Format of .data binary files for parental control logs?

I checked that area for one of my kids and found a file for today since she logged in earlier this morning.

It looks like these are binary plist files.  You can convert them to XML with plutil -convert xml1 18-usage.data where 18-usage.data is the name of your file.

Here's the contents.  It's not terribly interesting.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN" "http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd">
<plist version="1.0">
<dict>
    <key>$archiver</key>
    <string>NSKeyedArchiver</string>
    <key>$objects</key>
    <array>
        <string>$null</string>
        <dict>
            <key>$class</key>
            <dict>
                <key>CF$UID</key>
                <integer>14</integer>
            </dict>
            <key>NS.keys</key>
            <array>
                <dict>
                    <key>CF$UID</key>
                    <integer>2</integer>
                </dict>
                <dict>
                    <key>CF$UID</key>
                    <integer>3</integer>
                </dict>
                <dict>
                    <key>CF$UID</key>
                    <integer>4</integer>
                </dict>
                <dict>
                    <key>CF$UID</key>
                    <integer>5</integer>
                </dict>
                <dict>
                    <key>CF$UID</key>
                    <integer>6</integer>
                </dict>
                <dict>
                    <key>CF$UID</key>
                    <integer>7</integer>
                </dict>
            </array>
            <key>NS.objects</key>
            <array>
                <dict>
                    <key>CF$UID</key>
                    <integer>8</integer>
                </dict>
                <dict>
                    <key>CF$UID</key>
                    <integer>15</integer>
                </dict>
                <dict>
                    <key>CF$UID</key>
                    <integer>18</integer>
                </dict>
                <dict>
                    <key>CF$UID</key>
                    <integer>21</integer>
                </dict>
                <dict>
                    <key>CF$UID</key>
                    <integer>24</integer>
                </dict>
                <dict>
                    <key>CF$UID</key>
                    <integer>27</integer>
                </dict>
            </array>
        </dict>
        <string>com.apple.familycontrols.useragent</string>
        <string>com.unknown.activateSettings</string>
        <string>com.apple.Safari</string>
        <string>__COMPUTER__</string>
        <string>com.apple.finder</string>
        <string>com.apple.iTunesHelper</string>
        <dict>
            <key>$class</key>
            <dict>
                <key>CF$UID</key>
                <integer>14</integer>
            </dict>
            <key>NS.keys</key>
            <array>
                <dict>
                    <key>CF$UID</key>
                    <integer>9</integer>
                </dict>
                <dict>
                    <key>CF$UID</key>
                    <integer>10</integer>
                </dict>
                <dict>
                    <key>CF$UID</key>
                    <integer>11</integer>
                </dict>
            </array>
            <key>NS.objects</key>
            <array>
                <dict>
                    <key>CF$UID</key>
                    <integer>12</integer>
                </dict>
                <dict>
                    <key>CF$UID</key>
                    <integer>2</integer>
                </dict>
                <dict>
                    <key>CF$UID</key>
                    <integer>13</integer>
                </dict>
            </array>
        </dict>
        <string>duration</string>
        <string>uniqueID</string>
        <string>displayName</string>
        <integer>7</integer>
        <string>Parental Controls</string>
        <dict>
            <key>$classes</key>
            <array>
                <string>NSMutableDictionary</string>
                <string>NSDictionary</string>
                <string>NSObject</string>
            </array>
            <key>$classname</key>
            <string>NSMutableDictionary</string>
        </dict>
        <dict>
            <key>$class</key>
            <dict>
                <key>CF$UID</key>
                <integer>14</integer>
            </dict>
            <key>NS.keys</key>
            <array>
                <dict>
                    <key>CF$UID</key>
                    <integer>9</integer>
                </dict>
                <dict>
                    <key>CF$UID</key>
                    <integer>10</integer>
                </dict>
                <dict>
                    <key>CF$UID</key>
                    <integer>11</integer>
                </dict>
            </array>
            <key>NS.objects</key>
            <array>
                <dict>
                    <key>CF$UID</key>
                    <integer>16</integer>
                </dict>
                <dict>
                    <key>CF$UID</key>
                    <integer>3</integer>
                </dict>
                <dict>
                    <key>CF$UID</key>
                    <integer>17</integer>
                </dict>
            </array>
        </dict>
        <integer>0</integer>
        <string>activateSettings</string>
        <dict>
            <key>$class</key>
            <dict>
                <key>CF$UID</key>
                <integer>14</integer>
            </dict>
            <key>NS.keys</key>
            <array>
                <dict>
                    <key>CF$UID</key>
                    <integer>9</integer>
                </dict>
                <dict>
                    <key>CF$UID</key>
                    <integer>10</integer>
                </dict>
                <dict>
                    <key>CF$UID</key>
                    <integer>11</integer>
                </dict>
            </array>
            <key>NS.objects</key>
            <array>
                <dict>
                    <key>CF$UID</key>
                    <integer>19</integer>
                </dict>
                <dict>
                    <key>CF$UID</key>
                    <integer>4</integer>
                </dict>
                <dict>
                    <key>CF$UID</key>
                    <integer>20</integer>
                </dict>
            </array>
        </dict>
        <integer>3567</integer>
        <string>Safari</string>
        <dict>
            <key>$class</key>
            <dict>
                <key>CF$UID</key>
                <integer>14</integer>
            </dict>
            <key>NS.keys</key>
            <array>
                <dict>
                    <key>CF$UID</key>
                    <integer>9</integer>
                </dict>
                <dict>
                    <key>CF$UID</key>
                    <integer>10</integer>
                </dict>
                <dict>
                    <key>CF$UID</key>
                    <integer>11</integer>
                </dict>
            </array>
            <key>NS.objects</key>
            <array>
                <dict>
                    <key>CF$UID</key>
                    <integer>22</integer>
                </dict>
                <dict>
                    <key>CF$UID</key>
                    <integer>5</integer>
                </dict>
                <dict>
                    <key>CF$UID</key>
                    <integer>23</integer>
                </dict>
            </array>
        </dict>
        <integer>3588</integer>
        <string>Computer</string>
        <dict>
            <key>$class</key>
            <dict>
                <key>CF$UID</key>
                <integer>14</integer>
            </dict>
            <key>NS.keys</key>
            <array>
                <dict>
                    <key>CF$UID</key>
                    <integer>9</integer>
                </dict>
                <dict>
                    <key>CF$UID</key>
                    <integer>10</integer>
                </dict>
                <dict>
                    <key>CF$UID</key>
                    <integer>11</integer>
                </dict>
            </array>
            <key>NS.objects</key>
            <array>
                <dict>
                    <key>CF$UID</key>
                    <integer>25</integer>
                </dict>
                <dict>
                    <key>CF$UID</key>
                    <integer>6</integer>
                </dict>
                <dict>
                    <key>CF$UID</key>
                    <integer>26</integer>
                </dict>
            </array>
        </dict>
        <integer>12</integer>
        <string>Finder</string>
        <dict>
            <key>$class</key>
            <dict>
                <key>CF$UID</key>
                <integer>14</integer>
            </dict>
            <key>NS.keys</key>
            <array>
                <dict>
                    <key>CF$UID</key>
                    <integer>9</integer>
                </dict>
                <dict>
                    <key>CF$UID</key>
                    <integer>10</integer>
                </dict>
                <dict>
                    <key>CF$UID</key>
                    <integer>11</integer>
                </dict>
            </array>
            <key>NS.objects</key>
            <array>
                <dict>
                    <key>CF$UID</key>
                    <integer>16</integer>
                </dict>
                <dict>
                    <key>CF$UID</key>
                    <integer>7</integer>
                </dict>
                <dict>
                    <key>CF$UID</key>
                    <integer>28</integer>
                </dict>
            </array>
        </dict>
        <string>iTunesHelper</string>
    </array>
    <key>$top</key>
    <dict>
        <key>root</key>
        <dict>
            <key>CF$UID</key>
            <integer>1</integer>
        </dict>
    </dict>
    <key>$version</key>
    <integer>100000</integer>
</dict>
</plist>


Faint clicking noise in trackpad in Macbook Pro

The Apple repair folks won't actually replace the trackpad  itself, but they will adjust the tensioner underneath the trackpad. I had the same issue in my brand new Macbook Pro, and they were able to solve the issue.


This is a list of all the iPad compatible printers.
The only one that looks even somewhat portable is the first one.

HP Envy e-All-in-One series (D410a)
HP Photosmart Plus e-AiO (B210a)
HP Photosmart Premium e-AiO (C310a)
HP Photosmart Premium Fax e-AiO (C410a)
HP Photosmart e-AiO (D110)
HP Photosmart eStation (C510)
HP LaserJet P1102w Printer
HP LaserJet P1606dn Printer
HP LaserJet Pro CP1025nw Color Printer
HP LaserJet Pro M1212nf MFP
HP LaserJet Pro M1213nf MFP
HP LaserJet Pro M1214nfh MFP
HP LaserJet Pro M1216nfh MFP
HP LaserJet Pro M1217nfw MFP
HP LaserJet Pro M1536dnf Multifunction Printer
HP LaserJet Pro CM1415fn Color Multifunction Printer
HP LaserJet Pro CM1415fnw Color Multifunction Printer
HP LaserJet Pro CP1525n Color Printer
HP LaserJet Pro CP1525nw Color Printer
HP Officejet 6500A e-AiO
HP Officejet 6500A Plus e-AiO
HP Officejet 7500A Wide Format e-AiO
HP Officejet Pro 8500A e-AiO
HP Officejet Pro 8500A Premium e-AiO
HP Officejet Pro 8500A Plus e-AiO

Edit: That data is from here: http://www.apple.com/ipad/features/airprint.html


One-click save to Downloads folder in Mail.app

I don't think it is directly possible. However, you can right-click on the attachment and select "Save to Downloads folder".


mac won't start after "sudo chown -R $(whoami) $(brew --prefix)/*" command

It sounds like you mistyped the command or had problems with your brew command, making the chown apply to not only /usr/local but rather / - i.e. the whole system. The command you have written is actually relatively dangerous, as you're relying on "brew --prefix" to output the right thing.

In this case your command changed the owner of system files, such as the /etc/sudoers file. This is why the system won't boot anymore.

The good news is that you should be able to boot the Mac in Recovery Mode by holding down Cmd and R while booting. From there you should be able to select that you want to reinstall macOS on your computer. This should allow you to overwrite those system files and ensure that the system is good to boot, while keeping your own files intact. If you have done any changes to the system files, you'll loose those ofcourse.


How to run sshd on port 500 in High Sierra?

