After mounting a Windows SMB share, how can I determine the windows "creator" of a file?

AFAIK, you can't get the ownership properties of files on SMB/Samba shares on anything other than Windows. Mac OS / Linux implementations of Samba don't parse that info when reading the share, most probably because of the differences in how the extended attributes are stored between the OS's, and that the Share properties are determined by the hosting system and are locked down to prevent network users from altering the properties of the Share.


It's the same as Reverse Conversion (⌃⇧R).

You can use KeyRemap4MacBook to get a separate 変換 key.

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<root>
<item>
<name>henkan</name>
<identifier>private.henkan</identifier>
<inputmode_only>JAPANESE</inputmode_only>
<autogen>--KeyToKey-- KeyCode::COMMAND_R, KeyCode::R, ModifierFlag::SHIFT_L | ModifierFlag::CONTROL_L</autogen>
</item>
</root>


How to save emailed video into Photos program?

Save Attachment

Right click the video in Mail.
Select "Save Attachment".
Go to where you saved it in Finder.
Drag it into Photos.

It may take it a while, depending on the age of your Mac, how big the video is, etc.


How can I prevent FaceTime from launching when I plug in an external video camera?

You can control which applications automatically open after attaching a camera to your Mac using the native Mac application, Image Capture. Try plugging in you camera and then launching Image Capture. If the camera is recognized by the app, there will be a drop down menu visible in the bottom left-hand corner of the app. Click the drop down menu to choose which application to automatically open when the camera is attached (in your case, choose "No Application").

If for some reason Image Capture does not recognize your camera, the drop down menu will not be visible. In that case, I'm not sure how to fix your problem.


Viewing a mms:// live broadcast on my Desktop?

VLC Player
You can also take a look at the VLC features list.


Watch 4 buttons and certain features frequently go unresponsive

I'm going to assume there's no pattern to when this happens and it's totally random.

My first thought would be that it's a connection issue (remembering that your watch is designed to communicate with your iPhone). So I'd go through the process of unpairing and then restoring your Apple Watch to see if that resolves the issue.

IMPORTANT: - Read through all of this answer before commencing the process so that you know what's involved.

You can un-pair your Apple Watch from the Watch itself or from your iPhone. Since you're having frequent unresponsiveness from your Watch, the following steps are for doing this from your iPhone.

Un-pair and restore your Apple Watch

On your iPhone go to the Apple Watch app
Make sure you're on the My Watch screen
Tap on your watch name at the top of the screen
Tap on the info icon (i.e. the amber circle with an 'i in it)
Now select the red Un-pair Apple Watch option
You'll be prompted to confirm the un-pair process
If you have an e-sim activated with a mobile service, choose to keep your plan
Disable Activation Lock by entering your Apple ID password and tapping Un-pair
Your watch data will begin backing up to your iPhone
When complete, your watch will:

be unpaired from your iPhone
be unpaired from any Bluetooth devices
no longer have any Apple Pay cards attached
have no passcode
be reset to Apple's factory settings

OPTIONAL: You may want to backup your iPhone as it's now the only place all of your Apple Watch data is stored
Switch on your Apple Watch
Put it on
Now make sure your iPhone is close to your Apple Watch
Once the "Use your iPhone to set up this Apple Watch" prompt appears, tap on Continue. (NOTE: If the prompt doesn't appear, open the Apple Watch app on your iPhone and tap the Start Pairing option)
Follow the prompts to pair your Watch to your iPhone and to set it up

Now start using your watch again to see if it works properly. If it doesn't I'd call Apple Support. They can actually run diagnostics on your Apple Watch remotely (you will need to have your iPhone with you as well in order for them to do this). It doesn't take long to do and will help identify if there are any hardware issues.


How can i burn a Windows 7 USB to an ISO?

The easiest way will probably be UNetbootin which lets you specify an ISO to use and will create a bootable USB drive from it. I've not tried it on Lion but a quick Google says it should be compatible (a 90% of the time it works all the time situation).


How to mount PCIe SSD from MacBook Air in another computer

The physical interface(s) or form factor(s) are Apple proprietary. The different SSDs have 6+12/12+16/8+18/7+17 pins. The electrical/logical interface is PCIe 2.0 2x or 4x (everymac.com also mentions SATA for some older MacBook Airs).

Several adapters for different MacBook (Air) SSDs are available here.

Example: MacBook Air Mid 2013 SSD to PCI-e 4X. Please check the specs and features!

I haven't been able to find an adapter for the MacBook Air Early 2015 SSD there. The latest MacBook Air uses a proprietary PCIe 2.0 4x instead of a proprietary PCIe 2.0 2x interface like older MacBook Airs.


Is there a way to prevent downloads of purchased items to iTunes?

Open iTunes
Click iTunes Store
Go to the iTunes Store Home
On the right column is the text "Purchased" with a little bubble that says (new). Click "Purchased"
Find the show that you don't want.
Click it and then a window should pop up containing the show
There should be an (X) next to the show. Click That
iTunes will ask you whether you want to make the show hidden. You do.
Repeat for all other shows.


Trying to Determine if MacBook Pro 2011 projects in 4:3 or 16:9 format during presentations

Your native aspect ratio is 8 : 5. If you are using Keynote for Mac to present, click wide when picking your template, which can be blank. When being chosen as wide, it sets the ratio to 16:9.


Error when trying to export a multipage document from Excel (2011) with both landscape and portrait pages as a PDF file

This appears to be a limitation of the PDF generator within OSX itself. It appears as though the behavior has been present in OSX versions 10.5 Leopard, 10.6 Snow Leopard, 10.7 Lion and 10.8 Mountain Lion. According to posts within the Microsoft Excel 2011 support pages (here, here and here) when you initiate the print to PDF command from within Excel 2011 the program hands off the actual generation of said PDF to the operating system. On the surface it appears as though OSX is interpreting the page orientations differently and outputting as separate PDF files. I checked through the known issues with Microsoft Excel 2011 to see if there is an outstanding bug for this behavior but nothing seems readily apparent. The support pages contain references to different methodologies to get around the problem such as:

Automator workflows
VBA Scripts
Combing the resulting PDF documents within Preview
3rd party software to perform the actual generation (Adobe
Acrobat, PDFwriter, etc..)

The information available reports varying degrees of success depending on what solution you ultimately end up choosing. All the solutions seem to be more of the same shim type work arounds with no easy / native (within Excel 2011) solution.


The Apple macOS installer doesn't read settings so people that require a scripted setup add post install scripts or a full fledged MDM to push configuration profiles. You can pick apart the vendor install and roll a combined package - createOSXinstallPkg - but 10.12.4 changes may limit the options there going forward.

In the end, your solution for this varies according to your scale and the cost to afford user interaction.

5 installs typically you make an image or use ssh / Apple Remote Desktop to script and push out customizations
50 installs you might use a tool like createOSXinstallPkg or server.app and profile manager
500 to 5000 installs set up an MDM like munki or jamf pro.

Organizations are successfully deploying "zero touch" solutions but that means IT doesn't have to touch the os - end users still need to initiate and handle some subset of the default graphical / interactive steps. Many like iCloud, diagnostic settings, location and Siri can be preconfigured or automated but not everything.


Is the Guest account a security risk with full disk encryption on Mountain Lion?

No, it's not. Some say it's a benefit if you have geo-location and remote wipe configured (or other similar software) as it increases the chance that someone finding the Mac will connect it to the Internet.

What's happening is that you also have Find My Mac on. That enables a Safari-only guest account which will allow users to log in and run Safari. The goal is that if someone steals your laptop, they might log into the guest account and give Find My Mac a chance to phone home.

The Safari-only guest account uses the unencrypted recovery partition to launch Safari. It does not decrypt your FileVault area at all, so your data remains safe.

(I've found an Apple knowledge base article confirming this.)


Numeric Keypad on Extended Keyboard Doesn't Work in Terminal and There's No NumLock Key

Try pressing the "clear" button on the numeric keypad. If that doesn't work, try SHIFT+Clear.


Can't install programs nor change system settings because admin password is not recognized on Mac OS Lion

Have you done any of the obvious fixes yet?

repair file system
repair permissions
check keyboard encoding when prompted for password entry
...

Have you looked into the system.log for possible hints?


OS X 10.11.6 can not update iTunes 12.5.1, app store problem

I had the same issue. I ran Disk Utility -> First Aid and it found a buch of issues. After that I was able to download iTune 12.5.1 properly.

If that doesn't work, you can always download it directly from: http://www.apple.com/itunes/download/


Can iMac 5k be set up to change screen resolution at log in depending on user

Yes, the display resolution can be different for each user. This is specified in System Preferences > Displays and the computer should remember these settings at login.


How can I find the metadata of a file in Scanner app?

In the App they can go to their scans, go to the export button at the top right, and click on iCloud. Then you can run this shortcut on their phone. If they haven't already they will need to enable untrusted shortcuts (i.e. third party shortcuts).
Instead of using the shortcut, you could open the Files app, and go to iCloud Drive > ScanPlus. Hold down with your finger on the document to open the context menu, and select "Info". Under the heading "Information" you should see the creation date.


Will a ThunderBolt 3 (USB-C?) to ThunderBolt 2 cable allow me to use a MacBook Pro as second monitor?

If you mean Target Display Mode, then no - that was a feature only available to a select few iMac models & now defunct.

See Apple KB - Use your iMac as a display with Target Display Mode for details.
It was essentially available on iMacs between 2009 & 2014.


How to hide “Siri app suggestions” in iOS?

Go to Settings > General > Spotlight Search and you'll see a switch for Siri Suggestions at the top of the screen.


Command ⌘-Shift ⇧-3 will save a screenshot of the whole screen to your desktop. Command ⌘-Control ⌃-Shift ⇧-3 copies it to your clipboard.
⌘-⇧-4 lets you drag to take a shot of a portion of the screen, or press Space to select a specific window. Add Control ⌃ to the mix to copy to to the clipboard.

You can view and change these in the Keyboard pane of System Preferences, under the Keyboard Shortcuts tab:


I also lost various notes. I went to settings, iCloud and my notes were not turned on for iCloud backup storage. I turned it on, and voila, my notes were back on "my iPad"


Is Apple eSim on Watch 3 / iPhone XS proprietary standard?

eSIM is an open JEDEC standard for the interface to the hardware component of a SIM card designed to replace the UICC (smart-card) interface that is in common usage, the third-generation Apple Watch just happened to be the first major device to use it commercially.  There is actually no special support required for the hardware itself.

