How can I make autocomplete in the shell work with case-folding?

You can do that by typing the following command in the terminal:

echo 'set completion-ignore-case On' >> ~/.inputrc

if you want to go back to the original behavior you have the open that file and remove the line.

The file ~/.inputrc file deals with mapping the keyboard for specific situations. This file is the start-up file used by Readline, the input-related library used by Bash, perl and most other open source programs.

  The configuration options in .inputrc are particularly useful for
  customising the way Tab-completion works, e.g. with the ls command

  When a program which uses the Readline library starts up, the init
  file is read, and the key bindings are set.

You can find more information about the file syntax in "Bash startup files".


Seeking script to add to my automator service to make it reveal newly created item in finder

I figured it out for myself in the end - perhaps this will be useful to others :)
I added these lines to my code and they work - they reveal the newly created screen shot highlited in Finder:

tell application "Finder" to activate
tell application "Finder" to reveal the last file

I am aware there is probably a cleaner code to do all of this and if you feel like advising me on that, please do not hold back - I am keen to learn more :)
Thank you!


Cannot start MySQL server with AppleScript - Snow Leopard

PROBLEM SOLVED!

I found the way around it. Just create an AppleScript with sudo inside for mysql server startup

do shell script "apachectl start" password "mypassword" with administrator privileges
do shell script "sudo /usr/local/mysql/bin/mysqld_safe > /dev/null 2>&1 &" password "mypassword" with administrator privileges


I have received a response from Apple Support:

  I talked to VPN Engineering about your goals and, alas, what you’re
  trying to do is just not possible. We specifically prevent traffic
  from a VPN provider from going through some other VPN interface, so
  your per-app VPN provider — be it a packet tunnel provider or an app
  proxy provider — won’t be able to route traffic over the IKEv2 VPN
  interface.

As of iOS11, this is not currently possible.


What's happens to credit in the non-Organizer account when you turn on Family Sharing?

Yes. Gift balances are preserved.

In fact, I use a gift balance to avoid charging the family organizer for my primary Apple ID. I want to pay for my apps and be part of the family to share apps and calendars and reminders easily.

This lets me use my Credit Card to buy gift cards (usually at a substantial discount from Costco) and/or use Apple Pay and Passbook to load my store credit at Apple Retail Stores without needing a physical gift card at all.


Is Mac OS X Server 10.6 upgradeable to latest Desktop OS X (without Sever.app)

Once all the updates have been installed and OS X 10.6.8 is installed the App Store suggest to upgrade to OS X 10.11.6.

Therefore, it plays no role whether it is an OS X servers or a "normal" OS X.
As soon as it is 10.6.8, it is eligible to upgrade.


you can't select the frequency that you connect to any specific router to unless you have access to the router.

It's like (literally) "can I access my favorite radio station on 88.5 instead of 102.7?" It is the base station that determines the frequency (channel) it transmits/receives at.


My trackpad is collapsing in the front. Is it possible to reseat it?

I had this same thing happen to my 2009 Macbook a few years ago. I was outside of the warranty and AppleCare. Amazingly, I think I found the original YouTube video I used to fix it HERE. I recall parts being around $50 to do it myself. Also of note is THIS thread on MacRumors. It seems to indicate that, back in 2011, Apple may have fixed the trackpad for $100-200. When I had issues with my trackpad, it was because my wrist was laying on it when I typed and I damaged the trackpad. If you read THIS article in the Apple Support Communities, some people reported trackpad issues with battery swelling. Some people have reported getting the swollen battery replaced by Apple for free. It may be wise to take it to Apple and have them give you a diagnosis and a price quote before fixing it yourself like I did. I think I just got lucky that it was just the trackpad.


Does pressing the Force touch trackpad hard damage it?

The force trackpad is a piece of glass that doesn't move, but provides feedback based on where your fingers are using motors. Cleaning it with the damp cloth probably confused it as to where your fingers were, providing strange feedback until it dried a little.

But yes, really pushing your trackpad really hard could hurt it just like pushing on a piece of glass really hard can break it, but that seems unlikely given the strength of the glass.

As a fun experiment, shutdown your mac while clicking on the trackpad. You can tell when it shuts down completely because the trackpad stops clicking.


How to make iPhone charge over USB cable when locked?

Fixed.

Go into the security settings (Settings -> Touch ID and Passcode), and enable the "USB Accessories" switch (it should be green with the virtual switch-button to the right). This enables charging off any connection while locked.

Unfortunately this also disables the privacy/security feature that thwarts hacktools with physical access, so if you enable the USB Accessories option you will want to take extra precautions to prevent unauthorized physical device access and refrain from plugging into dodgy machines.


Encrypted APFS drive will not mount, RepairVolume reports disk OK

Rather than using diskutil RepairVolume, which runs fsck_apfs -y, let's first see whether the APFS container has any issues with fsck_apfs -n. That is, please share the output of fsck_apfs -n /dev/disk2s2. This will run fsck on your APFS container, answering "no" to all questions (rather than -y, which answers "yes" to all).

Doing so will probably provide the same output as you have already provided, but should at least get you past the progress bar you're seeing, in case there are any further issues that fsck might report.


macOS compiled binary runs in build folder, but reports killed: 9 when moved to /usr/local/bin

This was caused by kernel caching of previously signed binaries and my replacing those binaries with newly compiled binaries which weren't part of a signed package.
By deleting the existing binaries, rebooting the Mac to clear the kernel cache, and then recopying the new binaries into place, I sorted the issue.


Extended Desktop to Mac book from Macbook pro

It is likely not supported.

This article (apple.com) says how to use an iMac as a second display but makes no mention of using a MacBook(Pro) as one. Which usually means it is not supported.


How to attach files to emails on iPhone running iOS 8?

Documents by Readdle lets you send any arbitrary file over email. Select the file in Documents, tap Actions, then Mail to. This composes a new email with the file attached.

Upgrade to iOS 9 and you can attach arbitrary files from Apple's mail client. Documents can export files to iCloud drive for easy attachment or you can just save the file to iCloud drive from the get go and skip the Documents unless it ads value to your workflow.


How can I keep my iMessage on iPhone, but stop them coming through on my Mac?

Open Messages and open the preferences.

Select the Apple ID you want to delete and then sign out.

No more messages should arrive from that point on. You could reboot if you want to be sure things are reset.


Preview: PDF Highlighting & Search Stop Working until Restart

The issue seems to be resolved (from personal testing) in macOS Catalina 10.15.2

Here is the operating system info:

System Version: macOS 10.15.2 (19C57)
Kernel Version: Darwin 19.2.0

So, updating to macOS 10.15.2 (stable) will fix the issue.


Is it possible to use the Xserve VPN service without using the DHCP service?

No, Snow Leopard server VPN does not require that the XServe handles DHCP, though you'll likely want to have several IPs on the LAN that will be reserved for the connected device...


Tweets in my Tweetbot timeline are occasionally marked as a favorite when I see them for the first time. Is that a bug or a feature?

It's a bug with Twitter, not Tweetbot.
I've seen people ask @tweetbot about it several times now. The answer and response generally look like this exchange:

Q: @tweetbot keeps favoriting random tweets in my timeline. It's almost embarrassing.
A: Sorry, that's a Twitter bug. As you can see on Favstar, they're not real favorites.

That particular exchange happened just yesterday.
Twitter's REST API bug list has this bug still open where the API may erroneously report a tweet as favorited when in fact it is not.


Mac OS X equivalent to Windows "Register this connection's addresses in DNS"

dsconfigad -restrictDDNS en0

Will only allow the address assigned to en0 to be registered via DDNS.

Best practice is to have all NICs disabled except en0 when you bind the Mac.  Then restrict DDNS updates to only en0, only after this then enabling the subsequent NICs.


Safari complains about SSL certificate on redirect page

There is nothing you can do except get a new certificate which covers both www and non-www.

Any redirects will only be done after a successful SSL handshake. But since your certificate does not match the name in the URL used by the client there will be no successful SSL handshake and thus no redirect.


To reset the default location of screenshots to your Desktop, type this in Terminal:

defaults write com.apple.screencapture location ~/Desktop

then restart.


Google Hangouts with 10.6.8 and Firefox 8.0.1

I've just tried Google Hangouts my self - and it works with my FF 8.0.1 on OS X Lion - using Google Talk plugin v2.5.6.4871


How has OS X's Photos app determined people's names under the 'Faces' album?

It has access to the face data in your contacts, such as from syncing with Facebook. So, it's found similarities to those pictures.


Date format for file's "Modified" and "Last opened" is different than other files

The date "presentation" of a file info in column view in the preview column is determined by the column width! The wider the column the more detailed the date!

You can easily check this by either alt-holding and moving the column handle which increases/decreases all columns at once or just moving the "preview" handle. The handles are the two small parallel lines near the bottom of a window.

very short (all examples are german date formats):

middle:

full:


If I delete a voice memo from the Music app, will it also be deleted from the Voice Memo app?

I have tried it on iOS 11 with a new VoiceMemo. Here is what have I done:

I have created a new voice memo, then I have synced the phone to the computer (running latest iTunes). The voice memo showed up in both my music collection in iTunes (even separate playlist) and within the songs on the phone. At least according to iTunes. But then I have tried to search for voice memos in the Music app, but it did not show up. Was this done with some old software?

Anyhow deleting the voice memo on the computer - never mind what it says - will leave it on the phone. But of course, I suggest to back up.


Yay my first Shortcuts question!

Use the Dictate Text action.

This action will convert words you speak into to text and pass that text to the next action.

Currently, there is a bit of down side: You will not be able tell Siri in one sentence "Tell [Shortcut Trigger], Apples are cool" Instead you need to do it in two parts "[Shortcut Trigger]" wait... "Apples are cool".

Warning: Make sure to pick a language or it will silently fail.


Folders are disappearing from Safari's Bookmarks Bar

Do you have iCloud turn-on for your bookmarks? I did and found horrendous anomalies with my bookmark folders between my iMac, MacBook Pro, iPhone, and iPad. I could not get the issue solved and so far no solutions for it. My only recurse was to turn off iCloud/Bookmarks and restore my original bookmarks from backup and sync with iTunes. That solved my problem.


Restoring data from iPad to new Mac after old Mac died

Your personal, i.e. non-purchased, media can be copied from your iOS device using Macroplant's iExplorer.

If you could mount the iOS device's filesystem directly, you could find your media in Media/iTunes_Control/iTunes—if you had a Linux system handy, for example; I don't know of a way to do this directly on OS X.  The files stored in that area are renamed seemingly randomly, but should be able to be imported into iTunes since their media tags should be intact.


