Connect Wi-Fi Hotspot Through OSX Internet

This should trivial to do using something like an Airport Express (or Airport Extreme, though I haven't personally done it there). The method I've used involves activating Internet Sharing from the Sharing Preference pane, selecting Wi-Fi for the signal source and Ethernet (or the second Wi-Fi card, if it's set up as a network interface in the Network pref pane) for the check box for "To computers using:".

Sharing Wi-fi -> Ethernet and Ethernet-> Wi-Fi has always worked fine for me using this method, ever since 10.3 or 10.4.


Can I attach an Mac mini to a VGA monitor using an HDMI/VGA adapter?

Does the adapter work with other devices? If not, then your adapter is likely broken. You should be able to attach an HDMI to VGA adapter to your Mac. Video adapters aren't computer/software specific. Side note, it would be a better idea to convert HDMI to DVI instead of VGA since HDMI and DVI are both digital, meaning they will output higher quality video, whereas VGA is analog, and will output lower quality video.


How much capacity is good for an iPad? Does one need 3G on it?

I'm absolutely fine with a 32GB WiFi only iPad. 32GB is enough for most of my music, audio books, all the apps I use and some tv episodes. I never missed 3G on my iPad. Just one thing: you won't have GPS without 3G. If you have an iPhone, you can tether both, data and coordinates via WLAN (not bluetooth as previously said).


How to publish magazines (in PDF format) to Apple Newsstand?

If you do not have a dev kit you can use other companies who build, release and manage subscriptions.

One such comapny is Woodwing

However these options are generally very expensive. You are better off (if you can create and develop the product yourself) purchasing the SDK license ($99 per year) or failing that you can use Adobe software to publish the Newsstand Magazine but that costs about $500

There is more information on Newsstand here


Where is "Voice" on New Projects in GarageBand now?

They have taken that option out of the new project area in the latest version. You can use "Songwriter" and delete the drums and guitars, or chose "Empty Project" and add a vocal track.

If you want to get the settings you've used before you can open an old project and use "Save As..." after deleting all the audio (not tracks) to get a blank project with the settings you like.


Saving photos to iPhoto from iCloud, does copy/paste work?

From Apple Support:

  iPhoto automatically imports all photo stream photos into your library so you can keep them permanently (...)

Unless you disable "Automatic import" from the options, there is no need to manually copying them as they already are in your library.

Also, adding them to iPhoto albums does not make additional copies of the pictures, just lets you arrange links to the originals in any fashion you like. In fact if you remove a photo from an album:

  The photos are removed only from this album, not from other albums or events in your photo library.

And neither from the library, for that matter.

This is because iPhoto albums work like labels, instead of being real folders (see an explanation here).

So to answer your question, enabling My Photo Stream on your iOS device and iPhoto, keeping auto import on, should suffice to have one copy of your pictures on your hard drive, given you regularly open iPhoto and have internet available for both (not necessarily concurrently ).

Note that videos are not uploaded via My Photo Stream, and that you may run into trouble if you take more than 1000 pictures or let more than 30 days go between each iPhoto session.

Check Apple's FAQ on the details of this limitations.

I would advise to implement some kind of backup anyway, as this scheme will at the most leave you with one —maybe two copies if you don't delete them from your iOS device.
Time Machine is easy and free; for a dedicated picture/video solution check iCloud Photo Library (paid).

This information applies to the Photos app too at the moment of writing.


How do I change my UserId on Apple Developer Forums?

Yes, you are correct.

You'll need to contact Apple Developer Account Support. However, in most cases you will get an answer as once your account is created, you will not be able to change your username that appeared when creating a username, and suggest registering a new Apple ID for the developer.

So, if you don't care, you can probably create a new user.

Or at least first give a try asking Apple Developer Account Support team.


What is the easiest way to install emacs-ess on OSX?

Use the latest .tgz package:

Here is the installation version from the documentation (the -12.09-2 part of the file name is current-release specific and will change):

wget http://ess.r-project.org/downloads/ess/ess-12.09-2.tgz
tar -xvf ess-12.09-2.tgz
mv ess-12.09-2 /Applications/Emacs.app/Contents/Resources/site-lisp/
echo "(require 'ess-site)" >> ~/.emacs


Core Apps Not Launching After Installing OS X Mavericks

I managed to fix the issue by reinstalling OS X Mavericks

Here's how to fix it

Restart your machine
On boot hold Command and R
Choose to Reinstall OS X

System will restart as usual after install and OS X will be fully functional

You will NOT lose any settings or personal data with this method

:)


How to enter @ and € on a German MacOS installation?

