it sounds like a hardware problem that Apple has diagnosed for you.  The way to fix it is to get a new logic board as they suggested, or a new machine.  The only other way to fix a hardware issue is to find someone with a reflow station and serious hardware skills, but that's beyond the scope of this website!


Is it possible to download and install multiple versions of Safari on macOS?

Updates to Safari tend to include updates to the WebKit system framework on which Safari relies. (The WebKit framework is separate from the app, and is then available to other apps.)

Executing an app that was built for a different framework from the last one you installed is likely to cause problems.


If you don't want to rely on third-party solutions (keyboards) like the one mentioned by @TomGewecke, use the built-in functionality for Text Replacements, as mentioned in the article you already linked to.

First, copy the Unicode symbol, e.g. from here.
Go to the Settings app -> General -> Keyboards -> Text Replacement -> create a new one with the + button in the top right.
Paste the symbol in the Phrase field, and an appropriate term in the shortcut. I decided to go for the HTML entity &infin; since that works in Markdown as well: ∞, but you can definitely choose a shorter/easier one.

Save the text replacement, and now whenever you type &infin; the keyboard auto-complete suggestions will offer you to replace it with ∞:


Yes

200 new features: http://www.apple.com/osx/

You download the OS via the App Store, which you'll find in your applications folder. If you bought your Mac recently you may be eligible for a free upgrade. Check here: http://www.apple.com/osx/uptodate/


How to disable or uninstall iTunes under High Sierra without disabling SIP

I wasn't able to find a list of all the file types iTunes handles, but if you are willing to operate piecemeal, any time you open a file and iTunes launches, you can

Select the file in Finder
Get Info (⌘ + i)
select the app you want to use in the "Open With:" dropdown

then click "Change All..."

In the future that type of file will open in your alternate application. After a while you will have opened all the types of files you will open that iTunes handles.

Another method that you may find easier:

Right Click (or control click) the offending file in Finder
Select "Open With > Other..." (even if you see the app you want to use in the list)

Select your App (e.g. Audacity)
Check "Always Open With"

Click "Open"

It just depends on which way you find easier.


How do I boot up my laptop from an external backup drive, or how do I verify that a backup is good?

Head over to System Preferences < Time Machine and then select the "Show Time Machine in menu bar checkbox". From the menu bar, select time machine and select "Enter Time Machine". Now make sure your latest backup is visible there and you can see your files, this will ensure you have performed your backup correctly. To be safe, navigate to the disc and make sure you can see all files there.


Differences migrating using Target Mode vs Migration Assistant on source machine?

If by Target Mode you mean loading the HD of the old computer onto the new computer and drag-dropping files, then the difference is that Migration Assistant knows what it is doing.

You could have done this in the old Mac OS Classic days, but now there are tons of hidden files and locations that you would never remember to transfer over.

You should really use the migration assistant unless you have a good reason not to.


Can Watch Series 6 be used as a BLE peripheral?

No, that's not possible. Any change wouldn't have come with the Watch Series 6 as such, but a change in watchOS 7 - but such a change has not been made.


The following solution assumes that you are using a Mac running OS X Mavericks, and is connected to the same Wi-Fi network as your Apple TV.

You can use the Apple TV as a secondary display over AirPlay. Go to System Preferences → Displays, and select your Apple TV under AirPlay Display.

You can both mirror the contents of your Mac, or use Apple TV as a second display (your desired use case).

Go to Arrangements under Display preferences and uncheck Mirror Displays to use Apple TV as an extended display.


How do I subscribe to an RSS feed in Mavericks?

An option you might look into is Feedly. They have a Safari plugin (and probably other browsers) and work well enough.


Clear up space on my phone that seems be taken up by recently deleted photos?

I have found that in certain circumstances IOS hold on to data it should not, the fix is pretty easy if annoying and a little time consuming.

Back up the phone to your local computer. If it asks to back up apps, do that too
Unplug the phone from your computer
Go into Settings -> General -> Reset and tap on "erase all content and settings"
Your phone will do its thing for a few minutes, likely reboot.
When it is done, plug it back into the computer, bring up iTunes and it should ask if you want to set it up as new or restore from a backup
Click restore from backup, select the backup you just did and wait for that to complete.

I did say "annoying and a little time consuming?" Right?

If there is another method that is easier or less time consuming I'd love to know, but this has always worked for me when the phone has a lot of space consumed by stuff that should not be there.


Copy the selection.
Open the selection in a new document.
Rotate the new document.
Select and copy the new document.
Paste the new document into the original.
Re-position.


What areas of the MacBook Air should I keep clear?

You are correct. While the major fan vent is in the back, it is important that air can circulate under the laptop. This is because the bottom side of the laptop can get hot, and the space between the laptop and the (hard) surface helps release that heat. A soft, squishy surface will just trap it and push it right back up into the computer.And a computer with only one fan vent needs all the help it can get.

That said, you should be OK using the laptop on something soft for most of the time. It's when the fan starts spinning that you really should move to something more solid.
To keep an eye on how hot your computer is,\ and how fast the fans are going, I use the free iStat Pro widget.

Hope this helps.


Why cannot I see any browsers in system preferences?

It looks like you may need to rebuild the Launch Services database, which is what the Mac uses for its "what apps can open this type of file" structure.

You can either do it in Terminal, using

/System/Library/Frameworks/CoreServices.framework/Frameworks/LaunchServices.framework/Support/lsregister -kill -r -domain local -domain system -domain user ; killall Dock

then restart,

Or Onyx (freeware) can do it for you - Maintenance tab > Rebuilding - check just the first box & execute.


Some keyboard layouts (like Finnish, but not Danish) have a normal backtick under ⌥⇧´, so for example ⌃⌥⇧´ opens the console in Sublime Text.

If you don't want to switch to another keyboard layout, you can use Ukelele to modify the Danish layout. See this question.


How accurate is the location detection on the iPhone's Find My iPhone app

The generic answer you can find at Apple support website

About location precision or accuracy
Depending on your device and available services, Location Services uses a combination of cellular, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and GPS to determine your location. If you're not within a clear line of sight to GPS satellites, your device can determine your location using crowd-sourced Wi-Fi and cell tower locations or iBeacons.

If you want to have specific numbers, in meters, approximately they would be next (according to the 2009 study):

3G iPhone w/ A-GPS ~ 8 meters
3G iPhone w/ WiFi ~ 74 meters
3G iPhone w/ Cellular positioning ~ 600 meters

In 2011 Dr. Zandbergen tested several Android smart phones. Here he found the accuracies to be slightly better than the 2009 study. They ranged from 5-8 meters. It is likely that the iPhone 4S/5 is within this range as well. It can also be assumed that iPads and other Android tablets will be comparable.


How to get rid of all the .serverauth.$$ in the HOME directory on OS X?

You can prevent these from accumulating if you always exit the X11 server gracefully.  That means logging out gracefully and shutting down gracefully.  No way you can always do that though, so about all you can do is delete these every now and then.  You could write a script to find and remove the ones not in use and run it manually or schedule it to run routinely via cron.  Below is an example script:

#!/bin/bash
cd || {
  echo "Unable to cd to home." >&2
  exit 1
}
Candidates=$(echo .serverauth.*)
if [ -z "$Candidates" ];then
  exit
fi
for Candidate in $Candidates ; do
  PID=${Candidate#.serverauth.}
  kill -0 $Candidate 2>&-
  if [ $? != 0 ];then # The PID is not currently active
    printf "Removing orphaned xserverauth file \"$Candidate\".\n";
    rm $Candidate || {
      printf "Failed to remove file \"$Candidate\".\n" >&2.
    }
  fi
done


Create encrypted partition for Time Machine from command line using diskutil or gpt, instead of Disk Utility?

Below (in the steps 1-5) I assume you already formatted some device as JHFS+ volume with an arbitrary name (in my example I use TMBackup). If you have an unformatted/unpartitioned disk, you have to partition & format it to JHFS+ first:

$: diskutil list
$: diskutil partitionDisk diskX GPT jhfs+ Name 0

or (if the disk is already GPT-partitioned with one volume):

$: diskutil eraseDisk JHFS+ Name /dev/diskXsY

The content of diskX(sY) will be deleted.

Get the devices list:

$: diskutil list

Example:

...
/dev/disk1 (internal, physical):
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      GUID_partition_scheme                        *1.1 TB     disk1
   1:                        EFI EFI                     209.7 MB   disk1s1
   2:                  Apple_HFS TMBackup                1.1 TB     disk1s2

Choose the future backup drive partition and convert it to CoreStorage:

$: diskutil cs convert diskXsY

Example result:

$: diskutil cs convert disk1s2
Started CoreStorage operation on disk1s2 TMBackup
Resizing disk to fit Core Storage headers
Creating Core Storage Logical Volume Group
Reviewing boot support loaders
Attempting to unmount disk1s2
Switching disk1s2 to Core Storage
Waiting for Logical Volume to appear
Mounting Logical Volume
Core Storage LVG UUID: 586B5316-C702-4704-B8B9-D5F063AB1F84
Core Storage PV UUID: 17373D1A-FCBD-4915-8699-3DA174B59BB7
Core Storage LV UUID: AE765219-2012-4876-91DD-FE128DC8CA6C
Core Storage disk: disk3
Finished CoreStorage operation on disk1s2 TMBackup

Encrypt the logical volume (LV)

$: diskutil cs encryptVolume $UUID(LV)

Example:

$: diskutil cs encryptVolume AE765219-2012-4876-91DD-FE128DC8CA6C
New passphrase for existing volume:
Confirm new passphrase:
The Core Storage Logical Volume UUID is AE765219-2012-4876-91DD-FE128DC8CA6C
Started CoreStorage operation on disk3 TMBackup
Reviewing boot support loaders
Scheduling encryption of Core Storage Logical Volume
Core Storage LV UUID: AE765219-2012-4876-91DD-FE128DC8CA6C
Finished CoreStorage operation on disk3 TMBackup

Set destination device for Time Machine backups:

$: sudo tmutil setdestination mountpoint

Example:

$: sudo tmutil setdestination /Volumes/TMBackup

Enable Time Machine

$: sudo tmutil enable


How to check what causes iPhone battery to drain out?

There is a general tips page on maintaining great battery life, as well as general terms about battery replacement.

