How do I prevent my MacBook from sleeping when downloading apps from the App Store

If you don't want to install any software or change settings, you can use the Terminal utility caffeinate. Open Terminal (located in /Applications/Utilities/), type in caffeinate, and press return ↩.

If you want to set a timeout so it will go to sleep after some amount of time, use this:

caffeinate -t 3600

That will make it stay awake for an hour. (3600 is the number of seconds you want it to stay awake.)

To stop or cancel the caffeinate command, press ^ ControlC.


How to force Siri to use ONLY internal microphone

This is an often-asked question on many sites.  Unfortunately, all those sites say the same thing: this isn't possible.

As long as you're connected to a Bluetooth device that has a microphone, the iPhone will use that mic for Siri unless you specifically change it (like you mentioned) each time you use it.  I think your best option is use a Bluetooth device that doesn't have a mic.  No mic, no problem.

I don't know if this is part of the Bluetooth specifications and can't be changed or if it's an Apple-controlled thing.  I would recommend providing feedback to Apple and letting them know this is something you want.


Go to the System preferences > Keyboard > Shortcuts.

Then you can enable Full Keyboard Access to All Controls !


Associate Apple ID with two different SIM cards (phone numbers)

If you have another phone, you can forward both phone calls and messages from one number to another. If you have another iPhone, you can forward messages for free - just go to Settings > Messages > Text Message Forwarding. This will make the message appear on both devices within a minute or so of each other. If you don't have an iPhone, I expect other phones would have an SMS forwarding capability, but there would be a per message cost.

I use this so I don't have to carry a work and personal phone, and it works well. The only complication you have is that it is in 2 different countries, so there will be roaming charges (I expect).


Are all apps compatible with the Apple TV?

No, not every iPhone app will be on the new Apple TV. Developers have to release apps specifically for the Apple TV, not just porting the iPhone app.

Yes, you can mirror the screen of any iPhone 4s or later to one of the newer Apple TVs.


What happened to the rename song iTunes keyboard shortcut?

Pressing ⌤ enter / fn + ↩ return always works for me…

In addition, ⌘ cmd + ↩ return also works most of the time.


Slow mac when Terminal have been open for some time

You're going to have to broaden your search. There's nothing in your screenshots that points to Terminal. Nor anything in my experience—I let Terminal run for days with no ill effect.

It's possible that you're starting some task that's running away with the processor. You could set Activity Monitor to show all processes hierarchically, and give the tasks running directly under Terminal closer scrutiny, but I'd be more inclined to think that whatever it is is something you've spawned off as a separate process (using & at the end of a command).

Does quitting Terminal give you your performance back right away? That would indicate that the process is still running as a subtask of Terminal.

Either way, set Activity Monitor to show All Processes, and sort the list by % CPU. See what floats to the top.

Is there anything unusual about your $PROMPT_COMMAND? This is a command that gets run by the shell just before it displays the prompt. Seems to me to be a place where a time-waster could hide.

ADDENDUM: I just noticed your comment "...when I have an ssh session open to one of my servers". Do you also accept incoming ssh sessions? It's possible that you're under attack. Someone is trying to open an ssh session back to you, and is guessing passwords. If they're guessing very fast, they can bring your machine to its knees.

I thought of that earlier, because I've seen that happen when I enable Remote Login and have a publicly visible IP address. Once the bad guys notice that your port 22 is open from the WAN (and they will, within hours), they'll slam it with login attempts. The (temporary) fix is to disable Remote Login for a few minutes. They'll get bored and turn their attention elsewhere, and you have a respite of a few hours until another bad guy notices the open port.

But you say the problem goes away as soon as you quit Terminal, which sounds like a different problem. UNLESS you have some watchdog on your system that automatically opens port 22 (i.e., enables Remote Login) only while Terminal is running, and automatically closes it when Terminal quits. Or I imagine it could be possible to configure a firewall so that it allows incoming connections to port 22 only while there is currently an outgoing connection to port 22. Or only from remote addresses that you have an outgoing connection to, and the server you're connecting to is infected. Quitting Terminal closes all your ssh sessions, which would make the firewall stop accepting ssh incoming sessions, breaking the attack. Just a guess.

To see if you're under this kind of attack, open Activity Monitor and filter the process list for "sshd". If you see lots of very short-lived sshd processes, someone is trying to guess your password. Even if you don't allow password access, they don't know that and will try anyway.


A possible solution to the problem in your question is the following.

After the import procedure in the application Photos you can select the option of delete photo from the device (iPhone in your case) immediately after the importing procedure.


As far as I know, the debug menu is removed from Sierra. Try to clear Mac App Store caches to fix some downloading issues.

Launch Terminal and type the following command:

 open `getconf DARWIN_USER_CACHE_DIR`/com.apple.appstore

Move all the files and folders out of com.apple.appstore. Then relaunch Mac App Store. You can delete all the files and folders if Mac App Store get back to work.


Stuck or dead pixels on ipad 1st generation

Since that would be almost 200,000 pixels, I do not think they are dead or stuck, at least not in the traditional sense. I'd say there is something else that's broken.


Is Speech Synthesis protected by copyright or patent law? What does Mac OS License protect?

The License that is referred to is the Software License Agreement for macOS. It is not a patent or a copyright, it is a software license.

The license agreements protects the licensor in the sense that he has given the licensee permission to use the product in a limited form - for example as in this specific example only for creating original content and projects for personal, non-commercial use.

The license agreements limits use by making it possible for the licensor to sue the licensee for infringing their rights.

Note that the licensor does not have to offer everyone the same license rights. It is perfectly possible that you have bought a license to use the product only for personal, non-commercial use - while other's have bought licenses for global distribution of their project with commercial intent. The price would probably be higher in that case.


How can I get Apple mail or Outlook 2011 to look up SMIME encryption certificates for users?

According to the Apple TS article "Using Keychain Access to search directory services for certificates", if your Mac

is configured to use a directory service,
has the CA signing certificate trusted in either your login or the system keychains,
has a valid signed user certificate with the appropriate attributes,

then Keychain Access can be configured (Preferences → General → Search directory services for certificates) to search for certificates on the configured directory service.  Mail.app will also automatically search for certificates as well.

Unfortunately, I haven't done this personally, so I can't vouch for how well it works or have any advice on any issues.  This reads to me like a feature designed to be used with a centrally-managed IT infrastructure with directory and certificate services.  It does not sound like it is designed to work outside that sort of environment.


How to split data between two iCloud accounts?

When your daughter disconnects her phone from the shared iCloud account (by deleting it in Settings) she will be given the option to keep her contacts, calendar entries etc. on the phone. Afterwards just create a new iCloud account directly from the phone.


How to get ScreenCapture with mouse pointer?

You can open Preview and go to File -> Take Screenshot -> From entire screen, and the cursor will show up.


The password for the keychain access is apparently not my login password- please explain

If you have iCloud keychain sync enabled the "local" keychain will not have your account password any more.
If you reset your account password using the recovery drive the keychain password will be the old account password.

If you know your old password, use that password to update your existing login keychain:

Open the Keychain Access app, which is in the the Utilities folder of your Applications folder.
From the Edit menu, choose “Change Password for Keychain 'login.'”
Enter the old password of your user account in the Current Password field. This is the password you were using before the password was reset.
Enter the new password of your user account in the New Password field. This is the password you're now using to log in to your Mac. Enter the same password in the Verify field.
Click OK when done, then quit Keychain Access.

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201609


How can access to start up menu on Macbook Air 2011?

You need to start using Internet Recovery, and once it's started (which can take a while) you can then select the menu item to install the OS. See the (rather detailed) description of the Internet Recovery system here.

Please note that with a slow internet connection, this is going to be a slow process. This is because after downloading and running the Recovery system, it is then going to go away and download the OS installer - and that is quite large.

An alternative might be to go to an Apple Store and borrow their (rather fast!) WiFi connection to do this, if you have one close by.


From what it looks like there isn't a decent way to do this without unloading the entire Notification Center and any other notifications alongside with it.
However, as @Tetsujin noted and as many other people would also concur, for the sake of your drive and how macOS uses it I'd personally recommend just ejecting it for the sake of your data and not to risk nuking that drive even if the chances are small; annoying but necessary with how the file system deals with write caching.


Am I setting up routes and DNS for a private network properly?

macOS uses a system configuration database to maintain things like which DNS servers to use, and what domains those serves are used for. This database is exposed to the user through the interactive scutil program.
To update DNS servers and search domains, the simplest invocation of this tool would happen like this:
[root@host]$ scutil
> d.init
> d.add ServerAddresses * 172.16.1.10
> d.set State:/Network/Service/UniqueKey/DNS
> quit

To perform this configuration change, I created two expect scripts, one to load the configuration and the other to unload the configuration.
Here's the script to load the DNS configuration (note the "Corporate-VPN" part of the key which is the unique identifier for this configuration element):
#!/opt/local/bin/expect -f
set timeout -1
spawn /usr/sbin/scutil
match_max 100000
expect "> "
send -- "d.init\r"
expect "> "
send -- "d.add ServerAddresses * $env(VPNHOST)\r"
expect "> "
send -- "d.add SupplementalMatchDomains * intranet.company.com services.company.com\r"
expect "> "
send -- "set State:/Network/Service/Corporate-VPN/DNS\r"
expect "> "
send -- "quit\r"
expect eof

And then the script to unload the configuration:
#!/opt/local/bin/expect -f
set timeout -1
spawn /usr/sbin/scutil
match_max 100000
expect "> "
send -- "remove State:/Network/Service/Corporate-VPN/DNS\r"
expect "> "
send -- "quit\r"
expect eof

There is still plenty of tidy-up to do here (notably handling errors).
The previous method I wrote using the Resolvers system remains below. It still works but it's not the recommended method.

As per Gordon's comment, using the resolver system provided a solution:
#!/bin/sh
# Alters routing and DNS to use private network routes and DNS for
# private network destinations

networks=( "10.10.0.0/16" "192.168.20.0/24"  )
work_domains=( "intranet.company.com" "services.company.com" "customer.org" )
gateway=172.16.1.10

if [ "$1" = "up" -o "$1" = "on" -o "$1" = "start" ] ; then
    echo "Setting up private configuration"
    for net in ${networks[@]}; do
        /sbin/route add -net $net -gateway $gateway
    done
    for netname in ${work_domains[@]}; do
        echo "nameserver $gateway" >> /etc/resolver/$netname
    done
elif [ "$1" = "down" -o "$1" = "off" -o "$1" = "stop" ] ; then
    echo "Shutting down private configuration"
    for netname in ${work_domains[@]}; do
        rm /etc/resolver/$netname
    done
    for net in ${networks[@]}; do
        /sbin/route delete -net $net -gateway $gateway
    done
else
    echo "Usage: $0 (start|stop)"
fi
dscacheutil -flushcache


Apple Developer Account expired and Ad Hoc distributed app not working

You will have to reactive your develop account for sure, but it all depends on if you have to get a new signing cert which you probably do. That will require redistribution of the app.