If on the Mac you set the Input Source to "German Standard" (and not "German"), then you will have @ produced by Option/alt Q and € by Option/alt E.  That may be how your 3rd party keyboard is printed.
The layout shown in HT201794 reflects an Apple keyboard which corresponds to the "German" input source.  The newest Apple keyboards correspond to German Standard.


macOS catalina, Apache Benchmark (ab) not working, dyld library not loaded

I found the solution on this post, https://github.com/kelaberetiv/TagUI/issues/635
brew uninstall openssl; brew uninstall openssl;
brew install https://github.com/tebelorg/Tump/releases/download/v1.0.0/openssl.rb


Corsair Memory Question for a MacBook Pro (Early 2011)

The memory you specified, will not work.  It is PC3-12800 while the memory you need is PC3-10600.

According to Everymac.com, your particular model can support up to 16GB of memory.

  Apple officially supports a maximum of 8GB of RAM, but as first confirmed by site sponsor OWC, this model actually is capable of using up to 16 GB of RAM with two 8 GB memory modules.

Personally, I always recommend upgrading to the maximum amount of memory that you can get (I believe in the mantra it's better to have and not need, than need and not have).  The memory that you need for your particular MBP is the Crucial 16GB Kit (8GBx2)  2CT2K8G3S1339M


How can I get all photos in PhotoStream on my iPhone?

I don't know if this is an answer, but I wanted to add some images, so:

First, what computer / os do you use? Can you see the photos on this computer? If you are using iPhoto or Aperture and the photos you are looking for are not visible in these programs, they have already been removed from the iCloud server and cannot be re-synced to iPhone (at least not through Photo Stream). iCloud only stores the last 30 days worth, or 1000 photos, whichever limit is hit first.

On the iPhone, go to Settings then iCloud (as seen in the first image below).
Next, tap on Photo Stream, and ensure the "My Photo Stream" slider is set to ON (as seen in the second image below).

Finally, (as this is iCloud (grrrh), it might help to turn these settings off, wait a few hours, and turn them on again. I had to do this recently, with photos and mail. Hope this helps.


I am unable to download an audio book that I bought from iTunes to my iPhone 5

I think audiobooks get somehow special treatment, so that can not be re-downloaded them (even if accidentally deleted).
You have to copy it from iTunes over to your iPhone.


Based on your comment that when you go to site.local:8080 you get a white page with the words "It Works!" similar to the screen capture below

What you are seeing is the webpage based on the global server configuration where the DocumentRoot is whatever default MAMP is set for.

You mention in your OP that

  If I go to site.local:8080 it loads but doesn't render the elements as it should (instead loads the elements of the html in a list format)

Apache isn't going to render your webpage as a HTML list (unless you tell it to).  More than likely what you are seeing is a directory listing similar to this:

You get that listing because of the line Options Indexes FollowSymLinks in your httpd.conf file.  If you want to disable this, remove the word Indexes from that line and the listing will no longer show up.

Your Virtual Host Configuration

First, we need to understand how Apache handles virtual host requests.  From the Apache documentation:

  When a request arrives, the server will find the best (most specific)
  matching  argument based on the IP address and port used
  by the request. If there is more than one virtual host containing this
  best-match address and port combination, Apache will further compare
  the ServerName and ServerAlias directives to the server name present
  in the request.

  If you omit the ServerName directive from any name-based virtual host,
  the server will default to a fully qualified domain name (FQDN)
  derived from the system hostname. This implicitly set server name can
  lead to counter-intuitive virtual host matching and is discouraged.

If you notice, your host that is defined the global server configuration is the same as the virtual host.

This is probably where you are getting your error.

Now, my fix for this is a bit more involved initially, but infinitely more efficient because I try to avoid turing my machine into both a client and a server.  I do all my development on a Mac with a Virtual Machine running my AMP server.  This way I can mirror my production environment much closer and I don't have unnecessary services (like Apache and MySQL) running on OS X; they are all relegated to the VM.  The VM has it's own IP, own server name, everything so when I point my browser to it, I know what results to expect.

I have a write up on how to install a FreeBSD VM on VirtualBox running on a Mac that has autostart enabled.  If you are interested, I can share it with you.


After market car stereos with iOS 4/iPod Out support?

iPod Out, indeed, looks very cool ...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wbco58GnS9c

... but is there any reason that a simple line-out cable wouldn't work, at least until more companies hop on the iPod Out bandwagon? There appears to be a whole lot of nothing out there right now.