To modify the ssh port, you have to edit the ssh launch daemon of the ssh server host:

disable SIP
open ssh.plist:

sudo nano /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/ssh.plist

modify the <key>Sockets</key> (example port here: 10022) from

    ...
    <key>Sockets</key>
    <dict>
            <key>Listeners</key>
            <dict>
                    <key>SockServiceName</key>
                    <string>ssh</string>
                    <key>Bonjour</key>
                    <array>
                            <string>ssh</string>
                            <string>sftp-ssh</string>
                    </array>
            </dict>
    </dict>
    ...

to

    ...
    <key>Sockets</key>
    <dict>
            <key>Listeners</key>
            <dict>
                    <key>SockServiceName</key>
                    <string>10022</string>
                    <key>Bonjour</key>
                    <array>
                            <string>10022</string>
                            <string>10022</string>
                    </array>
            </dict>
    </dict>
    ...

unload and load the daemon

sudo launchctl unload /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/ssh.plist
sudo launchctl load /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/ssh.plist

test the ssh daemon
enable SIP

An alternative, less intrusive approach is to create a second ssh launch daemon in /Library/LaunchDaemons/:

copy the ssh.plist

sudo cp /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/ssh.plist /Library/LaunchDaemons/ssh2.plist

modify the ssh2.plist:

sudo nano /Library/LaunchDaemons/ssh2.plist

change the key Label to

<key>Label</key>
<string>com.openssh.sshd2</string>

change the key <key>Sockets</key> as described earlier
disable SSH in the System Preferences > Sharing > Remote Login
load the launch daemon:

sudo launchctl load -w /Library/LaunchDaemons/ssh2.plist

with strict key checking enabled in the ssh config file on a ssh client host you may have to remove the ssh server from the known_hosts file of this remote host.
access the ssh server with ssh user@IP -p <port>


How to enable key repeat on Macbook Pro with Yosemite

To disable the press-and-hold character palette, you could try running the following command in Terminal.app:

defaults write -g ApplePressAndHoldEnabled -bool false

Apps may need to be restarted for changes to take effect.

To reenable the menu, run:

defaults write -g ApplePressAndHoldEnabled -bool true


check if you have relocated songs.
check if your files can be rewritten.

I use self-written python program to remove stale content.

import win32com.client
itunes= win32com.client.Dispatch("iTunes.Application")
ITTrackKindFile=1
mainLibrary = itunes.LibraryPlaylist
tracks = mainLibrary.Tracks
numTracks = tracks.Count
deletedTracks=0
batch_size = 90
deleted = []
while True:
  while numTracks  !=0:
   currTrack=tracks.Item(numTracks)
   if currTrack.Kind == ITTrackKindFile:
       if currTrack.Location == "":
         deleted.append(currTrack)
   numTracks-=1
   for track in deleted:
      track.Delete()
      deletedTracks+=1
   del deleted[:] # free memory and close handles
   if not numTracks:
     break

if deletedTracks > 0:
if deletedTracks == 1:
  print "Removed 1 dead track."
else:
  print "Removed " + str(deletedTracks) + " dead tracks."
else:
  print "No dead tracks were found."


MBP USB-C charger can't keep up when busy. Is that normal?

Yes - when the GPU is full power and the CPU is committed, you could drain things faster than the charger can provide. I’ve not seen it often, but you are certainly able to run things past what most chargers can provide.

Now if you can get this without any external displays connected and when the integrated (logic board) GPU is running and not past 75% CPU load, I would suspect you either have a bad cable, bad adapter or less likely need a repair on the Mac.

Now - one hour battery is clearly an issue. This draining should be slow and run several hours if you are running mostly on wall power and only a little on draining the battery.

Think if you were flying a plane and refueling - you should be topping off slowly or perhaps burning more than you can take in in some cases but you should be able to drain both your tanks and the refuel volume in an hour.

Get the Mac to service for a diagnostic on power with that specific adapter if that’s the case.


Can I force Mac OS X to select certain Wifi network?

Sure. Just go to System Preferences/Network, select Wifi and click Advanced. A list with all the Wifi networks you've been connected to will appear. Just rearrange the connection order (the ones you'd like to connect first on top) by drag-dropping.

Also, delete any unwanted network SSID (network names) if you no longer want to auto-join that.


Using Safari to list all contents of a folder/path

I don't think this is possible. I looked at a list of Safari Extensions, and no extension I found has this ability.

NOTE: If you put the actual URL path description in the Safari address bar, ex: file:///Users/Panoy, Safari will open a Finder window to that path, not display the path in the browser window itself.


Apple's tools don't see Java 7, Oracle's tools don't see Java 6; it's all a bit ugly. Luckily there's an ugly fix to go with it!

Normal Mac Java 6 running on 10.8:

java -version
java version "1.6.0_33"
Java(TM) SE Runtime Environment (build 1.6.0_33-b03-424-11M3720)
Java HotSpot(TM) 64-Bit Server VM (build 20.8-b03-424, mixed mode)

Install the Java 7 JDK (not just the JRE) from Oracle.

Move the system java out of the way (so you can get it back if you want):

sudo mv /System/Library/Java/JavaVirtualMachines/1.6.0.jdk /System/Library/Java/JavaVirtualMachines/1.6.0.jdkx

Then symlink 7 in place of 6:

sudo ln -s /Library/Java/JavaVirtualMachines/jdk1.7.0_06.jdk /System/Library/Java/JavaVirtualMachines/1.6.0.jdk

and voila:

java -version
java version "1.7.0_06"
Java(TM) SE Runtime Environment (build 1.7.0_06-b24)
Java HotSpot(TM) 64-Bit Server VM (build 23.2-b09, mixed mode)

I've not had trouble with any java apps so far (apart from java preferences which checks which java it's running under).

There's probably a better way of doing this, but it works for me.


Is there an easy way to remove some of the built-in apps on macOS Mojave?

Go to the Applications folder in the Finder tool;
right-click on the unwanted application;
click "Move to trash", and enter the password if requested by the system;
then empty the trash.

Note the following exceptions:

In case an unwanted application is in the Utilities subfolder, the first step should be to navigate into that subfolder.
There are some applications such as Safari and Siri for which there is no "Move to trash" option.

Each of these steps should be well documented. I would be happy to add some more pointers upon request.


Why do I need to "repair permissions" on my Aperture library in order to migrate to Photos?

Apple often uses custom permissions to prevent users from going inside library files and deleting files that need to be in place since they are thumbnails and/or database files or referenced in database files.

Here's an official knowledge base article on the permissions required and steps to fix it.

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204484

Reading your alert, the step is probably precautionary to ensure that all the files are readable and ready to transfer.

You can check the locking with Finder - select the Aperture Library and choose File -> Get Info. Observe the locked button and expand the Sharing & Permissions portion if needed. You probably need Read & Write permission on the folder and all it's contents. If you wanted to dive into terminal, I'd start at the bottom of the article and work upwards.

I would let the tool work and contact AppleCare if it reports another error or doesn't fix the permissions after one pass.


Resetting old MacBook Air to factory defaults

The simplest manner would be to use the Air's Remote Disc functionality to re-install the OS using an erase and install.


coreutils on OS X adds the prefix g to all the commands so as to not mess up with default programs on OS X.

It prints this when you run brew install coreutils

==> Caveats
All commands have been installed with the prefix 'g'.

If you really need to use these commands with their normal names, you
can add a "gnubin" directory to your PATH from your bashrc like:

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

So unless you really need to use it as stdbuf, there is no real reason to update your path, you can simply run gstdbuf instead:

$ gstdbuf --help
Usage: gstdbuf OPTION... COMMAND


To empty the Safari caches, first you need to have the Develop menu displayed in the menu bar (Preferences | Advanced | Show Develop menu in menu bar). Then on the Develop menu, click on Empty Caches.

You can also use the keyboard shortcut: option+cmd+e.


Where is the private forum for the Universal App Quick Start Program / Developer Transition Kit (DTK)?

From an Apple ID that has been accepted to the Universal App Quick Start Program, access the Apple Developer Forums.
Click your profile icon at the top right of the screen:

You should see a link to the private forum:

Developer Forums
Universal App Quick Start

Which links to the forum/tag for the UAQSP/DTK, located here:
https://developer.apple.com/forums/tags/universal-app-quick-start

Universal App Quick Start
Private forums for program members

Notably, this Universal App Quick Start tag is not included in the list of all forum tags. So it's rather hard to find.


I'm still open to quicker ways to do this, however, I managed to solve it by running the full High Sierra installer over the drive.

Get the installer from the App Store. You need to use search as it doesn't appear in your Purchase History.

Run the installer - for some reason it insists on doing the Firmware update again, even though that had already been done.

Note: It says to hold the power button 'until the light flashes or you hear a tone'. Empirically, waiting for the tone is more likely to succeed. Releasing the button when the light flashes isn't guaranteed to work. If you hold for a few seconds after the tone is heard, the machine will automatically boot anyway.

The install took about 45 minutes in total.

Recovery Partition was restored.

/dev/disk5 (synthesized):
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      APFS Container Scheme -                      +1000.0 GB  disk5
                                 Physical Store disk3s2
   1:                APFS Volume KickMeHard              498.6 GB   disk5s1
   2:                APFS Volume Preboot                 19.8 MB    disk5s2
   3:                APFS Volume Recovery                515.3 MB   disk5s3
   4:                APFS Volume VM                      20.5 KB    disk5s4


Can an 2009 iMac have an odd total amount of RAM?

You can but it's recommended to use matched pairs as you'll get more of a performance boost due to the way the Intel side of things handles dual-channel memory. However, more RAM generally trumps less RAM so it's probably worth it to get that extra Gb of memory.


Podcast speed - Can't find adjust button

Here it is]1 In Podcasts native app this option is not very accurate, by the way.


Is there any way to convince Apple Mail to write its configuration as text Plist files instead of binary?

Probably not, but you could use plutil to convert the binary plist to XML and keep the results in your revision control system.


How do I turn off multitouch zoom in Safari?

In the trackpad preference pane (System Preferences) there is an option to disable Screen Zoom.

There is an alternative. A small plugin, of sorts, that allows you to disable pinch zooming in Safari and Firefox.

http://cubeyellow.blogspot.com/2009/01/mac-book-pro-trackpad-zooming-and.html


The good news.  Data is encrypted using SSL while it is transferred between your computer and the iCloud servers.  Also, data is encrypted while it is "at rest", stored on the iCloud servers (with some exceptions; see below).  Encryption is invisible, easy to use, and automatic (on by default).

