Why isn't Startup Manager showing Ubuntu Netboot USB - mid 2010 imac 21.5"

The short answer is the mini.iso is bootable, just not bootable from a USB flash drive on a Mac of your vintage.
Here is some of the things I tried.
I transferred an ISO file to a USB flash drive by writing the file directly to the flash drive. So, what appears on the flash drive is exactly what exists in the file. There many ways to accomplish this. I used a Mac booted to macOS. The identifier for the flash drive was disk2. An example of the commands is given below.
diskutil unmountdisk disk2
sudo dd if=~/Downloads/mini.iso of=/dev/rdisk2 bs=1m

The same can be accomplished with Linux by entering the commands given below. Here, the identifier for the flash drive was sdc.
sudo umount /dev/sdc*
sudo dd if=~/Downloads/mini.iso of=/dev/sdc bs=1M

I found the USB flash drive created using the mini.iso file was BIOS bootable by the Startup Manager on a 2013 iMac. While I was able to boot, I choose not to install. The same flash was not detected by the Mac Startup Manager on a 2007 iMac. This is expected, since iMacs could not BIOS boot from flash drives until at least after the 2011 model year. Neither Mac Starup Manger could detect a EFI boot file on the flash drive, even though such files do exist on the flash drive. I state this because the flash drive can EFI boot in a VirtualBox virtual machine on the 2013 iMac running Catalina. I was able to install Ubuntu 18.04.5 LTS on the virtual machine.
I used the same method to transfer the ubuntu-20.04.1-live-server-amd64.iso file to a flash drive. This was detected as EFI bootable by the Mac Startup Manager on the 2007 iMac. I was able to boot and installed an Ubuntu server. A present, the Mac Startup Manger is needed to boot Ubuntu server on the 2007 iMac. I have not tried fix the Mac to boot Ubuntu server as the default operating system. I should also point out that this version of Ubuntu server boots to a command line interface (CLI).
Next, I tried using the Startup Disk Creator that comes with kubuntu. This basically does the same thing as the dd command used above.
When installing Ubuntu Server, I made the following selections.

I chose to update to the new installer.
I chose to not use the entire disk without a LVM group.
I chose to install the OpenSSH server.

When I finished installing, the content of the USB flash drive had changed. A compare with the original ISO file found differences.
Update 1
I was able to install Ubuntu with a desktop graphical support on the 2007 iMac by using the mini.iso file. This was accomplished by using the dd command to copy the mini.iso file to the internal drive (/dev/sda). Next, boot to the Mac Startup Manager and select the Windows label under the internal drive icon. Once the Ubuntu installer starts, you can overwrite the the contents of the internal drive with the new Ubuntu installation.
Below are the exact steps, I used to place the contents of the mini.iso file onto the internal drive of the 2007 iMac. This is by no means the only way to accomplish this.

You will need a linux installer that offers a Command Line Interface (CLI). I chose the Debian firmware-10.7.0-amd64-DVD-1.iso file.

Transfer the file to a flash drive. I happened to have a 4 GB USB 2 flash drive and a 2011 iMac computer. By using the diskutil list command, I determined the identifier for the flash drive was disk1. The commands below were used to transfer the file to the flash drive.
diskutil unmountdisk disk1
dd if=~/Downloads/firmware-10.7.0-amd64-DVD-1.iso of=/dev/rdisk1 bs=1m

Download the mini.iso file.

Transfer the mini.iso file to the flash drive. The output from the ls -l ~/Downloads/mini.iso ~/Downloads/firmware-10.7.0-amd64-DVD-1.iso command is shown below. From the output, one can compute the mini.iso and firmware-10.7.0-amd64-DVD-1.iso files are 76 MiB and 3,772.3125 MiB long, respectively. (1 MiB = 1,048,576 bytes)
-rw-r--r--@ 1 davidanderson  staff  3955556352 Jan  5 16:10 /Users/davidanderson/Downloads/firmware-10.7.0-amd64-DVD-1.iso
-rw-r--r--@ 1 davidanderson  staff    79691776 Jan  5 16:07 /Users/davidanderson/Downloads/mini.iso

The output from the diskutil info disk1 | grep Size command is given below. From the output, one can compute the flash drive has a capacity of at least 3,853 MiB.
   Disk Size:                4.0 GB (4040748544 Bytes) (exactly 7892087 512-Byte-Units)
   Device Block Size:        512 Bytes

From the outputs shown above, I determined the command given below would copy the mini.iso file contents to a location above the contents of the firmware-10.7.0-amd64-DVD-1.iso file. (Note: 1m is 1 MiB = 1,048,576 bytes)
dd if=~/Downloads/mini.iso of=/dev/rdisk1 bs=1m seek=3773

Enter the command given below to eject the flash drive. Remove the flash drive.
diskutil eject disk1

Insert the flash drive in a USB port of the 2010 Mac. Start or restart the Mac and immediately hold down the option key until the Mac Startup Manager icons appear. Choose the external drive icon with the label EFI Boot. When the image below appears, pick Advanced options ..., then select ... Rescue mode.

Continue until a similar image to the one below appears. Pick Do not use a root file system, then select Execute a Shell in the installer environment and finally, <Continue>.

At this point, you should be able to enter commands.

Enter the command given below to transfer the contents of the mini.iso file to the internal drive. (Note: 1M is 1 MiB = 1,048,576 bytes)
dd if=/dev/sdb of=/dev/sda bs=1M count=76 skip=3773

Enter the command given below, then turn off the Mac and remove the flash drive.
exit

Update 2: Installing Ubuntu Server 20.04.1 LTS
I did use the Debian firmware-10.7.0-amd64-DVD-1.iso file to test if the mini.iso file would boot from the internal drive. However, IMO this is not a good method for installing the Ubuntu Server 20.04.1 LTS, for the following reasons.

The software need to install Ubuntu Server 18.04.5 LTS takes a long time to downoad.
The Ubuntu Server 18.04.5 LTS release is installed instead of the Debian Server 20.04.1 LTS.
Upgrading to the Ubuntu Server 20.04.1 LTS take a long time to complete.

I would recommend installing the Ubuntu Server 20.04.1 LTS by using a method similar to this answer. Some of the differences are given below.

You will be installing ubuntu-20.04.1-legacy-server-amd64.iso, instead of firmware-10.7.0-amd64-DVD-1.iso.
You will need to substitute vmlinuz and initrd.gz for the ones used in the linked answer..
Since up have a 64 bit EFI, you need to use firmware-10.7.0-amd64-DVD-1.iso file instead of firmware-10.7.0-i386-DVD-1.iso file.

I tested installation by using a 2007 iMac. When first booting to Ubuntu Server 20.04.1 LTS, a login prompt did not appear on the builtin display. This problem was solved by appending the following line to the /etc/default/grub file.
GRUB_GFXPAYLOAD_LINUX=text

Note: You will have to boot Ubuntu from recovery mode in order to login. Or, you can use ssh from another computer to login.

After appending the line, the command below needs to be executed.
sudo update-grub

The installer was unable to provide the software for the Broadcom wireless hardware. The problem was solved by executing the command give below.
sudo apt-get install firmware-b43-installer

Using the ubuntu-20.04.1-legacy-server-amd64.iso file, to install Ubuntu server on your Mac, is beyond the scope of your question. In other words, your question asked about the mini.iso file. If you want a more detailed answer with respect to using the ubuntu-20.04.1-legacy-server-amd64.isofile, then I suggest posting a new question.
References
Linux Wireless
b43 and b43legacy
GRUB/Tips and tricks: Disable framebuffer
Ubuntu Installation Guide
GNU GRUB Manual 2.04: 6.1 Simple configuration handling


How to select or autofill all distinct elements from a column in Numbers?

I can't do it in Numbers. Numbers  has some interesting layout tools,but its utterly pathetic for anything signficant.

If you export as an excel sheet, save to google drive, then open in google sheets it's easy.

Cut and paste seems to work between Numbers and Google sheets too.  Values only, AFAIK.

To get a list of unique categories:
In Sheet 2 enter the following formula at the top of the column: =Unique(sort(Sheet1!B:B))  This will autofill down.
Now if you want them as columns instead:

Create a third sheet.
in A1 enter the formula =Transpose(Sheet1:A:A)

If this happens a lot, leave it in place.

If it's a oneshot, then select, copy, paste special, paste values only.


Configuring Time Capsule to distribute ISP given DHCP address

BTW, the router should be doing NAT, so your ISP won't see the local addresses at all.

To change the address range… source AirPort Utility 6.x: Set DHCP options for your base station or your AirPort Time Capsule

  If you’ve set up your base station or your AirPort Time Capsule to use Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (DHCP) to provide IP addresses to computers and devices on your wireless network, you can choose the range of IP addresses a device uses, determine the amount of time a computer will have a valid IP address, enter a welcome message, and reserve specific IP addresses to assign to specific computers that join your network.

  Open AirPort Utility, located in the Utilities folder in the Applications folder. Select the device you want to set up, then click Edit. Enter the password if necessary.
  Click Network, and then choose either DHCP and NAT or DHCP Only from the Router Mode pop-up menu, depending on how you want to use DHCP.
  Choose a range of IP addresses from the DHCP Range pop-up menu. Choose 10.0, 172.16, or 192.168, and then enter a beginning and ending address in the beginning and ending fields, depending on which addresses you want the device to provide.
  If you set up a guest network, you can choose the address range for the guest network as well.
  Enter a number in the DHCP Lease field, and then choose minutes, hours, or days from the pop-up menu.
  To provide specific IP addresses to specific computers on your wireless network, click Add (+) below the DHCP Reservations list, and then follow the onscreen instructions to name the reservation. Reserve the address by MAC address or DHCP client ID. If you choose MAC address, click Continue and enter the MAC address and specific IP address.

It would be unwise to have the actual ranges overlapping. Set one to e.g. 1.92.168.1.2-10 & the other to .11-20

& don't have 2 devices both trying to do NAT, leave that to the main router.
Also, make sure the main router is only handing out addresses for wired devices & the TC for wireless, or they'll fight.


Renew DHCP from the command line on a Mac

sudo ipconfig set $if DHCP && echo OK

Where $if is your network interface. For example en0.

To find which interface you want to reset, you can see the output of ifconfig.

