How to initiate VPN conection from command line?

Your best bet seems to be AppleScript:

tell application "System Events"
   tell current location of network preferences
       set VPNservice to service "VPN (L2TP) 2" -- name of the VPN service
       if exists VPNservice then connect VPNservice
   end tell
end tell

(from http://macscripter.net/viewtopic.php?id=22992)

As for entering a username and password, I'm not sure how you could do that. Further scripting could get you the frontmost window and input the username and password, then submit the dialog, but as I don't have a Cisco VPN to test I couldn't tell you how to set that up.

If you have the actual Cisco VPN client installed (which afaik is not necessary), you could just use this command:

open /Applications/VPNClient.app --args -c -user <YourUsername> -pwd <YourPassword> <ProfileNameToConnect>


Family sharing and non-organizer's previous purchases

It sounds like you went into the App Store > Searched for the App > Installed. Rather, with Family Sharing, you would want to navigate to the App Store > Tap your icon in the upper right corner > Purchased > from here you should see each member of the Family. Tap into one of them to view their purchases & ultimately download free of charge. When it is being downloaded free of charge you will see the iCloud icon with an arrow pointing down.

Hope that helps!


How do I prevent Mac apps from blocking the restart process?

In my experience the best way to keep apps from blocking an update install is to just close all GUI apps before going to bed - or putting my machine "to sleep".

I've also noticed that I need to logout of Terminal, especially.


What determines whether 'Warranty' appears in About This Mac?

Are the two spellings of 'license' and 'licence' accurate in your question? The second spelling is usually a British spelling variation, (like labour for labor, aluminium for aluminum, &c.)

I would hazard a guess that the word 'Warrantee' appears because different legal conditions are in effect if this particular Mac/OS X was purchased in the UK.

My iMac, registered with AppleCare and purchased in the the US, does not have 'Warrantee.'


How to manage users access to shared folders from the command line?

User access to sharepoints will depend on permissions that are set on that sharepoint. You can use the 'ls' command to get that information using Terminal...Newer Mac products (10.4+) will use ACLs to control access to those folders. You can obtain infomation on both the POSIX as well as ACLs applied to folders by using this command:

ls -ale /Path/To/Folder

That command will list the directory contents in list view. Note that you will see the POSIX (legacy UNIX) permissions on the left hand side of each row. The permissions can be deciphered by examining the "Permissions Defined" section of this page. You will likely see output similar to the following:

allyourbasearebelongtous:folder eddie$ ls -ale
total 0
drwxrwxrwx    4 eddie  staff   136 Oct 10 12:17 .
drwxr-xr-x@ 101 eddie  staff  3434 Oct 10 12:16 ..
-rw-rw-rw-    1 eddie  staff     0 Oct 10 12:16 testfile
-rw-rw-rw-+   1 eddie  staff     0 Oct 10 12:17 testfile_acl
 0: group:staff inherited allow read,write,execute,delete,append,readattr,writeattr,readextattr,writeextattr,readsecurity,writesecurity,chown
 1: group:everyone inherited allow read,write,execute,append,readattr,writeattr,readextattr,writeextattr,readsecurity

You can see that the ACLs are listed out with their indexes (order of evaluation 0-n) on directories/files that have ACLs applied. You may also see that some files do not show ACLs associated with them (files that have ACLs applied show a "+" next to the file name when listed in Terminal). Both ACLs and POSIX permissions are evaluated when users attempt to connect to a sharepoint on the server. If the POSIX or ACLs conflict, you may see somewhat odd/undefined behavior.

For the most part, controlling access to sharepoints should be done by "group". I recommend setting up a group on the machine, adding users that should have access to that sharepoint to that group, and applying an ACL (that will inherit) to that sharepoint so that future files/folders created in that share have the same permissions set. An example of setting that inheritance for a group called "Accounting" on a single folder named "Data" is shown below:

chmod -R +ai "Accounting allow list,add_file,search,delete,add_subdirectory,delete_child,readattr,writeattr,readextattr,writeextattr,readsecurity,writesecurity,chown,directory_inherit,file_inherit" Data

Note that it may also be wise to coordinate the POSIX group permissions with the ACLs that are set to ensure secured access to those folders:

chmod -R admin:accounting Data

It may be a good idea to disallow other users into this share (for more strict security) using POSIX permissions. The "0" in this octal permissions mode specifies no read/write/execute permissions for other users (i.e., not admin user or accounting group):

chmod -R 770 Data

After you've setup that ACL on the folder, you can simply add future users to the "Accounting" group, which should then allow them access to the share. To add a user to a group from the command line, you can use dseditgroup. Here's an example of confirming whether or not the user is a member of the group:

dseditgroup -o checkmember -m newuser accounting

If the user is not part of the group, you can add them into it:

sudo dseditgroup -o edit -a newuser -t user accounting


Screen wave in Desktop while powering up, then in Chrome & iTunes (started with Finder not responding?) and flickering in Contacts

Are you sure this isn't a display issue? Plug in an external monitor. If you don't see the same "wave" and flickering on the external monitor, your built-in display may be flaking out. If you DO see the same weird display errors on the external monitor, then something else is wrong (perhaps an incompatibility, but something that is causing that much of a display mess is unlikely - possibly your video card is having issues).

If it is the internal display, sometimes very gently flexing the lid of your computer can temporarily fix this. Contact points between the display cable and the screen can become loose or break, causing weird display bugs like flickering or rolling lines. Wiggling the screen can put things back into contact - but this is not a permanent fix, you will eventually need to use an external display all the time or replace the laptop screen. (My old 2007 MBP started doing this a while ago - I was able to "wiggle" it into working again but do not trust that it will keep working much longer.)


Upgrade to iOS 9 Final from Public Beta?

As no answers are forthcoming, I'll report here my findings.

On 2015-09-16 , before iOS 9 GA, I removed the "Beta" profile from the iPad and rebooted. After reboot, software update says:

  iOS 9.0.
  Software is up to date

The version of the software is 9.0 (13A4325c)

So it looks good. There's an oddity, though. When I've rebooted (and hard-restart too to be on the safe side), every time I unlock the iPad I still get a notification saying:

  There's an update available. Update the iOS 9 beta version.

I hope that when 9.0 final comes up, the update check will pick it and I'll be back into mainline versions. I'll update here when things change.

Edit 2015-09-16 19:39 CEST: Apple has just released v9.0 final and going to software update in Settings I get prompted to upgrade, so it looks like I'll be able to get back to mainstream. The notification after login stills says the same. Will report later when I have the chance to upgrade.

Edit 2015-09-18: After installing the 9.0 update, and the subsequent reboot, the device says its updated to 9.0 and I no longer get the prompt to update -- so all seems to be fine!

Edit 2015-09-25: Just a final update to confirm that after a few days running, all seems to be fine. I've just got the prompt to update to 9.0.1, so I seem to be fully in "mainstream" now.


What is the difference between OneDrive from AppStore and standalone installer

The difference between the two is that the App Store version is "sandboxed" where as the standalone version is not.

"Sandboxing" means that the application is limited in what kind of resources on your computer it can access. This is the reason that when using the App Store version for the first time, you have to confirm the location of your OneDrive on your computer. This makes that folder available through the sandbox for OneDrive.

Sandboxing means that some features won't work on the App Store version - i.e. they're not available. However, Microsoft really isn't documenting or emphasising anywhere what those features might be. "Ordinary" home user usage of OneDrive is fully supported, but if you want to use other features, you might have to check that they work in the App Store version. For example take a look at this Microsoft guide:

https://support.office.com/da-dk/article/synkroniser-filer-med-onedrive-synkroniseringsklienten-på-mac-os-x-d11b9f29-00bb-4172-be39-997da46f913f

It explains how you can set up OneDrive to synchronize files with an enterprise Sharepoint installation. As the first step it tells you to uninstall the App Store version of OneDrive, and install the standalone version.

In short: If you want all features, use the standalone installer. If you want an easy, familiar installation process - use the App Store version.

Only Microsoft can say why they decided to have two different installation options. In general however, the most common reasons for doing that is supporting enterprise automated installations, and for supplying "familiar" and "easy to use" installation for home users.


Love DND -- Can It Be Applied to Individual Contacts?

Your service provider should be able to provide that service.  The number would be stopped at the call side, and redirected before it gets to your phone.

Give them a call.


Can I safely remove the QuarantineRoot folder?

I see to have posted a duplicate of Can I delete /Library/SystemMigration, so I consider this question closed.


iOS: Change language back to English after accidentally changing to a language I don't know

To solve a problem like this, I'd typically go to translate.google.com, type in "General", "International", and "Language", and translate them from English to German.

Or, sometimes I'm fortunate enough to have two computers/devices side by side, or I simply remember the user interface layout, and I navigate by menu item location.

I changed my iPhone 4 to run in German (Deutsch), and the German words are:

Einstellungen (Settings) > Allgemein (General) > Landeseinstellungen (Country settings) > Sprache (Language)

So just look for those words to navigate through Settings and change back to English.


Remote access forbidden but localhost works with Apache

By following the tutorial, you have created the file /etc/apache2/users/username.conf which contains the following:

<Directory "/Users/username/Sites/">
AllowOverride All
Options Indexes MultiViews FollowSymLinks
Require host localhost
</Directory>

(note that you've replaced "username" with your actual username)

If you want to allow the public access to the folder, change it to look as follows:

<Directory "/Users/username/Sites/">
AllowOverride All
Options Indexes MultiViews FollowSymLinks
Require all granted
</Directory>

Note that the "Require" line was changed to "Require all granted".


Show/Hide only specific hard drives on desktop and/or sidebar

You can use the chflags command to hide a drive icon from the desktop:

chflags hidden /Volumes/Hide\ Me

Then, relaunch the Finder by option-right-clicking it in the Dock and choosing Relaunch.

To restore visibility of an item, use chflags nohidden instead.

Of note, this won't hide the icon from the sidebar, only from the desktop and Finder folder listings.


iPod - How to display the battery remaining as a percentage?

That's an option to enable :

Settings > General > Usage > Battery Percentage


Where did music scan go on my iOS 4.2 iPod Touch 2nd Gen?

Have you tried tapping the album art while the music or podcast is playing? That should bring the "scrub-bar" to the screen where you can quickly scan through the media currently playing (seek-bar at the top of the picture).


How to make "Go to Folder" show current path?

