the toolbar.

Show the calendars by tapping them.


How can I control my Apple TV from my Mac?

I managed to control Apple TV from Mac with 1Keyboard application (http://www.eyalw.com/1keyboard) that turns Mac OS X into a bluetooth keyboard. Another app that does this is Type2Phone, probably there are even more of them.


iOS 5 upgrade deleted calendar from iPhone and iPad

Can you do a full restore from the backup at iTunes should have made before upgrading? Right click on iPhone in iTunes (device window on left) and hit restore from backup


Are iMessage encryption keys sent to all listed devices even if they're broken?

It is not possible to send a key to a device that isn’t powered on, and/or not online. The device must “sign-in” with Apples servers before any data, such as a key, is transferred.


How do I access hidden or specific directories/paths from the finder?

⇧shift+⌘cmd+G

Opens the Go to the folder: dialog in the Finder window:

This will let you open any folder for the directory you type.


It's not a very difficult think to do, I used to work at the Genius bar and I can confirm that it takes roughly about 20 mins for me to do, but there's always a queue of repairs to be done so it's very unlikely they will get it done there and then for you, unless you get a nice Genius.
If I were you and if the computer is out of warranty, then I'd say to do it yourself.


Does anyone have any tips or best practices for using NFS mounted directories?

In Finder press:

⇧+⌘+G to go to a directory. Since the automounting of /net is handled by the operating system (via Autofs, see the technical white paper) it will mount the share.
⌘+K to open the Connections window, where you can even save your commonly accessed locations.

(see the Go menu)

But I don't think you can rename connections.


Can I control the order of keyboard layouts in the system menu?

Since you're using more than two input sources you'd be better off configuring a specific shortcut for each input source.

Without knowing the exact version of macOS you're running, there are a number of tools you could use to achieve this:

IMEShortcuts
MLSwitcher2
Karabiner

My suggestion would be to create the same shortcut and use digits (i.e. 1, 2, 3, and 4) to differentiate them.


I was certain this problem was related to two factor authentication on my Apple ID because problems started happening when I tried to login. After more investigation it turns out it was a font conflict problem preventing the UI from starting.

I found an error message in the console application regarding NSString which, after a lot of googling indicated a font problem. I then cleared the font cache and reset all non standard fonts in font book and restarted OSX. The app now works


ITunes volume noticeably lower than browser volume

Perhaps you're not aware that there is a volume slider on the iTunes window?

Also, Are you using an Equalizer? (Window -> Equalizer)

Change the preamp setting if you feel it is too quiet.


Set inherited permissions on iLifeAssetManagement?

I would try to avoid ACL's: they are tricky and often behave unexpectedly.

If I were you, I would try stick to standard UNIX permission, following these guidelines:

Create a user group (say, MeAndWife)
Make sure users Me and Wife are the ones and only members of MeAndWife
Change group ownership of sub directory to MeAndWife by something like chgrp -hR MeAndWife '/Users/Wife/Library/Application Support/iLifeAssetManagement/assets/sub'
Grant the owning group members the same permissions which are granted to the owning user: this may be obtained in several ways, but one that I like is by running find '/Users/Wife/Library/Application Support/iLifeAssetManagement/assets/sub' -group MeAndWife -and -perm -u=r -and -not -perm -g=r -exec chmod -h g+r {} \; [this basically states: Find files/folders with owning group MeAndWife, for which owning user does have read permission, but owning group members do not; and give owning group members read permissions]. Of course you should repeat this step for write and execute permissions (just replace -u=r and -g=r with, respectively, -u=w and -g=w for write, -u=x and -g=x for execute).
Finally, I think that if you want to be able to navigate to the sub directory from your account, then you need to make the full path to your sub directory searchable by everyone. That means, run through chmod o+x '/Users/Wife/Library', chmod o+x '/Users/Wife/Library/Application Support', chmod '/Users/Wife/Library/Application Support/iLifeAssetManagement' and chmod o+x '/Users/Wife/Library/Application Support/iLifeAssetManagement/assets'

That should do the job: new files in sub should inherit group ownership (MeAndWife) and permissions (same as owning user). If you find that that is not the case, you could use launchd in conjuction with a very simple script to fix file permissions periodically (say, hourly).


Can I run a torrent client + Plex Media Server as "services"?

You can use launchd, tmux and this script to launch rTorrent as a daemon.

This post describes how to install rTorrent and run it as a daemon using tmux.
First, install software:

$brew install rtorrent --with-xmlrpc-c
$brew install tmux

Parameter –with-xmlrpc-c is needed to use GUI clients with rTorrent.
rTorrent needs terminal to run. We provide virtual terminal using tmux.
To autostart rTorrent create launchd sript and place it to

/Library/LaunchAgents/rtorrent.plist

The script:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN" "http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd">
<plist version="1.0">
<dict>
    <key>Label</key>
    <string>rtorrent</string>
    <key>ProgramArguments</key>
    <array>
        <string>/usr/local/bin/tmux</string>
        <string>new-session</string>
        <string>-s</string>
        <string>rtorrent</string>
        <string>-d</string>
        <string>rtorrent</string>
    </array>
    <key>KeepAlive</key>
    <true/>
</dict>
</plist>

Load script:

$sudo launchctl load -w /Library/LaunchAgents/rtorrent.plist
$launchctl list | grep rtorrent

If all is ok you will see something like this:

- 1 rtorrent
4868 - 0x7f872252ff90.anonymous.rtorrent

Now you can attach to tmux session and start using rTorrent:

$tmux attach-session -t rtorrent

To restart script unload it and load again:

$sudo launchctl unload -w /Library/LaunchAgents/rtorrent.plist
$sudo launchctl load -w /Library/LaunchAgents/rtorrent.plist

To view launchd logs run:

$sudo launchctl log level debug
$tail -f /var/log/system.log | grep launchd

The rTorrent installation is over, now you can install GUI client.
There is free client for Mac OS X called Nativa. It not very good, but you can try it. To use any client you need to add this in your .rtorrent.rc:

scgi_port = 127.0.0.1:5000

Source


How to restrict Internet, not just web, access for the guest account?

Please read this carefully and have another device with internet access, in case you are locking yourself out.

In OS X you will use the OpenBSD based tool pf which stands for "packet filter".

Helpful man pages are man pfctl and man pf.conf
You need sudo access.

Edit /etc/pf.conf to your desired needings:
An example pf.conf would be simple as this and look like this

## blocking rule
block out user guest

Now activate pfctl with sudo pfctl -e and load your config with
sudo pfctl -f /etc/pf.conf.

For checking the syntax of the config file you can use pfctl -nf /etc/pf.conf.
If you want to deactivate the firewall, pass the command pfctl -d.

Testing the new configuration is as simple as curl -I apple.stackexchange.com. The firewall should block this for you.

However, I'd be careful with restrictions. If you are losing your Mac or it gets stolen, the guest account is the only account which one will be has access too(hopefully) which in return should have access to the internet to track it down(if "Find My Mac" is enabled).


Check your profile files (~/.profile, ~/.bash_profile, etc) to see what is being run when you launch your shell and remove references to zsh. To see exactly what is being executed when you launch your shell, execute your shell with the -x option. Also make sure your Terminal shell is set correctly in Preferences.


How do I sync tags between two Macs using Google Drive?

The tags you see in the Finder that are associated with a file/folder are stored as extended attributes of that file/folder.

There is an excellent article which goes into some details about the portability/syncability of these extended attributes.  It suggests that Google Drive, amongst other cloud services, does not support the syncing of extended attributes, which is a pity. It lists three services which do support extended attributes, to varying extents, namely iCloud Drive (of course), Dropbox, and Resilio Sync.

I have personally found it effective when working with Google Drive to use workarounds to sync extended information. This includes different folder organization (e.g. red files in one folder, blue in other) or naming files differently. The exact way you'd do it is entirely based on the context of what you're trying to do, your goals, and whatever works for you.


Carbon Copy Cloner for your OSX partition, and Winclone for your Bootcamp partition. Winclone is now commercial software, but I believe you can still download older versions for free elsewhere.