At the very least it's way better than the FM transmitters, which really suck.


Every iPad including the original can run iOS 5.1 so it doesn't matter which iPad you purchase. The original iPad can be updated to iOS 5.1.1 and at the time of writing all other iPads (including all iPad minis) are still able to be updated to the latest version of iOS (7.1).

iBooks 3 requires iOS 5.1 so is able to be run on all devices that can run iOS 5.1 (therefore all iPads). However, iBooks 3 uses more system resources and the first generation barely handles it with numerous complaints of crashing simply because the first generation iPad doesn't have the resources available.

Ideally you probably want to buy the most recent iPad you can which will give you the ability to update in the future.


Check if you have the devices under settings/messages/text messages forwarding, and enable all the devices you want to recieve/send messages from. Even if you already enabled it previously, you might of renamed the device, just check if the device with exact name is enabled.


The easiest way for you to confirm whether or not you are infected if you're getting inconsistent results from tools is to manually check your DNS settings against the rogue servers.  These are the servers that were used in the attack:

85.255.112.0 through 85.255.127.255
67.210.0.0 through 67.210.15.255
93.188.160.0 through 93.188.167.255
77.67.83.0 through 77.67.83.255
213.109.64.0 through 213.109.79.255
64.28.176.0 through 64.28.191.255

To check your DNS settings on osx, follow these instructions to open your network settings, choose a connection, and then check the DNS tab.

To check your DNS settings on your iPad, follow these instructions to open Settings>General>Network>Wi-Fi and then check the DNS settings of your wifi network.


Lion Server: Is Mobility in Workgroup Manager related to Profile Manager in the Server.app?

Mobility in Workgroup Manager and Mobility in Profile Manager are tools to do the same job. If you have used previous versions of Mac OSX Server Workgroup Manager is familiar but is now deprecated. Profile Manager should do all that is required to set up a network account that is accessible on a laptop out of the network office.
What I have found is that using both tools at once on a single device/account is, as you might expect, not helpful in identifying and setting good syncing rules.
My experience is limited to small networks (<10 devices) and this information comes as a result of my test server experience, as I have yet to upgrade any production servers.


There are several reasons why you can't setup a new AppleID with a previously used email such as it's used as an emergency contact / backup account for another AppleID and verified or it's already the primary account.

No matter what the case, your best bet is to follow precisely the steps at:

https://iforgot.apple.com/password/verify/appleid

There is a link below if you can't unlock the AppleID you think you had titled "Forgot AppleID" at the end of that online tool, there will be a link to contact Apple Support - they are truly the ones best suited to help you with your specific details. They can look up purchases, talk with you to determine your AppleID and help unlock if needed.


MacBookPro Desktop Screen Display Action

I think that you need to change a setting of your Dock!
Or do you maybe have an app to organise your desktops or not?

I just remember this: click on the green circle top left corner (button to go full screen) but you hold the command key down while clicking and dragging the window to the left or right and normaly, it will set the window of your app to go from the left/right of your screen to the middle of your screen.
Do the same for another app but got the other direction. :-)
I don't know if this is understandable? :-(


How to reconnect to Airport Extreme hard drive without rebooting

Okay, I found one workaround which to option-click the Finder and pick "relaunch"


In AppleScript, what is the easiest way to remove all punctuation from a string?

Try the following:

set stringToConvert to "My Plant's Dead! (But, Who Cares? I Have 12 Plants.)"
set returnedString to do shell script "echo " & quoted form of stringToConvert & " | tr -dc '[:alnum:]' | tr '[:upper:]' '[:lower:]'"

It returns: myplantsdeadbutwhocaresihave12plants

tr commands explained:

tr -dc '[:alnum:]' deletes all non alphanumeric characters (including white space).
tr '[:upper:]' '[:lower:]' converts all upper-case characters to lower-case characters.

See the man page for tr.


Change media kind of multiple items not working

If your method does not work it could be the one of the selected  MP3 files (that you are trying to Join in to Audiobook) is not plain spoken word but contains music elements.

I recommend you use the conversion method or find out which MP3 file is the problem.

In this method, you can create audiobook from MP3 files.

As a mp3 to audiobook converter, iTunes is great. Even though the created audiobook files are deleted from iTunes library, you can import them from local into iTunes or other players with audiobook features. And there is no need to operate on the original MP3 file again as long as you have stored the created M4B audiobook files.