Script that Automatically Does Something Every Day

On Macs running 10.5 or earlier, I'll use crontab.

On Macs running 10.6 and newer, I'll use launchd. More details here
https://developer.apple.com/legacy/library/documentation/Darwin/Reference/ManPages/man5/launchd.plist.5.html


The issue persisted across multiple macs but Windows 7's Disk Management tool didn't seem to have any issues creating a new partition table. Afterwards the drive worked as expected on OS X.


You can change this setting in the Messages app preferences.

Go to Messages-> Preferences -> Alerts. Select 'Message Received' in the Event menu and uncheck the 'Play a sound' box.

You may also have to do this for the 'Message Received in Active Chat' and 'Message Received in Chat Room' events, as well as any others that are triggering unwanted sounds.


MacOS is showing a badge notification on System Preferences. How can I make it disappear?

I had the same complaint. I removed System Preferences from the Dock, and and haven't been bothered by the badge nag.

System Preferences is still easily available in the Apple Menu > System Preferences.

And you might review this Stack Exchange question for an alternative solution.


Applescript, quit app if other app is quit

I've only dabbled in Applescript, but would you be able to create a second script that is basically reversed? In English it would look like:

tell Plex to quit
then
tell Audio Hijack Pro to quit


How to create desktop shortcut for Chrome profile and run two or more profiles simultaneously?

Since there are several possible answers, I will introduce a more exotic one:

Download and install Platypus
Create a file chromedefault.sh in ~/Documents/scripts/ with the content:

#!/bin/bash
open -a "Google Chrome" --args --profile-directory=Default

Open Platypus with the following settings:

and create a new "app" ChromeDefault.
For a second app with the profile Other use another script chromeother.sh with appropriate changes:

#!/bin/bash
open -a "Google Chrome" --args --profile-directory=Other

and call it ChromeOther.
Put both apps in the /Applications folder and create as many symlinks or aliases as needed.


Downgrading from iOS 9.1 Beta to iOS 9 Stable and Keeping Picture Data

You can actually use your whole iOS 9.1 beta backup onto the iOS 9.0 stable release (installing backup made in newer firmware onto older firmware). I'm glad I managed it and I want to share the method.

First you have to backup in iTunes (while still in iOS 9.1 beta). Then, you have to find the directory where your backup is.

On a Mac, go to finder-->go-->go to folder, and input ~/Library/Application Support/MobileSync/Backup/
On Windows, go to \Users\(username)\AppData\Roaming\Apple Computer\MobileSync\Backup\Windows

Find the latest folder (with lots of weird numbers and alphabets). You can sort by date to do this. Open the folder, and you'll get LOTS of text files. Search for info.plist and open it using a text editor or Xcode. Under "software version", it says 9.1. Change it to 9.0 and close the file.

You restore your device to iOS 9.0 in iTunes (since 9.0 is released it will restore it to 9.0 by default, not 8.4.1 anymore), and then after it's done you can restore from the backup you just made. It was made in iOS 9.1 but the computer thinks it's 9.0.


You cannot, you need to scan with WhatsApp. When you scan the QR code you get a session ID. WhatsApp send that ID to their server to enable a session in your browser.


XCode : How to use cmd + x to either cut the current line (if no text is selected) or cut the selected text

That is correct. (Xcode 10)

Add the entry for cut line and copy line in the IDETextKeyBindingSet.plist file
Save the IDETextKeyBindingSet.plist
Restart Xcode
Set a key for the new command through xcode > preferences > key bindings > My Custom Commands
Resolve conflicts

Example: /Applications/Xcode.app/Contents/Frameworks/IDEKit.framework/Versions/A/Resources/IDETextKeyBindingSet.plist

<?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>Cut and Copy</key>
    <dict>
        <key>Cut Current Line</key>
        <string>selectLine:, cut:</string>
        <key>Copy Current Line</key>
        <string>selectLine:, copy:</string>
    </dict>
    <key>Duplication</key>
    <dict>
        <key>Duplicate Current Line</key>
        <string>moveToBeginningOfLine:, deleteToEndOfLine:, yank:, insertNewline:, moveToBeginningOfLine:, yank:</string>
        <key>Duplicate Lines</key>
        <string>selectLine:, copy:, moveToEndOfLine:, insertNewline:, paste:, deleteBackward:</string>
        <key>Delete Line</key>
        <string>selectLine:, deleteBackward:</string>
    </dict>
</dict>
</plist>

Xcode keybinding (Cut and Copy):

Xcode conflict resolve (Cut and Copy):


setup youtube-dl destination to ~/Downloads

youtube-dl Config File

To set a default download location, create a youtube-dl configuration file at:

~/.config/youtube-dl/config

Within this file enter the line:

-o ~/Downloads/%(title)s-%(id)s.%(ext)s

You can create this file using the following two commands:

mkdir -p ~/.config/youtube-dl/
echo "-o ~/Downloads/%(title)s-%(id)s.%(ext)s" > ~/.config/youtube-dl/config

The first command mkdir, creates the folders leading to the configuration file. The second command echo writes the output option into the file.

Options set within your configuration file are applied to every call to youtube-dl. Use the --ignore-config option to disable reading of the configuration file.


TinyUmbrella can only save the SHSHs for firmware versions that still get signed by Apple. 3.1.3 isn't signed by Apple anymore (i.e. they don't want you to downgrade to it), and therefore you don't get the SHSHs anymore.


How can I download the Lion installation file?

Recovery options for Macs with Lion pre-installed are documented in HT4718:

Recovery HD: recovery partition on hard drive, accessible by booting with Cmd-R pressed til the Apple logo is displayed
Internet Recovery: If you got a new (empty) hard drive, your Mac will boot into an internet recovery mode

Recovery in both cases requires internet connectivity.

You can use this to your benefit by rebooting your Mac into recovery and connect a USB drive. Go through the steps to link your Apple ID to that Mac for a Lion reinstall. Choose the external drive for the install. You should be able to catch the process at a reboot and save the 10.7.2 installer for later. Worst case is you miss it and the system deleted the installer application. Just open the App Store and hold option when selecting Purchased. You can generally re-download things once the store knows you get a copy of Lion.


Is there a significant reduction in cooling fan noise level in recent MacBooks?

The MacBook Pro with Retina Display received an overall update to pretty much most of the internal architecture. According to Apple the fans, vents and many other internal parts underwent redesign and development.

Apple => High-efficiency fans: Asymmetrically spaced impeller blades and back and side airflow vents work together to move the maximum amount of air while reducing tonal impact.

Personally, I have not had any extensive experience with the Retina models, but according to the statement on Apple's website it can be assumed that the noise should be dramatically reduced in comparison to other previous models.

The MacBook Air has, to my knowledge, received this update. Even after a quick Google search I could not find any 'fan noise' changing events or developments. However, working occasionally on an Air, I cannot complain about any extensively loud fan noises in comparison to my mid-2012 MacBook Pro (non-Retina).


How can one reset the tutorials that run for preinstalled OS X apps on first run?

I'm not sure this are the movies you are referring to, but Apple has made a lot of useful tutorials about using a Mac. From beginner to some more experienced...
You can find them on the Apple website.

And to answer your other questions, you can find extensive documentation and how-to's about Spotify and Office for Mac on their websites.


How to query the history record of when the USB driver which has been used?

Unfortunately peripheral connections are simply something that isn't logged by your Mac. Just think - why would it need to keep a written log of when a USB drive is plugged in?

Hope you end up finding it again!


Safari address bar complete URL with keyboard shortcut

Safari 8.0 does: Press and hold the Control key for a moment while you’re editing the location and you’ll see the search icon turn into an icon indicating that it’s interpreting the input as (part of) a URL instead of performing a search. The label “Search selected search engine” next to your text will change to “Go to Site” and the ‘Go to Site “your text”’ menu item in the completions list will be selected. Typing Control+Return will navigate there.

By the way, you can use Control+N (next) and Control+P (previous) to navigate through the completions list using the keyboard. (These are emacs-style navigation key bindings.)


you could ssh root@apple-tv.local killall AppleTV, also you might want to change your passwd from the default. As for a icon, you could but the above into a file and name it with a .sh extention, which could then be 'clicked on'.
If you don't want to be prompted for a ssh passwd, set up some ssh keys.
Setting up ssh keys
If you already have a key on your computer, skip to step 2

ssh-keygen -t rsa and follow the the prompts. If you use a passphrase, you'll want to set up ssh-agent.

Copy contents of ~/.ssh/id_rsa.pub to ~/.ssh/authorized_keys on the tv.

chmod go-rwx ~/.ssh/authorized_keys

This is just a quick example, check out this wiki for more.


Apple Business Manager. How do we revoke a code or license? We are not using a MDM

The ordinary way to do what you want is to use MDM.

If you do not want your client to setup MDM, then the only way to do this is by adding a login system to your app. This way you can have employees of your customer install the app via the App Store using redemption codes, and then be able to stop them from using the app by invalidating their login.

To make matters easier, you could implement the initial login in the form of a link for the employee to follow (similar to the link used to redeem the app), it could be a QR-code to scan or a simple username/password.


External Drive doesn't want to live in sidebar

Resetting the PRAM fixed my issue.

Restart holding option+command+p+r. Hold down the keys until you hear the 2nd startup chime.

https://discussions.apple.com/message/19207534#19207534


Movie Splitter

You can split your .mp4 movie without transcoding using Movie Splitter – which I wrote for my own needs.

There is a demo you can download and try.

Splitting and Trimming Custom Sections

Movies can be automatically split by embedded chapter markers, halved into two, or quartered into four. Version 1.4 added the options to let you select custom ranges to be extracted – by scrubbing or through keyboard input for fine grained control.


Can I create an iTunes account without a credit card?

I seem to have found a method. First i open itunes, app store and click a free app, it will prompt me to sign in or create new acc. When i create new acc i can choose Nil as a payment option. Thanks for the other methods too.


Is swipe to archive possible with non-Gmail account in iOS?