According to this page, "He's dead, Jim" message appears

  if the operating system has terminated the tab’s process due to a lack of memory

So it seems to be a RAM problem.

If your Mac is still under warranty, take it to an Apple Store to get it look at.


In addition to system_profiler SPUSBDataType (suggested by @kjs), you can also use ioreg -p IOUSB:

$ ioreg -p IOUSB
+-o Root  <class IORegistryEntry, id 0x100000100, retain 10>
  +-o EHCI Root Hub Simulation@1A,7  <class IOUSBRootHubDevice, id 0x100000227,$
  | +-o HubDevice@fa100000  <class IOUSBHubDevice, id 0x10000027a, registered, $
  | | +-o Apple Internal Keyboard / Trackpad@fa120000  <class IOUSBDevice, id 0$
  | | +-o BRCM2070 Hub@fa110000  <class IOUSBHubDevice, id 0x1000002b4, registe$
  | |   +-o Bluetooth USB Host Controller@fa113000  <class IOUSBDevice, id 0x10$
  | +-o FaceTime HD Camera (Built-in)@fa200000  <class IOUSBDevice, id 0x100000$
  +-o EHCI Root Hub Simulation@1D,7  <class IOUSBRootHubDevice, id 0x100000228,$
    +-o HubDevice@fd100000  <class IOUSBHubDevice, id 0x10000027b, registered, $
      +-o IR Receiver@fd110000  <class IOUSBDevice, id 0x100000288, registered,$

By default it clips to the window's width (80 chars in the example above), so you may want to add -w0 to get a full-width display. Also, adding -l will show details (probably more than you need) about each of the devices:

$ ioreg -p IOUSB -w0 -l
    +-o Root  <class IORegistryEntry, id 0x100000100, retain 10>
  | {
  |   "IOKitBuildVersion" = "Darwin Kernel Version 14.0.0: Fri Sep 19 00:26:44 PDT 2014; root:xnu-2782.1.97~2/RELEASE_X86_64"
  |   "OS Build Version" = "14B25"
  |   "OSKernelCPUSubtype" = 3
  |   "OSKernelCPUType" = 16777223
  |   "OSPrelinkKextCount" = 185
  |   "IOConsoleLocked" = No
  |   "IORegistryPlanes" = {"IOACPIPlane"="IOACPIPlane","IOPower"="IOPower","IODeviceTree"="IODeviceTree","IOService"="IOService","IOUSB"="IOUSB","IOFireWire"="IOFireWire"}
[...etc...]

[EDIT]: If you just want the device names, you can filter the basic list to trim the junk:

$ ioreg -p IOUSB -w0 | sed 's/[^o]*o //; s/@.*$//' | grep -v '^Root.*'
EHCI Root Hub Simulation
HubDevice
Apple Internal Keyboard / Trackpad
BRCM2070 Hub
Bluetooth USB Host Controller
FaceTime HD Camera (Built-in)
EHCI Root Hub Simulation
HubDevice
IR Receiver


How to fix AFP where some users connect after 4 minutes and others never connect (spinning progress bar and no authentication dialog)?

Yup, we saw the same exact symptoms, only on 10.7.4 machines, and after some digging, it appears to be a preference file causing this behavior.

Backup then delete the following:

 ~/Library/Preferences/.GlobalPreferences.plist

and

 ~/Library/Preferences/.GlobalPreferences.plist.lockfile

then reboot.

See the following link for more info:

http://derflounder.wordpress.com/2012/08/03/odd-afp-and-smb-connection-problem-caused-by-idisk-going-away/

If you delete the files above you'll have to redo your Mouse preferences, and perhaps something else, from scratch, but it was no biggie as far as I could tell.


Since there have been no "hardware" answers by someone who has used one, I'll add that there are third party drives who support Time Machine.  Just as some examples, LaCie has support in their NAS products and Drobos also have support.  I've used neither, although I have a LaCie d2 Network 2 on order.

The cautionary note here is that "support" means that they (a) make it possible to connect to the NAS from Time Machine and (b) typically provide size restrictions on Time Machine so that it doesn't eventually consume all free space on the drive.  Apple does not support any NAS other than a Time Capsule, so there is no guarantee that the third party drives won't stop working with a future Time Machine software update, or have other problems.


Passwordless SSH between MacOS and MacOS not working

If you tell your config file about the setup it will work.
Open ~/.ssh/config
Add this:
Host whateverYouWannaCallIt
  Hostname      192.168.1.235
  User          me
  IdentityFile  ~/.ssh/id_rsa

Then you can do this:
ssh whateverYouWannaCallIt

I recommend when creating the ssh key, to not use a generic one and give it a name for the machine, so one key per computer. You don't want to use the same key for more than one machine... but that's what will happen if you keep using id_rsa.
So as step one, do something more like this:
ssh-keygen -t rsa -b 3072 -f ~/.ssh/theServersName.rsa
...
ssh-copy-id -i ~/.ssh/theServersName.rsa.pub me@192.168.1.235

Then point IdentityFile  to the right place:
Host theServersName
  Hostname      192.168.1.235
  User          me
  IdentityFile  ~/.ssh/theServersName.rsa


Why do I keep having to reenter the SIM code after each iOS update?

Is this a 'SIM PIN'?  If so, go to settings - phone - SIM PIN and turn it to off.


Is it possible to modify OS X default MIDI sounds?

Louis Boux wants to substitute the default DLS soundfont of General MIDI sounds used by QuickTime to another DLS soundfont. Such soundfonts are files that end in .sf2 format.

It was possible to do this in earlier versions of QuickTime, such as QuickTime 5 or QuickTime 6, back around the year 2002 and earlier. In fact, I did this myself on older systems. However, QuickTime X cannot read an .sf2 file directly. It must be converted into .dls format.

By way of background, when you click on a standard MIDI file linked to a Web page, for instance, QuickTime plays it back inside your Web browser using QuickTime's built-in MIDI sound library, which is of poor quality. This sound library was licensed from the Roland company some 15 years ago and has never been improved upon.

The soundfont that I was able to use as a substitute in older systems is a GeneralMIDI soundfont which is provided with MakeMusic Finale Reader, which is free.


same power chord for Magsafe 2 and Lightning

No - there isn't. MagSafe is a 5 pin (mirrored - so really three total pins) for high current and wattage charging. The other is a 16 pin, much more adaptable digital interface that can embed USB as well as carry data and charging and audio signals.

Newer USB-C Charging MacBooks will charge over the same sort of USB power delivery that Lightning is supporting - to the future you wish will be here as soon as you step away from MagSafe based hardware.

See these similar questions for more details and possible options:

Magsafe to USB-C converter for charging Macbook Pro 2016
Is it safe to use this 60W PD charged for a late 2016 MacBook Pro 13"?


macOS Catalina and later (10.15+)

Apple replaced bash with zsh as the default shell. See article.

So no need to do anything.

You can verify the default shell by typing echo $0 in the terminal.

macOS Mojave and earlier (10.14-)

See Apple Support page, Use zsh as the default shell on your Mac

Surprisingly this doesn't work with the command line tools as one would expect. This needs to be done with the System Preferences app.

The following steps work with multiple versions of Mac OS X through at least 10.11 (El Capitan).

Open up the "User's & Groups" panel in the "System Preferences" app.
Make sure the panel is unlocked (bottom left)
Control click on your username (top left) and select "Advanced Options..." This is only available if you are an Administrator.

4. Change the "Login shell" value to /bin/zsh.

5. Press the OK button to save your change.

You should be careful not to change any other fields, as per the warning at the top of this dialog. If you have any doubts, then press the "Cancel" button and try again.


How can I evaluate which SSD adapter is functional with 2013 MacBook Air parts?

Apple uses a proprietary connector, which is usually described as a 12+16 pin PCIe connector. Or more simply "Mac SSD".

There are USB enclosures for these blades, though they tend to be very expensive - $70 to $100. Here's one:

https://www.amazon.com/QNINE-Enclosure-MacBook-External-Adapter/dp/B076KDPZMM/

However, note that this particular one claims not to work with Apple SSDs made by Toshiba or SanDisk.

You might be best off putting it back into a Mac and formatting it and installing MacOS using Internet Recovery. (Or even buying a secondhand Apple-Samsung SSD replacement on eBay.)

Everything you need to know about Apple's SSDs in all models of Macs can be found here:

https://beetstech.com/blog/apple-proprietary-ssd-ultimate-guide-to-specs-and-upgrades


iTerm spits out text every time I start a new session - why, and how to stop it?

Have you tried greping your home directory?

sudo grep -R 'PS1="' ~/

Or, if you're really getting frustrated-

sudo grep -R 'PS1="' /

Maybe redirect stdout of those bad boys to files so you don't have to run them over and over to work with the results.


How can I force iOS Mail to download the entire email every time?

Exchange ActiveSync 12.1 (introduced with Exchange Server 2007 SP1, released on Nov 29 2007) added a policy called mail body truncation size (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exchange_ActiveSync#Exchange_ActiveSync_12.1).

This is a server-side policy that can be enforced for a group of users, as stated in the Microsoft Exchange documentation (see https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/previous-versions/office/exchange-server-2007/bb123484(v=exchg.80)):

  Exchange ActiveSync mailbox policies let you apply a common set of policy or security settings to a user or group of users.

  (...)

  Maximum HTML e-mail body truncation size

  This setting specifies the size beyond which HTML-formatted e-mail
  messages are truncated when they are synchronized to the device. The
  value is specified in kilobytes (KB).

  (...)

  Maximum e-mail body truncation size

  This setting specifies the size beyond which e-mail messages are
  truncated when they are synchronized to the device. The value is
  specified in kilobytes (KB).

HCL Traveler (formerly IBM Lotus Notes Traveler) supports ActiveSync and has a similar setting in Default Preferences > Filter Settings, which is enabled by default and limits the downloadable body to 5000 characters (see Table 2 in https://help.hcltechsw.com/traveler/11.0.0/Server_synchronized_settings.html?hl=traveler%2Ctruncate):

  Email Body Truncation

  Enables email body truncation. Characters beyond the default character
  value in the email body are truncated from the email body.

So it looks like it is a bandwidth-saving setting on the server and you basically can't do anything about it.


Accidentally formatted an exFAT partition to OS X journaled and lost data

If you haven't done anything else to the disk besides reformatting it, if you haven't copied any other data to the drive, then you will likely be able to get most if not all of the data back using a data recovery tool.