Assign shortcut for "Look Up" in context menu

You could try adding the keyboard shortcut for "Look Up in Dictionary"

Once you have that set, you can add a dictation command (assuming you have advanced dictation enabled) by just selecting any text and speak the phrase "make this speakable" which will open this dialog box..

Use what ever phrase you want, then select keyboard shortcut in the drop-down menu and enter in the same shortcut you set in your system preferences.  Now you have a keyboard shortcut and a dictation command


I can't update my iphone 4 from ios 7 to ios 7.1.2

Have you tried doing it using iTunes after connecting the phone to a computer - Mac or a PC? That should work technically.
You should be able to set the phone up as new if everything else fails.

Don't rely on the OTA, especially coz it's the old version of the OS you'll be getting.


Is there a way to globally change the appearance of messages in Messages (Beta) for OS X?

Yes, there is:

Messages > Preferences > Messages

You can set the look and feel for incoming and outgoing messages here.


Will superdrive work on Macbook Air with Ubuntu?

This issue has been addressed on https://askubuntu.com/q/413882/48105. The OP doesn't report having successfully put his SuperDrive to work on Ubuntu. Here's my experience so far:

The MacBook Air SuperDrive does not work out of the box on Ubuntu 14.04
Installing sg3-utils through the Linux terminal and then running sg_raw /dev/sr0 ea 00 00 00 00 00 01 "wakes up" the drive. Now I'm able to insert media, view its contents in a file browser and eject the media.
DVD playback is not working. Not even the mighty VLC was able to reproduce it. However, I'm still able to rip the DVD.

You can learn more about the issue and how to automate this
wake up process here: http://techtalk.christian-moser.ch/wordpress/?p=517

I hope I can edit this soon and tell you can safely install Ubuntu on you MacBook Air and have SuperDrive work 100%. For now, it only seems to be able to open and browse the media files.


By default, Time Machine keeps the following backups:

Hourly for the current day
Daily for the past month
Weekly for all the other months

If there's space constraints then Time Machine will start to delete the backups, but otherwise it keeps them for as long as possible.

To get to the individual photos you will have to have iPhoto as the active window when you activate Time Machine from the menu bar. This lets you go back and see all of the photos. If you did it from the Finder it's more complex because iPhoto bundles its whole library into one big package.


What is this 'findmydeviced' in my location icon on the top menu bar?

"findmydeviced" is a daemon process that runs on OS X when you have enabled the "Find My Mac" option under the iCloud preference pane.

For some reason, it doesn't show up under "Security and Privacy" as an authorised system service (although this could be by design so that a non-Apple savvy thief wouldn't find it if s/he searched there).

If you no longer want to be able to track the location of your Mac via iCloud, you can uncheck the option by navigating to the iCloud preference pane. You may need to reboot in order for the daemon to unload fully.


iPhone vibrates in spite of "Do Not Disturb"

It's my understanding that this is by design.

Do Not Disturb mode is meant to be active when the phone is not actively in use. The idea behind it is that, if the phone is unlocked and you are working with it, you do in fact WANT to be notified of a new item.
However, when the phone is locked and dormant, the logic is that you no longer wish to be disturbed, and it will suppress vibration / notification indicators.

So for example, if you are sleeping, and DND is on, then it will remain silent, and not vibrate. If you roll over, pick up your phone to check messages, and it's active, the DND will still allow vibrate to indicate new messages while you are using it.


Applescript : generate a new list based on existing list

If you're wanting myNewList to return a list of lists I think you're trying to do:

set theList to {"Demo", "ok", "blabla", "demo2"}
set ColortheList to {"5cdf64", "FFFF00", "FF0080", "FF1000"}
set myNewList to {}

repeat with a from 1 to length of theList
    copy ({item a of theList, item a of ColortheList}) to the end of the |myNewList|
end repeat

return myNewList

A little fun with random number. You can modify the color selection and then randomly add to a list:

set theList to {"Demo", "ok", "blabla", "demo2", "foobar"}

set colorList to {"5cdf64", "FFFF00"}
set colorLength to length of colorList

set myNewList to {}

repeat with a from 1 to length of theList
    set colorPick to random number from 1 to colorLength
    copy ({item a of theList, item colorPick of colorList}) to the end of the |myNewList|
end repeat

return myNewList

If you're wanting a string approach try:

set theList to {"Demo", "ok", "blabla", "demo2"}
set ColortheList to {"5cdf64", "FFFF00", "FF0080", "FF1000"}
set myNewList to ""

repeat with a from 1 to length of theList
    set result to ({item a of theList, item a of ColortheList})
    set myNewList to myNewList & (result & " ")
end repeat

The above can be modified in the result. Let me know if I'm understanding you or if you're needing something different.


It’s up to app developers to update their menu bar items for Big Sur.
Previously, white text on the menu bar was only used in dark mode, but Big Sur uses the wallpaper to choose the foreground colour of the menu bar. App developers need to update their apps to correctly determine the foreground colour to use in Big Sur.


Erased Windows partition with Disk Utility still can see the EFI boot on the boot screen

The drives shown as (disk image) are temporary drives stored in RAM. These drive will disappear when you leave Recovery mode.

Chasing Ghosts

You have successfully removed all windows partitions from your disks, but you have not yet removed all files added during your installation of Windows. What is left are files in your EFI partitions. The ghost is being caused by the file efi/boot/bootx64.efi stored in one of the EFI partitions.

Open a Terminal window and enter the following command.

sudo diskutil mount /dev/disk0s1

From a Finder window, open the EFI disk. Next open the EFI folder. Remove any folders named Boot or Microsoft
When finished, enter the command below.

sudo diskutil unmount /dev/disk0s1

Enter the following command.

sudo diskutil mount /dev/disk1s1

From a Finder window, open the EFI disk. Next open the EFI folder. Remove any folders named Boot or Microsoft
When finished, enter the command below.

sudo diskutil unmount /dev/disk1s1

If you booted to Recovery Mode or wish to just use a Terminal window, then enter the commands given below.

sudo  diskutil  mount  disk0s1
cd  /Volumes/EFI
rm  -fr  EFI/Windows
rm  -fr  EFI/Boot
cd  /
sudo  diskutil  unmount disk0s1
sudo  diskutil  mount  disk1s1
cd /Volumes/EFI
rm  -fr  EFI/Windows
rm  -fr  EFI/Boot
cd  /
sudo  diskutil  unmount  disk1s1


The script you posted is a pretty good base for some edits. The second part is AppleScript, and iTerm2 offers a nice interface with it.

First, create a script (let's say ~/newiTerm.sh) and put the following content

#! /bin/bash

# ugly escaping: for apple script \ and " need to be escaped, whereas %q takes care of all bash escaping
declare -a args
mydir=`pwd`
mydir=$(printf '%q' "$mydir")
mydir="${mydir//\\/\\\\}"
args[0]="cd ${mydir//\"/\\\"};"
for a in "$@" ; do
    x=$(printf '%q ' "$a")
    x="${x//\\/\\\\}"
    args[${#args[@]}]="${x//\"/\\\"}"
done
mArgs=${args[@]:0}

osascript <<EOF
set cdScript to "$mArgs"
tell application "iTerm2"
    set newWindow to (create window with default profile)
    tell newWindow
        select
        set _session to current session
        tell _session
            write text cdScript
        end tell
    end tell
end tell

Then, go to Qt Preferences ( ⌘, ) > Environment > System > Terminal and set the value to ~/newiTerm.sh

Works well for me.

Cheers


How do I grant a second user complete access to a user's Home folder?

This appears to do the trick:

cd /Users/UserTwo
sudo chmod -R +a "user:UserTwo allow list,add_file,search,delete,add_subdirectory,delete_child,readattr,writeattr,readextattr,writeextattr,readsecurity,file_inherit,directory_inherit" ./
sudo chmod -R +a "user:UserOne allow list,add_file,search,delete,add_subdirectory,delete_child,readattr,writeattr,readextattr,writeextattr,readsecurity,file_inherit,directory_inherit" ./

As long as you apply these specific ACL entries for both users, everything seems to work properly. You don't want to give other permissions (like writesecurity) because those are best kept as administrative functions.