What is required for carrier support though is the ability to remotely provision the SIM.  Because an eSIM is not removable from the device, it has to be provisioned (configured for authentication to the carrier) in the device.  This particular aspect is what Apple's list is about, some carriers support it, some don't.  It's also really easy for them to find out which of the major ones do (they can literally just ask them, because Apple really is that big that they can do stuff like that).


Can’t choose startup disk after wiping hard drive from OSX Utilities

Well, your having wiped and reformatted the HD, there IS no bootable volume on that machine, so that HD cannot be selected as a bootable startup disk, as it has NO data on it at all, let alone a full Mac OS with which to boot.

You'll need to see about getting that OS installer downloaded set up as an ISO on optical media using a different machine to do this, and then running the installer on the target machine from the optical media I think, given the issues you're seeing when trying the network install option.


Lost iPhone but someone is trying to use it - how can I track this

If you have Find My iPhone enabled, simply log on to icloud.com and log in with your iTunes username and password. From the Find My iPhone home page, you can remotely wipe your phone or send a message to the thief. If you don't have Find My iPhone, try contacting your service provider to see if they can get a lock on the phone's location.


Some Contacts not showing up but are still stored in iPhone 4

Had a similar problem after doing a restore on my iPhone 4.  I just tried something that seemed to work.  Went to contacts and selected groups.  Selected Hide All Contacts and immediately selected Show All Contacts again.  The missing contacts re-appeared along with duplicate entries for the one's I recreated.


OS X Lion - Please help me understand Finder "Find"

You have a few options since you're on Lion. The Find feature of Finder by default will search whatever folder you're in. The option next to it is called "This Mac" which should look through the computer. You can also go to "All My Files" in the sidebar and then click on the images section header and that should look for all the image files as well.


Increasing The Size Of The Mouse Pointer In OS X Mavericks?

Check out Accessibility options in Preferences:


This is a known issue that has impacted a number of users following an upgrade to Catalina1.

The best way to resolve this is to disable System Integrity Protection (SIP), delete the files/empty the trash, then re-enable SIP.

Full instructions provided below for the benefit of users unfamiliar with the process of disabling/enabling SIP:

Startup (or restart) your Mac
Immediately hold down the commandR keys to boot into recovery
Click the Utilities menu and select Terminal
Type csrutil disable and press return
Close the Terminal app
Restart your Mac
Delete the files and/or empty the trash
Restart your Mac
Immediately hold down the commandR keys to boot into recovery
Click the Utilities menu and select Terminal
Type csrutil enable and press return
Close the Terminal app
Restart your Mac

1. In most cases, the affected users had XQuartz installed prior to the Catalina upgrade and during the upgrade process XQuartz isn't uninstalled properly.


Why should I observe a limit of sixteen partitions per disk with OS X?

A maximum of sixteen partitions per GPT disk may be for one or both of the following:

compatibility with other BSD variants
UNIX certification/conformance.

Key points

In theory, a GUID Partition Table (GPT) disk can have an unlimited number of partitions.

A Microsoft implementation of GPT allows a maximum of 128 partitions.

The OS X kernel, libraries, and utilities are drawn from a number of open source projects, including FreeBSD, GNU, NetBSD, and OpenBSD.

Some BSD variants have a maximum of sixteen partitions.

Sometimes misunderstood

Mac OS X: Mac OS Extended format (HFS Plus) volume and file limits

  Volume and file limits in Mac OS X

  Maximum number of volumes (all Mac OS X versions): no limit …

That is:

volumes per operating system
not partitions per disk.

Expect the operating system to handle:

thirty-two or more volumes spread across two or more disks
and so on.

Further reading

disklabel(8) OS X Manual Page (2004-09-03)

Frequently asked questions about the GUID Partitioning Table disk architecture (2009-08-04)

  …The Microsoft implementation of GUID Partition Table is limited to 128 partitions. …

OS X Glossary (2010-07-09)

  BSD
  Berkeley Software Distribution. Formerly known as the Berkeley version of UNIX,
  BSD is now simply called the BSD operating system. The BSD portion of Darwin is
  based on 4.4BSD Lite 2 and FreeBSD, a flavor of 4.4BSD.

Unix 03 Conformance Release Notes (2010-09-01)

  … FreeBSD, GNU, NetBSD, and OpenBSD … make an effort to
  follow industry standards …

www.bsd.org (2011-03-30)

How-To Dual Boot FreeBSD, Linux, and OpenBSD with GNU Grub (undated but Copyright © 2000 - 2012)

  … OpenBSD's disklabel allows up to 16 partitions. …

Register of Open Branded Products: five product standards for which Mac OS X Version 10.8 Mountain Lion is registered (2012-07-10)

BSD disklabel – Wikipedia (2013-01-27)

  … BSD disklabels traditionally contain 8 entries for describing partitions.
  These are, by convention, labeled alphabetically, 'a' through to 'h'. Some
  BSD variants have since increased this to 16 partitions, labeled 'a' through to 'p'. …


Harmonic noise introduced when using an iPhone dock extension cable connected to a mic peripheral

What you are picking up is EMI from USB frame sync (most probably through the ground wire):

  Every millisecond (12000 full-bandwidth bit times), the USB host transmits a special SOF (start of frame) token, containing an 11-bit incrementing frame number in place of a device address. This is used to synchronize isochronous data flows. High-bandwidth USB 2.0 devices receive 7 additional duplicate SOF tokens per frame, each introducing a 125 µs "microframe" (60000 high-bandwidth bit times each).

  USB 2.0 added a PING token, which asks a device if it is ready to receive an OUT/DATA packet pair. The device responds with ACK, NAK, or STALL, as appropriate. This avoids the need to send the DATA packet if the device knows that it will just respond with NAK.

This could be avoided with a properly shielded extension cable. Note that even dockXtender only shields some of the wires:

  A revolutionary 2-tier shielding system puts all video and audio signals inside a separate shielding to reduce interference from the other signals traveling through the wire.

If you're the DIY type of person it should be quite easy to make your own extension cable using high quality shielded wires. You will probably only need to connect just a few of the 30 pins: USB (power, gnd, data+/-), all GNDs and maybe accessory/serial (enable, rx/tx). Make sure you also shield the soldering on the connector.


How to use "Find My Phone" beeping feature (not location sharing) with a different Apple ID

You can do it from Find My iPhone on another iPhone, you just need to sign in as the person whose phone you're trying to find [or get them to do it].

Alternatively, you can find all members' phones if you use Family Sharing.

I doubt there's any way to do it from an Android. That really wouldn't be considered safe.


How can I check if leap year in AppleScript?

An alternative approach would be to ask for the month of February 29. In a non-leap year, it should return 'March'.

month of date "2/29/2018"

This shows the approach but as pointed out in the comments, the above is automatically compiled into a long date.

To address this and to also provide flexibility as to the year, this will return ‘February’ in a leap year, and ‘March’ otherwise.

month of date ("2/29/" & (year of (current date) as text))

-> March

Incorporating the question code, it could look like this. I ordered it this way so as to bail out of the elses earlier for more months.

set g31 to {1, 3, 5, 7, 8, 10, 12}
set g30 to {4, 6, 9, 11}

set MM to month of (current date) as integer

if g31 contains MM then
    set Prefix to "Gregorian_31"
else
    if g30 contains MM then
        set Prefix to "Gregorian_30"
    else
        if month of date ("2/29/" & (year of (current date))) as integer = 2 then
            set Prefix to "Gregorian_Leap"
        else
            set Prefix to "Gregorian_28"
        end if
    end if
end if


Is it possible to reduce the disk space required to install Mac OS X 10.6?

The minimum install that comes off the DVD is ~6 gigabytes. If you want to make a smaller install, the easiest thing to do is install it on another partition, trim down the installation, then copy it over to the target drive using ditto or Carbon Copy Cloner.

Though I do not recommend doing any of these, there are a couple of thing installed in the default system that can be trimmed out to save space:

All app binaries are installed 2 way fat (32 bit Intel, 64 bit Intel), and you can conceivably remove 32 bit Intel. The only Intel Macs shipped that do not support 64 bit userspace are the original MacBook Pro, Mac Mini, and MacBook 2006. You can use a program like Xslimmer to do this.
All frameworks are installed 3 way fat (32 bit and 64 bit Intel, and 32 bit PPC). The PPC bits are there for Rosetta even if you do not have the emulator installled. You can remove PPC if you are not going to use any appc apps. Again, Xslimmer does this.
All Mac OS X installs include the complete set of drivers necessary for all Macs supported by that OS at the time it shipped. A number of drives may not be necessary for your particular Machine, and could be trimmed out, but doing so is moderately complicated.
If you have multiple localization installed you can remove them. Xslimmer can do this, as can Monolingual.
If yo are really gutsy you can build an mkext and delete OS X's drivers directory entirely. An mkext is a bundle of kexts generally used as part of netbooting, but the bootloader can use it to boot off a normal disk as well. It will omit any driver not needed to boot a system, and be trimmed down to a single architecture. On my system that would save ~300MB. If the full drivers aren't there, then some devices might not work, but anything needed to boot should be.
You can start deleting programs in /Applications, but the system assumes those are there, some stuff may not work properly.
Disk Utility by default leaves extra space for certain things on drives larger than a certain size. It is documented here. On a 4GB drive there there is ~328 MBs lost that way.

200MB of it is for the ESP partition. The ESP is scratch space used under rare circumstances for the boot process. Removing it might cause difficulties installing firmware updates, but it probably won't, and you probably won't notice it.

There is also 128MB of unformatted space after the HFS+ partition. That is that there to aid in LVM operations (resizing partitions), and may be necessary in certain edge cases when running the installer (if the installer needs a chunk of contiguous space for something that is not a normal file during an OS upgrade, and it can't find the space within the FS it can extend it). You can probably get rid of it, but it might make it difficult to run the installer directly against the drive. Of course, given what you have to do to get 10.6 onto the drive, the odds that you could just run a 10.7 updater against when that comes out seem very low anyway.

In order to layout the drive this way you will need to hand build the partition map with the commandline gpt tool.

Having said that, the above will probably not trim down OS X enough to fit into a 4GB flash drive. Even if it did, OS X needs some temporary space (a couple hundred megs) to work, and by default that is on the boot drive. While it is conceivable you could write a boot script to find a drive inside the system and use it for temp space (point /private/tmp there, and setting the up the default pager), that is moderately complicated. I am guessing this is a recovery drive for a lab or something, in which case you don't want this install to perturb drives in the system it boots. If you need to boot on a range of machines it also means trimming out drivers is substantially more complicated and limited.