However, because the drive's original format was a PC format, you'll want to use a PC data recovery tool, not a Mac one. Something that can recover deleted files. You may get a messy jumble of pervious versions of saved files too, that's just the nature of recovering deleted files.

On the Mac, something like DataRescue works very well. But you need to do this on a PC to read the PC formatted drive.


How can I keep certain apps from showing in the command-tab switcher?

If these applications offer the ability to Hide the Dock Item, and live only in the Menu Bar, then they will not show up in the Command+Tab switcher list. Review the preferences within each application to see if this feature is supported.

Last I knew, there were no stable solutions for hiding Dock Icons without adverse application affects.

I have numerous applications that live in the Menu Bar only, and most have an option to show it if necessary:
Alfred, Sparrow, iMenuMeters, Divvy, Last.fm, Flux, Little Snitch, and Tunnelblick.


The solution is to "Reset Warnings" in Automator main menu ->
Reset+Restart Automator:


Wallpaper Not Showing Behind Mission Control/App Exposé or resized Window on only one Desktop

Still not sure why it did that, but resetting the NVRAM and PRAM fixed it for me.
Here's how to do it: https://purplecomputing.com/tech-how-to/how-to-reset-nvram-or-pram/
Or to make it simple. Restart your Mac, and hold cmd + option + p + r until it asks you to log in.
EDIT: It has returned. This is now REALLY bothering me


Mac App Store works like trying to open iTunes via browser

Go to your home folder. (your user name under places on the left hand side)
click on Library
click on Preferences
delete "ByHost" which is a folder.
delete "com.apple.appstore.appstore.plist" which is a file.
delete "com.apple.storeagent.plist" which is also a file.
restart
empty trash
open Mac App Store and it should work.

If you're worried about deleting files then just make a copy somewhere else before you delete them.

From discussions.apple.com


Refer to this article for more information about the Firewall and how to enable it: https://support.apple.com/kb/PH18646?locale=en_US

It is fine if the main computer user is an admin. You will still need to enter your password to authorize changes to the computer, the only thing that is different from being a standard user (in this scenario) is that your username will be automatically entered. As an administrator, you also cannot delete important system files (built-in apps, operating system files, etc.).


Is there any command line alternative to Activity Monitor that would yield the same results?

A good reference giving insight on the energy tab is given here.  It relates it to the Power column of the top command which you can generate by using top command as such: top -stats pid,command,cpu,idlew,power -o power -d  The power column is not usually displayed due to width of monitor.


Reminders app showing wrong day, or may be its confused between 1985 and 2085

If you look at the date-entering form, you'll see that Reminders gives you space to write a 4-digit year, so it assumes the number you enter is the complete year. You didn't send it to 2085 – you sent it to 0085! (And because I have no life, I actually scrolled through iOS Calendar to check. 2/1/85 was, in fact, a Thursday!)

I don't know if a solution exists. You may just have to get used to writing the full year, or just clicking the date on the dropdown calendar.


How do I install hp officejet printer 4610/4620 onto my apple 4th generation IPad?

This should be as simple as downloading and installing Handyprint (previously known as AirPrint Activator) which will share out an OSX printer on your wireless network as if it was an Airprint one.  Check it out here.


How to record screen with the audio coming from your Mac?

Try using Background Music.

When recording with Quicktime click the arrow and change the microphone to Background Music.

  You can record system audio with Background Music. With
  Background Music running, launch QuickTime Player and select File > New Audio Recording (or New Screen Recording, New Movie Recording). Then click the dropdown menu (⌄) next to the
  record button and select Background Music as the input device.

  You can record system audio and a microphone together by creating an
  aggregate device that
  combines your input device (usually Built-in Input) with the
  Background Music device. You can create the aggregate device using the Audio MIDI Setup utility under
  /Applications/Utilities.

Edit: If you have homebrew installed you can install using brew cask install background-music

source:https://github.com/kyleneideck/BackgroundMusic/blob/master/README.md


Define "just got" - as in today? Or as before a week ago? It sounds like your new device was not restored from a backup and was instead set up as new, in which case your previous text messages are not available.


How to stop Terminal from asking for access to some folders?

I can't answer to why your system asks you this at startup but it is likely that you need to give terminal "Full disk access."

Open up System Preferences and go to the Security & Privacy icon and click on it.
Click on the last tab "Privacy
Click on the padlock icon in lower left corner of that window
Note that Terminal may already be in the list and not checked, if it is check it
If it is not click the "+" button and navigate to the /Applications/Utilities folder and select the Terminal.app
Once it is added, if it is not already checked, check it and close System Preferences.

Mine looks like this.


Rebuild the Outlook for Mac 2011 database to resolve problems as recomended by Microsoft

Usually the maker (Microsoft) recommends the first thing to do is to REBUILD the database

That is a multiple step procedure and lengthy process so be ready for some work.

How to rebuild your identity database

Step 1: Quit all applications
You must quit all applications before you continue with the following steps. To quit an application, click the  menu on the toolbar (top), and then select Quit. If you cannot quit an application or do not know how, hold down the Command and Option keys, and then press Esc on your keyboard. Select the application in the Force Quit Application window, and then select Force Quit. Click Force Quit to quit the application.

Note You cannot quit Finder.

When you are finished, click the red close button in the upper-left corner to close the window.

Fore Quit Applications window

Step 2: Determine the amount of space available on the hard disk
Before you perform any database maintenance, make sure that you have at least three times as much hard disk space available as the current size of your Outlook identity. For example, if the identity is 1 gigabyte (GB), there should be at least 3 GB of free space available on the hard disk (not including the space that is needed for virtual memory).

To determine the size of your identity, follow these steps:

n the Finder, click Go, and then click Home. Open the Documents folder.
Open the Microsoft User Data folder.
Open the Office 2011 Identities folder.
Click the Identity folder.
On the File menu, click Get Info, and then click Get Information. Note the size of the database.

When you create an Outlook identity, hard disk space is allocated for the data that the identity receives as you work. When you add and delete messages, appointments, tasks, and notes, the database can develop wasted space.

Step 3: Discover and back up the current identity
To back up your identity, follow these steps:

In the Finder, click Go, and then click Home. Open the Documents folder.
Open the Microsoft User Data folder.
Control-click or right-click the Office 2011 identities folder, and then select Duplicate. A copy of the folder is created.
Quit all applications.

You have created a backup of your identity (or identities) and are ready to continue.

Note This backup can be used by third-party database recovery software, which generally work better on non-rebuilt identities.

Step 4: Rebuild the database

Quit all applications.
Hold down the Option key on the keyboard, and then start Outlook 2011.

Note You can also browse to the Database Utility by opening the Application folder and then opening the Microsoft Office 2011 folder. Open the Office folder, and then double-click Microsoft Database Utility.app.
In the Database Utility window, select the database that you want to maintain, and then click Rebuild.
The Rebuilding Main Identify window will open and show the progress. When the operation is completed, you will receive the message "Your database was rebuilt successfully."
Click Done.

Select an identity

Start Outlook and see whether the problem is resolved. If the problem is not resolved, go to the next step.

Step 5: Create a new identity
If you are using Outlook in more than one capacity, such as at home and at work, Outlook may be configured to have multiple identities. Each identity stores separate sets of e-mail, address books, tasks, calendars, account settings, and more.

If Outlook has multiple identities, one of the identities might be damaged. Try to use a different identity to determine whether this is the problem. If an identity is damaged, you must create a new identity to resolve this problem.

To create a new identity, follow these steps:

Quit all applications.
Hold down the Option key on the keyboard, and then click the Outlook icon in the dock. The Microsoft Database Utility will open.

Note You can also access the Microsoft Database Utility by opening the Application folder and then opening the Microsoft Office 2011 folder. Open the Office folder, and then double-click Microsoft Database Utility.app.
Click the plus [+] sign to add a new identity, and then type a name for the new identity. For example, type New identity.

Create a new identity
Set the newly create identity as the default. To do this, select the newly created identity, click the Action button, and then select Set as Default.

Set an identity as the default

Quit the Microsoft Database Utility, and then restart Outlook and see whether the problem is resolved.

If the previous steps did not resolve the issue, the Outlook database most likely is damaged beyond repair. If there are no viable backups available and there are no other sources of the data (such as another computer or a handheld device), you will have to start from scratch because the data is not recoverable. To start from scratch, you have to drag the Office 2011 Identity folder (only if there are no other identities) to the Trash, and then restart Outlook.


What exactly is the difference between Badges, Alerts, and Sounds?

Badges are the little numbered icons, like the one that appears on the Mail and SMS apps when you have new messages.

Alerts are popup messages like this:


How can I make it as easy as possible for someone to make an emergency call?

Apple Watch Series 4 provides a 1st party solution for the aforementioned requirements.

You can consider an Apple Watch Series 4 or later with Cellular connectivity. Apple Watch Series 4 and later feature build-in fall detection mode that can also alert the emergency services and customizable emergency contacts. A cellular variant remains connected to the Internet even if the paired iPhone is not in the proximity.

You can refer to the Apple Support document, Use fall detection with Apple Watch to learn more:

  If Apple Watch Series 4 or later detects a hard fall, it can help connect you to emergency services if needed.

  If Apple Watch Series 4 or later detects a hard fall while you're wearing your watch, it taps you on the wrist, sounds an alarm, and displays an alert. You can choose to contact emergency services or dismiss the alert by pressing the Digital Crown, tapping Close in the upper-left corner, or tapping "I'm OK."

and

  If your Apple Watch detects that you're immobile for about a minute, it begins a 30-second countdown, while tapping you on the wrist and sounding an alert. The alert gets louder, so that you or someone nearby can hear it. If you don't want to call emergency services, tap Cancel. When the countdown ends, your Apple Watch automatically contacts emergency services.

The fall detection and emergency calling feature is built into Apple Watch and doesn't require you to install a separate app or get a separate subscription.

Even without a fall, Apple Watch makes it very easy to contact the emergency contacts which can be configured. Having a Cellular model gives the extra peace of mind that the Watch would have cellular connectivity even if the paired iPhone is not in range.

Since the features comes built-in from Apple, there's no data privacy concerns.

Apple Watch Series 4 and later also supports "Hey Siri".


Where is the Keychain lock icon located?

Apple doesn’t store all icons anymore for compound items and overlays the key icon over the lock icon in this case. The same with the finder icon over the lock.