Follow the instructions here ...


If you want to specify the the root user's crontab, you have to use the -u option.

sudo crontab -e -u root

That said, there's a safer way to clean out your trash than just removing the whole directory.  Personally, I like to remove files that are older than a certain number of days.  This way, if I inadvertently delete something today, I have a "buffer" of time in which to recover from.

The following command will delete all files that are older than 15 days.

find ~/.Trash/ -type f -mtime +15 -exec rm {} \;

Now...that said...

cron has been deprecated for launchd.  I would take some time and learn how to create .plist XML files for lauchd and use that service instead of cron


Are the mid-2012 Macbook Air compatible with older MagSafe adapters?

Electrically yes, physically not without an adapter.

Only the physical layout of the pins and metal end that connects to the Air is different. However, with the MagSafe to MagSafe 2 Adaptor ($10) lets any original sized MagSafe adapter slim down to work with the new thinner Mac-side of the MagSafe 2 connection.


Sound effect to confirm text is copied to clipboard

I only know of one Clipboard manager for macOS that has the ability to play a sound when you copy/paste:  Copy 'Em for Mac ($10USD).
To be candid, when I was evaluating clipboard management tools, I didn't see many with this feature because it seems like it would get annoying very quickly.  Besides my extensive use of the clipboard which required me to look for a management tool (I settled on FlyCut†), having a sound every time something was sent to my clipboard - normally selecting and copy/cut, using the CLI tool pbcopy or from my password management or text expansion/replacement tools - I would imagine that my computer would sound like a telegraph operator keying out some Morse code.  You might be better served with something that gives you visual feedback rather than audible.

† Flycut is an open source tool that is "free" though the developers do accept donations and I highly encourage folks to send them some compensation if you find their app/utility of use to you. I prefer to support this type development effort because their code is open for all to see.


How do I update the primary email address used by my Apple ID when using Find My iDevice?

As Tyson says, this might help: http://support.apple.com/kb/ts5223

If you can make your AppleID change back to dan@old.com you should then be able to sign out of it on the iDevices. After signing out the iDevices - change the AppleID again to dan@new.com and you're good to go.

The place to change your AppleID (which is used by iCloud and iTunes and the Mac App Store) information is at https://appleid.apple.com/


Possible to reconstruct sparsebundle from bands folder only?

To follow up on this - no, it is conclusively not possible to repair an encrypted sparsebundle without the token file. The token file contains the initialization details and salt for the encryption algorithm, which is just as essential as the passphrase for decrypting the data.


How to enable FileVault after upgrading SSD on a MacBook Pro with no Recovery Partition

I seem to have solved the problem, and FileVault is processing my new SSD as I write this.  Because I did not find a complete solution online, I wanted to put my notes here.

I followed the instructions at https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/how-re-create-missing-recovery-partition-os-x-mattia, basically downloading the Yosemite installer from the App Store, making a separate copy from the Applications folder in case I needed it, and then running the installation.  That post suggested that the installation would take about 30 minutes, but my installation took significantly longer.  The first pass took only about 16 seconds, and then the system rebooted, and the Yosemite installation itself began.  The initial message was that it would take 44 minutes, and the first 43 minutes ran normally, but when the progress bar was at about a minute remaining, it stopped moving, and it literally took several hours for that last minute to complete, but ultimately it did, and the system rebooted.

Once that had completed, running diskutil list in a terminal window does show Apple_Boot Recovery HD.  I was able to configure FileVault, and I have my 2 TB SSD.  The operating system version is 10.10.5, which appears to be the current version, having been released on about August 13.

Finally, I would mention that I did slightly reduce the size of the 2 TB partition to 1.98 TB before running the Yosemite install, so that there would be space for the recovery partition.  However, I don't know that that was necessary, and I probably wouldn't do it next time, especially since I don't seem to be able to change the size again now that I am using FileVault.  Next time, I would make sure that the Recovery Partition was present (using diskutil list from a Terminal window), and then maximize the main partition size.

Also, when I initially created the Mac partition on the new SSD using Disk Utility, I did not create it as an encrypted, but rather used "Mac OS Extended (Journaled)"  I think that was correct, but would be interested if anyone knows a better way.


Are there keyboard shortcuts to move paragraphs up or down while editing text?

I had to disable two default shortcuts in the keyboard control panel (within System Preferences), that were designated for "Mission Control" and "Application Windows". They were getting in the way of me using this shortcut on Mac Word. Once that is disabled, you can use Shift + option/alt + up or down arrow.