Or if you are lazy, you can just copy/paste this line, which will set $if to the interface which is used to access the Internet:

if=$(route -n get 0.0.0.0 2>/dev/null | awk '/interface: / {print $2}') && echo $if

So in the right order:

if=$(route -n get 0.0.0.0 2>/dev/null | awk '/interface: / {print $2}') && echo $if
sudo ipconfig set $if DHCP && echo OK


iCloud Drive shows up empty in Finder after logging out

iCloud Drive takes a while to initialize. A loong while. Do not worry, so long as the files appear on iCloud.com they will be downloaded. This may take over 24 hours unfortunately and it won't appear to be doing anything at all. Leave your computer on and connected to the internet and wait it out.


Is it possible to display all of the Service titles in the context menu?

To show all Services on the Context Menu in Finder, do the following.

In Terminal, use the following commands:

defaults write .GlobalPreferences NSServicesMinimumItemCountForContextSubmenu -int 100001
killall -HUP Finder

Now all applicable Services in Finder's Context Menu should appear without being in a Services Sub Menu.

To revert to default behavior, use the following commands in Terminal:

defaults delete .GlobalPreferences NSServicesMinimumItemCountForContextSubmenu
killall -HUP Finder

Note: I've only tested this in OS X 10.8.5 and OS X 10.11.6 and it worked in both, so I'd assume it should work in the OS X versions in between. I've also tested this it in macOS 10.12.2 and it works, so I'd assume other versions of macOS 10.12.x it should work.

Update Note: This should also have an affect on other Context Menus in Applications other then Finder. However, applications that are running at the time this change is made must be restarted for this to take effect. After this change has been made, applications opened afterwards will be affected immediately.  You can also just logout/login for the change to take effect globally, all at once.


Replace or add graphic card on Macbook Pro

Unfortunately, there is not a cheap good or ideal way to do this.

The graphics card is a key integrated part of the logic board on the MacBook Pro, there really is no separation of it from it to do an upgrade, short of replacing the entire motherboard, and even then you would be limited to what was available at the time for that generation of MacBook Pro.

See that orange highlighted square, thats the NVidia GeForce pictured below:

Honestly, the Matrox route is probably the most affordable workable solution to this problem.

This MacBook Pro also lacks an ExpressCard/34 slot or Thunderbolt so you really can't go the route of an external graphics card. And even if you could you would be talking over $500 USD just to get the external PCI express chassis, for example Magma's ExpressBox 1 starts at $829 for just one external PCI Express slot, you would still need to spend another ~ $200 to buy a mac compatible graphics card.

Your last option is to maybe reevaluate if this MacBook Pro is the right machine for your needs. Would a newer model MacBook Pro with Thunderbolt solve this problem, maybe maybe not. If you don't have two Thunderbolt Displays, you are kind of still out of luck hooking up dual displays to even a Thunderbolt MacBook Pro, with out the need for expensive external adapters.

Would an iMac, Mac Mini, or Mac Pro better suit your computing needs, complimented with a basic MacBook Air or iPad of some kind for your mobility needs.


So since this is on the stackexchange network I am going to just link to it here.

Basically this is how you change the native keys.

To change the esc key you need this.


SSH is simply a protocol used to connect to a remote computer. It doesn't really restrict what you can or cannot do once you're logged in to that computer. And iOS doesn't really have any restrictions on typical SSH usage (except that you can't set up a tunnel for other apps).

So if you can do what you need to using SSH from your computer to your school's computer, then you should be able to do the same on the iPad with an SSH app.

There are several iOS SSH clients around, my favourite is Prompt; iSSH is pretty popular as well.


Is there something like "Mac OS X manager" to control all Macs in one network?

Apple Remote Desktop http://www.apple.com/remotedesktop/ might be what you are looking for.


new 4th generation iPod touch doesn't have the app store

I assume you have all your media synced to iTunes on a Mac or PC? Then it's save to do a full restore of your iPod touch.

  Disconnect the USB cable from the iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch, but leave the other end of the cable connected to your computer's USB
  port.
  Turn off the device: Press and hold the Sleep/Wake button for a few seconds until the red slider appears, then slide the slider. Wait for
  the device to turn off.  * If you cannot turn off the device using the
  slider, press and hold the Sleep/Wake and Home buttons at the same
  time. When the device turns off, release the Sleep/Wake and Home
  buttons.
  While pressing and holding the Home button, reconnect the USB cable to the device. The device should turn on.
  Continue holding the Home button until you see the "Connect to iTunes" screen.
  If necessary, open iTunes. You should see a "recovery mode" alert.
  Use iTunes to restore the device.

also see: official documentation


Guest account on MAC OS X 10.5 can go to Finder and see all the files

The most likely culprit is some utility or old step that was taken to change the permissions on your folders. Depending on how this happened, you may have a little or a lot of clean up, but let's verify this is what is happening:

Here are two screenshots of the default permissions for your administrator's home folder as well as the Documents folder within the home folder.

You can edit things by clicking the lock icon, entering an admin user/password and then using the +, - and gear buttons. Don't forget to apply the changes to enclosing folders. Also, getting a little help from Apple or a tech is often needed if many folders have incorrect permissions. The ~/Library and ~/Shared folders have permissions different than most as well as files that are constantly in use so try to stick with Photos or Documents until you're sure you're fixing things appropriately.


AirDrop between MBP and iPad not working

I unfortunately have no solution to offer you, but I need to point out that the answer by TheBro21 is actually incorrect. AirDrop should work between Macs and iOS devices provided that:

The iOS device supports AirDrop and runs iOS 8 or later
The Mac was made in 2012 or later and runs OS X Yosemite

Since both requirements are fulfilled in your case, it should work. I does for me. If it doesn't, I'd keep looking or take it up with Apple (since your iPad Air is still under warranty, I'm sure they'd help you out).

Source: https://support.apple.com/kb/PH18947


Check the homebrew project. There are lots of applications available in "casks." You need to be a little familiar with the command line, but if LibreOffice doesn't have auto-update built in, this might be your best bet.


How to assign a service keyboard shortcut for a specific application (non global)?

Going from your example, I assume:

You have an existing Automator service that reloads a Chrome tab.
It is set to work in TextEdit only.
It is installed (in ~/Library/Services).

To set an application-specific shortcut then:

Open System Preferences > Keyboard
Go to the Shortcuts tab and choose App Shortcuts at the bottom of the list.
Create a new shortcut:

Restrict the shortcut to TextEdit
The name must be exactly the same as the menu title of the service


Open a URL with parameterized query arguments (URL-encode)

You have lots of requirements, which makes for a slightly convoluted solution:
open fafapp://find?loc=$(python -c "import urllib, sys; print urllib.quote(sys.argv[1])" "$path")&inp=$(python -c "import urllib, sys; print urllib.quote(sys.argv[1])" "$what")

This uses python, which is pre-installed on macOS 10.11 and later (including Big Sur). It is also a one-liner (although a long one).


I am Unable to Uninstall an Applications like Node or Atom in OS X

Have you tried emptying your trash? Spotlight can find and open (IIRC) applications that remain in trash.

If after your trash is emptied and you still see Atom or Node, try, in Terminal:

sudo find / -iname 'thing'

in which you should substitute thing with your search query.

EDIT: in Spotlight, when you hold Command, does it show a path at the bottom of the spotlight window?

EDIT 2: As per @Lizzan's comment, do check your Downloads, Documents, and any other user-related folders.


Is it possible to have my MacBook become an iBeacon?

If you are a programmer I have posted instructions on how to use a MacBook with Mavericks as an iBeacon.  You can find the instructions on my blog at http://www.blendedcocoa.com/blog/2013/11/02/mavericks-as-an-ibeacon/

If/When I get a chance I may create an app that you can use to advertise an iBeacon.

This is the answer I gave to a similar question on Stack Overflow

Mavericks doesn't have the iBeacon support in Core Location that was added to iOS 7.  However, Mavericks does now have the ability to act as an BLE peripheral device.  Given that an iBeacon is basically a peripheral it should be (and indeed is) possible to use Mavericks as an iBeacon.

In order to create an iBeacon on iOS you first create a CLBeaconRegion object and then use the peripheralDataWithMeasuredPower: method to get an NSDictionary containing the necessary advertisement data to broadcast.  If you take the contents of this NSDictionary from an iOS device and use it on Mavericks then you get an iBeacon.

I have created a class to make this easier and allow you to generate the advertisement data dictionary directly on Mavericks.  The source code is available at https://github.com/mttrb/BeaconOSX

The BLCBeaconAdvertisementData class take the proximityUUID, major, minor and calibrated power values and creates an NSDictionary that can be passed to the startAdvertising: method of CBPeripheralManager on Mavericks.

The BLCBeaconAdvertisementData class is quite simple.  The main work is done by the following method:

- (NSDictionary *)beaconAdvertisement {
    NSString *beaconKey = @"kCBAdvDataAppleBeaconKey";

    unsigned char advertisementBytes[21] = {0};

    [self.proximityUUID getUUIDBytes:(unsigned char *)&advertisementBytes];

    advertisementBytes[16] = (unsigned char)(self.major >> 8);
    advertisementBytes[17] = (unsigned char)(self.major & 255);

    advertisementBytes[18] = (unsigned char)(self.minor >> 8);
    advertisementBytes[19] = (unsigned char)(self.minor & 255);

    advertisementBytes[20] = self.measuredPower;

    NSMutableData *advertisement = [NSMutableData dataWithBytes:advertisementBytes length:21];

    return [NSDictionary dictionaryWithObject:advertisement forKey:beaconKey];
}

I have a more detailed blog post about this at http://www.blendedcocoa.com/blog/2013/11/02/mavericks-as-an-ibeacon/


Can't install OS X, shows a message to restart Macbook, repeats

Assuming that there is nothing more serious wrong with your computer, you should just be able to use either the recovery partition or internet recovery to install the OS.

You can start the process by holding down Command-R when you restart and the computer should give you the opportunity to download a Mavericks installer. This should happen whether there is a recovery partition available or not. If no recovery partition is available, the computer should use internet recovery.

More information is here: http://support.apple.com/kb/ht4718

Also, it is unlikely that the Mac OS X 10.6.1 disc will work as new Macs will rarely allow old versions of the OS to be installed on them, although seeing a "screen of codes" seems less user-friendly than I would expect.


How can I use Wireshark on a MacBook Air?

You need to set the right permissions.

Go into Terminal and enter the following commands:

cd /Library/StartupItems
sudo chown -R root:wheel ChmodBPF

You might need to restart the computer to take effect.  You also need to be admin (a sudoer) to perform these commands

I should mention that you need to have copied ChmodBPF from the .dmg file for Wireshark into the /Library/StartupItems folder as described in the 'Read me first' document.  ChmodBPF is a file located in the Utilities folder in the .dmg


MacBook Air not contacting Wi-Fi with NETGEAR Extender

Change the authentication method from WPA2 Personal to WPA or WEP. If the Air is older it may not be compatible.