A pretty quick solution in Sierra:

Press cmd + alt + C or alt + right click on item -> copy "foo" as path name
Then press cmd + shift + G and paste your copied path with cmd + V
Edit your pasted path and press Enter


It looks like the vendor has named this device "iPOD". If your Mac was genuinely detecting your USB flash drive as an iPod, it would appear in iTunes and would also have the correct capitalisation ("iPod"). The manufacturer is listed as "i-FlashDrive", so it's not unreasonable to think that they'd set the device name to "iPOD".

As long as the USB flash drive is appearing as a disk, the correct driver has been selected and there is nothing to worry about.


How to find out process owner of unidentified windows?

Download and install Xcode.
When installed open Xcode.
In the menubar go to Xcode > open Developer tool > Accessibility inspector
In the Access..Inspector menu go to Inspection > Enable point to inspect
Click on anything to see the result

It does not give you the process name, but it does give you the parent's application name


How to show hidden files and folders in Finder?

I don't think you can set this for individual folders. To set it globally, so that Finder always shows hidden files, run Terminal and enter the following two commands:
defaults write com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles true
killall Finder

To switch back, do the same but substitute false for true.
This works all the way through macOS Catalina (and betas for Big Sur).


What is barred circle icon in dock after install to new HD?

Somehow, there was an error while restoring your backup.

Some user blamed Norton Anti Virus (but I doubt you've installed this software), others just re-installed the app. Both cases seems to work for some users, so you could try both :)


Run GUI Applications from Terminal with root privilege

To edit /etc/hosts with Sublime Text:
sudo /Applications/Sublime\ Text.app/Contents/MacOS/Sublime\ Text /etc/hosts

If you have to do this on the regular basis, you can add this snippet to your ~/.bash_profile

#   sudoapp: Runs .app with root privileges
#   Usage: sudoapp /Applications/Name.app /etc/hosts
#   --------------------------------------------------------------------
    sudoapp () {
        sudo "$1/Contents/MacOS/$(defaults read "$1/Contents/Info.plist" CFBundleExecutable)" $2
    }

Apps running with root privileges will use /private/var/root as home folder, thus all config and temporary files owned by root that will be created in the process will stay where they should be - in the root home directory.
This is the same as logging in as root and running the app, but without the hassle of user switching.

This method works on 10.6 — 10.11

Update: Apple's own TextEdit refuses to start if run as root in 10.11 and newer, so I changed my example to use Sublime Text instead


How do I disable the message: "Android Studio is an application downloaded from the Internet. Are you sure you want to open it?" on my MacBook Pro?

You can't disable this kind of message. The reason is you have allowed to install apps from anywhere in the Security setting in System Preferences. If the app is from Mac App Store, you won't get any messages like this.


How to make Mac shut down when fully charged?

The claim is not true.

The only thing that has been proven to degrade battery life is heat, which also means overnight charging with your Mac sleeping is better than charging it while in use.

Switching it off doesn't make a difference.


Changing The Administrator name and password

You can boot into Recovery (hold Command + R during startup) to change the password. Once booted from the recovery partition select Terminal from the Utilities menu and then enter resetpassword

Although, honestly, you might just want to erase the disk and install a new copy of OS X.


Switch apps with Cmd+Tab, only focus last window in app

I think Witch comes pretty damn close to giving me the level of control that I want, and then with even more nice stuff on top.


Opening New Terminal Tab Moves Window Above Dock

According to macOS, windows should not be behind the Dock. When the bounds of a window are updated, macOS moves any windows from behind the Dock above the Dock.

The window bounds update when you add a new tab, so macOS looks at those bounds and moves them such that they don't overlap with the Dock section of the screen. There's no way to change this currently.

As for why this happens in High Sierra and not in Sierra, I presume it's because Terminal now uses the unified tabs functionality provided in AppKit.

Terminal has always had tabs, but macOS recently introduced tabs as part of the OS, for any app to use. I believe Terminal now uses this functionality for its tabs, which has caused this. You can test this by opening Terminal with multiple tabs and pressing ⇧⌘\ for Show All Tabs — this is functionality provided system-wide by the OS, not by Terminal, for managing tabs including the tab bar.


Here's the official uninstall script:

#!/bin/sh

sudo rm -R /System/Library/Extensions/ntfs-free.kext
sudo rm -R /sbin/mount_ntfs-free
sudo rm -R /System/Library/Filesystems/ntfs-free.fs

if [ -f "/sbin/mount_ntfs_original" ]; then
 sudo mv -f /sbin/mount_ntfs_original /sbin/mount_ntfs
fi

Source: http://ftp.jaist.ac.jp/pub/sourceforge/n/nt/ntfsfree/uninstall.sh


Name of sender of SMS or iMessages missing, only number shown

I just had this issue happen on iOS 10.0.2. It started after I signed out of iCloud and back in (all of my contacts are stored on iCloud). I tried some of the same things you tried, all to no avail.

In my case, I noticed that all of the old message threads showed "+1 (nnn) nnn-nnnn", but all of my contacts use the "(nnn) nnn-nnnn", i.e. no country prefix. On a whim, I edited just one of the contacts that was having the issue and added the +1 prefix to their mobile number. I switched back to Messages, and right away, not only was that message thread fixed, they all were! Then I went back to that contact, removed the +1, and everything was still fixed. An easy fix, but very odd!

Of course, if you're outside the US you may need to use a different country prefix.


So the gel containing battery acid has leaked out and dried up.

You need to make it muddy again to be able to remove it, since dry removal is not possible.

There are multiple methods to do that described here. (Vinegar, Lemon juice, and others).

Example:

Mix water and baking soda into a thick paste. Start with about a teaspoon of baking soda and add water a few drops at a time until it can be mixed into a thick paste.

Apply the baking soda paste generously to any corroded areas using cotton swabs. Allow the paste to sit for 15 minutes.

Use a slightly moistened toothbrush to gently agitate the paste. Rinse the toothbrush often, and continue until the majority of the paste has been scrubbed away. In hard to reach spaces use q-tip to deliver the paste.

Needless to say, use gloves!


Will I be able to upgrade to iOS 7 on iPod Touch 4G?

Towards the end of the WWDC keynote, Craig Federighi showed a slide listing the devices on which iOS 7 would be supported. In the official keynote video, this occurs around the 1:54 mark.

Here’s a picture of the slide:

It reads:

  iPhone 4 and later
  iPad 2 and later
  iPad mini
  iPod touch (5th generation)

This matches the images and descriptions on the pages for iOS 7 for Apple’s website, so this seems to be the canonical list.

It’s possible that Apple will add support for the 4th generation iPod touch between now and the release, but currently it looks like you won’t be able to upgrade.


Prevent Apple Double Format Files on Remote Share/Disk

There is an application called BlueHarvest that fully automates the clean up of these files.

http://www.zeroonetwenty.com/blueharvest4/

Alternatively, you can use terminal:

cp -X /sourcedirectory/ /volumes/destinationsmbshare/


How to watch a wtv file on a Mac without using VLC

Install WtvWatcher on the PC - this will convert all of your wtv files into dv-rms by changing the packaging, not be re-encoding, so it is really quick and deletes the useless wtv file.
Share your recorded folder with your Mac. I simple turned on sharing on my PC and then connected to it over SMB://192.168.x.x
Use Handbrake to convert the file to m4v, then add it to iTunes, or watch in in quicktime player or whatever takes your fancy.

How to watch a wtv file on the iPad/iPhone.

On the PC install WtvWatcher as above.
Share your recorded folder with your mac as above.
Install "Air Video Server" on your Mac and tell it to share the shared folder from the networked PC
Install Air Video player on your iPad, iPhone etc.
Enjoy.

iPad/iPhone alternative solution

Just use Handbrake to convert the video file into a iPad/iPhone version.


Shiny new Macbook Pro -- can oils and sweat damage the screen?

The screen is glass, so it's highly unlikely that sweat can damage it.


How can I completely de-authorise my account from iTunes (mac)?

Signing out of your account and deauthorizing a device are two different things.

Within iTunes you can actually sign in and out of multiple accounts. I don't mean simultaneously, just that you can sign into one and, if needed, sign out of that account and then sign in using another account.

Authorising a device basically tells the iTunes ecosystem that it's allowed to play your purchased music, videos etc and that's why there's a limit to how many devices can be authorised for any particular account. So, deauthorizing a computer/device is typically something you would do when you're going to sell it etc.

If you want to sign out of your old account in iTunes you should actually do that within iTunes. You may need to sign in again first and then sign out before signing in with your new account.


Lock computer without disabling output to external monitor

You could create a screensaver using the video file so that it plays while the screen is locked.

If you're code inclined you may even want to try writing it yourself: http://cocoadevcentral.com/articles/000088.php

Or alternatively, there are utilities that will do most of the work for you: http://iscreensaver.com


In my opinion, the right way is to set your path to prefer your installation of PHP.

Apple restricts PHP so you can't delete it without bypassing the system integrity protection
Apple will update those files any time it pleases, so you're always needing to re-do whatever steps you take to modify the system
If you make a virtual environment like docker or just using correct paths to your installation, those are portable and don't need any sort of extra work.

If you really need to delete those files, you would boot to recovery HD and disable SIP. Then delete all files and associated libraries (with the potential to break Apple tools if you delete something the system actually runs at some point) and then re-enable SIP as desired. I would make a good backup before changing SIP just in case you wish to recover the system after deleting things.


Why is this command for "Changing Where Screenshots Are Saved" failing?

You do not have a space between location and /Users/.., there needs to be a space between arguments.

Example:

defaults write com.apple.screencapture location /path/to/folder


Given the following circumstances, how can I jailbreak my iPhone 6+

There is currently no way to jailbreak (as far as I know) using a virtual machine

Instead here is what i recommend you do (source):

  Download bootra1n 0.10.1

  Download Rufus, press SELECT, open the ISO file, and press START to flash it to your USB drive.

  Reboot your computer and enter your BIOS's boot menu.

  Select the flash drive, and it should boot into the login prompt
  Log in as anon, with password voidlinux
  At the $ prompt, enter sudo checkra1n

Further information can be found here


Does Spotlight index SSDs faster than HDDs?

Quite simply, SSDs do everything faster.

Their downside would appear to be a limited read/write cycle lifetime, but so long as you're comprehensively backed-up, I wouldn't see that as an issue.

Adding a Samsung EVO 1TB as the boot drive to my Early 2008 Mac Pro has given it life I didn't know it had left in it.