You can’t install software that’s not from the App Store except by compiling it yourself from source code (but you need a Mac to do that). And iPads can’t just run Mac software even if Apple would let you install it. They have different CPUs and a different operating system, and can only run software designed to run on iOS. There’s no iOS version of FileMaker (though there’s a client app available).


Why is my MacBook getting hotter than usual since some time?

Sometimes is is good to reset the SMC.

SMC controls the devices on your computer including the fans.

Intel-based Macs: Resetting the System Management Controller (SMC)


How to find out why it takes so long for the sign in form to appear after opening the lid on my Macbook Air

The MBA goes into hibernate mode after several hours of being asleep. Also, if you close it and then open it again rapid the computer will be mid-cycle in going to sleep and will want to finished that before attempting to wake up (which can take some time also). In general Macs today take longer to boot up than they did, but they sip much less power when not being used.

A similar post is here:

MacBook Air takes an eternity to come out of sleep

And some solutions are posted


Making Time Machine Backups while Mac is in Sleep Mode

You can schedule your Mac to wake from sleep or boot at a specific time. Go to System Preferences, then the Energy Saver pane. In there, at the bottom-right, is a "Schedule…" button. Pressing it brings up a sheet where you can set a day and time to wake up and another to go to sleep. If you leave a half-hour or so between the wake up and sleep times, it should have enough time to back up.

I must say, there's not much point in running a Time Machine backup when you haven't been using the computer: if you're not using it, nothing has changed, so there's nothing new to back up. I should also note that if the computer is shut down (like if you're on vacation) it'll boot and then go to sleep if you don't turn the schedule off before you leave.


How do I check the download progress of Mountain Lion through the terminal?

Sure - the storeagent uses a folder deep within /private/var/folders to hold the download progress.

On my Mac it's downloading to this folder below - yours may change, but you should be able to search for the com.apple.appstore using mdfind and use du or ls to see the file size grow.

/private/var/folders/tv/xyw2rpln7hq4gw2m0prg_src0000gn/C/com.apple.appstore/497799835

The App Store has a nicer wrapper on the progress with a time estimate, but with bc and other tools, you could do the same in a short shell script exercise.

If you can't locate your folder, this find command might be of use to narrow down your search....

sudo find /var/folders -type d -name com.apple.appstore -print


You can install it from Mac App Store. Just open it, search for iBooks and enter your Apple ID credentials when prompted.


my iPod touch was stolen and needs locating

You can't locate the iPod unless it has some way of telling its location to you. This is almost always through Wi-Fi.

If there's no network connection, you can't locate it, and there's no way round that.


Will Apple reject an app with "background fetch" which is used to upload a photos

Background Fetch only allows you to download data and the process exit if the transfer time is superior to 30 seconds. There are limited things you can do while the app is in Background mode : Background Execution

If you want to upload your photos in the background you'll need to use background transfer service, but once the task is finished the app will not upload more data. This tutorial explains how to download a file without the application in the foreground but you can use the same logic to send data : iOS 7 SDK: Background Transfer Service


Any issues with using US bought iPhone 11 in the UK?

I don’t recommend purchasing a US phone to be used in the UK. It’s not that it “won’t work” per se, but there are models specific to your region.

iPhone 11 Tech Specs US
iPhone 11 Tech Specs UK

At first glance, the Mobile and Wireless specification for the US lists the A2160 and A2161 models of the iPhone where as the UK  version lists the A2215 and A2218 models.  Specifically, there are differences in some of the FDD-LTE bands which could affect things like speed or particular service availability.

The best course of action would be to confirm with your carrier as to what the differences of the US vs. the UK models would be in relation to your services.


live screencasting solution that supports Power PC Macs

How about Copernicus?

http://danicsoft.com/software/copernicus/

Or this (More promising, as it is live):

http://b-l-a-c-k-o-p.com/GrabberRaster.html


Can an Open Directory (10.8) user's home directory be changed from the terminal?

Yes, it's certainly possible, but you'll need a bit of scripting knowledge to do it entirely. I wish I had a more elegant solution to edit things in place, but here's ham-fisted option if no one has a more surgical option.

I typically use slapcat to dump the current user details to a text file and then process is using perl or whatever other tool you want. Since it's one file, even TextEdit can do a search/replace. By putting the users in a group, you can specify that in slapcat.

