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This copy of the Install OS X El Capitan application can't be verified. It may have been corrupted or tampered with during downloading

Follow this tutorial. This applies to the reply from @Cazuma Nii Cavalcanti. In short once you are at the first install page go to tools in the nav bar and open the terminal, in the terminal type date MMDDHHmmYY replacing the letters as follows.

MM - 2 digit month  01 - 12
DD - 2 digit date   01 - 31
HH - 2 digit hour   01 - 24
mm - 2 digit minute 01 - 59
YY - 2 digit year   > 15

once that is done go through the install normally. I just tried it and it worked with a USB install of OS X (10.11 - El Capitan) and it worked like a charm!

If setting to correct date doesn't work. Set to a date just after the os release.


Finding Peak Memory Bandwidth on MacBook Pro

Your 2016 MacBook, depending on the model, uses either 1866 or 2133 DDR3 memory (1866 is used by the non-touchbar model, the others use 2133.)

This number refers to the data rate of the memory, in MT/s (millions of transfers per second) per channel. DDR3 specifies a 64 bit wide bus, and MacBooks utilize dual channel memory: thus, the total memory bandwidths are 238.848 Gb/s (29.856 GB/s) and 273.024 Gb/s (34.128 GB/s.) Note however that all of these computers use LPDDR3, which may result in lower than advertised bandwidth. In practice, you probably won't seem these speeds, but it provides an upper limit.

If you'd like to test the bandwidth, Novabench offers features to test the actual bandwidth of your machine, though there seem to be mixed results based on reviews (Novabench reported 15.6% of my theoretical speed, which seems suspiciously low.) You may have better luck with Bandwidth, though you'll have to install dependencies and compile it yourself.

Primary source.


Can I make a new apple ID to use for one specific game?

Making new Apple ID is easy but hard to manage long term. It almost certainly won't help you wi your game restart for several reasons listed below.

Unless you have a very special game that somehow asks you to log in and doesn't use Game Center to find your Apple ID, your phone expects all games to use the same Apple ID.

If the developers stored your progress using iCloud, you can simply delete that game from all of your devices and when the last delete happens, it will also delete the saved progress.

If that doesn't work (and in many cases - especially "free" games, this won't work) you will need to ask game support to reset your progress or ditch that old Apple ID forever and make a new one for all your games.


Outlook in VM not responding - want to bring window to front

My set up is Windows 8, Parallels 8 2Gb and 2 CPU, Outlook 2013.

I used to have these "not responding" messages in Outlook 2010/2013. From activity monitor I can see a lot of background activities of Avira anti virus program. I'm tired of all these "not responding" messages. Finally today, I uninstall Avira, and suddenly Outlook 2013 profile loading is a snap. Processing also a snap..
No more not responding.

Prior to removing Avira, I checked its log file and in there it reported numerous times on trying to scan Outlook's each OST files or pst files whenever I accessed them. Those outlook mail data files I really need to have them together in my Outlook folder panes..everytime, hours a day, and referred to numerous times a day. My email data files are gigs large..

I guess, will have to find another anti virus software with less cpu/resource loads..

Hope this can assist you.


Howto change the Apple logo after Filevault login?

When you have an encrypted disk with FileVault, the system needs to ask for an authorised user to login just after EFI boot. (no news here, just enforcing what most people know)

That logo shows your avatar because your user's avatar is inserted on the EFI boot image/nvram. At this point of the boot sequence, there is no Operating System loaded yet, it's just a simple boot screen to ask the user password [which simulates the login screen of the GUI], but it just a static image containing the user avatars.

After you insert the password, the disk is mounted, and the boot process begins.

After the loading bar reaches about 80% that screen changes to another almost identical, it sometimes blinks at this point. This is the GUI interface being loaded, process called WindowServer. Your avatar is not shown on this phase. To modify it would require to change protected SIP system files (if possible) otherwise you cannot easily change it.

This is how the boot sequence works for Encrypted Filevaut MacOS systems.

If you boot it using the "-v" nvram argument you can get a better view of what is happening "behind" the scene, and also can see the GUI loading moment.

If you open the Console.app and change your avatar on System Configuration you can see the moment it writes you avatar to the nvram [only for FileVault encrypted system this occurs]

My answer is a partial answer just to clarify how this is technically done and help describing how this works. I hope it can be valuable to help you [or others who are reading this] to reach your goal for changing it.


How to force iCloud profile photo to update

As you have done major steps like clearing cache, the following is a tweak which also allows you to sync the photo in all your Apple devices. Keep this a try

First, open Messages from your iPhone.
Tap the ellipsis (•••) button at the top, then "Share Name and Photo."

Once you see the Share your Name and Photo with the Friends splash screen, tap the "Choose Name and Photo" button to continue. On the next screen, your Display Name will be listed as whatever name is associated with your Apple ID, but you can change it to whatever you want. Only one field needs to be filled out, so you can just choose a first or last name or special moniker or nickname.

As for the photo, if you've set a custom photo for yourself in the Contacts app or have already created a Memoji, you'll see those options in the large circles above your display name. You can swipe through the options and select the one you'd like to use. If you want something different, there should be a "View More" option in one of the circles.

Once you've selected one you like, tap the "Continue" button at the bottom, and you'll get a prompt asking to "Use This Photo Everywhere?" It states that using the new image will change the photo associated with your Apple ID and in your My Card in the Contacts app. Tap "Use" to continue.

On the last page, you'll be asked to choose who you share your name and photo with. You can choose to share it automatically with "Contacts Only" or one a case-by-case basis with "Always Ask."

By default, "Always Ask" is recommended to maximize your privacy, which will display a permissions prompt within each conversation's thread, where you can choose "Share" or hit the (x) to keep it hidden.

This tweak might help you to sync the photo.


Is it possible to enable Legacy FileVault for a network user?

I haven't seen anyone hack together a script to re-implement the FileVault encrypted disk image settings, but I have heard of people using a pre-Mountain Lion machine to make more local users and then migrate them to OS X 10.8.

It requires a second machine (or VM if that is up your alley) but I haven't seen any downsides to moving more FileVault 1 type accounts to new systems other than the obvious downsides associated with those accounts:

backups to Time Machine only run when unlocked
compacting of free space can be problematic
slight slow down and chance of breaking some software that assumes hard coded file paths


Applescript to automate drop-down selection in Mozilla Firefox

Try this

tell application "Firefox"
    activate
    tell application "System Events"
        keystroke tab
        keystroke (key code 125)
        keystroke (key code 125)
        keystroke (key code 125)
    end tell
end tell

You might not need to activate Firefox if it's the current active app. Them you just need :

tell application "System Events"
    keystroke tab
    keystroke (key code 125)
    keystroke (key code 125)
    keystroke (key code 125)
end tell


can I point my Pictures folder to a folder in an external hard drive?

As Rabskatran pointed out, you can move your iPhoto Library if iPhoto is your primary photo manager. Or Aperture, it doesn't matter in this case.

Also, before we start, I would suggest you NOT to move your Pictures folder as it might mess with the structure of the system.

Anyway, here are the steps:

Close iPhoto if open,
Go to your Pictures folder,
Move that folder named as iPhoto Library to your external disk,
Make sure that the transfer is FULLY finished,
Open iPhoto while holding down the alt key on your keyboard,
From the pop-up Finder browser, choose your iPhoto Library on your external disk.

This way you transferred your iPhoto library to your external disk and made iPhoto to directly open up with your photo libraries new place.


You no long have a OXReserved partition. The partition shown in you question is the Windows Recovery partition. This partition is created when Windows is installed using the Boot Camp Assistant. (Although, the partition can also be created when someone installs Windows without using the Boot Camp Assistant.) A correct installation of Windows should include a BOOTCAMP partition and a Windows Recovery partition.

To remove the Windows Recovery partition using the Disk Utility, you would first have to remove the BOOTCAMP partition.

  Note: Normally, the Boot Camp Assistant is used to remove Windows.


Is a downloaded OS X installer from the App Store tied to my Apple ID?

If by reinstall the OS, you simply mean reinstall it and not run first-time setup, the resulting installation will not be associated with you in any way.

If you intend to run first-time setup, obviously do not login with your Apple ID during that process, and of course don't input any personally-identifiable information either.

There is metadata in a receipt file in the installer file itself that is associated with your Apple ID. That is not transferred to the resulting installation, though.


For iTerm2, how do I make the working directory appear in the window title?

With the \033]0;TEXT\007 escape sequence.

Example of use in Bash: echo -ne "\033]0;$PWD\007"

Which you could add to your $PROMPT_COMMAND if you use Bash, or otherwise attach to you PS1 so it gets re-evaluated often.

Example: export PROMPT_COMMAND='echo -ne "\033]0;$PWD\007"'


Carbon Copy Cloner should do the job.
CCC (Carbon Copy Cloner) creates a bootable backup, and preserves all your files, and in the right hierarchy. You can also have incremental backups (it only backs up items that have changed since the last backup). You can schedule CCC to backup regularly. CCC also has the ability to backup over a network. I also like the Growl notifications.

SuperDuper! is another handy little application. We used to use it for backing up before Time Machine came out. It has the ability to do incremental backups, so you won't be backing up the whole hard drive; just the data that's changed. Unlike CCC, it costs $27.95.

Another option would be rsync or cp. Both will have the option to make a perfect backup, invisible files included. Rsync can also backup incrementally, which means it will only backup what has changed. With rsync and cp, you can also schedule it to backup with launchd or cron.


Adding TextWrangler to the path environment

Your alias which you have configured will change the working directory in shells which support changing directory without 'cd' to the application bundle of TextWrangler.

To have an alias which opens an app, you will need to run the binary in the app bundle, usually located in Contents/MacOS. For example…

alias textwrangler=/Applications/TextWrangler.app/Contents/MacOS/TextWrangler

The binary in TextWrangler also understands arguments for passing files, which will mean that you can now edit files using the following. This won't work with every app though.

textwrangler /path/to/file

I'm not sure I understand what you're trying to add to your path, but if you want to add the binary to your path, you can add the containing folder:

export PATH=$PATH:/Applications/TextWrangler.app/Contents/MacOS

To add the alias to every interactive shell session, add the alias line to one of the profile files for your shell.


How can I see if my ipad 3 has been hacked?

There isn't a practical way for your iPad to be hacked and/or for the system to be moved into, at least without physical access or a jailbreak running.