Skype is showing up in Launchpad twice — why? How do I fix it?

Well, a bit more research and I may have found a solution.

* Proceed with caution. Backup files. Be smart. This worked for me YMMV. *

The Easy Solution

The most straight forward way to fix this problem seems to be to delete the SQLite database that stores Launchpad's data. To do this simply open the following folder,

~/Library/Application\ Support/Dock

and delete any .db files you find in there. They'll have a file name that looks like this,

58357ED0-F8D5-4EB3-9A1F-E6B71B0A001D.db

Then open terminal and type this command followed by return:

killall Dock

But be careful, you will lose any icon groups you created in Launchpad. I didn't like this solution for that reason so I while this worked to get rid of the duplicate icons I used the following solution on my machine.

The Hard Solution

I opened the above mentioned folder and located the above mentioned file and then opened that file in SQLite Database Browser by dragging the file onto the icon for the db browser.

Once I had the file open I clicked Browse Data and then selected Apps from the Table menu.

I then scrolled through the list of apps until I found one of the duplicate records for Skype and selected it.

With the duplicate record selected I clicked Delete Record.

I then quit SQLite Database Browser and acknowledged that I wanted to save my changes.

Then I switched to terminal and typed this command followed by return:

killall Dock

And Skype's doppelganger was thereby vanquished from my Launchpad.


Will Buying "SIM-Free" iPhone from Apple Work on Verizon

There are two different iPhone 5s models sold in the US -- the CDMA model for Verizon or Sprint (which also supports GSM connectivity for international use) and the GSM model. The unlocked phone is the GSM model, so it won't support CDMA and won't talk to Verizon's network (except perhaps for data (not voice) on 4G/LTE, where Verizon uses GSM like the rest of the world). So you can buy an unlocked phone and put a Verizon SIM in it, but it will at best only work with Verizon for data, and only in areas where they have 4G coverage.

Just look at the bottom of the page you link to in your question, where it says:

  If you buy a SIM-free iPhone, you will need to purchase a
  GSM-compatible nano-SIM card separately. In the United States, you can
  purchase such a SIM from AT&T or T-Mobile.


Given that this is about data loss on a windows-formatted disk, you might want to ask in a windows-centric place. It sounds to me like data recovery (deleted file scans) would be your only hope.

I'm not clear, did you have a USB thumb drive and a 2 TB USB HDD plugged in, and picked the wrong one for making the Bootcamp tools?


Adding a new picture to the appstore needs a new build of the app

It was a slightly common tactic for spammers to change the screenshots to mimic a different app. Hence, from 2013, you are required to create a new app version to change screenshots.

Ideally, you should not update your app version just to change the screenshots — perhaps you can wait until you really have a new version to upload?

You can read more about this functionality at App Store Screenshot Changes - MacStories.


Accidentally tried to set time to 1969 on iPhone 6 and crashed

You can't restore out of this problem, even with DFU restore. A bug with 64-bit devices renders them ‘bricked’ if you set the date to 1970-1-1.

Take your device to an Apple Store for them to reseat the battery, or you can try reseating the battery yourself. You could also put it in a drawer and eventually the battery will drain to a point where the date setting is lost and it should then power up properly. At this point, don't charge it and seek hardware service if you can't wait out this situation.

The bug is discussed on /r/apple: Changing Time & Date settings to Jan 1, 1970 will permanently brick 64-bit iOS devices


How do I make sure that the Yosemite icon for the Time Machine Disk on my desktop shows the updated version and not the Mavericks version?

Edit: There is nothing wrong here.

Under /Volumes/, there are two type of mounted volumes associated with Time Machine:

First is the hard drive the backup sits on. If you use Time Capsule, the hard drive inside is by default called Data. Because it's access through network, the volume in the picture has a Shared Disk icon. If you use an external drive through USB, the volume would have a USB/External icon.

Inside, there is a file with name like Someone's Macbook Something.sparsebundle. When backing up, Time Machine would mount this file and create /Volumes/Time Machine Backups. This volume is covered with Time Machine icon, and it only appears with TM is running. The name cannot be altered as far as I know

My conjecture is that Budda in question is a volume of a hard drive, not the mounted volume of the sparsebundle. Like other files, volumes can have its icon changed through Get Info window, which is probably why a generic disk got a TM icon in the first place.

Cut and paste the new icon from the location below, and you will have this resolved.

/System/Library/CoreServices/CoreTypes.bundle/Contents/Resources/


For security reasons, what should I block with the firewall?

Well, basically the standard Firewall blocks incoming connections only. So as long as any network accesses are triggered by your Mac (as in the case of clock synchronization or software downloads/updates), you can block all incoming connections.

Once you have the firewall set up if you install anything that requires a connection you will be prompted to allow or deny that connection - so turning it on has little downside and lots of upside from a security standpoint.


Is it okay for a brand new 13" MacBook Pro Retina to not sit flat?

If a unibody Mac is wobbly, I'd have it serviced sooner rather than later. The tolerances inside are crazy tight in some cases, so a warp could cause subsequent damage to sensitive and costly parts. A trained technician can tell at a glance if the damage was external or due to manufacturing issues.

Now, that being said, I've seen dozens of Macs where people reported they were off and most were the table it sat upon, and not a bend in the unibody frame of the Mac. You can test by measuring how many sheets of printer paper fit under the leg(s) that has(have) a gap.

Then rotate the Mac 1/3 of a turn and repeat the measurement. Then take it to a second flat surface and do the measurement one last time if you're not convinced that it's the frame instead of the surface that is off-level.

Any wobble that's less than three sheets of paper is probably nothing to worry about, but what if you needed a logic board repair 10 months down the road and today, your Mac is bent out of tolerance and you were denied warranty coverage since you didn't report the bend until then? Only by getting it checked will you know if yours was out of tolerance and have a service record to point to in case of a warranty repair question later.


Final Cut Express 3.5 HD quits unexpectedly

The problem was with the cross-dissolve transition that I was trying to render. Technically, I haven't figured out the problem, but now I know what is causing the problem. I am able to render video in other sequences and that works just fine. I haven't tried rendering a cross-dissolve transition in another sequence. Thanks so much to bmike for helping me with this!

UPDATE: I have tried rendering other cross-dissolve transitions in other sequences and even in the same sequence that had a problem. It was only that edit that was having a problem. The cut that I had placed the transition on was a full 1080p video. I don't think my version of FCE likes 1080p video. When I try to do other stuff to that clip, it wil sometimes quit.


Exporting CSV with Numbers with different languages

Make sure that you set the text encoding to UTF8


Can I preview iPhone photos on my MacBook display before actually importing?

Alternately, if I import say a group of photos at a time to my laptop, then delete the ones I don't want, can I simultaneously delete the originals on my iPhone from my MacBook? Does the Photos application have a "double-delete" or "delete here and on IOS device also" feature?

As far as I am aware there is not such a feature unless the photo is in iCloud (guessing it’s not) where the photo would be deleted from all iCloud devices.

I know this doesn’t use USB as you wanted but a alternative is you uploading your photos on your iPhone to an online storage service such as Google Drive which gives you 15 GB free storage (no affiliation), you can then go on to Google Drive on your Mac and view the photos without downloading them and the ones you like you can download straight from there.

I like this method as after you know which ones you like you can download them straight away without importing them again. The only negative is it might take a while to upload all the photos from your iPhone if you have a lot of the, and slow internet.

I have done this several times before.


What's causing kernel panic on mid 2011 iMac? (a freed zone element has been modified)

This turned out to be one piece of bad ram installed in the iMac.


iPhoto does not open a window after Lion Upgrade

iLife(iPhoto is part of iLife)does not come with Lion you have to download it separately, make sure it's installed XD


This might be one of those that changes by language, but on a UK English keyboard [& from comments, also US English], there are 4 dashes available from the key to the right of 0, Minus.

-  -  key alone (hyphen)
–  -    Opt ⌥  (en dash)
—  -    Opt ⌥   Shift ⇧  (em dash)
_  -    Shift ⇧  (underscore)

Late Edit...
To complete the set, & from comments...

 Ctrl ⌃   Opt ⌥   -  will give 'information separator one' which looks like a space "" & doesn't even seem to print in here. You could, however use the keyboard replacement tool to turn that into a true minus sign...  −


Encrypted external drive won't mount anymore

solution:

ps aux |grep disk3

this reported a fsck_hfs -y on disk 3, consuming either a lot of cpu as well as keeping the drive like as locked.

killed the related PID

then the disk mounted itself immediately. the conversion is still in progress, 60% now, but at least I can access files.

thanks.


Disable automatic "ligature" handling in PDF/Preview on El Capitan

Are you sure it isn't a simple font substitution error? What font is the PDF rendered in? Do you have that font installed? Does the lab machine have it installed? Does the document you are pasting into use the same font as the source PDF?

I did a simple test using your sample text, placed in a Word document (with ligatures enabled), then saved as a PDF using either Apple's in-built PDF or Acrobat Pro.

The original text, cut and pasted from Word:
“This is different from those who can afford to pay for college first; such students may find it less difficult by at least fifty percent.”

Apple PDF, cut and pasted from Preview:
“This is different from those who can afford to pay for college first; such students may find it less difficult by at least fi,y percent.”

Adobe PDF, cut and pasted from Preview:
“This is different from those who can afford to pay for college first; such students may find it less difficult by at least fi�y percent.”

Adobe PDF, cut and pasted from Acrobat Pro:
“This is different from those who can afford to pay for college first; such students may find it less
difficult by at least fiy percent.”

All of the above attempts pasted correctly, with the exception of the "fty" ligature, which differed in rendering based upon the PDF creation and rendering method(s) used. This character likely didn't translate correctly into plain text because I have enabled more than just basic ligatures in Word (optional and discretionary, but not historical).

All in all, it looks to me to be nothing but a font encoding or substitution error. Remember that a PDF document will have any necessary font characters embedded in the file itself, but when pasting, the target font will not necessarily match the source, especially if you are using a system with a clean install (meaning fewer fonts).


How to restore Spotlight user interface after killing it with Cocktail?

try

  sudo chmod 755 /System/Library/CoreServices/Search.bundle/Contents/MacOS/Search

then

  killall SystemUIServer


Siri: "Play all songs shuffled" in iOS 10

Hmm, odd, I always tell Siri to "play my music" and it starts to play my library shuffled, works eventhough I'm playing one track on repeat (one track from one album).

I always have shuffle on, you can try that!