This can now be accomplished very easily in iOS 7.

(n.b. The following assumes that you have already setup your account on the iOS device. These steps described are for a generic IMAP account. Also, when ALL CAPS are used below, it is to reflect how Apple has it listed in iOS 7.)

Launch the 'Settings' app on your iOS device
Scroll down and then tap on "Mail, Contacts, Calendars"
Tap on the email account you want to configure.
Tap on the 'Account' line with the > at the top of the next screen
On the 'IMAP ACCOUNT INFORMATION' screen, scroll all the way down until you see 'Advanced' and tap on it
Now you will see a 'MAILBOX BEHAVIORS' screen, showing you which mailboxes are used for Drafts, Sent, Deleted, and Archive mailboxes.
Important: Tap on the 'Archive Mailbox' line and verify that you have chosen the correct folder on the server where you want messages to be saved.
Once you have verified that the Archive Mailbox points to where you want it to go, look for the 'MOVE DISCARDED MESSAGES INTO' section, and tap 'Archive Mailbox' (instead of 'Deleted Mailbox')
Important: These changes will not be saved until you properly exit the configuration screen. To do this, tap the '< Account button near the top of the 'Advanced' screen.
When you get back to the 'Account' screen, tap 'Done' at the top-right corner.

If you'd like a step-by-step guide with screenshots, I have created one and made it available at: http://share.luo.ma/TUAW/guides/Archive-Email-Instead-of-Deleting.pdf


Rename iTunes TV episodes to include season and episode number in file name

I still don't know if there's a way to compel iTunes to do it automatically, but I managed it with Applescript and ExifTool. In case it's useful to anyone else, below is the full script. You'll need to install ExifTool first. You can run the script to choose one file at a time, or export it as an application to do drag-and-drop.

It renames episodes like:

Show Name S01E01 Episode Name.mp4

which is a format recognized by Emby, Plex, and other media managers.

It processes folders recursively, so you can drag your entire TV Shows folder onto it in one go. It will skip files that aren't video or don't have the expected TV show metadata, and when it's done it pops up a dialog to tell you how many of each it encountered.

(*
Rename TV Episode to include Season and Number

Drop or select files or folders.
This script will check each file for metadata tags for TV show name, season number, episode number, and episode name and rename each file in the format:
Show Name S01E01 Episode Name.mp4

It will ignore files that don't match one of the extensions in the extensionList below. By default, mp4, m4v, mkv.
It will skip files that don't have all four of the desired meta tags.
If the show name or episode name contains illegal characters (colon, forward-slash, back-slash) it will replace them with "_" for the filename.

ExifTool must be installed. You can find it here:
https://www.sno.phy.queensu.ca/~phil/exiftool/

Make sure the pathToExifTool matches your system. The included one is the default.
*)

property pathToExifTool : "/usr/local/bin/exiftool"

property whitelistTypes : false
property whitelistExtensions : true
property whitelistTypeIDs : false

property typeList : {} -- eg: {"PICT", "JPEG", "TIFF", "GIFf"}
property extensionList : {"mp4", "m4v", "mkv", "avi", "wmv"} -- eg: {"txt", "text", "jpg", "jpeg"}, NOT: {".txt", ".text", ".jpg", ".jpeg"}
property typeIDsList : {} -- eg: {"public.jpeg", "public.tiff", "public.png"}

global numberOfItemsRenamed
global numberOfItemsIgnored
global numberOfItemsWithoutMetaData

-- If opened without a drop, choose a file and simulate a drop
on run
    open {} & (choose file "Select a file")
end run
-- process files dropped or selected
on open theseItems
    set numberOfItemsRenamed to 0
    set numberOfItemsIgnored to 0
    set numberOfItemsWithoutMetaData to 0

    processItems(theseItems)
    reportResults()
end open

on reportResults()
    -- build the output string
    set output to "Renamed " & numberOfItemsRenamed & " file(s)."
    if numberOfItemsIgnored > 0 then
        set output to output & "
Ignored " & numberOfItemsIgnored & " file(s) with unrecognized filetype."
    end if
    if numberOfItemsWithoutMetaData > 0 then
        set output to output & "
Skipped " & numberOfItemsWithoutMetaData & " file(s) with insufficient TV metadata."
    end if
    display alert output
end reportResults

-- processItems takes a list of items and passes them one at a time to processItem()
on processItems(theseItems)
    repeat with i from 1 to the count of theseItems
        set thisItem to item i of theseItems
        processItem(thisItem)
    end repeat
end processItems

-- processFolder takes a folder and passes the list of contents to processItems()
on processFolder(thisFolder)
    set theseItems to list folder thisFolder without invisibles
    -- processFolder has its own loop due to different syntax for fetching aliases from within a folder
    repeat with i from 1 to the count of theseItems
        set thisItem to alias ((thisFolder as Unicode text) & (item i of theseItems))
        processItem(thisItem)
    end repeat
end processFolder

-- processItem takes an item and passes it to the appropriate next level
-- (processFolder for folders, processFileAlias for approved files, or nothing for non-whitelisted files)
on processItem(thisItem)
    set the item_info to info for thisItem
    -- if a folder was passed, process it as a folder
    if folder of the item_info is true then
        processFolder(thisItem)
    else
        -- fetch the extension, filetype, and typeid to compare to whitelists
        try
            set this_extension to the name extension of item_info
        on error
            set this_extension to ""
        end try
        try
            set this_filetype to the file type of item_info
        on error
            set this_filetype to ""
        end try
        try
            set this_typeID to the type identifier of item_info
        on error
            set this_typeID to ""
        end try
        -- only operate on files, not folders or aliases
        if (folder of the item_info is false) and (alias of the item_info is false) then
            -- only operate on files that conform to whichever whitelists are in use
            set isTypeOk to ((not whitelistTypes) or (this_filetype is in the typeList))
            set isExtensionOk to ((not whitelistExtensions) or (this_extension is in the extensionList))
            set isTypeIDOk to ((not whitelistTypeIDs) or (this_typeID is in the typeIDsList))
            if (isTypeOk and isExtensionOk and isTypeIDOk) then
                -- everything's good so process the file
                processFileAlias(thisItem)
            else
                set numberOfItemsIgnored to numberOfItemsIgnored + 1
            end if
        end if
    end if
end processItem

-- processFileAlias takes a fileAlias and rename the file as a TV episode
on processFileAlias(fileAlias)
    set originalInfo to info for fileAlias
    -- get the file extension (to use when renaming, later)
    set originalName to stripExtension(the name of originalInfo)
    try
        set originalExtension to the name extension of originalInfo
    on error
        set originalExtension to ""
    end try
    -- prep slots for the desired metadata
    set seasonNumber to ""
    set episodeNumber to ""
    set showName to ""
    set episodeName to ""
    -- use exifTool to get the desired metadata
    set theLocation to POSIX path of (fileAlias as text)
    set exifToolOutput to (do shell script pathToExifTool & " -TVShow -TVSeason -TVEpisode -Title " & quoted form of theLocation)
    -- break exifTool output into lines
    set oldTID to AppleScript's text item delimiters
    set AppleScript's text item delimiters to return
    set exifToolOutputList to every text item of exifToolOutput
    -- now extract tags from each line
    set AppleScript's text item delimiters to ": "
    set tagList to {}
    repeat with eachItem in exifToolOutputList
        set itemName to trim(true, text item 1 of eachItem)
        -- use items 2-end in case there are :s in the value
        set itemValue to (text items 2 thru end of eachItem) as text
        if itemName = "TV Episode" then
            set episodeNumber to itemValue
        else if itemName = "TV Season" then
            set seasonNumber to itemValue
        else if itemName = "TV Show" then
            set showName to itemValue
        else if itemName = "Title" then
            set episodeName to itemValue
        end if
    end repeat
    set isAllDataPresent to (episodeNumber is not "" and seasonNumber is not "" and showName is not "")
    if isAllDataPresent then
        -- pad the numbers so they alphabetize nicely
        set seasonNumber to padNumberWithZeros(seasonNumber, 2)
        set episodeNumber to padNumberWithZeros(episodeNumber, 2)
        -- build the file name
        set newFileName to showName & " S" & seasonNumber & "E" & episodeNumber & " " & episodeName & "." & originalExtension
        -- remove illegal characters from name
        set newFileName to replaceChars(newFileName, ":", "_")
        set newFileName to replaceChars(newFileName, "/", "_")
        set newFileName to replaceChars(newFileName, "\\", "_")
        -- rename the file
        tell application "Finder"
            set name of fileAlias to newFileName
        end tell
        set numberOfItemsRenamed to numberOfItemsRenamed + 1
    else
        set numberOfItemsWithoutMetaData to numberOfItemsWithoutMetaData + 1
    end if
end processFileAlias

(*
Everything after this is utility extensions for dealing with text
*)

on stripExtension(this_name)
    if this_name contains "." then
        set this_name to ¬
            (the reverse of every character of this_name) as string
        set x to the offset of "." in this_name
        set this_name to (text (x + 1) thru -1 of this_name)
        set this_name to (the reverse of every character of this_name) as string
    end if
    return this_name
end stripExtension

on trim(theseCharacters, someText)
    -- Lazy default (AppleScript doesn't support default values)
    if theseCharacters is true then set theseCharacters to ¬
        {" ", tab, ASCII character 10, return, ASCII character 0}

    repeat until first character of someText is not in theseCharacters
        set someText to text 2 thru -1 of someText
    end repeat

    repeat until last character of someText is not in theseCharacters
        set someText to text 1 thru -2 of someText
    end repeat

    return someText
end trim

on replaceChars(this_text, search_string, replacement_string)
    set AppleScript's text item delimiters to the search_string
    set the item_list to every text item of this_text
    set AppleScript's text item delimiters to the replacement_string
    set this_text to the item_list as string
    set AppleScript's text item delimiters to ""
    return this_text
end replaceChars

on padNumberWithZeros(thisNumber, minLength)
    return text (minLength * -1) thru -1 of ("00000000000000000" & thisNumber)
end padNumberWithZeros


Is this a loose part of MacBook Pro 2010 (15" version)?

In the meantime I found out that this part forms the inner part of the rubber stands at the bottom of the laptop.


How do you prepare or secure your Mac for the possibility of being stolen?

My preparation doesn't answer all of your concerns because my priorities are different. I place a higher value on data security than I do on the Macintosh itself. Tracking software doesn't assure the recovery of a stolen laptop. If you're concerned about the cost of hardware your best protection is an insurance rider specifically covering the theft of your computer gear.