The less-good news. iCloud uses server-side encryption, not client-side encryption.  When sending data to the cloud, it gets encrypted on your machine with SSL, then decrypted at the iCloud servers, then re-encrypted using an encryption key that Apple knows for storage.  This means that Apple employees have the technical ability to read your data.  There may be procedural, technical, or policy controls to make this unlikely, but the capability is there.  That means that if Apple's cloud ever gets compromised by a sophisticated attacker, the attacker could potentially access all your data.  In other words, any data breach or accident on Apple's part could potentially expose your data.  This may not be too likely, but given that even respected companies like Google have been breached, a breach or other exposure of the iCloud servers is not unthinkable.

Email and notes are not stored in encrypted form, while on Apple's servers.  Email often contains sensitive information -- e.g., account passwords, reset links -- so this is a bit dangerous.

If law enforcement asks Apple for a copy of your data, Apple will share it with them.  Apple won't necessarily require a warrant.  EFF gives Apple only one out of four stars for protecting user data in its report, When Government Comes Knocking, Who Has Your Back?, and dings Apple for not being transparent about government requests for access to your data and not telling users when their data has been disclosed to the government.

The risks are not limited to government requests.  If you get sued, or end up in a contentious divorce, the opposing party's lawyers could subpoena your data from Apple, and Apple would be required to disclose it to them.  Note that the threshold for a subpoena is relatively low: primarily, that the data has a likelihood of being relevant to the case.

The security of your data on iCloud is only as good as the passphrase on your Apple ID.  Therefore, if you want your data to be secure, you need to choose a long and strong passphrase.  Unfortunately, there are some aspects of the current systems that tend to nudge users towards choosing short, weak passphrases.  The OS refuses to store this passphrase in the keychain, requiring you to type it in frequently.  If you use an iOS device, you will frequently need to type in your Apple ID passphrase (e.g., every time you install or update an app).  Because entering a long and strong passphrase is a major pain on an iPhone, many users may end up choosing a short, poor passphrase just for convenience sake -- which unfortunately leaves their iCloud data poorly secured.  So, the current design may tend to encourage many users to use a weak password, leaving their data at risk.

Further reading. The Economist has an excellent argument summarizing the security implications of storing your data on the cloud, and the different levels of security afforded by different providers; for comparison, iCloud is similar to DropBox in its security properties, and weaker than SpiderOak.  To help understand why Apple might have chosen the particular architecture it did, you might enjoy Ben Adida's blog article: Encryption is not gravy; it has significant implications for usability..

Summary. iCloud's security practices are largely in line with mainstream practice in this area.  iCloud appears to have a reasonable and professionally designed security architecture.  While there are some security risks, for most people, iCloud's security is likely to be good enough, and the convenience benefits of iCloud will likely outweigh any risks for most folks.

However, storing your data in the cloud does increase the risk.  For some particularly-sensitive users -- e.g., health records, financial institutions, or other companies with sensitive data -- it might be prudent to avoid storing the most sensitive data in the cloud.


You have to change the icon every time it updates because, as you have correctly pointed out, the Package is replaced and therefore your icon is overwritten by the original one.

To make your life easier, you might want to take a look at CandyBar, it makes that job easier :)


What is the keyboard shortcut ctrl+option+shift+power for?

According to the apple support: This key combination resets the SMC (System Management Controller). The SMC takes control of the battery. Once the controller has been reset, the power supply is cut off.
It is not recommended to do this while the Mac is turned on.


MS Word for Mac, show outline on the left panel

I think I found the answer.

There is 'Show or hide the Sidebar' button on the toolbar.

I can choose 'Reviewing pane' from that button.


Why can't Time Machine see shared drive?

When you click the "Options..." button in the File Sharing preferences, is "Share files and folders using AFP" enabled? Time Machine over the network requires AFP, so it won't work if only SMB is enabled.

You may also need to disable SMB. I am not exactly sure why this is the case, but sometimes the SMB share takes priority and Time Machine can't seem to see the AFP share. Note that this will prevent Windows clients from connecting to file shares.


Certain Commands are not Found in Catalina's Zsh

I am going to bypass what could be causing it, to tell you how to “cure” it.

First, find out the exact path of “atom” (not Atom.app).  It is probably embedded somewhere inside of Atom.app, but it's possible the Install Shell Commands copies it to somewhere else.

If it disappears on a reboot, it might be copied to /tmp (!).  If that is the case, do echo $path and copy it to one of those directories.

After you have atom in a location that won't be erased on reboot, ensure that location is in your zsh $path as discussed in How does zsh find commands?


VMware fusion's Windows 7 takes long time to shut down (sometimes hang)

Upgrading to Fusion 4 will help some, but whether you upgrade or not, read VMware support article 1022625 to learn about the things that could be causing slowdowns and what you can do about them.

In particular, I recommend you follow the instructions labeled "Edit the virtual machine settings to reduce I/O usage by using more host memory":

  Add the following lines to the virtual machine's settings ( .vmx) file:

MemTrimRate = "0"
sched.mem.pshare.enable = "FALSE"
prefvmx.useRecommendedLockedMemSize = "TRUE"

In short, Fusion's code base derives from a server environment where one server is running many, many virtual machines which all are using the same OS. That code base implements several strategies to allocate less host memory to an individual VM than the VM thinks it needs.  These settings turn those strategies off, which is a good thing for Fusion where you're typically running only one VM at a time.  In particular,  sched.mem.pshare.enable = "FALSE" turns off sharing pages of memory using copy-on-write, which does not work well the way Fusion uses it on MacOS and causes insane delays shutting down VMs which use large amounts of memory.

I also recommend adding this to your VMX file at the same time:

# Do not allow VM memory to be swapped
Prefvmx.minVmMemPct = "100"

I've asked VMware to make these settings the defaults for Fusion, but I'm not holding my breath.  Until then, I manually add them to every VM I create, because, unfortunately, putting these changes in user- or system-wide config files seems not to have any effect.


How can I swap the shift key with another key?

You can swap shift key with some other with key using  KeyRemao4Macbook but I am not sure can swap with / .


High Sierra permissions failing to modify recursively via Terminal

The letter used in the terminal command must be a capital "R", not a lower-case "r".

e.g. use:

    sudo chmod -R 777 [dir]

not:

    sudo chmod -r 777 [dir]


Is there a way to force "low power" graphics?

gfxCardStatus is an unobtrusive menu bar app for OS X that allows
  MacBook Pro users to see which apps are affecting their battery life
  by using the more power-hungry graphics.

https://gfx.io

By this way you can simply disable your graphic card by an icon in your menu bar.


My iCloud account was infected with a ransomware virus thru in a Windows Desktop

It depends.

They didn’t infect your iCloud rather they encrypted the files on the local Windows machine in the synced directory.

If you have a backup of the files taken before they encrypted your files, then no, you don’t have to pay.  Simply restore your data.  If you don’t have a back up, you will probably have to pay.  The good news is this is very likely to work.  These scams don’t work if people know that paying doesn’t get your data back.

Whether you restore your data from backup or pay the ransom, make sure you do the following

Change your iCloud password from a non-infected machine in case the virus had a keylogger
Wipe that machine (format and reinstall)
Change the passwords on other accounts you may have visited.
If any of the documents contained banking or sensitive info, contact those institutions and change logins/passwords. It’s advisable to let them know what happened.
Update your anti-virus

As far as breaking the encryption, it’s next to impossible.  It’s not so much a “password” they used, but an encryption key and attempting to brute force it could take years; many, many years.

I wish there was better news I could give you, but you do have some work to do to recover and clean up.  You can take some solace knowing that municipalities and government agencies with dedicated IT departments have been hit with this as well.


Yes and no.

For practical purposes, texts aren't really "stored" in iCloud. I say that with two caveats. First, Apple may store them for their own use and second, they may be stored through your iOS device's iCloud backup.

As such, when you delete a message off of your iOS device, that change doesn't populate to other devices, and it isn't deleted from iCloud until your device backs up itself to iCloud (likely over night). The message will be deleted only from your device unless the backup occurs.


Why does my home network not show up sometimes in my network listings?

Your 10.9.5 and your Router are having problem of identity.

Your 10.9.5 can not find the correct name, or your router is not broadcasting it correctly.

So try changing the name of your Network, and make sure it is moved to the Top of the Network list and choose different Chanel.

Also you could tell the router that your MAC address belongs to trusted ones.

I would not panic but on they web site they skipped 10.9.5 (Mavericks) and call it Yosemite ?

Probably just a stupid typo :)

  Mac OS X 10.7 Lion Mac OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion Mac OS X 10.9 Yosemite


How to clear drive space used by Apple Mail App without removing Internet Accounts?

Apple Mail stores its stuff by default under ~/Library/Mail/V2 and V3

You can free up space in there. (of course a Time Machine backup would be a good idea before deleting the content of these folders)


How to use Ctrl+left/Ctrl+Right (instead of Alt+left/Alt+right) to move to the previous/next word

You can use KeyRemap4MacBook with a private.xml such as this:

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<root>
  <item>
    <name>⌃← & ⌃→ to ⌥← & ⌥→</name>
    <identifier>remapCtrlLeftAndCtrlRightToAltLeftAndAltRight</identifier>
    <autogen>
      __KeyToKey__
      KeyCode::CURSOR_LEFT, VK_CONTROL | ModifierFlag::NONE,
      KeyCode::CURSOR_LEFT, ModifierFlag::OPTION_L
    </autogen>
    <autogen>
      __KeyToKey__
      KeyCode::CURSOR_RIGHT, VK_CONTROL | ModifierFlag::NONE,
      KeyCode::CURSOR_RIGHT, ModifierFlag::OPTION_L
    </autogen>
  </item>
</root>

I'm not aware of any System Preferences setting regarding this.

With regard to comment, change the contents of the <autogen> to…

__KeyToKey__
KeyCode::CURSOR_LEFT, VK_OPTION | ModifierFlag::NONE,
KeyCode::CURSOR_LEFT, ModifierFlag::CONTROL_L

__KeyToKey__
KeyCode::CURSOR_RIGHT, VK_OPTION | ModifierFlag::NONE,
KeyCode::CURSOR_RIGHT, ModifierFlag::CONTROL_L


Will @mac.com e-mail addresses continue to work after the MobileMe to iCloud transition?

Yes.

You will have to opt in to switch your account over, but it sounds like it will be fairly painless as long as you agree to all the new (unannounced as of yet) license terms. From the Apple FAQ on the MobileMe/iCloud transition:

  Will I be able to keep my MobileMe email address when I move to iCloud?

  Yes. If you have an active MobileMe account when you sign up for iCloud, you’ll be able to keep your me.com or mac.com email address and move your MobileMe mail, contacts, and calendars, as well as your bookmarks, to the new service. When iCloud becomes available this fall, Apple will provide details and instructions on how to make the move.