They could, however, get your Apple ID password if it's not particularly strong or if you reuse the same password on multiple websites, and that can give them access to backups, your calendar, location via Find my iDevice, among other things. If you secure your Apple ID and you haven't jailbroken, then you'll be just fine.

It's highly unlikely that you'll ever have your system accessed because of Apple's review process for apps and the sandboxing requirements imposed on them.


If single user mode boot fails, the OS is broken on a fundamental level and since you already did the reinstallation of Snow Leopard the mac now should boot into safe mode or single user mode if it were working properly.

No matter how bad your user account or third party software was corrupted, a safe boot after a reinstallation of the OS should work. It's odd the installation didn't flag an error since i've almost never seen an install complete and not be able to get a safe boot/single user mode boot afterwards.

You did a great job of following the steps in Mac OS X: Gray screen appears during startup - I'm assuming you checked the peripherals, etc...

It's probably time to make a call to Apple for service, but if you care to try some more - here are two things I would do.

fire up disk utility and repartition the drive - make three partitions to see it can accept a new partition map, then make it back to one.
write zeroes to the entire drive

It's rare, but sometimes the drive needs to be really cleaned out and installing into the existing partition clearly didn't help you. Both of these make it almost impossible for even a professional to do data recovery if you don't have a backup - so use care before trying these.


Mac Clients getting IP address out of DHCP range when Net Restoring

Despite the Mac server's DHCP service being "off", it might still be handing out addresses to DHCP clients. The DHCP and NetInstall/NetBoot services are both handled by the same daemon, bootpd (although NetInstall also activates TFTP and NFS). Theoretically, if NetInstall is on but DHCP is off, bootpd should be running but not handing out addresses over DHCP. But in at least some versions there's a bug that can lead to DHCP being fully active despite being "off".

The bug seems to occur when both DHCP and NetInstall are turned on, then DHCP is switched off, but the bootpd daemon doesn't seem to get the message and keeps doing DHCP. Generally, the solution is simple: switch both DHCP and NetInstall off, then switch just NetInstall on.

To confirm, check the log (system.log specifically) on the Mac server, look for entries from bootpd. You should see "BSDP" entries, but not "DHCP". See this Apple support document for some examples (although it has both BSDP and DHCP running).


You have only one SSD in your MacBook Pro. The main former CoreStorage/HFS+ volume and the Recovery HD were transformed/merged to an APFS container while upgrading to macOS 10.13 (High Sierra) though.

Here is the old partition scheme:

diskutil list
/dev/disk0:
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      GUID_partition_scheme                       *120.5 GB    disk0
   1:                        EFI EFI                    209.7 MB    disk0s1
   2:                  Apple_HFS Macintosh HD           119.4 GB    disk0s2
   3:                 Apple_Boot Recovery HD            650.0 MB    disk0s3

After converting it to APFS disk0s2 and disk0s3 are merged to disk0s2 as one physical volume (container). The container is split into various volume disks.
A boot disk APFS container usually provides four volumes with different roles:

Preboot (which has no predecessor)
a non specific one/multi-purpose (the former system volume)
Recovery (the former Recovery HD)
VM (which has no predecessor)

Only one (the former system volume) is visible in the Finder!

The sizes of the volumes can be adjusted dynamically by the system without user interaction.

diskutil list
/dev/disk0 (internal, physical):
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      GUID_partition_scheme                       *120.5 GB    disk0
   1:                        EFI EFI                     209.7 MB   disk0s1
   2:                 Apple_APFS Container disk1        120.3 GB    disk0s2

/dev/disk1 (synthesized):
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      APFS Container Scheme -                     +120.3 GB    disk1
                                 Physical Store disk0s2
   1:                APFS Volume Macintosh HD            13.7 GB    disk1s1
   2:                APFS Volume Preboot                 19.9 MB    disk1s2
   3:                APFS Volume Recovery                519.9 MB   disk1s3
   4:                APFS Volume VM                      20.5 KB    disk1s4

The app you are using probably shows the possible max size of each APFS volume disk and not the real allocated size. It's either not properly adapted to the new file system or it's on purpose.

To get the real sizes enter diskutil list or diskutil ap list in Terminal.app. To get more APFS sub-commands enter man diskutil.


Will upgrading my iPod touch 3g erase any data or settings?

iTunes should back up the data before updating the firmware and restore it again afterwards (this is what it does with an iPhone)

To be absolutely sure you can right click on the iPod Touch in the tree and select Backup to create a manual one before updating.


Internal microphone only works when Siri is activated - MacOS 10.13.2

I could solve the issue by activating the dictation functionality. You can find it on "System Settings" > "Keyboard".


iTunes creates its own playlists when I add folders

It should only do that if you drag the folder to the playlists list on the left - drag to anywhere else & it doesn't.
Intentional behaviour.


Gmail messages seen on iPhone do not appear in Mail App

Double check to make sure you are using IMAP as your incoming mail server request on both your device and your computer.

If those are set correctly, make sure you have the latest OS X updates... I had some issues with missing mail or just mail that took forever to sync down to my computer when I first got Mavericks. I am currently receiving all of my mail now.

Lastly, I know this is stupid, because a lot of people say to do this for everything. But go ahead and restart your computer, some applications will "clog up" with system processes or they will just stop doing some processes all together. A reboot will allow for all caches to be cleared and processes to start from the beginning as normal.


How to get 1:1 scale in Keynote, Pages or Numbers?

If you select 'Actual Size' (Command 0) under the View > Zoom menu, then the page should display at ... actual size.
With this setting, an A4 page on the screen is the same size as an A4 piece of paper that I hold in front of the screen. This works for Retina displays and non-Retina displays.
Back in the old days, Mac screens had 72 pixels to the inch. So it was easy for 1 point on the page to equal 1 pixel on the screen. This ratio is what become 100% zoom.
Of course, screen pixel density has increased massively since then. Pre-Retina displays were around 109 dpi. Retina screens are twice that, but scale everything up by 2, giving the same perceived resolution.
109 dpi divided by 72 dpi gives you 151%, which is the zoom factor you get when you select 'Actual Size'.

Preview has a Preference to define 100% as either 1 point = 1 pixel, or 'size on screen equals size on printout', which presumably sets 100% to the Actual Size.


Internal hard disk won't wipe, can't reinstall OS because not enough disk space

If you don't want retrieve your personal datas (I suppose they are saved) you can erase the entire disk and after reinstall Mac Os X. I suppose you have an usb key or an apple installer for install your Mac os system.
I refer to this : https://imgur.com/C5yYVeT
The command in the terminal is :
diskutil erasedisk apfs "Alex HD" gpt disk0

This will reinitialise the 128 Go SSD with an APFS Volume named Alex HD


iOS App Store chart position: Strange ups and downs

I think you answered the question yourself. It looks like positions 60-150 for the section you are interested in are very variable due to the ranking algorithm being sensitive to very low traffic in app downloads.

I'd guess that positions 1-50 have significantly more app download traffic, and thus they are much more stable.


Fix bad image quality in dark images in iMovie

You need to set Data Rate in Export with Quicktime to Manual and increase Data Rate value for improving quality. You can also try compression quality after you have set a high data rate.


iPad Air 2 used ~2GB of Mobile Data Overnight: what for?

2Gb is in the range of a full software update (or a full backup), and it's unlikely the iPad did that over cellular.

Did you have anything tethered to the iPad? A laptop perhaps? The data limiting doesn't kick in over tethering, and the tethered device thinks it's on wifi.

If that is the case, you may want to turn off auto-update.


Inconsistent results when getting folder size in AppleScript

Try Automator. I did it and it worked for me on each folder.  I tried it as a Service.

I might have automator actions that you don't have.

You can get them here if that's the case:

http://www.automatedworkflows.com

There you will find awesome automator action packs. Very useful.

Phil


Fink help!! Not installing in Mavericks!

You didn't specify the version of fink you are using, but according to the Fink Announcement mailing list

  Note: be advised that fink-0.35.2 does NOT work for OS 10.9.  If you are
  testing on 10.9 prior to the official release date, you will want to
  grab an archive from https://github.com/fink/fink/tree/Futureproof2

And in the Fink Beginners mailing list

  We've added support for 10.9 into the master branch of the github
  repository (https://github.com/fink/fink).  Folks that were using the
  "Futureproof2" feature branch may want to update their git checkouts
  appropriately to pick up changes that get made after the merge and
  before we do a release.

  Some other notes:

  There is no 10.9 support in any released fink, version 0.35.2 or
  earlier.  (The first 10.9 support release version will probably be 0.36.0)
  There is going to be no supported upgrade path from any earlier OS X.
  The document /sw/share/doc/fink/INSTALL has information about how to
  capture your list of installed packages.

Update

On October 31st, fink 0.36.0 was released which does support OS X 10.9.


You can try BetterTouchTool. There might be a setting to do that. Maybe you'll even find another gesture to triple-click that you'll like better.


Manage and update many machines with the same settings

For that level of computers, your best bet is to get a license of Apple Remote Desktop to manage them.

https://www.apple.com/remotedesktop/

Since it's Apple software, you can leverage AppleCare to get technical help and guidance. It scales very well for situations under 50 computers. Even managing thousands of Macs is possible, but I'd put my money on a different horse when crossing 100 Macs under management.

Seriously consider trying out bushel as well as osquery along with ARD to get started.

https://osquery.io
http://www.bushel.com

You get free support from bushel and can stick with the free plan to see if it suits you while learning about MDM options. ARD is a no brainer to help install and manage without messing with setting up screen sharing one by one. Your call if OS Query is worth learning - if you don't want to know SQL like languages, there are other free solutions like Munki and AutoPkg to explore.

https://www.munki.org/munki/
https://autopkg.github.io/autopkg/


iPhone 3GS keeps vibrating at random times

When I worked at the Apple Store we had 3G and 3GS models come in every so often where their iPhone would vibrate without cause, sometimes the problem could be recreated by squeezing the top left hand corner (Pressing in on the front and back of the case) of the phone. As shown in this video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9zs17LV2SAM

It doesn't always show the vibrate on off icon when it happens.

We noticed it happened more with people who had 3G and 3GS phones that were older.  It is a common enough issue that if you google search iPhone 3g vibrating randomly, you'll get quite a few hits.