Here are the two sources:

Lock Icon

The lock icon is located in

/System/Library/CoreServices/SystemAppearance.bundle/Contents/Resources/Assets.car

Install Theme Engine

Note: You may want to download the released version.
Open the file
Select Security
Drag the icon to the desktop to convert to a png

Keychain Icon

macOS just places the app icon in front of it.  In this case the KeyChain icon is in

/Applications/Utilities/Keychain Access.app/Contents/Resources/AppIcon.icns


How to diagnose Address Book quitting unexpectedly?

You can click on the Report button and look though all the gibberish to see if there is something informative or suspicious there.

You could run the Console program and search for "Address" in the upper right to check for error messages.

You could try accessing your contacts from within the Mail program and check near the top and bottom of the list for any missing or weird entries.

You could turn on iCloud syncing (if you already have it on, back up) and see if you can access your full contact list from the web interface.

You could check for System Updates and hope there is a new update (Mavericks soon!) of the Contacts app.

** If you ever do get it to open, you should back up your contacts immediately (Export...> Contacts Archive) just in case.


How to avoid auto-disable Low Power Mode on iOS9 when charging

Just tested this - you can get Siri to turn low power on which saves navigating to the Battery settings screen. Just ask Siri to "Turn on low power mode"


iPhone hotspot prioritized over ethernet

Open System Preferences
Select Network preferences pane
Click gear menu in lower-left corner of Network pane and choose "Select Service Order..."
Drag the services into whichever order you want
Click OK


using a 2009 bricked iMac as an external display with windows

This is pretty easy. No iMac other than some 27 inch models work in target display mode. Not all 27 support it, but some do.  No other size iMac and no other Mac period support target display mode.

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204592

Even the 2009 models 27 inch iMac won’t target display mode - Can I use my early 2009 iMac as an external screen?


You can get a sort of macro facility working. Try this:

Insert a separate sheet, make the table name unique to the spreadsheet (I use "Macros"), and ensure the table has one header row and one header column. Then label the column A header "Name" and column B header "macro". This sets you up with a shorthand, self-documenting naming system. To add a macro, pick a name for it, put the name in column A and the code in column B and then call it. If your table, row, and column names are set up properly, then $macro $myMacroName will do it.

Example: you have three checkboxes in known locations (say $A$1, $A$2, and $A$3) and you need to repeatedly check to see if any one checkbox is checked and then perform specific code different for each checkbox. The following in columns A and B of any row in your Macros table will accomplish the goal.

    anyBoxChecked  =IFERROR(CHOOSE(MATCH(TRUE,$A$1:$A$3,0),1,2,3),0)
    runCheckbox    =INDIRECT("$macro $runCheckbox"&$macro $anyBoxChecked)
    runCheckbox0   ="ERROR"
    runCheckbox1   =specific code for checkbox $A$1
    runCheckbox2   =specific code for checkbox $A$2
    runCheckbox3   =specific code for checkbox $A$3

Note the macro statement must always be row and column preserved (i.e. with $s).

This is a complex example (I kind of went to town on it) with macros including macros and indirect macro calls.

But by using $macro $anyBoxChecked<>0 you have a boolean representing if any of the three boxes is checked and by using $macro $runCheckbox you can run checkbox specific code automatically and get an error message if none of the boxes is checked.

Now the bad news: these macros do not accept any parameters and you cannot use any function that is location dependent. So the example you asked for help on, OFFSET($A$2,0,0,ROW()-1,1), can't be one of these macros because ROW() will return the row number of the macro, not the row number of the cell where you called the macro from.

But take heart; I was in exactly the predicament that you were in and using this system in conjunction with some judicious code analysis allowed me to reduce my code footprint substantially and document the remaining code a lot better. It also seems to improve performance.

Another note: you can have the macro rows in any order and add, delete, or move them around as much as you like. Numbers automagically just takes care of the row changes so you don't have to change any macro calls.

Have fun!

(by the way, I am running Numbers 6.0 (6194) on Mojave 10.14.4.


Which iPad PDF viewers (annotators, readers, whatevers) give a faithful rendering?

It seems to me that maybe not enough Fonts have been embedded in this ("old") PDF. I downloaded it on my Mac, opened it in Preview and exported it under a different name (without changing anything else).

GoodReader on my iPhone now shows the alpha´s correctly. Inspecting it with Acrobat Professional now shows more imbedded Fonts than before (and of course a newer PDF standard being used).


List of Metadata Attribute Aliases That I can Search for in Spotlight

Good question. There is a page on the Apple Developer site that goes into details of Spotlight metadata attributes. Though it's developer focussed I think you'd be able to draw inferences from the attribute keys listed there, e.g.

kMDItemKindDescription of the kind of item this file represents.
kMDItemAttributeChangeDateDate and time of the last change made to a metadata attribute
kMDItemContentCreationDateThe date and time that the content was created.
kMDItemContentModificationDateDate and time when the content of this item was modified.

The nice thing about this list is, that it's quite exhaustive, but it also means that developers would have needed to build this into their apps, so that Spotlight could accurately index the content.

On this list you also find more "obscure" (or lesser known) attributes, such as

kMDItemCreatorName of the application used to create the document content. For example, "Pages" or "Keynote".
kMDItemKeywordsKeywords associated with this file. For example, "Birthday", "Important", etc.
kMDItemNumberOfPagesNumber of pages in the document.
kMDItemPageHeightHeight of the document page, in points (72 points per inch). For PDF files this indicates the height of the first page only.

If you're interested, there's also an oldish article over at the Superuser blog that gets into some of the details of using Spotlight including commands you can use from Terminal. There's a link in the article (about ⅔ down) pointing to a full list of attributes Spotlight keeps for you. That link is dead, but I've dug out a copy from the Wayback Machine for you. It's similar to the page on the Apple Developer site I provided before.

I've tried some of these examples out and it turns out that the command line would allow you to use the listed attributes, such as kMDItemLastUsedDate. It also seems to allow for a much finer use, such as Boolean use and number ranges like ">=10".

I've subsequently successfully used TextContent:"something", Country:AU (for Australian content), date>20/1/2017 (that's 20 Jan 2017 in my lingo and filters everything after that date) and author:Alex (e.g. returns documents and emails created by me) in Spotlight's GUI. This article on Spotlight tips for El Capitan & Yosemite (slide 10) mainly mentions the kind: filter, though they also name the above date and author.

What you can use very much depends on what developers of applications that save documents to disk have implemented using the metadata importer to provide Spotlight support.


AppleScript working until placed in cron; causing Chrome to go unresponsive

Using the same applescript; I moved over to launchd; using a generic template pulled from

http://launched.zerowidth.com/

and everything behaved just as expected.  I'm not sure what I was missing in my cron environment; but the answer seems to be to avoid crontabs for simple applescripts for now..


Is there a good email app with text-to-speech for iPhone?

Speak Screen
From email to books, let your iPhone read to you. If you
have a hard time reading the text on your iPhone, use Speak Screen to
read your email, iMessages, web pages, and books. Turn on Speak Screen
and swipe down from the top of the screen with two fingers, or just
tell Siri to Speak Screen and have all the content on the page read
back to you. You can adjust the voice’s dialect and speaking rate, and
have words, sentences, or words within sentences highlighted as
they’re being read. And the new Speech Controller provides a Speak
Under Finger feature for more precise control.

https://www.apple.com/accessibility/iphone/vision/
From the Home screen, go to Settings → General → Accessibility → Speech → Speak Screen. Or simply search using the search bar in Settings. To read screen, imagine bringing down notification centre, but with two fingers.
For single words: select them, and find "Speak" in the tooltip options that appear.
RSS reader for iPhone with text-to-speech support?


Is winSCP available for mac or only windows?

No, there is no native WinSCP.

Cyberduck is a free option.

Transmit (Paid) is the FTP client for macOS.


Has iMessage changed anything about how texts are forwarded from iChat to offline users?

No, iMessages has not changed any of these features. Forwarding to a cell phone is a feature that is handled via AIM rather than iChat.

Furthermore, the new Messages application has not changed any of this functionality either. It works exactly as it did before. It shows a little "wi-fi" symbol next to buddies that are offline, but have AIM Forwarding enabled. However, this symbol is only visible in the Buddies window, and not in the Messages window (the window where you chat). They appear like any other offline user in the Messages window. Therefore, it might help if you remember who does and who doesn't have this feature enabled.

When you send them a message, it goes to their cell phone, and when they reply, you see it in Messages. Note that if they are on invisible mode on AIM, it goes to their AIM rather than their cell phone. This provides further evidence that AIM is in charge of forwarding to the phone rather than iChat/Messages.


It's the cable. The internal disk flex cable connecting the disk to the motherboard. Trust me, I have seen these symptoms dozens of times with the MacBook Pro 13" 2012, and it can really give extrmemly weird problems, of the sort you describe.
You need a new cable, the only problem is knowing which one. The 2012 MBPs use one of 3(!) different identical looking disk flex cables with different model numbers. First check which one you have, lift the connector from the motherboard and look on the underside of the cable on the part. The model number will probably be either 821-1480 or 821-2049. If it is the former it might need to be replaced either by the same, or the 821-2049. If the latter, it will need a replacement with the same model, 821-2049.
If you only get one new cable to try, I would bet on the 821-2049. Regardless, it's that cable, there's your problem right there.


Try turning off a setting called, "Share details about your library with Apple".  In iTunes, goto Preferences, Store Preferences and uncheck that option.


How can I sync all of my Email addresses (including Gmail addresses) using iCloud?

Practically speaking, the answer would be no - iCloud doesn't "sync" multiple email accounts (this is built into iOS). @me.com email address is just like gmail - it is just another email account. If you really wanted to, you could have all your gmail forward to iCloud's @me.com email account, but that wouldn't be practical.

To have your Gmail accounts synced into your iPad, open Settings, on your iPad, tap Mail, Contacts, Calendars, select Add Account, for a Gmail account select Gmail, and enter your information in there. Repeat the process for every mail account you have. (You should notice your iCloud account in the list of email accounts when you first open it)


Permanently Enlarging the "Open File" dialog box in Yosemite

I tested this with TextEdit and it does not remember the size of it's open dialog window. I tested it with Script-Editor and BBEdit and they both remember the size.

After reading something about another, maybe related situation, I tried this:

I resized the open dialog in TextEdit like it is described here (second screenshot).
[ which is: hold the SHIFT-key and click into the right side of the dialog and start dragging it ]

And when I do that this way, TextEdit remembers the size, also between relaunches.