If you do not opt in, you should expect your @mac.com and @me.com email to only work through June 30, 2012.


Can a MBA 2014 output 2560x1080 at 60hz?

I bought a few of these panels last month on special.  They are great. I just tried to hook up my MBA11 2014 to the display and here are the options I got.

It doesn't look like it does 2560x1080

Here is what I get when I try it on desktop mac


My Mac keeps playing a sound every now and then

If someone comes here with the same problem: for me it was the Calendar app. I disabled notifications for the calendar in the notification pref because I am using Fantastical for that. It must have been desperately trying to show me an event and beeped because of that. My solution was also to disable audio notifications and voila, the basso beep disappeared.


WD My Passport 0820 USB HFS+ data disk drive partition problem following accidental use of Recovery Assistant

OS X Recovery Disk Assistant v1.0

If you allowed that assistant to complete its work on the wrong disk (with your data) then it's reasonable to assume that hundreds of megabytes of your data were overwritten. However, from your screenshot it appears that the WD My Passport 0820 Media does still contain a VideoUSBPASS1TB volume; so maybe the assistant was unable to proceed with a drive that uses hardware and/or firmware encryption.

I suggest taking advice from Western Digital …


Despite these programs aren't listed in Login Items I'd recommend you to check again the state of "Open at Login" option in the dock.

Next stop is to verify the content of these folders

~/Library/LaunchAgents

/Library/LaunchAgents
/System/Library/LaunchAgents

Launch Agents are usually loaded by launchd when the user logs in


There is no app that can manage SMS/MMS as well as your other instant messaging networks. You will need to use Messages app for iMessage & SMS/MMS, and a third-party app for any other IM networks (such as AOL, Google Talk, Yahoo!, etc.).


Did Sierra's latest security update brick my device?

The number of times the sleep light flashed was an indicator of the problem. Three flashes means the Mac can't find any RAM.

Practically, this means the RAM you have installed is bad, or has a bad connection. Step one is re-seat like you did. Meaning remove and reinstall the RAM. If you still have problems, swap it out with some other compatible RAM and see what happens.


Corrupted USB Drive - Unable to Partition or Erase Disk

Did you try erasing your disk with diskutil? You can do that via this command (assuming your disk is still disk2):

diskutil eraseDisk FAT32 NAME MBR disk2

Here is an explanation of the command:

diskutil: This is a disk management tool provided by Apple.

eraseDisk: Tells diskutil to erase a disk

FAT32: The filesystem format you want to use. You can replace it with any other filesystem, such as JHFS+ or FAT16

NAME: The name of the newly erased disk's new partition

MBR: Partitioning table to use. You can replace it with GPT if you want.

disk2: Your disk's identifier. Replace it if your disk's identifier is different. You can find out your disk's identifier using diskutil list

More information about the usage:

Usage:  diskutil eraseDisk format name [APM[Format]|MBR[Format]|GPT[Format]]
        MountPoint|DiskIdentifier|DeviceNode
Completely erase an existing whole disk.  All volumes on this disk
will be destroyed.  Ownership of the affected disk is required.
Format is the specific file system name you want to erase it as (HFS+, etc.).
Name is the (new) volume name (subject to file system naming restrictions),
or can be specified as %noformat% to skip initialization (newfs).
You cannot erase the boot disk.
Example: diskutil eraseDisk JHFS+ UntitledUFS disk2


kill acts on Unix level, the targeted process is free to ignore any signal besides kill -9. And depending on the internal structure of the process you are looking at, kill -15 will not be the same as 'File->Quit'.

As an alternative you could do something like osascript -e 'tell application "Safari" to quit'.


If you need it urgently, since you can boot into Recovery, can you create a new volume and do a fresh install of macOS onto that? Then you can migrate your files over to that new volume and delete the old one.


How to play a video file (avi/mp4) in AppleTV?

The easiest way to to stream it via AirPlay.

You could also use a cable to hook up your TV, or stream it from an iDevice. You could also put in on a supported video stream site (like YouTube), and play it from the Apple TV's app. There are more ways then I'm able to list in the answer, so explore!


Does jailbreaking an iPhone have an impact on performance?

No. Jailbreaking itself doesn't cause slowness. It's what you do with that that causes trouble. And since you have a 6s.. I wouldn't bother jailbreaking it until iOS 10, since it's so close.


How to prevent Option+Command+Space from opening "Searching This Mac"?

Yes. Go to System Preferences → Spotlight and uncheck the box for the Spotlight window keyboard shortcut. Alternatively, replace the shortcut with a different shortcut.

You can also enable/disable/modify the shortcut through System Preferences → Keyboard → Spotlight → Show Spotlight Window:


Play music from iPhone on MacBook using iPhone 4 dock?

While it's theoretically possible to take the sound output from the iPhone dock and run it through a 3.5" cable into the input jack in the computer, it's much easier (and better quality) to simply fire up iTunes 10 and play the media through the computer directly.


Which audio interface standard (or API) does macOS use?

Apple's main low-level Audio Framework / API for macOS 10.0+ is Core Audio .

https://developer.apple.com/documentation/coreaudio

  Framework

  Core Audio

  Use specialized data types to interact with audio streams, complex buffers, and audiovisual timestamps.
  SDKs

  Overview

  The Core Audio framework (which is not an umbrella framework for the other services in Core Audio, but rather a peer) declares data types and constants used by other Core Audio interfaces. This framework also includes a handful of convenience functions.

Apple actually supports multiple frameworks & APIs, including AudioUnit & OpenAL.

Core Audio is actually based on OpenAL.


Connect to MySql over Airport Wireless LAN

Open terminal.
Type ifconfig
Find something like inet 192.168.1.100 netmask
192.168.1.100 is local ip of your machine in your WLAN. You can connect to mysql using this ip.


Is it possible to have more than one remote Mac open in Remote Desktop at a time?

Yes, but you have to select the machines one at a time and click the "control" button.


How can I add an Automator application to the Dock?

Just drag and drop the app_name.app bundle created in Automator onto the Dock where you want it.


What you and future searchers are looking for is this:

open -n /Applications/Mumble.app --args -m

This is valid as of 11/04/14 on OS X 10.10/Darwin 14.0.0 (Yosemite)


How to fix poor font rendering in Mac iBooks?

It seems that there is are others that report a problem with font rendering in the iBooks app when using epub files under OS X Mavericks (10.9.x). As in your experience, the problem seems isolated to Macs that don't have a Retina Display, such as your Mac Pro.

The solution is fortunately a simple one: Go to

System Preferences > General

and uncheck the box that says Use LCD font smoothing when available.

This should clear up the jagged text you've been experiencing in iBooks on your Mac Pro.

(Note: You may need to quit and restart iBooks and/or restart your Mac for these changes to take effect.)


try JITouch https://www.jitouch.com
or
Better Touch Tool http://www.bettertouchtool.net


Dragging an app's icon across in Dock without ended up pinning

There is no setting for this; any item on the dock that you move gets pinned to the dock. Locking the Dock's content does prevent items from being pinned, but it also prevents items from being moved/rearranged.

You could download an alternative dock replacement that looks and acts like the OS X Dock (there are a few) and hide the real Dock, but that's about it. It may be possible to somehow watch the Dock for newly pinned items and unpin them every 60 seconds or something... but that's probably more hassle than it's worth. OS X doesn't always like to be tinkered-with like that.


I have a problem with the track pad on my Mac Book Pro (mid 2012)

It sounds like your track-pad might need to be adjusted. If it's too tight it can cause the "symptoms" you are describing. I would say this is most likely, but it's always possible that there is another issue with it. If this happens to be the problem it is an easy fix, really. Or, at least it should be. I would take it to your authorized Apple Care repair shop and just have them open it up really quick and take a look.

You can do it yourself without much difficulty at all. Just keep in mind that if you open it up yourself that it voids your warranty. If you are OK with that, then go ahead and check out the solution below.

You need three screwdrivers to get in there and fix it: a tri wing screwdriver(same as the one for nintendo), a Phillips #00 screwdriver, and a T6 Torx Screwdriver. The screws holding the back cover on are tiny phillips screws, the battery is held in by tri wing screws, and to adjust the track pad you will need the T6 Torx driver. NintendoScrewdriver.com has a nice little screwdriver set that has a precision tri wing and phillips screwdriver in it (find that here: nintendoscrewdriver.com). It's technically for Nintendo stuff, but it's high quality and you can't go wrong with it. You can find the T6 torx driver here (also good quality, so you don't strip screws and so it actually fits!).

You really just need to take out the battery to get to the track pad. This video does an awesome job showing very clearly how to do this: (www.youtube.com/watch?v=aQZ_rG9VpHk). The parts you need are the first 0:00-1:45 (shows how to take out the cover and battery) and 13:40 shows taking out the track pad. You won't need to take the track pad out unless you are going to replace it. Also, this video (www.youtube.com/watch?v=BdKwE9FOnrI)does an AWESOME job describing how to adjust the track-pad. The macbook in that video is a 2008, but it should be the same on the 2012 model. I would also try cleaning it out with compressed air after opening it up.

Another possibility is that the battery is swelling. This is actually somewhat common. You can read about that here: discussions.apple.com/thread/4652016

If worst comes to worst, replacing the track pad isn't too bad. But, rounding back to the beginning, try to use that AppleCare to resolve the issue first so you don't void the warranty.

Hope this helps!

Note: you will have to copy and paste some of the links. This is a new profile and it won't let me post more than 2 links until I have over 10 reputation points.


Accessing Time Machine for different computer

If you press the option key when clicking the time machine icon in the menu bar, you can browse backups from other computers.


Need some advice/solutions on having 2 external displays set up


There is Type2Phone, but it only works with Bluetooth and not USB.

The website says that it supports iPhone, iPad, and AppleTV, but it might also work with other devices according to the comments in this blog post.


Disable shift key slow animations from command line

I believe you'll have to log out and back in for this to work.


Why it shows "You are opening the application 'Xcode' for the first time?

If you're not able to set the quarantine status on the app, then it will forever have that status and will prompt you. You can manually remove quarantine from the app with…

xattr -d com.apple.quarantine /Applications/Xcode.app


Apparently, the Version A is the iPad 2 that came out in March 2012 and was only sold in a 16GB version. It has a revised A5 CPU and it's Model Identifier is iPad2,4.

The two numbers you're referring to, provide different information.

The one on the back cover is the actual Model Number, which in this case is A1395, whereas the one retrieved from Settings / General / About is the Order Number, and holds information regarding when and where the device was made, its colour and storage.