Yes, Time Machine should restore all your applications, personal files, and preferences, provided you have not made any files private the Time Machine system preferences pane.

When you get your new Mac (or freshly installed OS), it will ask if you want to restore from a Time Machine backup, and I think the process is self-explanatory from there.

One caveat - if you have partitioned your hard drive, I believe only the first partition will be automatically restored. You'll have to manually restore the others.


Can I share the Wi-Fi connection of my Mac to the internet with my iPad?

To share your Mac internet connection with your iPad do the following (Source with some screenshots)

On your Mac, go to Apple > System Preferences > Bluetooth > Turn Bluetooth On.
Turn Bluetooth On on your iPad.
Your iPad should show up as a new device in the Bluetooth preferences of your Mac. Click Pair. A six digit number will appear on your Mac. This same number should show up on your iPad. Confirm the connection by tapping “Pair” on your iPad.
On your Mac, go to Apple > System Preferences > Sharing

Click on “Internet Sharing” from the menu on the left. Do not check the box yet!
Select: Share your connection from “Wi-Fi”
Check: To computers using “Bluetooth PAN”
Check the “Internet Sharing” box from the menu on the left
When asked if you’re sure you want to share your connection, select “Start”
share mac internet with iPad

At this point, you should be able to get online on your iPad. Obviously, for this to work, your Mac will have to be awake and connected to the internet.


According to a google search for [safari 2 tabbed browsing], yes.

Source: http://www.macnews.com/content/safari-beta-2-brings-tabbed-browsing-autofill-forms


Reuse Time Machine backup drive after migration to new machine - revisited

You're missing a / from the start of your second path, so it's looking in the current directory for Volumes, as shown by the error "/Users/jt/Volumes/…". Add a / to the start of the second path.


If you right click it, and click Show Package Contents you'll get a few files in a Contents folder. (Note: if you do not see Show Package Contents you will need to open Terminal.app and run pkgutil --expand mystubbornpackage.pkg path/to/expand)

One is a BOM file (bill of materials) which gets turned into a receipt that you can use to uninstall the app.  This file contains a manifest of everything the package will install and where to; to read this file, use the lsbom command.

Most packages (I'm using Office 2008 here) also have an Archive.pax.gz file, this contains everything that Installer will move into the various folders as instructed in the BOM file.  Most apps seem to have the .app in this archive, although dragging that to /Applications might leave it without frameworks it needs to run; so you'll have to figure out which other files it needs and where it needs them to get it to work.

Additionally, all packages can log messages, if you hit Cmd-L (or choose the Installer Log option from the Window menu, you can view them as they're generated.  This might give you an idea what extra things it's installing, at the very least it's some more information if you're untrusting of the package.


Download on the first machine.
When complete, the Installer will auto-launch.
Quit it.

The Installer is in /Applications/ and has the name Install macOS Sierra. [BTW it's not a .dmg, but an .app file]

Copy it to a safe place; after install it will be auto-deleted from Applications.

The copy can then be used on any other machine. Drop into the Applications folder on that machine & launch.


stuck booting into broken Bootcamp (Win 7) volume. any ideas on how to get back to OS X?

I pulled the windows drive and put it in a windows machine to repair it and got it booting over there, but it still wouldn't boot when put back into my Mac Pro.

I was able to get my Mac Pro to boot back into OS X by resetting NVRAM (command-option-P-R after startup sound until you hear it again). Apparently this contains boot disk preference and resetting it along with pulling the windows drive let it 'find' OS X again.

I believe the reason that OS X Recovery and holding option for the Startup Manager don't work for me is due to an aftermarket GTX 760 graphics card. It works great on successful boot, however it doesn't behave the same as the OEM card did in the EFI.


Can the 2013 13" Macbook Air drive an external 4k monitor?

No, it won't support it. The Thunderbolt 1 controller in the Air only supports DisplayPort 1.1 and you need DisplayPort 1.2 to get 4K support, as you mention in your question.

Check out http://www.anandtech.com/show/7049/intel-thunderbolt-2-everything-you-need-to-know and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thunderbolt_(interface)#Thunderbolt_2


Is it possible to remove one word from iOS autocorrect?

This solution taken from a response on URL:

How can I get the iPhone to "forget" certain words?

Worked for me.  It did not take nine times for it to figure it out, you experience may vary.

Good luck,
Barry

"I opened notes, typed the word I wanted and when the incorrect autocorrect showed I pressed the cross. I pressed space bar and repeated the process 8 times. On the 9th time the incorrect suggestion stopped showing. Now it doesn't suggest the incorrect word anywhere!"
              --answered Feb 3 '13 at 5:36
                Glenbod


Boot macOS on Lenovo machine from hard drive of MacBook pro that is dead

Basically an unmodified Lenovo won't read the boot information on a mac os formatted drive, so this won't work.

To read that mac drive, put it into an external drive enclosure and connect to a mac. Success here will also depend on having the user names and passwords as necessary.


How do I remove and/or change the speed of the minimize animation for application windows in macOS Catalina?

I do not know of a speed setting for this action.

That said, the default setting for the Dock preference Minimize windows using: is Genie effect and the Scale effect may be a bit faster, so I'd try that one.

There is also a Suck effect, which can be implemented via Terminal, using the following compound command:

defaults write com.apple.dock mineffect -string suck; killall Dock

Note that after using the above compound command you will not see Suck effect as a setting for Minimize windows using: as a Dock preference, however using the following command will show  the present value, e.g.:

% defaults read com.apple.dock mineffect
suck
%


Is there a way to automatically forward text messages to email?

Not really ideal but I think that you can setup a Google Voice # that will auto forward to both sms and email - https://support.google.com/voice/answer/160203?hl=en


Can I attach external video/webcam to an iOS device?

A quick Google search finds multiple products and guides for using a webcam with an Android phone, but the same search with "Android" switched to "iPhone" shows nothing. This makes sense, as historically iOS devices have never had native USB support, neither for printing nor keyboards nor flash drives nor anything else. I'd be surprised if they relaxed the security restrictions only for webcams.


Do you have SIRI on?  If so, try turning it off and restarting.

Just in case somebody has the same issue but wants to continue using Siri:
make sure your keyboard shortcut for Siri doesn't conflict with the keyboard switch combination.

Original text:

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/7769867?start=0&tstart=0


Recording multiple midi inputs to separate tracks on garageband

Update: Found that the 'Show Record Enable' function had been disabled.

To enable it, right click on a track, Track Header Components > Show Record Enable.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-UrRzbLvsqc#t=36

You can then click the record button for each track you want to record simultaneously.


I would suggest putting on APFS as you have SSD drive even the current situation will not hamper anything but you can use the optimal resource as required when you put on APFS.

APFS, or Apple File System, is the default file system for solid-state drives and flash memory in 2017’s macOS High Sierra.
If you’ve got a mechanical hard drive, and you intend to use it only with Macs, it’s probably best to stick with Mac OS Extended. And any drive that needs to work with older Macs, running El Capitan or earlier, should absolutely be formatted with Mac OS Extended because APFS is not compatible with those computers.


Changing file metadata from CLI that will show in Finder

mdls uses it's database to display file info, not extended attributes that are set on that file. So in order to make it work, you have to import the file to its database after changing the xattr with:

mdimport /path/to/file

In order to see the update comment in Finder, you can use AppleScript. Here's the code:

#!/bin/bash

filepath="$1"
comment="$2"

/usr/bin/osascript -e "set filepath to POSIX file \"$filepath\"" \
-e "set theFile to filepath as alias" \
-e "tell application \"Finder\" to set the comment of theFile to \"$comment\""

Better version of that script can be found on StackOverflow by user l'L'l.


I've solved it by going into package contents and used the wineskin app with winetricks to install allfonts and upgraded bundled wine version


Is it possible for my HTC phone to interupt my music when I receive a call?

I'm pretty sure, you can't do that. You have a bluetooth connection between your iPod and your headset - your mobile phone cannot close this connection or notify you over your headset. So you may have to buy an iPhone or use the HTC to listen to music... :)


Reducing PowerPoint file size with retina images

Try saving the screenshots to a JPG file and then inserting them into the Powerpoint. You can switch the format that Mac OS saves screenshots in to JPG by typing the following command into a terminal window:

defaults write com.apple.screencapture type jpg;killall SystemUIServer

I just tried it with identical screen shots and saving to a JPG file and then inserting into the Powerpoint made the file 80% smaller than pasting the screen shot directly into the Powerpoint. The quality was identical.

You can shrink your existing files by saving the screenshots out of Powerpoint as a JPG (right click and choose save as picture), then delete it from the slide and re-add it from the JPG you saved.

To switch back to saving screenshots as PNG, use this command:

defaults write com.apple.screencapture type png;killall SystemUIServer


Turning of indexing on Time Machine Volumes

You can't. Spotlight is an integral part of Time Machine.
https://eclecticlight.co/2016/06/20/you-cannot-turn-off-spotlight-indexing-on-your-time-machine-backup/
As quoted there, Apple support pages used to say:
If you add a Time Machine backup disk to the privacy list, you will continue to see messages that Spotlight is indexing your backup disk. This indexing is necessary for Time Machine to function properly and can’t be disabled. Spotlight does exclude from searches any items you store on your backup disk that are not part of a Time Machine backup.
(Though they have rewritten them all for Catalina.)
So the real issue is not how to stop Spotlight from indexing, but work out why it's using so much CPU, and how to mitigate that. Sometimes, Spotlight needs to ramp up for a bit, but if it's happening more regularly, or constantly, then that might be a symptom of a problem with the backup's integrity.
Or it could just be that you're backing up thousands of small files every hour which require lots of processing, or a symptom of the drive being too full, or possibly too slow. Or something else. ;-)


Mountain Lion Installer detects hard drive damage

To fix this I re-partitioned the volume from Disk Utility running off a USB boot volume. This got the volume accessible and responsive again. Then I restored from an earlier Time Machine backup, and proceeded to re-download and run the Mountain Lion installer, this time with no problems.

While it may be faulty hardware somewhere, I can't rule out that a bug or some other interference for the Mountain Lion installer damaged the partition. It has been working fine for days now, and was working fine prior to ML.


How to send several pings per second? (ping more quickly)

ping -n -i 0.1 google.com

This should do it at 10/sec (works fine in my testing).  (-i sets the interval wait in seconds).