Any idea why the pkg process in OS X Yosemite (10.10.2) would replace the Markup.appex plug-in Preview?

Markup.appex is a new extension that was added in Yosemite. It delivers the Markup feature shown on Apple's Yosemite page:

  Mark up attachments right in Mail. It happens often. Someone sends you
  an attachment that requires quick feedback. It could be a form you
  need to fill out and sign or an image you need to comment on. Markup
  lets you respond quickly to these requests without opening the file in
  another app. Just click Reply and add your notations right in your
  response. Add shapes, text, and callouts to images by drawing on the
  Multi‑Touch trackpad. Fill out forms and PDFs, and add your signature
  by signing with your finger on the trackpad or capturing it with the
  camera on your Mac

Is it possible you installed the 10.10.2 update lately?


Unfortunately, that's normal. MacOS cannot display sharp UI when connected to a 23 Inch HD monitor. You have a built-in retina display which is 220 ppi. On the other hand, the monitor you are using is only 95 ppi.

I had a similar experience with a HP ZR 24W, which is a 24 inch 1920x1200 display. I have tried this monitor using both HDMI and DisplayPort (thunderbolt), results were the same. Therefore, I don't believe your problem is related to the interface, since macbook pro 2015 can easily do 60hz 1920x1080 from its HDMI port.

There are some ways to make text sharpness somewhat better by playing with text smoothing parameters (see this article), however you can only go so far with it.

The real solution for you is to switch to a display which has more pixel density. One that will let MacOS to use the HiDPI retina resolutions. For that, a 24 inch or 27 inch 4K display will be an affordable choice.

You can read my answer to a related question for more details.

Hope that helps.


iPhone randomly reboots into safe mode when opening apps

If you mean MobileSubstrate SafeMode…

Since it has happened multiple times, restarting hasn't seemed to fix it. Consequently, I would recommend performing the following:

Remove recently installed extensions.

If you know that you recently installed a Cydia package, or updated one, I would suggest uninstalling that package and see if it makes a difference.
Use Crash Reporter.

Crash Reporter will attempt to guess the cause of a crash. After installing, next time your iPhone crashes, you can check the 'Possible Causes' list in Crash Reporter for its guess on the cause. You can then try to delete the package in Cydia and see if that fixes the problem.


How do I see the currently running applications on an iPod Touch?

In iOS 3, you press the home button, with very few and only Apple-engineered exceptions (eg. the iPod app) the app is closed.

In iOS 4+, there is limited multitasking available to third-party apps. Apple freezes all processes in the background unless they're performing one of the following functions (ripped from Ars):

Audio: you can now listen to streaming music from apps, like Pandora or newscasts through the NPR app, while doing other activities on your phone.
VoIP: you can carry on Voice Over IP calls on services like Skype without having to quit the app if you need to perform other tasks.
Location: apps that need to poll your location, such as GPS and direction apps, will be able to do so in the background.
Local notifications: third-party apps no longer have to rely solely on push notifications if they want to alert you of something on your phone. If you have an alert set in, say, one of Omni's applications, it can ping you when the time comes instead of having to go through a convoluted series of Internet tubes to get to you.
Complete tasks: if you start a task in an application and then switch to another one (such as downloading a new map in your favorite game), it can now complete the task in the background instead of forcing you to sit there and wait on it.
Fast app switching: this is basically "pausing" an app where it is, which allows you to quickly switch away from it and then switch back, picking up where you left off.

In iOS 4, double-tapping the home button shows a tray holding both recently-used apps and apps performing the above limited-multitasking functions. You can close them/remove them from the tray by clicking the red "-" sign.


How to find files not containing comment x?

The expression has to be a single argument. Subexpressions can be joined with &&:

mdfind 'kMDItemFinderComment!=abc&&kMDItemFSName=*.xyz' -onlyin /path/to/folder/x


Back up your devices
Jump in the iCloud pool
See if you like it

Given your landscape, having one set of photos instead of managing them on many devices alone seems worth simplifying things via iCloud. I'm also a big fan of iTunes Match and Apple Music despite having tens of thousands of CD and phonograph recordings digitized.


How do I make use of the remote disc icon in the sidebar of Finder?

Remote Disc is a way for Macs without optical drives (Air, mini) to access another computers optical drive over a network. So you can put a disc in another Mac or Windows PC and read it on your mini.

Full details and instructions are reported here.

On the computer with the CD/DVD drive:

Go to the Preference panel, and click on "Sharing."

In Sharing, enable the "CD and DVD Sharing" service.

When a CD/DVD is inserted in the computer used to share the CD/DVD, its content will be show under "Remote Disc" on the Mac Mini.


How to get text from a webpage from the command line?

Your best option is the textutil command. Read the man page, but something like:

textutil -convert txt webpage.html

should work.


I have a broken iPad that is being replaced tomorrow, is there any chance I could still keep the broken one?

As a former Apple employee, I can tell you this is not possible. Apple will use undamaged parts from the one you return to create refurbished units that are sold online, as well as service replacements for Genius Bars. If they shipped you the replacement in advance, you could technically just not return the damaged unit, but you will be charged for it after a certain number of days (I believe 30).

If your sister wants a good deal on one I would keep an eye out on the refurbished section of the Apple Online Store, or on Craigslist or eBay.


Is there a way to verify the URL of a page loaded in a browser window inside an iPhone app?

Two Questions:

Verify URL

Connect through laptop. Use packet sniffing tools to check what requests go out.

Perhaps: Disable 3G. Wrap with WiFi in Faraday cage, make sure no other covert incoming or outgoing communication.

Eavesdrop

Cat and mouse. Basic tools and basic skills will detect basic phishing/eavesdropping. But the above URL verification would not catch other simple methods like the website re-broadcasting it elsewhere, or the app recording and transmitting at other times.

Still, you could read the EULA.

Given what is currently known about Apple and Google, Verizon and AT&T, Paypal and credit card companies, your ISP, business focii, data breaches, government agreements, other gov't interactions, etc. it is probably safest to assume that everything is tracked and recorded, whether you are using the phone or not.


How to get p4merge to come up when I do git mergetool?

I just solved it! The definitions of cmd should be
cmd = /Applications/p4merge.app/Contents/MacOS/p4merge "$BASE" "$LOCAL" "$REMOTE" "$MERGED"
...
cmd = /Applications/p4merge.app/Contents/MacOS/p4merge "$LOCAL" "$REMOTE"


Why does my external monitor brightness increase on 144 Hz?

Turns out this was related to another issue I had, caused by a monitor with defective timing.  I got a replacement which solves this.


Just use Safari. If not you can try Opera 12

Opera 12 Link: Opera 12 Download


You could upload the drivers to a service such as Dropbox...


Mac thinks external Dell display is a built-in display

There may not be drivers for this monitor set up for the MacBook. Check if you can find drivers online for this monitor.


One of the processes keeps sending a keystroke repeatedly in the background, how to identify the culprit?

It turned out that the culprit was Karabiner-elements, and the issue has been resolved in the latest update.

https://github.com/tekezo/Karabiner-Elements/issues/1828

https://pqrs.org/osx/karabiner/history.html


Why is the Amazon iOS App allowed by Apple?

By my reading, it doesn't.  Which rule do you think it violates?

Section 11 covers In-App Purchases, which Amazon's app doesn't use, and which are only required for "content, functionality, or services in an App".  Amazon doesn't let you buy anything to extend their app.

Amazon's app also doesn't allow purchasing ebooks, which is their only product (AFAICT) that might be covered by section 11.  They have a note at the bottom of all ebook pages that says "This mobile application does not currently support Kindle downloads, however you may add the item to your Wish List and purchase it using the browser on your device".

Finally, section 20 explicitly prohibits allowing the user to purchase a lottery ticket, which suggests that there is nothing unacceptable about other real-world purchases.  Lots of other apps allow them, too, like eBay.


Have you tried the following:

Are your identities active? (running: ssh-add -l will tell you).
Since you're keeping your connections alive in the background for
Github (not sure why you'd want to do that) once you go idle, the
connection may lock you out.
Have you checked your firewall settings to make sure port 22 access is enabled on your end?


Disable "do you want to allow downloads from" prompt in Safari

I don't think it's new to Catalina, I think it's new to Safari 13.

Preferences > Websites > Downloads

From the "When visiting other websites" drop down in the bottom-right, select the "Allow" option.

Picture from Catalina:


iPad 2 stopped syncing with my MacBook, how do I fix it?

First reboot the iPad and then try syncing. If still unable to sync, make a backup (make sure your backup is current) and restore the device to it's factory setting and then restore from backup.


viewing old imessages (for free, on a PC)

I would get PhoneView and connect the device to a Mac (even if you have to borrow one or go to a library) and then save the message database to a more friendly format.

I sadly cannot offer any PC options, but I'm sure someone else here will edit one in to this answer in place of my ignorance or offer their own software recommendation.

Phone View is my go-to tool for this. You could even ship your iPod to a consultant that was willing to do the work for you if you absolutely have no other options.


You cannot cmd-tab to it since it is not an application. The best you can do via keyboard commands is to use Cmd+Space to bring up spotlight, then start typing "About this Mac", once it populates, hit Enter.


How do I remove songs from my iPhone 5s running IOS 8.3?

Yes, what you need to do is go into settings on the iPhone, then iTunes & App Store, and disable Automatic Downloads of Music.

Apple applied the U2 album to everyones account so if u have this option turned on, then it auto downloads.


Update: I'm still not sure what the problem was, but deleting ~/Library/Application Support/Sublime Text 3 solved it. It looks like my default Sublime packages got screwed up to the point where it was somehow overriding all the user provided keymaps, among other issues. But now that I've regenerated the folder, setting keybindings works like normal.

As for why only Ctrl+C was affected and not Ctrl Z, X, or V, it's because Sublime has a default shortcut for Ctrl+C defined on Macs (cancel_build), but no shortcuts for Ctrl+Z, X, or V. Other shortcuts which clash with a predefined shortcut such as Ctrl+K were also broken.


Can I encrypt data on an external hard drive without reformatting it first?

What you are looking for is encrypting a drive "in place".  Some software packages do provide this, however you can also do this with Lion's built-in whole disk encryption, which you have to enable via the terminal, since the diskutility does not expose this functionality.  It was intended only to encrypt the main OS disk in place, but is available if you need to do it by hand for other volumes.