So may be this is possible with all applications you want to remember it's open dialog size? It's not a general solution but a workaround. If it does the job it may be a pretty useful one.

I got the idea to try this from here
(second screenshot): http://osxdaily.com/2014/12/08/resize-large-open-save-dialog-windows-mac-os-x/ and I found that site with a google query containing the title of your question.


The application "Google Chrome" is not open anymore

Sometimes uninstalling and reinstalling applications helps to solve problem.  Try that and see if it works.


Why am I seeing subtle horizontal lines? (Intel HD Graphics 4000)

As a general guide, if it doesn't show up in a screen-shot, it's a hardware fault.

Potential fail-points are the monitor's video cable, the screen, or the graphics chip itself.
Unless you fancy stripping it apart yourself to try to re-seat or replace the video cable, I think a trip to the repair shop is on the cards.

iFixit do some good teardown & repair guides, if you want to tackle something like this yourself - MacBook Pro Repair - though you'd need to see if they have one for your specific model.


How to make an expanding compressed encrypted disk image?

This is exactly what a dmg does.

To create one use Disk Utility and hit the New Image icon. Then choose the size, encryption and choose the image format as one of the sparse images. Even if you choose a large size it will only take up space according to what you save in it.


How do I fix "Battery is not charging" for 2012 macbook pro retina?

Troubleshooting is a process of elimination and often requires patience.

In this situation, if you've already reset the SMC (and it may be worth doing again, ensuring you've followed the correct steps for your model), you'd normally want to isolate the different components by testing them separately (e.g. testing the battery in another 2012 MBP, testing the AC charger with another MBP, and so on).

Of course, when you're trying to do things yourself, that isn't so easy.

Even though you've reset the SMC, I'd do that again first and ensure you refer to How to reset the System Management Controller (SMC) on your Mac on Apple's website. Read through this page carefully as the instructions differ for different models of Mac.

Once you've done that, and assuming it has no effect, you'd want to run Apple Hardware Test.

Run Apple Hardware Test

Your model MBP uses Apple Hardware Test. To use this, follow these steps:

Shut down your MacBook Pro
Restart your MacBook Pro
Press and hold the D key before the gray startup screen appears.
After a while, Apple Hardware Test (AHT) will start.
When prompted, select your language and click the right arrow.
When the AHT console appears, you can choose to run Basic tests by clicking the Test button. However, I suggest you select the "Perform extended testing" checkbox before you click the Test button.
Your test results will appear in the window in the bottom-right of the console.

Note 1: that the extended test will take some time. Take a note of the results and report back.

Note 2: If pressing and holding the D key at Step 3 doesn't work, start again at Step 1 and, at Step 3 press and hold both the OptionD keys instead. This will try and run diagnostics from the internet instead, so you will need to allow more time for it to complete.

Once you've done that, let me know what happens.

Your battery

Based on your question, your battery has only done 27 cycles, so I'm assuming you've only recently bought this battery. If so, I would be speaking to Apple (or the 3rd party vendor) from whom you bought the battery as it is possible it's an EEOL (Early End Of Life) situation. Any reputable retailer will be willing to test/replace the battery in this situation.


How do I correct settings for Collapse Blast to access Facebook?

The best place for support for Collapse Blast will be the creator's GameHouse Support site. GameHouse are best placed to answer this question.


Without seeing a screenshot of what, exactly, you're talking about, it's hard to give any really good advice.

That said, try this:

Go to Settings
Scroll down to Messages; set iMessage to OFF
Back in Messages, go to the root screen (where you see all the different conversations listed); either click Edit and then swipe each conversation to delete as needed

This should get rid of all your messages, as well as prevent any further iMessages from being delivered to that device.


Are there general or specific iOS6 performance issues on iPhone 4?

I have been running iOS 6 since Friday night (I ran the Golden Master that became release) on my iPhone 4.

Safari feels snappier (and show improvement on SunSpider benchmarks).

I have not noticed any degradation like the 3G iOS 4 craziness that apple gave us (I went through that as well).

I am very happy and using it (everyday) and it feels a bit better in most things than 5.


Why can't iTunes find media on my Time Capsule drive?

Did you add your media to iTunes?

menubar -> file -> add to library

Then restart iTunes.


You're right, top has changed since 10.6 (Here is the man page for the top on Snow Leopard)

Now, to access to the accumulative mode you have to

start top
type c to change the current mode
type a to set the accumulative mode (and enter to validate the input)

To sort by CPU time, use the -o option :  top -o time

About the second part of your question, I a bit curious. Accumulative mode counts the CPU time since the start of the mode. So I will do it for 10sec if you wait 10 seconds etc.


How to solve it when the iPhone is going to be locked for 48 years?

This is very unlikely a security issue. This insane amount of minutes message is usually due to the iPhone clock being reset. You should be able to solve it by rebooting the phone (might need to do it a couple of times) with a working SIM card in that has data. When the phone boots it should sync the time and unlock everything.


Will Mountain Lion run on an early 2008 MacBook White?

As Steve Moser says there is no support for 32 bit drivers and Mountain Lion will refuse to install on the macs which had 32 bits drivers (someone seems to be too lazy to rewrite them?).

If this answer is not the one you want to hear, then you can install Mountain Lion the hard way. Because there is a way (which worked for the preview).

You will need another compatible mac (support) and you will have to do some hard drive switching.

The idea goes as follow:

Get Mountain Lion
On the target Mac remove the hard drive (target drive)
On the support Mac insert the hard drive (USB or internally)
Install Mountain Lion on the target drive
Put the target drive back in the target Mac
Boot on the target drive holding Cmd + V And write down the ID given in the error message "Incompatible Mac detected: ..."
Put the target drive back to the support Mac and on this drive in /System/Library/CoreServices edit PlatformSupport.plist

Add your board ID in the SupportedBoardIds section.
Add your model ID in the SupportedModelProperties section.

Put the target drive to the target Mac
Boot

You should be able to get to the desktop but without hardware graphics support.

To enable the graphics hardware support you will have to install the right kernel extentions. You could use kexthelper.

EDIT: To avoid all the hard drive switching and messing with internal components you can boot the target Mac in the so conveniently named "target mode" and connect it to the support Mac on which you could install the OS to the target drive and then boot on the target drive to edit the plist files.


delete duplicate aliases created by itunes when adding songs stored in my external hard drive

Try Dupin or Dupin Lite. Dupin is $15 from the developer's site, and Dupin Lite is $8 from the Mac App Store. I recently purchased the full version and used it to delete duplicates from a 57,000 song library. It did a very good job. It's filtering mechanism is highly customizable. It is not super fast, but it ran through my library in less than a day.

To specifically deal with your issue, you can set the rules to keep the file with the shorter filename. This will get rid of the commonly found "whatever the song name 1.mp3" file, while keeping the "whatever the song name.mp3" version.

Also, dougscripts.com should be your first stop for any iTunes maintenance scripts. I have found the following scripts especially useful in cleaning up large iTunes Libraries:
Artist - Name Corrector
Super Remove Dead Tracks
Search-Replace Tag Text v2.0
Track Parser
Remove n Characters From Front or Back


Why do I see this installation screen upon logging in?

That looks like macOS Catalina 10.5.6 Update released 7/15/2020.  Seems Catalina finally decided to force it on you. You must have Automatic Updates turned on which isn't necessarily a bad thing except for when it happens when you have things to do. A large update can take 45-60min.
In System Preferences -> Software Updates there's a checkbox to Automatically keep my Mac up to date as well as an Advanced button. In Advanced there is Check for updates, Download new updates when available, Install macOS updates, Install app updates from the App Store and Install system data files and security updates.
You can make adjustments to these settings to stop the Mac from automatically installing macOS updates. Those are the big dot releases like ".6" in this case. But you really should install these updates because they always include security fixes to protect you.
Out of band security updates usually take the form of "Security Update 2020-004" which was for Mojave and High Sierra while the dot-6 update included those fixes in 10.15.6.


Shutdown "no tty present and no askpass program specified"?

The error message appears when you try to run a command inside your bash call with sudo and, although the user ADMIN on the destination system mac123 has permissions to run commands with sudo, the option NOPASSWD is not specified for this particular user (in /etc/sudoers).

System would have to prompt user and wait for the password to be provided from the keyboard, however as no terminal is attached, the prompt would hang forever.

As a measure against such situation, system fails with the error message you got.

If you took time to understand my yesterday's answer:

  provided ADMIN has passwordless sudo permissions for shutdown or all commands on macxxx machine)

You wouldn't run into this problem.

You should modify your script:

...
if [ $DAYS_UP -ge ${MAX_UPDAYS} ];then
    echo Mac is going to shutdown
    sudo shutdown -h now
else
...

And edit the sudoers file on mac123, so that it contains, for example (it must match the command in the script):

ADMIN ALL=(ALL) NOPASSWD: /sbin/shutdown -h now

Bear in mind that you must do it using visudo program, otherwise you will likely break your system completely.

Alternatively you can use SUDO_ASKPASS environment variable and point it to a script providing the password (the second part of the error message). I do not recommend this method.


Why is application switching slow on Late 2013 Mac Mini compared to early 2008 Macbook Pro?

4GB of RAM isn't much to be running all of those heavyweight apps at the same time. My guess would be that it's doing a lot of paging to disk. Check the size of the swap files on both machines.

Go to the Finder's "Go" menu and select "Go to Folder…".
Enter /private/var/vm/ into the box and press the "OK" button.
Add up the sizes of the swap files.

If it's more than 1GB I usually reboot. That will clear out these files. I've seen these files up to 4GB on a machine with 8GB of RAM.

Since running out of RAM can cause writes to disk, the difference in disk speed may be what's causing the delay.


After Installation of Yosemite some command line tools not found!

GPG for Mac can be found at:
https://gpgtools.org/

Your problem description also means, if not using some PKI infrastructure, you lost your PGP keys...


External display : why 59Hz instead of 60Hz on Macbook Pro 15" mid-2012 @ 2560 x 1440 via DisplayPort

You can pretty much always attribute this one to a rounding error in the way the information is displayed to you. The actual refresh rate is somewhere very near 59.97Hz, leading whatever function they've run the number through for parsing to only display the whole number digits, and not perform any actual rounding.

This does lead to some interesting effects though. Some applications will do this and end up with a V-Sync rate that's not actually synced (They fake it and do framerate lock instead, leading to 59fps when you actually need 59.97fps exactly.)