So with that qualification, here's my list:

A reliable, robust backup system that works from any location that has an internet connection  and archives data to an offsite cloud server. I use Crashplan Central. When I'm at my desk, I also make daily system clones to a local drive using SuperDuper!
Set a firmware password for the Mac to prevent unauthorized booting from alternative startup drives. Warning: If you set this password, don't lose it.
Encrypt the hard drive using  FileVault (2).
Use a strong password for login.
Set  a short idle interval to lock the screen when computing in non-secure locations. I consider my home, office and most client sites to be secure and I use a longer interval. If I'm traveling or working in a public place I set the screensaver/lock to activate after one minute of idle time. . Regardless of location, I am in the habit of manually locking the screen from the Menubar when I walk away from the computer.
Activate Find My Macintosh via your iCloud account. Don't expect to get your computer back, but it can't hurt, and it will allow you to remotely erase the data from your computer if necessary. I've used this feature to locate a computer that I'd left in a client's server closet.
Develop a workflow that lends itself to getting back to work on a replacement computer quickly. I minimize the applications I use regularly so there are fewer to install and purchase apps from the Apple App Store when possible so they're easy to install from a single source, even from the road.  I use DropBox to store current projects. When needed, older projects are available to me remotely by logging into CrashPlan.

In addition, I carry a mini flash drive in my (real) wallet that has a recent copy of my Password Wallet file and a few other "key" data files. I keep this up-to-date using an Automator action that runs whenever that flash drive mounts on the system.  The current copy of the passwords file is also on my iPhone, iPad and on Dropbox..

Most of all, I try to maintain situational awareness to minimize the likelihood of theft. Even so, my laptop sits unguarded in hotel rooms and offices all the time, yet I rest easy because I've taken the necessary steps to secure my data and implemented plans for a rapid recovery.

One more thing… I have my contact information (phone number and email) displayed on the login screen of my MacBook Pro and the lock screens of my iPad and iPhone. Perhaps I'm naive, but I believe the greatest risk is loss, not theft.


Is it OK to run -sudo purge, frequently?

There isn't a good reason to run it (as detailed here). Inactive memory won't slow things down (I haven't stress-tested it myself, but it makes sense to me). Inactive memory is second only to free memory with malloc, etc.

Inactive memory is just used for keeping things around so it won't have to load them from disk again. If you open, say, Terminal for the first time in a while (or after a reboot), you'll notice it takes a couple seconds to get a prompt. Quit and reopen it (or just make a new shell window) and it's almost instantaneous.

That said, running sudo purge all the time won't break anything. I would recommend setting up an alias/function in your .bash_profile as you don't want to mistype anything prefixed with sudo. (The results could be disastrous, and I mean it).

But with 24 GB of memory, there is no reason to run it.


Does Apple's wireless keyboard work cross-platform such as in Ubuntu, Windows and *ixes?

Sure, there's nothing keeping it from working with Windows other than the fact that it's missing some keys. I'm not sure if it's compatible with the various distros of Linux, but you can try it out and look on their associated forums.

Also, for Windows, be sure to check this out:  http://www.kudzuworld.com/blogs/Tech/20080101.EN.aspx


Get country specific app by restoring from iPad backup

Application data is included in backups. I would say that yes, if you restore a backup with that app on it you will have it back.


If I were to use Windows 7 or 8 either via Boot Camp or Virtualisation Software on my Mac would my Magic Trackpad still function?

There is a table showing the features of the Magic Trackpad supported for Windows 7, Windows Vista and Windows XP on the About Apple Magic Trackpad (and 27-inch LED Cinema Display) Update for Windows on the Apple Support site.

http://support.apple.com/kb/ht4273

Windows 8 is not currently supported by BOOTCAMP. Boot Camp 4.0, OS X Lion and Mountain Lion: Frequently asked questions refers:

http://support.apple.com/kb/HT4818#3.1


Any app you install can (if you allow it) access the camera. So if you by accident installed such an app and granted access to camera and microphone, yes it‘s possible.

An attack through the Internet into an iPad with the most recent iOS version might be possible as well, but it‘s rather unlikely.

PS: The mail you got might just be spam though


2012 iMac stuck at grey screen after reinstall, plus the inability to restore from backup prior to this. Please help!

Use the recovery mode of OSX to run Disk Utility so that you can check whether your HDD is faulty. See:

https://www.apple.com/osx/recovery/


Since I do not install and uninstall multitude of apps daily, I prefer to use something that will not constantly burden my system like a package manager may do.

I use a very simple but very effective app called AppCleaner (what a name), that is only running when I ask for it.

It will find all the related files to a given app and show them to me before I hit delete.

It allows the deselection of drivers ect. if you want to keep them for some reason.


This is a list of the keys and their symbols:

⎋ Escape
⇥   Tab forward
⇤   Tab back
⇪   Capslock
⇧   Shift
⌃ Control(this is the one you are looking for)
⌥   Option (Alt, Alternative)
⌘   Command
␣   Space
⏎   Return
↩   Return
⌫   Delete back
⌦   Delete forward
⇱   Home
↖   Home
↸   Home
⇲   End
↘   End
⇞   Pageup
⇟   Pagedown
↑   Up arrow
⇡   Up arrow
↓   Down arrow
⇣   Down arrow
←   Left arrow
⇠   Left arrow
→   Right arrow
⇢   Right arrow
⌧   Clear
⇭   Numberlock
⌤   Enter
⏏   Eject
⌽   Power


iphone thinks it's up to date when it's not

You can always find full lists of download links within 24 hours of a release going live.

9.0.2 is listed here - http://www.redmondpie.com/download-ios-9.0.2-links-for-iphone-ipad-ipod-touch-ipsw/

The links are to Apple's own download servers - just make sure you pick the correct version for your device.

Initiate the update from iTunes by holding the  Alt ⌥  key as you click Check for Update & navigate to the file you just downloaded.


What do each of the files do inside of an iPhoto Library?

Basically, all the files like xml, db and such help different softwares like iPhoto, iMovies etc gain information about your photos.

Excerpted from Fat Cat Software: iPhoto Library Internals help page:

  AlbumData.xml

  This file is written out by iPhoto as a way for other applications
  (such as iMovie and iDVD) to be able to easily access the contents of
  your iPhoto library. You can read in more detail about this file here.

  AlbumData2.xml

  This file is only created by iPhoto 8. It is a smaller version of the
  AlbumData.xml file that only contains information for the library's
  albums and events, and none of the actual photos. This file is faster
  to read for programs that only need to get the list of albums and
  events in the library.

  Attachments

  This folder is used by iPhoto 9 as a temporary holding place for
  photos that are being sent using iPhoto's built-in email features.

  Auto Import

  This folder is created by iPhoto 7 and later. There does not seem to
  be any mention of this folder in iPhoto's documentation, but if you
  put some photos into it, then quit and reopen iPhoto, it will
  automatically import those photos into the iPhoto library and then
  delete them from the Auto Import folder. There is also an "auto
  import" Applescript command which does not appear to do anything when
  called. It's not clear if this was a planned feature for iPhoto 7 that
  ended up getting pulled out (but not completely, apparently), and it
  doesn't seem to be very useful for anything, especially since that
  folder is buried inside a package now, but that's what it does if
  anyone is curious.

  Backup

  If a library has been upgraded from an earlier version of iPhoto to
  iPhoto 9, a copy of the original database files from the library are
  stored in this folder before performing the upgrade.

  Caches

  Only present in iPhoto 8 or later, this folder contains additional
  data for the iPhoto library. Unlike some other Caches folders that can
  be safe to delete, this one is not, so don't go deleting it in an
  attempt to clear up disk space.

  com.apple.iPhoto.plist

  This file is actually not written out by iPhoto itself, but rather by
  iPhoto Library Manager. It is a copy of the preferences file that is
  associated with this library. When you switch between different iPhoto
  libraries, iPhoto Library Manager will swap out this preference file
  for the existing preferences before opening the library up.

  Contents/PkgInfo

  This is part of the new package structure in iPhoto 7 that gives the
  package a type and creator code so that the Finder knows what
  application the package belongs to.

  face.db, face_blob.db

  Contains the data for faces identified by the face recognition feature
  added in iPhoto 8.

  iLifeShared

  Starting in iPhoto 9, the AlbumData2.xml file is now stored within
  this folder rather than at the root level of the library package.

  Info.plist

  iPhoto 9 added this file, containing basic version information about
  the library

  iPhoto.ipspot

  This file is written out by iPhoto and read in by Spotlight in order
  to index the information about the photos in your photo library. You
  must have iPhoto 5.0.2 or later for this file to be present.

  iPhotoLock.data

  This file is used by iPhoto to help prevent more than one copy of
  iPhoto from accessing the library at one time.

  iPod Photo Cache

  This folder is created by iTunes if you choose to sync your iPhoto
  library with a photo capable iPod. It contains cached information
  about the last time the photos were synced and help speed up the
  syncing process, allowing iTunes to tell which photos have changed
  since the last sync and only update those ones. You can delete it if
  you want to clear up space, but iTunes will have to create it all over
  again the next time you sync your iPod's photos.

  Library.data, Dir.data (iPhoto 2), Library.iPhoto, iPhoto.db (iPhoto 4, & 5), Library.iPhoto6 (iPhoto 6 & 7), iPhotoMain.db, iPhotoAux.db
  (iPhoto 8), Database (iPhoto 9)

  These files/folders serve as the central database where iPhoto stores
  your library information. All your event, album, and photo metadata is
  stored in these files.

  Data, Originals, and Modified

  iPhoto 6 organizes its photos fairly differently that previous
  versions. Imported photos will initially be stored inside the
  "Originals" folder. Within that folder, photos are organized into
  subfolders based on the roll that they are in, so each roll gets its
  own folder. Those rolls are then sorted by date (2006, 2005, etc.) and
  put into dated folders accordingly. So, if you had a photo in a roll
  named "Vacation" and dated February 24, 2004, to find that photo, go
  into the "Originals" folder, then into "2004", then into the folder
  named "Vacation". When you edit a photo in iPhoto, the original stays
  where it is, and the edited photo is placed in the "Modified" folder,
  which has the same per-roll organization scheme within it as the
  "Originals" folder does. The "Data" folder contains all the scaled
  down thumbnail version of photos in your library. If you upgrade to
  iPhoto 6 from a previous version, iPhoto will rearrange all your
  photos from the old scheme into the new scheme. After upgrading, you
  may still see one or more leftover folders named "2004" and such.
  These folders should no longer contain any files being used by iPhoto
  6, and can be disposed of safely.