When we had this issue, it was usually the vibrate motor going bad or having issues, a lot of time it was because people dropped their iPhones a lot and we could tell because the corners we scratched up, but it wasn't always the case. If you are under warranty, they will replace it.  If not, they can replace your iPhone for a price, usually 200 dollars. There was no software fix available from Apple.  We just had to simply repair the iPhone.  Restoring/Updating the iPhone didn't help either. It was purely a hardware issue.  There might be guides on replacing the motors in the device since it is easy to open up the devices but do that on your on discretion if its possible.

Personally, I would just hold off until a new iPhone comes out and just buy it if you want to.  Unless the issue gets to the point to where it is constantly vibrating for minutes at a time, which I have also seen happen during my time at Apple, then see if you can get them to replace it. It vibrating every once in a while won't cause issues but it vibrating constantly can deplete battery life quicker than normal.

Now, it could also be an app that is just updating its badge and your not realizing it. Every time I have seen it though it was because of the vibration motor.

I hope that this information helps you out.


How fix broken Macports installation after manual deletion of app?

I am not quite sure, but after I purged the unused dependencies of gimp, the error went away.


No audio for mp4 files in Quicktime and ITunes but works for VLC

MP4 is a container format,the audio codec format could be aac mp3 ac3,etc.
iTunes and QuickTime can’t support all those codecs.You can use mediainfo to check the exact audio codec format.
You can see the link below
QuickTime compatible and non-compatible formats
Codecs supported by MP4 container
TL;DR according to my experience,probably AC3 DTS opus.
Although they are popular formats, quicktime does not support.


Safari giving "kCFErrorDomainCFNetwork error 303" when visiting a site

OK, this solution is the strangest thing. I found the solution on a Russian site, but now that the search terms for the solution are known you can find at some other sites.

The problem is a result of Safari holding too much local data for the site in question and failing to deal with that correctly. I use archive.org a lot so I had lots of LocalStorage and Cookie data for that site. The fact that this data is only in Safari, and none of my other browsers explains why they could browse the site just fine.

So, the solution:

Go into Safari > Preferences > Privacy
Search for "archive.org"
Click Remove
The problem goes away

Here's a video showing the problem before and after: https://imgur.com/gallery/d1P1FCi

I've reported this to Apple with full logs as radar #14814758.


Do MacBooks have scissor-switch keyboards yet (Feb 2020)?

The 2019 MacBook Air uses the third-generation Butterfly keyboard.

This is also clearly stated on Apple's marketing page for the 2019 MacBook Air:

  "The latest-generation MacBook Air keyboard features our butterfly mechanism [...]"

The new scissor-switch style keyboard debuted on the 16" MacBook Pro, which was released in November of 2019. The 2019 MacBook Air is from July of 2019.

It doesn't matter which country you buy your MacBook Air in. Different countries obviously have different keyboard in terms of number of keys and the letters on them - but they're all made in the same way. I.e. a Mid 2019 MacBook Air is going to have the same style of keyboard in every country.

There's no such thing as a "Mid 2020 MacBook Air" (yet). You can only speculate whether it will have a scissor-switch key, or the butterfly keyboard. The public does not know.


Folder that automatically creates aliases

Simply create a folder action script, move the scpt file to /Users/user_name/Library/Scripts/Folder Action Scripts and apply it to a folder:

The content of the script is:

on adding folder items to thefolder after receiving theAddedItems
    repeat with eachfile in theAddedItems
        tell application "Finder"
            make new alias file to eachfile at folder "Main_Volume_Name:Users:user_name:Desktop:Inspirational:"
        end tell
    end repeat
    repeat with eachfile in theAddedItems
        tell application "Finder"
            move eachfile to folder "Main_Volume_Name:Users:user_name:Downloads:"
        end tell
    end repeat
end adding folder items to

With Main_Volume_Name: the name of your volume (e.g. Macintosh HD – you don't have to escape spaces!) and user_name: your short user name.

Save the scpt to /Users/user_name/Library/Scripts/Folder Action Scripts/ with the name "alias - add alias instead of moving files.scpt".

Now create a folder "Inspirational" on your desktop and a folder "intermediate" somewhere else.

Right-click the folder "intermediate" and attach the above script to the folder:

Drag both folders to the dock. You may apply convincing icons to be able to tell which is which.  If the folder action is activated, applying an icon to the "intermediate" folder will already create a file named _icon alias (or similar) in "Inspirational" folder. Please delete this file. In the example below the rose indicates the "Inspirational" folder and the chalkboard the  "intermediate" folder

To create (an) alias(es) in the folder "Inspirational" drag one or several files and/or folders on the "intermediate" folder:

The aliases will be created in the folder "Inspirational" and the dragged files will be moved back to "Downloads":

You can't use only one folder, because this will invoke an endless loop: as soon as a new alias is created by adding a file to the folder action enabled folder, the new alias will be aliased itself too (because it's another "new" file). This would be repeated until your Mac dies!


iTunes shows my iPhone 6 has several audiobooks and music from CDs but the phone itself says no content

After looking at many sites on this, I gave up and just transferred my audiobooks back into music on my computer, then sync; the phone does not notice they are just another mp3. Inconvenient but ...


Transfer statistics per process or destination, not interface

Best I've been able to come up with myself is to write a script that runs iftop -f "dst net REMOTE_IP" -t in the background, redirecting the output, and after a certain timeout kills the process, and then grep/awk my way through the redirected output. Hardly elegant.


Upgrading My MacBook Pro (Late 2013) Components

There's not much you can do, other than change the SSD. Apple solders essentially everything down onto the motherboard (CPU, RAM, chips...). Unless you have insanely good microsoldering skills, you can't swap the CPU or RAM.

The only think you could upgrade would be the SSD drive, which should be a M.2 PCIe drive, like this. Even then, you'll need a Pentalobe screwdriver.

If you're interested in how irreparable your Macbook is, here is the teardown from iFixit.


No need to restart, these steps helped me:

Swipe 4 fingers up to show Mission Control
Select a full-screen app in the list of desktops
Swipe 4 fingers up to show Mission Control again
Select a text editor app on the main Desktop


Xcode 5 update, why am I stuck on Xcode 3.2.6?

You may have Xcode 3.2.6 from an earlier installation and are running it. Note that Xcode 3.x being a pre-MAS (Mac App Store) version, installs into the /Developer folder (by default, although it can be installed elsewhere too), whereas the Mac App Store versions (from Xcode 4 onwards) install into the /Applications folder. To run Xcode 5, make sure you're running the application from /Applications. You can also use Spotlight to find where Xcode 3.2.6 resides on your system.

If you wish to uninstall the older version (Xcode 3.2.6), open Terminal.app and uninstall it using the command:

sudo /Developer/Library/uninstall-devtools --mode=all


Stop gmail + terminal from pasting rich text

Either change Gmail composition to plain text or use Paste and Match Style.


Error in Virtual Box: Failed to open a session for the virtual machine

The solution is just choose your ISO file not from start button, instead choose from Settings/Storage/Controller: IDE


How to edit Yosemite Bootloader, startup manager?

Try clearing out your computer's NVRAM by holding down  Cmd ⌘ Optionp r while booting (until you hear a second chime), and see if this solves the problem.


Terminal not recognizing imacro:// as protocol, thinks it's a pathname

Use

open /Applications/Firefox.app --args 'imacros://run/?m=macro.iim'

to prevent open from messing with the argument. Also quoting might help to stop the shell from stumbling over any special characters (not really required in this specific case).


Back up only actual files in directory structure

You can pass a list of file names to backup to tar by running find first:

cd ~/Library/Containers/
tar -T <(find com.doublefine.dfaosx -type f -print) -cvzf ~/dfaosx.tar.gz
tar -T <(find com.doublefine.dottosx -type f -print) -cvzf ~/dfaosx.tar.gz

If you prefer rsync it supports a --files-from option which more or less does the same as -T for tar.


Why are some disk images bigger when burned?

Different file systems and disk formats have different block sizes, which all files are rounded up to in size.  If you have a lot of small files on one file system, and try to move them all to a different file system or media format with much larger block sizes, the total space required can balloon.


What is the keyboard shortcut to set the language for text in MS Word 2011?

Go to System Preferences > Keyboard > Shortcuts and there will be various shortuc setups for almost anything. If you see something that is not listed, Make a service in Automator and add it as shortcut:

Here you see the service in Automator. It ain't always have to be an AppleScript. You can chose other services from the Menu on the left.

And here is a screenshot of enabling the service and assigning a shortcut by double clicking the shortucts on right, and pressing a combination of keys.

here is a full tutorial on services and automation as a little bonus to the question.


Facetime overloading my computer's scheduler

I believe your MacBook is overheating, which will lead to throttling (automatic downclocking) of your CPU and GPU. While most Intel-based MacBooks do suffer from that to a certain extent, it shouldn't be triggered by a 15-minute FaceTime call.

When using Activity Monitor.app, make sure to have View → All Processes enabled, so system processes are shown as well.

You may use the app iStat Menus or Hardware Monitor to check the temperatures of your MacBook.

It's possible that your MacBook is just dusty, which prevents proper airflow and therefore limits cooling. Here's a link to a video showing a (very thorough) cleaning process: Fixing My Filthy Overheating MacBook Pro. It's usually sufficient to just (carefully!) vacuum the dust from the fans though.


Are there iOS apps for taking notes with Apple Pencil in color, grid, and with pages to print?

Notability is the app you want to use but it is $8.99. There is also a version for Macs as well. This allows multiple colors and it opens with a large page to write on. I can't vouch for it because I use Notes but Notability is a popular app. You can read about it at the link I included.
There is a free app called Notes Writer which you could check out since it's free.


If you have to use sudo to load it, the plist file may be owned by root. Launchd will only automatically load agents that you own from ~/Library/LaunchAgents, where it will load agents owned by root from /Library/LaunchAgents.

You can do ls -l ~/Library/LaunchAgents to view the ownership of the plist. If you actually want it to run under your user account, you can change it's ownership:

sudo chown `whoami` ~/Library/LaunchAgents/homebrew.mxcl.mongodb.plist

However, if you need to run mongod as root, you should leave the plist in /Library/LaunchDaemons


From the bootpd man page:

  For each of the properties dhcp_enabled, bootp_enabled,
  old_netboot_enabled,
       netboot_enabled, and relay_enabled, the corresponding service can be enabled or
       disabled for all interfaces, or enabled for just a specific set of interfaces.
       To enable or disable globally, use a boolean value true or false respectively.
       To enable just for a specific set of interfaces, use either a string, for a
       single interface, or an array of strings, one element for each interface.