Enabling location services for Exposure Notification Availability Alerts

For "Availability Alerts" to be enabled, I believe you need to have 3 settings turned on:

Location Services
Location Alerts
Significant Locations

It looks like you might not have "Significant Alerts" turned on.  Go to Settings -> Privacy -> Location Services -> System Services and turn that on.

Image courtesy of MacObserver.


BootCamp 5 + Windows 8 troubles (unsupported hardware?)

Note that the 13" MacBook Pro, mid-2010 is NOT supported.  If you have a 15" or 17" model, then you should be able to update to OS 10.8.3 (DO NOT do this if you have a 13" model) and get Boot Camp 5.

Download link for 10.8.3 (only if you have a supported Mac): http://support.apple.com/kb/DL1640

If you have a 13" model and you've updated to 10.8.3, you may be out-of-luck unless you downgrade back to 10.8.2.

As of 10.8.3, they've added checks to the OS (and, it seems, bootloader) to check for a Windows 8 disc.

If your device is unsupported (see link [2] at the bottom), BootCamp Assistant will refuse to help you, stating instead that "Windows 8 is not supported on this Mac."

You can still manually resize the HFS+ partition (the one that Mac OS X is installed on) via the Disk Utility.

However, from my experience, trying to boot to the "UEFI" Windows 8 disc manually (by holding Alt/Option when turning your Mac on) just results in it loading into the Mac OS. (Preventing a Windows 8 install.)

I downgraded to 10.8.2 and was once again able to install Windows 8.

As far as the BootCamp drivers in Windows 8:

Regardless of whether you use the BootCamp 4 drivers (for Windows 7)
or manage to obtain the BootCamp 5 drivers, you will need to
navigate to the "\BootCamp\Drivers\Apple" folder in an Explorer
window in Desktop mode.
Next, go to File -> Command Prompt -> Open command prompt as
administrator.
From there, type ".\BootCamp.msi" to launch the installer.

This should get around any "unsupported machine" issues.

Final note if you have NVIDIA graphics:
Boot Camp 4's NVIDIA drivers are NOT COMPATIBLE with Windows 8.
These will likely result in your screen going black until you restart.  At which point, you should go to NVIDIA.com and download the latest drivers.
You can, potentially, stop these from being installed by using the Task Manager and choosing "End Task" on any NVIDIA installation during the Boot Camp 4 install.

Hopefully, this will help you get around Apple's attempt to force you to buy a new computer.

Official Apple Info:
[1] Apple's Boot Camp \ Windows 8 FAQ: support.apple.com/kb/HT5628
[2] List of which Macs support Boot Camp 5: http://support.apple.com/kb/HT5634


Linking to a box or other drawing object is the easy thing to do. It's not a true link to text like you asked, but maybe a small object surrounding the text would be worth the hassle.

Now on to the easy option:

Select any object / shape that exists in the canvas/layers picker (or is visibly selectable).
Select the inspector control if the right inspector pane is not visible (click on the circle with an i in it)
Select Properties (the blue gear below)

* Open the action triangle (if needed) and select @ Open a URL and paste in the link you wish to have linked

.


Samba issues (deadlocks and instability) in OSX 10.10.1?

I've had similar problems compared to what you're describing, although it sounds like your problems are worse. It's very common based on what I've read and there's no cure. The issue is that Apple isn't using the Samba software but rather their own version. Here's my experience, FWIW:

SMB volumes were slower for me on Mavericks and older on these machines. Upgrading to 10.10.2 has sped it up and made everything work much better.
The shares are still very slow. One very large share performs much like you're describing at times. But other smaller ones are fairly managable, albeit frustrating.
We use Path Finder to connect to our shares, not Finder. This may be superstition on our part, as I don't know if it is actually doing anything different. But it does seem to give us fewer crashes.
DF in the terminal does not create the issue you have, it just lists like normal.
I have upgraded the RAM, but the hardware is older. One Mac Pro 2008 model has 8GB while another has 16GB. I've seen machines have a slow finder when they don't have enough RAM, but the problem is the software. Unfortunately, upgrading the RAM was the only solution I had to improve performance.
Windows shares may not list as slowly as my Linux NAS, but I have no benchmarks to prove that. (That would make sense if both weren't using Server Message Block.)

If none of this information helps you, may I ask if you've tried a fresh install?

As for me, I'm very interested in compiling Samba from source providing I can find enough support.


Is an iPhone still carrier activated after factory reset?

Yes, the factory reset deletes all contents and restores your phone to its newly-bought condition but other than that, you can still call/text whoever you like.


Command+O  this opens a dialogue with the current file.
Select the file, and press Command+R, this reveals the file in Finder.
In Finder, select the file, and press Option+Command+C, this copies the full path to the Clipboard.


Dynamically adjust image canvas for images

You can use Patina app (http://www.patinaapp.com/) in MAC.

This costs around 3.5 euros but it closely resembles MS Paint of Windows OS in terms of being able to dynamically resizing image canvas, adding text, etc

Sadly, they do not have a trial version to try it out beforehand. But I bought it and it seems fine as of now


Reading the help pages I would assume that prs stands for public range comma-separated and prn stands for public range binary network-byte-order format.

The entry(ies) go(es) to the authoritative DNS-server which is not necessarily your (internal) DNS-server.

The purpose of the entries (of the public hosts or network ranges) in the zone file is to introduce your caching server and then redirect any of the service queries (e.g. updates) of the other hosts to your caching server.

Rough example:

Your public host             ---update request-->                            Apple Update Server
Apple Update Server      ---reverse DNS look up--->                 auth. DNS server
Auth. DNS server            ---domain name/_aaplcache._tcp---> Apple Update Server
Apple Update Server      - determines the responsible caching server
Apple Update Server      ---sends public ip of caching server---> your public host
Your public host             ---update request-->                            your caching server


Mavericks calendar events longer than 3 hours

I use the + quick event button which is the same as Command-N to enter:

meeting from 10am to 5pm on thursday

It makes blocking specific times quite easy using Calendar app. I also often use the week or day view and create a default event and drag the bottom of the event to the end time.

Lastly, I select the hour when I mouse to raise the quick interval drop down and rather than use the mouse to change the end time, just type the hour and tab to the minutes field if necessary.


How I can move the clock to the middle of the menu bar?

Unfortunately for you, the answer is: you can't. The way the Mac OS X Menu Bar is set up, Application Menus get added starting in the left hand corner (after the Apple menu) and going right; System and 3rd party Menu Extras get added from the right hand corner and go left. There's no way to absolutely position a menu on the menu bar; you can only change the order of the items.

As Tony mentioned in his answer, the user can reorder Menu Extras by dragging them while holding Command. Only the developer of an app can reorder the Application's menus. But there's no way to position anything in the center.


It's not a stock feature of the OS, but you might have some luck with third-party add-on BetterSnapTool, which mimics Windows Aero Snap features.


How to increase the size of the OS X user interface without lowering the resolution?

There is a feature that's currently experimental called HiDPI that may do what you want. Like the retina displays on the iPhone and iPad, HiDPI mode creates a "logical" resolution that's half the current resolution on your display but uses all the physical pixels to keep the image sharp. This results in all the user interface elements appearing much larger, but with no lack in clarity. For example, if you're outputting to a 1080p TV with a resolution of 1920x1080, the HiDPI resolution would be 960x540, and all the elements on the screen would be the same size as if you were outputting that physical resolution.

To enable HiDPI mode in Mac OS X Lion:

Download the "Graphics Tools for Xcode" download from Apple. This download requires you to enter an Apple ID, which you most likely have and can get for free.
Mount the DMG
Open the "Quartz Debug" app
In the menu bar, select "Window", then "UI Resolution"

Check "Enable HiDPI display modes"
You'll be prompted to log out and log back in. If multiple accounts are logged in, they must all log out for the change to work.
Once you log back in, go to System Preferences, then Displays. You will see the new HiDPI modes there.

For your 1080p TV, select "960x540 (HiDPI)"

P.S. If you're curious what HiDPI mode looks like, the screenshots I've taken are both in HiDPI. Click on them to see them full sized.


Yosemite when logged in will not connect to internet (but during system recovery mode will)

Resolved the issue by clean installing the OS.


What is the correct pentalobe screwdriver size for a Macbook Air Model A1370?