  Thumbnails, Masters, and Previews

  iPhoto 9 organizes photos in much the same way as iPhoto 6-8, but uses
  the folder names Thumbnails, Masters, and Previews instead of Data,
  Originals, and Modified

  Metadata Backup

  Created by iPhoto 8, containing backup copies of the metadata for your
  photos, events, albums, and other library content. This information
  can be used by iPhoto to recover a library whose main database has
  been corrupted.

  ProjectDBVersion.plist, Projects.db, Projects.db-journal, SharingActivity.db

  These additional data files exist only in iPhoto 9 and contain
  information relating to "keepsake" items such as books and slideshows,
  and information for albums published on MobileMe, Flickr, or Facebook.

  ThemeCache

  A cache file used by iPhoto to store theme data used to make books,
  calendars, and cards

  Thumb32Segment.data, Thumb64Segment.data, ThumbJPGSegment.data

  In order to improve performance, when you add photos to your library,
  iPhoto creates small "thumbnail" versions of your photos and caches
  them in these files. In iPhoto 5 and earlier, these files are instead
  called Thumb32.data, Thumb64.data, and ThumbJPG.data.

Note that there are some small and some large differences in the folder structure depending on what version of iPhoto you're using.


From my homebrew:

brew info octave
homebrew/science/octave: stable 4.0.0 (bottled), HEAD
high-level interpreted language for numerical computing
https://www.gnu.org/software/octave/index.html
Not installed

and

brew cask info octave
octave: 3.8.2-1
Octave
https://gnu.org/software/octave/
Not installed

xoctave is a gui which I suspect is independent.  I'd use homebrew for the installation.

FWIW the Octave wiki it explains what to do:

brew tap homebrew/science
brew update && brew upgrade --all
brew install octave


Using Time Machine with Virtualization (Parallels, VirtualBox, VMWare, etc...)

Parallels has a specific setting to optimize its VMs for backup by Time Machine and prevent backing up unchanged data.

  To enable improved integration with Time Machine, please go to Virtual Machine Configuration, choose Options and hit Backup.

  Select "Optimize for Time Machine" in SmartGuard menu.

Similarly, VMWare Fusion has some support for Time Machine, which appears to involve turning on snapshots.


Can't run one particular program from Terminal without using its full path

The command is apparently aliased to a broken alias. First, check for all the matches for ds9 in PATH environment variable, by executing the following command:

type -a ds9

As per your updated question, it's apparent from the output of type -a ds9 command, that an alias is shadowing the actual command.

To execute the actual command by ignoring the alias, and without specifying the full path, prepend a \ (backslash) character before the command. This ignores any bash defined alias.

If you do not wish to prepend the backslash before the command every time, figure out where the alias is being created, and either remove it, or override the alias with the actual command.


Command+Tab misbehaving for apps on multiple monitors

It seems that this is related to displays having separate spaces. This can be changed by unchecking System Preferences -> Mission Control -> Displays have separate Spaces. (requires logout+login)

Note that with this you'll get the old full screen with multiple monitors support (that isn't so nice usually)

Related also to other multi-monitor functionality things, see for example cmd-tab behavior on Mavericks with multiple displays.


Compress folders with lots of duplicate files

I use 7zip to handle this and encodings issue. I use it from macrpots/command line, but there're many GUI versions


Should I be worried if the newest Macbook Pro specs are lower than my older Macbook Pro spec?

Your question is actually based on a wrong assumption, namely that you're interpreting the specs of the current 2019 MacBook Pros as being lower than those for the 2018 models.

Using your specific example, you're citing the 2.4GHz processor in the top 2019 model and comparing that to the 2.9GHz processor in the top 2018 model. However, you're only looking at part of the picture:

The top 2018 MacBook Pro has a 2.9GHz (Core i9) processor with six cores.
The top 2019 MacBook Pro has a 2.4GHz (Core i9) processor with eight cores.

At the risk of oversimplifying things with this analogy, having eight cores compared to six cores is like having eight people v six people trying to do some heavy lifting. In most cases, eight people each capable of lifting 50kg each is better than having six people each capable of lifting 60kg each. Worse, not all problems can be evenly or efficiently divided, so having 7 people standing idle while one works is more the norm and the entire system balance is far more important than any fractional increase or decrease in core count or speed measuremen. Those only matter when all the other primary factors are perfectly equal which usually happens only in benchmarks or hours long video rendering exercises.

To put this into perspective, testing both these MacBook Pros using the same benchmarking tests, we get the following results:

Information on how to interpret these results is available here

In summary, the above chart shows:

2018 MacBook Pro (2.9GHz) achieves a single core score of 5,335 and a multi-core score of 22,432
2019 MacBook Pro (2.4GHz) achieves a single core score of 5,658 and a multi-core score of 30,151

So, as you can see, the newest MacBook Pro specs are not lower than those of the 2018 models.


Mojave App Store is only showing Updates tab

I have found the solution (and origin) to this problem. Thanks @charles for giving me the insight.

The problem occurs because the new Mac App Store app CFBundleVersion is marked as 1 so if you have any copy of the old Mac App Store (which had CFBundleVersion over 459) in the system, macOS will think is the most recent version and will try to use it on the background.

This is why if you go the the Apple Logo > App Store… it tries to open the old version.

Deleting the old app bundle from the system resolves the problem.


macOS: Finder constantly restores "Desktop" favorite under Sidebar

Have you tried using First Aid? If there are problems, you may want to use the Disk Utility Tool from Recovery mode. If you reboot and hold down command⌘+r you will boot into your local repair disk, or if you hold down command⌘+option+r you will boot into the internet recovery mode (you will, of course, need internet access and will want to give it a while to load all the options up.)

Also, try zapping the NVRAM by holding down command⌘ + option + p + r when rebooting?

You may also simply need to trash your sidebar preference files:
/Users/Library/Preferences/com.apple.sidebarlists.plist
...or even the Finder preference file:
/Users/Library/Preferences/com.apple.finder.plist

Also check /Library/Preferences/ and /System/Library/Preferences/ to see if there are duplicates.

Note: If you are not the owner of the computer, speak to the owner/admin before trying any of this and request permission from your system administrator. If you are the owner you may need to assign this login account admin status.


Make urls in plain text files into clickable links

You can also automatically change all of your links that appear as text into actual clickable hyperlinks


Does the OS X log notifications from the Notification Center?

This is an old question, but just in case someone stumbles on it and is specifically worried about the privacy implications of Notification Center, the answer is YES, OS X does keep a log of notifications on disk.

The format is an sqlite database, and it can be found inside this folder:

~/Library/Application Support/NotificationCenter

Inside you'll find at least one .db file for your account, i've seen some that OS X apparently considered corrupt at one point, so they're called .db.corrupt.

Running the strings command on this file will show you a load of binary data, quite a few "NSSomething" class names, and yes, your iMessages, file paths, twitter and facebook notifications and anything else that was sent to Notification Center by an app or the system.

If you want to get rid of that file at a specific point in time, you can kill usernoted temporarily (it'll restart itself) and delete the file in one shot (run this as your user account, not with sudo):

killall usernoted && rm ~/Library/Application\ Support/NotificationCenter/*.db

This will, 99% of the time, catch usernoted while it's temporarily not running, successfully delete the old database, and usernoted will make a new empty one when it starts again.

This isn't a good solution if you're really worried about privacy, but aside from encrypting your system or using a ramdisk for that folder, there really isn't a solution.


Did Mail.app once allow messages to be annotated with notes?

yes and no
yes: it was possible to "annotate" mails with a todo - that function is gone in Lion

no: afaik it was not possible to "annotate" mails with a note as well


I think you are correct. Watt=ampere*Voltage, Wh=Ah*V, so 3582/1000*12553/1000=44.96 Wh.


MacBook-iPhone Sync via USB does not work: "AMPLibraryAgent PrepareToLoadDatabases() failed!"

I found the problem:
I havent had opened the App TV yet and therefore that database was missing and thus AMPLibraryAgent would get this error...


Saving and managing attachments in the stock iPhone email app?

Dropbox's email management service app, Mailbox, allows you to open attachments in Dropbox or iFile, which in turn saves the attachment to your /var/mobile/Documents folder, but then again, this same thing happens in the stock Mail app (minus the Dropbox integration). What happens is iFile just registers itself as being able to open any file type, so that any application can open its files in iFile. This is how almost every application does it - they simply let iFile do all of the filesystem handling, so they don't have to (it's tricky on iOS; just ask the guy who made Sandcastle).

If that doesn't fit your needs, however, there is a paid jailbreak tweak called Attachments+ for Mail that should do everything you're looking for, and it integrates directly with the stock Mail app (plus, it even looks like it uses Sandcastle), and it's recently been updated for iOS 7.


It turns out another Mac had an idle screen sharing session open to this computer.  After closing that, I have not experience the screen saver start.


Horizontal or Vertical stand for cooling a Macbook?

Bookarc looks great, but closing the lid means thermal problems. It's not meant to be used that way, and under full load, this probably will lead to noise and overheating. I was planning to buy a stand (since I use my MacBook Pro with external monitor and keyboard), but inadequate cooling stops me, however keeping it open all the time accumulates dust.

Here is my "Reverse V" method

Connect all cables (video) and close the lid.
Wake from external mouse/keyboard. This will force using only the external display.
Open the lid to about 20-40 degrees. Internal display will remain off. The Macbook will be in a "V" like shape.
Put it on the desktop in reversed "V" form on something soft. I recommend old polyurethane mouse pad or shaped polystyrene.

    /\\
   /  \\     - MacBook
  /    \\
===========  - mat/soft mousepad

Pros

Perfect cooling. Warm air gets up, there are no obstructions to the vents and all parts are exposed to colder air.
Cooler means less fan noise under load.
Takes less space than fully opened notebook.
Better bluetooth/wifi reception because lid is not fully closed (compared to fully closed one).
Less dust accumulation.

Cons

You cannot use your internal IR receiver.
Some people will not be comfortable to run their HDDs from this position (10-20 degrees vertical inclination). I think it's perfectly safe.. and I have trustworthy backup system.
If computer sleeps, you should do the steps from 2-4 again or the internal display will be on.
Looks kinda strange compared to the great looking vertical stands available.


Why does the name of my flash drive change whenever I demount, then remount it?

It has always been the case that changing the case of a USB volume formatted with FAT required some low-level hacking.