Personally: This sounds like a bad battery. It sounds like it just plainly is not holding a charge after a certain discharge point. Remember that iOS multitasking is not true multitasking. Barring streaming audio (actually persistent audio in general), there is (almost) NOTHING that your phone can constantly do for more than 20 minutes at a time.

I've streamed audio for hours (hours being... maybe 5?) during the day at ~40% and it did get under 20% by the time I was done, this was both on an iPad, and roughly equivalent on an iPhone 4. Connected WiFi, 3G (on the iPhone) enabled but not being the active radio in use, of course.

I don't know that you're able to see what's draining the battery, Apple forbids "task management apps". A possible workaround to see if it is app involved or a bad battery, is to drain your phone to a similar level, open the fast app switcher bar (double tap the home button), tap-hold on any application in the task bar until they begin to "jiggle", then press the white minus inside the red circle on EVERYTHING. This will kill any and all tasks that aren't first-party. (For example, it will not stop the occasional housekeeping/tasks that Mail, Phone, Safari, or other built-in apps are allowed to do.)

Having said that, to properly test, ensure that mail's auto-fetch is off (or in push only mode at best), make sure that you have no tabs in Safari with "live" or automatically refreshing content. Safari IS ALLOWED TO BACKGROUND, and has always been able to, to the best of my knowledge. At least since iOS 2.something (where I started with an iPhone 3G).


What's the cleanest way to integrate apps across multiple devices?

Enabling automatic App Store downloads on all devices solves this issue for devices that use the same AppleID for App Store.

macOS this is in the preferences for the App Store App
iOS this is in the settings app under Apple ID > iTunes & App Store

The general case is solved only when you package and script app installs with an MDM framework like JAMF Now. It’s a lot of work to start packaging your apps or manage installers, so most groups don’t fully manage all apps until they have 50 to 100 Macs, but the technology is there to do this on macOS and iOS. There are even comprehensive books on packaging such as Armin Briegel’s


Putting files outside the home folder on Catalina

One place that Apple recommends/allows is /Users/Shared.


This is currently not possible.

The question was asked on Super User too a while back:

https://superuser.com/questions/774509/enable-rubberband-scrolling-on-mac-osx-snow-leopard (deleted, archive.org)


Is it a bad idea to compile Samba from source for Mac?

Honestly, it’s a mixed bag. I worked for a client in an enterprise environment—300+ users—with mixed Windows and Mac OS X clients and the SMB/CIFS issues were maddening to say the least. The only “solution” to some specific file sharing issues we could practically implement was to deploy Synology rack-mounted NAS enclosures and use those in lieu of core Windows server-based file sharing since those Linux-based devices handled SMB and AFP connections on Mac and Windows clients beautifully; never an issue.

But I left before any real solution was implemented for the core Windows server-based issues they faced. One idea we seriously looked into was upgrading the default install of Samba on the Mac OS X client side via SMBUp. As the developer’s page states:

  Did you lose your shared folders with the update of Mac OS X from Snow
  Leopard to Lion? You can’t see your shared folders from your DVR or
  Mediacenter box hooked in your TV? The internet tells you to install
  gigabytes of developer tools and use tons of command-line instructions
  to regain the ability to see your mac from your other devices in the
  house after moving to Lion or Mountain Lion? We might be able to help.

  SMBUp (current version: 1.4.1) re-instates Samba as a service of your
  mac and provides a simple interface to manage the service. Compatible
  with OS X Lion and above.

That said, I still see a “fix” like this as a “caveat emptor” endeavor. Apple really mucks around with Samba with each new Mac OS X install. So who knows what will happen if you—for example—install SMBUp and then run an Apple update that somehow conflicts with it. I’d honestly be walking on eggshells with each new Mac OS X upgrade/patch if I went down this path.

That said, the nice thing about SMBUp is that the developer is clearly devoted to providing simple/non-sysadmin level advice in the usage of this package to help people going nuts of SMB issues in Mac OS X. In fact, as the developer explains here on a “Mac OS X Hints” page on installing SMB support from source:

  I made SMBUp to help people avoid having to install XCode and
  MacPorts, both of which I love but which are overkill for something
  like this. I kept waiting for someone to come up with a simple
  installer for Samba binaries (my money was on Liyanage, who'd made
  similar things in the past) but after a year I just gave up and made
  SMBUp.

So you could do worse if you attempt to do this yourself; at least this developer is doing the “heavy lifting” for you in this case. But like I said, I would still be wary of interactions with core Mac OS X functionality with each Mac OS X upgrade/update. Thus is the reality of Apple’s odd devotion to pushing everything into “the cloud”; basic functionality like file sharing is not seen as a priority anymore.


What's the best way to back up the list of installed apps on your Mac?

Time Machine does back up your applications. You can restore from a Time Machine backup and your computer will have the system software, applications, and user files it had when it was completely backed up. See this Apple page for details.

Some other backup solutions (such as Crashplan) generally are set to just back up the /Users folder - Time Machine is a "bare metal" backup.


Properly edit the location in Calendar events on the Mac

But do you guys have a smarter way?

Not to sound flippant, but I use Outlook App.  I've used this exact feature extensively (today in fact) where I have to add floor or room numbers and the App doesn't complain.  It still links the Maps data to the event.

The App handles mail and calendar.  It gets very high reviews and some features I now can't do without like the Focused Inbox.


Can't access old iTunes purchases after changing email address

This sounds like something is broken on the iTunes side - you can indeed change your email address and it's all still tied to the same Apple "account", meaning all your old purchases should still be there.

The very first thing you should do is contact iTunes support and explain what happened. Chances are high they'll be able to correct whatever's happened.


How to get my lost mail and accounts back after kernel panic?

Click on the Finder icon, then press shift-command-g. This will open up a dialog where you can type a direct path.

Now type ~/Library/Mail/ and press return. You should be able to see a folder called something like 'V2', and possibly other folders with similarly cryptic names. Open them and look for your mail messages. If your mail messages are hidden anywhere on your computer, they will be somewhere in these folders. If they are not here, then I hope you still have access to the messages online, or have made a Time Machine backup of your computer, because they are gone from your mac.

If you have made a Time Machine backup, then keep the Finder window open and and go to the Time Machine menu and click 'Enter Time Machine'. You will be able to travel back in time through the folder looking for your messages.

If you still have the messages available online, then you should be able to setup your accounts again and re-download the messages. (If you are using IMAP, then the messages should all download automatically when the account is setup, but if you are using POP you may have to go online and change your POP download settings to allow all mail to be downloaded.


Time Machine is documented well at http://support.apple.com/kb/ht1427 and this discussion goes into sparse bundles and FileVault so it's worth a read http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=1447315

Since backups to an attached hard disk are written as plain files - that would be easier to connect to a non-Mac system. Backups to a Time Capsule are stored in a disk image
in sparse bundle format, you will need to have software that knows how to mount those bundles.

Either requires your non-Mac system to be able to read HFS+ volumes - but once over that hurdle, you can simply navigate the Backups.backupdb folder and extract whatever files you need. The folder structure is simply organized by the time the backup completed.


MacBook: Should I close all applications before going to sleep?

...what I want to know is, if leaving applications open drains my battery, or if it has any bad effects on my device over the long term.

Yes, it drains your battery, but it uses a fraction of energy than when awake.  When your Mac goes to sleep, it suspends all of your applications in their current state in memory meaning that (CPU) processing and disk activity have all been stopped, but the application state is in memory being supported by battery - so yes, your battery will drain.
However, when your Mac goes into hibernation it will write those saved states to a sleep image in which your Mac is all but turned off.  If the battery drains completely, the memory states though lost in RAM are preserved in the sleep image.
For more information, see Use sleep and Energy Saver on your Mac

or if it has any bad effects on my device over the long term.

Why would it?  Whether your Mac is fully operational and memory is being utilized versus in sleep mode where memory is also being utilized, there’s nothing that the latter condition is going to do to “have bad effects on your device over the long term.”   Memory just holds values and when you get down to it, it's simply holding on or off states (the 1s and 0s) representing values.
Whether it’s holding a spreadsheet, an photo, an animation, or the state of your application, it affects the memory no differently.  It doesn’t matter if your CPU is doing things with that memory or it’s in a static state, it doesn’t have adverse effects to your computer - it’s doing what it’s designed to do - hold on/off states representing values so long as there’s power.  In fact, an argument can be made that computer that’s awake causes more “wear” on one that’s asleep or hibernating.
Bottom line, the sleep/hibernate function has been used on all computers - Windows, macOS, and BSD/Linux alike across many different architectures like X86, ARM, RISC, SPARC and PowerPC - it’s a mature technology that works very well.  It’s designed to be a convenience feature that has no detrimental effects to your system.


How to install Windows ISO on a single partition of external HD on Mojave?

Your model Mac is suppose to be Windows 7 compatible. Windows 7 should include SP1 or later. The Boot Camp Assistant included with macOS can be used to install Windows. There is a chance Mojave will not allow the installation of Windows 7. In this case, the easiest solution would be to install High Sierra to a new volume in the same APFS container as Mojave. You can then use the Boot Camp Assistant from High Sierra to install Widows 7. After Windows 7 SP1 is installed, you can remove the High Sierra volume. The Boot Camp Assistant will probably inform you that you will have to manually copy the Windows Support Software to the flash drive. There will be a link to the website with further instructions. After installing Windows 7, you can upgrade to Windows 10. After you successfully active Windows 10, you can elect to use the Boot Camp Assistant to remove Windows and reinstall a clean version of Windows 10. This version should automatically activate. Also, the clean install of Windows 10 should UEFI boot.


MacPorts would install sftp in /opt/local/bin/. You can test against the OS installed /usr/bin/sftp.

The OS installed zip uses gzip compression by default but can be configured to use bzip2 (with the -Z option) which should give you better compression. I would split the 100GB of files into smaller archives.

Next, consider using tar or xar to create your archives. tar with xz should give you the best compression,xz should already be installed by MacPorts. Of course these suggestions depend upon the tools available on the remote host.


How can I play YouTube in the background without using Safari?

On iOS 5.1 (not sure for earlier versions) the same procedure works for the YouTube app too (as for Safari):

Start the video in the YouTube app.
Press "Home" button once to go to springboard (or twice to switch to another app)
Press "Home" button twice to bring up the app-switcher. Slide to the right to bring up background audio controls. The icon on the right side will show whichever program you last used with background audio: YouTube.
Press Play. YouTube audio will resume playback.


Safari - Easy way to open a link in private window?