Instructions can be found here:

http://www.red-sweater.com/blog/1935/lions-whole-disk-encryption

Excerpt:

  To convert an arbitrary volume to Lion’s whole-disk encryption, you
  use diskutil’s core storage “convert” command, and provide a
  passphrase. For example, if you have a volume called “Data” attached
  to your Mac, you would run something like this from the command line:

% diskutil cs convert /Volumes/Data -passphrase [yourPasswordHere]

  What this does is kicks off a conversion process similar to what the
  System Preferences panel does when allowing you to convert your main
  startup volume to core storage with encryption. At any time during the
  conversion, you can use the diskutil command again to see status of
  your volumes, whether they are encrypted, not encrypted, or
  in-progress while converting.

% diskutil cs list

  You’ll see a bunch of information, but search carefully for the named
  volume (e.g. “Data”) that you just started the conversion process on.
  You’ll find a line starting with something like:

Size (Converted):

  This shows you what the progress in the conversion is. From time to
  time, check this manually, to see how far along things have
  progressed.

I'm not sure that this will work on a network volume.  If not, check out TruCrypt carefully.  It allows in place encryption of non-system windows volumes, and so it may have the same functionality for OS X volumes.  Otherwise, the google search (first link in this answer) does bring up some other options.


How to move boot and recovery partition from HDD to SSD

You are correct that the recovery partition is not on your machine.

On my Lion machine I see:

$ diskutil list
/dev/disk0
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      GUID_partition_scheme                        *500.1 GB   disk0
   1:                        EFI                         209.7 MB   disk0s1
   2:                  Apple_HFS Macintosh HD            499.1 GB   disk0s2
   3:                 Apple_Boot Recovery HD             650.0 MB   disk0s3

You could clone your existing drive "Crucial M4 SSD" to an external disk, then repartition and reinstall Lion, then clone it back, though reinstalling Lion over your existing volume may also work! You could also try downloading the Recovery Update and see if that can add it:

http://support.apple.com/kb/DL1464


Fixed with:

$ brew edit gpg-agent
    - mirror "ftp://ftp.mirrorservice.org/sites/ftp.gnupg.org/gcrypt/gnupg/gnupg-2.0.26.tar.bz2"
    + mirror "http://mirrors.dotsrc.org/gcrypt/gnupg/gnupg-2.0.26.tar.bz2"

$ brew install gpg-agent
$ brew install gnupg2


Dictating spelled numbers in English and other languages

The answer is to install Google’s GBoard keyboard. Its voice dictation feature automatically spells out numbers like “forty-five” rather than typing them out as “45”. I don’t know why iOS doesn’t do this. I’ve tried, but ultimately it was Google to the rescue. It also works in other languages, i.e. French “quarante-cinq” and Spanish "cuarenta y cinco”.


Does Remote Wipe securely wipe the contents of the drive?

I've done a remote wipe on a MacBook Pro with an SSD running Mountain Lion because I wasn't sure how else to securely wipe the SSD.  So I can answer some of your questions.

To start with, Mat Honan was wrong when he said that the purpose of the PIN was so that "the process can be reversed."  It is to prevent the thief from using the computer.  I believe the thinking is that if the computer has to be taken to Apple to be unlocked, then it is much more likely that a stolen computer would be recovered.

Yes, when you remotely wipe the computer it does a secure wipe.  Apple even warns you that it could take as long as a day.  However, if your drive was encrypted with FileVault 2, then it is not necessary to erase the disk.  It is sufficient to securely erase the encryption key(s) stored on the disk, so that's what they do.  It's very quick and as secure as the underlying encryption system is, which for now is very secure. You cannot recover the drive with the recovery key once the encryption key(s) have been erased.

Before starting to wipe the disk, though, Apple installs some kind of lock on the system that prevents you from booting it up from the internal or an external drive.  I don't know the details of how this works, I only know that I did not find an obvious way around it.

EDIT

I did this a second time and this time I wrote down the steps.

After the laptop received the remote wipe instruction it emitted 2 short beeps and then froze, displaying the spinner (not a beach ball), and then rebooted
After reboot, it displayed a Grey screen with the message “Enter your system lock PIN code to unlock this Mac” and options to sleep, restart, or shut down.
I entered the PIN code pretty much right away
After a brief delay the laptop rebooted into the Recovery partition and asked about installing a system (either a new system via the internet or an old system via a Time Machine backup or other computer to clone)
I then rebooted the computer into Target Disk mode and examined the drive from another computer. The drive is no longer seen as an encrypted drive and I could find no signs of useable data on the drive, though to be fair I did not try anything too fancy. I have faith that the encryption key was wiped and that all I would find is encrypted data for which I no longer had the key.

Now back to our original story...

Below is from memory, so might be slightly wrong in some details.  You can read another person's account of the process from MacObserver.  (They were able to recover files from their unencrypted mechanical drive, but I believe it was because they entered the passcode and interrupted the wipe before it finished.)  I think that after the remote wipe started and the lock screen came up on the MacBook Pro I did not wait very long for it to finish wiping the drive and entered the PIN to see what I could see on the drive. (I never saw anything on the drive, but I also did not take it out of the computer and send it to DriveSavers for them to check out.)  I don't recall exactly how I got to powering down the machine post-wipe.

Anyway, after the wipe and power-down, I attached an external Mountain Lion Install drive and powered up the computer. I got a flashing folder with a question mark (meaning it cannot find a boot drive).

I rebooted, holding down the option key to get a choice of boot disks. I had a choice between Macintosh HD (the internal drive) and the external drive.  I picked the external drive and again got the flashing folder with a question mark.

I rebooted again, holding down the option key again, but this time chose "Macintosh HD".  Then I was presented with a screen to enter the unlock PIN.  Which I did.  I was then back to the screen where I could choose a boot drive, but this time the internal drive was labeled "10.8 Recovery HD" or something like that.  I again chose the external drive and it booted fine.  I was then able to reinstall the OS and all was normal from there.

I didn't see about trying to put the computer into target disk mode but Apple is pretty savvy about encryption and security so I expect that the PIN code lock is in the firmware and the computer just won't do anything until it's unlocked. I also suspect that Apple can unlock the computer with some secret procedure, but that would only restore the computer to normal operation: whatever was on the disk would still be gone to the extent the computer was able to erase it before you got it to Apple. (The MacObserver article states that they were not able to put the computer into target disk mode until they unlocked it when it was just remote locked. Mat Honan stated in a follow-up to his original article about getting hacked that the Apple Genius he eventually got to help him "had been able to reset the firmware password" even though he "couldn’t crack the PIN".)  What makes the encrypted drives so secure is that all you need to erase is probably just one file system block containing the encryption key(s), so it's done in under a second.


Do NOT remove your Apple system provided python version found at this path:
/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.7

In fact - you should never mess with any Frameworks under /Library/... unless you know what you are doing.  Your OS may have tools that depend on this version of Python that it ships.

After installing brew - did you run

  brew doctor

It should tell you if you have any issues.

Also - be sure your brew install python3 (note there is not a space - 'python 3')

After installing your new Python - brew should put it under /usr/local/ not /Library/...

I suggest you use either Homebrew or Macports - NOT both.  Make sure you follow the directions on their webpages and set your PATH in your .bashrc or .bash_profile properly.

After you set your PATH in those files, don't forget to "source" the files - or simply close and reopen terminal to "refresh" your environment to the new settings.

Good Luck!


Bash Script which calls osascript stops working when run by launchd

Graphical User Session Required

The error occurs because the commands in your osascript require a graphical user session. AppleScript requires a graphical user session to work.

The launchd job is running as the root user in a non-graphical user session.

Alternative Approach

In these situations, the typical approach is to split daemons in two parts – one computer wide and another within each graphical user session. A pipe or socket is frequently used to communicate.

Even as root user, there are barriers that can not be crossed in macOS.


How to execute install.sh under Big Sur?

.sh files are what is known as "shell scripts". Basically, when you run a .sh file, you're not executing that file directly - instead the contents of the file is given to a specific program as instructions to follow. That specific program is named in the first line of the .sh file prefixed by #!.
The error message you see means that the program specified by that first line of the file does not exist (at the given location). Essentially the shell script is incorrectly made.
If you have knowledge about the purpose of the script, and how your system is setup, you might be able to use a texteditor to change the file line of the file to point to the correct program - otherwise I would contact the supplier of the program and ask for updated files and instructions.
UPDATE: You have updated your question with the first part of the contents of the shell script. This makes it clear that the problem is that the first line of the script ends not with a normal newline symbol (LF), but rather a Windows-style newline consisting of two symbols (CR LF).
You can fix the line feeds in the file by running this command in the same folder as the shell script using the Terminal:
perl -pi -e 's/\r\n|\n|\r/\n/g' install.sh


"The operation can’t be completed because you don’t have permission to access some of the items." when moving OneDrive files

I had the same problem. What worked for me was the open the source file, which probably triggered the on-demand download. Then I was able to move/copy it elsewhere.

You could probably also go to OneDrive Preferences and click "Turn Off Files On-Demand"


iTunes can't sync contacts as contacts has been disabled on iPhone

back up address book  [File>Export]
delete all contacts in address book
delete all files within: library>user>application support>address book
untick "sync contacts" in iTunes - click on "Sync" button
open address book: import file (the backup file)
open iTunes: tick "sync contacts" - click on "Sync" button


iPhone 4S and 5 freezes after not answering 2 calls

After spending quite sometime trying to find out a definite solution to this annoying problem I am afraid this is a glitch we have to live with until apple comes up with a fix. In my case not even using Siri for a call helped out. Once the call is over the phone freezes again. The only walk around I have found is asking Siri to open any application I have in the phone (I usually ask for the calendar) and Siri will notice that the phone is locked and will ask for the four digit code to unlocked. Just plug the code in and magic, you will gain access to the phone without having to reset.


Connecting wireless keyboard to non Apple monitor

Your Apple (Bluetooth) Keyboard doesn't connect to your monitor, but to your Mac. Open System Preferences and go to bluetooth, there you can connect new devices. Make sure the keyboard is on (there's a power button on the side) - a green LED in the top right of the keyboard (front) should light up when you turn it on.

Link: Apple's Support document with Screenshots.


Does Tivoli Storage Manager for backup get the details right?

I'm not sure that Tivoli gets these finer details absolutley correct.

In terms of backing up files and applications these are fine, but when it comes to passwords, attributes and preferences etc, then no, not always.