At this point, I'd convert that text file into the import format that server app wants - see it's help guide - Server Help: Create a file to import users or groups (or click this after pasting it locally to your Mac help://bookmark='https://help.apple.com/serverapp/mac/2.2/help/index.html?localePath=English.lproj#apd41051F16-D4B7-464F-BD1C-0CBEDF7CA29A')

At this point you could delete the affected records and re-introduce them with the correct home directories.


Macbook hangs when booting up in single user mode

Below is what I did to fix a similar problem, but I already had the root account enabled, which made it a lot easier. If root is not enabled for you, you might be able to use single user mode to accomplish a similar result (move or rename the existing home folder).

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/7502209

I had already tried resetting NVRAM and SMC. It turned out that the update to 10.11.4 didn't like my primary user account. I discovered this by successfully logging in as system administrator (root) while in Safe Boot mode. Root was already enabled using Directory Services.app (/System/Library/CoreServices/Applications/). I needed to migrate my home folder to a new account. I logged in as root, then created a new user in Users and Groups prefpane. Then I used a combination of Terminal commands and the UI to replace the new user's home folder with the one I had used for the account into which I could not log in. This explanation may risk over-simplification, but what I did was this. While logged in as root, I deleted the former user  in Users and Groups leaving the home folder unchanged, deleted the new user's home folder, used the "mv" command to change the name of the old home folder to the name of the new user's home folder, then used a command something like "chown -R new-user-name /Users/new-user-name" to give the new user permissions to the stuff in the old folder. Then I was able to log in and use my stuff. I didn't worry too much about persistent caches, so I have a bit of cleaning up to do, but the old stuff is where it should be now and everything seems to be working.


How to add multiple effects in iMovie 10 (Mavericks)

Not in iMovie 10.0.5, unless you open up a separate project, drag the clip in there, apply the 1st effect, export it, then drag the exported clip it into your main project or 2nd project (if 3 effects or more effects are needed), then add a second (or final effect).


Is there a way to get a crash report (not a core dump) for a command line program?

Looking back, past crashes are logged in the log system, and also individual dump files are saved for about a month in /Library/Logs/DiagnosticReports
Looking forward, to cause them is a bit harder and risky. You could try issuing a SIGABRT or SIGQUIT signal if you know the process:

How to crash an application to produce Crash Report

Something more generic would be the general system diagnostics will capture  much more. The main difference in these two options is a crash has an end point, system diagnosis grabs an arbitrary snapshot, so it isn’t necessarily as final as a crash. I don’t recommend forcing an app to crash and certainly don’t recommend forcing a kernel panic but you could try both. Why not start with a general diagnostic dump:
sudo sysdiagnose

You can pass a process ID or process name to sysdiagnose or also trigger it from the Activity Monitor app.

https://support.apple.com/guide/activity-monitor/welcome/mac

If you need to halt the program or process, try Instruments from Xcode.

https://apps.apple.com/us/app/xcode/id497799835?mt=12


Registered Apple Developer Agreement when under 18

You of legal age now, and meet the current age requirement of the agreement with Apple, so there's nothing to worry about.


Is it possible to arrange or categorize the imported pdf assets from within iTunes first and then sync the devices (iPod,iPad) with iTunes?

You might want to look at Calibre. Famously one of the ugliest Mac apps ever created (although it's much nicer looking now), Calibre is an e-book manager. You can use it to process your books, categorize them, tidy up the metadata etc. and then hit "send to device" to copy the books into iTunes.

I originally used it because my ePub collection for my Sony Reader was in it, and so it was the easiest way to get that to my iPad, but I've stuck with it because it has lots more features than iTunes.


Is there a way to sort photos by file size in iPhoto?

No, there is no way to sort on size in iPhoto. From your context I guess you mean filesize. In iPhoto, size means the dimensions on the Photo (length by breadth, measured in pixels) - see the Export dialogue, for instance. iPhoto is all about the images and not the files that contain them, so I'm not surprised. It's a $15 app, you get a lot, but not everything.


Mac App Store has become dog slow after 10.6.7 update on latest MacBook Pro

Did you by any change change the Certificate settings in Keychain Access?

If so, that's the source of your problem. Go back to Keychain Access > Preferences > Certificates and turn Certificate Revocation List: off.

The Mac App Store should be snappy again after that.


How to make apps not start up automatically on iPhone and iPad?

You might try turning off Background App Refresh.

Settings > General > Background App Refresh > Switch to OFF


Disk utility unable to change partition type

The lock switch on the card was not locked, but after locking and unlocking it (turning it off and back on) again, it worked fine.

Problem solved.