Ultimately, you are much better off just buying a 8GB flash drive. That is large enough to clone a normal installation, and will save you days of work.


Insecure update error - SUPublicDSAKeyFile

The error comes from the Sparkle Update system (SU). It is a freely available system for integration by developers into apps to provide online updating of their apps.

The error message you see could come from any of your third party apps that are using Sparkle (it is very popular).

The error message indicates that an important file is missing from the application's bundle. This usually indicates developer error (i.e. the program you've downloaded was "flawed" to begin with) - or it could be caused by you manually deleting the file.

I would start with Activity Monitor to see which third party apps you're running, and simply try closing down app after app until you're left with the one responsible for this popup.


Removed Cloak leaves strange patterns on screen

I went browsing in the installer package, and it looks like Cloak does some serious meddling in system frameworks.  For example, there's a lightpurple.scpt that does (among other things):

sudo mv /System/Library/PrivateFrameworks/CoreUI.framework/Versions/A/Resources/SArtFile.bin /System/Library/PrivateFrameworks/CoreUI.framework/Versions/A/Resources/SArtFileold.bin
sudo cp /Themes/LightPurple.cloak /System/Library/PrivateFrameworks/CoreUI.framework/Versions/A/Resources/SArtFile.bin

These are not changes that will reliably work as the OS gets updated.

You could do a search across the OS to find *.old.* files, but I would recommend simply reinstalling OS X.  You can reinstall the OS on top of your current system, which will replace the system files but leave your user files alone.


iTunes doesn't restore your OS during a normal restore, it only restores backed up information which is listed below.

Contacts(1) and Contact Favorites (regularly sync contacts to a computer or cloud service such as iCloud to back them up).
App Store Application data inlcuding in-app purchases (except the Application itself, its tmp and Caches folder).
Application settings, preferences, and data, including documents.
Autofill for webpages.
CalDAV and subscribed calendar accounts.
Calendar accounts.
Calendar events.
Call history.
Camera Roll (Photos, screenshots, images saved, and videos taken. Videos greater than 2 GB are backed up with iOS 4.0 and later.)
Note: For devices without a camera, Camera Roll is called Saved Photos.
Game Center account.
Home screen arrangement.
In-app purchases.
Keychain (this includes email account passwords, Wi-Fi passwords, and passwords you enter into websites and some other applications. If you encrypt the backup with iOS 4 and later, you can transfer the keychain information to the new device. With an unencrypted backup, you can restore the keychain only to the same iOS device. If you are restoring to a new device with an unencrypted backup, you will need to enter these passwords again.)
List of External Sync Sources (Mobile Me, Exchange ActiveSync).
Location service preferences for apps and websites you have allowed to use your location.
Mail accounts (mail messages are not backed up).
Managed Configurations/Profiles. When restoring a backup to a different device, all settings related to the configuration profiles will not be restored (accounts, restrictions, or anything else that can be specified through a configuration profile). Note that accounts and settings that are not associated with a configuration profile will still be restored.
Map bookmarks, recent searches, and the current location displayed in Maps.
Microsoft Exchange account configurations.
Network settings (saved Wi-Fi hotspots, VPN settings, network preferences).
Nike + iPod saved workouts and settings.
Notes.
Offline web application cache/database.
Paired Bluetooth devices (which can only be used if restored to the same phone that did the backup).
Safari bookmarks, cookies, history, offline data, and currently open pages.
Saved suggestion corrections (these are saved automatically as you reject suggested corrections).
SMS and MMS (pictures and video) messages.
Trusted hosts that have certificates that cannot be verified.
Voice memos.
Voicemail token. (This is not the voicemail password, but is used for validation when connecting. This is only restored to a phone with the same phone number on the SIM card).
Wallpapers.
Web clips.
YouTube bookmarks and history.

Your contacts are part of the backup to preserve recent calls and favorites lists. Back up your contacts to a supported personal information manager (PIM), iCloud, or another cloud-based service to avoid any potential contact data loss.

Source: http://support.apple.com/kb/HT4946


App launchers and utilities like Launch Bar and Quicksilver can be pretty useful, but you might want to try learning the command line. After all, the Windows Run prompt is just a single line command prompt.

It can be a bit daunting, but you can just learn bit by bit, and after a while you'll be able to do some pretty powerful things.

To get started, open up Terminal (found in /Applications/Utilities).

Here are a few basic commands that you'll find useful:

open opens whatever path it's followed by. Some examples:

open /Applications/ opens the Applications folder in Finder.
open ~ opens your home folder. ~ is shorthand for your home folder (i.e. /Users/you.
open ~/Documents/myfile.txt opens myfile.txt in your Documents folder in whatever application is set to open that file.
You can use open to open a file in a specific app with the -a flag. open -a TextEdit website.html would open that file in TextEdit, and open -a Safari website.html would open the same file in Safari.

open -a followed by an application, with no file or path specified will activate that application.

ls lists the contents of the current directory, or any other directory you specify.

By default, your current directory is ~, so if you specify a file without a path, the command line looks for it in your current path. But you can specify a full path to address any file in your filesystem.

cd changes your current directory. E.g. cd ~/Documents moves you to your Documents folder, and cd /Applications moves you to the applications folder.
Bonus: say "I know now why you cry, but it's something I can never do"

That's just a small fraction of what you can do with the command line, but perhaps it will whet your appetite. If you want to learn more, there are tons of resources out there for learning the command line — OS X's command line is very similar to BSD and Linux, so many resources applying to those will be helpful. There's also a big thread here on Ask Different with various tips and tricks for the terminal.


iPhone XS the display works but not the touch

There are only two pathways to address this:

Reset your phone.  Obviously, you need to make sure you have a backup of your data.

You need to take it in for service.  The Apple employee will actually repeat step one (and inform you about making a backup as well).

The digitizer (the portion that detects touch input) has died.  Unfortunately, it's no longer a separate components, but it's now glued to the LCD (the portion that displays images).  The whole assembly will need to be replaced.
There is a possibility that the logic board malfunctioned and the digitizer and display is still good, but without opening it up and putting hands on, it's impossible to tell - you still have to take it in.


iPhone went through wash - charging flashligh comes on

Check if you able to power on the device after making sure that it's sufficiently dried.

In case the device isn't powering, unfortunately, there's nothing much you can do. Liquid damage to iPhone or iPod isn't covered by warranty.

Still, it would be advisable to get in touch with authorised service personnel to check for the extent of damage and to evaluate recovery options.


Apple Macbook SERVICE BATTERY status and where is it stored

"Service Battery" isn't stored in a file somewhere.  It's a value that, for a lack of a better term, is "calculated".  The SMC reads certain values, measures the current charge and depending on the results, you get a "status."
This is why you can have a faulty battery one minute, change it out with a good and it in a few moments, it will give you an updated status of "Charging" or "Charged." (Granted, it takes more than a "minute" to swap a battery, but you get the idea).
You can obtain this information with the system_profiler command:
% system_profiler SPPowerDataType | grep -i "charge information" -A 10


Feasible font size on the Retina MacBook Pro

It is impossible to deliver an "answer" to this question. You are asking for something that is purely opinion-based. I have friends who use super small fonts and it's very comfortable for them. I also have friends who use larger fonts, and that works best for them. I personally use a variety of font sizes depending on what Mac I am on and what App I'm using. Your best best is to work with whatever font size suits you, despite what anybody else tells you.

There is no "one-size-fits-all" answer to your question.


Is it possible for my husband to receive message on his phone that have been sent to me.

Do you share an AppleID? More generally, does he know the password to your AppleID. If so, then yes, he can tell Apple that his phone (or Mac) is one of the places you want your messages to be delivered.

If that's not what you want, change your password.


I might not be understanding your problem correctly, but in the iChat menu, try selecting Preferences. From there, click on the Accounts tab. If you click on your account, there is a place to enter (and store) your password. Try entering your correct password there.


iPhone shows OS X Handoff of a device I want to remove

Handoff is keyed to your iCloud account, so you might want to sign in to https://www.icloud.com/#settings and see if that Mac is still listed.

If so, there are links to what to do if the device is "lost, sold, gave away this device"

In a nutshell, sign out of iCloud entirely on that Mac. If that doesn't work, you can send a remote erase to that Mac which will erase everything on it - not just the Apple ID / iCloud settings.

Once you've ruled that out, you might need to sign out of iCloud on your iPhone, but I've usually been able to clean thing up from the Mac end of thing when I find unwanted entries like you have.

In your case overloading two user accounts and deleting one before signing out may have confused the registration. Can you restore that user account from a backup and sign out? If not, worst case is you might need to sign out from both (or even all) accounts on that Mac to remove the machine record from the cloud database.


How to pin a video to watch independently from Safari tabs

This is called Picture in Picture mode. Using it, you can watch video in a floating frame which remains on top of all windows and is available on all the Spaces.

Picture in Picture mode is a macOS feature available on all Macs running macOS Sierra and later. It doesn't require dedicated hardware such as a Touch Bar to function. Touch Bar merely gives a handy shortcut to enter Picture in Picture mode.

Watch video using Picture in Picture on your Mac

  If you don't see a Picture-in-Picture button, hold down the Control key and double-click inside the video to open a shortcut menu. Then choose Enter Picture-in-Picture, if available.

This shortcut relies on using both keyboard and mouse.


iPhone 4s Recover from lost lockscreen password

You don't.  You can only install a version of iOS that Apple is still signing.  For the 4S, that would be 9.2.1.


You could try the Airplay functionality for iPhone ( though I'm not sure if it is available on all iPhone devices, but it is on the 4S ).
Then try and find an Airplay plugin for VLC.

It's already possible for Windows Media Player so VLC can probably do it too ( and be better at it, because you know, it's VLC ).

I haven't tested it myself, but it's probably worth trying out.


iCal won't change what calendar events are saved on

I've had similar trouble. I just went to preferences>accounts and unchecked, then re-checked "enable" for the account. Seems to be working for now.


How do I enroll devices while "Can enable remote management" is disabled?

Four years after you posted this, Apple's answer to this is Device Enrollment Program to point all the macOS and iOS hardware you buy to your MDM enrollment URL without user interaction.

That way the devices can be enrolled, supervised, managed without needing to train end users.


Why does iTunes think my SIM card is unsupported?