How to find duplicate lines of code in Xcode

Not in Xcode itself, but there are third party solutions. They both can analyse Swift code.

PMD, it includes CPD, the copy-paste-detector.
jscpd, a copy/paste detector for programming source code


How the low battery message graphic is loaded?

I believe it's just an early stage of the bootloader that checks to see if the battery has enough charge before going on to boot iOS. It's no different from being able to display the Apple logo while iOS is booting.

If you download one of the IPSW files (iOS images), you can unzip it and find several images inside - applelogo, batterylow, glyphplugin, and so on. A full listing can be found on this page: IPSW File Format, and I also came across this page which has instructions for replacing the low battery image with something else (essentially just replacing the file inside the IPSW with another one in the correct format).

That would seem to indicate that iOS 7 will (or does) have a new version of the image for all devices, just like it has a flatter Apple logo at boot time.


On macOS Sierra Airplay is always "Looking for Apple TV"

I was having the same issue. It started occurring when my external speaker tried automatically connecting to the device. Turning off bluetooth entirely solved the problem for me.


Would adding RAM to 2009 imac improve performance

To answer this question accurately, you will need to get some statistics on how much RAM you are currently using. But in general, more RAM is going to improve things, especially if you're still on 4GB.

On the other hand, the 2009 iMac is really reaching EoL at this point -- according to Mactracker, the support status for that machine is currently "Vintage". The biggest factor for this machine's performance in my opinion is the processor architecture -- Core 2 Duo had a good run, but the Core ix architectures are really in another class.

To put it another way -- one of my machines is a 2010 iMac 3.6 Ghz Core i5 with 16 GB of RAM, and it's still completely usable at this point. Despite it being only one year off from your model, the processor architecture difference is what's allowing my machine to stay usable while yours is showing its age. (I'm sure the 16GB RAM is helping too, but I think the processor architecture comparison is more relevant.)

Might be time for an upgrade! 6-year lifespan is nothing to sneeze at; I'd call that getting your money's worth.


Can't get past the login screen even with a correct password

It looks like that User's folder got corrupted somehow, and the System doesn't know what to show and load, as It wasn't there.

Try logging with other user or a Disk Repair / Repair Permissions, through the Recovery Partition.


If you have a couple of computers kicking around to test AirDrop on, you can open a terminal on each machine and enter something like 'ifconfig -a' which will list all your networking interface cards.  I'm not near a Mac or Unix box to show, but what you will see is a network interface that might be called say "en0" (Ethernet0) which is a physycal interface (may be wifi, or cabled) and a further one called "en0:0" which is a logical interface that piggybacks on top of the physycal interface.  In this way you can run multiple virtual interfaces using just one physical one, and this is how AirDrop works.  It is possible to manually create these interfaces yourself, and "multihome" your mac by having one interface say on a 192.168 address, and the other on say a 172.16 address, thus allowing it to talk to 2 networks at a time.  It was always relatively straightforward on cabled interfaces, but I am not sure how tricky it would be (from a hardware support viewpoint) with wireless connections, but it's clearly possible in some way.  See this question and answer for more details, but in short you need to be familiar with such terminal commands as ifconfig, netstat, route etc.
Use the Airdrop network to access a computer?


Install Apple's Podcast app on iOs Simulator

Your best bet for debugging on iOS devices may be to acquire a cheap iPod Touch.


Install new NANO (2.4) using BREW but still uses old versions (symbolic link not created?)

You can always create a symlink in /usr/local/bin manually, which (depending on the order of path components in $PATH) will then shadow the standard binary in /usr/bin. As nano is used interactively only, the risk of breaking anything is probably rather small.


Terminal CMD + SHIFT + Left/Right Brace No Longer Works

Edit: Disregard the first part. [ Is the shift of { so we were saying the same thing different ways. I'm leaving this here though regarding disabling the Mission Control shortcuts.

The sequence to cycle forward through tabs is ⌘+shift+}, despite what the Window menu says. (⌘+} switches between windows. Very odd.) And ⌘+shift+{ cycles backward.

(You should also be able to reclaim ⌘+1, ⌘+2, etc. to switch windows in Terminal, which is what the Window menu says those shortcuts do, by going to System Preferences > Keyboard and disabling the keyboard shortcuts that use cmd+ a number under Mission Control. I haven't tested this though.)


What size is this internal screw for the Macbook Air (A1466)?

The website ifixit.com has repair guides for many Apple computers, including the from-mid-2012 A1266 MacBook Air.

One of the entries for this MacBook Air is Replace Trackpad. Step 10 contains this picture, showing the screw in question highlighted. Here's a screenshot:

The instruction text says it is a 1.4mm T5 Torx set screw.


Though there is g++/gcc in Xcode 8, gdb isn't found

The command-line debugger in Xcode is now LLDB; the relevant command is lldb.


Integrating Active Directory into our Mac Mavericks Open Directory Domain

You can integrate Active Directory with Open Directory in Mavericks, but it's a much different process then before. You have to give the AD user access to the services you want them to use before adding them to a group. (For instance FileSharing) If you don't you will get some weird errors, especially with Window's users. Once you give them access, then you can add them to groups. Apple wants you to use Profile Manager for all Management purposes, and not use groups at all. I find Groups are nice for server access, and auto mounts, but that's it. Everything else should be done in Profile Manager or a product like Casper.


My iPhone 6s is glitching like mad after the iOS 11 update, what should I do?

The first thing I’d try is downloading and installing the iOS 11.01 update.

To install the update over-the-air, go to Settings > General > Software Update.

For more information, refer to: iOS 11.0.1: What’s New Or Changed?

Finally, if you get absolutely desperate you may want to consider Downgrading iOS 11.0.1 To iOS 10.3.3 / iOS 10, though the window for doing this will be short!

Long term, like any iOS problem where multiple apps are misbehaving, you can always erase all content and settings after you have a good backup to make sure it’s not your settings. If the glitches continue, then restoring the device will get you a clean speedy iOS or the knowledge you need a hardware repair.


ntpd and incoming connections on OS X client?

I cannot say for certain, however, from reading this notice from NTP.ORG about a DRDos attack, I suspect someone is attempting to use your (and my) machine's NTP server for bad business.  I'm clicking the "Deny" button for accepting network connections and will go through these configuration instructions later.

Here's the opening paragraph of the notice:

  NTP users are strongly urged to take immediate action to ensure that
  their NTP daemon is not susceptible to use in a reflected
  denial-of-service (DRDoS) attack. Please see the NTP Security Notice
  for vulnerability and mitigation details, and the Network Time
  Foundation Blog for more information. (January 2014)


iPhone 7plus Pages application - table formulas

Although presently formulas are not available in iOS Pages (version 3.1), if you have a copy of Pages for Mac, the document can be formatted there, share with iOS (either with iCloud, email, AirDrop, etc.) then edit on iOS as illustrated below. The formulas entered using Pages on the Mac will be retained provided one does not overwrite them with other text.

In the example below, the number 317 is changed to 17 thus updating the sum in the footer.


macbook air sleep/wake problem after dual boot

This happens to my MacBook Pro also, 98% of the time I get it to work by turning up and down the brightness, even if you turned it off when it was bright. I assume this just gives a prompt to the OS that it is needed again, and should stop sleeping. otherwise, just click a couple times and wait.


How can I manually install applications on a jailbroken iPad?

Make sure you have appsync and installous from cydia installed on your iPhone, installed from the source
The app has to be a .ipa file.
Place the file in /private/var/mobile/documents/installous/downloads.
Open up installous and install from there.

Or use iPhone Explorer as described in this LifeHacker post:

  Using iPhone Explorer, you can backup or copy apps (and their settings) to your computer or to other iOS device—and it can do all of that without a jailbreak. To backup system files or default applications, like iOS's built-in calendar, you'll have to jailbreak your iOS device. (Even if you're not interested in backing up apps, iPhone Explorer is still great for mounting your iOS device as a disk.)


How to always show window controls in Yosemite full screen apps?

Use Option + Shift + Click green button to get the old fill screen behavior of expand to fill the whole screen.

Use Option + Click green button to get the old green button behavior to just expand vertically.

This was also driving me nuts today since every time that I change my KVM switch to my other machine, I end up with OS X resizing all of my windows! Argh! At least now I can get them back to the sizes I want. But the windows that I don't want to take up much room are still getting moved around annoyingly.


How do I do a Windows-Left or Windows-Right on Apple?

On the top left The Green Button for full screen / maximize have three ways:
short click -> app goes to full screen, creates a new desktop
long click -> app goes half full screen and you can choose from open windows for another half for the screen (that's a new desktop workspace too practically)
option+click -> app goes "old style maximize"

If I get your question well, the "long click" is what you are looking for. Only works in El Capitan 10.11, this is new feature. For older versions there were plugins to emulate Aero snap


Deleting emails on iPhone creates new folder "Deleted Messages" in Mac Mail

You can tell iOS which folder it should use for your deleted messages. Open up the Settings app and follow this path:

Mail, Contacts, Calendars < YOURACCOUNT (iCloud) < Account < Advanced (Mail) < Advanced

There you'll see Mailbox Behaviors options to tell iOS which folders to use for Drafts, Sent, and Deleted messages.

In your case, tap Deleted Mailbox and navigation your mail account's hierarchy to find your existing Trash folder. Select that and everything should work as you expect.


Downgrading the OS...restore apps from TimeMachine?

You will be able to restore everything from the backup which was done on the same or an older version of macOS Lion (10.7.5 was the latest, so if you just downloaded it from the App Store, you will probably have this one).

From later backups you have to copy/paste everything manually.

Also for Apple apps like Safari, iTunes, etc. only the latest version that was provided for the OS version your are about to install will be available, eventhough you haven't updated it to that version at the time of the backup.


Is there a way to temporarily pause iCloud sync of photos?

There is no way to pause it, but you can disable it temporarily. The only downside is that you will have to redownload all the pictures when it is re-enabled. To disable cell data for photo stream, you can go into Settings>Cellular and find the Photos app. Simply turn it off.


Download the USB installer on macOS X Catalina

softwareupdate --fetch-full-installer --full-installer-version 10.15

See also How can I download an older version of OS X/macOS?


Microsoft Arc Touch mouse doesn't want to connect in MacOS High Sierra

After a while, the mouse starts working with the next solution, but still, I don't know if it will fail again.

In System Preferences > Bluetooth at the devices list, delete
mouse and keyboard pairing (maybe keyboard was in conflict, I
don't know)
Pair the mouse. Turn on, press the Bluetooth button, wait for the device to be identified and connect.
Then turn on the
keyboard and connect.