In Safari 9.0 (El Capitano) you can right-click on the URL while holding down the option key and you then have the option to open the URL in a new private window. This option is provided from regular or private windows, unlike what appears to be the case in previous versions of Safari.


How to download legally OSX if you don't have formatted Mac

You can download any Apple software directly from the Developer portal: https://developer.apple.com/downloads/index.action

Not sure if the site is accessible to non-developers.


Setup wifi access on iPhone when out of range

Perhaps you can set up a temporary access point at your present location with the same SSID and password, then connect to that?  I do not know if the iPhone is going to save some other router-specific identifying information which would prevent connection at the other location, but if you have two routers available to you where you are it would be pretty easy to test.


Is there an app or setting to lock an iPad in a Presentation mode, so other apps can't be accessed?

The Apple-sanctioned method to accomplish this is the use of the Guided Access feature in iOS6. Settings > General > Accessibility > Learning > Guided Access.


Danger Will Robinson!

Not sure why it matters that you have an empty folder in /System/Library but I have found from past experience that you NEVER touch anything in the /System folder. Doing so can lead to problems with your Mac up to and including making it non-bootable.

I completely ignore all folders outside of my home folder. Sure it is interesting to go exploring but honestly if it ain't broke don't fix it. And an empty folder takes up so little space on disk it's not worth deleting.


Why doesn't MiniDisplay out work with Thunderbolt-only Target Display Mode iMacs?

The display port standard only supports a video signal going in one direction (source to destination). The video card can output via display port, but  handling a bidirectional connection would require extra hardware to handle the inbound signal, and isn't part of the standard.

AFAIK the iMac's target display mode is done through the PCIe layer of thunderbolt, whereas the DisplayPort layer is only supported (by the graphics card) in the outgoing direction.


How do I set up a firmware password on a MacBook Air?

The MacBook Air should have come with a bootable USB flash drive for OS reinstalls. Use that and follow the same steps as 10.5.x.


I would like to get text in between line in pages

Make some ------------ reduce the spacing to -30% will give you a line type your txt highlight it increase the spacing to 0 make some spaces inside your txt cut and past them to the sides of your txt

           ————————————————  SELECTION ——————————————————

you will need to increase the spacing again on the next line also. better still put it in a txt box , copy and paste for the next one just change txt .there are probably other ways


How can I isolate macOS 10.14.6 Mojave freezing 1-2 seconds every few minutes except for sound and the mouse?

I've seen precisely this problem on many, many versions of macOS, both release and beta. Usually the delay is caused by some Apple process. For me, diagnosing is not the problem, the problem is fixing it.

You didn't say how much memory your computer has. A few years ago, Apple introduced compression on virtual memory. This is especially important in SSD-based computers: it decreases wear on the SSD to just compress memory, rather than sending it out to mass storage. But more and more programs are using more and more memory. So most of the freezes I've seen are related to long-running processes, typically Apple's processes used for things like curating photographs or background indexing of the SSD, waking up, having lots of memory decompressed, making the program you are using have its memory compressed, and then the scheduler changing its mine and giving your program memory.  One of the related problems is that the Mach process scheduler doesn't seem to be as memory and swapping aware as it should be.

Your question is about how to diagnose this, so here's what I do:

First thing I do is set my system clock to count every second so I can always look up at the menu bar and see if the computer has crashed.
Next, I set up a program that does a ps aux every second and stores the result in another file.
I use the computer until it freezes.
Then I look at the relevant ps aux to see which process was taking up the most memory or the most CPU.

If you are pretty sure you have identified the process, you can STOP it without killing it. See if this makes the problem go away.

Once you've identified the culprit, you have a problem. It's typically an Apple process, not your own, not a third-party driver, not anything that you have control over. Here are some of the things I've tried:

Create a new user on your computer and try using it without copying over all of your files. Does the problem go away? If so, it's either that your profile is corrupted or, more likely, a file in your profile is causing the problem. Now you can slowly copy things into the new profile until you have identified the problem.
Sometimes I've found individual files that causes the full-text indexing program to blow up the amount of memory it needs or to crash. I delete those files and the problem goes away.
Sometimes I just wipe the computer and restore my files. That works.

Good luck. This is annoying and it's almost certainly apple's fault.


What are the techniques for upgrading scripting languages on Lion OS X

Don't overwrite or remove the system versions. Future OS X updates will break things.

MacPorts, Fink and Homebrew will use prefixes to prevent such problems, and typically set up the path so that your own calls to scripting languages will use their custom versions, whereas OS X packages will continue to use its own versions.


It's possible to get notes out from the device itself using a idevice explorer such as iTools or iFunbox, but with some research the tutorials and questions for "where's the notes stored on my idevice" is outdated and doesn't work with iOS 8 ~~~

So, doing it manually, I recommend hooking up your iCloud to the notes, (which you've already done) and load it up on your mac using the Notes app. Open Pages alongside, and copy and paste the good old fashioned way. Command+c and command+v

  I don't want to use iTunes & a computer. There should be a simple way to move all my notes into one Pages doc.

You could do this on your iPhone/iPad too


Minecraft/Xbox Live not working when Content Restrictions are enabled

I know this is old but I am still fighting this issue. Navigating to settings > Screen time > Content & Privacy Restrictions > Content Restrictions > Web content > and then adding in "live.com" to the list of approved websites solved this issue for me.


"Could not activate cellular data network" - cellular data not working on iPhone

ETA: Go to ivzwentp.tracfone.com and install the configuration profile. This fixed the problem for me. (That's what the text I got last week instructed me to do. I was able to find a copy of that text online, at a different site.)

Same problem here, also on PagePlus. I've tried to chat with PagePlus customer service but have been unable to get through. I did get a weird text message last week about iPhone data issues on PagePlus - maybe that was related? I thought it was spam so I deleted it...


Does the 2011 Macbook Air come with a OS reinstall USB drive?

According to Apple.com it does not:

In the Box

MacBook Air
45W MagSafe Power Adapter, AC wall plug, and power cord
Printed and electronic documentation

The air uses Internet Recovery to boot from Apple's servers and then recreate the Recovery HD if needed to re-install Lion (which also will download from the internet). You will only need media if you can't get to an internet connection and have the existing Recovery HD go bad.


You have two choices that I can see if you don't want to re-burn and re-verify.

Mount the ISO and the DVD and do a recursive diff of the two file systems. For example, if the DVD is /Volumes/DVD and the ISO is /Volumes/ISO then:

diff --recursive /Volumes/DVD /Volumes/ISO
Compare the MD5 sums of all the data on the two images. So:

md5 original.iso

dd if=/dev/disk1 bs=2048 count=169383 | md5

I'd take option #2 over #1 personally, though both are less than great ways to do a comparison.

You could also try exploiting rsync to do the comparison instead of using diff. If you ran rsync with the --checksum, --recursive and --dry-run options what you'd get back is a list of transfers that rsync thinks it needs to make to make the two file trees look the same.


How can I send an iMessage from my iPad to my iPhone?

Yes. Sending a message to "yourself" (i.e. your other devices) is done exactly how you would send a message to anyone else. Start a new conversation in Messages, then enter your phone number or email address, whatever's associated with your Apple ID, as the recipient. If you're going to be somewhere where you won't have cellular access (such as a foreign country) but only Wi-Fi, use your Apple ID-associated email address as the recipient to ensure you get it.

Each message will appear twice - once as being sent and once as being received - but other than that minor inconvenience, it is easy to message between your own devices.


Older versions of Xcode Command Line Tools on macOS Catalina

The command-line tool installer installs lots of stuff (libraries, frameworks, etc.) in multiple OS system directories.  So you probably need to find or create a volume (external drive or partition) with OS X High Sierra on it for the install to complete.

I usually partition my SSDs so that I can keep multiple bootable macOS versions on it for running such older tooling and apps.


Apple iPhone won't connect to insecure website

If the certificate has expired, but HSTS is enabled, it is not possible to bypass the error message ‘Safari cannot open the page because it could not establish a secure connection to the server’.

To bypass an expired certificate for a site without HSTS, choose Show Details, then ‘visit this website’.

If the certificate is was revoked, a similar error message is shown but it cannot be bypassed.


Mountain Lion Broke MacPorts - Cannot Update

Based on the error in your update, it appears that (as Nathan said) you haven't installed the Xcode commandline tools yet. You should be able to finish the update process after you've done that.


Can I grab the content from a .pages file, without using Pages.app?

Apple provides a hosted solution called iWork.com and has snazzy videos showing how it works. I believe it is still in beta despite being available for tens of months, and was announced that "As of July 31, 2012, you will no longer be able to access your documents on the iWork.com site or view them on the web.".

It's not clear if this will roll into iCloud once the iOS versions and the OSX versions of the apps reach parity in file format. At the moment, the capabilities and file formats are not close enough to work together well. Also keep in mind that Mountain Lion is slated for release this summer and the current versions of Pages, Numbers and Keynote are all marketed as iWork '09 and perhaps could be revamped to provide this interface using iCloud.

Lion Server does this for you as part of the Wiki Functionality. Many documents - including Pages will be rendered into a mostly html5 / css3 web page so that viewers of the wiki and embedded/uploaded documents on mobile or other client platforms do not need a Pages viewer app and can just use a modern web browser.

I could expect you were looking for more of an open-source solution where you had inner workings of the tools better documented, but this is a widely available and quite low cost solution for some to the problem you ask.


I have an iPod 5 gen, how do I view my wifi password? I've lost the wifi password

You can't see it on Iphone.   Security issue.   If you access the router from OSX it will be in Keychain access.


What time do iTunes Connect daily sales reports begin and end?

Yes, it is midnight PST/PDT to midnight PST/PDT.

Keep in mind that your numbers will not always match the official reports. It all depends on the timing of when credit card transactions complete and money is actually posted, etc.