If the handset was unlocked using UltraSn0w, then you have completely removed it by updating the firmware to the latest version (Ultrasn0w only supports iOS 4.3.3). Worse yet, this has updated your baseband and that cannot be reverted even if you manage to downgrade the OS (unless you used Pwnage Tools or Sn0wbreeze as they can preserve the baseband during update). If this is indeed the case, you have now a locked phone to whatever carrier it was purchased under (AT&T) and you will have to talk to that carrier for a "hard" unlock.

To my knowledge, a "true" unlocked iPhone has no geographic limitations. As long as the network supports GSM phones (read: SIM cards), then there should be no problem.


Create Google sheets shortcut in homescreen

I see that all of my line breaks were removed in the answer. Let's fix that!

Open the document in GoogleDocs app on your iPhone.
Tap the three dots in the top corner
Share & export
Copy link
Leave the GoogleDocs app and open Shortcuts app

Create Shortcut
Add Action
Search for Safari
Open URLs
Tap the little gray field that says URL
Type googledocs://
Tap and paste (the link you copied from GoogleDocs). The result will look something like http://googledocs://https://docs.google.com/document/d/bunch-of-random-characters
Tap where it says “New Shortcut” at the top in big bold letters and name the shortcut

Tap the three dots
You can change the icon (the gray square with the magic wand in it) to what you want and give it a shortcut name.
Tap Add to Home Screen
Add
Done
Done/Next

Voila! You now have an icon on your home screen for the document, which will automatically open in GoogleDocs.


How to update Late 2011 Macbook Pro past 10.7.5

In order to upgrade to macOS High Sierra, you should be running at least OS X Mountain Lion. I suggest you upgrade to macOS Sierra first, which you can get here: Get macOS Sierra.
You can check here for more information on upgrading to macOS Sierra: How to download macOS Sierra

You may need to reset your Mac's software update URL. You can follow the guide at Robin's Blog to learn more about this. This excerpt from the post explains how to reset the update URL;

  Open the /Library/Preferences folder on the main hard drive.
  Find the com.apple.SoftwareUpdate.plist file and move this to the desktop (the easiest way is just to drag and drop the file to the Desktop). If you find a similar file with a .apple at the end (com.apple.SoftwareUpdate.plist.apple) then move that too. Moving them to the desktop means that you can restore them if this goes wrong.


iPhone 4 syncing to old version of iCloud Notes, even after reset and on different Apple IDs!

Assuming your freshly-laundered phone was using iOS 9 & your iPhone 4 is still on the last available iOS for it, 7.1.2, then the reason it cannot sync to new Notes is because the new Notes feature was only introduced with iOS 9

Anything older will still be syncing to the older version, presumably last updated the day before you hit the button to upgrade to the new version when you loaded iOS 9 for the first time.


Where is the NFSHomeDirectory attribute stored?

You need to check the mappings being used on the various servers. The program for looking at/configuring this used to be in /Applications/Utilities and named "Directory Access", then at some point it got renamed to "Directory Utility", and then (I think later) got moved from Utilities to /System/Library/CoreServices.. but I don't remember where it was & what name it went by in version 10.5. You'll have to look for it in both places.

Anyway, run Directory Whatever, click the padlock and authenticate, double-click the LDAPv3 service, select the config for the Sun LDAP service (there should be two configs listed, one for the local OD master, and one for the Sun service) and click Edit, then select the "Search & Mappings" tab.

There should be a pop-up menu near the top labelled something like "Access this LDAPv3 server using". If "From Server" is chosen, it's getting its settings from a config record on the Sun LDAP server. Everything bound with this option should be getting consistent mappings & therefore the attributes should match on all Macs.

If it's not in "From Server" mode (which it probably isn't, given it's a Sun server): find Users in the left column ("Record Types and Attributes" if the name hasn't changed since 10.5), click the disclose triangle next to Users, select NFSHomeDirectory under that, and see what's mapped to it (listed in the right column).

Compare what you find on the various OS X servers; if I understand your setup at all correctly, this should tell you where the difference is coming from.

EDIT: Having the OS X NFSHomeDirectory attribute mapped to the LDAP homedirectory attr is entirely normal. The naming conventions here are hopelessly confusing: the OS X HomeDirectory (note caps) attribute contains XML-wrapped instructions on how to mount the home directory, and the OS X NFSHomeDirectory attr contains the local path it should have (after being mounted), which matches exactly with the standard (RFC 2307) LDAP homedirectory (note lowercase) attribute. If the home directories are mounted via NFS, it's generally ok to have the OS X HomeDirectory attribute blank.

I'm not sure what happens if there are multiple home paths; my guess would be that it'll use the first and ignore the rest, but I don't really know.

To see what server is queried first, check in Directory Whatever, in the Search Policy section under Authentication. I'll search the various data sources in the order that they're listed here. Note that OS X does not handle identity conflicts at all well, so having users with the same account and/or full name, or the same user ID number, in multiple domains is a really really bad idea. If you have multiple accounts with any matching identifiers, OS X tends to merge all of their attributes in unpredictable and confusing ways. In a situation like yours, I'd tend to keep all users in just one of the LDAP services (probably the Sun server), with only the per-domain "diradmin" account in each of the OD master's domains.


networksetup -disconnectpppoeservice not working

I am going here on a hunch !

sudo networksetup -disconnectpppoeservice HUAWEIMobile-

sudo networksetup -showpppoestatus HUAWEIMobile-

You confirmed it says

  connected

I further assume when you activate the PPoE service it will respond with user + password request.

Since that information was not supplied it will wait for it and refuse your disconnect request.

So we can try the activate with user name and password, then do the disconnect, you can find the appropriate command set here.


How do I sort a Numbers' table using data from another table?

Thanks to your sample file, I think I was able to do what you wished.

Using an additional column to bring in the numbers corresponding to the codes (16AA, 1; 16AE, 2...) sorting by that column then hiding it the desired result was accomplished.  To refresh the sort after adding data, unhide the column and sort again.

Here are the steps:

Create new column to the left of the "Code" column.

Add a formula to extract the proper number for each code and copy down.

Formula: =INDEX (Group::c, MATCH (B, Group::A))

(Using INDEX(MATCH) is a good way to get column data with out worrying about extra columns being added as is the case with VLOOKUP.)

Copy the formula down, sort the column and hide it if desired.

Result:


Is there a lightning cable power splitter / double charger?

No, this is not possible to make.

Your question implies that you think of the Lightning cable as solely providing power in the form of two wires with +/- electricity. This is not the case.

In addition to simply power supply, the cable also contains wires that are used for communication between the charger and the device. When you plug your phone or other device into the charger, they start negotiating right away what kind of supply is needed. The charger acts differently according to the needs of the device plugged in.

This is the reason why you cannot have both a phone and AirPods (for example) spliced into the same charger cable - as the negotiation process would go hay-wire with multiple devices communicating on a protocol that is designed strictly for one-to-one communication.

I would recommend instead getting a charger with multiple USB outputs. These can be bought quite cheaply - for example IKEA has a cheap charger with 3 USB outputs for plugging in Lightning cables.

In order to keep the Lightning cables short, you would have to extend the use of the 110/230V cable and place the actual charger nearer your devices.


I would back up the phone and then erase all content and settings and re-measure it with no user apps or data or things installed - just the blank OS.

If you just want to poke at things before erasing, I would put the device in airplane mode then do the power off ( slide to power off in screen - controller shut down of iOS). Then start the device and open the storage viewing app. Ideally you connected to power and let the spotlight index rebuild for 15 minutes on power and in airplane mode (so no new data arrives on device)

Then if it's still too high (or you're just curious how much thinner you can make it), restore the device from iTunes (perhaps in restore mode).

Something is really off with that large an amount. I expect 3 GB of system space on older iOS versions and older devices:

What's the practical difference between a 16GB and 32GB iPhone?
How large is iOS?

Not the whopping 50 GB you post in your image. Either there are backup snapshots or something else really taking up space. If you only have 64 GB of space, I could see the device barely operating if it's reserved that much space. Even a larger storage device could be in trouble, so back up and then clean all your apps / settings and consider a restore for good measure.


How can I copy a PDF from OneDrive to iBooks using the OneDrive iPhone app?

Try downloading the PDF, there should be an option called "Open with ..." or "Open in iBooks".

Or after selecting it, click on the 3 dots on the top right, there should be the option "Open in"


Can iPhone X be set to show battery percentage on the status notch?

Currently, as of iOS 11.1, there's no way of showing the battery percentage by default.

One way to see the battery percentage is to pull-down slightly on the right 'wing' (with the battery icon).  Once the screen changes to the Control Center, you'll be able to see the battery percentage.

Another way to find this out is to just ask Siri.  You can say "What's my battery life" and the response will include the percentage of power remaining.

The remaining way is to charge your iPhone.  When you charge it, the battery percentage is briefly displayed on the lock screen.


So the correct answer is... there is no such option in macOS.  Bummer!


My Bootcamp Windows system can't see my Mac files?

The reason is that with the latest version of OS X, the internal drive is converted to a Core Storage volume, rather than the simple HFS+ volume you presumably had on your old computer. Apple still hasn't rolled out support for this in many areas, Windows included. You won't be able to access your files directly anymore from within Windows until Apple gets around to implementing Core Storage in Windows, if they even have plans to do that. The only solution is to use an external drive or create another partition formatted as exFAT or FAT32 as a neutral location that can be accessed by both operating systems.


I found an answer on Apple Support Communities:

defaults write com.apple.dock contents-immutable -bool true; killall Dock


Getting an iPhoto book project created on an iPhone to another device like a Mac or iPad

I've looked into this as well. As of this time (March 2014) there is no way to export an iphoto book created on an iphone or ipad other than to automatically send it in for printing with the associated cost. Hopefully they will come up with a way to export these as a pdf file the way they have done with the desktop version of iphoto.