App for "Minds of Modern Mathematics" doesn't work?

Leaving a review is generally the last way to get assistance since the developer and Apple do not reply to those - I resort to a bad/stinging review only after exhausting support from the vendor (or more than a month passes from the request for initial help or explanation.)

In all cases, Apple requires the developer to list a web site for each app. In the minds of mathematics case, since this is a free app, there doesn't appear to be a dedicated support, but if you click through to the developer site:

http://mindsofmath.com there is an about page

It has an email address, so I would start with mailing them asking how to reach the developers support. In this case, your request isn't really best asked to the developer since you are having an issue installing it. You could ask them - perhaps they need to change the devices that the app supports.

In this case, it's installation and Apple should be contacted:

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201398
https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204084

The second article seems to have the best info - if you can't even get that app to install - http://reportaproblem.apple.com/ which seems to work best when you reach it from the HT204084 support page.


You can use the Recovery partition to reinstall OS X. This will keep your user account but reset all system files.

To reinstall OS X, boot with ⌘R and select the Reinstall OS X option, then follow the instructions.

Additionally, this file is normally backed up to the local time machine store, so try entering Time Machine even if you don't have your drive connected to see about restoring that file.

Worst case, have some trusted people MD5 check sum the app on 10.8.5 if you want to risk downloading it from a stranger instead of from a friend's backup or Mac.


please see Apple documentation here: http://www.apple.com/server/macosx/features/wiki-server.html

and here: http://www.apple.com/server/macosx/resources/documentation.html

That should get you started.

Enjoy!


Old phone cannot connect to computer, the "computer connection" icon appears on phone

Here is how I finally got the photos.

I called various cell phone stores and asked for if they have a Cellebrite machine, a phone forensics machine that can get out contacts, pictures, and videos out. An AT&T store has it. So I went there.

The machine failed to connect to read from the phone twice, but it worked the 3rd time!! I got most of my pictures out. A read failure occurred twice during the transfer. Once I hit "retry" and it continued to work. The second time, it actually stopped. But I got the important photos out and I was so happy!

I transferred the photos to my iPad. But You can transfer it to another phone. I tried transferring to my USB drive, but a read failure occurred as well around half way. After I checked the USB drive, it didn't have any pictures on it. So be careful if you choose that option.

Btw, I don't know why the machine couldn't get my audio out. But those were not important. So I don't care.


Developer not identified error when logging in Oracle Instantclient on Catalina

This should do it!

System Preferences -> Security & Privacy -> Developer Tools

White-listing one-by-one

While launching your non-verified app keep your System Preferences -> Security & Privacy -> General open.
You can whitelist executables and libraries along the way. They will pop up in the general tab.

A signing tool

https://github.com/mitchellh/gon


Setting PHP upload_max_filesize in Mountain Lion

Have you modified the post_max_size too ?

post_max_size = 20M
upload_max_filesize = 20M

Check "PHP post_max_size overrides upload_max_filesize" here :
https://stackoverflow.com/questions/7754133/php-post-max-size-overrides-upload-max-filesize


How do I sync apps to my iPhone with iTunes 12.7 or later?

With the release of iTunes 12.7, Apple removed the ability to browse, download or install iOS apps via iTunes for macOS/Windows.

In case you wish to browse App Store on your Mac/Windows PC, you can still download the last version of iTunes (iTunes 12.6.3) with App Store built-in via the Apple Support article, Deploy apps in a business environment with iTunes.


How can I de-folderize the contents of a folder?

Currently I'm sitting at an older Mac (running 10.6.8), but if I use the folder view where I see the sidebar and search field I can:

Type anything into the search field to activate it
Constrain the search to the enclosing folder
Click the little circle with the plus to get more search options
Choose "Kind" is "Document"
Delete the text you typed in to activate the search field

What I get is a list of all documents in all the folders inside the enclosing folder, recursively. You could then select all of the files and copy or move them to a new location.

Or -- since we are talking about Photographs -- if your have Adobe Bridge you can set that to show the contents of sub-folders when looking at a folder, then use Bridge's move or copy commands.


You should be fine with many SSD models on the market, among these you can find the ?amsung EVO 850 series, just as an example. If you replace the original HDD for an SSD, however, be aware that you will need to enable TRIM manually on your new SSD. Please check this page on trimforce.


How to change binding in zsh? command key vs control key

Install the awesome, free Karabiner-Elements app.
Install the "Keyboard shortcuts for Terminal apps" mod.

Then, instead of using ^W, ^U, ^A, etc., you can just use the modifier keys (⌘/⌥/⌃) plus the arrow/delete keys (↑/↓/←/→/⌫/⌦), just as you do in the rest of macOS.
Don't like those exact mappings? Just git clone https://github.com/pqrs-org/KE-complex_modifications.git and write your own mod.


buy a Mac from Apple
set it up, use the same iCloud account/Apple ID as on the iPad
enable iCloud Keychain syncing using the iPad keychain as a starting point
access password via Keychain application
disable iCloud on Mac
return Mac to Apple and get refund

PS: please check the applicable return policy for your country first


What solutions exist when apps don't download or update on iOS 6?

I had the same problem and after none of the other suggestions worked (changing date/time, shutting down and restarting), I went to Settings > iTunes & App Stores, then clicked on Apple ID > Sign Out.  After signing back in, I was able to start downloading apps again.


Disable Search / Dictionary Popup Window in iTerm2

You can disable this feature by opening iTerm2 preferences, then search for "dictionary". You can navigate to this preference by opening preferences, clicking "Advanced", and then scrolling through the list until you see "General" and "Perform dictionary lookups on force press".

You don't need to restart iTerm2 for this change to take effect.

This was tested while using macOS Catalina with iTerm2 3.3.6. I have "force click and haptic feedback" disabled in the system's Trackpad Point & Click settings.


Is Adobe Lightroom v6.0 (standalone and NOT cloud) serial# stored in a file on my Mac?

You can try using Migration Assistant to migrate your Home folder, Applications & Settings from your old Mac to the new one. This often transfers app licenses & settings successfully between computers.


What software provides a code editing environment on iPad?

A good code editor for iPad is Textastic. Its not free and sells for $10 at the AppStore.  It claims to have syntax highlighting for over 80 languages. If you want to program exclusively in Python, there is an app called Pythonista. This is more of an IDE than just a code editor.


Smart mailbox for unread messages in Mail.app

Spotlight is responsible for searches, so I would add your home folder to the spotlight system preference privacy settings.

Then say Ok to any prompts that mention search will break.
Then remove your home folder and let the indexer re-index mail messages.
Restart after 30 minutes if you don’t see an improvement

There are more drastic and questionable options, but let’s start with safe and easy.


Determine geolocation in shell / Terminal on OS X 10.5

According to Apple Developer documentation, the feature is available from OS X 10.6 or later.

Alternative to hardware-based GPS, how about DNS-based geolocation option for OSX 10.5? May be worth your time to google those.


How to prevent Yosemite's Finder from seeing a folder with a .epub extension as a epub file?

You could look at using duti, a command line tool that lets you change the the file type association of an extension.

Along with duti, something like this could work:

com.apple.finder    .epub
com.apple.finder    .key
com.apple.finder    .numbers


Ah, the downfall of slot drives - getting a disc stuck in it when it dies :(

As per the comment to your question, I presume that this is a smaller CD, not an actual minidisc that is more akin to a floppy disk in a plastic case?

Oddly, some slot loading mechanisms can support these smaller discs.  For example, the Nintendo Wii is a vertical slot loader that will accept Gamecube discs that are smaller than regular CDs/DVDs.

Obviously, the MacBook won't tho.  I would recommend the use of a pair of slim "shims" that you can use to make a pair of tweezers with.  They would need to be both slim, but strong enough to get a grip with.  You may need to cover the ends if you don't want to risk scratching the disc.

Alternatively, a piece of double sided sticky tape on the end of a plastic ruler may help.  Just insert an inch (don't go too far, don't want to touch the laser with sticky stuff), and wobble it up and down a bit, see if you can get contact with the edge of the disc, then slowly pull it out.  If this is tricky, try it with the drive/laptop upside down.


Why does the iPhone's iPod app sometimes forget playback position?

This could be a memory issue that the developer was forced to handle this way. All apps in iOS are subject to memory warnings at which point the app (developer) is to free up as much memory as it can by clearing out what the developer considered unnecessary information.

Another point of of possible quitting is if a phone call is being received. Apps only have a split second to save what is crucial before quitting to make room for the call. Again, the developer has to decide what is truly important and what isn't to save.

The save position may not sound like a lot, but mobile devices really don't give developers a lot of room to play with and media of any type is a resource hog.


I'd get the free app Mountain and see if it will mount the drive. Often when I've had troubles mounting a drive Mountain helped. The app has a free trail so it'll cost you nothing. Start the app from the menubar and it lists all the Volumes connected to your computer. Find the drive tyou want and click the mount  icon.


Deselect text using keyboard shortcut or prevent selection of word/link on right click

cmd+a (select all)
cmd+shift+home [at least tested on PC with control+shift+home]


Is it possible to run Snow Leopard (Server) inside VirtualBox on a Mac running Lion?

Yup. You should be able to. Give it a try. :)

Though, I hope apps will be updated to work on Intel, because this isn't the most resource-firendly solution. It probably takes more processing power / RAM / Hard Disk Space to install and run Snow Leopard than to run the app itself.

Yet, I think you can find alternative Intel apps. I really like using Apple's Mail for e-mail, and this article shows several alternatives to Quicken.

Anyhow, its your choice. Give it a try and see what works better for you.


How long does it take to enroll in the Developer Program (Organisation)

Apple makes an API call to D&B to look up DUNS numbers, so it's basically instantaneous. It's pretty clear from the wording of the response that Apple isn't the hang up here.

When DUNS is already set - registration takes me a day or so typically to enter everything in Apple - see that the API call matches - clear up any issues with zip code or business name between how I entered the company name in D&B and how it's entered in Apple (a space before a comma can break the API lookup - it's very precise in my experience and fails if you don't have every character exactly matching in the two systems).

Assuming you haven't made a clerical error that's causing the DUNS lookup to fail, You'll want your business manager or corporate legal department to contact D&B and expedite the listing. D&B does accept money to expedite their listing process so you could always pay your way to an official "credential" from them if it's taking too long to go down the "I'm a small business and want you to verify my credentials for free when you get to it" path.