Cannot boot into Ubuntu installed on an external SSD after installing Windows with Boot Camp

Grub was installed on the EFI partition of the internal drive. When you installed Windows the BOOTX64.EFI file was overwritten. The shimx64.efi file usually is a duplicate of the overwritten file.
Since the boot files for both Windows and Ubuntu are sharing the same EFI partition, the simplest solution would be to install the rEFInd boot manager. There are many ways to install rEFInd. Below are two different ways. Once you have installed rEFInd, you will probably want to edit the refind.conf file to remove duplicate entries.
Install rEFInd to the EFI partition.
This is the default. You will have to temporarily disable System Integrity Protection (SIP) to install this way. The instructions are given here. To edit the refind.conf file from macOS, you will have to mount the EFI partition. The mount command is given below.
sudo diskutil mount disk0s1

To unmount, enter the command given below.
diskutil unmount disk0s1

Install rEFInd to a HFS+ partition.
You have to use the Disk Utility application or the diskutil command to create a small "Mac OS Extended (Journaled)" formatted partition to hold the rEFInd files. This way does not require you to disable SIP to install. Also, you can select rEFInd as the default directly from the Startup Manager (by holding down the option key on startup). The installation instructions are given here.
Create Another EFI partition for Grub.
An alternative solution, which does not require rEFInd, involves using the
Disk Utility application or the diskutil command to create another EFI partition. You can then copy the /EFI/BOOT and /EFI/ubuntu folders to the new partition. Afterwards, you will need to overwrite the /EFI/BOOT/BOOTX64.EFI file with the EFI/ubuntu/shimx64.efi file in this new EFI partition. This solution would allow both Windows and Ubuntu to appear in the Startup Manager. If you use this solution, you should consider changing the label to something other than EFI Boot and using an Ubuntu icon. Basically, you have to adapt steps 5 and 6 of this answer.


During an iTunes sync, are MacBooks prevented from going into sleep mode?

Your MacBook shouldn't go to sleep while iPhone sync is in progress.  iTunes' sync needs to copy files from your Mac to the iOS device, and vice-versa. In either case, your Mac is accessing the hard drive.

Refer to Mac OS X: Why your Mac might not sleep or stay in sleep mode – Apple Support. This section roughly halfway down the page is relevant:

  Open applications can affect sleep

  Software that accesses the hard drive will delay sleep mode until it
  is either quit or done accessing the drive.  For example:

  Songs playing in iTunes.
  A movie disc playing in DVD Player.

  [... lots more detail in the article ...]

In your case, songs aren't playing in iTunes, but iTunes does keep accessing the drive as long as the sync is in progress, which should keep your MacBook awake.


Backup and Restore Apple Messages on macOS

Yes, it is possible to import message history from a Time Machine backup onto a new machine without a full restore from a Time Machine backup. This was tested on 10.10 but should work for at least 10.9 as well.

Take a full Time Machine backup of the new system.
Quit Messages.app.
Remove all of the following files and directories on the new system:

~/Library/Caches/com.apple.iChat/
~/Library/Containers/com.apple.iChat/
~/Library/Messages/
~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.imessage.bag.plist
~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.imservice.FaceTime.plist
~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.imservice.iMessage.plist
~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.imservice.ids.FaceTime.plist
~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.imservice.ids.iMessage.plist
~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.iChat.AIM.plist
~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.iChat.Jabber.plist
~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.iChat.LSSharedFileList.plist
~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.iChat.StatusMessages.plist
~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.iChat.Yahoo.plist
~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.iChat.plist

Copy the following files and directories from your Time Machine backup to their respective locations on your new system:

~/Library/Containers/com.apple.iChat/
~/Library/Messages/
~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.imessage.bag.plist
~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.imservice.FaceTime.plist
~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.imservice.iMessage.plist
~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.imservice.ids.FaceTime.plist
~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.imservice.ids.iMessage.plist
~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.iChat.AIM.plist
~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.iChat.Jabber.plist
~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.iChat.LSSharedFileList.plist
~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.iChat.StatusMessages.plist
~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.iChat.Yahoo.plist
~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.iChat.plist

Restart your system


Applescript - how can I select all *non*-folders in an expanded list view window?

Unfortunately, Finder doesn't support revealing files in this way.

The following code sets 'theFiles' to the files in the directory chosen, but 'reveal' doesn't support any parameters. If you already have the window open, it selects the files in the root of the chosen folder in that window, but then opens a window for every other folder recursively.

tell application "Finder"
  set theFiles to get every item of (entire contents of folder (choose folder)) whose kind ≠ "Folder"
  reveal theFiles
end tell

I still feel like this is more of an XY problem though.


Your problem might be your router loosing connection temporarily to your ISP.

I use Chax, an extension to iChat which, among other great things, auto-reconnects when connection is lost. Chax is donationware.


Installing Windows 10 via Boot Camp & official Microsoft retail USB

I believe that you will need an actual .iso image of the version of Windows you have purchased retail. Fortunately that is both easy and legal, just go here.

Download the same version you bought and save it to your Mac's hard drive. I would use a different USB key so you don't lose your original. But then if all you need it for is Boot Camp on the Mac go for it and use your Windows USB key with Boot Camp.


Does iOS send contacts to Apple servers?

In some instances, yes.  In the Apple privacy policy breakdown, available here, you can see that Apple indicates your contacts are sent to their servers when using Siri:

  The longer you use Siri and Dictation, the better they understand you and the better they work. To help them recognize your pronunciation and provide better responses, certain information such as your name, contacts, and songs in your music library is sent to Apple servers using encrypted protocols.

However, and this is an important point, all the data is encrypted.  Further in that same policy statement is this:

  That said, Siri and Dictation do not associate this information with your Apple ID, but rather with your device through a random identifier. Apple Watch uses the Siri identifier from your iPhone. You can reset that identifier at any time by turning Siri and Dictation off and back on, effectively restarting your relationship with Siri and Dictation. When you turn Siri and Dictation off, Apple will delete the User Data associated with your Siri identifier, and the learning process will start all over again.

So you have the ability to control what info is sent to Apple, how they use it, as well as being able to reset your unique identifier.

I would strongly suggest you visit the Apple privacy policy site to get a better understanding of what data is sent to Apple and how they use it.  You can compare this to other mobile companies to see which one takes better care of your data.  I think it's great that you're interested in the privacy of your data.  It's also great that some companies put this info our there for everyone to see while others don't.


Why does iTunes re-open after I quit the app?

I used to have this problem when I had SRS iWow installed in iTunes. Is that the case for you?

If not, do you have any other plugins installed?


Is there any way to permanently crop a PDF without decreasing its quality?

Cropping (in Acrobat) is non-destructive, as you noted.

If you really want to permanently cut away parts of your scan, it would be better to open the file in an image processing software, do the cutting away (aka cropping) there and resave as PDF (or TIFF, and then bring back to Acrobat for a PDF).

If you do not change the image resolution, the image quality will remain.


Apple Pencil 1st generation is not pairing/recognised by 7th generation iPad after installing iPadOS 13.7 update

The Apple Pencil won't show up in the list of Bluetooth devices unless it is paired with your iPad first. Physically connect your first generation Apple Pencil using Lightning.

Remove the cap and plug your Apple Pencil into the Lightning connector on your iPad. When you see the Pair button, tap it.

https://support.apple.com/kb/HT205236
If that still doesn't work, make sure you've tried all these steps.

If your Apple Pencil won't pair with your iPad

Restart your iPad, then try to pair again.
Go to Settings > Bluetooth and make sure that Bluetooth is turned on.
On the same screen, look under My Devices for your Apple Pencil. If you see it, tap i. Then tap Forget this Device.
Connect your Apple Pencil into your iPad and tap the Pair button when it appears after a few seconds.
If you don't see the Pair button, wait for one minute while your Apple Pencil charges. Then try connecting your Apple Pencil again and wait until you see the Pair button.
If you still don’t see the Pair button, contact Apple Support.

https://support.apple.com/kb/HT205236#pair-help


Should the Windows 10 Technical Preview work in BootCamp 5.1 on new Mac Pro (Desktop)

Yes, Windows 10 works fine in Boot Camp, but the Boot Camp Support Software doesn't really launch correctly. In compatibility mode, it seems to work but I haven't extensively tested whether the settings actually make a difference. Technical Previews are generally 'buggy' too so problems may not solely be due to Boot Camp.


Apple Watch: Can it be configured to only send outgoing calls?

I don't think the Apple Watch can be configured like this, but you might take a look at Use Emergency SOS on your Apple Watch.


How can 2020 16" MacBook Pro output to 2 displays that also get used by a PC? (See diagram)

There are a couple paths you can take to solve this problem:

A hardware only solution.  It's simple to implement, strong and features and equally strong (high) on price.
Software based KVM with some bodging to address the audio needs.  If you can live with some manual switching of USB and audio, you've got a strong solution here.

A Proper KVM
Something that's definitely not in the consumer market is a KVM that handles multiple computers, dual headed high-res display and audio.  There's lots of gimmicky firms out there, but to do it right, you need something like the Avocent SV300.  It checks off all of your requirements: supports UHD 4K Resolutions in a dual headed configuration, audio and your USB devices.  It's not cheap at about $800USD.  However, this is that piece of kit that you gawk over when you go into a broadcast studio or a big dev shop and watch them seamlessly move between their multiple computers.
Disclaimer:  I used to work for a company† that was acquired by Avocent and have many years experience with their KVM and secure console servers (RS232/RS422 over IP).  I've even used their digital signage products when I was with other companies so I'm quite familiar with them and their capabilities.
An Open Source Solution
There's an FOSS KVM solution that is probably well worth looking into.  It's called Barrier and I've mentioned it in a couple answers here on Ask Different:

Multiple Macbook Pros with one monitor
Linking MacBook Pro and iMac as single system

The one area you'd likely have issue is the audio.  For that, you would need a simple, inexpensive audio source switcher.  Basically, it's a four input, one output switch that you'll connect to your headphones.
The upsides here are this is very inexpensive.  This will require some time and very little in the way of hardware (the audio switcher).  The downsides are that the audio is manually switched (minor) and there's no USB switching (could be major depending on your requirements).  There are USB switches available, but this is where it starts becoming a bodge.  Instead of an all-in-one solution like the Avocent, you've got a minimum of three different disparate solutions and one being open source.
Since this is software and it requires you to go over your network (I'm assuming all the computers are on the same network), your video performance will be limited.  The performance will be like using a remote desktop app like VNC or RDP.  A wireless network is good, a wired network will definitely be better.  If you're hoping to do video editing and/or gaming, this probably won't work.
Barrier Configuration Screen

A note on the cheaper KVMs
There are some cheaper KVMs that you can find online from IOGear, TrendNET, and StarTech.  I wouldn't say that they are bad, because they're not.  If you're working a dev environment in mostly text or lower resolution graphics, you can certainly use these; so don't rule these out.  However, all these new video standards are bandwidth hungry and being able to accommodate all of that bandwidth and provide you with smooth experience requires quality components and some strong engineering.  In the end, you get what you pay for.