Rosetta 2 works by doing an ahead-of-time (AOT) translation of the Intel code to corresponding ARM code. It is able to do this efficiently and easily mainly because the M1 CPU contains a special instruction that switches the memory-ordering model observed by the CPU for that thread into a model equivalent to the Intel x86 model (TSO - total store order). This has to do with how programs can expect memory consistency to work when having multiple processors (i.e. cores in this case).
User's can observe the translation the first time they launch an Intel app on the M1 as the first launch is slow. The translated code is cached and used on subsequent, much faster launches.
If you have a binary that is valid for several different architectures, you can specifically invoke Rosetta 2 by specifying that you want to launch the Intel code. You can do that from the terminal like this:
arch -x86_64 ./mycommand

Note that this setting also applies to any program that the "mycommand" process should choose to run.
Rosetta 2 as delivered by Apple in macOS Big Sur is not setup to dynamically invoke translation for a portion of x86 instructions. It is entirely focused on doing an AOT translation of the whole binary in advance. There's no user interface for translating a few small set of instructions on the fly. Rosetta 2 does include a JIT engine that allows translating instructions on the fly (for example if you run an Intel-based browser with a JIT JavaScript engine) - it is however not a general purpose JIT-engine that you could use for other purposes through an API or similar.
If you want to do that for research purposes or just out of "pure interest", then you could just take the instructions you want to translate and add them to a simple application shell (essentially adding them to a simple main()-only C program for example) and run it. The cached, translated version of the program then includes the translated instructions for inspection.
The cache is available in these folders:
/var/db/oah/
/System/Library/dyld/aot_shared_cache

There's no immediate way of "bridging" Rosetta 2 to QEMU to allow fast virtualization of Intel Docker images. QEMU contains its own Intel x86 emulation, so you could get it to run Intel Docker images on the M1 without involving Rosetta 2 at all. In this case, "fast" is a very subjective measure.


OSX is much simpler than Ubuntu, the only mount that will occur to USB devices' FSs is the one with mount point located at /Volumes. Even if every file system (which of course mounts as a folder) has some little differences from an actual folder. These differences make it appear as a directory transparently to the programs, but allow apps such as Finder to differentiate folders' and volumes' icons - for example.


Apple Watch Sport Band Permanently Damaged

Apple's warranty policy allows them to not cover cosmetic damage to parts however, they may not choose to deny a warranty swap if you present the band for service and are reasonable. (I don't think you'll be angry, just that I've seen people totally ruin things by rude or boorish behavior when they are angry and seek service with aggressive language or worse).

I would print out or be very familiar with Apple's cleaning guide for the product. They may decide to take back some parts for quality control that wouldn't normally be exchanged since the product is so new.

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204522

Do be aware that toilet paper is not lint free cloth and many brands may not even be non-abrasive. The only cleaning agent Apple recommends is water so be sure to understand if they charge for a replacement if you don't follow their recommendations. Better to take the dirty band in and ask if it's cleanable than to show up after you expanded the list of techniques.

Even if you did resort to harsh methods, asking for help is still worth its IMO.


Firebug style inspect element on iPhone?

They all say this is a remote debugger: http://people.apache.org/~pmuellr/weinre/

From docs:

  weinre is a debugger for web pages, like FireBug (for FireFox) and Web Inspector (for WebKit-based browsers), except it's designed to work remotely, and in particular, to allow you debug web pages on a mobile device such as a phone.

EDIT: Here are more details and step-by-step instructions: http://envyandroid.com/archives/483/easily-debug-mobile-websites-with-weinre


How to use an AirPort Express as an AirPlay device with a TP-Link router?

I had the exact same thing. I have three AirPort Expresses and it seems to me that my oldest one is not compatible with the new technology. The other two work fine. I can't update the firmware, so I guess I'm left with buying a new one. It took my whole system down.


Keep my Apple ID, but delete individual iCloud services and data (for example the mailbox @icloud.com)

This is impossible as clearly stated on Apple's website:

How to change your Apple ID if it ends with @icloud.com, @me.com or @mac.com
If you use an @icloud.com, @mac.com or @me.com email address as your Apple ID, you can’t change it to a third-party email address.

That is your Apple ID so you can't change it, the only real alternative is to create a new Apple ID.


Policy on users of Internet sharing on Mac OS X Mountain Lion

There is not a decent way to do this using OS X's Internet Sharing feature. It is not designed to be a fully-fledged router. I recommend that you purchase an inexpensive router that is capable of 802.11n and WPA2 encryption and use this to share to all devices on your network. This will have a side benefit of protecting your Mac from external attacks.


How do I backup 2 external hard disks to 1 external hard disk?

This can even be done in Time Machine:

Choose the 5 TB HDD as only Time Machine backup drive (OK, my disks are smaller  ):

Then exclude your internal drive by adding it to the excluded items - the backup drive is excluded automatically:

The final result:

You get a folder Backups.backupdb with one folder vm (the name of my Mac) containing folders (with date names representing the backup date) and each with two folders representing the two drives (Data1 and Encrypted). I added and modified files successively on both volumes and initiated a backup after each step.

Needless to say: it's recommended to backup your main drive/system drive also!


Is it possible to export a simple Numbers spreadsheet while being dynamic?

No, PDF exports of a numbers file become static and can no longer be edited as a spreadsheet. You must use the Numbers program (or an equivalent like Excel) to achieve the dynamic features of spreadsheets.


Can I use a PlayStation 3 or 4 controller with a 4th gen AppleTV?

You can only use Made For iPhone (MFi) controllers with the Apple TV at the moment.


How can I show seconds on macOS BigSur's menu bar clock?

On macOS older than Big Sur, the System preferences can be configured to show seconds on the menu bar clock:

Apple has changed up the menu bar on Big Sur specifically and people have opinions about that for certain. There is no seconds display that’s easily enabled on 11.3 and below.

How do you remove the time from the menu bar in Big Sur
macOS Big Sur - how to show exact time when clicking on analog clock in the menu bar?


Use internal speakers while headphones are plugged in to iPod touch 5th generation

No. Only if you remove the object and the switch that detects the object resets to the normal position will the internal speaker option come back.

See these threads for more details.

Why are my Macbook's internal speakers not available?
Use internal speakers with others plugged in


Time machine: include external FAT drive

Your FAT drive needs to be formatted using GPT[GUID] (or GPT+MBR which is how Boot Camp does it, but it's not necessary for a regular, data only, non-Windows OS disk) rather than 'plain' MBR.

There are two utilities I know of which can change the underlying format from GUID to MBR without destroying the data - iPartition & the new Paragon Hard Disk Manager.
Of the two, right now Paragon looks the most future-proof, iPartition hasn't seen an update in a while & cannot handle CoreStorage volumes.

Not an advert, no affiliation, I'm not providing links you'll have to Google it
Right now, summer 2016, Paragon HDM is $40 but there's a company called BundleHunt - kind of a 'Groupon' for Mac apps - who are doing it in a bundle of any 7 apps for $16. The resultant version you get registers properly with Paragon as though you'd bought it direct.

Failing that, you would need to wipe & reformat the drive in Disk Utility - which cannot do the 'soft' conversion.
It might be possible to do from terminal, but that's beyond my pay-grade, I'm afraid.


What are the downsides to using Apple Git?

There are currently no downsides but there have been times when the Apple release was behind and missed useful changes.

The only downside is that it is not the latest version and so missing new features and bug fixes (and probably some regressions).

Xcode 8 includes git version 2.10.1 (Apple Git-78).

Latest source release on git home page is 2.11.1 but latest maintained build is 2.10.1


It turns out my problem is related to a bug in versions 9.9 and 9.91 of JAMF (enterprise management software) as described here: https://jamfnation.jamfsoftware.com/discussion.html?id=19626
It's unclear as to whether it's directly related to El Capitan or if it affects all versions of OS X.

As far as I know, this bug in JAMF has not been resolved yet but I have found a workaround that alleviates the high CPU usage by spotlight:

For reference, the steps I did to resolve was:

-remove all Spotlight.plist files in /Library/Manged Preferences/
-kill the actual spotlight process (it restarts automatically)

sudo rm -f /Library/Managed\ Preferences/<username>/com.apple.Spotlight.plist
sudo rm -f /Library/Managed\ Preferences/com.apple.Spotlight.plist
sudo killall Spotlight

Note that there may be more Spotlight.plist files than I have explicitly pointed out - delete all of them.

This will not work for you if the problem does not stem from JAMF!

CPU and energy usage should go back to normal at this point.
As far as I know, this is still a temporary fix and the problem would come back upon reboot, upon which you would have to reapply this fix.


What is the use of a clean OS (Lion) install?

There are no disadvantages to a clean installation. But the return on Lion has been severely culled due to Apple's decision to prevent any kind of modification to the OS. With previous OS X builds, users were able to select (and deselect) packages (such as printer drivers, extended languages, etc.) during the installation process. Lion brings everything and the kitchen sink.

The ability to trim away parts of OS X was probably the most compelling reason to perform a clean install (saving GB of space).

Your notion of how hard drives work isn't accurate. There's no "prime" location for data, outer ring or inner ring. So long as the files are contiguous, your data will be delivered optimally. Access times depend on rotation latency (speed at which the disks spin, calculated in RPM) and seek times (the time it takes the head to reach the desired location to reach the file), although density plays a role too, by packing more bits of data per region (thus increasing throughput).

Moreover, OS X handles the defragementation of small files on a regular basis, ensuring continued performance over time. It's also of note that such things are gone by way of using SSDs.

Lastly, clean installations may also reduce bugs introduced by updates. While OS X is quite resilient, updates can introduce new bugs into the system. Often times, Apple technicians will request a clean installation and applying only the latest subsequent update in an attempt to isolate bugs (rather than upgrade from a previous version of the OS and then applying a slew of incremental updates). These problems are however quite rare.


iMac Core i3 mid 2010 hard drive removal and fan control

The usual result of removing the thermal sensor is roaring fans; I suspect that there's little reason for Apple to add some "if no drive, ignore sensor" logic, because Apple would want to replace the drive.

The best instructions for replacing components on your Mac can be found here:
https://www.ifixit.com/Search?query=imac%202010

Remember that your iMac has a SATA II (3 Gbps) controller, so you're not going to see the full benefit of the SSD: though it will probably double your HDD's speed.

If your iMac had Thunderbolt, then I would have said avoid the hassle and use an external drive; but it is a 10-year-old Mac!


AppleScript to show package contents of hidden original of alias

You can try something like this:

   on run {input, parameters}
    tell application "Finder"
        repeat with oneItem in input
            if kind of oneItem = "Alias" then set oneItem to oneItem's original item
            set contentsPath to (oneItem as text) & "Contents"
            if oneItem's container as text = (path to desktop as text) then
                open contentsPath
            else
                set target of window 1 to contentsPath
            end if
            activate
        end repeat
    end tell
end run

You may also want to include a test to make sure the input is the expected type.


After upgrading Snow Leopard to Lion, can I reinstall the original Snow Leopard to a virtual machine?

Yes - it is technically possible.

The Leopard and Snow Leopard installers look for a file (even if it's empty) named /System/Library/CoreServices/ServerVersion.plist

Armed with this, you should be able to search for many "how-to" articles like this.