 For example, to enable DHCP on interfaces en0 and en1, disable BOOTP on all
 interfaces, enable NetBoot on en1, and enable relay agent on interface en1,
 /etc/bootpd.plist could contain:
 <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
 <!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN" "http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd">
 <plist version="1.0">
 <dict>
         <key>bootp_enabled</key>
         <false/>
         <key>dhcp_enabled</key>
         <array>
                 <string>en0</string>
                 <string>en1</string>
         </array>
         <key>netboot_enabled</key>
         <string>en1</string>
         <key>relay_enabled</key>
         <array>
                 <string>en1</string>
         </array>
 </dict>
 </plist>

To disable dhcp globally, use:

    <key>dhcp_enabled</key>
    <false/>

Don't forget to send a SIGHUP (kill -1) to bootpd after making changes to the configuration file.


Single user mode disables many of the system demons and processes needed to run an update.

Instead of that, I use the createistallmedia tool to make a bootable installer on a USB drive and I boot to that OS  that is exceptionally limited and controlled by Apple and exists only to run the installer.

The downside of this method is that you need apple to release an installer based on 10.10.5  and it's also a bit of chicken and egg problem if you start asking which operating system do you trust to create the installer in the first place.

See https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201260 for details on which build corresponds to which numbered release.


Duplicate 'Unknown Album' listings for the same artist in Music app

Since you've got access to iTunes on a Mac, the way I would try to achieve what you want is as follows:

Launch iTunes on your Mac
Ensure you have your music library selected
Choose Songs in the lefthand pane
You should now see a list of all your songs
Filter your list by Artist
Now scroll your list so you have the particular artist in view
While holding the command key down click on each of the songs you want to group together - this should highlight them all
Now right-click on one of the highlighted songs and select Get Info (or just use the commandi shortcut)
You'll should get the following prompt:

Click on the Edit Items button
Now start with the Details tab and ensure all fields are blank to begin with and then enter details for Artist, Album and Album Artist) - for album I would replace 'unknown album' with the correct album name (if it exists) or something appropriate like Cryptic's Freddie Gibbs Compilation)
Then select the Artwork tab and if artwork already exists right-click on it and select the Delete Artwork option
Now move onto the Options tab and make sure the media kind is Music (I imagine it already will be)
Finally check the sorting tab to make sure that the metadata you completed at Step 11 is reflected within the fields under the Sorting tab
When you've finished with all the metadata, click on the OK button
Now sync your iTunes library as you normally would to see if the changes are reflected on your iPhone

NOTES:

If the above doesn't work then try again but at Step 11 ensure you select the Compilation option
If you have iCloud Music Library and/or iTunes Match enabled, it's unclear how those services may impact what you're wanting to achieve, so please report back using comments below to let us know how you go.


My phone isn’t able to receive incoming calls from my girlfriend’s phone but can make outgoing calls to it

Here is a list of things you could try:

Check your settings Phone > Silence Unknown Caller - disable this if enabled.
Type her number out on the dial pad to see if her number is saved as another contact on your phone that was previously blocked.
Try resetting call blocking software like TrueCaller
Try saving her number under a new contact after removing everything that showed up on Step 2 and adding the new number to favourites.


Time Machine backup size seems to be too small

Time-machine does not back up your entire Harddrive. It excludes most of the OS files and backups to your internal harddrive.
It is possible, that you didn't notice, that your data got accidentially backed up to your internal drive. You can check it as follows.

To see how much space those local Time Machine backups are consuming, click the Apple icon on the menu bar, click About This Mac, and click the Storage heading. The “Backups” category here represents your local snapshots.

You can disable that through the terminal:
sudo tmutil disablelocal

Edit: It will then automatically purge the already created local backups


How is Apple repairing iPhone 5 with damaged glass at the genius bar?

$150 without being covered by Apple Care warranty is a sweet deal. Our company purchases back the broken LCD from repair shops around the USA and this is really going to be stiff competition. There isn't anyone offering iPhone 5 LCD replacement for under $150 in any retail repair shop around the US. Their all between $160-$200. In the past Apple's repair prices haven't seemed like a business model they wanted to focus on. I'm left scratching my head at what this could mean for their future plans to compete with the boom of iPhone repair shops. I suppose it might not be as big of a deal since there are only so many Apple Genius Bar locations nationwide.


How would I unlock an iPhone while out of the country?

iPhone unlock is a remote process done by your carrier directly with Apple.

From Apple Support:

After your carrier confirms that your iPhone unlock has been processed (…)

If you have a SIM card from a carrier other than your current carrier, follow these steps:

Remove your SIM card and insert the new SIM card.
Complete the setup process.

If you don't have another SIM card you can use, follow these steps to complete the process:

Back up your iPhone.
When you have a backup, erase your iPhone.
Restore your iPhone from the backup you just made.

It does not mention anything on having to be on an area covered by your original carrier, but the process apparently needs internet.

  (…) contacts the registration database (…) to determine the lock status and set the appropriate carrier settings file if needed.

See this question for additional information.


Why does preview change the ctime of a pdf, and how can I disable it?

The filesystem and metadata can change when preview has write access to the file. The precise why is probably complicated, but you can prevent it by removing write access (chmod a-w test.pdf) and then using preview on the file. Note, the chmod updates the ctime as well.

My guess is that metadata fields like kMDItemUsedDates and kMDItemLastUsedDate are the reason for ctime being updated. You can use mdls test.pdf to check those details before and after your tests.


It needs to be plugged into the mains to do it.

  To reset the SMC:

  Shut down the computer.
  Plug in the MagSafe or USB-C power adapter to a power source and to your computer.
  On the built-in keyboard, press the (left side) Shift-Control-Option keys and the power button at the same time.
  Release all the keys and the power button at the same time.
  Press the power button to turn on the computer.

Source : Apple KB - Resetting the System Management Controller (SMC) on your Mac


Is there a way to access iCloud's Photo Stream from the Finder, similar to Windows?

After doing some research, I finally found where they were located, and then figured a quick way to get back to them.

The files themselves are stored in hashed folders under ~/Library/Application Support/iLifeAssetManagement/assets/sub.

I then created a Smart Folder using this path, and then selecting Kind as "Image". This then provides me with a directory with just the images in Photo Stream, outside of their folders.

I also verified that this was working on a machine where iPhoto didn't have Photo Stream enabled itself, the only Photo Stream part was enabled in System Preferences. Therefore, it was syncing on its own, and not with a relation to iPhoto having to launch to trigger it.

You can't cd into a smart folder, but it looks like I can use some actions with it it. I moreso wanted a direct folder, so I could copy stuff out quickly.


Does a black screen save battery on a macbook?

No. No battery will be saved regardless of what color your screen is. This only applies when the screen is OLED, like in the Apple Watch.

You can save battery by lowering the screen brightness, though.


What kind of mouse has best performance to use with a Mac?

I think you have arrived at the wrong conclusion. A USB-C to USB-A adapter cannot introduce lag on your mouse. It’s only a mechanical adapter from one type of plug to another - there’s nothing changed in the actual electric signal.

I would look at:

1) ensuring your have the correct driver

2) ensure that there are no sources of noise near the wireless adapter (try disabling WiFi, Bluetooth etc on the Mac to see if it is disturbed by those)

3) that the actual wireless antenna for the mouse is placed near the mouse


pfctl config to allow VPN host names instead of IP addresses in OpenVPN connection

You can simply add the host names instead of IPs to the tables. If DNS resolution isn't blocked they will be resolved.

I recommend to include the tables in /etc/pf.anchors/org.vpnonly.pf.rules

...
# Ports
allowed_vpn_ports = "{ 1:65535 }"

# Table with allowed IPs
table <allowed_vpn_ips> const { us1.vpnprovider.com, us2.vpnprovider.com, uk.vpnprovider.com }
table <allowed_dns_ips> const { 8.8.8.8, 8.8.4.4 }

# Block all outgoing packets
block out all
...

Test this with sudo pfctl -vnf /etc/pf.conf.


How can I make sure my Mac has access to files on its own SMB server?

This is the reason why companies set up shared directories - to allow or deny group read / write permissions to files.

You will want to think about how you wish to have people authenticate and whether all shares can default to everyone can write.

On the Mac - files like this typically are homed in /Users/Shared so you could move those files to a place that’s naturally open to all accounts or change the permissions on the files you chose to share from the sharing panes.

Another last bit of advice, spend a little time thinking if you can use POSIX group / ID based permissions or want to layer on Access Control Lists (abbreviated ACL) that are more granular and can do things like add a group and then deny one member of that group from files and folders.


Gatekeeper notification doesn't show location of application

Spotlight might be the easiest

mdfind Launcher.app

If you get too many results, mdfind -name Launcher or mdfind -name Launcher.app might narrow the scope. I'm able to locate all the things I have installed via homebrew so you can check that for another install by trying the results of brew list and feeding one other package to check spotlight.


SYNC-Bluetooth Audio 'jumbled' on car start

Generally when a vehicle cranks the engine there is a lot of stress on the electrical system, in some cases the power supply to ECUs, such as the SYNC module or the ACM can go below the minimum required for them to function, so straight after a crank they can be doing a lot of initialising processes at the same time as trying to play your audio.

I'm sure that the SYNC module uses a 400MHz processor, which isn't really that powerful compared to modules that other automotive manufacturers are using.


How can I change a command and cursor key bindings globally?

To swap the key bindings download, install and start Karabiner.

Open the menulet Karabiner -> Preferences... in the menubar, search for arrow and enable the swapping of the two command like in the example below (FYI KeyRemap4MacBook shown in the screenshot is the predecessor of Karabiner):


3 commands may help you to track down this protocol failure:

ping server_address
traceroute server_address
ssh -v login_name@server_address

Please check that you are connecting to your targeted server with the
right network interface. If you are using the infamous Automatic location you might be networking the wrong way (for example through the neighbour free wi-Fi when you thought you were using your company VPN).

If you suspect a legitimate or accidental filtering, you will be able to
diagnose it with:

nmap -Pn -p22 server_address


How to hide recent files in iPad OS and iOS

Natively: iPad OS and iOS does not allow you to remove/hide files from the “Recents” section in the native file app.

1st work around (any file)

For when you are trying to prevent files from showing up in the recents section.

Create a folder in the “On my [device here]“ tab
Move all the files that you want to remove from “Recents” into the folder you’ve created.
Long press the folder, and select compress.