Part of Apple SSD not accessible after failed bootcamp attempt

All the partitions after disk0s2 can be returned to free space. The commands to do so are given below.

sudo diskutil eraseVolume free none disk0s8
sudo diskutil eraseVolume free none disk0s7
sudo diskutil eraseVolume free none disk0s6
sudo diskutil eraseVolume free none disk0s5
sudo diskutil eraseVolume free none disk0s4
sudo diskutil eraseVolume free none disk0s3

Next, the following command adds the free space to the APFS container in the disk0s2 partition.

sudo diskutil apfs resizeContainer disk0s2 0


How can I wake up a MacBook with lid closed?

macOS Sierra, has an option in Energy Saver > Power Adapter to "Wake for Wi-Fi network access." In earlier versions that option was in Network preferences.

Apple Remote Access will wake a Mac this way but I am unaware of any iOS app that does this.

Generally speaking Wake On LAN (WOL) requires the sending device to send a so called "Magic Packet" and the receiving computer to be able to receive it and act upon it. I believe that Apple supports this method of WOL but I have not tested it in quite a while.

So your job will be to find an iOS app that provides WOL capability as it should do what you are looking for.


Cleaning out the ~/Library/LaunchAgents directory worked for me.

See https://discussions.apple.com/thread/251132653

I'll find out later which of the auto start applications fail to load.


Force Mac Installer to Continue Download

No - the installer for the reinstall uses apple's Content Delivery Network (CDN) to download the install image file in parts. There are usually about 500 chunks that get downloaded and then fused into the installer.

(I suppose someone could reverse engineer this process, but it's not documented and signed cryptographically to prevent man in the middle tampering with the downloads - so that might be costly).

What you can do is run a local caching server (on High Sierra - turn on content caching on the Sharing preference pane and on Sierra and lower - install server.app and turn on content caching).

That way whenever any device on your local network downloads these 500 items - they get cached locally and your next download only needs to get pieces that are not already cached. The first time you do recovery for the image needed - you of course download all bits from outside your local network, but until the image changes - you are set.

If you can't afford another download or set up caching server - you can go to the Mac App Store on another Mac and download the OS installer and then create a bootable USB installer - now you have no download and something bootable for the Mac you hoped to use Internet Recovery on.


The issue was with GPT partition. Somehow the disk didn't have it.

After running the next command:

diskutil partitionDisk /dev/disk2 GPT JHFS+ New 0b

disk utility started offering needed encryption options.

/dev/disk2 is the path of removable hard drive.

If you are not sure what is the path, run diskutil list - that will list all the disks and you'll be bale to pick yours.


Segfault when switching to a custom keyboard layout from Touch Bar

I'm using the Bépo layout and I was experiencing the same issue.

I recreated the .icns file using the iconutil command. I just provided the 16x16, 16x16@2x and 32x32 icons.

Create a folder named <your_layout>.iconset
Put your icons inside. They MUST be named icon_16x16.png, icon_16x16@2x.png, icon_32x32.png, …, icon_512x512@2x.png.
Run the command iconutil -c icns <your_layout>.iconset
Copy the resulting .icns file to your keyboard layout.

Since then I had no more TouchBar crash on layout switch.


AppleScript: Get list of 15 most recent files in directory

Change the line,

    set imageName to the file name of imageItem

to

    set imageName to the name of imageItem

and it should work.

EDIT:

Couldn't help but notice that you are not quoting your file names. If any of them contain spaces, then you will have problems. Best to also change

    set concatFiles to concatFiles & " " &  imageName

to

    set concatFiles to concatFiles & " " & quoted form of imageName


How do I remove the recently added section in Music?

No, that section can't be removed.  Many people, including me, would like to be able to customize the start screen like this but I haven't been able to find any credible info on how to do this.


After another 30 minutes of playing, it turned out (competely illogically) the reply/share button leads to a tagging UI.


Disable moving fullscreen windows when clicking on a Dock app

System Preferences → Mission Control and uncheck ‘Automatically rearrange Spaces based on most recent use’.


Looking for a decent time-tracking application for Mac

I am listing the apps I have looked at so far. I must emphasize that none of them really solves the problem stated above perfectly.