What are the default permissions on the Applications folder in OS X supposed to be?

That is not normal - I have

drwxrwxr-x+ 73 root     admin         2482 24 Jun 09:28 Applications/

There is a option in Disk Utility.app to repair permissions which should change the Applications directory and others back.


Programmatically read both per-tab Terminal.app titles

Try:

tell application "Terminal"
    set myTabs to every tab of window 1
    set myData to {}
    repeat with aTab in myTabs
        set aTab's selected to true
        delay 0.2
        set windowTitle to name of window 1
        set customTitle to aTab's custom title
        set end of myData to "Window:" & windowTitle & return & "Custom Title:" & customTitle & return & return
    end repeat
    display dialog (myData as text)
end tell


How to bump up text size & other graphical elements system wide

Managed to try Quartz debug in my Mavericks. After enabling HiDPI display mode, I got this in display preferences.

Noticed only 960 X 540 (HiDPI) is available. which doubles everything that appears on screen.

very nice and crisp looking font and icons are smooth but it is too big for the need. Just double.

Is there a way to get a resolution option with HiDPI for slightly smaller view size without compromising Graphics engine resolution. My monitor is Samsung 24' LED.


My Mac is beeping 3 times every couple of seconds when it starts

That does sound like "Three successive tones, then a five-second pause (repeating)", which according to Apple, suggests that the RAM has not passed an integrity check.

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT202768

You mention a disk slot, so it's likely quite an old Mac. The last models with optical drives were c. 2012, I think.

Either way, it's a hardware problem that needs hand-on, physical inspection by someone competent. See if there's a local guy who does Apple repair work. (The Apple Store may say it's too old, but it's worth a try.)

It may just need the existing RAM to be reseated or replaced. Or it may be a problem with the main circuitry: in which case it's time to go shopping.


The new console.app will let you set filters and lets you set options to display certain info. Console.app comes with your mac and is in the Utilities folder which is in the Applications folder. Or more clearly its path is /Applications/Utilities

The console.app is shown below.


Windows 7 installer wont boot after creating partition for Bootcamp

The most common Issue when installing bootcamp windows

Causes:
Failed to detect USB3.0 drive after reboot

Solution:
Use a USB2.0 drive to create windows install disk instead of USB 3.0 drives.

Or you can inject usb3.0 driver into the installer using Dism++


MBP (2016) to Thunderbolt Display with Thunderbolt 3 (USB-C) to Thunderbolt 2 Adapter and extension cable

Sure. Any thunderbolt 3 or 2 dock will work. Be sure to read the friendly manual - not all cables that fit physically in a thunderbolt slot are thunderbolt cables and cables can be faulty.
I’ve only seen 10 foot 2 cables in copper. You’ll need optical to go further and they are pricey but very long range. Two feet is the longest 3 cable I’ve seen.

https://www.amazon.com/Cable-Matters-Certified-Thunderbolt-Black/dp/B01AKP8Z4C
https://www.monoprice.com/product?p_id=24721
https://www.owcdigital.com/products/thunderbolt-3-dock-14-port


As far as what happens after you cancel the transfer, I'd surmise that it would, like it says, cancel the transfer. Items already copied may remain, items that were in the progress of being copied will be removed, a process which may take a significant amount of time in itself.

If your intent is to copy/move a Time Machine backup so that it remains functional in its new location, the system has many idiosyncrasies you need to work around.

James Pond maintained a website which was a fantastic source of reference on the "gory details" of Time Machine (in his own words); he has since passed away, and the information is slowly becoming outdated, but much of it is still relevant. You can still access it on the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine.

Since you are trying to back up the entire drive, I think following these instructions would be better than trying to copy every single item file by file:

  Copy LOCAL backups from one volume to another LOCAL VOLUME

  Format the new drive/partition, with either the GUID or APM Partition Map Scheme, and the exact same Format as the old backups. See  question #5 if you need detailed instructions.
  Connect both drives to your Mac, via separate ports if possible, then open a Finder window. Make sure both volumes are shown in the sidebar (if not, from the Menubar select Preferences > Sidebar, and check the box to show External disks in the sidebar). Leave the Finder window open.
  Start Disk Utility, select anything in the sidebar, and click the Restore tab.
  Drag the old volume to the Source box, and the new volume to the Destination box.
  Check the Erase destination box, then the Restore button. This will take a long time.
  When the duplication is complete, note that Disk Utility has changed the name of the destination volume to be the same as the source.  You do not want to leave it that way, so immediately rename one of them.  In the sidebar of the Finder window opened above, control-click (right-click) the one you want to rename.  When done, look back at the Disk Utility display to be sure you renamed the right one, then quit Disk Utility.


Sleeping mode and start up inconsistens behaviour

You are experiencing more or less the same as me. However I can't change my settings right now.

Normally your mac will simply sleep, i.e. turn everything into a low power mode and supply the RAM with electricity so it does not get deleted and you can quickly restart working. Then after one hour or so autopoweroff will kick in to save more energy (in order to comply with EU regulations). This is normally set by the autopoweroffdelay. As far as I know this is more or less a suspend-to-disk mode. That means the contents of your memory (RAM) is written to your disk and the RAM is taken offline. So when you next start your Mac, it will first have to load the RAM back from the disk which can take 10 to 60 seconds depending on your drive's speed and RAM size and usage.

To make things more complicated there is also a standby mode.

Now the implementation with FileVault2 is IMHO a bit unfortunate. What happens is that your Mac will first need your password to decrypt your disk. Only then it can start the RAM restoration procedure. This is particularly annoying if the acwake feature is on. In this case the Mac will power on, if you remove the power cord. When I first bought my Mac, it happened to me a couple of times, that I had to leave in a rush, removed the power cord, put the Mac into my bag and when I opened it the battery was half drained. The problem is that it will not sleep again once it is waiting for your FileVault2 password.

Therefore I disabled acwake with the following command: sudo pmset acwake 0.

In order to secure your FileVault2 further, you can use the command sudo pmset -a destroyfvkeyonstandby 1 hibernatemode 25. With this setting the FileVault key will be destroyed once the Mac goes into standby. That means that only suspend-to-disk is used. You may also want to reduce the standbydelay.

You can list your timers and options by typing pmset -g into the terminal. You will find more info by typing man pmset.


No.

Homebrew-cask is for binary distribution.
Downloading binary and place appropriately is all what Homebrew-cask does.

If you look in a cask (package installation script), you'll notice there's no url for source file (.tar.gz) but only for binary file (.dmg, .zip, etc.).


I think this is a normal situation as well - see my answers here:

Why is my Wi-Fi process using 3GB of memory?
Why is my Wi-Fi Process eating >2GB memory

I don't think there is any leak or issue on Apple side - just some programs you run open lots of connections and if they have bugs or you have more tabs open one day versos another and the specific web pages with trackers in the hundreds can really pile on - so the explanation could be more about what specific requests are made each session you use your Mac.


Check that you have the Xcode command line tools installed. See Homebrew installation page.


What is the Apple_PubSub_Socket_Render environment variable for?

PubSub is the backend for how Safari and Mail handle RSS feeds.  There are command line utilities too. From the pubsub man page:

  pubsub -- Utility for managing RSS/Atom subscriptions via the PubSub framework

This variable is just part of that process.

The ability to read RSS feeds in Safari is going away in Mountain Lion, but I don't know if the entire RSS infrastructure is going away too.


What use for the thin, folded, two-side protector that was boxed with my iPhone XR?

Your "Apple Protector" is just a cheap piece of plastic made for disposal:
it's just there so you can remove it and view your new phone in its glory without fingerprints.
Apply the real (Belkin) protector immediately for protection.

Proof: the Apple Protector usually doesn't have openings for the earspeaker part.


Application appearing on all spaces in Lion

In the dock you can right click the application, go to Options and de-select the option there.


How do you ask Siri to message whatsapp group?

I figured out today how to do it.

First, you need to be sure that the name of the group can be easily understand by Siri. As I know from myself some group names are too complex for Siri. It will be simple if the group name is like a person's name.

Second, you need to add the group name to your contacts without any number etc. just create a new empty person with the group name.


Running Unsupported Applications Natively

First step is to create an AppleScript application containing an empty file.

Next edit the applet.icns and the file to the appropriate name.

Add an app.sh file to MacOs.

#!/usr/bin/env bash

exec "/Applications/iMovie HD.app/Contents/MacOS/iMovie HD"

Edit Info.plist to contain the following.

<key>CFBundleExecutable</key>
<string>app.sh</string>


Keynote '08 has the ability to do this by selecting Insert -> Web View. Unfortunately, for some inexplicable reason, Keynote '09 omitted this feature. You can, however, create a presentation in the former, and use this object in the latter (or so I recall, as I no longer have Keynote '08 on which to test.)


Cannot open OpenOffice because the developer is not certified

After failing to open the app, go to System Preferences -> Security. It should refer to blocking openOffice and give you an option to open it.


How to connect to the internet from Terminal when using a proxy with authentication

Terminal does not use proxy settings configured in the network preferences pane because it doesn't do any connection. Terminal just let you fire commands which will use the network in different ways.

When setting your http_proxy and https_proxy environment variables should not include the http: or https: prefixes.

Therefore the environment variable in your case should read:

http_proxy=username:password@proxyserver:port

Note: many old programs have issues with connecting through proxy servers which require authentication before connecting.

Additional Tip:

Due to our infrastructure we found it much easier to have users run SquidMan locally and have it configured to connect to our main proxy. This allows the local machine to act as a proxy directly, and eliminates a lot of authentication issues etc when using proxy servers on Mac machines, especially in a mixed and AD environments.

In the case of using this method our http_proxy and https_proxy would be:

http_proxy=localhost:3128


Did you reset both the SMC and PRAM (instructions is on the same support page at the Apple website)?
If you did, try it once again.

Did you try all of the things in your post with both the power adapter and on battery?

Since the machine is old and there is no support warrant left at Apple I don't think there is any idea to contact them.
Otherwise, you may have found the reason to why it was just laying around at the IT office.


You have turned your iPod in DFU mode, now you can do one of the following things to turn on your iPod touch back

Press power and home button of your iPod simultaneously for 10 sec. Then press power button until apple logo appears on screen. If this does not works then follow step 2.
Take your iPod again to DFU mode using your step -->

a. Hold the power button for 2 sec. Without letting go of the power button, press and hold the home button for 10 sec. Let go of the power button but not the home button for another 10 sec.

b. Then by pressing the home button connect your iPod to the iTunes. It will ask for restore. Do the Restore.


How to select iPhone audio device before placing a call?