I have just spoken to a pal who uses IBM systems in a Mac and PC magazine publishing environment and prefers his staff on Macs to use Time Machine as the standard back-up to their servers, rather than the PC users who use Tivol as standard.


Create install media - lion -command not found

Mac OS X Lion didn't come with the built-in ability to create a USB installer since a small USB flash drive installer came with Mac's that shipped with Mac OS X Lion and was also sold by Apple on a small USB flash drive.  It was also downloadable through the App Store.  It was the first release of Mac OS X to not come on optical media.

To create a USB Installer, from the downloaded Install Mac OS X Lion application bundle, you'll need to use a program like DiskMaker X (formerly Lion DiskMaker)

Surly because Apple sold the Mac OS X Lion USB Installer for ~$79 USD they weren't going to make it easy for users to usurp buying the product vs. making it themselves.  That changed with OS X Mavericks, being the first OS X release to include a built-in way to create a USB Installer.

To create a USB Installer for OS X Mavericks and later, have a look at: Create a bootable installer for OS X


Here are some settings that are working for now to provide a Default Kiosk Style Account logging in by ldap authentication.

Fileserver: MacBookPro
Mac OS: El Capitan

This is based on Connecting 10.5 to Stanford's LDAP

With this setup, all ldap users will log in, but have the same home directory and system user id. It is only useful if one ldap user at a time will log in to the machine.

Create the default user home folder contents

Make a standard user from Apple -> System preferences -> Users & Groups

User: ldaptemplate
Pass: randomAnyP@ssKe1

Login as the ldaptemplate. (Customize the desktop if you like.)

Logout

Make a folder with a unique id as the owner, then copy all inside ldaptemplate to the new folder.

su -s
mkdir /Users/ldap
rsync --quiet --recursive --links --perms --group --delete --extended-attributes /Users/ldaptemplate/ /Users/ldap
chown -R 900 /Users/ldap

Add the home directory reset script to the login hook

mkdir /Library/Management
nano /Library/Management/ldapcleanup.bash

Paste in the script below

#!/bin/bash
# /Library/Management/ldapcleanup.bash
# Copies the templates user home directory to the Kiosk user home dir
# When a Kiosk user logs in using LDAP authentication

templateDir="/Users/ldaptemplate/";
targetDir="/Users/ldap";
targetOwner=900;

# this script must be run as root, bail if it is not
if [ "$(whoami)" != "root" ]; then
echo "This script must be run as root!"
exit 0;
fi

# here we test to make sure both the directories we are using exist on this system
if [ ! -d $templateDir ] || [ ! -d $targetDir ]; then
echo "Either $templateDir or $targetDir did not exist!";
exit 0;
fi

# now we use rsync to make the target mirror the template
# note that we are not preserving owner
rsync --quiet --recursive --links --perms --group --delete --extended-attributes $templateDir $targetDir

# and then we make sure everything has the correct owner
chown -R $targetOwner $targetDir

exit 0;

Save the script and close the editor

control + x y return

Make the script run when a user logs in

 defaults write com.apple.loginwindow LoginHook /Library/Management/ldapcleanup.bash

Exit root user terminal mode

exit

Add your ldap.server.tld to the list in Directory Services

command + space -> Directory Utility -> enter

Click lock and authenticate to make changes

Choose LDAPv3 -> Edit -> New

    Server Name or IP Address: ldap2.server.tld
    √ Encrypt using SSL
    √ Use for authentication
    Continue

Select Server -> Click Edit

Set all the parts of each tab like below, so they match your ldap server requirements and information fields provided. Stuff here, worked on this particular job.

Connection Tab:

Configuration name: ldap2.server.tld
Server Name or IP Address: ldap2.server.tld
default timeouts
√ Encrypt using SSL
Default port is 636 (your server may need custom)

Search & Mappings Tab

This part makes or breaks the login. I needed only a minimal setting in the end. Basically the things on the left side of the boxes can map to LDAP properties on the right side. They may be information about the person or account stuff like network home folder and many other things.

Choose Custom, erase everything from left box then add following.

> People         (Search base: ou=People,dc=server,dc=edu)
    RecordName   Map to uid
> UserAuthenticationData (Search base: ou=People,dc=server,dc=edu)
    RecordName  Map to uid
> Users      Search base: ou=People,dc=server,dc=edu)
             Map to inetOrgPerson
    AuthenticationAuthority  Map to uid
    EMailAddress             Map to mail
    FirstName                Map to givenName
    JobTitle                 Map to title
    LastName                 Map to sn
    NFSHomeDirectory         Map to #/Users/ldap
    OrganizationName         Map to serverEduStaffDepartment
                             (or some existing ldap field)
    PostalAddress            Map to postalAddress
    PrimaryGroupID           Map to #900
    RealName                 Map to cn (users ldap full name)
    RecordName               Map to aid (users ldap id)
    UniqueID                 Map to #900
                            (Default owner of that folder we made)
    UserShell                #/bin/bash

Security tab:

This ldap server requires the group authorized account to search it. Without this account the login screen on the Mac showed a red dot, unable to connect to the network. This information is setup and provided by the LDAP admin team in this organization.

Access to Directory
  √ Use authentication when connecting
  Distinguished Name: uid=someid,ou=SomeGroup,dc=server,dc=edu
  Password: somelongpasswordstringprovidedbyldapadmins

Click OK, OK

Choose Search Policy

Click +
Add your new LDAP server to the list

Choose Directory Editor an try to use the LDAP search and login.

Select Users in node /LDAPv3/ldap.server.tld
    * Try searching for your id, If you can't find it something wrong
      with setup.
    * Click the lock to authenticate. If you can't something did not
      map right. Check that mac did not auto-correct 'uid'

Click lock to de-authenticate

Close Directory Utility

Allow network login from Users & Groups

This part is just telling mac to check the ldap directory for user accounts.

Click Apple -> System preferences -> Users & Groups

    Automatic Login: Off
    Display login window as Name and password
    Show fast user switching menu as Full Name
    Click the lock to make changes and authenticate
    √ Allow network users to log in at login window
    Click Edit near Network Account Server:
    Click + and choose the ldap server created previously

After these changes, the MacBook was rebooted and I could log in as LDAP authenticated users. Log messages now show:

Sep  1 13:40:24 MacBook-Pro SecurityAgent[652]: User info context
                values set for auser
Sep  1 13:40:44 MacBook-Pro KeyAccess[62]: opened session B8860100,
                auser (en_US)

After all the setup was done, the answer to the original question, "Have any advice to allow users to authenticate on this mac by LDAP to access share folders?" is to setup everything like above, then share the folder with the network user.

Add network logins to the shared resource

Click Apple -> System preferences -> Sharing
Choose File Sharing
Select the Shared Folder:
Click + in the Users box
Choose Network Users
Search for the ldap ID you want to add
Highlight the user
Click Select

After this, when the backup toy was launched, the network users authenticated and the script ran as well as it did when authenticated against the local user account.


Does the Macbook (Early 2016) support Wake up from standby through an alarm or at a scheduled time?

System Prefs > Energy Saver > Schedule...

You can set sleep/reboot/shutdown or wake times.
There's no default option for a specific date, but there are options for day, weekdays, weekend etc.


Configuring Mail.app "From" drop-down menu?

There are few ways to do this.

The From field could be preselected in the mail preferences, using the dropdown and select From that would be ALWAYS used from now on.

I still have it as choice since i use multiple emails and want to choose the From.

Next is the multitude of From's, way more then actual email accounts.

Called the smtp servers list

That can be resolved by DELETING all duplicates and others, and leaving only the one you actually have and use.

In drop down Click on edit smtp list and delete the one you do not want.


Macbook crashed, need help finding out why

panic(cpu 0 caller 0xffffff801742595f): "compressed PTE 0xfffffe818487a938 0xc010000000000000 has extra bits 0x8000000000000000

Your system was under memory pressure and the virtual memory subsystem started compressing memory. At some point, one of the compressed page table entries (PTEs) became corrupted. The kernel attempted to repair this corruption but was unable and so it rightly induced a panic rather than allowing the OS to continue running in an inconsistent state.
Memory corruption can happen for a great deal of reasons, including software bugs, hardware bugs, and even cosmic rays occasionally knocking out enough electrons in your DRAM to flip a bit. In order to further debug corruption, we would need to have a core dump from the time of failure. Short of that, there’s no way to begin to discern between the above three possibilities.
What this means for you is: Don’t worry about it too much if this is a one-off event. If, however, you begin to see panics and hangs more regularly (especially if you try repeating the same workload) then that is good data to collect.
(All that being said: Make sure that you always maintain an ongoing backup of your data. While rare, memory corruption can indicate an incipient hardware failure that may render your machine unusable. Computers are never to be fully trusted.)


Run a program/script when the screen is locked or unlocked

After some searching, I found SleepWatcher, a free tool that allows to run a script when the screen goes to sleep or wakes up.

After installing it, you can link a shell script that is run on one of the available events (which include dim screen, wake up screen, computer sleep, wake up computer and some more). From the shell script, I can run a command, or call an AppleScript that I want to run on these events.

Since my screen goes to sleep when I lock my computer, this is exactly what I was looking for.

You can see it in action here: https://github.com/nwinkler/sleepwatcher-lync-status


Leaving macbook plugged in and on 100% all the time

The Macworld article reflects best practice.  The battery is designed to be used.
I wouldn't be too concerned about dropping the charge to 30% every day.  Even dropping to 80% will help.  For a long healthy life the battery should be used.
Of course, if you keep it plugged in all the time you don't have to be worried about keeping the battery healthy!
Just to say it again: The battery is designed to be used.


this is what I have observed. your tab in iOS was in private  mode and macOS was in normal. so it was easily transferred to iOS but got opened in private mode which in turn could not be opened in Mac.

Do tell me if I am wrong.


Inherit Time Machine backup after changing source hard drives

When you plug in the new HDD, do you get a message saying

  Would you like this computer to inherit the backup history from xxx on the "xxx" backup disk?"

then an option to choose

  Don't Back Up Now, Create New Backup or Inherit Backup History?

If so, click Inherit Backup History. If not, follow the steps below:
Open Finder and navigate to your backup location

In terminal, type (but do not press return yet

sudo tmutil inheritbackup

Drag the backup location to the end of the terminal command, and press return for Terminal to navigate to the correct path.

If it was successful, it will ask you for your password. (It won't be shown in the Terminal window as you type.)