Were you using an older version of iTunes on the old computer? They have made a number of redesigns in how iTunes works. If you see a little iPod icon show up near the top of the iTunes window below the play button when you connect the iPod, click it, and then at the bottom click Sync. Or go to File>Devices>Sync.


Wi-fi login Network Accounts are Unavailable

I presume you mean this error message:

I have had this problem in the past, due to an incorrectly configured DNS on the local machine. If it's only the Wi-Fi that the network accounts are unavailable on (as it was for me), try changing the DNS to point to the correct server for Wi-Fi connections.

networksetup -setdnsservers Wi-Fi <server-ip>


Is it okay to uninstall the old versions of iWork/iLife after their respective upgrades that come with OSX Mavericks?

You can uninstall them if you like. Apple leaves them behind so you can compare the feature sets and UI redesign to see if you want to use the new apps or retain the old ones. I personally dislike the new design, as it is too simplified and was missing some key features, at least in Keynote, which I use the most.

Remember, though, that whenever you click on an iLife document, it will always open in the new app. If you set the default app on a document to the old iWork app in a Get-Info window, Finder will soon change it back! Even worse, Software Update will pop up a daily asking to upgrade to the the iWork apps, with no way to turn this notice off.

Insidious nonsense.


I believe that unless you have "Show all filename extensions" checked in Finder's Preferences, the .app extension is hidden by default. If you were to look at Sparrow in Finder, do you see the .app? If so, open the Get Info window for it (Cmd+i while highlighted) and make sure "Hide extension" is checked. You would have to check each app that is showing its extension manually.

Another thing is that if you have more than one of the app, I think it will always show the extension in Spotlight.

If none of that works, you can always try rebuilding your Spotlight index: $ sudo mdutil -E /


I would suggest to use a simple app like Paintbrush.

Modify, crop or cut the image to your liking.

Save it with new name (to keep the original).

This way you wont have the problems of trying to hide it in Keynote.


What does login item "System Events" do?

This is what you are looking for: Explanation.
I have comfortably removed it from my startup items without any issues arising whatsoever.


Add SD card to Fusion Drive in MacBook Pro 12,1

You need to create a RAID 0 Striped Array. Here is how to do it: https://www.lifewire.com/use-disk-utility-to-create-a-raid-0-striped-array-2260918


How to install an app on iPhone from a second machine?

For most users, the headache free method is preserving the iTunes folder in its entirety and bringing it over to the other computer. You would then sign into the account you obtain the app with on that computer, and authorize it.

If you're simply without the first computer and want to get the app back, then you would simply re-download from the App Store for free (assuming it hasn't been removed).


How does APFS on macOS handle upper/lower case file names?

APFS has case-sensitive and case-insensitive variants. The
  case-insensitive variant of APFS is normalization-preserving, but not
  normalization-sensitive. The case-sensitive variant of APFS is both
  normalization-preserving and normalization-sensitive. Filenames in
  APFS are encoded in UTF-8 and aren’t normalized.

  The first developer preview of APFS, made available in macOS Sierra in
  June 2016, offered only the case-sensitive variant. In macOS 10.12.4,
  the APFS developer preview was updated to also include a
  case-insensitive variant. In iOS 10.3, the case-sensitive variant of
  APFS is used.

Apple’s Developer FAQs


Mac Pro trashcan as file server for 60+ users

You should reconsider a NAS because using a Mac Pro is complete overkill when a NAS will do exactly what you want including sync to public cloud services like DropBox, OneDrive, Box.net, etc.

I am a fan of Synology products because whether you are using their entry level single disk NAS devices or their enterprise grade rack mount solutions, the software and features are the same.   Specifically, to your question, it includes Cloud Sync which will sync up with DropBox.

Also, consider moving from AFP to SMB.  AFP has been deprecated in Yosemite in favor of SMB2.  AFP is also not compatible with the new APFS.
However, most NAS devices will still provide AFP for backward compatibility.

Finally, I suggest you utilize their "NAS calculator" because sizing a file sharing solution is more than just how many people it needs to serve, but the type of files, how much space, your iops requirement etc.


You could use the string concatenation operator '&' and make a formula like this:

=B2&" X "&B3&" X "&B4
which would display "4 X 8 X 7"

then have another formula that actually calculates the function:

=B2*B3*B4
which would display "224"

http://i.imgur.com/9ggakhc.png


It sounds like an issue with the hardware of the phone. I'd take it back to the Apple Store and have them swap it again. Before you leave, make a few calls on the new phone and make sure the issue is resolved. I've seen this issue pretty frequently on iPhone 4/S's


First make sure the "Save history when conversations are closed" is checked in "Preferences-->General" to have an archive of conversations in the future.

Second the Messages.app history and archives are saved to a couple locations in Yosemite.

~/Library/Containers/com.apple.iChat/Data/Library/Messages/
~/Library/Messages/

Backup the files in the folder ~/Library/Messages/ and save to a separate location to have a backup of your previous messages.(if they exist)

Then remove both the files in above paths:

rm -rf ~/Library/Containers/com.apple.iChat/Data/Library/Messages/*
rm -rf ~/Library/Messages

Restart Messages.app and the below message will appear that it is rebuilding your Messages database.  The couple times a have done this it resulted in having to just restart the machine as I didn't want to wait.

Just remember to make a backup of any files you delete as they hold archives of previous conversations.


Unable to install 'Java Platform, Enterprise Edition 7 (with JDK 7u45)'

The Enterprise Edition of the JDK does not contain the JRE -- you have to install that stand alone first and only then install the JDK as detailed here :

http://docs.oracle.com/javase/7/docs/webnotes/install/


Do you need OS X Server to do SUS updating?

The "host" machine has to be a Mac OS X Server machine (depending on the systems of your other Macs 10.6 Server/OS X Server 1.0 - OS X Server 4.0) which stores all the update packages and the SoftwareUpdate catalog(s) and provides the Software Update service.

So one of those Server OSs has to be installed on at least one Mac to serve as a SoftwareUpdate server.

Once a method without installing a server OS existed (sorry german only). I don't know if it still works and can't prove it now. Here is a link to Software Update Enabler mentioned in the appletalk.de tutorial.


Apple has many security features within their iCloud Keychain. According to this support article, you do have some options:

You can use your iCloud security code that you set up when you started using iCloud Keychain. If you enter it too many times incorrectly, you will have to contact Apple support to try again. Too many incorrect tries will delete your security code from Apple's servers.
You can also verify your identity with a text message sent to the number used when first setting up iCloud Keychain. If you no longer have access to this number, you can also contact Apple support for more help.

Hope you can get this sorted out!


verifying download showing on screen for 12 hours and can't turn iPad off?

Unplug it and do a 'hard restart' > note this is hard on your iPads hardware if you do this often, so only use this when needed.

Press and hold the sleep button while holding the home button until it shuts off and restarts. It should take no more than 10 seconds for it to recognize.


How can I create an iCal alarm that doesn't get synced to all my computers?

You can create many calendars in iCal, and sync only the ones you choose to other devices. So create a calendar to contain these alarms.


Turn minimum contrast back down—that's what's washing out the colors. It's meant to increase the contrast between foreground text and background color, which is making the colors look wrong.


Mac Mail: How to have mail popups show for only a couple seconds

As mentioned you can change the Notifications settings in Notification Center.

You have the Mail alert style set to alert which makes the notification stay until dismissed.

To make the notification disappear after a few seconds you need to change the style to banners in Notification Center.

Shown below:


Issues with new Macs: Hardware makes them difficult for me to use. What options might be available in the future?

Start a conversation with your IT department about using Linux (possibly alongside Macs, it doesn't have to be a replacement).  Don't just assume they can't/won't support it: go and actually put your case to them.  It sounds like you're not the only person in your company with these concerns.

(I know, this isn't likely to get a lot of votes on an Apple-centric site.  And I used to like my iMac a lot, but haven't tried the new machines that are bothering you.  But, given your constraints, I think this is the right answer to your question.)

  ...pure Linux would work fine (for home) but in the (larger) companies
  it is not supported (security apps, wifi, productivity apps etc)

Where do you get this idea from?  It simply isn't true: plenty of large companies have been using Linux for many years.


Macbook Pro 15'' early 2011 - external monitor 27'' with DVI connection

If you want a resolution of 2560x1440 and you want to use DVI, then you must use a Dual Link DVI adapter.  Period.  A Single Link DVI connector will only support up to 1920x1200.

That said, I wouldn't recommend going with Dual Link DVI but rather getting a monitor that natively support Display Port or mini Display Port like the Dell UltraSharp U2715H

I am a big proponent of the idea that the less you have to convert, the better the reliability.


Remote login error: "DISPLAY is not set"

The solution appeared to be straight forward: just set

export DISPLAY=":0"

in .bashrc or whatever file your shell sources its profile from.


You should make four shell profiles by using the duplicate option and create your shells from those different profiles.
Edit: There are other answers with alternatives that may better suit different use cases. This way is still going to be the nicest approach for consistent re-use of color sets.


Deleting messages only once on IPad IPhone, and mail account

It sounds like you are using a POP3 type email account. Unfortunately, using native (built in) apps, I don't know of any way to sync across your devices. Deleting emails multiple times is indeed something that can be a major pain.

One usability thing you probably use all the time, but just in case you haven't seen it is the fact that you can tap the edit button on an iOS device (upper right) and tap the emails listed to quickly delete emails. This is faster then swiping each email.

Also, if it is possible (if the Comcast email is just personal and you have a choice where to host your email), you could switch to a Gmail type IMAP service. This automatically stores all your email in the cloud and will sync across all your devices.


Iphone 3G is very slow when launch apps that use GPS

Well I used to have an iPhone 3G and when I upgraded it to iOS 3 it was painfully slow. So what I did was this:

1) Switch off spotlight search (Or some elements of it) - Settings -> General -> Spotlight Search.

2) Reduce the amount of mail accounts being fetched to only the ones I needed to be fetched.

3) Try and keep minimal tabs open in Safari i.e. Don't leave all 8 open, keep closing them once you're finished.

4) Reset network settings at least once a month - i've found this also helps when you have no service, it just comes back instantly for me sometimes.

5) Try to use applications that are less resource intensive. This means stay clear of things like Infinity Blade.

6) Try to minimize how many calendars, contacts etc you have syncing.

7) Upgrade to iPhone 3GS/4/4S - they are all faster, the iPhone 3G has a slow processor.

I hope this helps. This really helped me speed my iPhone 3G and make certain applications usable a few years ago.