Based on information from iFixit, you need a P5 Pentalobe Screwdriver, which is 1.2mm, as shown in this MacBook Air 11" Mid 2011 Solid-State Drive Replacement guide to remove the lower case.

You need a T5 Torx driver for the SSD.


I wouldn't necessarily take Apple's word on how much of use you can get out of your iPhone given it's mostly marketing and reproduced in specific lab conditions. Here are some real world numbers from AnandTech's iPhone 5 review. The differences can be quite significant for instance, 4.55 hours on 3G and 8.19 on LTE.

Note that this is presumably for a brand new iPhone 5; if you have one that is more than a year old, it would probably be around 80-90% of it's maximum battery capacity.

Lastly, here are some ideas on maximising your iPhone's battery life:

Disable Location and Background App Refresh for Facebook
Disable Background App Refresh for Apps You Don't Care About
Stop Quitting Your Apps in Multitasking
Disable Push Email Temporarily (especially if you are using Exchange)
Disable Push Notifications for Apps That Annoy You

It may also be worth doing the test mentioned at the top of that blog post i.e.

  So here's the test: write down your usage and standby time, press the
  sleep/wake button (or lock button, as some call it) to put the device
  to sleep, and set the device down for five minutes. When you come
  back, take note of the change in time. If your device is sleeping
  properly, then the Standby time should have increased by five minutes
  and your Usage time by <1 minute . If your Usage time rises by more
  than one minute, you have a drain problem. Something is keeping your
  device from sleeping properly, significantly shortening the time it
  will last.

From my own experience, I've noticed that apps that utilise background app refresh in concert with location services tend to be pretty expensive in terms of battery usage. Dropbox and Downcast use these to upload photos and download podcasts in the background respectively - location services appear to be turned on all the time when these Dropbox/Downcast features are turned on. I turned off background app refresh and location services for both of these apps and have noticed quite significant improved battery life.


Why does Apple TV not stop my Mac from sleeping?

You might want to try going to

System Preferences
Energy Saver
Then set Display Sleep to never

If you find the need to put the display to sleep because you want to have the computer on and running for whatever reason then I would suggest going to the Screen Saver options and enabling Hot Corners. In that screen you can make the display go to sleep or trigger a screen saver by moving the mouse cursor to a corner on your screen.

Source: That is my current setup. No Display Sleep on unless I'm running a lengthy Time Machine Backup overnight.


Which carriers will my unlocked AT&T iPhone 4s work with?

You won't be able to use it on any CDMA networks.  T-Mobile is no problem.  Metro PCS has a big "bring your own device" headline on its site so I'd guess it's OK as well.


Install OS X on a MacBook Pro with empty SSD

⌘R only opens a specific preexisting partition on a hard drive that's already had OS X installed, so it makes sense that it wouldn't get you anywhere. You want to hold down Option as you press the Power button and watch the computer boot up. That tells the computer to list all the drives you can possibly boot from, and then you just select your bootable drive using the arrow keys and Return.


Your warranty will not be voided, as this does not violate any Apple agreements.


Parallels desktop keeps creating windows/ubuntu folders in launchpad

Turn the first one off and they won't show up in Launchpad:


How to prevent Google Drive File Stream from updating itself without permission?

I am answering this myself from my rather limited experience because there have been no responses and there is almost nothing about this issue on the web right now.
Google decided to merge the enterprise version of its desktop streaming app (Google Drive File Stream) into its personal desktop streaming app (Google Drive).   They did this by having their Drive Stream app upgrade itself without permission to the new Google Drive.  Nice.  But the new version does not work with El Capitan.  No warning, no instructions, nothing.
Several times, I re-installed the previous version, which would work until it caught on to what I was doing and would again upgrade itself into un-usability. I was hoping to find a way to stop it from doing so, but eventually had to give up.
I upgraded the OS on that computer to Sierra, which took quite a bit of doing, as it was one of the 2011 Macs with the overheated/blown graphics display processor which had to be hacked into working at all.  It took me days to sort out, and only to get this one app to run.
It bears stating that Google does not appear to honor Mac protocol in setting up their desktop streaming clients. The app doesn't appear in the dock.  It doesn't appear in the Force Quit window either, so when it hangs up, which in my case would hang up the entire OS, you can't get out of the program without launching Activity Monitor and force-quitting several unannounced background Google apps. It puts an icon in the menu bar without option and also puts an icon on the desktop without option (when running).
So in short, the answer to this problem is you just have to eat it and upgrade your OS to at least Sierra, because their new app combo is not compatible with El Capitan.  I still think that someone could come up with a fix for this, perhaps by hacking the app to tell the Mac OS that it will run on El Capitan, (because perhaps it could) or on fixing the app so it won't update itself without permission, its doing of which, to my mind, is outrageous.
I would welcome any comments at all or any methods that could be used to restore a Mac user's proper control of the situation.  Thank you for listening!


How to hide a photo in the new Photos.app

Select any [or more than one] photo.
Right click > Hide [number of selected] Photo


Reading large .mbox email files without importing to Mail?

You have to use a third-party app, on MacOS I haven't found any free ones (on Windows you have some free).
This one for example:
https://apps.apple.com/us/app/mbox-office-viewer-migration/id829623734

All messages in an .mbox mailbox are stored as plain text so you can also open it with any text editor.


Is it normal for LaunchD to write over 600 megs of data to /private/var/db/dyld/dyld_shared_cache_x86_64?

Yes, it is normal.

On macOS the system stores a combination of the most recent (i.e. highest version numbers) dynamic libraries (frameworks, etc.) in this cache file in order to speed up the launching of processes later on.

When switching from another OS (like Linux) it is normal that you have to get reacquainted with how the system works. As you'll learn, there's a quite big overlap conceptually between macOS and Linux. Most everything in macOS has a Linux counterpart and vice versa.

In this case the dyld_shared_cache is somewhat similar to the /etc/ld.so.cache file on Linux. On Linux this cache contains the most recent shared libraries, which are essentially the same as dynamic libraries on macOS.


Login with your AppleID in Settings > iTunes and App Stores and then run the App Store. Look in the Updates > Purchased tab for all the apps you can download.

In-app purchases can sometimes be re-enabled, but not all app developers handle this. Your milage may vary.

Make sure you go to Settings > General > Reset and Erase all Content and Settings before you turn in the loaner.


2nd Gen iPod (iOS4.x) using iPod keyboard

The original article by Andy Ihnatko can be found here: The iPad Keyboard Dock works with the iPhone 3GS! According to one of the commenters there:

  The iPad keyboard dock also works with my iPod touch 2G (8GB) running iOS4. Great!

But personally, I'm not sure how or why this would be a better solution than a Bluetooth keyboard.


You can send messages to a Contact Group - start to type the Group's name, then select when you see it in the list...


AirPort Express extending connects in the wrong order

I recently encountered the same issue and was able to resolve it by removing the Wifi connection in System Preferences > Network.

Here you can select the Wi-Fi interface from the left panel and click the "-" underneath this panel. Then, add back the Wi-Fi interface by pressing the "+", select Wi-Fi and attempt to connect to your desired network.

This should then place all devices in the correct order by connecting to the device that creates the wireless network as opposed to those devices that either join or extend it.

Best of luck.


git auto-complete branches with checkout alias

I have this in my .bashrc which works okay:

alias gco="git checkout"
__git_complete gco _git_checkout

If you open up that neat script you'll see method names like __git_checkout. You can get completion for each of those methods using this method.

Unfortunately, commands like git pull don't play nice when you try to tab complete the branch name (the second argument), for example given this alias:

alias gpl="git pull"
__git_complete gpl _git_pull

This behavior occurs:

gpl origin master
      ^      ^
 tab ok      doesn't tab


Macbook Pro 2017 Heating Issue while running Windows 10 on Bootcamp

The needn't worry over the core temperatures you've shown in your screenshots (47-50 degC). And your system will always run hotter when you are using Windows in Bootcamp... I don't know all of the reasons for this, but it's just "the way it's always been" on my Macs.