Be aware, the comments on the page call out issues that this "hack" causes when running the OS (software updates is confused by this file's presence/absence)

Legal and moral issues aside. (I'm not a lawyer but I too fail to see how the license prevents you from virtualizing your legally purchased Snow Leopard on a legally purchased Mid 2011 MacBook Air)

Think of this as an iOS jailbreak - someone has to stay on top of the things that these changes break, but the payoff may be well worth the hassle.


How to install SVN binary on Mountain Lion?

Once you have installed XCode, you can install SVN and other command-line utilities from the Downloads pane in XCode Preferences.


How do I restore the default certificate settings in Snow Leopard?

You want the two files ending in *.keychain found in /System/Library/Keychains (note that they may differ depending on your region, I'm not sure if things change depending on your geo-location).

Unfortunately, there is no way to roll back unless you have a Time Machine backup, or the install files from the OS (then you can extract them using something like Pacifist).

Alternatively, you can run Keychain First Aid from the Keychain Access menu and hope it fixes things but those likely will only deal with errors or anomalies in your user's keychain, not the system's.

ATTENTION: For those in a similar position, these are all the files located under /System/Library/Keychains from a default installation of Snow Leopard 10.6.8 (in North America).


I cannot edit Excel file in Excel for Ipad - Convert buttons does nothing

As noted in the comments, editing is only allowed if one has a subscription to Office 365.
As noted in this article Excel for iPad is free as a read-only client for Excel spreadsheets.

Alternatives to purchasing a subscription to Office 365 are available but each have their drawbacks.  (Formula editing, format retention, etc.)

Google Sheets [App Store link] offers free editing of Excel files.  See documentation for details.
Apple's own Numbers for iPad will open Excel files for editing but some of the functionality is limited.


Is there a way to customize the color of visited links?

There is.

The color of a visited link is determined by the people who have designed the website you are visiting. Most sites will show links and visited links in the same color, but Google for example use different colours so that you can see which sites you have visited. This can be useful if you're trying to find back the site you've visited, or rather if you don't want to visit this site again and want to try another of the search results.

The way Google does this is by putting this into something called a Cascading Style Sheet (CSS), which are effectively instructions for your browser on how Google wants it to look in the browser. CSS allows for different link 'states' to have a different color.

Some examples ...

/* unvisited link */
a:link {
    color: green;
}

/* visited link */
a:visited {
    color: green;
}

/* mouse over link */
a:hover {
    color: red;
}

/* selected link */
a:active {
    color: yellow;
}

In addition to this, some browsers allow you to "overrule" the way a site operator wants their site to look by letting you apply your own CSS to a site.

Chrome used to allow users to directly enter this type of custom CSS. Nowadays, Chrome only allows this through the use of a plugin. Stylebot is one of them, Stylish another.

Vivaldi is a browser I'm not familiar with. A quick Google search indicates that potentially aforementioned Stylebot can also be used for Vivaldi, but perhaps someone with more expertise on this specific browser can help out on more specific instructions.


Multitasking on iPhone 5s while HDMI displays something else?

Lock the phone, swipe to the left then back. Swipe up to bring up the calculator and then unlock the screen.
You should now be able to multitask.


As the system is used, it learns about typical variations in a user's
  appearance, and will adjust its registered face data to match aging,
  facial hair growth, and other changes using the Neural Engine. The
  system will recognize a face wearing hats, scarves, glasses, many
  sunglasses,9 facial hair or makeup.10

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Face_ID#Technology


How to move a folder containing aliases to another machine without breaking the aliases?

Aliases are not the same as symlinks.

Symlinks just point to a path (relative or absolute).
Aliases first track the file's unique ID and then the path.

Since there are two pieces of information stored in an alias - they are more robust and will follow a file that's moved based on the unique ID. The downside is that the unique ID is based on the file system so copying the file elsewhere mints a new ID so the alias doesn’t map to the new location by design and implementation (currently at least).

Finder (or the very powerful ditto) are your best bets for moving aliases intact. Worst case you could use disk utility to make an image of a folder that contains everything needed as a subfolder and then move that to preserve the relative locations of the files and isolate the effects of a short name change (/Users/whatever) in case you wish to change that. Once the original mac is disconnected from the new mac - the aliases will reconnect as desired to location of the files on the new mac.


Replace string with new line + string in a big file

Try

sed -i '' $'/),(/ s//),\\\n(/g' bigfile.sql

$'...' indicates that the string is a C-style string. This allows you to use the \\ and \n escapes, among others.
In place of your \n, we have a \\ and then a \n. This passes a literal backslash, and then a literal newline, to sed. This allows it to recognize that the newline is a part of the pattern, instead of terminating it.

The following also works:

sed -i '' '/),(/ s//),\
(/g' bigfile.sql


I was able to fix my disk through DiskWarrior5. I had to rebuild the directory and I did it with one click.

I had a similar problem a few months back but because I've tried first a few terminal commands DiskWarrior wasn't able to do a thing but this time it worked.


I can't help with this but I can confirm that this is one of many issues with multi screen multi window applications on mavericks. As he says, when you have 2 windows of the same app open on different screen, it will always give focus to the one on the primary monitor when you cmd+tab away and back to the app. This makes it rather annoying for development work when you are switching between a browser and editor regularly.


How to adjust gamma correction on old monitors

With your monitor connected, go to System Preferences > Displays and click on Calibrate with the Option key pressed down. This turns on the otherwise absent Expert Mode in the Display Calibrator Assistant.

This will present you with far greater control, including on about page 7 a Gamma adjust.

Nothing can replace a proper hardware colorimeter for screen calibration, but this will at least allow you to get closer.


How to know which iOS apps are restricted to a country?

I don't know of anything automatic - but you can browse the iTunes store here:

http://itunes.apple.com/us/browse

This is the US store - if you browse to your app, and then replace the 'us' part of the URL with the country code for the store you want to check (e.g. 'fr' for france, 'ie' for Ireland, etc) - you'll either get brought to the entry for the App in that country, or get an error message that the app is not available.

I don't think you'll find a huge number of apps that aren't available.

If you use Apple TV, do consider that the films/TV choices in other stores may be much more limited.

You might want to consider keeping two accounts rather than changing. It can make management a little more inconvenient, but you'll have a bigger choice of things to buy/rent.


Is it possible to use the integrated gpu on MBP retina with Bootcamp?

No, sorry. Apple disabled switching between the (integrated) IGPU and GPU.

I haven't tested what you posted, and I doubt it will work. (Still 1.3 years left on my warranty)


I would just sign out of your account and set up the correct account on each Mac. Open the App Store and see what updates are available. Any admin user can run normal updates and then you can see what purchases (if any) are on the wrong account.

You may have dodged a bullet if only system updates were done as they don't get tied as a permanent purchase. Even so, the cloning process means only one Mac registered for the iLife suite and you can wait for advice from Apple if that decision can be reversed if you'll just use one of the other accounts to update two machines going forward.

Ask a second question or edit this with more details once you've tried this on one test Mac to see what else needs fixing.


Remove dock notification badge for apps not in notification center

I have a solution that I was able to reverse engineer. I've tested it on my machine, running Yosemite 10.10.4 (14E46). If you can find the bundle ID (in the Info.plist file for the app bundle), you can use this script to force the app to appear in the notifications preferences pane.

# "Usernoted" seems to be the "user notifications daemon", so get it's PID.
pid=$(ps aux | grep -i [u]sernoted | awk '{print $2}')

# Find the sqlite3 database that this program has open. It's in a "private" folder (app sandboxing).
db="$(lsof -p $pid | grep com.apple.notificationcenter/db/db\$ | awk '{print $9}')"

# I got the bundleid from Spotify.app/Contents/Info.plist
bundleid="com.spotify.client"

# I use 0 as the flags because you can change all the settings in System Preferences
# 5 seems to be the default for show_count
# Grab the next-highest sort order
sql="INSERT INTO app_info (bundleid, flags, show_count, sort_order) VALUES ( '$bundleid', 0, 5, (SELECT MAX(sort_order) + 1 FROM app_info) );"

# Run the command
sqlite3 "$db" "$sql"

# Restart usernoted to make the changes take effect
killall usernoted

At this point you can open System Preferences -> Notifications, and you will find the app that you just added at the bottom of the list. You can enable / disable badging the icon from this page.


How to fix iMac losing Wi-Fi connection again and again?

You may find that another device is causing interference such as a cordless phone or microwave, or even a neighbour's wifi device. Try changing the channel on your wifi router.

It may be worth using the "alt-trick" to check what's going on with your wifi - when your wifi is connected, mouse over the wifi icon in your system tray, hold down the alt key then click on it. You should see some additional info, like the following:

Keep an eye on the Transmit Rate and RSSI; if they're poor it could be a sign that you need to change the wifi channel.

You can also use Lion's hidden diagnostic app to see what could be causing problems for your wifi.


How do I get the URL of a right-clicked link sent to an automator action?

Try this code on Automator action "Run Javascript".

for Chrome

function run(input, parameters) {

    var app = Application("Google Chrome");
    app.includeStandardAdditions = true;

    var url = app.windows[0].activeTab.execute({
        javascript: 'window.getSelection().anchorNode.parentNode.href'
    });

    return url;
}

for Safari

function run(input, parameters) {

    var app = Application("Safari");
    app.includeStandardAdditions = true;

    var url = app.doJavaScript('window.getSelection().anchorNode.parentNode.href',{
        in: app.windows[0].currentTab
    });

    return url;
}

For example

Right click on the link and select "Copy link to clipboard" service, then you can get the URL.


AppleScript detect key press by user alternatives

One way would be to use Hammerspoon to detect key presses as in this example. You could use something like this:
hs.hotkey.bind({"cmd", "alt", "ctrl"}, "I", function()
  ok,result = hs.applescript('tell Application "iTunes" to artist of the current track as string')
    hs.notify.new({title="Hammerspoon", informativeText=result}):send()
end)

Pressing ⌘+⌥+ctrl+I will give you a notification with the name of the artist, in this case.


My Macbook Air Battery Is not Charging and the Icon Shows Charging

First of all imo you should not provide hardware data of yr computer in plain site (and don’t get me wrong to say this). Its 101 infosec.
So ...i would try this:
1. backup my  (time machine & an external HD) -have all my accounts written down (iCloud-appleid- Gmail ets) just in case...
2. Delete all of it  . Restore it from backup.
https://www.imore.com/how-to-prepare-mac-for-sale
So it’s:
        Step 1: Back up your Mac
        Step 2: Sign out of everything
        Step 3: Reformat your hard drive
        Reinstall a clean Mac operating system

Now if issue persists , I would take it to Genius Bar .
Hope to have helped you.