† I worked for Equinox Systems (no, not the fitness club or water filtration MLM company), a direct competitor to Digi International that made RS232/RS422 and UART over IP products that spanned applications from Unix, Solaris and even Citrix.  It's here I gained my in depth experience with these types of products.


You can do this using the screencapture CLI:

screencapture -T 5 -C ~/Desktop/screencapture.png

Define a delay using -T <seconds>. Use -C to capture the cursor too.

Add -i to capture interactively. This uses the normal capture region selection available from ⌘⇧4, however you can combine this with -T to add a delay so that it captures the tooltip in the region.


How to display icons in finder in newest to oldest order in a grid?

To sort by modified in icon view:

Go to the settings for your finder window by clicking on the gear icon at it's top and choosing View Options. You've already set it to arrange by date modified, but you also need to set it to sort by date modified.

Then you'll have groupings to minimize until you reach the date range you are looking through AND a list of items to scroll through that's sorted by date.

*as an aside, in figuring this out, I noticed that the sections aren't entirely accurate for me in 10.9.5 (items from 2014 are in the 2013 section), but the files are in the correct order - so don't necessarily trust the section headers. Interesting glitch.

As a tip - You could change to list view to see where the modification dates are about where you want to be, select an item to mark your place and then switch back to icon view. Another note - to find where you'd clicked after clicking show all, just arrow key to the left or right and your view will scroll to the selected file.

Hope that helps!


Enable full screen mode in iBooks on iPhone

The official text of the feature says:

  Full-screen layout lets you focus on the words without distraction.

I believe that full screen feature is referring to only having the book title on top and the page number at the bottom of the screen. You can activate it by single tapping in the center of the book. This will get rid of all other UI elements, including the status bar on top.

It doesn't necessarily give you more screen real estate, it just gets rids of these extra distractions.

Here's a good example of the difference between "full screen" (left) and normal layout (right):

As you can see, it doesn't actually increase the reading area, it just hides the status bar and the additional UI elements, and actually adds the book title to the top.


I've always used Memtest86 on a bootable disk to do memory testing. Not sure what you mean by "burn in" though. Other than testing for stability, bad block and general good-functioning of your RAM there isn't anything else you need to do. Using the RAM doesn't actually make it perform any better or worse than when it was initially installed in your machine.

Burn Memtest86 to a CD. Boot from the CD. Let it cycle through all your blocks and it will produce a report.

There's an OS X build of Memtest that's available through this OS X Daily article but I've never used it. Can't speak to how well it works.

There's also memtester and it's available as a Homebrew package:

> brew info memtester
memtester 4.2.2
http://pyropus.ca/software/memtester/
Not installed
https://github.com/mxcl/homebrew/commits/master/Library/Formula/memtester.rb

To install it:

> brew install memtester

Again, haven't used it so I can't speak about how well it works, but it's a userspace program so it means you don't have to reboot your machine to get it to work. I'd probably start with that and if it doesn't give you a suitable report, move on to Memtest86 on a CD.


Weird Wireless Issue - Looks like lost connection, but not really

I just bought another router and aparently the issue disapear.


Can I get push notifications for emails in my Gmail Priority Inbox only?

After days of searching I have found the solution. https://www.ultimatenotifier.com/

You have to buy Ultimate Notifier from the AppStore. $2.99 at the moment.
Create a free account on their site or through the app.
Login to the web interface on your computer and under Add Notification select Add Gmail / Google Mail - NEW Priority Inbox
Complete the fields username and password with your Gmail username and password. (I know this is a BIG leap of faith.)
Save.
Log in to the app on your iPhone to receive push notifications


How to recover data from Safari Sessions extension after clearing history?

If you go to Sessions "Help" (in the gear menu), there are two questions relevant to your issue:

  Why did my saved sessions disappear when I reset Safari or cleared its
  history?

  The option to remove website data, available when either resetting
  Safari or clearing its history, will delete extension data without
  warning. Some third-party cache cleaners may do the same. It is
  recommended to take care when using these tools, as any data so
  deleted can only be recovered from a backup.

and more importantly for you:

  How do I recover Sessions data from a Time Machine or other backup?

  If you are familiar with the command line, try using the
  sessions-export script. This is the recommended procedure.
  Alternatively, it is possible to physically replace the database file
  with a backup. The .db file under the directory
  ~/Library/Safari/Databases/safari-extension_yoo.david.sessions-deub45nr9t_0/
  can be replaced by a recovered file if the latter is renamed to match
  the file it replaces.

So, if you have a backup, it should be as easy as a copy and maybe a rename.


How do I enter Dutch names in Address Book?

My preference is to list their name as something like "Heirseele, van" because when searching by last name you'll still find them using "van" if you decided to. Putting the preposition in another field is a little hackey (and incorrect from a data-integrity point of view) for me.

For the benefit of others: in Dutch, all those prefixes are part of the name. You refer to someone in Dutch as "Meneer van Heirseele" not as "Meneer Heirseele". Those names haven't joined the prepositions like French names have (e.g., Dupré).

Just my two cents…


Unexpected Safari Extension -- Download Video

If I had to guess on what this was there would be two things that I would guess that it might be:

Adware

You might have accidentally installed a package somewhere that installed this as an option in the installer, and this would install adware that could change your default search browser. The person who made the extension might have messed up and not made it so that it didn't activate it.

Real youtube downloader

At one point you might have installed a browser extension if you wanted to download a youtube video. These are everywhere and since youtube does not have a built in free system to download the videos officially, there are a ton of different 3rd party plugins that people have developed and this might be one. If you can remember that you installed it then you shouldn't worry.

Either way, I would uninstall it if you don't use it anymore as it could be anything


OS X Server Users Read & Write but can't delete

Select the containing folder in Server.app, then Edit Permissions….
Click the gear icon at the bottom of the sheet, then select Make Inherited Entries Explicit.
Change the permissions as you desire (the users should no longer be greyed out), then click OK.
With the containing folder still selected, click the gear icon at the bottom of the window and click Propagate Permissions….
Select all the option boxes, then click OK.


Is encrypting then deleting the same as securely erasing?

To answer your question 1: You often see encryption mentioned when you speak of securely deleting the contents of a computer.

The reasoning behind this is that if you for example fully encrypt the disk drive on your computer (i.e. use the built-in File Vault encryption as an example) - then no one can access the contents of the drive without the password.

If you then encrypt the drive with a long, random password and immediately forget that password - then you have effectively deleted the data. If you don't know the password, and it is not written down anywhere - noone can access the data.

The caveats are ofcourse if your password is so bad that it can be guessed, or there's a bug in the encryption routines that makes it possible to recover data without the password.

Remember that:

(a) You must not store or remember the password anywhere

(b) You must not add a password hint or anything that makes it possible to guess the password

(c) You should throw away any recovery keys or similar, and make sure you're not storing a copy of passwords/recovery key on iCloud

(d) The password should be sufficiently strong (i.e. long and random)

To answer your question 2: If you have already stored the data unencrypted, you're out of luck. Just copying them into an encrypted image or anything like that won't replace the data on disk. Instead you'll be making an encrypted copy of your data - there's no guarantee that the disk will really delete the non-encrypted data.


Just run the refind-install script with sudo in the OS X side. I could not get to the recovery mode. This solved the problem.


It is not possible for an iPhone to answer calls that are being routed to an analogue SIP port. Depending on your VoIP provider, however, you may be able to install a SIP client, e.g., Acrobits, on your iPhone and configure it to work with your VoIP providers servers.

It's unlikely that your VoIP services support the same number to be configured on both your SIP modem and a SIP client on the iPhone, so it would be a case of either your modem is configured to provide VoIP services for your phone number or the iPhone is. It's unlikely that you'd be able to register two different clients to handle the same phone number.


Can the data on an MacBook Pro SSD be recovered after formatting using Disk Utility

Since I was the author of the answer linked, I'll have a go at explaining what's going on....

First off, it's important to note that the study FAST referenced from the SE Information Security community,  Reliably Erasing Data From Flash-Based Solid State Drives is from 2011 and now 6 years old1.

The conference where this paper was presented was in Feb of 2011.  Keep in mind that the SATA 3.1 spec which addressed the TRIM issues wasn't released until July of 2011

Within the TRIM specification, included in SATA 3.1,

  A drawback of the original ATA TRIM command is that it was defined as
  a non-queueable command and therefore could not easily be mixed with a
  normal workload of queued read and write operations. SATA 3.1
  introduced a queued TRIM command to remedy this.[62]

  There are different types of TRIM defined by SATA Words 69 and 169
  returned from an ATA IDENTIFY DEVICE command:

  Non-deterministic TRIM: Each read command to the Logical block address
  (LBA) after a TRIM may return different data.
  Deterministic TRIM
  (DRAT): All read commands to the LBA after a TRIM shall return the
  same data, or become determinate.
  Deterministic Read Zero after TRIM
  (RZAT): All read commands to the LBA after a TRIM shall return zero.

What all of this comes down to is which type of TRIM command your hardware is capable of executing.  From the research I have done thus far, modern SSD's use either DRAT or RZAT depending on the "quality" of the drive (higher quality generally meaning RZAT is implemented).

In drives that implement DRAT, the deleted space is marked "unused" the data "can" be recovered, to a point.  With drives that use RZAT, once the TRIM command is executed, the drive will return "zeros" regardless of whatever data is in that space.2

The 2016 MBP uses the SanDisk SDRQKBDC4 064G 64 GB3 NAND which is OEM'd specifically for Apple.  Unfortunately, I haven't found detailed specs on concerning TRIM support for these particular drives (the White Paper they reference is 404).  While I can't get my hands on any detailed tech specs of this drive, I would wager that it uses the RZAT TRIM command and not DRAT.

Long story short, if the SSD has only DRAT capability, there is the possibility of recovering data, but it's usually in a situation where you were able to stop the deletion process and immediately start  data recovery.  If it implement RZAT, you can be pretty sure the recovery will only get zeros back unless they take it (along with a court order) back to the manufacturer to get a low level recovery. 2

TL;DR

With new and modern Macs and macOS, if you wipe your drive and reinstall macOS on top of it it is highly unlikely that someone will be able to recover your files.

If you are concerned that the user will take the drive to a forensics lab to recover data, (that's a whole different issue), you should replace the drive.  Anything less than that and you will be fine.