This will create a duplicate of the original folder with all the files that you’ve placed inside as a .zip file.

Delete the original folder that was not compressed

This will not immediately delete the folder and will instead be moved into “Recently Deleted” in case you want to recover your file. (This also removes the folder and its contents from the recents section, so technically you could view the files from “recently deleted” without anything appearing into Recents even after you restore it after viewing the contents).

Tap on the compressed file and it will export a duplicate of the original compressed folder. None of the files inside the exported folder will be listed in the “Recents” section until viewed again.
After viewing the contents, assuming no files were added or modified (if files were added, start from step 1), delete the uncompressed folder, and uncompress the zip file. Rinse and repeat as needed.

2nd work around (images, GIF’s, videos only):

This work around is for images, GIF’s, and videos specifically.

Separate all the files into a folder as you would in work around 1.
Select all the sorted images
Tap “share” and press “Save Image(s)”
Delete the folder containing all the images/videos

Again this will not immediately delete the files/folder and you can recover them if you so please.

Open the native Photos app
Select all the images that you would like to hide
Press Share, and tap the “Hide” option
Go into the “Albums” section and go into the “Hidden” album.

This will remove all the images from being viewable in the photos app or any other application. Unless unhidden, all images will be restricted to just the “Hidden” album.


Problem with passing iTunes payment method

You can buy a gift card and charge your account with it. Then it won't bother you anymore.


Cannot switch focus between monitors when clicking a space in mission control

I've been trying to solve a similar issue, Mac mini with 2 external monitors. Changing focus is in System Preferences: Keyboard: Shortcuts: Keyboard: Move focus to active or next window. I changed the key combination to something easier than the default (Ctrl + F4).

I hope that helps.


Upgraded RAM, Bootcamp doesn't recognize

Can you boot into Mac O/S? If so open up System Profiler, click on the memory option and see what the Mac is seeing. If it sees all 8GB then the issue is with windows and you might want to ask your question on superuser or another Windows forum.

If the mac side only sees the same 4GB then you may have an issue with the DIMM. It could be not seated properly, contacts could be dirty (clean the contacts with a pencil eraser and then rubbing alcohol) or the DIMM could be defective.

Another quick (and sometimes overused) trick would be to zap the PRAM:

Reboot and hold down COMMAND - OPTION - P - R (that's four keys) and let it bong a couple of times before releasing the keys and booting into Windows.


Wifi/Bluetooth/Ethernet all mixed up in Sys Prefs

According to some other users, you can delete the icons and OS X will re-assign them automatically.

Very strange behavior thought!


How can I sync my iPad apps onto a new iPhone?

No, you're not. The iOS device is a consumption device - every time you toggle the app sync option it will try to "reset"/wipe the existing apps and re-transfer them. Either leave that option on or tweak it and set your sync to Manual.

To sync your apps to a new device, you have to transfer as to it as a new device. Existing folder structures you had on the iPad do not transfer to phones. You cannot restore configs between different devices.

New phone = new setup of apps and their folders. You sync between your iTunes library and device not device to device.


The application is probably in .../bin. You can either start it from there or (according to the instructions on the Jalmus website) from the commandline.


The first time you connect to a server, you are prompted to accept the fingerprint for the host you are connecting to. The fingerprint is a combination of a digital signature, the host name and the IP address of the server. When you do accept, the fingerprint is saved in ~/.ssh/known_hosts as being a "trusted" host.

For some reason, the server's fingerprint has changed since the first time you connected to it. This may be because it is not the server you expect it to be, for example when your request is being intercepted and redirected to a different server. Hence the security warning. The explanation might also be less malicious, for example when the server was replaced/reinstalled without restoring it's previous digital signature, or when the IP address has changed.

If despite the security warning, you still trust the server you are connecting to, you should open ~/.ssh/known_hosts and look for the line starting with the address of the server you are connecting to. Remove the entire line and save your changes, then reconnect to the server. The first time you connect, it should again prompt you to accept the updated fingerprint, after which you should have no more troubles connecting to that host.

The reason why it would work with sudo is because in those conditions you are running it as a different user (root), and each user has it's own known_hosts file (for root this is located at /private/var/root/.ssh/known_hosts). root may have never recorded the previous fingerprint of that host, and therefor has no way of comparing it to the current one, and no reason to distrust the server.


Apple Battery Charger - does not charge to 100%?

It’s hard to tell with this new product, that is really a normal battery charger. Rechargeable batteries should charge all the way to 100% especially when they are new. If you’re not getting a full charge, try depleting them all and fully charge them, see if that works. Otherwise, batteries may be defective or it could be a mouse/software misinterpretation.


Will my macbook pro come back to life with a new graphics card?

Graphics cards on MacBook (and PowerBook / iBook) machines are soldered to the logic boards. You'll likely find a replacement logic board for less than the tools / skills needed to repair things.

If you're into microelectronics repair - you might see about reflowing the GPU and testing - it really depends on the failure profiles for your specific model. Apple normally charges $300 to repair all parts in a Mac portable that fails - so give the manufacturer a chance to repair things. 2010 might be vintage so you'll need to find parts on the open market in all likelihood now that it's 2017.


The error message you received is simple to understand.  The email address is invalid.


Why are my images exported to flickr at a lower resolution when I asked for "Actual size"?

Just wait a little longer. What happens is that it starts by uploading 1024-sized images, and then later replaces them with high-resolution versione. So if you check flickr while it is still working you will see the lower-resolution versions but wait and reload and it will be high-resolution.


What data is accessible after resetting administrator password with FileVault enabled?

If FileVault is enabled it is impossible for anyone without the FileVault password to access the data on your computer including any services like Notes which you may have.

Please note that what you have just done on your partner's laptop may be illegal and I would caution you that this is a public website where you may just have admitted to a crime depending on your location.


Do refurbished Macs come in the standard boxes when ordered from the online store

Speaking from experience, I can tell you that they do not come in the retail packaging. There are instead shipped in white box packaging.

My Mac was delivered by UPS, it was just the white box, with the handle, on the side of the box was the barcodes and address etc, there was a mention of Apple on the barcode stickers, but no Apple logos, or images.

The standard iMac box, I also know from experience, has an image of the iMac on the outside and is a thinner box (I'm guessing as it doesn't need to be shipped). It also has a gloss finish whereas a refurb box has a matt finish.

I also received a keyboard and mouse with my refurbished Mac and the internal box with these in had

  Apple Refurbished Products

on the exterior.


iPhone heats up and uses lots of data once a day

Go into your cellular setting and start turning off apps that you don't want using cellular data. You might be able to narrow down which one is doing it. Also, make sure your hotspot setting is turned off.


it seems that you your macbook pro is running mavericks but is not supporting it natively (guessing so because "allow bluetooth devices to wake this computer" is greyed out)

you can try to

on your MacbookPro; in BluetoothSettings, "connect to Network" your already paired iPad.

AT THE SAME TIME

on your iPad, in the Bluetooth Section of your General Settings, click on your Paired Device , e.g.. Macbook Pro.

you really should try to tap simultaneously; then normally, it connects.
with my iPad, this generally works very well.

with the above Settings that you already installed, e.g. Internet Sharing active via Bluetooth Pan and Bluetooth Pan active,

Your Internet sharing should be succesful;

sometimes certain dongles and OsX'es just don't work very well together.

If you use a ThirdPartyUSB BluetoothAdapter, you might need to deactivate the Internal Bluetooth Adapter.
To to do so, download HardWareIOTools via Apple Developer for your Xcode and use the Bluetooth Explorer Utility. (select "HCI Controller")

if you have certain adapter, you can also use ethernet on your iPad

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nKp02y4JXVs


MacBook cannot connect to non-SSL websites

I've fixed this problem awhile ago on a customer's machine, in that instance I believe it was an issue with the WebKit framework.

I'm assuming you don't have access to an external bootable drive, (if you did, boot off it and test).  Try booting to your Recovery HD and see if "Get Help Online" works.  If it does we know the problem resides in your OS, I recommend backing up your machine and performing an install of your OS, note a clean install should not be necessary unless an archive install fails to resolve the problem.


How to I stop a launchd script from running on wake

The problem lies with launchd and how it handles jobs that are missed during sleep:

From the launchd.plist man page (man launchd.plist)

Unlike cron which skips job invocations when the computer is asleep,
launchd will start the job the next time the computer wakes up.  If
multiple intervals transpire before the computer is woken, those
events will be coalesced into one event upon wake from sleep.

So, there are a few options to consider...

revert to cron.  Though deprecated, cron won't run jobs that have been missed
check for time of day before playing the sound (this can be done with a "wrapper" script or within the script itself.
write a log entry (somewhere).  On script launch, parse the log.  If a sound was played within the last 30 mins, don't play again.


How do I disable Internet access on my MacBook as to make it as inconvenient as possible to re-enable it?

The most effective way to prevent a node (a workstation) from having Internet access is to stop it at the gateway.

Why?

Anything that you can do as an admin can be undone by another admin.  However, if you block Internet access at the network level, an admin of a single node (your MacBook for example) cannot bypass that restriction (unless of course you give them admin access to the gateway).

That said, a very effective way to block Internet access is to route Internet (default) traffic back to the localhost (127.0.0.1).

$ sudo route delete default
$ sudo route add default 127.0.0.1

While not foolproof, it can deter a determined admin from figuring it out what's causing the block because the network appears to be operational as the internal network is still functional.  In other words, the user cannot browse the Internet, but still connect to local shares or use a network printer.

The caveat here is that to circumvent the block, you either reboot or just restart the network service.  However, you can have a LaunchDaemon that runs every minute ensuring this setting is persistent.

With this setup, the user is tricked into believing there's a problem with the network and not their machine.  Because even if they restart the network service, at most it will run for a minute, then stop.  If they were the present these symptoms to even the folks here on AD, the initial responses will be to look at the gatway.

It's not that you lock your door, it's the perception that your door is locked.


Automatically open mounted volumes in Path Finder

Not switching but show in a new window.
Preferences->Browser->Open mounted volumes in new Window


How do I pin notes to the top of the list in Notes.app?

How about creating another folder, call it 'pinned' and keep your notes there. Works for me, anyway...


Default browser in Google maps on iPhone

If I go to a business location and on their website via the google maps-app, the website is opened in the internal browser of google maps (and not in a external browser like safari or chrome.
When I click the icon on the right bottom, it's open the recent website in safari, but this icon refer to the safari browser.