An alternate method would be to "Associate the OS X volume, which is:

sudo tmutil associatedisk -a /

You will drag (from the Backups.backupdb folder) the folder containing the backups from the old drive into the Terminal window for the path. Again, if prompted, enter the Admin password.


How do I disable (and re-enable) my Thunderbolt port from the terminal?

Apple has several kexts for the Thunderbolt-Connection :

AppleThunderboltDPAdapters.kext
AppleThunderboltEDMService.kext
AppleThunderboltIP.kext
AppleThunderboltNHI.kext
AppleThunderboltPCIAdapters.kext
AppleThunderboltUTDM.kext
IOThunderboltFamily.kext

I think the commands you are looking for are either:

sudo kextunload /System/Library/Extensions/AppleThunderboltPCIAdapters.kext
sudo kextload /System/Library/Extensions/AppleThunderboltPCIAdapters.kext

or

sudo kextunload /System/Library/Extensions/IOThunderboltFamily.kext
sudo kextload /System/Library/Extensions/IOThunderboltFamily.kext

I have a Thunderbolt port in my Mac Pro, but currently no devices. So I can't tell you exactly which kext does the trick.

--
Further Information :

Thunderbolt is basically PCIe tunneled through the DisplayPort Connection. I can imagine that it is based on the ACPIPlatform or IOPCIFamily kernel extension. Either way if you unload those you would probably cut off the branch you're sitting on.

Apple released a document on creating Thunderbolt drivers and how you verify if the device is still online here.

It also says: "In the case of PCI, the I/O PCI family (IOPCIFamily) within the I/O Kit is responsible for enumerating the PCI bridge in the controller chip and any downstream bridges or devices."

Furthermore : "PCI device drivers can determine if a Thunderbolt device is connected by recursively searching over parents in the I/O Registry for the key IOPCITunnelled (...)."

Also have a look into the Developer Library.

Thunderbolt is a complicated technology and you could either write a little program or you can write a launch script that checks and reloads the driver if the device is offline. You could do it manually instead of unplugging it and replugging it in.


The only thing that is supported is 'one app, one Space'.
Once you spread an app to more than one Space, results will be at best random.

I would have expected that any relaunch, whether after reboot or not, would reduce your content to a single Space. I'm actually surprised it sometimes doesn't.


It looks like a coincidence to me.

Only the files and folder in ~/Movies should be affected.

Even running the command with sudo in the root of my drive doesn't render my system unbootable:

for f in .*; do sudo mv "$f" "_$f"; done

Some files and folders are renamed (e.g. _.fseventsd, _.Spotlight-V100, _.Trashes, _.DocumentRevisions-V100, _.vol) but after a restart the important ones will be recreated with the proper name (leaving the renamed folders as they were).

Navigate with Terminal to / and /System/Library/CoreServices and check if anything was renamed; if not reboot otherwise remove all the underscores.


I was able to fix this by changing the Micro SD adapter into another one and then unlocking the security switch in the sd adapter. That error occurs whenthere is a physical write protect switch on the drive, and it's locked in that position.


exFAT is a file system optimized for flash drives, meaning storage devices without moving parts where seek times are constant. It sounds like you're using it for a mechanical hard drive – which is what's causing the poor performance that you're experiencing.

You should reformat the drive to HFS+ or FAT32 and only use exFAT for solid-state drives.

ref: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ExFAT


iPhone Personal Hotspot always visible even when off

This is intentional behaviour since iOS 8.1. It is called Instant Hotspot and is described as a feature of Continuity:

  If you’re out of Wi-Fi range, your iPad or Mac can connect to your phone’s personal hotspot when your iPhone is close by. With the new Instant Hotspot feature, you’ll see the name of your iPhone in the list of Wi-Fi networks in Settings on your iPad and in the Wi-Fi menu on your Mac. Just select it and you’re connected. And when you’re not using your phone’s network, your devices intelligently disconnect to save battery life.


Jollys Fast VNC

It attempts to keep the clipboards in sync and for the most part it does a very good job of it. Not all objects copied to the clipboard on one machine can be used on another though. For example: copying a file the clipboard just puts a lean file object in the clipboard which has no parallel on the remote machine.

But for text and such it works great.

There's a free trial (that continually renews itself) and you can buy it in the MAS as well for not a lot of money (there's a "home" version for even less).


How do I select/move multiple albums or events in the Photos sidebar?

You can utilise album view as prior suggested and then drag albums into the sidebar to achieve the desired result, but you are absolutely correct in noting the failure of this desired behaviour to operate, purely within the sidebar itself.
yup the OSX HCI / UX toolbox in terms of standardisation of elements with predictable results is something that apple has debased since leaving OS9, selectable text OS wide - has similar issues.


The same thing happened to me and my iPhone 5S yesterday when I tried to restore that backup onto my iPhone 6S. You just have to install all of the apps again from the App Store. They will function just as you left them, will all game saves and app data in place, as all your app data was restored, just not the apps themselves.


Store movies/tv shows from iTunes on external drive

Use TuneSpan. Here's an article I wrote about it.


I do believe OS X Base System is the name of the mounted Recovery Partition image.

I would suggest completely erasing every last partition on your drive (except Recovery), recreating a Macintosh HD partition, and reinstalling OS X onto the newly partitioned Macintosh HD.

As for restoring your data, you can use Migration Assistant (/Applications/Utilities/Migration Assistant.app) to restore data from the Time Machine backup after you get a working system, or better, use the "Enter Time Machine" functionality from the TM menubar dropdown.


App Store: You have not yet purchased any apps

The App Store is having problems since yesterday afternoon.
It is not your fault, it is a problem on their end.
So we just have to wait it out.


To buy something on the App Store you have to type your password.

If you choose "always require", every time you buy something, App Store will ask your password.

If you choose "Require after 15 minutes", for the first purchase you will have to type your password, then you would be able to buy everything on the App Store for 15 minutes without typing your password again.
After 15 minutes, App Store will ask your password again.


Cannot Use the Disk Utility to Create Two Partitions on External HDD with High Sierra

The Disk Utility application can partition the external drive, if you use GUID Partition Map scheme.

Below is an example using a 16 GB flash drive.

Erase the drive.

Partition the drive.

Erase the first partition.

The results are shown below.


Is it possible to use an iPhone without a SIM card as an iPod touch?

There is an Apple support document on how to do this.  You don't need to keep a sim in the phone but you need to put one into it to activate it before taking it back out.

Here's the procedure for 3G and 3GS:

  You can use any SIM card associated
  with the carrier that your device
  supports to activate the phone. Simply
  place a SIM card from the last carrier
  with which you used your iPhone into
  the device, and activate it. Then
  remove the SIM card. You can now use
  the iPhone 3G or iPhone 3GS as you
  would an iPod touch (Wi-Fi only, no
  cellular service).

  Note: You can use the activated SIM card from your new iPhone to do
  this.

  To re-activate an iPhone 3G or iPhone
  3GS that displays the "Connect to
  iTunes" screen:

  Insert a SIM card from the carrier with which you used your phone. Note:
  If you are using the same carrier, you
  can use the activated SIM card from
  your new device to do this. If your
  device is unlocked by your carrier,
  you can use any SIM card.
  Connect the iPhone 3G or iPhone 3GS to iTunes on a computer connected
  to the Internet. iTunes will then
  activate the device. You can remove
  the SIM card at this point and use the
  iPhone as if it were an iPod touch.


How to list content of .Trashes folder in single-user mode

There is a systemwide Trash folder as well as one per user. If you deleted files in Finder while being logged in with your user account, the deleted files are in /Users/YOUR-USER-NAME/.Trash.


I would say, that your RAM usage is not the issue, but you would need to edit in some more measurements about what is slow (or make the detailed measurements in the first place) and look at perhaps network latency (web pages take a while to paint), network bandwidth (iTunes movies take hours to download instead of minutes), or CPU perhaps.

In the RAM snapshot, the system looks to be used lightly, due to a small amount of inactive RAM and the large amount of free memory. Over time, if your programs need more than half the RAM for active and wired, you would see a speed up when switching between seldom used apps if you doubled your RAM so that rather than releasing memory, the system would build up a larger cache of "inactive" memory, but that's just speculation.

Why not pick one or two things that seem slow to you and make 10 measurements on how long they take. At that point you can ask a more pointed question or perform the restore and re-test the speed to see if your change made any difference.


Is my fusion drive supposed to show as two different volumes in Disk Utility? (It shows just one in Finder)

This is normal for all Catalina system/boot volume layouts independent of the number of physical disks involved.

The various main partitions (here disk0s2 & disk1s2) of the single physical disks of a Fusion Drive are combined as physical stores to one container: disk2. The predecessor (CoreStorage) did the same.

The whole container (here disk2) is divided into various APFS volumes with different roles: Preboot, Recovery, VM, Data and System. Each volume can be enlarged or shrunk dynamically.

The last two are combined in one APFS volume group.

You get all available APFS volume groups by entering diskutil ap listVolumeGroups.

The system volume (role: System, name: Macintosh HD, device: disk2s5) is mounted read-only. The necessary read-write data volume (role: Data, name: Macintosh HD – Data, device: disk2s1) is mounted to /System/Volumes/Data.

By default various folders of the Data volume are firmlinked to various folders of the System volume. They are needed to add user installed apps/binaries/frameworks etc. and user content (which requires a r/w volume) in a transparent way. The list of a all current firmlinks is available at /usr/share/firmlinks.

The two devices in the APFS volume group (disk2s1 & disk2s5) mustn't be confused with the two physical devices (disk0 & disk1). Both APFS volumes may partially reside on both physical disks.

At least the APFS volumes with the roles Data and System are shown as separate devices in Disk Utiliy. I expect the volumes with the roles USER, Undefined and Installer (which don't exist in the standard partition scheme) to be also shown in Disk Utility – I haven't tested this though.

Further reading and pics of the various stages of Catalina APFS volume schemes:

macOS Catalina Boot Volume Layout
Working with APFS Volume Groups


How to fix SyncMate kernel panic at El Capitan boot

So, for anyone who is in a similar position to me, the critical step that I was missing after getting rid of the offending .kext, was removing the various caches that were resulting in it still getting loaded during the FileVault startup process.

Removing /var/vm/sleep* and /var/folders/* from the FileVault volume caused all the caches to be rebuilt and the system booted correctly.


Looking for an app to manage an archived music library

iTunes will actually let you use multiple libraries if you want, and then can switch between them on launch. So if disk space (and just keeping the files where they were wasn't an issue), you could use a second library.