As for your questions, "I was wondering if this kind of stuff is normal. I'm worried if this is overheating and it might compromise the life of the Macbook for which i have spend a lot of money on.":

It's a well-known fact that heat adversely affects the life of electronics. But again, for the temperatures you've recorded, I wouldn't worry. You may find that when Windows 10 performs some compute-intensive tasks that the temperature goes a bit higher. Apple has some guidelines on temperature management. And here's a Q&A that provides additional information.


Texting is very sluggish on 2020 iMac running Big Sur

If it's just in Messages.app, I would check two things:

network traffic to/from the app,
try doing an 'inspect' of the process while it is exhibiting the behavior (in Activity Monitor). Do one before it has the problem, so that you have a baseline.
your keyboard connection (bluetooth or USB) and see if something else is interfering with it.

Since it's new, you should also definitely contact Apple, in case there's a hardware issue, which would be a warranty-covered problem. Also, their support specialists are quite good on the phone, in my experience; I've been happy to refer clients there and have not been embarrassed by the support they get. You are entitled to the support, you paid for it, enjoy it.


Can I simply make a partition on my Mac, install an OS to it, and boot from it via Startup Manner?

I don't think so. On my Mac, even though I don't have OS X (I think its all the same though) you don't have to use option to boot into Ubuntu, but any other OS like OS X you will have to use Option to boot into it.
EDIT : Ubuntu or anything like Linux WILL NOT show up in the Option menu. It just boots straight away to Ubuntu.


How can I show the battery as a percentage on my iPod Touch?

No iPod Touches can show the battery percentage at the top of the screen (unless you jailbreak them). There are apps in the App Store that will show the battery percentage when you run them, but obviously not all the time.

There's a discussion thread here: http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=1013295


How to remove one old python installation from a system with multiple (non-system) installations of python

From python docs noting that they seem to have hard coded 2.5 instead of the current version and is not that well written

  What you get after installing is a number of things:

  A MacPython 2.5 folder in your Applications folder. In here you find
  IDLE, the development environment that is a standard part of official
  Python distributions; PythonLauncher, which handles double-clicking
  Python scripts from the Finder; and the “Build Applet” tool, which
  allows you to package Python scripts as standalone applications on
  your system.

  A framework /Library/Frameworks/Python.framework, which
  includes the Python executable and libraries. The installer adds this
  location to your shell path. To uninstall MacPython, you can simply
  remove these three things. A symlink to the Python executable is
  placed in /usr/local/bin/.

so remove

/Applications/Python 3.1
/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/3.1
/usr/local/bin/python31 (I use a different install so this might be python3.1 or similar)


What to use on OS X Lion: OpenOffice.org, LibreOffice or NeoOffice?

Openoffice is effectively dead ofter Oracle bought Sun -- all the developers moved to LibreOffice, and, assuming you care about future enhancements and compatibility Libreoffice is the way to go now.  I used to use NeoOffice when it was the only native port of OpenOffice for OSX, but since LibreOffice has a maintained OSX port I just moved to LO.

I am on OSX 10.7.4, LO 3.5.4 and all works fine for me.


Tried a couple more things, and here's what worked: kill the Dock, then get it to restart.  I did this by doing killall Dock in the Terminal.  It didn't restart by itself, so e.g. Cmd-Tab didn't work to switch applications, my desktop had no background, and (of course) there was no Dock.

I launched the Dock again by going into System Preferences & clicking on the Dock pane.

Why did I try killing the Dock?  Because I also noticed that Exposé/Mission Control wasn't working either.  Some searching led me to this question, which suggested restarting the Dock.


Can I speed up iCloud photo sync between iPhone and Macbook?

When you take a photo from your iPhone, switch to the Photos app. At the very bottom of the Photos tab, you should immediately see the indicator Uploading…

If your MacBook is plugged in to a power source and/or has the Photos app open, it will download photos as soon as they are in iCloud.

Both your devices need to be connected to Wi-Fi for the aforementioned to occur.

The key is for you to open the Photos app on your iPhone. It used to upload as soon as you connected to Wi-Fi (possibly only if you had sufficient battery), but as of iOS 9 that no longer appears to be the case. I’m guessing this was done to keep from eating up your bandwidth while you may be doing something else.

If you don’t open the Photos app, your iPhone will upload new photos if it is connected to a power source and locked, and it has sufficient battery.

Update: Starting with iOS 10, I am once again seeing immediate uploads of photos from my iPhone when connected to Wi-Fi, whether I’m using the phone or not, and whether connected to a power source or not (might still need to be above 50% battery). Low power mode should be turned off too.


What's the PCI Compatibility for Mac Pro, Early 2008?

The everymac.com website reports the following (which basically is the same as Apple reports:

  This model has two PCIe x4 expansion slots and two PCIe 2.0 x16 expansion slots (in the default confugration one PCIe 2.0 x16 slot is occupied by the graphics card). Apple also reports that "all slots provide mechanical support for 16-lane cards [and supports] 300W combined maximum for all PCI Express slots."

Note: The two PCIe x4 expansion slots are actually PCIe 1.1 x4 expansion slots. PCIe 1.1 has the same data rate as PCIe 1.0.

Wikipedia offers a nice table which is repeated below.

Below is a quote from Wikipedia regarding USB 3.0.

  USB 3.0 adds the new transfer rate referred to as SuperSpeed USB (SS) that can transfer data at up to 5 Gbit/s (625 MB/s), which is about 10 times faster than the USB 2.0 standard.

Wikipedia also has the table shown below.

Almost everything made for PCIe and USB is as backward compatible as reasonably as possible. Which means some cards may work in your Mac, but not necessary at at a high enough speed to get the performance advantages of USB 3.

This OWC website offers a Allegro USB 3.0 4-Port card for $59 (USD) and explicitly states the card is for your model Mac. However, how the card preforms depends on the slot you use. Under "Bus Interface", the specifications state "PCI Express 2.0 x1", where "PCI Express means "PCIe" and "x1" means the card only has a single lane for data. According to the "PCI Express link performance" table, if you put the card in the PCIe 2.0 slot, then the transfer between the card and the Mac will occurs at 500 MB/s. According to the "USB 3.2 transfer modes" table USB 3.1 Gen 1 (or USB 3.0) transfers data a 625 MB/s. So the actual transfer rate to the Mac will be the lower of the two which is the PCIe speed of 500 MB/s. If you use one of the PCIe slots in your Mac, then the transfer rate will be only 250 MB/s.

This OWC website offers a Allegro USB-C 4-Port card for $149 (USD), which is also for your model Mac. Again, how the card preforms depends on the slot you use. Under "Bus Interface", this time the specifications state "PCI Express 2.0 x4", which means this card has a four lanes for data. According to the "PCI Express link performance" table, if you put the card in the PCIe 2.0 slot, then the transfer between the card and the Mac will occurs at 2 GB/s. According to the "USB 3.2 transfer modes" table USB 3.1 Gen 2 transfers data a 1.25 MB/s. So the actual transfer rate to the Mac will be the lower of the two which is USB speed of 1.25 MB/s. If you use one of the PCIe slots in your Mac, then the transfer rate will be only 1 GB/s. While this would not slow down a USB 3.1 Gen 1 (or USB 3.0) device, it would limit a USB 3.1 Gen 2 device from 1.25 GB/s to 1 GB/s.


NTFS drive is not mounted after changing /etc/fstab

Generally the mount command is not used under the OS X operating system. Apple has there own command called diskutil. This basically the command line version of the Disk Utility application. The command line version has more functionality than the UI version. If an external drive is recognized by OS X, it will show up under diskutil list as /dev/diskX were X is a positive integer. To mount a drive enter the following command.

diskutil mountDisk /dev/diskX

To unmount use the following.

diskutil unmountDisk /dev/diskX

Partition Y on disk X is denoted as /dev/disk/XsY as shown in diskutil list. To mount and unmount a partition use the following.

diskutil mount /dev/diskXsY
diskutil unmount /dev/diskXsY

The mount command can used to see if a partition is currently mounted. Just enter the command without any options.

Be default NTFS partitions are mounted as read only. I guess there is a way to mount without the protection of read only status, but from what I have read this is unsafe.

Companies such as Paragon offer software that allows OS X to write to NTFS volumes. I have never used such software.