Does anyone know how apps are published on the same day as new iOS release?

When the iOS Golden Master (GM) release is sent to developers, Apple also opens up app submissions for the new OS. They also appear to segment out releases targeted for the new OS so that apps are available, though there is no solid evidence for this.

For example, iOS 8 was released on Sept 17th, 2014. On September 9, 2014, Apple opened submissions for apps targeting iOS 8:

  Prepare your apps for the App Store by downloading the iOS 8 and Xcode
  6 GM seeds now. With these latest seeds, Swift is now final and you
  can submit your iOS apps written with Swift to the App Store. Learn
  about iOS 8 for Developers.


What maximum OpenGL context do the Macbook Pro's support on Bootcamp Windows

13 inch integrated:
Intel HD graphics - supports OpenGL 4.5

15 inch integrated
Intel iris pro 5200 - supports OpenGL 4.3

15 inch discreet:
AMD radeon r9 m370x - supports OpenGL 4.5


iPod lyrics hiding things in  ... workaround?

After a bit of experimentation, I found a workaround.  The artist whose name wasn't appearing has a name that starts with an ASCII character.  It looks like iOS is trying to be clever, and ignoring anything that looks like it might be an HTML tag, even if it really isn't!

One simple workaround is to put a zero-width space (you can copy/paste one from that article) right after the <.  Your iPod will no longer assume it's HTML, and it will display just fine!


Run EDITOR=nano crontab -e and add a line like this:

* * * * * pgrep -qx Safari&&networksetup -setairportpower en0 on||networksetup -setairportpower en0 off

The command is only run once every minute though.

You could also save this plist as ~/Library/LaunchAgents/safariwifi.plist:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN" "http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd">
<plist version="1.0">
<dict>
  <key>Label</key>
  <string>safariwifi</string>
  <key>ProgramArguments</key>
  <array>
    <string>bash</string>
    <string>-c</string>
    <string>while sleep 10;do pgrep -qx Safari&amp;&amp;mode=on||mode=off;[[ $last != $mode ]]&amp;&amp;networksetup -setairportpower en0 $mode;last=$mode;done</string>
  </array>
  <key>RunAtLoad</key>
  <true/>
</dict>
</plist>

Then run launchctl load ~/Library/LaunchAgents/safariwifi.plist.


Garageband - Remove Dead Space at End of Track

By saying cut off all of the dead space, I assume you wanna crop the track to remove silence at the end of the track? If I'm right, here is 1 solution:

Add the track to your iTunes
Right click on track and Get Info (or just cmd+i)
Select Options tab
Tick stop, and select time you want track to end and press ok
Go to iTunes Preferences: cmd+, (comma)
In General tab, click on Import Settings and select your output format, eg. MP3, then ok
Click on your song, go File > Convert > Create MP3/AAC version
When this is complete you can find this track by right clicking on it and say Show in Finder

Hope this is what you wanted? If not, it might help someone else as this option has been silently removed from the right-click context menu. :) Let us know.


Unable to share Wi-Fi passwords with one of my Macs

I don’t have a fix, but I know this has come up. Also, this is going to be very hard to reproduce your conditions, so it might be a while to solve this. Here’s how I would troubleshoot this, based on a layered approach:

Make sure AirDrop works bilaterally - photos / web page - share back and forth.
Make sure Handoff works bilaterally - safari and messages are good to test
Make sure WiFi handoff works - this uses Handoff to store an item in Keychain / System Preferences

So, for most people, I would expect handoff is the broken piece here and not that the keychain or system preferences app are broken for you.
Also - when A/B testing, it’s very useful to have a C to test - iPhone / iPad or another Mac.
Good luck - with so many variables, you may need a piece of paper or spreadsheet to test the various apps in the various configurations, but WiFi sharing layers on top of handoff which layers on top of AirDrop with iCloud identify certificates to allow Handoff to work. Hopefully you can eliminate iCloud as a cause by signing out and in, but clearing the keychain of signing / identity certificates might be needed - especially if iCloud syncs these down to the Mac A after you erased it.


Create a automator application able to launch and quit from dock

Your app does start the process and then quits itself straight away leaving the process running.

You could try and check in the Automator action to see if the process is running. if it is quit it, if it is not launch it.

 isRunning=`ps aux | grep -i "Textedit.app"| grep -v grep`

    if [ $isRunning -eq "" ]; then
        echo "is Not Running"

/abspath/to/my-command
    else
        echo "is Running"

# terminate code  here
    fi;

So when you click the App in the Dock. to will either start the process or stop it.


Alternatively to the proposed Terminal commands, you can make your own shortcut key commands, that will work system-wide to shut down or restart your Mac

System Preferences > Keyboard > Shortcuts > App Shortcuts
Add new commands to All Applications for Restart… & Shut Down…
Note that those are ellipses, not 3 full stops [periods].
3 stops will not work.
Copy/paste them from here if you're not sure how to make them.

Choose any key commands you like, but make sure they don't conflict with anything else.

The slightly odd thing is that once you've done it, the menu itself 'grows' another two commands, without ellipses.

This doesn't appear to affect anything adversely, it just looks odd.


Inexpensive AC charger for iPod 3rd gen / 4th gen

You should be able to use any USB charger of decent build quality, as long as they follow the USB spec. Emphasis on decent build quality, you get what you pay for sometimes. The Apple charger has the added advantage of working with other Apple plug adapters the MacBooks use, like the travel kit and those longer cords. Plus they look nice ;)

If you're looking for quality-but-thrifty, try finding unused USB ports on other devices, such as the Xbox 360.


You'll need to approve the iCloud activation from another device. It may pay to check your Apple ID has a valid phone number associated, so you can receive an SMS verification.
From Apple Support https://support.apple.com/kb/HT204085:

If you can't access any of your other devices that are using iCloud Keychain, you can still set up iCloud Keychain on another device if you have these items:

Your iCloud Security Code

The device that is using the SMS-capable phone number you provided when you first set up iCloud Keychain. A verification code is sent via SMS to this phone number. If you can't access this number, contact Apple Support, who can verify your identity, so that you can complete setup on your new device.

After you complete the setup, your iCloud Keychain will be pushed from the cloud to the new device.
If you use two-factor authentication with your Apple ID, enter your password and the six-digit verification code that's automatically displayed on your trusted devices and authorize the new device. Then turn on iCloud Keychain.


How to Format APFS drive using a PC so I can replace my Mac drive?

To answer your question, there are good windows software package to read and write to APFS, however you don’t need this and none seem to allow partitioning or setup like you ask.
The stand alone installer knows enough to run Disk Utilty and prep a drive, so you don’t need a formatted drive. When you run the installer it will detect the bare drive and offer to erase, format, partition and install the OS.
Just boot up the installer and connect the new drive. It can be internally connected or externally connected and the installer will do the correct erase and format for you.
Your Mac might even be able to boot to internet recovery to get Disk Utility to partition the disk with zero local bootable OS or installers. Here is a step by step guide that Apple keeps updated for this procedure.

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204904


How do I reset my passcode on my iPhone?

No you can't.

Recovery mode is the only solution.

http://support.apple.com/kb/ht1808


How to download public photostream album from icloud.com?

There is no such function in iCloud, but you can install this here in chrome and use it: Chrome Webstore Link, I have used it for iCloud before and it just works perfect.


MP3s cause QuickTime to crash - how do I reinstall QuickTime on Mountain Lion?

I know you "don't want to reinstall OS X," but the easiest way to reinstall Quicktime (the current version, which is not a standalone download) is to reinstall Mountain Lion via Recovery Mode. Following the introduction of Lion, Quicktime became apart of the OS X installation package. There is no need to take a roundabout method. Reinstallation using recovery is non-destructive and only reinstalls OS X builtin applications and system components.


Remote control of a Mac that's behind a NAT

Without VPN-Functionality on the Router you have to rely on Software like 'LogMeIn' or 'Teamviewer' to access you Machine from outside your Home-Network.

As an alternative to LogmeIn you can use "Teamviewer". You have to install 'Teamviwer Host' on the Machines you want to control from outside and the regular 'Teamviwer' on your Machine.


Open the preferences for Terminal and untick the following flags

If this alone doesn't solve the problem

unset PROMPT_COMMAND
check whether PS1 (the prompt string) changes the window title as well


Selecting iPad As Audio Source When Mirroring to Apple TV?

This isn't possible with how AirPlay currently works. It's a great idea to send to Apple for future consideration, however.

On my Panasonic Viera theres a headphone jack and a seperate volume setting for the headphones (so you can turn the TV right down). I've also got a set of TDK wireless headphones which do double duty (TV, iPad, iPhone). They've got line-of-sight range of about ten meters so you can move around without causing disturbance. Smaller TV's generally dont have audio out, but if you're looking to watch stuff in bed, why would you need anymore than the iPad fullscreen.


Which cellular carriers worldwide allow FaceTime calls over 3G/4G Networks?

Standard, Apple doesn't allow you to make FaceTime calls on a 3G network. And however 4G is often faster then WiFi, the LTE network isn't supported either.

There are however some ways you can enable FaceTime over 3G using Cydia (so jailbreak) or you can use your personal hotspot feature (jailbreak too) to enable this.

UPDATE:
I've tested the method of Redmondpie (with iFile) and with a Belgium Provider (Proximus) it works like a charm!


I'm not sure how it exactly accomplishes it, but take a look at TripMode. It offers the functionality you're looking for, and even automatically switches based on the network you're on.


Error: "couldn't unmount disk" keeps coming up when formatting external HD to eXFat

I had the same problem with the same drive. I finally got it to work by rebooting from the recovery partition and formatting it using the disk utility option.


Can I connect standard Dell displays to a Thunderbolt iMac?

If you get a Mini-DisplayPort/Thunderbolt to DVI adapter, then yes you can hook any DVI display up to your Mac.


what is "translate" and why does it want access to my keychain?

It looks like /usr/libexec/oah/translate is Rosetta, an Apple program to allow programs developed for PowerPC architecture to run on the newest Intel Mac.

So I don't think it's a malware, just Mac OS using Rosetta to run Entourage.


I would do the animation of the line as a Magic Move. To do that, start with the line on a slide. In the Slide Navigator, duplicate the slide. On the second slide, adjust the length of the line (and position if you wish). Select the first slide in the Slide Navigator and apply the Magic Move transition.