If you are a solo developer, you might find it easier to just make a personal account and sell your apps without needing D&B if you won't use that listing for other reasons. This really is a business decision about how your LLC or incorporation is set up and not really an Apple question other than this is one of several hoops they require businesses to jump through before they enter a legally binding agreement with your business.

I would add, that joining as an enterprise takes far longer, weeks to a month if you have your legal council ready, records match and add month or two if there are hiccups like someone already signed up your company or an account is frozen or locked.


View the actual configuration of a remote printer

Lets see if this works for you:

Using the one Computer that successfully made the connection to the printer to find out the printers information.

How to Set or Change Default Print Settings on Mac OS X, using CUPS interface which is an Apple’s printing system.

http://localhost:631/printers

You might get an Message saying the access is blocked (that is normal setting).

Open Terminal and copy paste following:

sudo cupsctl WebInterface=yes

Enter the password (system password)

Open the Link now and you will be presented with the printers administration screen.


Some categories, like the one you mention, aren't listed in System Preferences.

You can reset that one in particular with this command:

tccutil reset AppleEvents

Or, you can reset all app permissions like this:

 tccutil reset All

You can also add an app's bundle identifier (e.g. tccutil reset All com.apple.Terminal) to reset only that app's permissions.


MacBook Pro Lion crashes after a progress bar boot

It could be a few different things that are causing this issue.

I would highly recommend taking your computer in to the Genius Bar at your local Apple Store and having them take a look at it.

http://www.apple.com/retail/geniusbar/

Its free for the appointment and the diagnostic even if you are out of warranty and will probably be the fastest and easiest way to get to the bottom of what is happening with your machine.

I know its not an instant fix but it will make things a lot easier to have them look at it.


Automator rename finder item date and time

Check the answer found here

https://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/52535/clean-up-file-names-using-automator

I changed the bash script code to include the date code.

shopt -s extglob
dcode=`date '+%m%y'`
for f in "$@"; do
   f1="${f%.*}"
   f2="${f##*.}"
   if [ "$f2" == "$f1" ] ; then
       echo "$f" "${f1}_${dcode}"
   else
       echo "$f" "${f1}_${dcode}.${f2}"
   fi
done

The code will should work even with files that do not have extensions.

Replace the commands echo with mv to actually get the code to do anything.

Hope that helped.


Traffic to IP addresses matching local network not sent over VPN

No. This is precisely why all of documentation about setting up VPN tunnels/bridges stresses the need for local and remote networks to have different subnets.

You will need to change one or the other.


Can I have launchctl output stdout/stderr from my application to the system-wide Unified Logging mechanism?

You could use blowhole.

blowhole is a command-line tool that takes a string as an argument and sends it to the unified logging system. It is supported from Sierra (10.12) up to Catalina (10.15).

How to use it

(Tested on macOS Catalina 10.15.5)

Modify the ProgramArguments array in your .plist file like this:

<key>ProgramArguments</key>
<array>
    <string>/bin/bash</string>
    <string>-c</string>
    <string>COMMAND OPTIONS 2> >(while read; do /path/to/blowhole -e "$REPLY"; done) | while read; do /path/to/blowhole -d "$REPLY"; done</string>

where COMMAND OPTIONS is the command you want to execute, followed by any desired options.

Here, I make use of bash's support for redirection (2>), process substitution (>()) and pipelines (|) to:

sort out the command's standard error and standard output
process them separately inside two while loops. The first while loop runs blowhole -e to log standard error with an "Error" level:

  <timestamp> Error <info> blowhole: [co.eclecticlight.blowhole:general] Blowhole: STANDARD ERROR MESSAGES

and the second one runs blowhole -d to log standard output with a "Default" level:

  <timestamp> Default <info> blowhole: [co.eclecticlight.blowhole:general] Blowhole: STANDARD OUTPUT MESSAGES

(Since blowhole can't read from standard input, we need while loops to feed it a line of input at a time.)

The blowhole: [co.eclecticlight.blowhole:general] Blowhole: string is not configurable, but you can add a prefix of your choice to the logged messages. For example, since you mention offlineimap in your question:

  /path/to/blowhole -d "offlineimap stdout: $REPLY";

and:

  /path/to/blowhole -e "offlineimap stderr: $REPLY";

You can read log entries with sudo log show | grep blowhole:general or sudo log show | grep offlineimap, if you added the customized prefix. To read log entries as they are generated, in a manner similar to tail -f, use show stream instead.

Alternatively, you can wrap the command you want to execute in a shell script so that blowhole logs the command's standard output and error in a way similar to above. This is convenient if you want to run some code prior to executing the actual command:

#!/bin/bash
# Add the code you want to execute prior to the actual command here
COMMAND ARGUMENTS \
> >(
while read; do
    /path/to/blowhole -d "$REPLY";
done) \
2> >(
while read; do
    /path/to/blowhole -e "$REPLY";
done)

You can then configure the ProgramArguments array of your .plist file to run the script instead of your command:

<key>ProgramArguments</key>
<array>
    <string>/bin/bash</string>
    <string>/path/to/script.sh</string>
</array>

Where to get it from

You can download blowhole from its project page or directly from here. The program is provided as a signed, hardened and notarized executable (as required by Catalina) and as an Installer package.


Macbook pro trackpad works but not detected in system preferences

open up system prefs and click the 'view' drop-down options (Next to the apple logo on the upper left corner of your monitor its the third option) > go to 'customize'
and check to see if there are any disabled preferences...(such as your touchpad or whatever...)


hyperlink to another worksheet in Numbers 09

The short (and sad) answer is: No, unfortunately it is not possible.


Automator SCRIPT NEED: Select part of name file, find file with containing name, then copy this in item in another folder

Open Automator, create a new Service and mount your workflow like this:

Save it and name as CopyRaw or something you like.

Shell Script:

awk '{print $1}' <<< "${1##*/}"

Usage:

Righ click the file you want and click on your service CopyRaw.


Macbook feels a lot hotter than usual; are these temperatures normal?

Those temps seem fine to me.

MBP models usually range from about 40ºC (104ºF) to 100ºC (212ºF) depending on whether the CPU is idle or under load. CPU temps (just like ambient temperatures) typically have a bearing on GPU temps too, especially within the extremely confined spaces of a MacBook.

If you'd like, you can refer to the Intel Mac Temperature Database to see the various temperature ranges reported by users. You can also filter the list by model etc.

As for your battery, it's also clear that it needs replacing. MacBook Pro batteries have a life expectancy at or around 1000 cycles.  It's not uncommon for batteries to exceed or fall short of this number; as every user is different in terms of what they use their computers for and how/when they're using AC power etc. So the 1000 cycles is just an estimation of how long it can last.

Since your battery needs replacing, it's not contributing as much to the overall power source mix for your MacBook Pro, so this could explain an increase in temperatures - although the increase could also be explained by other factors.

As an aside, the cable you bought in Italy is most likely a charge only cable (i.e. many of the cables sold at fuel stations etc only support charging and not data transfer), so that explains why this cable will charge your iPhone but not allow data transfer. Regardless, it's unlikely to affect the temperature of your MacBook Pro.


Reformat old windows hard drive for use externally

Have you opened Disk Utility and tried to format it already? Sometimes a drive will not appear on the desktop, but will appear in Disk Utility.

I've had windows drives show up sometimes, and not other times. What you could do to make it more likely to show up is go to an available (hopefully not too difficult) windows machine and reformat the drive as a FAT/MS-DOS drive (don't do quick-format). This should be easier for the mac to see.

Once you can see the blank FAT formatted drive, open Disk Utility and then select it on the left sidebar and erase it again as a "Mac OS Extended (Journaled)" (HFS+) format.

There are other methods like using an emulation environment like Parallels Desktop (IMHO bad SW company), VMWare Fusion (my choice), or VirtualBox (free) (all of these require a windows install disc); or you could even try using programs like MacFuse or NTFS-3G, Tuxera, etc., to mount windows (NTFS) drives directly in the Finder. But unless a mac you can find has one of these solutions, it's probably not worth it to go through the trouble just to erase one drive.

Lastly, I've also had some external USB enclosures not show up on some versions of OS X! So the cheapy enclosure you got just might not work with your installation anyway?

Details that might be helpful for potential helpers:
HD interface PATA/ATA/IDE or SATA?
OS X Version?
iMac model year or identifier?
Enclosure is assumed to be USB 2.0 high speed plugged into built-in port on iMac. Correct if wrong.


Finder error after taking screen shot, apple button not working either

OK, lets do this.

In Terminal run launchctl list to see all programs running.

Then anything that does not start with com.apple....

Quit or Delete and make sure it is not in you Login items (automatically starts when you log in)

Check your CPU load and Memory load in Activity monitor.

Gaming sites like Steam might run limits on your GPU.

Lets close and quit all 3D party apps, like coconutBattery and others.

The goal here is obvious. Free you OS X and see how it runs then.

Since your Finder just crashed, Open the Console and select Errors and Faults, then take screen shot and publish.


How do I convert this Applescript to Terminal osascript?

There are several ways to accomplish the goal. Here is the method I would use...

In Terminal run the following compound command, e.g.:

f="myscript"; touch "$f"; open -e "$f"; chmod +x "$f"

Note: Change myscript to the name you'd like.

In the new blank TextEdit document that opens, add the following as the first line:

#!/usr/bin/osascript

Then add your AppleScript code under the shebang you just added.

Save the document.

Now to use it in Terminal, e.g.:

./myscript

Or:

/path/to/myscript

Or place in in a directory that is within the defined PATH and then simply use its name, e.g.:

myscript

This method also works; however it's not practical for long scripts:

osascript -e 'tell application "System Preferences" to activate' -e 'tell application "System Preferences"' -e 'reveal anchor "input" of pane id "com.apple.preference.sound"' -e 'end tell' -e 'tell application "System Events" to tell process "System Preferences"' -e 'repeat until exists tab group 1 of window "Sound"' -e 'end repeat' -e 'tell table 1 of scroll area 1 of tab group 1 of window 1' -e 'select (row 1 where value of text field 1 is "Internal Microphone")' -e 'end tell' -e 'end tell' -e 'quit application "System Preferences"'

Please read the manual page for osascript for additional information. In Terminal:

man osascript

On a separate note, if you omit the following line of code you'll not have to see the System Preferences window flash on the screen:

Saved as as script, remove:

tell application "System Preferences" to activate

In the very long drawn out command line, remove:

-e 'tell application "System Preferences" to activate'