Before placing the call, you can open Control Center and tap the AirPlay icon to select a Bluetooth destination such as for example a pir of AirPods. The following call will then use that audio device by default.
After the call is done, you'll probably to tap the AirPlay icon again to choose iPhone as your destination.
If you want to use wired headphones, you'll obviously need to actually connect them to the phone before they can be used.
There are no other settings or functionality for doing a once-only rerouting of phone-only audio to a specific device before placing a call.
There is however a different way to overcome the problem that the calls connects before you have managed to switch the audio destination: You can add a pause or wait to the actual phone number.
I.e. when you edit a contact on your phone, you can set their phone number. If you click the button labelled "+*#" you get the option to place a pause or a wait. Add this to the start of the number, and you'll get additional time to switch the audio destination.
A pause is literally just a pause for 2-3 seconds (afair), whereas wait means that the phone does not dial the rest of the number until you have tapped the phone to acknowledge.


Why does iTunes keep re-downloading my deleted podcast episodes?

I still don't know why it was doing this, but I've since set iTunes to automatically delete played podcasts after 1 day, and stopped deleting them manually. That does what I need.


Can I clean install Mavericks preserving other bootable partitions (Ubuntu on ext4)?

If you clear you partition using Disk Utility and then boot into Internet Recovery or install from another location (for example a USB flash drive) you should be fine, OS X will only be installed (and only effect) the partition you choose to install it on at the start of the installation process.


update unsupported mac with OS X lion to APFS 10.15

There is software on the logic board which is referred to as firmware. This is the software that first executes when a Mac starts up. The firmware is capable of reading partitions using various formats such as JHFS+. When Apple introduced the APFS format, Apple only provided firmware updates for certain Mac models. Older Macs can not boot from APFS formatted partitions, because the firmware does not recognize the APFS format. Your Mac is one such model. There is no way to fix this. The macOS 10.15 operating system can only boot from APFS formatted partitions.


How can I trim the first 3 characters in file name with AppleScript?

This code will do it for you:

set whichFile to choose file with multiple selections allowed
repeat with aFile in whichFile
    tell application "Finder"
        set filename to name of aFile
        set name of aFile to ((characters 4 thru -1 of filename) as string) --trim first 3
        --set name of whichFile to ((characters 1 thru -4 of filename) as string) --trim last 3
    end tell
end repeat

Note that stripping the last three will get rid of the extension. If that isn't what you want to happen, let me know in a comment.


Previous deleted text keyboard shortcuts keep appearing

Deleting from all devices does not appear to permanently fix the problem.  They live in the cloud somewhere, and I was told by Apple in 7/15 that the are working on a permanent fix.  Mine stay away from the most part, but have come back occasionally on my MacBook and iPad.


Why my app is starting in /private/var/folders/hl instead of it's real location

I found a way I just moved my application and its dependencies from it's location to ~/Applications/ and its. I hope it will help someone.


When you search for an email address in the OSX Mail search bar, if you select the address from the dropdown, the mail app will automatically add the option From: in front of the email address in the search bar. Thus, the mail messages that show up in the left mail list will change so that only emails from the selected email address are displayed.

If you do not have any messages that are actually From: the email address selected, no emails will be displayed in the list. You may need to change the From: option in the search bar to Entire Message in order to see messages where a certain email address was CC'ed or if it was written in the email message text.


Presentation software for ipad which works also on windows 7 laptop for remote control

There are several apps that will allow you to remotely view your laptop's Powerpoint, as well as remotely control it. Here is one such application:

i-Clickr PowerPoint Remote


Can't update apps from Apple Configurator 2 (apps are already up to date)

I had this problem recently in macOS 10.15 (Catalina) with an iPhone 11 Pro Max.
The App Store app on the iPhone showed 19 updates available via a red badge on the app icon as well as inside of the app. Meanwhile, the Apple Configurator app on the Mac claimed no updates were available.

Restarting the iPhone didn't change anything as far as I could tell.
But after restarting the Mac and launching Apple Configurator again, it now showed 34 updates available, which still doesn't match what is shown on the iPhone, but I guess it's better than zero!

Clicking the Update button in Configurator resulted in the apps being downloaded and updated. By the time the update process finished, 32 updates were downloaded, and I received an "unknown error" on the last two.
Apple Configurator's handling of app updates seems to be quite buggy.


My computer logs out and sleeps after two or three songs play on itunes

Open System Preferences→Security & Privacy, unlock the padlock if it's locked, and then in the Privacy pane click on the Advanced... button. See if you've enabled "Log out after [x] minutes of inactivity".


Trying to install a .sh that will automate installation of .pkg

The file's shebang #!/bin/zsh (first line in the file) means the file should be run with the zsh shell. Bash and sh have different syntaxes to zsh — you should use the zsh shell to run this file.

The shebang is used so that the file itself can specify shell that should execute the file. By specifying /usr/bin/env /path/to/file.sh in the launch agent's plist you force to run the file with the shell determined by the variable SHELL which usually is bash on macOS. Instead, just provide the file path, /path/to/file.sh and the shebang will cause zsh to be used automatically.


Selecting multiple words via AppleScript in PowerPoint

You are very close. Let's say you want to select words 2 through 4 of your text frame of aShape:

Where you have this:

select word 2 of text range of text frame of aShape

change it to this:

select words 2 thru 4 of text range of text frame of aShape

You could put in any number you want in there, not just 4, of course. If you might need to specify a different ending word every time you run the script you could extend this script by displaying a dialog box and asking for input.


Trying to get Hadoop to work; "connection refused" in Hadoop and in Telnet

It's normal getting conection refused if you ftp or telnet to localhost, at least if you haven't up and running that kind of servers, and by default, you don't.

The /etc/hosts should look like 127.0.0.1 localhost by default. To use apache and avoid the error you mentioned, you must add ServerName  localhost to httpd.conf. Restart apache and should works fine.

Don't know if this solve Hadoop error too. Can't help you on it. Just try and let me know.


Can I delete my local photo library now that all my photos are on iCloud?

Yes - if you trust Apple to never lose the photos, you can delete all your local copies.

Pay attention to which devices have full resolution images and which have "optimized" settings.

Also, I've been doing this for iTunes Match for some time. I have only lost a few dozen songs in two years of trusting the cloud. For that reason, I now set alarms every 6 months to download a local copy of all the songs from iCloud and back that up to an external HD. I'll be doing the same with my iCloud photo library to be sure I never lose all the photos.

I would add, that if the thought of losing a dozen photos or having to wait several weeks if your account should get messed up for engineering to work out the problem isn't your cup of tea, you might keep your originals on hard drives and in filesystems you know you have the tools to work with directly.


removing 'recent' files names from finder in MacOS

I'm assuming you are talking about Finder > Go > Recents

Files there cannot be deleted without deleting the files themselves. It's just an alternate view of the files on your computer.

(If you are instead talking about the Apple Menu > Recent Items or Finder > Go > Recent Folders, those both have a "Clear Menu" option at the bottom of the menu)

see:
https://discussions.apple.com/thread/8137012


How does the iPhone 5 measure elevation?

Measurements are done using the GPS.

INFO: http://gpsinformation.net/main/altitude.htm

  GPS altitude measures the users' distance from the center of the SVs orbits. These measurements are referenced to geodetic altitude or ellipsoidal altitude in some GPS equipment.


My iPod touch won't let me save the new iTunes security questions

I would suggest trying to download an app with iTunes on your computer. You may have better luck getting the questions there, and it shouldn't bug you about it on your iPod after you've done it.


How to automate deleting what's inside the search box in the Dictionary app after 3/5 seconds?

This works for me using the latest version of macOS High Sierra.

Save this following code in script editor as an application.  This application will continue to run until you quit the Dictionary.app

Adjust the delay values to suit your needs.

tell application "Dictionary" to activate
delay 1
repeat until application "Dictionary" is not running
    tell application "System Events"
        tell process "Dictionary"
            tell its window 1
                repeat
                    delay 1
                    try
                        if value of text field 1 of group 3 of toolbar 1 is not "" then
                            delay 5
                            try
                                set value of text field 1 of group 3 of toolbar 1 to ""
                            end try
                        end if
                    end try
                    exit repeat -- when you want to exit the loop
                end repeat
            end tell
        end tell
    end tell
end repeat

Be sure to add this new created application to your list of apps allowed to control your computer.


Is it possible to dual-boot Mac OS X 10.7 Lion and Mac OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion?

take a full backup to an external usb drive using a tool like Superduper or CarbonCopyCloner and boot it to make sure it's good (select disk using "Startup Disk" in System Preferences.) You need a good backup before messing with the partitions.
Using Disk Utility (/Applications/Utilities/Disk Utility.app) select your internal drive in the left-hand column and select the "Partition" tab in the right-hand column. Hit the "+" button under partition layout to create an additional partition. You can use the slider in the partition layout or the "Size" textbox to change the partition sizes. Hit "Apply" to confirm changes and write to disk.

All partitions will be dynamically resized, presuming they pass a fsck (filesystem check test.)

Launch the Install OS X Mountain Lion.app (no need to bother with usb install disk creation) and accept the license agreement. When you get to the screen showing the install disk click the "Show All Disks..." button and select the partition you just created.
Proceed with the installation as normal (this being Apple you will not be asked for a lot of input.) As part of the installation the installer will boot into the second partition for you. If you want you can use the Migration Assistant in the final stages of the installation to import all users and settings from your Lion partition.

That's all there is to it! I've done this on an iMac and a Macbook Pro so far this week with minimal problems. Only the Macbook Pro couldn't pass the fsck and I needed to boot to the recovery partition to repair the root fs before I was able to shrink and create another partition.

Addendum: repairing the system partition

The system partition cannot be resized if it does not pass a filesystem check and you cannot repair the system partition while you are booted into that system so you will need to boot from an alternate one. Apple has made this very easy by automatically creating a Recovery Partition in OSX Lion and later.

Reboot the system. While booting press and hold down the "option" (aka "alt") key until you are presented with a list of boot devices and choose the "Recovery HD" disk. (Alternatively press and hold [CMD]+[R] during boot to boot directly to Recovery)
You are presented with a list of utilities, choose Disk utility

Now you have the familiar Disk Utility interface but on a linen background. Select your system partition from the left-hand column and select the "First Aid" tab in the right-hand column, finally click the "Repair Disk" button located at the lower right-hand side of the text box.

A lot of text will scroll by in the text box. If all goes well you should end with a message telling you that "Volume repair is complete."

Now reboot ("Apple Menu" > Restart) and let the system boot as normal.