I like using Magic Moves for things like this because it makes it easier to deal with multiple elements on the slide.


No, you can't disable pop-up reminders globally.
You can turn off an alert by accessing the event properties in the Calendar app, but then
it will be disabled in Google Agenda too.


How to find out when and where backup recovery password was set for iPhone backups?

The password used for local iPhone backups is set when enabling encrypted backups. When checking the box to use encrypted backups, a dialog asks you to enter a new password. This is independent to your Apple ID or other passwords.
Your Mac stores the password in the login Keychain and uses it for future backups. To get the password from the Keychain, open Keychain Access.app, search for ‘iPhone backup’ or ‘iOS backup’ and open the item, then choose ‘Show password’ and enter your Mac account password to view the backup password.


You might try the following:

Quit Mail first
Run the following command in Terminal:

sqlite3 ~/Library/Mail/V2/MailData/Envelope\ Index vacuum;

This will rebuild your Mail index data.

Below is the actual shell script that I use. I keep it in ~/Library/Scripts/Applications/Mail so it is accessible from the AppleScript menu in Mail.app

#!/usr/bin/env bash

mail_data_dir="/Users/$USER/Library/Mail/V2/MailData"
killall -HUP Mail
BEFORE=`ls -lah $mail_data_dir | grep -E 'Envelope Index$' | awk '{ print $5 }'`
/usr/bin/sqlite3 $mail_data_dir/Envelope\ Index 'PRAGMA integrity_check';
/usr/bin/sqlite3 $mail_data_dir/Envelope\ Index vacuum;
AFTER=`ls -lah $mail_data_dir | grep -E 'Envelope Index$' | awk '{ print $5}'`
echo "before: $BEFORE"
echo "after:  $AFTER"
open -a "Mail.app"
/usr/bin/osascript -e 'tell application "Mail" to display dialog "Envelope Index before: " & "'$BEFORE'" & return & "Envelope Index after: " & "'$AFTER'"'

When run it will automatically quit Mail. Run the command to rebuild and check the integrity of your Mail index data, restart Mail and present a dialog box showing you the before and after sizes of your Mail index file.


Why are chrome, safari and firefox rendering Open Sans 400 as Extrabold

Not sure if you got an answer to this question, but I had exactly the same issue myself. Didn't have Open Sans open in Suitcase and it wasn't in my System Folder BUT I did find Open Sans Extrabold installed in my Creative Cloud assets using Typekit. I removed it, restarted machine and problem solved. Hope that helps if you hadn't gotten to the bottom of it!


How can I buy an older version of Keynote that's compatible with 10.8?

I presume that you're trying to purchase iWork from the App Store.

You can purchase a physical copy of iWork '09 and install it.

If your Mac doesn't have a disc drive, you can use Remote Disk to do so.  You'll need access to another computer (either Mac or Windows) that has a disc drive.  Apple has complete directions for using Remote Disk here.


how do we organize our apps in itunes library

No - there is nothing in iTunes to make it easier. You can also use Xcode and the iPhone configuration utility to get a little more screen real estate, but managing apps is still fairly simplistic. The configuration utility does make it possible to automate installing several apps, so that's a step in the right direction for some.

I've filed bugs and sent feedback to Apple asking for more screen real-estate in iTunes to start making app management easier.

They have a 'Use Full Window for iTunes Store' view so it's not inconceivable they might do the same for iOS management at some point. Feel free to link to my picture in your bug report or feedback if you also want to ask Apple for this change.

http://skitch.com/mbrad/fgj28/itunes-managing-ios-apps


How to image and deploy a Bootcamp setup?

There is a paid software called Winclone. It's at version 3.7 now. Take a look at reviews to see if it will do what you want. There is another open source software but I can't recall the name now. You might run into that info while doing a search for Winclone.

http://twocanoes.com/winclone/


Logical Volume Group 17gb "Available Space"

I don't know what happened with your drives while installing OS X Yosemite, but I have the same Fusion drive as you but ostensibly without "glitches".

First let's compare your and my Fusion drive, though mine is not filevaulted, but that shouldn't make a big difference.

Your SSD:

Apollo:~ arronvoce$ sudo gpt -r show /dev/diskO
     start          size  index  contents
         0             1         PMBR
         1             1         Pri GPT header
         2            32         Pri GPT table
        34             6
        48        409600      1  GPT part - C12A7328-F81F-11D2-BA4B-00A0C93EC93B
    489648     236306352      2  GPT part - 53746F72-6167-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC
 236715992        262144      3  GPT part - 426F6F74-0000-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC
 236978136             7
 236978143            32         Sec GPT table
 236978175             1         Sec GPT header

My SSD:

machine:~ user$ sudo gpt -r show  /dev/disk0
      start         size  index  contents
          0            1         PMBR
          1            1         Pri GPT header
          2           32         Pri GPT table
         34            6
         40       409600      1  GPT part - C12A7328-F81F-11D2-BA4B-00A0C93EC93B
     409640    236306352      2  GPT part - 53746F72-6167-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC
  236715992       262144      3  GPT part - 426F6F74-0000-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC
  236978136            7
  236978143           32         Sec GPT table
  236978175            1         Sec GPT header

They have the same size and are formatted the same way.

Your HDD:

Apollo:~ arronvoce$ sudo  gpt -r show /dev/disk1
     start          size  index  contents
         0             1         PMBR
         1             1         Pri GPT header
         2            32         Pri GPT table
        34             6
        48        409600      1  GPT part - C12A7328-F81F-11D2-BA4B-00A0C93EC93B
    409648    5857846336      2  GPT part - 53746F72-6167-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC
5858255976       1269536      3  GPT part - 426F6F74-0000-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC
5859525512       1007623
5860533135            32         Sec GPT table
5860533167             1         Sec GPT header

My HDD:

machine:~ user sudo gpt -r show /dev/disk1
       start        size  index  contents
           0           1         PMBR
           1           1         Pri GPT header
           2          32         Pri GPT table
          34           6
          40      409600      1  GPT part - C12A7328-F81F-11D2-BA4B-00A0C93EC93B
      409640  5858853952      2  GPT part - 53746F72-6167-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC
  5859263592     1269536      3  GPT part - 426F6F74-0000-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC
  5860533128           7
  5860533135          32         Sec GPT table
  5860533167           1         Sec GPT header

They have the same physical size but are formatted slightly different: after your Recovery HD (the third partition) you have some non-formatted blocks with a total size of ~516 MB (1007623 blocks)

Your Physical Volume on the SSD:

    +-< Physical Volume 1212D66A-ADCC-49C2-B2BD-43180F3D1B6F
    |   ----------------------------------------------------
    |   Index:    1
    |   Disk:     disk0s2
    |   Status:   Online
    |   Size:     120988852224 B (121.0 GB)

My Physical Volume on the SSD:

    +-< Physical Volume 1212D66A-ADCC-49C2-B2BD-43180F3D1B6F
    |   ----------------------------------------------------
    |   Index:    1
    |   Disk:     disk0s2
    |   Status:   Online
    |   Size:     120988852224 B (121.0 GB)

They have the same size.

Your Physical Volume on the HDD:

    +-< Physical Volume 39D4DCA9-7F2E-40FA-B457-CCDD4370FF2F
    |   ----------------------------------------------------
    |   Index:    0
    |   Disk:     disk1s2
    |   Status:   Online
    |   Size:     2999217324032 B (3.0 TB)

My Physical Volume on the HDD:

    +-< Physical Volume 39D4DCA9-7F2E-40FA-B457-CCDD4370FF2F
    |   ----------------------------------------------------
    |   Index:    0
    |   Disk:     disk1s2
    |   Status:   Online
    |   Size:     2999733223424 B (3.0 TB)

Your Physical Volume is ~516 MB (515899392 B) smaller than mine which roughly matches with your non-formatted blocks on disk1, which are "missing" now.

Your Logical Volume Group:

+-- Logical Volume Group 91F22B32-DD9C-442B-95F0-ED3DB69AC4FB
    =========================================================
    Name:         Macintosh HD
    Status:       Online
    Size:         3120206176256   B (3.1 TB)
    Free Space:   17091772416 B   (17.1 GB)

My Logical Volume Group:

+-- Logical Volume Group 91F22B32-DD9C-442B-95F0-ED3DB69AC4FB
    =========================================================
    Name:         Macintosh HD
    Status:       Online
    Size:         3120722075648 B (3.1 TB)
    Free Space:   114688 B (114.7 KB)

Your LVG is ~516 MB (515899392 B) smaller than mine, which matches with the findings above.

Your Logical Volume:

         +-> Logical Volume 2E2D175C-1397-474D-900F-A9DA7B9D65D6
             ---------------------------------------------------
             Disk:                 disk2
             Status:               Online
             Size (Total):         3097259147264 B (3.1 TB)

My Logical Volume:

        +-> Logical Volume 2E2D175C-1397-474D-900F-A9DA7B9D65D6
            ---------------------------------------------------
            Disk:                  disk2
            Status:                Online
            Size (Total):          3106191572992 B (3.1 TB)

Your LV is ~ 22.9 GB smaller than your LVG (while 17.1 GB are indicated).
My LV is ~ 14.5 GB smaller than my LVG (while only 115 KB are indicated!).

Your LV is ~ 8.9 GB smaller than mine, which matches again, because 22.9 - 14.5 + 0.5 (the unformatted blocks on the HDD) = 8.9 GB

Compare this with a filevaulted OS X Yosemite VM where the LVG (67.86 GB) is 365 MB bigger than the LV (67.49 GB) and the indicated free space is 12.7 MB.

Finally we have to note:

the arithmetic of diskutil is in great need of improvement
apparently some valuable hard disk space is needed/lost dealing with LVM (CoreStorage). I haven't been able to find any sources explaining this though.
You lost only 8.9 GB (which are only 2.9 ‰ of the total disk space) instead of 17.1 GB compared to my Fusion Drive.

After backing up your Mac, booting to Internet Recovery Mode or Recovery Mode and starting Terminal.app you may try to increase (or decrease) your Logical Volume with the following undocumented command after unlocking the volume with diskutil cs unlockVolume LVUUID -stdinpassphrase:

diskutil cs resizeVolume LVUUID size

Example:

diskutil cs resizeVolume 2E2D175C-1397-474D-900F-A9DA7B9D65D6 (3106191572992+x*4096)b

with x = integer and 4096=8x512 (aligned blocks).