What's the easiest way to do a screen recording and get a small file?

Quicktime

You can use QuickTime Player to record everything that happens on your computer’s screen or on a portion of your computer’s screen, along with your narration, if you’d like. This is called a screen recording.

In QuickTime Player, choose File > New Screen Recording.
Choose options for the screen recording from the arrow pop-up menu.

If you want to record yourself speaking as you use the computer, choose an audio input source below Microphone in the pop-up menu.
Choose whether you want the recording to be medium or high quality. High quality results in a larger file size.

[Edit/update by Helen Ayres: Jan 2020] You can no longer choose screen recording quality up-front in Mojave, unfortunately.  A workaround in QuickTime (without having to download or purchase any additional software, so all done in <1 minute!) is to record your full-fat version - 1 minute averages about 100Mb - then open the movie in QT.

File
Export As
480p

This reduced my 107Mb file to 17.7Mb so I could then email it, and didn't need to bother with Dropbox etc.
You can only do this when the QT file is open; you can't perform this file size reduction in eg Finder as the 'Export As' option will be greyed out.

Screenshot showing the steps above: [End of edit - Hope I've followed edit protocol correctly folks, as this is my first post, it's a little long for an edit I think; I would have posted a comment underneath but being a newbie, I'm not allowed to yet ;o) ]

If you want mouse clicks to be visible in the recording, choose “Show Mouse Clicks in Recording.”
If you want to change where the recording is saved, choose Choose, and then select a new location.

Arrange the computer windows as you want to capture them, and then click the Record button.

If you want to record only a portion of the screen, drag the pointer to select the portion of the screen you want to record, and then click Start Recording.
To adjust the portion of the screen you selected, drag the small gray circles along the edges of the screen recording rectangle or drag the entire screen recording rectangle to another location on the screen.

If you want to record the entire screen, click anywhere on the screen to start the recording.

4.To stop the recording, click the Stop button, or press  Cmd ⌘   Ctrl ⌃   Esc .

Source: Apple KB - QuickTime Player 10.x: Record your computer’s screen

From comments…
If the file sizes are still too large, there is Apple's own excellent Compressor ($49.99) or for a simpler approach, still with many possibilities, you could look at SmartConverter (freeware)


Finder not displaying a folder icon. How do I get it back?

I found some useful info on this Apple support discussion:

  First verify from Finder>View>Show View Option>Show icon Preview

  If that is check, toggle it off and on.

  If no success

  Open to the Preferences folder of  your home directory, or from  Finder>Go>Go to Folder, copy &  paste: ~/Library/Preferences/
  com.apple.finder.plist
  Delete the com.apple.finder.plist
  From the Finder icon on the  Dock, hold the control option key  and click the Finder icon>select
  Relaunch.

If that doesn’t work try updating our Dropbox.

I found someone with a similar problem online:

  I contacted support via chat, and they helped me understand that the dropbox version was outdated. now updated and it's working. thanks!

https://www.dropboxforum.com/t5/Installation-and-desktop-app/MacOs-High-Sierra-10-13-6-after-update-icons-missing-in-finder/m-p/319945#M58452


Can I wipe a MacBook Air SSD without having a recovery partition and still be able to do a new installation of OS X?

If your Mac shipped with OS X Lion or later, you'll be able to use Internet Recovery - in which case it's safe to fully erase your SSD, as your Mac is capable of fetching the recovery partition over the Internet.

You can enter Internet Recovery by holding Cmd+R during boot.


Looking for a program that jumps a mouse cursor from the middle of one monitor to another

XTool (OSAX) looks like a promising set of scripts:

From the readme:

hide mouse v : hide the mouse
    hide mouse

show mouse v : show the mouse
    show mouse

move mouse v : move the mouse to given coordinates
    move mouse [point] : where you want to move the mouse

scroll mouse v
    scroll mouse integer : the amount of scrolling
    [scroll direction vertical | horizontal] : which mouse button

click mouse v
    click mouse [point] : where to do the mouse click
    [times integer] : how many times you want to clik the mouse
    [delay integer] : delay between two mouse clicks
    [using primary button | secondary button | middle button] : which mouse button

position of the mouse v : get the location of the mouse
    position of the mouse
    → point

Sources: Apple Discussion List, Direct Download (with readme Docs)


You can just launch any app while the Mac is shutting down and that'll terminate the process.


Kernel panics; Apple hardware test error codes... Bad memory?

It sounds like some sort of RAM issue for sure, and there are a few memtest based programs out there to try and run and see if you run into problems.
Rember is a gui based memtest, and applejack is a fairly well known utility script that also contains it.

I dont know why you only got the error with a specific configuration of ram, but with 8GB of addressable space it can take a while to find the bad guy.


Chrome seems to tank my Air's performance. Any solutions?

Based on your question, I assume you're not experiencing problems when using Safari or Firefox (although you don't specify whether you use them or not).

Assuming that's the case, the first thing I'd try is turning off hardware acceleration in Google Chrome. To do this, follow these steps:

Launch Google Chrome
Go to Chrome > Preferences (or just press the command, keyboard shortcut
At the bottom of the page, click on Show advanced settings...
Look for the System subheading in the new settings that appear
Uncheck the Use hardware acceleration when available option
Restart Google Chrome


Here's a relatively simple method that does involve jailbreak but ends up with a non-jailbroken iPod and a fake carrier setting.

Jailbreak your iPhone (stay with me)
Download Cydia App: 'MakeItMine' by Erika Sadun
Change the carrier name
Connect your iPod and create a backup on iTunes
Restore your iPod to factory settings
Restore your backup

Your iPod touch should now display your fake carrier and be non-jailbroken.


Recovering emails from defunct IMAP account

My solution at the end: I wrote a tool to convert the .emlx and .partial.emlx files to .eml files. I re-imported these .eml files into Mail.app and was able to upload them to my new IMAP mail account.

In case anyone should encounter the same challenge, here’s my converter (Node.js-based):

https://github.com/qqilihq/partial-emlx-converter


It's most likely due to your particular database file.

Have you tried making a new user account and checking Outlook with an empty local mail store? You could also go in and switch user's but I don't recall the steps needed to close the main outlook database and make a new one so I'll leave that for someone else to edit in or answer.


I ended up purchasing this cable and it works for internet sharing as both an input and output. When it is plugged in, a new option in the internet sharing preferences appears.


Accidentally denied access to keychain for a program I need (Mac, obviously)

I had already deleted the entry thinking that would reset it.  I tried manually adding it back in with the same name.  I'll try it when I get the chance, but that's not going to be the same is it?


Jump the pointer long distances with keyboard?

Karabiner
Karabiner comes with everything you need—a way to define a shortcut, and a way to move the mouse. The warp-mouse-cursor-position utility lives in /Applications/Karabiner.app/Contents/Library/utilities/bin/.
It has a default setting to warp the mouse to the center of the current window by tapping fn or holding ' or /, but for a customized version, add this to your ~/Library/Application Support/Karabiner/private.xml: (After you’re done, go into Karabiner’s preferences and check the box inside Mouse Warping.)
<item>
    <name>Mouse Warping</name>
    <vkopenurldef>
      <name>KeyCode::VK_OPEN_URL_SHELL_mousetowindowcenter</name>
      <url type="shell">
        <![CDATA[
          /Applications/Karabiner.app/Contents/Library/utilities/bin/warp-mouse-cursor-position front_window middle 0 center 0
        ]]>
      </url>
    </vkopenurldef>
    <item>
        <identifier>private.f14_mousetowindowcenter</identifier>
        <name>F14 to move the mouse to the center of the current window</name>
        <autogen>
            --KeyToKey--
            KeyCode::F14,
            KeyCode::VK_OPEN_URL_SHELL_mousetowindowcenter
        </autogen>
    </item>
</item>

With Karabiner's utility, you can use the screen option like this:
warp-mouse-cursor-position screen NUM VERTICAL X_OFFSET HORIZONTAL Y_OFFSET

VERTICAL can be top, middle, or bottom, and HORIZONTAL can be left, center, or right.
X_OFFSET and Y_OFFSET can be numerical values, like +10 or -10. Just be careful to put the arguments in the right order—they seem oddly switched.
(For the front window, just use front_window instead of screen.)
cliclick
Probably the most popular way, but in order to use it for moving to the middle of a window, you’d need an AppleScript to get the bounds of the current window, then calculate the center, etc.


How to reinstall OSX on a Macbook Air whose screen is broken, and OS has been erased?

There are several options:

Plug in an external monitor and then you should be able to follow the install process.
Target disk mode, but as it's a MacBook Air this would be dependent on having a Thunderbolt port, that you can connect directly to another Thunderbolt port, or a Thunderbolt to Firewire adapter into an older Mac with Firewire.


Do Macs in a corporate setting behave more erratically?

No - Macs in enterprise are generally less erratic, more agile, less expensive, more productive and let people get work done with less unpleasantness like cryptic error messages, slow deployments, hard to diagnose issues, and things that require a large, IT support orgainzation.

In 2015 - IBM was 6 months in to a user choice program allowing their employees to choose a Mac or a PC and they had realized faster deployment, less support and cost savings of somewhere south of $300 per device.

https://www.jamf.com/blog/mac-ibm-zero-to-30000-in-6-months/

In 2016 - IBM is now betwwo 90k and 100k Macs deployed and is realizing savings of $250 to $500 per device type in cost to buy, support, provision Mac hardware versus PC hardware.

https://www.jamf.com/jamf-nation/events/jnuc/2016/246/keynote-a-user-first-mentality?view=info
https://www.jamf.com/jamf-nation/events/jnuc/2016/220/mac-ibm-under-the-hood?view=info

The videos from above should be posted within a month. Also keep in mind that this is a customer / partnership success story, but the hard numbers and experiences of people I spoke with make me feel these numbers are both fair and real as well as transferrable to many other enterprise organizations immediately with low risk if the company decides to support their employees and let them choose their platform to get work done.

If you are getting slow performance, it's likely due to something that can be fixed without a lot of delay if someone looks into the root cause and decides to support your location.

If you have stability issues - consider getting a good backup and wiping. Just add back the apps you need. My feelings are that the only changes that organizations make tend to increase stability of the Mac OS except for one.

antivirus software other than Apple's GateKeeper and Xprotect are huge sources of delay, slowness, resource usage and breakage. Kernel extensions generally are buggy, slow to be ready for new releases, etc...
Setting up restrictions like disabling iCloud sync generally make a Mac run better, not worse.
Setting up a server to delay or restrict updates and patches generally makes a Mac more stable.
Having IT to help you with backups and procedures to automate things like an erase instal and/or script setting things up like printers and such generally reduce the time you need to manage settings and don't cause any issues with stability.