There are instructions to do this in the following link: (a word of warning: I have not tried this and making a mistake with some of these low level commands may wreck your drive, so be careful!)

http://hints.macworld.com/article.php?story=20090506034709445

Also see the thread here for instructions to change the drive icon if you so desire.

http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=677658


Copy Time Machine network backup (SMB) to USB dirve

I've found the problem..... I've created backup on latest OSX version and the computer where I wanted to restore it had older version. After updating to latest version all works fine.


How to copy pdf files to be view with iBooks on iPad using iTunes

Might need a bit more info on what you're trying to do and what gear you're using but if you're on Yosemite then just open the iBooks app on your Mac then drag your pdfs into that. Then connect your iPad and open iTunes. Select your iPad in iTunes then select the Books tab and make sure Sync Books is ticked and All Books selected. Then sync your device. Alternatively, you can use Adobe's PDF Reader app or one of the many other PDF apps for iPad and use iTunes File Sharing to copy the PDFs across.


How to Sync MacOS Applications + Preferences across multiple Macs without OS X Server?

Seems like ChronoSync could help in a limited way. The support pages have warnings on syncing ~/Library. See ChronoSync - Syncing your Home folder.

You could try Unison for everything instead of multiple tools and approaches (one caveat is that Unison was last updated in 2009; it's source is available under GPL though).

References:
Unison Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)
Using Unison on Specific Operating Systems


Apple Mail search & smart mailboxes stopped working

In such events where a problem arises due to multiple reasons, answers look like troubleshoot efforts. Cleaning up the comments, here's what I did on Mojave for an IMAP account:

Back up the relevant folder under ~/Library/Mail/ and then delete the original folder associated with the troubling account.
Hide the ~/Library/Mail/ from Spotlight index using Spotlight Preferences -> Privacy and revealing hidden folders in Finder layover.

Restart Mail and wait for all the mails to get downloaded. And remove the said folder from Privacy in Spotlight Preferences. Let the indexing be complete. If anything breaks, use the backup folder.

Do step one(backup) of above and take screenshots of Mail Preferences in case account specific settings like "rules" break down.
In Internet Accounts in System Preferences, remove the account. Wait for some reasonable time, and add it back.
Again if anything breaks(as OP says, smart mailboxes, not for me), replace the new folder under ~/Library/Mail/V6 with the backed up one.


How to set odd rows as x axis and even rows as y axis in numbers?

I am afraid there is no way you can chart all that data in Numbers as they are.

First make a copy of that table and then transpose the copy via the Table > Transpose Rows and Columns menu at the top. Then cut & paste all date and amount columns below each other respectively. There does not appear to be any other way.


Your G3 probably has a dead motherboard battery.  Depending on the model, they are usually not that hard to replace and cost between $2 and $30.

As for the G4, I'd say physical damage from the fall is a pretty good assumption.  Since it sounds like multiple components are damaged, it may not be worth the effort to fix unless you just like to tinker.


How do I change the default font-family for all slides in keynote

You can change the Master Slide to get the fonts you want, and if you’d like this to be the default, then you can save this out as a Theme.

(Caveat: I only have iWork ’11 in front of me, but I believe it's the same, for iWork ’09).

(i) Adjust font for a single presentation

Open the complete set of Master Slides. View > Show/Edit Master Slides.
Find the Master Slide(s) that corresponds to slides that you’ve used in your presentation. Open the Fonts panel (Format > Font > Show Fonts, or the Fonts item in the toolbar).
Select everything in the slide (Edit > Select All, or ⌘A), and then, in the fonts panel, select Courier instead of Gill Sans.
Repeat for every Master Slide you need.
Create a text box and format it with the font/style you want. Then select it and choose Format > Advanced > Define Text for All Masters.

(ii) Adjust font of a theme for all future presentations based on this theme

Create a blank slide show with the chosen Theme, make these edits on every Master Slide. (Every slide should now have Courier instead of Gill Sans as the default font).

Then save this out as a new Theme (File > Save theme…) to avoid overwriting the default. Call it something descriptive, like Courier Black, and just save it.

Now, next time the Theme chooser pops up, you’ll be able to choose your Courier Black variant, which will have Courier as the default.


LG UltraFine 5K with MacBook Pro 2017 issues

It sounds weird but anothet thing to try is if you have the Macbook touching the LG5K display in any way it causes some sort of earthing issue.  As you know the Macbook aluminium case is a conductor and there are minute amounts of current generated on the shell by the Macbook Pro itself.  If these currents find their way to the LG5K display it causes erratic behaviour (display turns off for a second or two) or wavy lines.

Also pls be aware not all Type-C's are the same - a Type C1 (TH3 mode) passes a 5K display signal whereas a Type C2 (USB3.1) does not.


I use FlyCut, you can do Cmd-Shift-V and then cycle through your recently copied texts with arrow keys.


OS X works perfectly fine on external HD but extremely slow with HD on MBP

If both the HDD and the SSD are running significantly faster when installed in the external enclosure rather than the internal bay, your SATA cable is likely the culprit. Both should run faster when connected via the internal SATA bus vs external USB 3.0 bus. You can run the Apple Hardware Test (which doesn't test your drive, but does test the connection), but it's prone to false negatives.

If you are close to an Apple Store, my advice would be to take it in for a free diagnostic (AppleCare won't cover the cost of replacing the cable since you already swapped out the drive, however). At any rate, you can get a definitive diagnosis and then decide whether to go through Apple, use a third-party service, or a DIY solution as posted in the link above. BOL.


After creating your rectangle you can choose the color picker, then Show Colors. That gives you an opacity slider.

Here you can see I've given it a purple tint.


MacBook Pro 16" Pinch to Zoom Delay in Google Chrome

Unfortunately, Google Chrome has always worked like that on macOS and it's the same in many Electron apps (since they're based on Chromium).
The only thing you can do is report the bug to Google, but don't expect much.


Check out EasyFind (Freeware). It will search through all subfolders including hidden folders.


osx cancel startup applications from login window

Click the account you want to login to, enter the password, hit Enter and immediately press and hold the Shift key. You may also hit Shift+Enter once you’ve typed the password, and you will have similar results.


You should also see the white squares defining the borders of the mask. Those are the handles for resizing borders. (It's also possible to select the picture behind the mask, in which case the handles surround the picture itself.)

Pixelcorps has a terrific MacBreak Work video tutorial on masks in iWork '09.


Can I build a smart playlist populated by songs I’ve loved within the last x weeks?

The workaround I use is the use the "Grouping" info for each track (in addition to or instead of the rating).  That won't help you if you use Grouping for something else already, but updating the "grouping" will change the "modified date" for the track, which could then be used as a criterion for a smart playlist.


Bootcamp Macbook Air thinks my USB 3.0 ports are USB 2.0

On Windows, you need drivers in order to have everything working fine. In this case, the bootcamp should install it for you right after Windows installation. It installs all drivers: trackpad, graphic card, webcam, USB 3.0; as well as some bootcamp utilities that allow you to use the F10, F11, F12 as volume keys for instance.

If you didn't get this part during your installation, you just need to use the USB-stick you installed windows with and run the bootcamp software on it (it's the only .exe you'll find).

OR

See this Apple Support page to download it again (64-bit, Mid-2013 MacBook Air): http://support.apple.com/kb/DL1721


This is dependent on how the game's developer has coded it. In principle it is possible that the developer saves the state somewhere on the internet but my guess is this is only normally done for games with a network or social component. It may even be possible to do a sync via iTunes on a desktop computer shared by the iPhone and iPad (i.e. sync the iPhone with the computer then plug the iPad into the computer). However, all of this depends on how the game was coded and as far as I know there is no general way of doing this.


Using Two External Monitors for my MBP (E. 2015) but resolution is low on the other one

If the Samsung display has other inputs, you're likely to have better luck with digital inputs (DVI or HDMI) than with analog inputs (VGA). You'll need a different Mini DisplayPort adapter for that.


Despite the fact Steve Jobs didn't support this idea because it's making things complicated for the users, there are some apps which will allow you to do so.

There is i-FunBox which allows you to browse through your iPhone files on your Mac. And if you're a Windows user, you've more options. There is iPhoneBrowser or iPhone Folders.
All of these solutions will allow you to browse the iPhone file systems using your computer.

If you want to be able to browse on your iPhone yourself, I'm afraid I only know one solution, called iFile. But this is only accessible on a jailbroken device...


Just tried this myself and confirmed that the executable gives the error you mentioned:

"JDiskReport" is damaged and can't be opened. You should move it to the Trash.

I was able to get it to run setup by Ctrl-clicking JDiskReport.app, clicking Show Package Contents and navigating to Contents/Resources/Java/jdskreport-1.4.0.jar.  Ctrl-clicking this .jar file will allow you to click Open and bypass Mountain Lion's default 'unidentified developer' error.  I did not go completely through Setup (only confirmed that it ran), so try this and let me know how it goes.


MacBook Pro black screen - or reset password

This happened to me too with my macbook pro 15 (mid 2012) running yosemite. What I did is took a flashlight and see if there was an image still on the screen. What I found out is that I was able to see the log in screen but it was all dark. After logging in all was back to normal.

Eventually if that doesn't work you can reset the pram of your computer. Follow this link http://support.apple.com/en-us/ht3964 .


Folder selection in Finder's column view

Just a thought, but do you have Show Hidden Files turned on in the User account and not admin? Could paste this in a terminal window:

defaults write com.apple.Finder AppleShowAllFiles NO

and see if it makes a difference.


Your photos should be tagged if taken by the phone. You can use iPhone Backup Extractor — it will show you location data and times, that your iPhone tagged a location, be that a photo, a message or something else, which may help you for what you are trying to do.

The other option may be to download your google maps timeline if you have this activated: https://www.google.com/maps/timeline

You can manually extract the frequent location data from here, but you will need to convert the files to something readable.

/private/var/mobile/Library/Caches/com.apple.routined/


iPhone 5 won't turn on after being off for two weeks


MacBook Pro 2016 + 4K 60Hz display maxes out at 30Hz

I assume you have 2 GPU's in that MBP- try this util and see if enforcing to run on NVIDIA/AMD instead of INTEL helps:

https://gfx.io and check if it's displaying a little d or i letter in menubar.

i - means integrated GPU.
d — means discrete higher-powered GPU. I got a 2012 1st retina MBP and the integrate GPU is bad, slow and unusable with 2880x1440, so I doubt it even could be connected to a 4K screen. Good news is there is also the d discrecte GPU that is either one of AMD or NVIDIA mobile powerhorses and they are quite good.