Usually you can't expand the CoreStorage Logical Volume beyond LVG_size - ~300 MB (tested with a 64 GiB disk, I don't know how this works for bigger disks). So you may start with 3119900m. If you get a message saying "Error -69720 There is not enough free space in the Core Storage Logical Volume Group for this operation" decrease the size in 100m or 500m steps until it works. If you enter g (=Giga), m (=Mega) or k (=kilo) instead of b (=byte) diskutil will do the math and choose a proper aligned (=multiple of 4096b) value.

I have tested those steps in my aforementioned 10.10.4 VM with FileVault enabled and managed to increase the size of the volume by 6 MB to 67.5 GB. Your mileage may vary.


You could create alternative iTunes libraries.

Just hold the Option key while starting iTunes and point it to a new directory. To go back to your main library quit iTunes and start it again while holding the Option key.

If you are on Windows, the Alt key should have the same function, I don't remember which one.


Yes. You can use the New as main router and create a WiFi network. Then have the Old join in (as an Access Point in jargon). It's the same is accessing a shared disk on another Mac laptop/desktop.

Or you can link them with Ethernet cable.


SMC Reset Won't Work on Macbook Pro Retina mid-2012

I found the answer under this link
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT3964

  1.Shut down the computer.

  2.Plug in the MagSafe power adapter to a power source, connecting it to the Mac if its not already connected.

  3.On the built-in keyboard, press the (left side) Shift-Control-Option keys and the power button at the same time.

  4.Release all the keys and the power button at the same time.

  5.Press the power button to turn on the computer.

I have the same model and I tested it. So in my case I had full charged the macbook and the led light from MagSafe power adapter change from green to orange.

When I had the same problem with you (with the led in magsafe adaptor not lighting) I solve it just with a pram reset. You can get info about how to reset pram here: http://support.apple.com/kb/ht1379


How do I add custom DNS server and preserving default DNS of ISP in OS X Mountain Lion

Yep. You can do this, /etc/resolver is your friend.

$ man 5 resolver:

  domain
  Domain name associated with this resolver configuration.
  This option is normally not required by the Mac OS X DNS search system when the resolver configuration is read from a file in the /etc/resolver directory.   In that case the file name is used as the domain name.

Simply put you can place nameserver 127.0.0.1 inside a file you create called /etc/resolver/dev

You'll need to reload/restart. It'll then direct any requests to *.dev to your local nameserver.

Your network connection DNS remains on automatic, so it will cope with any changes in your environment.

Edit: I've just found https://serverfault.com/a/164215/163311 and http://www.echoditto.com/blog/never-touch-your-local-etchosts-file-os-x-again which have a few more details and include dnsmasq setup details.


Trick Macbook to not recognize HDMI connection with external monitor but still mirror the screen to it

No, it does not technically make sense to send an image to the external display while at the same  time not recognizing the HDMI connection.

However what can be done is presenting an environment to the specific app where it is not told about the HDMI connection:

An easy and practical way of doing this is to run the app inside a virtual machine (using software such as VMware Fusion or Parallels Desktop).

An better, but more involved, approach is to override the specific library functions that the app uses to inform itself of the HDMI connection. The overriden functions would simply hide the fact that an external HDMI connection is made. Creating such an override usually requires programming experience in order to create what is essentially a shared library. The library could then be loaded using the environment variable DYLD_INSERT_LIBRARIES when launching the specific app.


No, iTunes and related apps use the artwork from the initial track of each album. Yes, it is frustrating. And no, it is not worth retagging your songs to pretend each of the tracks is its own album.

I asked what is essentially the same question over here:

https://superuser.com/questions/11081/how-can-i-force-front-row-to-show-me-single-artwork-instead-of-album-artwork

In case you want to ask Apple to add this feature, here is the feedback page for iTunes:
http://www.apple.com/feedback/itunesapp.html


How can I move /Library/Developer to an external disk?

Well, might be a strech to call this an answer, but most of the stuff that requires hd space on a modern Xcode installation is located in your
$ ~/Library/Developer

directory (mostly simulator files), and within the Xcode app bundle itself, in my case Xcode alone needs 10 gigabyte plus around 6 gigabyte for the simulator files and only 1.3 gigabyte in /Library/Developer.
I also do some Flutter development, so that is another 10 gigabyte for the Android sdk and 4 gigabyte for the emulator files, plus a couple for Flutter itself.
All those directories have been symlinked or aliased and works just fine on an external drive.
This is described in my answer regarding moving Xcode and friends to an SSD drive.
I also got some problems using brew when I moved the /Library/Developer stuff, so it's probably best to leave that wormhole alone and focus on moving the things that does take a lot of space.
If you've already messed it up, just install the command line package again using the xcode-select command as described in my other post and go through those steps that fits your setup.
I save around 50 gigabyte ++ on the system drive by using this method with Xcode, the simulator and all, and I don't have the problem you mentioned in your question. I've been doing this for a couple of years now. So it IS possible, even if I can't pinpoint why it's not working for you.
If you update the question, documenting:

the file system in use on the external drive
mount options you use for mounting it
if you use FileVault or not on the system
have you tried repairing the permissions on your whole user directory while booting into recovery mode? (In the terminal)

I'd have a bit more to work with probably.
But as of now I can't reproduce what you experience.
Also try using a good old "alias" for the developer directory, don't use the command line to make a symlink, just hold down the option and command keys while dragging the Developer directory back to where it used to be. Sometimes things work better with a symlink, but in other situations I've found aliases to be the only way...


Why is Photos.app taking 2 months to scan faces for recognition?

I solved the problem!  I hope this helps others. The following steps take a bit of time, but if you're like me, it was totally worth it.  Most of the work is done by the computer.  :-)

Exported all my photos from my library as full-sized photos, choosing PNG formats, for optimal size without data loss.  This full export required some time to download missing photos from iCloud, but it reassured me that no photo information was lost.  It also detected all my "problem" photos that were corrupt or missing on the local hard drive.  And of course the exported photos serve as a crude but real backup.

Be sure to export the photos as full sized photos!  In other words, don't turn on "optimize storage" in this step!

Created a brand new empty Photos Library, called "good library".

Important:  This library MUST BE disconnected from iCloud at this point, i.e., is NOT the System Photos Library at this point.  Leave it that way for now, because if you connect this nice new library to iCloud at this point, you will end up with lots of duplicate photos on iCloud after step 3, which will then all show up on your phone and computer and screw everything up and you'll have to start over!  This is because the exported photos have different names than the old ones on iCloud and this confuses iCloud and it thinks they are new.

Imported all my photos exported in step 1 into the new library.  Scanning resumed.  27,500 photos were scanned in four days at an average speed of 271 photos per hour.
Deleted all my photos from iCloud to avoid the duplicate photos problem I mentioned in step 2:

Created a new empty Photos library on my Mac, called "iCloud download."
I then turned on iCloud photos on my Mac and it's downloading all the photos to my Mac.  I have it set to "optimize storage" so it should be quicker than full resolution would be.
In the iCloud download library Select-All delete all photos then empty trash.  DONE (some stragglers undeleted still)
I then confirm on iCloud (https://www.icloud.com/) and on my phone that all are gone.  Again, this is critical to avoid duplicates!

After confirming that step 4 has deleted all my photos on iCloud, I switch to my new good library and make it the system library.  Photos got uploaded and problems were all gone.


Why do I get a '"Calendar Cache" couldn't be moved' error when launching Calendar?

If repairing permissions with Disk Utility and/or checking permissions for the actual calendar-files in /Users/<username>/Library/Calendars do not work maybe this will:

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/3773022?start=0&tstart=0

Seems a bit drastic though. I have not tried this myself. I suggest having a backup just in case.

Update: I just tried the instructions from the thread at apple discussions, and everything on my 10.8 system is OK. It's kind of a supercharged permissions-repair (lacking better terms atm).

If it works, thank macjack at the appe forums. If not, tell me :)

On my mac the ~/Library/Calendars/Calendar Cache is owned by me:
-rw-r--r--@  1 nils  staff  2813952 Jul 31 18:44 Calendar Cache

It may be of help if you post the output from this terminal command:
ls -lar ~/Library/Calendars/|grep "Calendar Cache"


Should I buy a Hardware Firewall for my Time Capsule 4th Gen Router?

Is it advisable for me to buy a Hardware Firewall to complement the Time Capsule for security reasons – especially when having some IOT devices?

Yes.  Absolutely.  Unequivocally Yes.
Threats have evolved significantly since 2011 when that Time Capsule came out and quite frankly, are woefully ill-equipped to deal with the current threats.
I don't use "retail/consumer grade" routers that you get at your local big box house.  I use pfSense running on a USFF Dell machine (Core 2 Duo, 8GB RAM and 32GB SSD) configured with an Intel Quad Gig interface.  The total cost was under $150 (the quad gig adapter was the most expensive part).

I can drop traffic from certain global regions (i.e. China, Russia, India, etc.). Any traffic that originates in a particular area is literally dropped.

I can add on any number of enhancements to my router

Run my own VPN
Add my on SSL certificates
Add DNS whitelists/blacklists (pfBlockerNG)
Install a Squid caching Proxy
Configure High Availability with cellular fail over

There's a cornucopia of features you can add to this type of router to customize the level of protection you need.
Such overkill!
Yes, there's a ton of features, many of which you'd probably never need unless you were setting this up for a corporate entity.  However, what's important about having a hardware firewall is that

being hardware, it's performance is that much greater.  The more hardware you throw at it, the better it works
Stateful Packet Inspection.  This is a technology that analyses the "context" of each packet and whether to allow it or to block it.  Your TC is stateless meaning it will either allow or disallow based on a simple rule.  This also requires CPU cycles

Is it really overkill?
IMO, no, it's not.  You can start with a cheap PC you pick up on eBay, Craigslist, Gumtree, etc.  For home, it doesn't need to be fancy.  2GB RAM is more than enough but the more RAM, the more "states" the router can handle.  You'll need a NIC since the computer will come with one, you just need another (one for WAN the other for LAN).  I found (on eBay) SSDs used in thin clients and bought 5 for under $40 (good to have extras on hand).  Spend about an hour putting it together and going through the setup and you'll have an enterprise grade hardware based firewall protecting your network.
TL;DR
Yes.  You absolutley need one.  Whether you build it yourself (I like pfSense or you purchase one (go for a "business class" not fancy "consumer grade") put something capable of handling today's ever evolving threats between the Internet and your network.