Terminal Displays My Roommate's Computer

I know this is late, but the solution here may work for others with similar roommates.

I am thinking that your hostname is properly set, but that your prompt definition may have been pranked.

First check is to run 'echo $PROMPT && echo $PS1' and see if they match. If they don't, then we are looking for a prompt re-definition for sure but it is worthwhile to investigate fully anyways.

The terminal prompt is defined in several places and I suggest you look at them all for alterations

I am assuming that you use bash as your shell based on the output from your echo command. When I went to Mojave I switched to zsh, but I kept my bash settings.  This following is from my previous master file.

# ==============

/private/etc/profile
 Last edited: 2019/07/08

Bash first reads and executes commands from the file /etc/profile, if that file exists. From that file it calls (appends) /private/etc/bashrc, the System-wide bashrc file for interactive bash(1) shells. That bashrc checks if bash is interactive, then sets windowsize parms, and then appends Apple terminal definitions before returning control to here

After reading those files, it looks for ~/.bash_profile, ~/.bash_login, and ~/.profile, in that order, and reads and executes commands from the first one that exists and is readable.

# ================

You should look at /private/etc/profile and /private/etc/bashrc as system wide prompts can be set there.

Also look at the  ~/.bash_profile, ~/.bash_login, and ~/.profile files as they are the final place your prompt is set.

In general you are looking  statements along the lines of:
PS1=' some set of esc sequences like '\n and '\u mixed with the chars like '$' or '@''

 OR

PROMPT=   the same as just above.

If you see Gabiel's name in any of those files then that is the one to change.

I would look at these files in reverse order.

If you are interested, putting the following would give you a nice terminal front based on a Green on Black Homebrew profile for  you, root, and you as sudo -s. Of course you could modify it as you see fit as the colours are defined too. Copy following to the end of /private/etc/profile:

# declare ANSI color codes VARs

 RS="\[\033[0m\]"        # reset
 HC="\[\033[1m\]"        # hicolor
 UL="\[\033[4m\]"        # underline
 INV="\[\033[7m\]"       # inverse background and foreground
 FBLK="\[\033[30m\]"     # foreground black
 FRED="\[\033[31m\]"     # foreground red
 FGRN="\[\033[32m\]"     # foreground green
 FYEL="\[\033[33m\]"     # foreground yellow
 FBLE="\[\033[34m\]"     # foreground blue
 FMAG="\[\033[35m\]"     # foreground magenta
 FCYN="\[\033[36m\]"     # foreground cyan
 FWHT="\[\033[37m\]"     # foreground white
 BBLK="\[\033[40m\]"     # background black
 BRED="\[\033[41m\]"     # background red
 BGRN="\[\033[42m\]"     # background green
 BYEL="\[\033[43m\]"     # background yellow
 BBLE="\[\033[44m\]"     # background blue
 BMAG="\[\033[45m\]"     # background magenta
 BCYN="\[\033[46m\]"     # background cyan
 BWHT="\[\033[47m\]"     # background white
 BFRED="\[\033[01;31m\]" # bright foreground red
 BFGRN="\[\033[01;32m\]" # bright foreground green
 BFYEL="\[\033[01;33m\]" # bright foreground yellow
 BFBLE="\[\033[01;34m\]" # bright foreground blue
 BFMAG="\[\033[01;35m\]" # bright foreground magenta
 BFCYN="\[\033[01;36m\]" # bright foreground cyan
 BFWHT="\[\033[01;37m\]" # bright foreground white

#  end colour VARs

#  set colour prompt

    export SUDO_PS1='\n'$BFRED'\u'$BFGRN'@'$BFRED'\h'$BFGRN':'$BFBLE'\w '$RS''$FRED'$ '

    if [[ ${EUID} != 0 ]]; then
        export PS1='\n'$BFGRN'\u'$BFRED'@'$BFGRN'\h'$BFRED':'$BFBLE'\w '$RS''$FGRN'# '
    else
        export PS1='\n'$BFRED'\u'$BFGRN'@'$BFRED'\h'$BFGRN':'$BFBLE'\w '$RS''$FRED'$ '
    fi

#  end set prompt


macOS Sierra identifies my external Microsoft keyboard as my MacBook internal keyboard

I finally figured out that there was a kernel extension named org.pqrs.driver.VirtualHIDManager from an old Karabiner installation that was running and causing this problem. It was in my boot volume at /Library/Application Support/org.pqrs/Karabiner-Elements/org.pqrs.driver.VirtualHIDManager.kext/. Removing org.pqrs didn't work while I was logged in, so I restarted into my recovery volume, mounted my boot volume, and used the terminal to remove the directory. Everything went back to normal after that.


How to fix Mountain Lion that is very slow after sleep by timeout?

I recommend you start 'Activity Monitor' (found in Applications/Utilities') before you let the Mac go to sleep. If an Application shows a high CPU-load it could be the culprit.

In you case it's probably the 'Safe Sleep' function, the equivalent to the Hibernation Mode in Windows, which creates a temp. file on your HD to ensure a correct wake-up - even after a power loss. The file is usually the same size of the RAM and is probably the cause of you problems.

Can you give more details to the RAM- and HD-Size?

Edit:
if you check your activities as i mentioned before, did you notice any activity in
/var/vm/

There should be a file called 'sleepimage', which you can remove. It will be rebuild if needed.

You should check your Power Management Settings in the Terminal via pmset

pmset -g | grep hibernatemode

The default should be "hibernatemode 3", meaning that RAM contents is written to the disk upon sleeping. To test if the reading of the sleepfile is causing your sluggish behaviour you can disable 'safe sleep' with

sudo pmset -a hibernatemode 0

Please try that and post your observations.


The first appearance of the Mac App Store was 10.6.6 Snow Leopard.

Any Intel-based Mac will accommodate Snow Leopard. A list of Intel-based Macs can be found here and at Apple's detailed system build versions for Intel Macs. So the original MacBook Pro from February 2006 would be the oldest portable that can run the Mac App Store.

Depending on which iOS device they have, you might need Lion or even Mountain Lion to run a version of iTunes for some newer devices like the iPad mini or iPhone 5.


Were you running Parallels Desktop with a Windows Virtual Machine?

These folders are created if you are using the Shared Folders feature in Parallels Desktop. You can disable it in Virtual Machine -> Configure -> Shared Folders.

These folders can be safely deleted if you don't care about their contents.


Most compact solution for external monitor for 2011 MacBook Pro

I purchased a Wavlink 2.0 USB to HDMI/DVI adapter and its working fine as of now with my MBP. Text editing and movie watching have not been an issue.

My monitor is an old HP 2311x. YMMV on different more high res monitors? I had to install their software for my macosx to get it to work which was not so hard.

There are some wonderful details about this technology.


In case anyone has this problem and doesn't have Nocture, you should be able to fix it by running the following Terminal command:

killall SystemUIServer

This restarts the process responsible for drawing the menu bar. It should fix almost all menu bar-related problems.


macOS Catalina creates "Relocated Items" on every update

I also experienced this problem over several Catalina and Big Sur updates.
I too had a /p link defined in /etc/synthetic.conf
I too noticed the rivate misspelling.

So before updating to macOS 11.4 today, I rebooted in recovery mode and removed my synthetic.conf. The update then installed normally, without blowing away my /var and /etc directories and without running the new installation setup. I conclude that having a /p link does cause this problem.


Why does my iPhone 4 get so hot during charging?

FYI, iPhone 4 does have heat sensors and if it gets dangerously hot it will show a black screen with a yellow warning sign and shut down. It's perfectly reasonable to be concerned and take the measures you have to increase heat dissipation, but batteries warming on charging is quite normal. I wouldn't worry unless the iPhone displays an overheating warning consistently.


Boot hangs on grey screen (even when booting from USB drive with fresh OS X install)

Solved: Booted to Single-User mode and disabled Radeon GPU.

Details of investigation:

Initially I suspected hard-drive corruption and went about trying to remedy that. Unsuccessfully, I tried the following, with each continuing to hang as described above:

Safe boot
Boot into recovery (including Internet Recovery)
Boot from install media on USB drive
Boot from OS X installation on USB drive
Clear NVRAM
Reset SMC

I also ran the Apple Hardware Test many times without it finding any issues.

Verbose safe boot (Cmd+Shift+V) output everything that I'd expect to see but would then hang as described above.

After coming across more posts online of GPU related problems I revisited this as the cause:

https://discussions.apple.com/message/22751155#22751155
https://discussions.apple.com/thread/4766577?start=210&tstart=0

Attempting to boot Ubuntu from a USB flash drive, I could only get as far as Grub. When trying to boot Ubuntu Desktop or run the graphicstest in Grub the system would hang.

At this point, running Apple Hardware Test hung right before the end of the standard test, possibly [guessing] when doing a video test.

Based on the advice in the Apple Discussions posts above I did the following:

Boot into Single-User mode
Execute the following commands:

    /sbin/fsck -fy /
    /sbin/mount -uw /
    mkdir /Disabled_System_Library_Extensions
    cd /Disabled_System_Library_Extensions
    mv /System/Library/Extensions/ATI* .
    mv /System/Library/Extensions/AMD* .
    touch /System/Library/Extensions
    exit

This time the machine booted all the way through. However, graphics are extremely slow, even just transitions when minimizing windows. I will be taking my MBP to Apple to demand a replacement as the large number of reports of others facing similar issues makes it look like a recurrence of a similar GPU-related failure that resulted in them doing a recall.


Prevent iPhone from trying to send text message after leaving airplane mode

There's a hack that I've used to stop a message from being sent.  I presume it worked because I didn't get any blow back from the excoritating message I sent to the wrong person (sent to client, not to tech who went the extra mile to find ways to pad billable hours)

Enable Airplane Mode as quickly as you can
Settings →  Messages → Turn off "Send as SMS"
Return to your messages and delete the message (hold the message, select "more", then select the message and then "Delete All" at the top
Disable Airplane Mode

The key here is to enable Airplane Mode before your message hits the Apple servers.  Once it's there, it's out of your hands.  As for blocking the person, that's for incoming calls/texts, not outgoing.
Now, Apple is supposedly testing new iMessage features including retracting messages, but we'll have to wait and see.