If you launch iTunes while holding down the Option key on your keyboard, you will get this dialog.

You could choose 'Create Library' here, and make a second library.

Unfortunately, the storage location of your music is a iTunes general setting versus per library. But, there is the options in Preferences -> Advanced to not copy files into the iTunes Media folder. Changing this though would affect your main library too though.


Softonic has a nice list of 7Zip for Mac utilities. Some are freeware.


Bluetooth device still paired after clean install

Just to clarify, have you tried either of the following:

On the MacBook Pro go to System Preferences > Bluetooth and right-click on the device (his iPhone) and select Remove
On his iPhone, go to Settings > Bluetooth and tap on the 'info' icon on the right of your MacBook Pro  and then tap the Forget This Device option

Doing this should solve your issue. For good measure, I would do both.

If the above steps don't work, try resetting the iPhone settings. Your co-worker can do this on his iPhone by going to Settings > General > Reset > Reset All Settings. However, make sure he has his passcode and Wi-Fi passwords handy.

Finally, if you happen to not be using any Bluetooth devices with the MacBook, you can also turn it off totally from System Preferences > Bluetooth.


generate password option not appearing in "manage apple id"

It appears that app specific passwords are not needed to access icloud on Ubuntu, using Thunderbird. I refired up an old box, I had stashed away; and, it connected to icloud fine, on Ubuntu using Thunderbird. I set up this account nearly 2 years ago and it works, with no app specific password. However, I never was able to set an app specific password at the apple site. So, I am closing this as, I don't actually need one.


Why does iPhone navigation bar disappear when browsing certain sites?

Yes, mobile sites can be programmed to remove the navigation bar whilst browsing the site.  Makes for a better user experience when these elements get out of the way.

This is documented here  http://developer.apple.com/library/safari/#documentation/appleapplications/reference/SafariHTMLRef/Articles/MetaTags.html

In particular the apple-mobile-web-app-capable element.


Macbook pro trackpad stops working after plugging in USB mouse in Windows 7 under bootcamp

During boot camp assistant partitioning, it prompted you to create  windows support folder. After installing windows you should have run setup from this folder. If you run it again and reboot, you should have your track-pad driver restored. When you run it again, select repair.


NTFS partition on external HD not recognized or mounted on El Capitan or Sierra, even with latest Paragon or Tuxera

disk0s4 has the wrong GUID partition type - as visible in the Tuxera screenshot. The partition type is 48465300-0000-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC which is HFS+ (the standard OS X partition type). You can check this by entering sudo gpt -r show disk0.

It should be EBD0A0A2-B9E5-4433-87C0-68B6B72699C7 though, which is the GUID for Microsoft basic data partitions (BDP).

To change the partition type boot to Internet Recovery Mode or a second boot device (e.g. a thumb drive), remove disk0s4 with gpt and re-add it with the same boundaries (index number, beginning block & size) but a different type.

Under certain circumstances - I need the output of sudo fdisk /dev/disk0 and some hexdump results additionally - unallocated disk space between disk0s3 and disk0s4 is required and the beginning block & size have to be modified compared to your current gpt partition table.

Boot to Internet Recovery Mode or a thumb drive with either a full OS X install or an OS X Installer thumb drive. Editing the GUID partition table with gpt requires you to unmount the disk. You can't unmount the disk you are booted to.

Open Terminal (menubar Utilities > Terminal) and enter diskutil list to get an overview. Get the disk identifier of the 500 GB drive - this may be disk0 or disk1. Below I assume it's disk0. Use the disk identifier you have found in your environment though.

If you log-in as admin some commands require you to prepend sudo ... executing some commands (e.g. gpt). Booted to an installer thumb drive or to Internet Recovery Mode you are always root user and prepending sudo is not necessary.
Get the partition table:

gpt show -r disk0

Unmount the disk

diskutil umountDisk disk0

Remove the 4th (falsely typified) partition:

gpt remove -i 4 disk0
diskutil umountDisk disk0

Your hexdump results ("eb 52 90 4e 54 46 53 20" is the "string" ∂RENTFS(x20)) show that disk0s4 has special NTFS Boot Sectors (which typically occur in the first and the last block of an NTFS volume) in block0 and block 121948143. (x0000000 is byte/block 0 of disk0s4 and xe898fde00 converted with a hex2dec service is byte 62437449216 or 62437449216/512: block 121948143). This shows that there is no gap between disk0s3 and disk0s4 and the size is (121948143 blocks + block0) 121948144 blocks.
re-add the 4th partition with a proper type but the old other values:

gpt add -i 4 -b 488722456 -s 121948144 -t EBD0A0A2-B9E5-4433-87C0-68B6B72699C7 disk0

reboot


Why am I notified about some missed calls via a text from +8888?

5 seconds with google showed me this: http://forums.crackberry.com/blackberry-pearl-flip-f85/rogers-sends-8888-text-message-every-time-someone-calls-332862/

Seems to be a "service" Rogers offers where they notify you if you miss a call. You need to call their customer support line and ask them to disable the "Whocalled" service on your contract.


How do I join a Microsoft Active Directory Domain in OS X?

Well, I figured it out!
Our Active Directory is very large.  I'm actually only technically a container admin deep within a large tree of Colleges within the University so I believe that had something to do with it.

Instead of using the easy quick Join interface I had to open up Directory Utility and join this way.

When I pressed 'Bind' I typed in the direct OU path for my particular Container that my machine should be placed in and it let me bind.

I don't have this issue on Windows but Mac is needing it to be specifically assigned to that OU before my level of authority will allow me to add the Mac.

I hope this helps someone!


Remove delimiter section from filename with Automator

You're doing many things wrong:

If you set AppleScript's text item delimiters to other then its default {}, always reset it to {} when finished with the temporary delimiter.
input is a list and as such you should return a list and do it outside of the repeat loop.
item 2 within the repeat loop needs to be text item 2, however, anItem within the repeat loop in this use case must also be text, so it needs to be (anItem as text).
fileName needs to be a list because you are processing a list and you need to return a list.

That said, here's an example Automator workflow with an AppleScript action coded in an example manner of how I'd write the code. Note though, that while it returns a list of the filenames after the $ delimiter, I'm not sure what good it's going to do you as it all depends on additional code not currently present in this example.

AppleScript code for the Run AppleScript action:

on run {input, parameters}
    try
        set AppleScript's text item delimiters to {"$"}
        set theFileNameList to {}
        repeat with thisItem in input
            set the end of theFileNameList to text item 2 of (thisItem as text)
        end repeat
        set AppleScript's text item delimiters to {}
        return theFileNameList
    on error eStr number eNum
        display dialog eStr & " number " & eNum buttons {"OK"} ¬
            default button 1 with icon caution
        set AppleScript's text item delimiters to {}
        return
    end try
end run


Preview 10 in Mojave: selected text does not get highlighted

I had a similar issue on macOS Catalina 10.15.1.

Upgrading to 10.15.2 resolved the issue. Multiple Reddit users experiencing a similar issue confirmed the same as well.


Is it possible to download iOS 8 beta without Developer Account?

No.

You need to be a registered developer agreeing to the license agreements AND your device needs to be registered as a development device.

As always, there are ways around this, but that is illegal. Torrent sites sometimes offer the software and in the comments developers offer to register your device as a development device. But these developers are at risk to lose their own development access.

Furthermore the first betas tend to be buggy. Unless you have an obsessive need for the latest stuff or are a developer you don't actually want it on your phone.


Is it possible to store "on my mac" local folders on a network device?

You can do this by making a symlink (using Terminal, not an alias in the Fnder) to the directory on the NAS as you describe, but I'd caution against it unless your laptop is alway connected to your network. You could (and most likely will) get some unpredictable and possibly data corrupting behaviour if the Mail app tries to access data only to find the network volume isn't mounted or accessible.


How did this item get in 'Notification Center' and how do I remove it?

It got in there through a popup like the following:

You can remove it from the list by going into Safari, opening its Preferences, and managing through the Notifications tab.

It seems that, at least on Mavericks, if you have the Notification Style set to Banner or Alert then it will force the notification into Notification Center.


Can I get service for my Windows PC iTunes at a Genius Bar?

Apple retail stores support iTunes on PC. The depth of troubleshooting is typically deleting iTunes and associated applications from PC and re-downloading iTunes. That said many people have received great how-to info regarding iTunes on PC or Mac in Apple retail stores


How to make the Backspace key to take me to the previous page in Safari 6?

I actually asked a similar question (but more broad so this isn't a duplicate). I got this as an answer (it works, I tested it):

Write the below line in terminal:

  defaults write com.apple.Safari com.apple.Safari.ContentPageGroupIdentifier.WebKit2BackspaceKeyNavigationEnabled -bool YES

Then restart Safari.

Hope this helps!


MacOS Sierra how to reduce priority of iCloud drive sync?

Bonus question, Exclusion: In MacOS Sierra, you have one option in Apple menu > System Preferences > iCloud > iCloud Drive Options > Desktop & Documents Folders - on or off. It's all or nothing, therefore you should reconsider iCloud for small files, for example I tried it with some .dotfiles and very soon dropped that idea as my CPU time was eaten up.

Same goes for Dropbox (but my experience is 1.5 year old here, so maybe Dropbox is now better-handling small files) Other thing I tried was syncing .zipped files / containers - that was working fine but in after a while I droped that too- what I found best is TimeMachine "set it and forget it" config you can access from the outside.

I know that it's not the answer you are looking for, I can only say from my experience, after few months of cloud syncing I put it on external solution where I sync a local drive and forget about it, QoS takes care of upload priority and file sync isn't my Mac's CPU problem.

Worth remembering: if you start using iCloud, there is no way to delete certain files (which is absurd) - for example you can't delete files Applications leave in your User ~/Library, I know it sounds crazy, but just google for "iCloud delete all preferences" or similar


prevent Lock Screen from showing user FullName

Try this in Terminal

sudo defaults write /Library/Preferences/com.apple.loginwindow HiddenUsersList -array-add user1 user2 user3 user4

Change user1 and/or user2 ect. to actual user name

If there is only one user drop the others


Send Photos via Email when accessing Camera from Lock Screen

Your out of luck for now as there is currently no way to enable this functionality with the stock iOS.  That being said if you are a jail breaker there IS a jailbreak app that enables this.  That jailbreak app is called 'LockShare'