How to determine which one process owns particular window

This script will print information(owning PID) about visible windows.
And information for the window that changed position within a 5 second interval.
Credit goes to superuser answer
#!/usr/bin/env python

import Quartz
import time
from Foundation import NSSet, NSMutableSet
def transformWindowData(data):
    list1 = []
    for v in data:
        if not v.valueForKey_('kCGWindowIsOnscreen'):
            continue

        row = ( \
            str(v.valueForKey_('kCGWindowOwnerPID') or '?').rjust(7) + \
            ' ' + str(v.valueForKey_('kCGWindowNumber') or '?').rjust(5) + \
            ' {' + ('' if v.valueForKey_('kCGWindowBounds') is None else \
                ( \
                    str(int(v.valueForKey_('kCGWindowBounds').valueForKey_('X')))     + ',' + \
                    str(int(v.valueForKey_('kCGWindowBounds').valueForKey_('Y')))     + ',' + \
                    str(int(v.valueForKey_('kCGWindowBounds').valueForKey_('Width'))) + ',' + \
                    str(int(v.valueForKey_('kCGWindowBounds').valueForKey_('Height'))) \
                ) \
                ).ljust(21) + \
            '}' + \
            '\t[' + ((v.valueForKey_('kCGWindowOwnerName') or '') + ']') + \
            ('' if v.valueForKey_('kCGWindowName') is None else (' ' + v.valueForKey_('kCGWindowName') or '')) \
        ).encode('utf8')
        list1.append(row)

    return list1;

def printBeautifully(dataSet):
    print 'PID'.rjust(7) + ' ' + 'WinID'.rjust(5) + '  ' + 'x,y,w,h'.ljust(21) + ' ' + '\t[Title] SubTitle'
    print '-'.rjust(7,'-') + ' ' + '-'.rjust(5,'-') + '  ' + '-'.ljust(21,'-') + ' ' + '\t-------------------------------------------'

    # print textList1
    for v in dataSet:
        print v;

#grab initial set
wl = Quartz.CGWindowListCopyWindowInfo( Quartz.kCGWindowListOptionAll, Quartz.kCGNullWindowID)
wl = sorted(wl, key=lambda k: k.valueForKey_('kCGWindowOwnerPID'))

#convert into readable format
textList1 = transformWindowData(wl);

#print everything we have on the screen
print 'all windows:'
printBeautifully(textList1)

print 'Move target window'
time.sleep(5)

#grab window data the second time
wl2 = Quartz.CGWindowListCopyWindowInfo(Quartz.kCGWindowListOptionAll, Quartz.kCGNullWindowID)
textList2 = transformWindowData(wl2)

#check the difference
w = NSMutableSet.setWithArray_(textList1)
w.minusSet_(NSSet.setWithArray_(textList2))

#print the difference
printBeautifully(w)

Output:
all windows:
    PID WinID  x,y,w,h                  [Title] SubTitle
------- -----  ---------------------    -------------------------------------------
    204     2 {0,0,1280,800         }   [Window Server] Desktop
    479    36 {0,0,1280,800         }   [Dock] Desktop Picture - DefaultDesktop.jpg
    731  2893 {640,0,640,800        }   [Finder] /Users/wolf/Downloads
    731   260 {-608,-1440,2560,1440 }   [Finder]
    731   259 {0,0,1280,800         }   [Finder]
   1301   321 {0,366,1280,411       }   [Audio Hijack] Application Audio
Move target window
    PID WinID  x,y,w,h                  [Title] SubTitle
------- -----  ---------------------    -------------------------------------------
   1301   321 {0,366,1280,411       }   [Audio Hijack] Application Audio


Apple logic board part number replacement issue

Those are interchangable parts.

Over at CmdMacParts, it lists those two part numbers for the same board:


Is there any way to write an automation or program on an iPad except Shortcuts?

The only other way I can think of is jailbreaking and using Activator.


How to increase cursor size programmatically?

Unfortunately the command line command defaults, which can read and or write the value of the mouseDriverCursorSizekey in thecom.apple.universalaccess .plist file, the write command, e.g. defaults write com.apple.universalaccess mouseDriverCursorSize 2.5 doesn't take immediate affect and may actually get overwritten before the change can take effect. Note: The mouseDriverCursorSize key in com.apple.universalaccess .plist file does not exist unless the default value has previously been changed.

While you said you didn't want to go the GUI route with e.g. AppleScript, how about you split the difference and do it from the command line using osascript to process the AppleScript code, which does make the change from System Preferences, but without being interrupted by the System Preferences UI. As a matter of fact, assuming the System Preferences Dock Tile is still present, as is its default, all you'll see is the System Preferences Dock Tile bounce once, and no System Preferences UI. (This assumes it wasn't open to begin with.)

If that's acceptable, then the following AppleScript code saved as a command line executable will do the job:

Note: The value shown for theCursorSize  is what my system is presently set to.

#!/usr/bin/osascript

    -- # set theCursorSize between 1.0 and 4 (Valid intermediate values may run out 12 decimal places.)

set theCursorSize to 1.388884782791

    -- # Get the system minor version number, as an integer.

set theSystemVersion to system version of (system info)
set TID to AppleScript's text item delimiters
set AppleScript's text item delimiters to {"."}
set theMinorSystemVersion to text item 2 of theSystemVersion as integer
set AppleScript's text item delimiters to TID

    -- # Change the size of the mouse cursor.

tell application "System Preferences"
    reveal anchor "Seeing_Display" of pane id "com.apple.preference.universalaccess"
    delay 0.5   -- # Modify as/if necessary. Value is in seconds as a decimal number.
    tell application "System Events"
        if theMinorSystemVersion is equal to 8 then
            set value of value indicator 1 of slider 2 of group 1 of window "Accessibility" of application process "System Preferences" to theCursorSize
        else if theMinorSystemVersion is equal to 9 then
            set value of value indicator 1 of slider 2 of window "Accessibility" of application process "System Preferences" to theCursorSize
        else if theMinorSystemVersion is greater than 9 and theMinorSystemVersion is less than 13 then
            set value of value indicator 1 of slider 1 of window "Accessibility" of application process "System Preferences" to theCursorSize
        end if
    end tell
    quit
end tell

Note: As coded, this script works with OS X 10.8 through macOS 10.12. I have not tested this under macOS High Sierra, however if nothing has changed between macOS 10.12 and macOS 10.13 with this particular object, then the less than 13 then code segment can be changed to less than 14 then, or if you prefer, shorten the line of code to just:

else if theMinorSystemVersion is greater than 9 then

To create a command line executable, containing the above AppleScript code, do the following in Terminal:

touch cmcs
open cmcs

Copy and paste the above AppleScript code into the opened cmcs document.
Set the value of theCursorSize to your preferred cursor size.
Save the document, pressing: ⌘S

Back in Terminal, make cmcs executable:

chmod u+x cmcs

Now the cmcs command line executable can be executed by typing: ./cmcs

Note: If you place the cmcs command line executable in a location defined within the PATH environment variable, you can omit the leading ./, and or having to type /path/to/cmcs. Also note that the naming of, cmcs is for change mouse cursor size, and can be whatever you want it to be otherwise.

Additional Notes:

The value of mouseDriverCursorSize key in the com.apple.universalaccess .plist file is stored rounded to the 6th decimal place, e.g, 1.388884782791 is saved as 1.388885

To get the full value, in Script Editor, run the following script:

set theSystemVersion to system version of (system info)
set TID to AppleScript's text item delimiters
set AppleScript's text item delimiters to {"."}
set theMinorSystemVersion to text item 2 of theSystemVersion as integer
set AppleScript's text item delimiters to TID

tell application "System Preferences"
    reveal anchor "Seeing_Display" of pane id "com.apple.preference.universalaccess"
    delay 0.5 -- # Modify as/if necessary. Value is in seconds as a decimal number.
    tell application "System Events"
        if theMinorSystemVersion is equal to 8 then
            get value of value indicator 1 of slider 2 of group 1 of window "Accessibility" of application process "System Preferences"
        else if theMinorSystemVersion is equal to 9 then
            get value of value indicator 1 of slider 2 of window "Accessibility" of application process "System Preferences"
        else if theMinorSystemVersion is greater than 9 and theMinorSystemVersion is less than 13 then
            get value of value indicator 1 of slider 1 of window "Accessibility" of application process "System Preferences"
        end if
    end tell
    quit
end tell

Update to address comment:

If you're wanting to run this each time a User logs in, the I'd do the following:

In Automator create a new Application workflow and add a Run AppleScript action to it.

In the Run AppleScript action, replace (* Your script goes here *) and return input with all but the shebang (#!/usr/bin/osascript) of the first AppleScript code. The shebang isn't necessary since this is being run in an Run AppleScript action vs. a Run Shell Script action.

Save the Automator Application workflow as e.g. Set Mouse Cursor Size in the /Applications folder.

In System Preferences, do two things...

In Users & Groups > select target User > Login Items and add Set Mouse Cursor Size to the list of Login Items.
In Security & Privacy > Privacy > Accessibility, add Set Mouse Cursor Size to the Allow the apps below to control your computer list.

Note: the above is for OS X 10.9 and later. For OS X 10.8, Accessibility and check the Enable access for assistive devices check box.

Then each time the User logs in, the Set Mouse Cursor Size will run and do as programmed.


Adguard for Mac avoids the restrictions placed on browser extensions. It intercepts http(s) connections from all apps (not just Safari) and applies its blocking rules.

As well as using blocklists linked to Adguard, you can create your own. So invent your own rules - limited only by your imagination!

And if you need a little help there is an active forum which includes a section for Custom Filters.


You can disable it by editing ~/Library/Preferences/.GlobalPreferences.plist:

defaults write -g NSUserKeyEquivalents -dict-add 'Minimize' '\0'

To apply the changes you have to reopen applications. If the shortcut was assigned to nil, pressing L would trigger it in Audacity.


Add a value to CustomPapers' plist using Terminal

You have to quote the value, remove -dict-add, and use for example <key>name</key><string>165x165</string> instead of <name>165x165</name>:

defaults write com.apple.print.custompapers 165x165 '<dict><key>bottom</key><real>0</real><key>custom</key><true/><key>height</key><real>467.71653555</real><key>id</key><string>165x165</string><key>left</key><real>0</real><key>name</key><string>165x165</string><key>printer</key><string> </string><key>right</key><real>0</real><key>top</key><real>0</real><key>width</key><real>467.71653555</real></dict>'

This checks if the key exists:

if defaults read com.apple.print.custompapers 165x165 &> /dev/null; then echo 'the key exists'; fi


Short answer is - you can't.

The Library is your total structure, containing everything.
Playlists are made from the overall structure.