So, first try to switch from one to another and see if anything changes.
I don't know the new MBP specs, but I am almost certain that you got some kind of integrated/discrete GPU combo. I had similiar issues when the first retina come out in 2012- soo im not sure if the new MBP runs also some kind of hybrid intel/amd or intel/nvidia- but nothing else would make sense ;)

Try one of those utils then, swap resolutions, fiddle with configs.

RDM freeware
Resolutionator paid app
QuckRes paid app

You can manually enforce screen options -check my other answer here to ~ related ~ issue, but let's keep things simple first.

Cycle (disconnect/connect) your screen and post the output of sudo dmesg immediately after cycling somewhere (pastebin,.. etc.) We can check what it says about your screen, swapt the resolution etc. a few times and see if you can see anything in the log (openup console) about errors etc.

Then do:
defaults read /Library/Preferences/com.apple.windowserver.plist
Post the output of the command above- but take out any device serial numbers first.

You can also gather all diagnostic info about your mbp with:
sudo sysdiagnose -f ~/Desktop/, then selectively post the info
about your system and especially graphics/screens config to http://pastebin.com/ or gist or whatever.

Forgot to ask, are you familiar with *nix/bsd or linux?

Important! Don't forget to delete private information before you post anything anywhere, anything like your device serial number, ip, mac address, user names, login, mail etc. that can be used by someone else.


iPhoto - find all photos that look like this photo?

There's actually no way to do that in iPhotos/Photos.

But you should take a look at Google Photos which add this feature recently.

As far as I know iPhotos/Photos can only identify human faces, geotagged photos, panoramic photos (Photos only), in addition to various metadata (such as date, description…).

Nevertheless you can add tag manually (at least in Photos.app) by opening information related to the photo (cmd+i).


You can set shortcuts for some context shortcuts, specifically anything that's a service. Most app-specific context menu items aren't services (although some, such as services to modify a file in a particular app are), so they can't be assigned shortcuts. So it depends which items you want a shortcut for, but it's doable.

To add a shortcut for a service, open Keyboard Preferences, click the Keyboard Shortcuts tab, and select Services in the left pane. Then look for the context menu item you want in the right pane, click it and you'll get an option to set a shortcut.


How do you do a web search on an IPhone?

You can just swipe down on any home screen to reveal the search field at top of screen. Enter your search criteria and you'll see a range of results, including suggested websites.

If none of the results suit you, just swipe up and tap on the Search Web option that appears at the bottom of screen. This will do a search for you using Google (or whatever search engine you have set as your default) in a new Safari tab.

NOTES:

It may be worth you checking whether you've configured Spotlight Suggestions. You can do this via Settings > General > Spotlight Search.
You can also check your Safari Search settings within Settings > Safari.


Damage replacement plan / Insurance for Mac Book Pro?

Apple does not offer any insurance like that with Applecare. I think Dell only offers it because replacing a piece of equipment is ultimately really cheap for them, but Apple doesn't play Dell's game (and that is probably part of the reason why you purchased an Apple product).

Going by the fact that you are in the USA, I think this would depend on the type of damages for which you are seeking insurance, which you don't specify in your question. Renter's or home insurance would protect against theft from your home (rent or own, respectively). Damage incurred while being on the road would probably fall under some kind of business insurance, though I'd imagine you would pay a pretty hefty penny for that level of care no matter who you call.

I think your best course action would be to call your insurance company and see what they have to offer that best suits your particular needs.


Time Machine backing up way more space than hard drive contains

Not exactly sure since I haven’t used TM with Mojave yet however, I may help point you in the right direction or stimulate a more accurate answer.  TM can backup all files including temp files, deleted files, cache files and even USB drives attached. If you were making a lot of changes during the initial backup, the initial file size will compensate for that. Also Mojave utilizes APFS which contains nested volumes and containers. There are additional formatting files outside of the readable HD within the volumes and containers that could be getting backed up to make sure you will be able to install from backup correctly.  It could also be backing up your recovery HD. If you run diskUtil list in terminal you can see the size of any hidden volumes and containers.

I wonder since APFS uses the new file reference system to save space while keeping track of duplicated and edited files, maybe that could be play a role as well. TM HD might be saving both or be adding additional reference files for the locals snapshots? In the long run, TM will be writing over the older saved backup files with newer content. So I don’t think you should pry too much to get that additional space back.

I have had issues in the past trying to restore from a TM HD that was the same size as my primary HD and wouldn’t recommend it. Using a drive at least 2/3 times larger is the right way to go.


Can I play ARK: Survival Evolved on my MacBook Air?

No, according to http://www.survival-evolved.com/ark-guides/survival-evolved-system-requirements.html

  Mac OS X
  MINIMUM:

  • OS: OSX 10.9 or Higher
  • Processor: 2 GHz Equivalent CPU
  • Memory: 4000 MB RAM
  • Graphics: OpenGL 3 Compatible GPU with 1GB Video RAM
  • Hard Drive: 20000 MB available space

Your machine is under-spec on CPU & GPU & OS requirement.


What to do if MacBook Pro 2017 uses more wattage than the charger can give?

You should check the power of your charger and then check the power required for your MacBook Pro. I think you need a 87 Watt charger but smaller chargers will work although they may exhibit the problem you see. You can check the required charger and cables for  your computer here.

If your charger is less the 87 Watts your best options are to go back to wherever you bought the computer and explain your problem or buy a new charger from Apple.


Problem downloading 10.8. Can I use my copy?


In situation as you described, HDD could survive with high probability, but as MBP retina uses SSD instead there is a small, but chance to kill it. First steps to repair it is to disconnect the battery and disconnect the SSD. This is guarantee to prevent:
1) future information losses
2) future damage of logic board.

What damages can you expect - generally, in these cases this is 50/50 game. Cleaning requires disassembly of the MacBook and wiping board with cleaning agent e.g. ethyl alcohol (96% concentrated). It is non-conductor, so then when macbook will be reassembled, it probably will work.
My friend had similar problem: water and MBP retina 13. And now his MBPr works OK, but only with power cord plugged in. I do not recommend connect it to power cord until it properly dried and cleaned (with alcohol).


Don't bother getting a replacement, get a refund as it'll likely be the same and you'll see the same issues on their demo units if you have a keen eye like I do.  Detailed reply below...

I have a space grey iPad Mini Retina 32GB WiFi/3G.  I also have the yellow tint on the lower half of the screen by the home button.  I've tried leaving it plugged in and set at 100% brightness for 4 days and the issue persists 6 weeks later.  I went into my local Apple Store and I could see that all the others on display were the same or even worse regardless if they were black or white bezels or what the serial number started with (mine is F4KM...).  It is a production issue that had been around for ages and Apple think it's now good enough for us not to notice but, a lot of us do!  It's not a glue curing issue and will not go away over time.

I've even been to the genius bar and they can't acknowledge (or refuse to) the problem even after showing them photos, a clear white screen and the greyscale test which clearly shows the issue even under the store's lighting.

I think Apple are clearly aware of this problem and just don't want to go through the expense and embarrassment of a recall affecting millions of units as only a few of us can see this widespread problem that appears to affect ALL retina iPads.  However, they will be forced to act once major magazines and consumer media start publishing these problems.


Is it possible to use Back To My Mac DNS or routing information from the command line?

This has changed a little with 10.7 and you'll want to note that this uses IPv6 almost entirely so test with ping6 and traceroute6 to debug things.

It's no longer done via @computername.mobilemename.members.mac.com, it's now done via members.btmm.icloud.com, and its no longer as simple as your mobilemename.

Step 1: Find out your iCloud BTMM domain

Either of these commands will provide your BTMM domain:

# dns-sd -E
# mDNS -E

The output is formatted slightly differently, but what you're after is the numeric ID, it'll be something like 12345678.members.btmm.icloud.com.

Step 2: List Computers

You can use these tools to browse that domain for services, e.g. for ssh servers:

# dns-sd -B _ssh 12345678.members.btmm.icloud.com

Or if you already know the hostname just access it directly as computer-name.12345678.members.btmm.icloud.com. (Any spaces in your computer name will be hyphens in this domain).

You can only access this from a computer that is also set up for BTMM on the same account, because this hostname will resolve to an IPv6 address that is really the end of an encrypted network tunnel between your BTMM computers.

If you want to see the IPv6 address for a specific host, you can type

# dns-sd -G v6 computer-name.12345678.members.btmm.icloud.com

And it'll output something like:

17:37:47.504  Add     2  0 computer-name.12345678.members.btmm.icloud.com. FD11:993E:64AE:4DEA:011F:FBD1:F444:11A1%<0>  152

Step 3: Connect

# ssh username@computer-name.12345678.members.btmm.icloud.com

Note

I'm not sure if that number will ever change, so you may or may not need to repeat Step 1 at some point later on...


How do I show who created/owns a file in the Finder?

I appreciate this doesn't completely answer your question as its not a modification to Finder, but I've previously used Path Finder to do this - assuming you're willing to pay for and use a 3rd party application (though its does have a 30-day trial).


How to identify build number of a macOS installer?

The most reliable way of telling the build number is to check the SystemVersion.plist file inside the installer's OS image file (and not the build number of the installer app itself).

Mount /Applications/Install macOS Sierra.app/Contents/SharedSupport/InstallESD.dmg
Mount /Volumes/OS X Install ESD/BaseSystem.dmg (hidden file)
Open /Volumes/OS X Base System/System/Library/CoreServices/SystemVersion.plist and examine the build number under <key>ProductBuildVersion</key>


Daily FTP backup script for external hard drive

You may write this script and it will work for not big number of files, but entire external hard drive backup to ftp server only using bash is a hard task. Because of possible connection problem, because of namespace problem. (Some file names on Mac ) may be impossible to store on your ftp server. If you backup small number of files ~100mb just zip them and upload with sh ftp command. But if the amount of data is large >1gb it is better to use third party software like "immortal files" or "goodsync".


Is Google Translate Phrasebook sync available for iOS

As of today (Sep 7th 2015) July 23 2017 , it is still unavailable on the iOS.


Transfer songs purchased on iphone 4 to computer

Sync it with ITunes (if it isnt already) and sign in to itunes on your mac and it should (may take a minute or two) sync up.


How to transfer images from macOS to the primary Photo Library on iOS?

I always use AirDrop to transfer things between my macOS and iOS devices, and it works very well.


Can I override the error AutoCAD gives about my older video card?