Transferring an iMovie project with AirDrop gives "Insufficient Space" repeatedly

I think the following is what actually happens when using AirDrop to transfer an iMovie project from one iOS device to another:

The project is transferred from the sending device into an "iTunes" holding area on the receiving device.  (I'm putting "iTunes" in quotes here, because iTunes the desktop app isn't actually involved in this AirDrop process).
The receiving device then copies the project from there into the main iMovie area.

The issue described in the question occurs when there is enough space to complete step (1), but not step (2).

The "iTunes" holding area can be managed, once you understand this and know what to look for.

On the main iMovie screen (which allows selection between Video / Projects / Theatre), there is an arrow-into-box icon.  This is at top left (iPad) or bottom left (iPhone):

Press the arrow-into-box icon and then select the iTunes tab.  This lists the items available in the "iTunes" holding area I described above.

Projects that failed to complete an AirDrop transfer due to a failure at step 2 are listed here.  This is the cause of the repeated lack of space.

Tapping on an item imports it into iMovie (as in step 2 above), if there is enough space.

Tapping the bin icon allows items to be deleted.  Deleting unwanted items should help to free up enough space to resolve the issue.


Xcode will open tiny window but not IDE?

Xcode will usually do this if this style of window is the last to be closed. If this is the case the your window looks like this:

Then it can be fixed simply by doing the following:

And finally select what side bars you want to be visible:


Try with a soft-reset on the device. Settings/General/Reset/Reset All Settings and try again. No data will be lost (other than passwords).


Deleting a podcast on iPod. What will happen the next time I sync?

If you play through the podcast before deleting it - iTunes on the iOS device will record that fact and sync this information to the main library even if you delete the episode before you connect to sync (over USB in iOS4).

The answer to your question depends more on how you have syncing set up. If the episode is still one that would be synced (after whatever play information transfers) - it will reappear again after the sync.

Whether you listen to the episode or not, it won't get deleted on the main library simply because you deleted it from an iOS device. It may get deleted if you have that podcast set to auto delete once you have listened to older episodes, but that is because of the listening and the subsequent sync - not the deleting.


How do I turn off push notifications without turning off notifications in iOS 6?

Go to Settings > Notifications. Scroll down until you find Skype and tap on it. Then you'll be able to set the notification settings for that app without turning notifications off entirely.


On the lookout for an iPad 2 case that integrates a keyboard but doesn't block the camera

Unfortunately, I don't know that a case meeting all of your criteria exists. It might be time to dig out the dremel tool and DIY.

My iPad keyboard solution is to use an inCase Origami Workstation and the Apple Bluetooth Keyboard. I don't carry the keyboard most of the time, but it does go into my bag if I think I'm going to be in a fixed location and do extended writing and when I  travel—where it generally stays in my hotel room for use at the desk. This doesn't meet your strict criteria, but it may be an acceptable compromise.


Incorrect apostrophe character in MS Word 2011 on Mac

After updating OS X to 10.9 and opening Word for the first time since the update I encountered the same problem. I spent half a day testing all the suggestions put forward here and in other forums responding to the same query (including checking autoformat preferences/searching for font duplicates/verifying fonts/testing in new mac user account/repairing permissions etc.) with no luck.

Finally, I deleted the Cambria font from the Font Book and reinstalled again. I reopened Word and tested and the problem seems to have disappeared.

I'm using OS X 10.9 and Word for Mac 2011, v14.3.8.


Media keys Next and Previous don't work in safari

For a test, play a YouTube video in Safari and go to Notification Centre, and find "Now Playing". What the arrow keys do here is what the physical keys would do too. In Safari, they're for fast forward. I don't have chrome, so you can test what they do there.

For Spotify, they are used to skip songs.


Yosemite won't boot in safe mode with Shift held down

Ok, I managed to boot to Safe mode using this:

  Access the command line by either opening Terminal remotely, or by logging into the computer using SSH.

  Use the following Terminal command:

  sudo nvram boot-args="-x"

  If you want to start in Verbose mode as well, use sudo nvram boot-args="-x -v" instead.

  After using Safe Mode, use this Terminal command to return to a normal startup:

  sudo nvram boot-args=""

Yosemite is looking more worrisome by the hour though.


Possible to charge iPhone through other means?

Yes it is possible, but consider the consumption and Costs.

How much electricity does it take to power your iPhone for a year?

The answer: 1 kWh.

This is the amount of electricity you’d need to power ten 100-watt incandescent light-bulbs for an hour.

Far from anything worth being sheepish over, 1 kwh costs about 12 cents.

To be specific, your iPhone battery holds a charge of 1,440 mAh, or about 5.45 watt hours. If you fully drained and recharged your phone everyday, then over the course of a year you would have to feed it about 2,000 watt hours, or 2kWh = 25 Cents per Year.

As for your iPad, keeping it fed costs just $1.36 a year, according to the Electric Power Research Institute.

Your average laptop, with its far bigger screen, uses about 72 kWh, costing some $8 a year.

There is your challenge:

Make a power station that has a ROI such to recover the cost using the 25 cents per Year returns.

Answer: if it cost you $20 to make the power station- it will take about 40 Years before you see benefit.


Yes - anything you do to reduce the number of writes to an SSD will prolong "the life of the drive". Also yes - the memory (RAM disk) is an order of magnitude faster (between 10 to 1000 times as fast based on what exact workload you want to measure) than just the SSD.

Whether you ever get to a point where your SSD fails due to write exhaustion or if something else breaks first (or you sell the device) is hard to estimate even for a statistical group of 1000 machines used in a proscribed manner.

I wouldn't worry about trying to extend my SSD life and instead worry about making the Mac you have work well for the specific tasks you need. The OS already caches much of the filesystem to RAM, so you'll need a very specific workload to do a better job at caching than the OS already does for free. Also, a repair part is not that expensive should you actually wear out that one part before you're done with that computer. Yes, try not to have un-necessary writes and thrashing an SSD, but since Apple designs the SSD to be covered under AppleCare for three years - it's not in their interest to have lots of SSD needing replacement due to them picking a part that won't last long enough in practice.


How do I search Mail.app by country code?

You can make a smart mailbox where "From" "ends with" "ru".


To answer the title of my question

The files are located in /Users/<user>/Library/Caches/com.skype.skype/fsCachedData

If someone knows how to get them out of there automatically, I would still like to know


How do I type a tilde in spanish keyboard?

Using a Spanish keyboard and Spanish keybindings the tilde is altñ. Using English keybindings (System Preferences -> Keyboard -> Input Sources) and a Spanish keyboard it's still altn.
If you immediately enter a / afterwards, you don't need an extra space.

Note: On some keyboards the two alt keys are different. To get the tilde, you may have to use the alt gr key located to the right of the spacebar.


Trying to use a mid 2011 iMac as a display screen for my 2016 MacBookPro

According to Apple you have to press CommandF2 to enter target display mode, not just F2.


How to position a window (e.g. iTunes Mini Player) next to the Dock?

The dock will automatically push windows up above it to avoid the problem of losing windows. This is something that cannot be changed I believe. The only way to get it down that far would be to hide the dock or place the dock on the left/right side.


Catalina: Spotlight can no longer launch many apps

This is a rare situation, but I’ve had great success making a new volume sharing the same APFS container and reinstalling a clean OS in a new volume to validate it’s not your disk that’s failing(failed). It’s not at all unique to Catalina and Catalina works great for spotlight in hundreds of machines we have. We’re seeing fewer spotlight issues compared to older OS in fact.

Back to what you can do - installing a new OS to the same container (to test). I would back up all your important filed before poking anymore, just in case. Once you have that system set up you can let spotlight run on the new OS and convince yourself it’s just that you have corrupt data on the old volume.

Once you know you have a working system, you can run some apps or just run Migration Assistant to bring the files over. If you lack space to have two copies of everything - boot to the old systems and clean / run a Time Machine backup and restore from there (or just erase and install if you already have a backup) knowing things will be fixed.

The commands you list are nice if they work once, but running them several times rarely patches up a system that’s broken in my experience so the sooner you can delete / walk away from the corrupt data / files / filesystem, the better.

If you really need to isolate the failure, I would run mddiagnose and review the files - it’s a ton of work the first 5 to 10 times you try to understand all the diagnostic files - like finding a needle in a haystack, but most failures can be identified from the diagnostic output.


Dual login Windows and OSX on an Apple computer (not dual boot)

I suspect it was a dual boot set up. This can be done via refit and would show a screen like this

You then get taken to the Windows or OS X login - but for both of these you can make this auto login so the process does not stop here and you go in as a user. In OS X probably as the guest user and I think this can be done on windows as well


How to restore the Terminal mail program to default settings

There must be two files main.cf.default and master.cf.default which you can use to overwrite the messed up ones, thus resetting them to the distribution default values.

cp /etc/postfix/main.cf.default /etc/postfix/main.cf
cp /etc/postfix/master.cf.default /etc/postfix/master.cf

If you can't find the default ones, you may try to copy them from another computer.

Also, you may type postconf -d which will print main.cf default parameter settings instead of actual settings.  Specify -df to fold long lines for human readability (Postfix 2.9 and later). Read more here.


Why is my iPad causing WiFi interference?

I doubt highly that it is the iPad causing interference. What I could expect is that the base station at your friends place can't keep up with all the wireless devices at once. If the TV is using 802.11g as are the other devices that disappear and then your iPad using 802.11n then the base station might crap out. Have seen a few similar cases before.

Additionally some base stations have limitations, example older AirPort Expresses could manage 5 or 10 clients. Once an 11th device comes into the network then a device or two or more might be kicked out because of the DHCP TTL time out. Going static with your IP address won't fix this, only a better base station, eg. the newer Express or Extreme.


If you allowed a profile to be set on your device, you will need to also remove that profile.
Settings -> General -> Profiles
If you set up Outlook, then you can remove the account from Outlook, that should remove their ability to manage your device.


Eclipse 4.2 on Mountain Lion: gatekeeper rejects as unidentified developer?

disable Gatekeeper ("Allow applications downloaded from: Anywhere")
run Eclipse once
reset Gatekeeper to a more strict level ("Mac Store and identified developers".)

Doing this has allowed me to start Davmail, also a Java app, after Mountain Lion initially claimed the binary was corrupt ("App is damaged and can’t be opened" error message) even when back on the stricter level.

Another option, as mentioned in John Siracusa's excellent review, is to do the following from the Terminal:

% xattr -d com.apple.quarantine /path/to/Eclipse.app

I have not (yet) personally tested this but John's a solid source.