1 USENIX Conference on File and Storage Technologies, 2011.

2 Recovering Evidence from SSD Drives in 2014: Understanding TRIM, Garbage Collection and Exclusions.  Sept. 23, 2014

3 MacBook Pro 13" Touch Bar Teardown  Ifixit.com, ~December 2016.


Can I add personal info to my iPod touch's lock screen?

The easiest way to go about this without jailbreaking is to use some custom wallpaper.

Make a new document in Photoshop, Pixelmator, GIMP, or your editor of choice.

Find a high-resolution image on the Web that you like and copy it into the document. Crop it to 640 x 960 pixels.

Add some text with your personal info over the image. Make sure that you leave ~225px space at the top of the image and ~150 at the bottom (these will be covered by the unlock UI). A subtle drop shadow can help make the text easier to read.
Export the image is a JPEG or PNG.

Use your preferred method to get the photo onto your iPod (sync with iTunes, email to yourself, Dropbox app, etc.).

On the iPod, go to Settings-> Wallpaper and select your custom image. You can set it as wallpaper for only the lock screen or the lock screen and home screen.

You'll now have custom text on the lock screen:


Create a custom Quick Action to create a zip file with password

To make a Service/Quick Action take any file or folder as input, select:

  Service receives selected files or folders in Finder.app

...at the top of the Automator window.

The selected files or folders will get passed as input to the first action in your workflow.

(Note: The workflow will not receive this input when it is run inside Automator! in order to test your your Quick Action by running it inside Automator, you need to temporarily add "Ask for Finder items" as the first action in your Workflow. Delete this action when you are finished building the Workflow.)

Among the many actions you can add is one called "Run Shell Script", which will likely be useful to you. If you change the dropdown to Pass input: as arguments, you'll be able to use the variables $1, $2, $3, etc to reference items passed from previous actions within your script.

After you have finished building your workflow and have saved it, you will be able to right click on any file or folder in Finder, and select your Workflow from the right click menu to run it.


Disable alert: "Cellular data disabled for [app]"

Sadly, there's no way to stop seeing that alert every time you open the app from the cellular data network.

Every time the app tries to connect to the Internet, then you'll see that alert.

In fact, there is one way you'll probably won't like, but just in case... If you put your phone on airplane mode, then you won't see that message (though you'll see the annoying "no data connection" if you perform any activity that asks for connection anyway).


VMWare Fusion Pro macOS Host to Linux Guest Keyboard Mapping

I've been running a Linux guest on my iMac VMware Fusion Hypervisor for years and have been logging in via ssh to avoid this.   Only recently set it up for Gnome.
I found that configuring gnome for an Apple keyboard solved most of the issues with tilde etc.   The one key which I did have problems with was the hash '#' key which for some reason either works via SHIFT-.


Hiding ads on my own YouTube videos on Apple TV

If you disable monetisation and you have no third-party content in your YouTube video, then no ads will be shown on the video.

You can check if Content ID has identified third-party content in your videos by checking your My Videos page as a link will be shown next to the video if this is the case.


How can I turn off encrypted iPhone backup without a password?

If you have a password encrypted backup you can't restore it without the password. If you could it would be no use of encrypting the backup.


If you are on iOS 12, go to Settings -> [your name] -> iCloud -> Manage Storage

iCloud page:

Then click on your app in the list.

Then look for your games data in the list.

Then click on it and click delete data:

This should clear all backed up data for the app. Then reinstall the app.

Alternatively, you can try and look for a setting in the game to reset your progress.


Using Swedish keyboard as English ANSI on macbook pro

If you are talking about the fact that the ISO keyboard puts characters on the key next to the Z that you want on the key to the left of 1, then I think the best thing is make a custom layout with Ukelele or Karabiner.

(I am assuming you have already set your Input
Source to US or ABC instead of Swedish, right?)


My iPhone 11 running iOS 13.3 won’t give permission to apps to use my camera or microphone

Photos and Camera are two different settings, access to the Camera doesn‘t automatically grant access to the Photo library as well. There should be a separate option to enable for Photos, e.g. for WhatsApp it looks like this:

You can try to tap on "Enable Library Access" (from the second screenshot). If this doesn't work I would proceed with reinstalling the apps in question and trying again.


As @tty suggested, using Karabiner is brilliant. I made some extra rules.

You can navigate using HJKL and zoom using FDER. Read the file for more information.

Here is my private.xml:

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<root>
  <appdef>
    <appname>PREVIEW</appname>
    <equal>com.apple.Preview</equal>
  </appdef>

  <item>
    <name>Vi Navigation in Preview</name>
    <identifier>private.preview.vinav</identifier>
    <only>PREVIEW</only>
    <uielementrole_not>AXTextField, AXTextArea</uielementrole_not>
    <modifier_only>
        ModifierFlag::NONE,
        ModifierFlag::SHIFT_L | ModifierFlag::NONE,
        ModifierFlag::SHIFT_R | ModifierFlag::NONE,
    </modifier_only>
    <appendix>Navigate using the HJKL keys</appendix>
    <autogen>__KeyToKey__ KeyCode::J, KeyCode::CURSOR_DOWN</autogen>
    <autogen>__KeyToKey__ KeyCode::K, KeyCode::CURSOR_UP</autogen>
    <autogen>__KeyToKey__ KeyCode::H, KeyCode::CURSOR_LEFT</autogen>
    <autogen>__KeyToKey__ KeyCode::L, KeyCode::CURSOR_RIGHT</autogen>
  </item>

  <item>
    <name>Vi Zoom in Preview</name>
    <identifier>private.preview.vizoom</identifier>
    <only>PREVIEW</only>
    <uielementrole_not>AXTextField, AXTextArea</uielementrole_not>
    <modifier_only>
        ModifierFlag::NONE,
        ModifierFlag::SHIFT_L | ModifierFlag::NONE,
        ModifierFlag::SHIFT_R | ModifierFlag::NONE,
    </modifier_only>
    <appendix>Zoom using E/R: out/in</appendix>
    <appendix>Zoom to fit: F</appendix>
    <appendix>Zoom to 100%: D</appendix>
    <autogen>__KeyToKey__ KeyCode::F, KeyCode::KEYPAD_9, VK_COMMAND</autogen>
    <autogen>__KeyToKey__ KeyCode::D, KeyCode::KEYPAD_0, VK_COMMAND</autogen>
    <autogen>__KeyToKey__ KeyCode::R, KeyCode::KEYPAD_PLUS, VK_COMMAND</autogen>
    <autogen>__KeyToKey__ KeyCode::E, KeyCode::KEYPAD_MINUS, VK_COMMAND</autogen>
  </item>
</root>


How to uninstall a program through the App Store?

No.

You cannot uninstall apps from within the App Store.

How can I delete an application?

You can delete them like in iOS:

Open Launchpad.
Click and hold the app you want to delete (or hold ⌥)
Delete by clicking on the X.

Note: The X appears only for apps which have been installed using the Mac App Store.
Locate the Applications folder where the app is located:

/Applications or /Users/my_name/Applications
Drag the application to the Trash.

Note: This will only remove the application - this will not remove some other files which may be related to the app (e.g. preferences). If you want to remove such files as well, you can use tools like AppCleaner which @james.garriss has mentioned.

Besides this, applications which have not been installed via the Mac App Store sometimes provide their own uninstaller in the installer .dmg image. I usually keep them in a folder Applications/Uninstaller which I created.


How can I force Mountain Lion's Messages app to refresh a conversation?

Is there any reliable way to force Messages to refresh or reload the current conversation? Or make it receive messages reliably in the first place?

No. Messages is very buggy for many users and there is not a known fix at this time. I believe the most prominent client-side issues are resolved in Mavericks, but I am not running the it yet so perhaps not.

As far as I know, the best solution is to sign out of your account, log back in, and then restart Messages. For me, this fixes the ordering of messages (so they are sorted by timestamp) and generally keeps Messages running smoothly for a little while. However, the fix doesn't seem to last longer than a few days.


Try BasicTeX which includes pdflatex and all the usual tools, but is only 64M.

For a description of what it contains, see BasicTeX.pdf.


El Capitan: Your iCloud session has expired

I found an advice for this on Reddit: Log out of iTunes Store account and log back in.


Time Machine only backs up /Users and /opt

Select Options… in System Preferences » Time Machine and specify which directories you don't want backed up.

theis answer shows, what happened on your device:

Time Machine Synchronize just my Home Folder to external hard drive in MacOS Leopard

So you have to do it the other way round


JavaScript problem while installing NetBeans and JDK in OS X 10.5.8 - Leopard

I just found out I want to install the 64 bit version of NetBeans but I have 32 bit OS X....  So, that can be the reason...


Macbook Pro won't display external monitor when lid is closed

I faced the same issue few days back after being able to successfully close the laptop lid with my external monitor connected all the while. For me it started working back after connecting the power cord to the laptop. Without power, laptop does not seem to mirror the display to the external monitor with the lid closed. hope this helps.


can I change the iphone 5S text tone swoosh on sending to a more noticable sound

See the Settings.
Sounds: see under "Sounds and Vibration Patterns".
Self explanatory.


If you have Find My iPhone enabled on the device, go to icloud.com and see if the device is online. If it is, you can locate it on a map and put it in lost mode to track the location as well as send a message to it.


What is the proper way to change Macintosh HD icon used on Mac Startup Manager with FileVault2 enabled?

Note: Not all icns files are compatible with the firmware installed in your Mac. You may need to convert an icns file to a different format before the file will be recognized by the firmware.

You first need to determined the identifier for the APFS Preboot volume from the output of the command diskutil list. Below is an example.
/dev/disk1 (synthesized):
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      APFS Container Scheme -                      +898.0 GB   disk1
                                 Physical Store disk0s2
   1:                APFS Volume Muskie                  32.2 GB    disk1s1
   2:                APFS Volume Preboot                 120.5 MB   disk1s2
   3:                APFS Volume Recovery                1.0 GB     disk1s3
   4:                APFS Volume VM                      8.6 GB     disk1s4
   5:                APFS Volume Snapper - Data          741.9 GB   disk1s5
   6:                APFS Volume Snapper                 11.2 GB    disk1s6

From the above output, the identifier for the APFS Preboot volume is disk1s2. If you have a different identifier, then make the appropriate substitutions. Enter the following commands to copy the icns file to the Preboot volume.
diskutil mount disk1s2
sudo cp /Users/admin/Desktop/icon.icns /Volumes/Preboot/.VolumeIcon.icns
diskutil unmount disk1s2

In the above example, there are two versions of macOS installed in the container. The Muskie volume has High Sierra installed. The Snapper and Snapper - Data volumes have Catalina installed.  When booted to the Mac Startup Manager, the .VolumeIcon.icns file, stored in the root of the Preboot volume, is used to display the same image for both operating systems.
If you wanted different images in the Mac Startup Manager for each version of macOS, then you could install both versions of MacOS in different containers. Or, the same container could be used, but I am not sure if this would work when encryption is employed. An example is given below.
The previous example used the /Users/admin/Desktop/icon.icns file. In this example, this file is replaced by the two files High Sierra.icns and Catalina.icns stored in the Desktop folder of your Catalina account. Images of both files are shown below.