Running a script as root and presenting a GUI to logging in users

Sockets - Involved but Tried and Tested

Your solution of two scripts talking through a socket is the tried and tested approach. We did this for Power Manager and it has worked reliably from OS X 10.3 – 10.11.

You can use a tcp or unix domain socket for this purpose.

In our situation, the daemon pmd runs as a computer wide process and the user session daemon pmuser runs once per user. They talk to share information that a computer wide daemon can not safely obtain and to perform actions within specific user sessions.

The computer wide daemon can detect when a user logs in. This is done through the SystemConfiguration API SCDynamicStoreKeyCreateConsoleUser.

The graphical script must be launched within the graphical user session; a launchd job in /Library/LaunchDaemons with the key value pair LimitLoadToSessionType: Aqua set will ensure this.

Depending on the information you need to gather from the user, I expect what you want to achieve is possible with Power Manager; feel free to get in touch.

launchctl's bsexec

Recent versions of OS X include a launchctl that promises what you need: the ability to launch a process within a user session. See How to launch a GUI application in another user's graphical session? for the details and likely problems you will encounter.

If you are deploying on OS X 10.10 and later, investigate launchd's new domain capabilities. A complete rewrite in OS X 10.10 opened up many as yet not completely documented options. The launchd mailing list is a treasure trove of information.


Is there an Arabic Easter Egg in Snow Leopard?

Sometimes when copying a large file, a temporary file will be created at the destination. The temporary file could be named <actual file name> <some additional random data>. Once the download completes, the temporary file is renamed to the actual file name.

I'm pretty sure Firefox behaves this way, but not certain whether Finder does. Also, I'm not sure why the suffix was in Arabic; perhaps the random data Apple uses is not limited to just A-Za-z0-9?

Interesting phenomenon nonetheless.


Twelve GB isn't too massive for an Outlook:Mac 2011 database.  Personally, my Outlook database at work is 20GB.

Make sure that your colleague isn't running out of disk space.  Outlook can have issues if there isn't sufficient hard disk space.  My rule of thumb is that I should always have a bare minimum of 10% of my disk free.  I'll also assume that you're up-to-date with both OS and Outlook updates.

If your colleague's Outlook content is exclusively stored in Exchange, an easy potential solution is to start afresh:

Create a new user on their Mac.
Launch Outlook.
Enter their Exchange credentials.
Let Outlook download everything from Exchange.

Since your colleague's account is so large, I would start this on a wired connection at the end of the day.  If all goes well, everything will be downloaded by the following morning, and you can see if Outlook still has the same issues.

This will also work if your colleague's Outlook content is exclusively stored in IMAP/CalDAV/CardDAV.  It won't work if your colleague has local content or if they are using POP.

If your colleague's Outlook content isn't exclusively stored in Exchange, try the following options:

Rebuild the Outlook database:

Quit all running applications.
Copy the existing Identity to the desktop (or any other location you prefer).
Hold down the Option key, and launch Outlook.
The Microsoft Database Utility will launch.  Select the Identity file and and click the "Rebuild" button.
Outlook will create a new Identity file.  The new file might be smaller than the old one, since rebuilding the database cleans up quite a lot of things.  Launch Outlook with the new database and see if you still have the same problem.

Create a new Outlook database:

Quit all running applications.
Copy the existing Identity to the desktop (or any other location you prefer).
Drag the folder ~/Microsoft User Data/Office 2011 Identities/Main Identity/ to the trash, and empty the trash.
Relaunch Outlook.  The dialog will reference Time Machine, and ask if you want to rebuild your database.  Click "Rebuild".

There are some additional Outlook database troubleshooting steps available in the (unofficial) Office for Mac Help site.  You could also try asking your question on the Outlook:Mac forums or the Mac Enterprise mailing list.  If you do post to another forum, you should include some additional information in your post, like OS version, Outlook version, and the email server that you're using.

After you have resolved this issue, it might be worthwhile to see if you can archive some mail.  If your colleague only needs to retain the emails in case they're needed, but doesn't actually refer to them very frequently, you could archive them.  I've seen a few different methods for this, such as creating an Identity per year.  This is outside the scope of your original question, so if this is something you're interested in, you can open another question and I'll answer there.


Does hard disk continue to run while sleeping?

It will almost never run while the computer is sleeping. Sometimes when you put the computer to sleep, the disk will run for a short time while doing "housekeeping". There are also options in the Settings for waking from sleep (thus starting the hard drive) for network access.

Closing the lid of a macbook will try to get it to sleep, but it may not always go there. If it does successfully sleep, then your drive should be inactive.


Using OSX 10.8 it is simply not possible at the moment, what you need to do is to access a Mac running 10.7 or lower and sync them to that Mac and move them to an IMAP notes account. Then, you can access the IMAP notes in 10.8 Notes app and drag them all to iCloud. The only manual part necessary is to remove the duplicate notes left "On your iPhone" - they need to be removed one by one (or simply left alone).

Details:

Turn off iCloud Notes sync (Settings -> iCloud -> Notes switch to Off)
Set up an IMAP account in Mail on both computers (running 10.7 and 10.8)
Set up iTunes synchronization with the Mac running 10.7 (Make sure to select to synchronize Notes in iTunes)
Synchronize with iTunes
Go to Mail in 10.7 and drag the notes "On your Mac" to the IMAP notes folder
Turn on iCloud Notes sync (Settings -> iCloud -> Notes switch to On)
Open the Notes app in 10.8 and drag the notes from your IMAP notes account to the iCloud notes account
(Optional) Switch to your "On my iPhone" notes account and remove all notes, one-by-one, in order to avoid confusion later.
On your phone, make sure that you are using the iCloud notes account (Notes -> Accounts -> iCloud) when using notes


Linking my mac to a monitor but my backlight has gone

A keyboard shortcut used to be cmd-F1. You may also try fn-cmd-F1.

Check this thread. It is rather old but has had recent updates.


My MacBook Air won't charge correctly : the light is green instead of orange

The first thing I would do is an SMC Reset.  According to Apple, one of the reasons to reset your SMC is...

To do a reset

Shut down the Mac.
Plug in the MagSafe or USB-C power adapter to a power source and to your Mac.
Using the built-in keyboard, press Shift Control Option on the left side of the keyboard, then press the power button at the same time.
Release all keys, then press the power button again to turn on your Mac

If you continue to have problems, I would then run an Apple Hardware Test and see if you can obtain any diagnostic info.


Installing VMware on MacBook - Free version

VMware Player is only avaiable for Windows and Linux, not OS X. To install Windows 8 on your Mac, you will need to purchase VMware Fusion.

From VMware Workstation Player (formerly known as Player Pro):

  VMware Player is the easiest way to run multiple operating systems at the same time on your PC.

You do have a couple of free options:

Virtualbox is a free program that will allow you to install Windows 8 alongside OS X in the same way that VMware Fusion works (you can run both OSs concurrently).
Apple's own Boot Camp software will allow you to install Windows in a separate partition. The downside to this is you have to reboot your computer to switch between OSs, but the upside is that you can run more graphically-intense programs (i.e. games) at native speeds.


What can other administrators access on my machine?

Short answer: Generally an administrator account can access and read any file on the computer. To protect files, either remove all untrusted admin accounts except for yours or encrypt the specific files you need protected with your admin password. Another admin can reset your password, but not see it to unlock things like your keychain. Of course a new password for encryption is ideal if you don’t trust another admin.

There are certain files within your account that are encrypted and can not be read without your password.

The main file I'm thinking of is the "Keychain" which may contain your iCloud password and any other passwords you've allowed Safari (or other apps) to remember.

As an IT system administrator myself I would recommend not to store personal data on your work computer that you don't want anyone else to see.

The computer may have backup software that's backing up all files on the computer - including your iCloud Drive.

Also remember that if you're fired, the computer may be taken away before you have a chance to remove your personal files.


Website gets blocked by webfilterproxyd even without website restriction

In case someone else stumbles on this as I did...

Deleting webcontentfilter.kext is actually deleting part of Parental Controls. kext is short for kernel extension. It is better to turn Parental Controls off than to wreck it.

What was probably going on is that you need to, in the main firewall (under Security, in System Preferences), allow incoming connections from that IP address. You may need to configure the firewall manually, if so, consult a complete tutorial.