Disable double-click to maximize in OS X Yosemite

While I haven't found a way to turn it off completely, you can make it minimize instead by enabling:

  System Preferences > Dock > Double-click a window's title bar to minimize.


Google Calendar Notification not making any sound on iPhone 6

Try either turning your sound all the way up or actually turning on your ringer for your phone.

If that doesn't work, go into your settings and make sure that the ringers sound is all the way up and see if that works.


win7 on macbook pro: is it safe to delete osx partition?

answering to myself: yes it is safe
source: own experience


How to gift an Apple TV show to someone else (living under Windows)?

Apple has documented the various ways to access TV+ on https://support.apple.com/guide/tvplus/welcome/web.

On a Windows PC (including Microsoft Surface), Chrome OS device, or Android device, you can watch Apple TV+ in the Chrome and Firefox web browsers.
Go to tv.apple.com to subscribe to and watch Apple TV+ in a web browser.


Why can't I create an IMAP folder in Mail?

You need to add these folders in your IMAP mail account.

If for example you are using Gmail login, and create the folders you want using the webmail settings panel.

When you next launch mail the folders will be there and you can then drag and drop emails into folders, etc.

Outlook doesnt create the folders in IMAP it creates them on the machine, so they are not true IMAP folders they are just folders in Outlook.


If I turn on FileVault for a TimeMachine drive, are previous backups encrypted

FileVault itself does not encrypt TimeMachine backups at all. But you can specify TimeMachine encryption separately under the TimeMachine options. All contents on the disk should be encrypted then.


How can I completely uninstall Xcode in macOS Mojave 10.14?

What finally solved the problem for me was to download and install the Command Line Tools as well as Xcode (in that order) from the Apple developer site.
After the next reboot, the Mac App Store recognised Xcode as not installed and all standard libraries and compilers were available again (which was not quite the case with Command Line Tools only).


Can a Netgear ReadyNAS be used as a Time Machine Backup Destination?

To use the Time Machine Server function in Lion Server, you'll need to use a built in drive. As long as the NAS is able to be seen on your network, you should be able to use it as a Time Machine backup destination on each client Mac. While you won't be able to configure this for all machines at once in WorkGroup Manager, you should still be able to set up each client Mac to back up to the NAS.


How do I view a song's composer on my iPod touch?

There's a small app you can find here

Don't worry, it's all Japanese. But the app works really fine and reads all (!) ID3 tags of the current song playing.

Since I am listening preferably to classical music, too, I hate iTunes non-existent ability to show all relevant tag information.


Anyone gotten 10.7.2 to bind properly to Active Directory in a multi-domain environment?

MacWindows has a lot of good feedback about this issue.  In my own testing I've found that 10.7.3 has certainly improved network logins on AD2003-bound Macs, though its still not as reliable (or fast) as I'd like.

As always, contact your SE and leave feedback about your issues.


I was able to get this to work on 10.11.1 by adding a new key to the Preview.app plist.

  PVPDFSuppressSidebarOnOpening

You can use the defaults write command to do this in Terminal.

cd ~/Library/Containers/com.apple.Preview/Data/Library/Preferences/

defaults write com.apple.Preview PVPDFSuppressSidebarOnOpening true


Is there a free temperature monitor program that works on a 2014 Retina MBP?

It is not really an app, but there is a Widget for on your Dashboard that can display diagnostics information like the temperature. One of them I personally prefer is iStat Pro, you can find it on Softonic (the official site is offline). Hit the large green "Descargar Gratis" (Free Download) button and right-click > open the file from your downloads folder. It will be installed in your Dashboard, where it will show temperatures by default. Confirmed by me to work on the latest (late 2013) 15" rMBP.


How do I move to the beginning of text in a line, not to the beginning of line?

From the online OS X: Keyboard shortcuts page @ http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1343z:

Command+ ▶ Move the text insertion point to the end of the current line
Command+ ◀ Move the text insertion point to the beginning of the current line
Command+ ▼ Move the text insertion point to the end of the document
Command+ ▲  Move the text insertion point to the beginning of the document
Option+ ▶  Move the text insertion point to the end of the next word
Option+ ◀  Move the text insertion point to the beginning of the previous word

with the ◀ icons being the arrow keys on full sized keyboard. Happy typing.


That's not a battery problem unless it powers off while you are trying to connect it to a computer / powered USB hub to try and pack up the photos.

Taking it to Apple for service won't get the data back as they erase the device if it gets swapped. If the battery indicator is not showing, it could be a bad battery (even some new parts are DOA), the connectors failing or the control circuitry on the main board is faulty.

Worst case, get a quote from a data recovery service and understand if they charge if they cannot get back what you want. Be careful - some say if any data is recovered - be sure to specify you only want photos if that's what you're considering paying for.

If you have a Mac - check out PhoneView to restore the photos. There are lots of other apps, you can search them here for specifics but you might have passed the window where you can get the photos back.


Reliability of cheaper RAM like Komputerbay, or unbranded?

I have used RAM from "tier 1" vendors, as well as from "value" vendors like the ones that you've mentioned. I've had very few sticks "go bad over time" or "just die", but I tend to buy DIMMs (dual in-line memory module) appropriate for the application.

This last bit is key: RAM from a vendor who manufactures a quality product (good solder joints, board integrity, etc.) typically has problems when used outside of its intended parameters, generally defined by inconsistencies in speed, timing, and latency (the gap of time between when the computer attempts to read/write/act on the RAM and the resulting change).

You can install slower RAM in a faster computer. In fact, many computers tend to run slower, adjusting themselves to the RAM's timing. If you overclock any part of the system (processor, RAM, video card, etc.), the component needs to handle the additional thermal demand placed on it. RAM that cannot dissipate heat effectively enough will eventually have future problems, as the continual exposure to too much heat causes some parts to melt or degrade.

Just because "Vendor X" has RAM priced at an absurdly low (or high!) price doesn't mean that it's a good deal. Just make sure the RAM meets your system's requirements. As @lupincho's comment states, using the vendor's "configurator" will get you the appropriate components for your system, and a much greater chance the vendor will stand behind their warranty.


How do I update the FileVault 2 recovery key stored in iCloud?

According to Apple's [documentation on Filevault 2] (https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT4790) (emphasis added by me)

  Changing your recovery key

  In the Security & Privacy system preference, under the FileVault tab, click "Turn Off FileVault" to disable FileVault. After FileVault is off, FileVault will begin to decrypt your drive. Once decryption is complete, you can click the "Turn On FileVault" button. Doing this allows you to enable unlock-capable users. You're also provided with a new recovery key and have the option of sending this new key to Apple. The old key sent to Apple will not be able to unlock your newly-encrypted disk. If you need to retrieve your recovery key from Apple, only the new one will be retrieved based on the Serial Number and Record Number displayed in the login window.

I think that this might be your answer.


How can I set up a virtual machine on my MacBook Pro?

You could try VirtualBox.

From its webpage :

VirtualBox is a powerful x86 and AMD64/Intel64 virtualization product for enterprise as well as home use. Not only is VirtualBox an extremely feature rich, high performance product for enterprise customers, it is also the only professional solution that is freely available as Open Source Software under the terms of the GNU General Public License (GPL).

Presently, VirtualBox runs on Windows, Linux, Macintosh and OpenSolaris hosts and supports a large number of guest operating systems including but not limited to Windows (NT 4.0, 2000, XP, Server 2003, Vista, Windows 7), DOS/Windows 3.x, Linux (2.4 and 2.6), Solaris and OpenSolaris, and OpenBSD.

VirtualBox is being actively developed with frequent releases and has an ever growing list of features, supported guest operating systems and platforms it runs on. VirtualBox is a community effort backed by a dedicated company: everyone is encouraged to contribute while Sun ensures the product always meets professional quality criteria.

I'm using it since I realise I didn't have to pay for having a good virtualization software on Mac OS X.

I can tell you it works really well, it's easy to setup and very stable.


iMovie for iOS

iMovie for iOS will let you record sound using the voiceover tool and overlay this on media in your timeline, such as pictures imported from your camera roll, Photo Stream or imported pictures.

  Add background music, sound effects, and voiceover narration to your movie. And with new advanced audio tools, you can trim, split, duplicate, and reposition audio anywhere in the timeline.


FaceTime and iMessage - an error occurred during activation

Found this apple support article covering this exact error: - https://support.apple.com/en-gb/HT201422

  Check your device settings

  Make sure that you’re connected to a cellular data or Wi-Fi network. If you're using an iPhone, you need SMS
  messaging to activate your phone number with iMessage and FaceTime.
  Depending on your carrier, you might be charged for this SMS.
  Go to Settings > General > Date & Time and make sure that your time zone is set correctly.

  ￼
  Turn off and restart iMessage and FaceTime

  Go to Settings > Messages and turn off iMessage.

  Go to Settings > FaceTime and turn off FaceTime.

  Restart your device.

  Turn iMessage and FaceTime back on.

  ￼
  Still not activated after a day? It might take up to 24 hours to activate iMessage and FaceTime. If the issue continues after 24 hours,
  follow these steps:

  Make sure that your device has the latest version of iOS.

  If you're using an iPhone, contact your carrier to make sure that you
  can receive SMS messages.

  Contact Apple Support.

It has the links to support once you've ruled out the easy things like a setting on your Mac. They can help if your network connection isn't reaching Apple's servers or if there's an issue with your account on the server side.


GUI applications installed with homebrew cannot be launched using Spotlight

There are many workarounds for this,

you can copy Emacs and MacVim direclty to your /Applications folder : cp -r /usr/local/opt/emacs/Emacs.app /Applications/ and cp -r /usr/local/opt/macvim/MacVim.app /Applications/.
You can run sudo chflags nohidden /usr, /usr folder is flagged as hidden but not /opt, this command will unhide /usr so that Spotlight could index it (Spotlight doesn't index hidden directories).
You can also make a shell script and appify it

#!/bin/bash
open /usr/local/opt/emacs/Emacs.app

There is also an option in homebrew , I've not tested it personnaly, that fixes this issue : brew linkapps --system, you can remove --system if you want brew to link your.app to ~/Applications instead of /Applications


Delaying spotlight indexing to avoid the fan noise

To turn off Spotlight indexing for all mounted volumes:

sudo mdutil -a -i off

See the mdutil man page for other options.


Can I cmd-F and click a highlighted link in Safari (or something similar) without a mouse?