The following steps could be used to install the icns files.

Note: You do not have to disable SIP.

Boot to Catalina and enter the commands given below to remove any existing .VolumeIcon.icns file from the root of the Preboot volume.
diskutil mount disk1s2
sudo rm /Volumes/Preboot/.VolumeIcon.icns
diskutil unmount disk1s2

Enter the following command to install the image for High Sierra.
sudo cp "$HOME/Desktop/HighSierra.icns /Volumes/Muskie/.VolumeIcon.icns

Boot to High Sierra and enter the command given below to install the image of Catalina.
sudo cp "/Volumes/Snapper - Data/Users/$USER/Desktop/Catalina.icns" /Volumes/Snapper/.VolumeIcon.icns

Update for Big Sur
The Preboot volume is already mounted at /System/Volumes/Preboot. To change this volume while using macOS Big Sur, first you will have to disable SIP.


Can you override app sandboxing, force app to use working directory?

Create a shell script - ie asympdf.sh with the following content:

/Applications/Preview.app/Contents/MacOS/Preview `readlink -f $1`

If you put that script somewhere, ie near to the asymptote binaries, you can then set the pdfviewer setting to point to that script instead.


Sending e-mail attachment from MS Office

Oh ! I think I have seen this before

Try the following:

Start Apple Mail

Go to Mail>Preferences>General
The top line that reads "Default Email Reader" must show either Outlook or    Mail.
If it doesn't, please go ahead and change it.

you might have google set as of now.

Hope this works!


Keyboard/touchpad no longer works in OS X. Works fine in Linux. 13" early 2015

EDIT: It turned out to be water damage that caused the issue. Fiddling with the case probably shifted some leads inside the computer that had shortened/lost contact.

So I think I've finally found the problem; the bottom of the case wasn't on properly.

The keyboard/touchpad would sometimes work, but after putting it in my bag and taking it out again it would usually not work anymore. However, after turning it off by holding the power button and carefully squeezing the case along the edges it would work when I powered it on again. The Macbook provides the ground connection for the keyboard via the bottom of the case, so my guess was that there was a problem with that connection.

So I took off the bottom of the case, cleaned it, and put it on again, careful to screw it in exactly straight, and now it seems to be fine.

I still don't know why it would work better in Linux. My only conjecture is that Linux can somehow reinitialize the hardware after it has lost power briefly.


Last Opened not clickable in Applications folder View Options

Date last opened was only available in Spotlight windows in 10.6 and earlier. It became available in normal Finder windows in 10.7.

http://www.mac-help.com/t205135-does-snow-leopard-have-last-opened.html

    One thing that's always annoyed me about Leopard is that the search
    results window has a Last Opened column, but an ordinary Finder window
    doesn't have that option.

    Of course, it also annoys me that the search results window is not an
    ordinary Finder window like it used to be, with Size, Created and all
    the other column options.

    Has Snow Leopard fixed this inconsistency?

  In list view 'Last Opened' is one of the options in Show View Options,
  but it's rather annoyingly greyed out.

  So: Yes, but no.


Can the Time Capsule back up multiple drives (internal and external) at the same time?

Yes - when you set the Time Machine to back up to the Time Capsule - you will include the internal drive by default.  I would let a couple of backups complete, and then go to the settings for time machine under options and make sure the external drive is not excluded. Kick off a a backup with the external drive connected to make sure it works.

If the drive isn't connected when a back up event arrives, the internal will get backed up - but the software will remember and resume backing up the external any time it is connected and a back up happens. You don't need to always have the external drive connected for this to work, you just lose some chances to back it up when it's not connected.


macOS High Sierra not trying other DNS servers

First: nslookup does not use the system DNS resolver, and does not behave the same way that the system resolver does. Neither do dig or host, so none of these tools are useful for checking how macOS resolves names. If you want to use the system resolver, use dscacheutil -q host -a name google.com, but note that it uses the entire resolution system -- it looks in the local cache, /etc/hosts, mDNS (for .local names), and then DNS. Oh, and the man page for dscacheutil claims it can flush the DNS cache, but it doesn't work; use sudo killall mDNSResponder instead.

Second: the system resolver does not do a good (or even adequate) job of failing over between DNS servers. If you list multiple servers, it'll fire off queries to all of them in a sort of randomized-round-robin fashion. If it doesn't get a response, it'll eventually time out and try the other one. If it gets a "that doesn't exist" response, it assumes that's correct and doesn't try any other server. As a result, you really need a single server that can answer all queries, both internal and external.

Ok, there's one possible workaround: you can point your system at a public DNS server, then create /etc/resolver/ and put files in it to redirect queries for certain domains to your internal server. Provided you know what domains to redirect, that is. See Apple.SE: "Do /etc/resolver/ files work in Mountain Lion for DNS resolution?".


Print to PDF an email dropped into a Finder folder

I think you may want to investigate Hazel.

http://www.noodlesoft.com/hazel.php

It allows you to create automated workflows and is probably exactly what you need.


To create a graph of profit over time, you need data over time. Spreadsheets can only plot graphs of data present in a table, or interpolated between. That means you need a table containing rows for each time point you want plotted, not just the current value.
Numbers can import ‘delimited or fixed-width text files’. If you can find a source for the data you need over time, you can import this into Numbers and plot the data over time.
Create one row for each point in time over a contiguous time period with regular interval and use a line graph, or plot using a scatter graph for non-contiguous/non-regular time (other types cannot be used, see Time as x-axis in chart with Apple Numbers).


How do I silence Messages from a single person on my Apple Watch?

It is possible to set a conversation in Messages to "Do Not Disturb". This will cause notifications to stop and will put a small moon icon next to the conversation. Works great!


One way to bypass the trash without any additional tools is to open a Terminal window, type rm -rf (note the last space) and the drag/drop the files/folders to be deleted and press enter. This will instantly and recursively delete the files/folders, so be careful with it!


I recommend you reset your NVRAM. This chip stores information on screen resolution and can often become corrupted. You can reset it by starting your Mac while holding down cmd + opt + P + R . You should hear the Mac chime, restart and chime a second time. Then you can release the keys you are holding. More info here.


Installing hybrid drive in mid-2010 17-inch MacBook Pro

I have a late 2011 15" 2.2 quad core i7 macbook pro, and after using it with a 7200 rpm hard drive for about 2 months I decided to upgrade it to the Seagate Momentus XT 500GB Hybrid drive. I am a iOS programmer and I can't tell you what a big difference this hard drive made in my computer. I did a couple of tests before I changed out my old hard drive like boot up time and opening programs and such. With my 7200 RPM hard drive my boot up time was 31 sec. and with the hybrid drive my new boot up time is 20 sec. I strongly recommend the hybrid drives. Seagate also just updated there hybrid drives with twice the amount of solid state memory instead of 4 GB they now have 8 GB. I hope this helps!


Why can't I see subscript "s" (Unicode Character “ₛ” (U+209B)) even though I can see lots of other unicode characters?

The display of any unicode character requires that your machine has a font installed which contains the glyph for it.  Apple doesn't provide fonts for all 130000 unicode characters.  For U+209b you need to download one.  A possible list is here.
And a font that can be used as a source for installing these glyphs is here: https://dejavu-fonts.github.io


I want all applications show their title bar, how do I achieve this?

Don't use Fullscreen. Maximise instead.
 Opt/click the green dot, top left, instead of just clicking it.

Or double-click the title bar.


Is it safe for Mac not to sleep for over a month

Won't fix your issue, but, anecdotally…

My Mac has been running 24/7 since 2008, never sleeping & only ever rebooting/shutting down for OS updates/hardware clean etc.

No issues so far.

So I'd say, yes, it's perfectly safe to leave it awake, so long as it has adequate cooling.


Sort with case-sensitivity (lowercase before uppercase) in macOS in the Terminal

Sort order is defined in your locale.

locale
LANG="en_US.UTF-8"
LC_COLLATE="en_US.UTF-8"
LC_CTYPE="en_US.UTF-8"
LC_MESSAGES="en_US.UTF-8"
LC_MONETARY="en_US.UTF-8"
LC_NUMERIC="en_US.UTF-8"
LC_TIME="en_US.UTF-8"
LC_ALL=

When LC_COLLATE is defined as LC_COLLATE="en_US.UTF-8" on macOS, LC_COLLATE uses the C or POSIX definiton. The default behavior of sort is to sort in ascii order where uppercase has precedence over lowercase.

On Linux, when  LC_COLLATE="en_US.UTF-8" the LC_COLLATE definiton is non-standard. The default behavior of sort is to ignore-case and lowercase has precedence over uppercase.

To mimic Linux default sort behavior on macOS, You can use tr to "translate" lowercase letters to uppercase and uppercase to lowercase, sort with the ignore-case option (-f), then change the case back again.

tr 'a-zA-Z' 'A-Za-z' <file.txt | sort -f | tr 'a-zA-Z' 'A-Za-z'

EXAMPLE:

cat file.txt
"cat"
"Best"
"A"
"BEST"
"Castro"
"alfred"
"a"
"CAT"

tr 'a-zA-Z' 'A-Za-z' <file.txt | sort -f | tr 'a-zA-Z' 'A-Za-z'
"a"
"A"
"alfred"
"Best"
"BEST"
"Castro"
"cat"
"CAT"


How do I fix the duplicate libraries I think the new Photos app has made?

See https://apple.stackexchange.com/a/180313/54484

The files were not duplicated, rather additional hard links were created. The data exists once, and each hard link is simply a pointer to that data on the hard drive.

Deleting one library will not recover any significant space, because hard links to the same data still exist. Finder shows the size for each library bundle as including the hard linked files, so it appears that much more space is being used, when it is in fact not.