Also, 49757 is not the port the request was coming from, it is the local port the request is attempting to connect to.


How to appeal rejection by Apple for Developer Enterprise Account?

How many employees do you have as an LLC that only just created their DUNS? A dozen? Installing your app on a dozen devices without enterprise license but just the developer license is no problem at all.

There have been a few cases recently where enterprise licenses have been abused to distribute malware, so Apple will have some rather high standards for enterprise licenses.


How do I close only one Google Chrome window in macOS using mouse?

File → Close Window (⇧⌘W).

⌘W closes the tab which will close the window if this is the last tab, but ⇧⌘W closes the window containing any number of tabs.

This menu and shortcut is standard macOS working in all tabbed apps implementing macOS tabs, and Google Chrome has applied this shortcut to their tab implementation.


Bought a selection of songs off iTunes, they are "greyed out" won't play, can't sync them

This may be a long shot, but were the ones that are greyed out in .MP3 format by any chance - notice the capitals?   If so, and you rename them to .mp3 in lower case via "Get Info" in Finder, you may, possibly, notice a change.
Good luck.


How do you list clients connected to OS X Server 10.8's VPN?

I put this command together to list connected IP address:

ps -ef | awk '/[p]ppd/ {print substr($NF,2);}'


Does Apple accept .app jars on the Mac App Store?

The question was asking about the Mac App Store, not the iOS App Store. Yes, Apple does accept Java applications into the Mac App Store if packaged correctly. Here are a couple links with more info:

Packaging for Distribution on a Mac

Getting Your Java 8 App in the Mac App Store


Why do I get "A program tried to load new system extension(s) signed by 'Benjamin Fleischer'"?

This seems to be a known issue with FUSE for OS X (and I guess sshfs uses that). Take a look here: https://github.com/osxfuse/osxfuse/issues/437

It is not a security issue per se, but just the system informing you that an app tried to load a system extension and that this extension was blocked (due to your system's settings). The question rather should be: Do you trust the people who wrote sshfs and FUSE enough (Benjamin Fleischer) to let their extension run on your system? If the answer is yes, then you can open open System Preferences -> Security & Privacy -> General and allow Benjamin Fleischer


“Unable to load photo, an error occurred while loading a higher quality version of this photo” error message in Photos (iOS)

I managed to fix it by logging into iCloud.com and downloading the photo from the website (as proposed by @X_841 in the comments).


How to limit system processes cpu usage?

Thos system processes respond to other apps that run, so your first step would be to isolate and identify what programs you have that cause high background system load.

It’s like racing a high performance car and seeing the tires are hot and fuel is being consumed rapidly - those all are the design intent when you press the accelerator to the floor.

It might make more sense to start with your actual workload than try and hobble or disable logging and sound output. Sorry for a side answer, but those processes sit at idle for the vast majority of installations and likely would on your system if you restart and some troubleshooting should show exactly which of your apps trigger this usage pattern.


Battery life is heavily dependent upon how you use the system. Things such as leaving screen brightness at maximum can have significant effect on how quickly power is drained from a charged battery. Applications such as running guest operating systems inside of a virtual machine can be I/O- and CPU-intensive tasks that will also reduce the longevity of a charge.

If you're running VMs with regular screen brightness, I'd say 5 hours of battery is about right.


Could not validate sizes – Operation not permitted. The operation couldn’t be completed. (OSStatus error 1.)

I think the "Operation is not permitted" may be caused by Disk Utility lacking the necessary admin privileges.

sudo /usr/sbin/asr restore --source BaseSystem.dmg --target /Volumes/MyVolume --erase

Should do the trick (terms and conditions apply)


How can I make Finder start not in "All my files"

You can change this in Finder > Preferences > General > New Finder windows show. I've set mine to my home directory, but you can also choose Other... and set a different directory


Attempting to send video on WhatsApp causes crash

Looking through your log I noticed a library called Unflod.dylib.

This is malware. You might want to remove it ASAP.

http://nakedsecurity.sophos.com/2014/04/21/new-ios-malware-with-a-funky-name-unflod-baby-panda/

Users on Reddit are suggesting it grabs your Apple ID and password and sends it to a server in China. So you might want to reset the password for your Apple ID too.

http://www.reddit.com/r/jailbreak/comments/23bdwr/beware_unfloddylib_sends_apple_id_and_password_to/

BTW At least one user on Reddit says it made their WhatsApp crash too. So removing this might stop the WhatsApp crashes.
http://www.reddit.com/r/jailbreak/comments/23b7qs/what_is_unflod_its_a_mobile_substrate_addon_that/cgve5aq


How to always use integrated graphic card in Macbook Pro

One option might be to use Cody Krieger's gfxCardStatus app and to select the integrated GPU from it. Doing that, Mac OS should only use the integrated GPU until you either switch it back to automatic or explicitly tell it to use the discrete GPU. Unfortunately, I don't know of a way to do this without gfxCardStatus, but there is probably a way, seeing as the app does it. Still, it seems to work pretty well.


I have had some success using the terminal command top.  Much the same results as Activity Monitor, but I can slow down the update speed, and sort on any field.

In my experience, the problem is usually with individual programs that fail to free memory. You will see the memory for that process creep up.  See 'man top' for details about the various fields that top reports.  Firefox is notorious for this, and with 60 or so tabs requires a restart every few days

If you want to dig deeper, vmmap can give you the status of pages owned by a particular process.

Be warned:  sometimes slowdowns are CPU related.  Sometimes disk i/o related, althoth the latter is less common with current memory prices.


Can I upgrade from 10.6 to 10.7 for free?

Apple's policy is that you get an OS upgrade for free as soon as the launch date of the new OS has been officially announced. For Lion, this was after July 21st. However, as you discovered yourself:

  Remember your completed order must be entered within 30 days of the date of your purchase of a qualifying computer.

So no, you won't be able to get anything from Apple's up-to-date program, which is the only way to get an OS upgrade for free.


In the slightest possible case, if the hard drive remains untouched, you stand a chance of getting all your data intact (OS + user data).

In the current scenario, without a backup, there is no way to access your data from MacBook Air.


How to force include files in Time Machine

$sudo tmutil removeexclusion <file name>


Can I turn an old iMac (early 2008) into an external monitor

I believe this should be possible. However, you cannot do this without changing the hardware of the computer. What you can keep though is the display and the housing. You need to take the rest of the computer out and take a look at the back or side of the display. Somewhere around there or on the display's flex cable you should be able to find a code which you can use to buy a compatible inverter board on the internet (just google or search on eBay, it should not be this hard). Now you need to plug your display flex cable into the inverter board. Then you will find a DVI/HDMI/VGA port on the inverter board, depending on which one you bought, which you need to lead to the outside (p.e. with an adapter cable). Now you can plug your computer into the port and use the iMac as a display.
Some German guy did something similar with a modern 5k iMac with the only difference being that he bought the housing and the display specifically for it instead of recycling a Mac. Even though you probably do not speak German, this might give you a better idea of how it is done: https://youtu.be/hzTVe6aVgww
And there is also an English video where someone tried this with a Windows laptop: https://youtu.be/CfirQC99xPc
Good luck! It is always better to try to reuse old and broken electronics instead of throwing them away!


How to wake a MacBook Air (2019) display after it suddenly goes dark (not sleep) for no reason in macOS Catalina (10.15.1)?

The solution is to login from another device via the command line, put the display to sleep and then wake up the machine.

This solution hinges on whether or not you have SSH remote login capability to the machine. But if you do, you are in luck!

What I did is SSH in from iPhone using a Terminal app and then run this command to put the display to sleep:

pmset displaysleepnow

When I entered that command, the display on the MacBook Air went truly dark. Then by simply tapping any key on the keyboard, the screen came back to life. And my download was not interrupted!

FWIW, I am unsure if this is a MacBook Air (2019) specific issue, a macOS Catalina specific issue, or some combo of the two or just something else. Posting specifics in case this helps someone in a similar situation.


How can I remove a pre-installed application on macOS Sierra

You technically can remove Safari by weakening your system's security protections and disabling SIP.

Again: Do not do it!