Thanks to Asmus's suggestion I found that if you remove your graphic card's model from the file unspt_gfx_cards you can install AutoCad. So to recap:

Copy the .mpkg package out of the DMG file to some place like your Desktop
Right click on the package and select 'Show Package Contents'
Browse to Contents/Resources/unspt_gfx_cards
Right click unspt_gfx_cards and open with textedit
Remove all lines that contain Intel or GMA(for your macbook) and save
Double click on the .mpkg to install without hardware restrictions

Not sure if you will have any problems running Autocad but at least you should be able to install it.


Discrepancies in available capacity of Macbook Air SSD

It is interesting to note that Hard Drive Manufacturers use the correct meaning of "Gigabytes" when referring to hard drives, and not what most people think of as a GB which is actually a Gibibyte:

Gigabyte = 10 to the 9 bytes = 1000000000bytes = 1000 megabytes

Gibibyte = 2 to the 30 bytes = 1073741824bytes = 1024 mebibytes

Since Mac OS X also switched to this "proper" definition for storage units such as Gigabytes as of Snow Leopard, then the size of the drive should be understood in these terms, noting that on a Mac the OS and the Hard Drive will be talking the same language, there is no need to do the conversion from Gibibytes to Gigabytes.

The given size should be correct and accurate as reported on a Mac as they have a common understanding of what a Gigabyte is, and incorrect on Windows which uses the commonly misused Gibibyte structure on it's filesystems whilst users incorrectly assume it is measured in Gigabytes.

Technically manufacturers should use GiB not GB when marketting and packaging their drives, but they don't/won't, and use Gigabyte which they know practically everyone uses incorrectly.

In your case the available unformatted capacity is indeed low even for using the correct maths, but as referenced in another answer the size of 256Gb refers to the total storage capacity of the drive, and you have to not only accept that formatted capacity is lower, but also that the capacity that is available to format can also be lower, if portions are reserved for the purposes of replacing bad blocks through the lifecycle of the drive.

Lengthy comment follows after the first 2 comments below - too long for a comment tho, but not really part of the answer other than background info perhaps

The space reservation thing is not something I feel I can be canonical about, I know the theory, I can't really backup it up once and for all, especially because this is an Apple non-consumer drive.  However, almost all drives over provision, providing more space than they state in order to have capacity for replacing worn areas.

It's not 100% clear, but it certainly appears to be the case, that in the case of these Apple supplied drives, the provision of "backup" blocks is taken from the stated capacity from the off.  I think this is how most manufacturers do it, hence the fact that you see way more 60Gb drives than 64Gb etc.  The implication being that there is 64Gb of storage capacity, and 60 of it us user addressable.  Whether you call that a 60 or a 64Gb drive could potentially be taken either way.  I would call it a 60, but from a legal perspective I would imagine both cases are arguable accurate.  As for the instances you see where the available capacity is equal to or greater than the nominal capacity (in the case of the 128Gb drives you see) then it could simply be the case that some manufacturers are either more generous, or more worried about failure, than others and genuinely put in more chips worth, say 132Gb for example.

So in you case, you likley have a 256Gb drive in terms of chips, the fact that the user addressable space is lower, even before formatting is likely just how it is.  I have an Apple supplied 128Gb Air SSD which shows much the same behaviour:

APPLE SSD TS128C:

Capacity: 121.33 GB (121,332,826,112 bytes)
  Model:    APPLE SSD TS128C


iOS Mail app archive button sometimes goes back to inbox view?


Needs Office for Mac 2011 Outlook Spotlight?

As you suspected, Outlook for Mac does use Spotlight's index files (as do many other apps, such as Alfred). If you've got Spotlight disabled, search in Outlook isn't going to work either.

Spotlight shouldn't take up any memory really at all if it's not indexing and/or updating indexes.


Something like BetterTouchTool can be used for this purpose. You can configure gestures and actions that trigger keyboard shortcuts. You could trigger something that simulated the enter key being pressed using this tool.


Do I need two passwords? I keep getting an annoying request to enter my iTunes password, and I have never even tried to order anything from iTunes

You don't necessarily need two passwords/accounts. Here is how it works:

You have an iCloud account, and an iTunes account. Both are accessed using your AppleID account credentials, but they are separate services. So account changes made in one service (like change of password) will be applied to the core AppleID account, and by extension the account used to log in to all other related Apple services. Most people use the same AppleID account credentials for both services, but you can use two separate accounts if you prefer (I do this for managed business devices).

iCloud accounts are generally only used to backup data and configurations (Activation Lock and Find My iPhone are also features of iCloud). You typically never get prompted for this password unless you are using a service or App that explicitly wants access to your iCloud (usually to perform or access backups). The iCloud account credentials can be set at Settings/iCloud.

iTunes Store accounts are used to purchase, download and update Apps. Depending on your settings, Apps may try to update themselves in the background, and this may require you to verify with your iTunes account password (even free Apps). This also occurs with iOS updates, but with a 1st gen device you won't have to worry about that. This is most likely what is happening to you. The credentials for this account can be changed in Settings/Store on 1st generation iPads. You can also disable automatic updates for Apps via the same location. That should stop the prompts. I have no idea what could be trying to update on a 1st gen device, but I am super curious.

Hope this helps. Apple device/account management can be unnecessarily convoluted sometimes. I wish someone would fix that.

Good luck.


After some efforts I have come to a useful result !!
sed syntax is quite confusing and I am quite happy to exist in a state where it works without knowing quite why.

#!/bin/bash
for file in *.pdf
do
    # return file name and date in form "Payment Date:   8/7/2016"
    date=$(pdfgrep -C 15 "Payment Date:" "$file")
    echo $date

    # now replace / with - to make naming file easier
    date2=$(echo "$date" | sed 's,/,-,g')
    echo $date2

    # use date string to rename : YYYY-mm-payslip-dd-mm-YYYY.pdf
    new=$(echo "$date2" | sed 's,\Payment Date:\ *\(.*\)-\(.*\)-\(.*\),\3-\2-\payslip-\1-\2-\3.pdf,')
    echo mv "$file" "$new"
done

I used pdfgrep which was installed using homebrew (found on another answer I can't find right now).

I needed to change "/" for file name.
Using the forward slash as sed syntax is not necessary, and can be replaced by other characters. Hence using "," instead of "/"
https://stackoverflow.com/questions/17379293/replace-forward-slash-with-double-backslash-enclosed-in-double-quotes

I found there were variable spaces in $date which necessitated the ..Payment Date:\ *\...

I added year and month to start of file name for organising purposes.


Removing apps from 'Mobile Applications' that aren't in iTunes?

I don't know of an effective solution.

One approach could be trying to process the iTunes Library metadata files to see if you can extract the raw filenames from that. There are some third party programs that read your iTunes Library. There's an one open source library called sift that does that.

In addition to this, I can think of a workaround requiring some work. Not sure if it will work for you:

Remove all apps from iTunes without deleting the files.
Re-add the complete folder.
Re-delete all the apps you don't want from iTunes, making sure you chose to delete them from disk as well.


Try deleting the Finder preferences (rm ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.Finder.plist)
Try to replicate the problem on another user account on the same Mac.
Look for utilities which change the keyboard behaviour.


Installing 64-bit java on Mac OS X Lion?

Look for Java Preferences in Utilities. There you'll find order of Java binaries browser will use.


Try going to System Preferences...

There in the System row go to Statup Disk

And select the Windows partition.

Restart...

During Startup try holding the option key. You should be able to select the partition you will boot from.


Homebrew installation failed on OS X El Capitan. Uninstall won't work. How do I start over and reinstall?

Late answer, but I just ran into this issue myself.

This Github issue suggests the solution is to run rm -rf /usr/local/.git. I did that, but the issue persisted. I then deleted the /usr/local/Homebrew directory. That seemed to resolve things for me, and I could then re-run the install command OK.


Your computer name can be changed in System Preferences > Sharing. This name may take a while to propagate to Apple ID device list.
Your hard drive name (not your computer name) looks set to Macintosh HD–this can be changed by simply right clicking and choosing rename.
Your account name can be identified in System Preferences > Users & Groups. If the information on this screen is incorrect, the easiest solution is to make a new account and transfer stuff manually. It is possible to change this without making a new account, just not trivial.


How to get Apple TV to start an iPhoto slideshow in the middle?

You can use third party apps now and those make it easier to create and show slideshows from the middle. One in particular that I like is Slidez but there are others such as Storehouse. Go to the App Store and do a search from your Apple TV. Good luck.


Apple Mail App :: "Erase Junk Mail" is greyed out

Go to mail>preferences>junk mail>under when junk mail arrives make sure options #2 move it to the Junk mailbox is selected and this should fix your problem immediately.

Let me know if you need any help, this is what worked for me after I let my junk mail build up to over 600, which was killing me, I can understand you want it gone! Should look like this:


Is there a third-party iTunes store browser?

A very basic way to browse the iTunes Music Store with less of bling-bling and no ads is nashville:

Open Terminal and install nashville:

sudo gem install nashville

After the gems are installed, choose an inspiring coloring scheme:

osascript -e "tell application \"Terminal\" to set background color of window 1 to {56000,450,10000,0}"

Now search for an artist, an album or a song.

Check its --help or its [command] --help. By entering its preview [previewUrl] you can also listen to some music previews with an external player like QuickTime Player.


Why might pasting an URL link into iCloud from a PC make that link inactive on iOS in notes?

I made a short clip of how the web app works when typing.

My guess is the paste event isn't triggering the URL detection and I can replicate the behavior you describe on Safari by pasting in and matching the style - even when I cut the URL that was detected by my typing.

All I need to to is add a space after the paste event and the URL gets encoded properly and turns blue as shown in this short video...

So, you need to type a space to get the paste to be processed.


With any Jailbroken device, any update of any kind will break the Jailbreak. OTA updates (update from device in settings app) will kill your phone and force a restore. Updating through iTunes will revert the Jailbreak but leave the rest of your data untouched. I recommend updating to 8.4 and jailbreaking again with the new TAiG jailbreak tool (plus it gives you some laughs during the process because the translation is so horrible)!

Hope this helped, Nick


/dev/tty.usbmodem disappears after Mountain Lion upgrade

I beleive that plugging the arduino into the Mac via USB causes the port to be created automatically as part of the device detection.

If it's not showing up, then the OS is not detecting it as a device or the name of the device is no longer waht you expect it to be.

It may well be that under Mountain Lion, that the port name has changed, I found a script over on StackOverflow that detects for changes in the /dev folder by comparing a list of all the devices in /dev before and after the device is plugged in.