As far as your "missing" 33 GB, unless you have turned on the display of hidden folders you are not getting an accurate count by simply counting the size of visible folders. Use something like Daisy Disk for a true view of what space is being taken up and where.

Finally, for the record, both Aperture and iPhoto work fine under Yosemite, so long as you don't delete the libraries they used. They cannot read a Photos format library.


wget isn't in the default path used by cron. Give it the /full/path/to/wget and it should work.


Tell your command where your myapp.app resides

You need to provide the open command an absolute or relative path to the application, unless the executable is already within your $PATH, or you change your working directory to the location in the filesystem where your myapp.app is (in my examples, myapp.app is the Applications folder, the home Applications folder, a folder called someotherplace, and the Shared folder, respectively).

 open /Applications/myapp.app
 open ~/Applications/myapp.app
 open ../someotherplace/myapp.app
 cd && cd ../Shared/ && open myapp.app

You can also type your open command and hit spacebar, and drag your application from anywhere into the Terminal, and the path will be provided.

There is another way

You can execute your executable using its full path  and adding the ampersand.  This will run it in the background so your terminal isn't tied up:

 ./myapp.app/Contents/MacOS/myapp &
 /Applications/myapp.app/Contents/MacOS/myapp &
 cd /Volumes/externaldisk/projects/thisone/myapp.app/Contents/MacOS && ./myapp &

And interestingly, using this method you can launch as many instances of your app as you have memory to do so.

To use torify with your myapp.app

I'm reasonably sure you need to launch it like this to use torify (assuming your myapp.app is in the /Applications folder):

 torify /Applications/myapp.app/Contents/MacOS/myapp &

or

 cd /Applications/myapp.app/Contents/MacOS/
 torify myapp &


I can not stop the mackeeper's installing

I would recommend just letting it finish then removing it. MacWorld has a pretty good guide, but I'll skip some of it in favor of just downloading MalwareBytes Anti-Malware and letting it do it's job in case some other stuff got installed as well. Let it run, and once it's done, if there are any remaining traces, quit any relevant process and move them to the trash and empty said trash.

If you absolutely need to close it though, you can force quit the installer or kill the process. You can force quit by right clicking the icon in the dock with alt held down, then clicking force quit, or through a menu accessible via  -> Force Quit (accessible with the shortcut Command + alt + esc.) You could also use the command-line command kill or killall to kill the installer process. I'd avoid this, as it may have unintended consequences.


Although newer iPhones get substantial value (iPhone 4S + 64GB AT&T is up to $150 today), iPhone 3 and 3GS are rapidly becoming worthless in the US. Your phone is may still be worth money in a rebate or gift cart in USA if you exchange it as part of a phone purchase. Apple has an official relationship with PowerOn where the staff in each store checks market conditions from that third party and quotes you an offer when you are shopping.

Apple's plan is documented at http://apple.com/recycling and currently in the US, you can only trade in one device for each iPhone purchase. You can go to that site now and see if they will offer any money, but I'm seeing $0 currently.

Apple staff are trained in evaluating the condition of devices, so you'll get a better read on the price you'll get by having that second opinion. Some people feel their phone is flawless when it isn't. Others mark a phone down for things that would actually fetch price for excellent condition. You can do a little research before going in to the Apple store on:

http://gazelle.com
http://ebay.com (prices here will likely be both higher and lower than what you will get from a company that does Apple's trade in which means you have to do more work to get a fair number)
http://amazon.com (search for your model and look for Trade In in the right side of the web page under the buy now/add to cart button)

I would also research what your local cell carriers have for current promotions. If there is an in-store, verifiable special. You can ask Apple Retail to match the brick and mortar offers if there are case / charger deals locally when you buy.

If Apple's deal isn't good enough, look for a carrier or Radio Shack that have $50 for any phone trade in and see what's the best deal overall. I can't imagine it not going for $15 if you put it on ebay for 0.01 and no reserve, but that's a bit more of a gamble than if you were to get an offer from a company that buys used devices.


How to only back up one partition of a Macbook hard drive?

Your problem is a consequence of an over simplified vision of users from Apple:
a user has one uniq computer with one uniq partition then name it with a simple and uniq name "Macintosh HD".

Once you start to have external disks, different versions of OS on the same disk, you should carefully avoid all the failures this over simplistic naming scheme will led you to.

Change all your partitions names with a very clear and really unambiguous name
for you and forever.

My personnal use is as follows: every disk partition is named from the computer name it is used on ex.: coriolis, the partition number ex.: 1, its actual capacity, ex.: 250 Gb and the version of the OS it is used on, ex.: High Sierra for a production OS or 10.14.1 for a test one.

Ex.:

coriolis 1 250 Gb High Sierra
coriolis 2 250 Gb 10.14.1

All my computers, all my external disks have a different and uniq name registered at time of their 1st formatting.


How to move my OmniFocus data from old Mac to new Mac?

Quoth OmniGroup:

  The database file now is in a sandboxed container. The easiest way to get to the file is by opening the backup folder through 'File' → 'Show Backups…'. The data file is in the same folder as the Backups folder.

From: https://discourse.omnigroup.com/t/where-does-omnifocus-2-keep-the-database-file/4211/2


They do it every year. The official announcement is too early to be. In 2011 it came on Nov 16th. I have no mail from 2012 to see when it came.


USB C to Ethernet on iPad Air 4 in hotel

You are getting good advice and the hotel probably needs the hardware media access control address which is like a serial number on the adapter. If you can’t find that out from a computer, manufacturer support, the labeling on the part or the box, ask if you can use a web browser to navigate to http://captive.apple.com to register.
You can also ask them if setting the DHCP client ID or address manually works. You can’t discover the ethernet MAC address from iOS 14 (afaik) - here is what you can see and control in the settings app if you tap Ethernet.

For WiFi and Bluetooth you can see these addresses on iPhone and iPad  (like 16:00:DD:EE:FF:78 ) and even specify a private one different than the factory address, but this doesn’t apply to ethernet adapters currently.


NetBoot Server Alternatives for macOS 10.14 Mojave?

What about a netSUS server?

https://github.com/jamf/NetSUS

Just a thought, but I've run one and it works great


How do I find how much disk space a program is occupying?

Daisy Disk

It's a killer app for analyzing disk use on a Mac. It'll scan all your drives and shows you disk use broken down by customizable buckets: file types, programs, tags, etc. It can show you all the disk space used by a program like Skype if you like and more.

Edit: it's also on sale right now for $10.


How do i disable Fn Key on Microsoft Surface Ergonomic Keyboard for OS X?

It seems like the keyboard handles the Fn key itself, rather than passing it through to the OS to handle. Since the OS doesn't receive the Fn key input, it can't do anything to change it.

Therefore, disabling the Fn key would have to be something the keyboard would allow you to control, either on the keyboard itself or with a tool which writes that information back. I can't find either of these, so I don't think it's possible currently.


Needing FTP Software with editing and hides system files?

I believe that Transmit from Panic Software will meet all of your needs.

There is a menu option that toggles the visibility of dot (.*) files. View menu (Hide/Show) Invisible Files.

To edit a remote file in Word, right click on the remote file and select "Open With..." and select Word from the context menu to edit the file. Edit and Save the file within Word and the file will be uploaded as soon as the save completes. There is nothing else to set up.

I usually use this method with BBEdit and Text files, but I tested and it works with Word files.


How do I wirelessly connect my iPad with iTunes?

If you're looking for a way to stream music from iTunes to your iPad, you can use Home Sharing in the Music app:

If you're looking for a way to control iTunes from your iPad, you can use the Remote app, available from the App Store:

Finally, if you're looking for a way to wirelessly sync your iPad with iTunes, that is an announced feature of the next version of iOS, due out in the fall.


Can I see the URL of an RSS feed on Apple Mail 4.5?

Once an RSS feed is added to Mail, you cannot see the URL it retrieves anywhere within Mail :(

There does not appear to be any way you can read the configuration using Applescript, looking at the dictionary, the RSS feeds are not accessible either as a distinct entity type or as a Mailbox type.

The only place I can find this information is in ~/Library/Mail/RSS

Each feed is a folder with an .rssmbox extension and inside the folder, the Info.plist contains the URL of the feed.

edit: change reponse re: applescript after further investigation


Dynamically change opening app according to file folder

I created the following APP with Automator and select it as the default APP to open PDF files.


What to do with an old iPhone without SIM

If the phone is unlocked, you can use it with any SIM, even from a different GSM operator or even a SIM that is not in service (obviously in this case it won't work as a phone). If you don't have one or can't find one, you may be able to get prepaid SIM for cheap from an GSM operator.


How to activate lost mode on iCloud for iPhone that cannot be located?

Login to iCloud, go to Find My iPhone, select your phone in the drop down list on the top of the page, provided it has Find My iPhone enabled it should show up as offline. Lost mode should be available.


There are a lot of ways to do this, one is to use sed

echo R5C9 | sed -E 's|R(.*)C(.*)|{\1, \2}|'

Or, if you want to ensure that only input with the correct format will be matched

echo R5C9 | sed -E 's|R([[:digit:]]+)C([[:digit:]]+)|{\1, \2}|'

Some explanations:

-E enables extended regular expressions, which among other things makes the matching of the pattern easier
s|SOURCE|TARGET| is the substitution command to transform SOURCE into TARGET
R([[:digit:]]+)C([[:digit:]]+) is the source pattern we are looking for: An R followed by at least one digit [[:digit:]]+ followed by C followed again by at least one digit
The target replaces the matched source, with \1 standing for the text matched within the first () in the source, \2 for the second

You can also just use bash itself

[[ "R5C9" =~ R([0-9]+)C([0-9]+) ]] && echo "{${BASH_REMATCH[1]}, ${BASH_REMATCH[2]}}"

[[ "R5C9" =~ R([0-9]+)C([0-9]+) ]] matches the text, with R([0-9]+)C([0-9]+) being basically the same as the source pattern above
Matching parts within () get assigned to the shell array BASH_REMATCH
The echo is only executed if the match ([[ ... ]]) was successfull, and then prints the reformatted expression (which is a bit confusing to read because the various {} mean different things...)


How to find and remove duplicate calendar entries (Mac OS, Yosemite)

It can't be done since Apple doesn't think that's something anyone would ever need to do.

Maybe it's time for Apple to invest a few cycles in updating iCal, Contacts and Email - they haven't been updated in a decade.