Cmd + PgUp/Down shortcut to navigate through terminal tabs

Update:
The answer now reassigns Scroll to Top/Bottom to ⌥⌘PageUp and ⌥⌘PageDown.
This leaves Show Previous/Next Tab free to take over ⌘PageUp and ⌘PageDown.

Assuming your OS X runs in English, you can use this one-liner:

defaults write com.apple.Terminal NSUserKeyEquivalents -dict-add 'Scroll to Top' '~@\Uf72c' 'Scroll to Bottom' '~@\Uf72d' 'Show Previous Tab' '@\Uf72c' 'Show Next Tab' '@\Uf72d'

If your OS X runs in a language other than English, modify the command to resemble the exact menu item text for your language.


How do I download all PNGs on a page with iOS Workflow?

What a hot mess... I ended up using a number of "Get Component of URL" steps to extract the scheme and host from the Workflow Input and the path from the links to PNGs on the page (these were the ones showing as applewebdata://).

Once I had the parts of the URL to download, it went something like this

Get Contents of URL
|> Get Component of URL; Scheme
|> Save Variable 'Scheme'
<Input>
|> Get Component of URL; Host
|> Save Variable 'Host'
<Input>
|> Get URLs from Input
|> Repeat with Each
   |> If Input Contains '.PNG'
   |> Get Component of URL; Path
   |> URL <Scheme>://<Host>/<Path>
   |> Get Contents of URL
   |> Add to Variable 'Pages'
|> Pages
|> Filter Images; Sort by Name A to Z; File Type 'PNG'
|> Make PDF
|> Set Name <input.Name>
|> Quick Look
|> Save File

It seems like, if I didn't have to break down into procedural steps to extract and recombine a usable URL, I could have written a much cleaner simpler pipeline. Something like

Get Contents of URL
|> Get URLs from Input
|> Get Contents of URL
|> Get Images from Input
|> Filter Images; Sort by Name A to Z
|> Make PDF
|> Set Name <input.Name>
|> Quick Look
|> Save File


How often does Google Notifier check for email?

I believe by default it checks every ten minutes.  To adjust the interval, click on the mail icon, then hold down the Command and Option keys and click on Preferences.
A box will pop up asking for a key and value. Use AutocheckInterval as the key and type the number of minutes in the value box.  Then click Set and you're done.  You need to restart it for the change to take effect.

NOTE: AutocheckInterval is case-sensitive

You can also do the following in Terminal

defaults write com.google.GmailNotifier AutocheckInterval #

Replace the # above with a number to represent minutes between checks


Using screencapture when remotely logged in to a headless mac via ssh

I'm not sure if this will work, but, it's worth a shot...

What is you create an Automator script to take a screen capture, and then run that using the terminal?

Similar to what is described in this TUAW article, however, without the part that mails the screen capture to you.

Save the Automator script as an application, SSH in, and run open /path/to/the/automator.app


Can an iPhone be restored from an iPod Touch backup?

According to this forums post, somebody did it with success.

  Worked flawlessly for me
  I just activated my new iPhone 3GS and then iTunes offered to either set it up as a new iPhone or to restore it from my iPod Touch backup which I did. No problems so far...


How to proceed with iOS set up without Wi-Fi network?

Yes, you can, set it as a new iPhone or restore your contents from iTunes backup in your computer by tethering your iPhone with iTunes.


How can I turn off the gamed service or more generally, any service?

Specifically for the gamed service, the following command in one of the posts about a similar topic on the Apple Support Communities worked for me, without any need to modify plists or rename files:

sudo defaults write /System/Library/LaunchAgents/com.apple.gamed disabled -bool true

Changing "true" back to "false" will re-enable it, although I've not tried it.


I discovered that bouncing airport (Disable/Enable on Air Port Icon in the top right) resolved the issue temporarily.

Eventually I tried a PRAM reset and that seems to have fixed the problem for good.

Would have loved to understand the root cause though ...

There is a collection of fixes on reddit here, that people with similar issues might like to try: http://www.reddit.com/r/apple/comments/2jwah7/psa_yosemite_wifi_issues_list_of_possible_fixes/


Software Update doesn't show available updates

This sometimes helps me when I know that there is an update: Cmd-R. Since the iTunes/iBooks/Mac App Store are all web-based, it forces a refresh.

Your problem sounds more systemic than this, but it’s a quick thing to check (especially for those Java OS X update which hide from me sometimes).


How can I set up a local mail server on Lion?

Lion Server isn't released as a separate OS anymore, so if you're concerned about having to upgrade your entire OS, that isn't necessary. The server programs are distributed as an add-on to a regular Lion install, for $50, through the App Store.

There are also ways to do this for free. Being somewhat unfamiliar with running email services on MacOS myself, I would probably just configure a Linux VM and run it in Parallels (or Virtualbox if you don't have it already). A quick google search also reveals that there are a bunch of other options too, such as http://cutedgesystems.com/software/MailServeForLion/


iPhone 4s leaking weird substance, has 2 small shadow bumps on the side of screen, and is getting hot very quickly

Internal pressure is almost certainly a safety issue and battery failure mode. Same for anything leaking out. Even if the substance entered the phone and not something decomposing from the materials made into the phone, you don't want electrical shorts or anything leaving the case of an iPhone.

Think potential fire hazard if the battery is swelling or leaking and get the hardware to someone that is qualified to diagnose a failing battery and physical damage. Call Apple if you can't take it to someone for service. 1-800-APL-CARE

Do not charge it or connect to any USB - I would power it off immediately from the description you have listed.

You can also get safety information from: http://www.apple.com/us/search/iphone-safety?find=iphone+safety and select Support to narrow the results to specific hardware safety and manual download instructions.

Once you have some guidance, you might power it on one more time to perform a backup if you don't have a recent one. Again, don't leave it unattended until you're sure it's stable and working correctly. If you can't get it cooled, consider calling for help - local fire department if needed.


I find that's Apple Safari behaviour.It use iPhone UA to get Mobile Webpage,that have Apple Touch Icon in link rel.


How to clean speaker hole on macbook pro

I would suggest you clean it from the back if you can open it to get there. If not, I would take something like a toothpick and put a piece of tissue on the end and inert in each hole in the cover being careful not to have dirt fall off inside. Probably doesn't matter if it does but I'd still be careful. I just counted the holes in the picture and there are about 1450 just in the picture with approximately 40 that are blocked. That works out to less than 3%. You can use this to determine if you wish to pursue this.


The Mail.app stores all Messages in your User Directory:

~/Library/Mail/

Depending on your OS Version there is a Subfolder, f.e. "V3" for 10.11 and "V2" for 10.10., containing Subfolders for each Mailbox.

The Library Folder is usually hidden, but you can access it in the Finder from the Menu "Go to" > "Go to Folder" (or CMD+SHIFT+G) and typing in the Path listed above.


I use the Belkin Bluetooth receiver to stream music to the speakers connected to my older Core Duo mini with the free LineIn by Rogue Amoeba. I've not worked out getting microphone input to the iPhone but am guessing it's might not be possible.


Can you restrict Command + Tilde (CMD + ~) in El Capitan to switch between only windows on the same desktop?

I think this behavior is fixed in the new update 10.11.1. I tried it on both explorer and chrome on the same desktop and it switches to the other windows as expected.


Can I control window size and position when opening files via script?

Having a look at the man page for open, it doesn't seem to allow it, but you can use applescript to resize and position windows:

tell application "Finder" to set the bounds of window 1 to {325, 465, 1095, 926}

The numbers are the coordinates in pixels of the top left and bottom right of the the window:

top left corner x
top left corner y
bottom right corner x
bottom right corner y

If you set the windows as you like them, you can use applescript to tell you the current bounds:

tell application "Finder" to get the bounds of window 1

The window numbers are assigned going from front to back, starting at 1.

If you prefer, you can also refer to windows by name instead of id, though this won't work if the name of the window is different every time:

tell application "Finder" to get the name of window 1
tell application "Finder" to set the bounds of window "name" to {325, 465, 1095, 926}

Update: Coordinates for multiple monitors behave as though a single large display were present.


Your question is basically:

  “Is it possible to use R on an iPad?”

And the answer to that is a simple:

No.

While you are well intentioned in your post, from a basic operating system there is no way you can program on any iOS device since you won’t be able to ever selfie-install tools or get to the command line to install R to begin with.

Some might say you could do this by using the iPad to remotely connect to another machine—such as a MacBook or a Mac mini and such—but that is really not a solution. You would simply be remotely accessing a real computer in a kludgy way. If you want to use R, you need a real macOS computer… Or Windows… But you asked for Mac so I will say… Mac.


Not sure why you're always seeing them -- I don't, even with hidden files enabled -- but they're the root directories commonly used by the automounter when you connect your Mac to an NFS network (which generally means a Unix/Linux network). Users' home directories are usually mounted under /home, and other shared filesystems under /net.


Encryption of Time Machine backup disk taking several days

Regarding your first question, it is hard to say exactly "why" it is slow. There's multiple factors involved - obviously reading in and writing out 6 TB of data from an external hard drive is going to take some time. If we say your drive does 100 MB/s (which might be very optimistic for some drives if we're looking at small transfers), then that alone takes approx. 18 hours.

Add to that the time needed to encrypt and validate the data as well as overhead. I doubt that the process is optimized for taking the shortest time - rather it is optimized to affect the rest of the system the least, so that you can keep working on your computer while it runs.

Regarding your second question: No, it does not first write the files unencrypted and then encrypts them afterwards. The files are written to disk in encrypted form.  However, you should note that when you encrypt the drive, you're not only encrypting the files you transfer to it right now, but all the blocks on the drive (used or non-used for your data).


Will macOS High Sierra support my iMac's 500 GB SATA internal physical drive?

Yes, while APFS is optimized for SSDs you can still use it for HDDs as well.

Installing macOS High Sierra on a HDD installation of macOS Sierra won't prompt you to convert it to APFS, though.

See this quote from Apple.com:

  Can I use Apple File System with my existing hard disk drive?

  Yes. Apple File System is optimized for Flash/SSD storage, but can
  also be used with traditional hard disk drives (HDD) and external,
  direct-attached storage.


How to mount a DMG image created with dd?

I've gotten shafted doing a similar rescue using dd. I doubt this will help, but it's worth a shot: How to Repair DMG Files. Another comment on there reported success opening a problematic dd created image using filesavage, seems kinda dated and pricey for a maybe.

I don't know if your drive is still alive or not, if you can do another rescue run with different software, that would probably be your best bet.

In the comments on the webpage you linked to, there were suggestions of using ddrescue, a worthwhile read here before you go down that road and it might explain why your (and my) dd backup did not work.