Steps:

Reboot on the recovery partition (hold cmd-R while rebooting until the Apple logo appears)
Open the Terminal from the Utilities menu
Type csrutil disable
Reboot
You should now able to remove Safari (if the Finder does not let you do it, use the Terminal and type sudo rm -fr /Applications/Safari.app)
I'd highly recommend you reactivate SIP then by rebooting and typing csrutil enable (it won't reinstall Safari)


How to download photos from iCloud (iPhone 4)

1. I don't know what iOS 7 looks like but you can try sharing the iCloud link with yourself as they are already backed up in the iCloud.

2. Other option can be to save all the photos to iCloud Drive(this is different from the photos thing) (if it is there).

3. One can save them to notes and then wait for it to sync and then download it.

4. See if google photos or drive or Microsoft drive etc can store them.

5.  Firefox send is a good feature and is private too! If the above option makes you think that this is an app, you're wrong, it is a web tool. Go to send.firefox.com

6. This is a new thing I came across recently. Go to Privacy-apple and download all the data. It might take a few in preparing the folder.

I did not remove the options that won't work for you for future readers.

Cheers!


How can I set up Macs with dynamic IP addresses to update a server with a static IP?

You can try and host your own dynamic DNS service or you could use one of several online dynamic DNS companies.

While I have not implemented it, this MacOSXhints article appears to be a fairly straightforward solution via a FreeDNS account:

http://hints.macworld.com/article.php?story=20110812232611102


I see three reviews only for your app. One on the current version and two on "all versions" and I'm browsing on the US store.

Sadly, I think this is in the normal range (if a bit less reviews) - but you are operating in the free app space with a dollar "remove the ads" IAP.

Apple does not incentivize people to leave reviews - you don't get better genius results, better recommendations - so people don't invest time in a review unless they are a) angry b) pay a lot for the app and it really saves them time or effort.

I would be curious on your engagement rate for the 30k downloads. If you have a solid core of people that continue to use the app weekly and daily - you might over time get a few that leave reviews.


How do I use OS X Print/Save as Postscript to produce a custom sized page?

After noodling on this question and worrying that my google-fu had atrophied, I sorted out something that works.

Edit the generic PPD file provided in Mac OS X to add the desired page size.  I found the generic PPD file here:
  /System/Library/Frameworks/ApplicationServices.framework/Frameworks/PrintCore.framework/Resources/Generic.ppd

Follow the directions here https://stackoverflow.com/questions/1028891/whats-the-easiest-way-to-add-custom-page-sizes-to-a-ppd to figure out what needs to be added.  (Thanks, SO).  In my case, the lines added were (they are non-contiguous in the file, just look to see where they go):

*PageSize LetterEx/US Letter Expanded: "2 dict dup /PageSize [630 810] put dup /ImagingBBox null put setpagedevice"
*ImageableArea LetterEx/US LetterExpanded: "18 18 612 792 "
*PageRegion LetterEx/US Letter Expanded: "2 dict dup /PageSize [630 810] put dup /ImagingBBox null put setpagedevice"
*PaperDimension LetterEx/US Letter Expanded: "630 810 "

Edit the generic PPD file to set the new settings as the Default in each case.  This seemed to be necessary in make case to get the desired PS output.  Note these are also non-contiguous in the file, but just replace them where each *Default occurs.

*DefaultPageSize: LetterEx
*DefaultImageableArea: LetterEx
*DefaultPageRegion: LetterEx
*DefaultPaperDimension: LetterEx

Reboot the system.  For whatever reason, my attempts to restart the printing system/CUPS/whatever didn't take.

Install a new printer, type IP, IP address = localhost or 127.0.0.1, and specify the Generic Postscript Printer type.

From your application (in my case, Word or Pages) do Print, select the 127.0.0.1 printer, select the Letter Expanded page size for your target document page size, and then do PDF/Save as Postscript.  It appears that the Postscript conversion engine silently makes use of the current printer profile when producing the PS, rather than the application's page size settings.


An app downloaded from the Mac App Store re-installs itself after I delete it. How can I remove it permanently?

Some troubleshooting tips:

Open the Mac App store and choose the menu Store > Sign Out
Log out of your account (save work and then choose the menu Apple > Log Out ...
Log in and hold the shift (this prevents apps from automatically starting. If you miss the timing, just continue - things will be slower as a result)
Disconnect any network cables and turn off WiFi
Restart your Mac (Apple Menu > Restart)

At this point, you've disabled the checks and tools the app store will use to try and continue a download.

Open Launchpad and delete any copies of that app (and any others you wish to clean up).

Once that's done, restart your Mac.

Reconnect WiFi and network
Open the Mac App Store
Sign in again
Check for Unfinished Downloads (under the Sign in option)

At that point, you should be save from further intrusion of the App Store.

There's some great information on the tools here:

App Store repeatedly asking me to update


Upgrade to higher memory or faster processor on MacBook Air

With all that stuff you're running, you probably won't be happy with 4 GB of RAM. If it's truly an either/or decision, up the RAM unless you know that you won't be paging with only 4 GB.

The processor goes from a 1.8 GHz Core i5 to a 2.0 GHz Core i7. I'm not sure that's all that much of a noticeable increase.

As for temperature, Apple will put in a sufficiency of cooling regardless of the processor you choose. I don't really get why people get freaky about laptop heat output: any heat problem I've ever heard of is due to environmental factors that the user (not the manufacturer) has control over.

All that said, I got a 2012 MacBook Air with 8 GB RAM and the 2.0 GHz Core i7, and I'm super happy with it. It's noticeably faster than my previous, a 2011 Air with 4 GB RAM and the 1.8 GHz Core i7, but I suspect that's mostly the RAM and the better graphics between the 2011 and 2012 models.

tl;dr: probably the RAM, maybe the processor. It all depends on how you're going to use the machine.


Does Find My iPhone upload its location when connected to iTunes via USB?

No, the iPhone does not update its location when plugged in. However, the iPhone will send its location to Apple when the battery gets to a critical level as long as it has an Internet connection.


Please help me software brick (all data erase) my iPhone 5c in-hand

No easy workarounds if iTunes won't restore / erase an iPhone in normal mode, let alone when you have it in DFU mode. Apple Configurator might be worth a try, but it uses the same library / underlying erase code the last time I checked. Same with Xcode.

I suppose the only workaround is to disassemble it and destroy / sanitize the data by jumping some of the pins to take control of the storage. The getting it open might be easy for most skilled people - the jumping the pins would need specific technical tools and training as would getting a controller to erase systematically the data.

Physical destruction would be the alternative to software erase
repairing the phone to functionality also would be an alternative


The closest I've found is the Steeef theme for oh-my-zsh. It seems very close, except the font/background is different (however that is set externally in Terminal settings).

To install this:

Install Homebrew and zsh, then set zsh as default shell.

ruby -e "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.github.com/mxcl/homebrew/go)"
brew install zsh
chsh -s /usr/local/bin/zsh

Restart Terminal.
Install oh-my-zsh.

curl -L https://github.com/robbyrussell/oh-my-zsh/raw/master/tools/install.sh | sh

Edit ZSH_THEME in ~/.zshrc to be steeef.

Restart Terminal.


How to scan with Canon TS 5150 Printer/Scanner

According to the information on Canons website this device is only supported over AirPrint (which doesn't support scanning). It seems to be supported by Vuescan though:

VueScan is compatible with the Canon TS5150 on Windows x86, Windows x64, Windows RT, Windows 10 ARM, Mac OS X and Linux

I'm just a happy customer but IMHO the application is absolutely worth its price. And there is a free trial so you can easily check whether it suits your needs.


How can I change the black text in my terminal?

In the second screen shot, it looks like you're looking at man builtin and the Command column, the first column, is in bold text and not visible. Looking at the Bold Text color shows it being rather dark, as dark as the Background Color & Effects in the first screen shot. So, change the Bold Text color to the same color as the Text color or just a shade darker then the Text color.


Since your phone only really talks to Apple's servers - you can sign out of your Apple ID in the store section of the settings App. Then check the date and time on the device (it needs to be somewhat close to the time on the servers for the security to work - within a minute should be fine) and then sign in again.