You can delete a song from a Playlist without removing it from the Library - but if you delete a song from the Library, it will also delete it from all Playlists.


Is it safe to remove the "Install Xcode" application after installation?

Yes, it’s safe to remove the XCode installer, once you’ve installed the XCode tools. XCode tools can be downloaded for free from Apple’s website. If you are registered at developer.apple.com, you may also download the iPhone/iPad SDK from developer.apple.com, to be able to create iPhone/iPad software (the XCode tools that ship with MacOS X will only allow you to build applications for Mac OS).


Windows stop in the purple screen after Ubuntu installation

So far this is not a answer. To fully answer, I would need more information. Below is an explanation of what went wrong.

Both Ubuntu and Window place boot software in the /EFI/Boot folder in the EFI partition (sdc1). Most notably is the bootx64.efi file.

When you installed Ubuntu, the Windows EFI\Boot\bootx64.efi file was replace with an Ubuntu version. There is a backup copy of the overwritten file stored under the file name EFI\Microsoft\Boot\bootmgfw.efi. So repairing the broken Windows is fairly easy. You could just copy a file. However, this type of the repair would also break Ubuntu.

A possible solution would be to clone the EFI partition. You could then make the above repair to the clone. This would allow both Windows and Ubuntu to appear in the Mac Startup Manager. Below is an example of how to do this. Here, both Windows and Ubuntu were installed on a single drive in a VirtualBox virtual machine. This was done to verify the commands are correct.

While booted to Ubuntu, temporarily make Windows bootable. The steps are given below.

Open a Terminal windows. Enter the command below to become the root user.

sudo bash

Enter the command given below. This changes the folder to the EFI/Boot on the partition labeled EFI.

cd /boot/efi/EFI/Boot

Rename the Ubuntu file bootx64.efi to the temporary name bootx64u.efi.

mv bootx64.efi bootx64u.efi

Enter the command given below to copy the Windows file bootmgfw.efi to bootx64.efi.

cp ../Microsoft/Boot/bootmgfw.efi bootx64.efi

If you do not have a Microsoft folder, then you will need to reinstall the Windows boot files. See the Appendix end of this answer.
Enter the exit command twice to close the window.

exit
exit

The output produced when I entered these commands is shown below.

dma@dma-VirtualBox:~$ sudo bash
[sudo] password for dma:
root@dma-VirtualBox:/boot/efi/EFI# cd /boot/efi/EFI/Boot
root@dma-VirtualBox:/boot/efi/EFI/Boot# mv bootx64.efi bootx64u.efi
root@dma-VirtualBox:/boot/efi/EFI/Boot# cp ../Microsoft/Boot/bootmgfw.efi bootx64.efi
root@dma-VirtualBox:/boot/efi/EFI/Boot# exit
exit
dma@dma-VirtualBox:~$ exit

Next, reboot to Windows and clone the EFI partition. Cloning can not be accomplished while booted directly to Windows. Instead, you have to reboot to the Windows Recovery Environment (winRE) or from a Windows USB flash drive installer. The instructions for using the winRE are given at the Microsoft website Start your PC in safe mode in Windows 10.

  Note: The website explains how to reach "Startup Settings". You need to select "Command Prompt" instead of  "Startup Settings".

Execute the diskpart command and list the available drives.

diskpart
list disk

Select the correct disk. I selected disk 0. You will need to select the correct external drive from the drives listed.

select disk 0

List the partitions on the selected drive.

list partition

Windows should be partition 2. Enter the following commands to create a new 200 MB partition labeled EFI2 after the Windows partition.

select part 2
shrink desired=200
create partition efi
format fs=fat32 label=EFI2 quick
list partition

Assign the new partition the letter T: and the original EFI partition the letter S:.

assign letter=t
select partition 1
assign letter=s

Enter the exit command to exit the diskpart command.

exit

Copy all the files from the old partition to the new partition.

xcopy s:\* t:\ /e /h /q

Restore the Ubuntu bootx64.efi file.

del s:\EFI\Boot\bootx64.efi
ren s:\EFI\Boot\bootx64u.efi bootx64.efi

Enter the exit command twice to close the window.

exit

The output produced when I entered these commands is shown below.

Microsoft Windows [Version 10.0.17763.107]
(c) 2018 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.

X:\windows\system32>diskpart

Microsoft DiskPart version 10.0.17763.1

Copyright (C) Microsoft Corporation.
On computer: MININT-PVCCLL9

DISKPART> list disk

  Disk ###  Status         Size     Free     Dyn  Gpt
  --------  -------------  -------  -------  ---  ---
  Disk 0    Online          300 GB      0 B        *

DISKPART> select disk 0

Disk 0 is now the selected disk.

DISKPART> list partition

  Partition ###  Type              Size     Offset
  -------------  ----------------  -------  -------
  Partition 1    System             200 MB  1024 KB
  Partition 2    Primary            153 GB   201 MB
  Partition 3    Unknown           3815 MB   153 GB
  Partition 4    Unknown            142 GB   157 GB

DISKPART> select part 2

Partition 2 is now the selected partition.

DISKPART> shrink desired=200

DiskPart successfully shrunk the volume by:  200 MB

DISKPART> create partition efi

DiskPart succeeded in creating the specified partition.

DISKPART> format fs=fat32 label=EFI2 quick

  100 percent completed

DiskPart successfully formatted the volume.

DISKPART> list partition
  Partition ###  Type              Size     Offset
  -------------  ----------------  -------  -------
  Partition 1    System             200 MB  1024 KB
  Partition 2    Primary            153 GB   201 MB
* Partition 3    System             200 MB   153 GB
  Partition 4    Unknown           3815 MB   153 GB
  Partition 5    Unknown            142 GB   157 GB

DISKPART> assign letter=t

DiskPart successfully assigned the drive letter or mount point.

DISKPART> select partition 1

Partition 1 is now the selected partition.

DISKPART> assign letter=s

DiskPart successfully assigned the drive letter or mount point.

DISKPART> exit

Leaving DiskPart...

X:\Windows\System32>xcopy s:\* t:\ /e /h /q
146 File(s) copied

X:\Windows\System32>del s:\EFI\Boot\bootx64.efi

X:\Windows\System32>ren s:\EFI\Boot\bootx64u.efi bootx64.efi

X:\Windows\System32>exit

  Note: When finish, you may find the Startup Manager's selections confusing. If so, consider adding a Windows and/or Ubuntu icon to the Startup Manager menu.

Appendix

How to reinstall the Windows EFI boot files.

Use the Boot Camp Assistant to create a Windows 10 USB flash drive installer. If you have problems do this, then see the question Boot Camp Assistant fails to create the USB installer from the Windows 10 October 2018 Update.
With the flash drive inserted in a USB port, start (or restart) the Mac and hold down the option key until the Startup Manager icons appears. Select to boot from the USB drive icon labeled "EFI Boot".
When the initial Windows 10 installation windows appears, press then shift+F10 key combination to open a Command Prompt window.
Execute the diskpart command and list the available drives.

diskpart
list disk

Select the correct disk. I selected disk 0. You will need to select the correct external drive from the drives listed.

select disk 0

Enter the command below to determine the drive letter assign to the Windows partition. In this example, I will assume the drive letter is C:.

list volume

Assign the EFI partition the letter S:.

select partition 1
assign letter=s

Enter the exit command to exit the diskpart command.

exit

Enter the following command to create the Windows EFI boot files. If you determined a different drive letter than C: in step 6, then make the appropriate substitution.

bcdboot C:\Windows /s S: /f UEFI

Enter the command below to close the Command Prompt Window.

exit

Click on the red X button and then select Yes button to restart the Mac.


Why get a regular MacBook Pro versus the Retina display model?

I can buy a regular MBP, with a cheap HDD, open it, upgrade the RAM and replace the HDD with a SDD, all for a fraction of the price Apple would charge me. In addition, I still have Ethernet and a CD/DVD drive, in case I need one.

As I said, you might need the retina, or you might just like it, both of which are perfectly reasonable points. I don't, and I prefer to keep my money with me, upgrading my hardware when I need it, and at the price I choose to pay (out of a range of options).  Uh, and I also hate the lack of Ethernet port.

To each their own.


Move rows or columns with keyboard shortcuts in Numbers

AFAIK you can't.

The closest you can get is highlighting a row/column/cell, and long-pressing (or force touching) then dragging, to insert/replace somewhere else. Also, highlight one of the above and pressing Option-ArrowKey (substitute ArrowKey for an arrow key) to insert a row/column/cell in the direction of the arrow key.

Here is a link to the Numbers Keyboard Shortcuts help.


How to check what applications are using the most disk space?

Using the Finder, you can sort the Applications folder (or any other folder) by size, and let it calculate the space inside each folder in addition to sizing the flat files.

The key command Command-Shift-A will open the Applications folder from Finder
The key command Command-J will Show View Options

Then ensure the checkbox to calculate all sizes is checked. Lastly, click on the size column in the finder window (making sure you are in list view (Command-2) to sort by size. Keep clicking to reverse the sort order if the small applications get sorted to the top.

You will also want to look at your home folder as well as the /Library folder to see if some applications have large media files that you might be able to delete if you don't do movie editing or need all the Garage Band loops for example.


Starting from March 2019, is it necessary to build all existing apps using iOS 12 SDK and Xcode 10 for it to work on iOS 12 devices?

The key words in this announcement are "new apps and app updates".

Apps which are already available on the App Store do not need to be rebuilt with the new SDK. Apps which were built with earlier SDKs will remain available on the App Store, and will still be usable on devices. However, after March 2019, the developers of those apps will need to rebuild their apps with the iOS 12 SDK to release any further updates.


How to copy videos wireless from Mac to iPhone? (wireless)

If you don't regularly sync with your phone with your computer, the easiest way might be to use the Dropbox app. I'm copying my answer from a previous question:

  The easiest way is to use Dropbox (you have Dropbox right?). Put the photo in your Dropbox, go to the same folder using the Dropbox app on your phone, click on the video, click the little share button in bottom left, and then choose "Save Video."

Note that videos are generally pretty large in file size. You should probably be connected to wifi on the phone before attempting to do this.


Is it possible to decrypt external hard drive without losing data?

Yes it is possible to decrypt a disk. This option is directly accessible from the Finder popup menu.
Simply make a ⌃ ctrlclic on the disk icon on the Desktop:

and select the entry starting with Decrypt…. Then enter the encryption key (or password as you prefer to name it) and confirm.
This function will of course take care of conserving all the data by performing it step by step (because you never have half of a disk free to use for this operation).
Take care the alimentation and the connection cable to your disk are
protected against any break during this operation which may take a few hours.