You can easily install the current version of ddrescue if you have macports installed sudo port install ddrescue. Failing that, If you have xcode installed, it's trivial to download the latest source code, browse to download in terminal, extract lzip -dc /PathTo/ddrescue.tar.lz | tar -x, cd to extracted ddrescue directory, then make and sudo make install. If not, another alternative is the this ddrescue-gui that I came across, it has ddrescue bundled within the application, you'll want to download the .dmg version. This might be an easy way to go, but you lose the power of log files (you can merge multiple partial recovered images).

I've used testdisk/photorec in the past with some success, it got some of my files but not all of them, and it was not organized at all by the way, many duplicates. I'd try ddrescue or ddrescue-gui out if I were you, if you want to do the free & command line route. As always, read the manual, it's got some good practices as far as best recovery practices. Dated Mac OSX hints entry

Seek and ye shall find. Best of luck, let me know if you need help with anything.


Can you change the text background color in TextEdit


How do I get music labeled under "various artists" to appear under the artist themselves?

Besides the Compilation checkbox, look under the Sorting tab.  The songs are probably configured with sort artist as "various artist".  Clear that field for all of the tracks and they will default back to the appropriate artist value.


Software recommendations for projector titles/slides and simple visual effects at an event

You can do this in either Keynote or Powerpoint by building a simple menu system in a master slide. Simplest is to build a menu slide that will hold all the content you want to target and jump to. Then make a link back to this main menu slide on the master of all your slides. You can make it visible or quite small. Your choice.

In Keynote the main menu slide is done via Insert > Text Hyperlink.
In Powerpoint you have far greater capability with macros, but can easily jump to a slide in the same way.

I believe macros can be linked to text or graphics (button) where with Keynote, it's a text link.


Photo Delete from PC but not from iphone

If you have an iCloud account and have My Photo Stream enabled they should sync right to your iCloud.


New to OS X - Why does pressing the red X close some windows, and minimize others?

Mac OS has always had a multiple document interface. Applications like TextEdit can have multiple main windows open without requiring multiple instances. The open command doesn't usually open documents over the current document.
The close button might also quit the application after closing the last window like on Windows. But what if you want to create a new document? Many applications create an untitled document on startup. Should closing it quit the application?
There's no real harm in keeping applications running in the background. They don't usually use CPU, and you should have enough free or inactive memory anyway. Quitting and opening applications all the time would take more time. OS X has also supported automatic termination since 10.7.

Automatic termination eliminates the need for users to quit an app. Instead, the system manages app termination transparently behind the scenes, terminating apps that are not in use to reclaim needed resources such as memory.
[...]
Automatic termination transfers the job of managing processes from the user to the system, which is better equipped to handle the job. Users do not need to manage processes manually anyway. All they really need is to run apps and have those apps available when they need them. Automatic termination makes that possible while ensuring that system performance is not adversely affected.
Apps must opt in to both automatic termination and sudden termination and implement appropriate support for them.

The close button does actually quit some applications with a single main window, like Dictionary, System Preferences, and Calculator. Opening them again doesn't take that long and quitting them frees users from having to do it manually.


Not sure why you think it's SATA2. According to everything I read, the mid-2011 Mini is SATA3

http://www.everymac.com/systems/apple/mac_mini/specs/mac-mini-core-i5-2.5-mid-2011-specs.html

There are considerations related to garbage collection related to the SSD controller. The safest choice is a OWC Mercury from macsales.com since they are intended for Macs. Others may require installing a 3rd-party TRIM enabling utility.


How do you cope with tons of web fonts when copying and pasting from web pages?

Most people I know set the paste shortcut to invoke paste and match style. Here is the command to change:

You can paste with style when you really want it, but for me 95% of the time I don’t want the style and only the raw text.

Open System Preferences
Select Keyboard
Go to the Shortcuts tab
Select App Shortcuts
Select the + button
Type Paste and Match Style into the Menu Title field
Select the Keyboard Shortcut field
Enter ⌘V as the shortcut.

You can then have another shortcut for the “normal” paste that includes styled text when desired. (Or just click paste on the rare occasions you want that.)


Mac Mini with OS X Server v. a dedicated NAS

The question is a bit vague, but having generally considered this idea myself here are some equally vague thoughts...

Disk Capacity

With a NAS you're (generally) limited to N drives, where N is the number of bays. So a 4-bay NAS will never go beyond 4 physical drives (There may be some NASes that allow external drives, I don't know of any though).

Your Mac Mini solution (thanks to daisy-chaining Thunderbolt enclosures) will be expandable to as many drives as you like (pretty much).

In general, I'd suggest this isn't a huge advantage for the Mac Mini as it may seem at first, because unless you're doing something unique, you'll probably only want a few drives anyway, and will probably end up swapping them out for larger drives later on, rather than continually adding extra drives on. After all, you probably won't want really old drives in there (they'll eventually fail, and be slow, and less power efficient, etc), so replacement after a few years seems likely.

Some years ago I built a desktop-case based NAS with 4, then 5, then 6, then 7 drives... and a very convoluted setup to let me use all the space on all of them for a RAID device. I'm now back to 3 drives and wouldn't trust the old 320-750 GB drives anymore, even if I had space for a 7-disk NAS. A 2TB disk isn't that expensive, and covers 2-6 times the capacity of my old drives, so just 2x2TB drives is as much space as I had in my 7-disk NAS 4 years ago, and much easier to deal with!

Also, if you're planning to use RAID, you'll want to have similar if not identical drives, even if your RAID system supports mixed disks. Fewer things tend to go wrong with simpler setups. So plan for complete replacement of all disks after 2-4 years.

Ease of Configuration / Re-configuration

This kind of depends on how you want to set it up, but both Mac OS X and the firmware on NAS devices make it pretty easy to configure and reconfigure disks.

Most NASes have a web-based admin/setup, while OS X obviously will require you to log in with keyboard/monitor or some kind of remote desktop thingy.

Some NASes will let you use mixed disks, while most will treat all disks as if they were as big as the smallest in the set. Mac OS X, like most 2- to 4-disk NASes supports RAID0 and RAID1, and also a concatenated. Some NAS devices, especially if they're 5+ disks, will allow RAID5, RAID6, RAID1+0, etc. I've not used the MAC OS X RAID software enough to know how it handles mixed disks.

Quite a few NAS devices will let you expand a RAID array without losing any data, either by adding an extra disk or by replacing the disks in the array. Almost none support reducing the total size or number of disks in the array. I suspect this is the same for Mac OS X's RAID implementation.

Many NASes actually won't let you treat each disk individually, which Mac OS X will, so if you want to just have a collection of disks you can plug in, each independently, with different data shared on each, it might actually be advantageous to use the Mac Mini. Though with a headless machine and daisy-chaining of drives this won't be totally straight-forward.

The RAID performance of a Mac Mini will not be as high as a hardware RAID chip, though these days its not too different. In any case, for network read/write speeds the limiting factor will be the network and protocol (AFP/Samba/etc) rather than the physical disk speeds. I think its safe to assume you're not after super high performance given you're looking at a Mac Mini vs consumer-grade NAS devices.

Power

The Mac Mini itself is very low power, as are many NAS devices. They're pretty much all based on laptop-style chipsets for low power usage. I think the main difference you'll see is in the external enclosures if you go the Mac Mini route. Each thunderbolt enclosure will likely have its own power supply/converter, and will likely use more power than the equivalent disk in a purpose-built NAS. All I can really say is check the specs of what you're after, because some disk enclosures I've used in the past have awfully inefficient (really hot) power supplies, using much more power than the other more efficient ones. This can add up to quite a bit of extra heat + electrical costs in the long run.

If power consumption/cost is a concern, you might want to consider 2.5" laptop drives, which use less power, and can often be "bus-powered" rather than needing their own external power supply (though I don't know how far you'll get with Thunderbolt).

Most NASes as well as the Mac Mini support putting drives to sleep when they're not in use, so will run at a lower power level when idle.

Neatness

May or may not bother you (or, quite importantly, other people you live with!), but imagine a nice simple box with only power and network cords (ie the NAS), compared to a mac mini + 2 or more external hard drive enclosures, each with their own power supplies + cable connecting them to the Mac Mini, on top of its power + network cords... or just power if you're using wifi). And an extra power board to plug in all those power adaptors. It might not be so bad for 1-2 bus-powered drives, but will get pretty messy if you're using big desktop-sized drives with external power and lots of daisy-chaining... If you live with others, as I do, they may have strong opinions about which option is better ;)

Future Proof-ness

The only real difference in future-proof-ness that I could think of was the SATA interface for the drives. Pretty much every NAS uses SATA drives, while the Mac Mini is using a Thunderbolt (or USB3) interface, so you will probably be able to replace your enclosures if/when SATA gets replaced by the next big thing. Honestly I wouldn't worry about this too much unless you really need this one specific piece of hardware to last 5+ years.

Thunderbolt may provide improved network speeds in the future, if/when you switch to a  10Gbps LAN, if you get a 10gbps thunderbolt/lan adaptor when such things exist. Again, depends how willing you are to fork out for a whole new NAS, rather than just an adaptor, if/when that actually becomes a problem.

Extra Features

The Mac Mini is a whole computer, so you can run anything on it you could run on a normal computer. That gives it a second life if your needs change later on, or a dual-life if you hook it up to your TV or something, rather than running it headless.

Most NASes can run some limited set of software, usually multimedia applications for network streaming of photos/video/music. The Mac Mini can do all that of course, and more, but the basics are definitely there for most NAS devices (e.g. DLNA media streaming, or as the network store for other media centres).

Final Thoughts

I think the main differences between a dedicated NAS device and a Mac Mini will be

The Mac Mini is

More re-usable (because it's a computer in its own right — either now, or after you replace it with the next NAS!)

The NAS is (probably)

Cheaper (add up all the costs, including delivery, of all parts you'd need for each configuration)
Neater/tidier (all drives are internal)

Both will be

More than capable of sharing several TB of disk space at gigabit speeds
Able to run a few extra services if you want (multimedia, streaming, network utilities)
Able to be set up easily, and reconfigured for drive changes/replacements/extensions
Easy to check status, health, etc
Low power usage
Quiet


What is this invisible character icon in Pages?

According to Apple's official documentation, that symbol denotes a layout break.

These allow you to change the layout anywhere on the page (for example, a one-column title then a two-column title).

The reason you can't remove it is because it's part of the layout of the document. You could try applying a default style to the text that is part of the layout break (such as "body text").