Here's what I have looked at so far based on my google doc list

On the Job looks great, but the developer seems to have abandoned it. At least he does not really fix bugs and is very slow to respond to his user base.
Timings light-weight but the UI to create clients, projects and tasks can be confusing. I am testing it right now. A friend uses it and says it crashes sometimes though it has not happended to me yet.
Harvest looks good, it does have a desktop client itself and an API that is used by lots of apps. But it is subscription-only which is a no-go for me and costs at least $12 per month.
The same goes for Toggl: looks good, but is subscription-based and costs $5 per month
iBiz and timeEdition have been discontinued
Klok is an Adobe Air app. The UI feels weird. Small typography, limited support for keyboard shortcuts and complex interface.
OfficeTime feels like the best match so far but the UI is very cluttered (see this screenshot of the Generate Bill dialog as an example). It feels a bit like a Windows app that has been ported to Mac but I am not sure if that's true.
Timecop is a very minimal approach. There is no way to test it without paying the $6.99 price. Has not been updated for 9 months, twitter account has been inactive for 5 months.
Tictoc seems very similar to Timecop. No way to test without buying either.


I found a thread about the simulatecrash command. It says you need to use simulatecrash -h to make it work properly. As for the apps, I don't think you can launch apps from the command line as you would a shell command. You can try /var/Applications/Name.app/Name but I can't confirm if this works because my iPhone is not jailbroken.


Are wireless speeds on Laptop and iPhone the same?

It would largely come down to the hardware components (i.e., related to wireless communication) that each device is composed of.

From the Apple store, you can inspect the list of components within a given device. You want to identify the specific part number/name and the manufacturer. Some device review sites might provide that info as well.

You can then go to manufacturer sites and reference the specific parts, and learn more about the specifications for each part. Doing this comparison, this should answer your questions about the varying performance that you're observing.

Also keep in mind that newer versions of the same hardware model can have more advanced wireless components, which improves performance in the newer product (even though it appears identical to the older model).


Is it safe to upgrade all outdated port when upgrading from Snow Leopard to Lion?

macports.org currently says:
"Note for Lion users: There is no official release supporting Mac OS X 10.7 yet, but you can test the MacPorts 2.0.0 release candidate if you like."

I usually don't upgrade to a new major version of OS X until MacPorts has released their first official support for it.

I agree with Jerry Jacobs that you should probably back up your /opt hierarchy before attempting. Then you could try doing sudo port selfupdate to see if that upgrades you from 1.9.2 (or whatever) to the 2.0.0 release candidate.  If it does, then you can try sudo upgrade outdated.

I wouldn't try doing a sudo upgrade outdated on Lion without at least being on the 2.0.0 release candidate of MacPorts.


Can I put an app bought with an old ID on my iPad with its new ID?

Yes you can.

Open Settings.app
Scroll down and tap on "iTunes & App Stores"
Tap on "Apple ID: [yourappleid@example.com]
Tap Sign out
After signing out of your "new" Apple ID sign in with your old one and download the app.


How to change the default media player on iPhone?

There is no current way to make Pandora Downloader the default music app on iPhone (even jailbroken). There is a way to make Spotify the default music player (see here), but all that tweak does is change the little icon in the multitasking bar. When pressing play the music app still plays. While maybe that is a technical issue, there is also the functional problem of what the phone should do when the button is pressed. Should it play a random song? The first song in a playlist? It's unclear.


"Slow down" bootup until all devices are available

It's Server.app that is creating that mysterious folder that's gumming up your works.

Stop the Server.app from launching when the server boots, and then you can create a cronjob that launches it via a .sh script.

Script should just be something like

#!/bin/bash
/Applications/Server.app

and like the person said in the one link, the cronjob entry would be something along the lines of

@reboot sleep 60 && my_script.sh

That should give your RAID enough time to mount properly before Server.app pops up and creates that folder.


How to prevent "Look Up" functionality from showing link previews?

No definitive answer, but I do have a workaround for you.

Select the link including a whitespace before or after it, then use the look up function on the whitespace part of the selection.

Update: you can also look it up by selecting it and then right clicking a few pixels next to it (see picture). I find the quickest way to do this is right clicking the link to select it, than right clicking again right next to it to make the 'Look up' function appear.


I would started with getting that drive out of MBA with the instruction from iFixit for example.

Then I would buy one of these IDE to 40 pin ZIF adapters and find yourself old PC or Mac with IDE connection.

Fire up DiskWarrior or R-Studio (on Windows) or better and cheaper with DDRescue.
If you want to check if HDD is physically sound you might also try MHDD or Victoria tools (they are DOS and Windows only though).

And if you want to replace that HDD better go with SSD. At least 64GB SSD will do big boost to this old bugger. Provided you have Nvidia in yours. If it is intel I would just replace HDD and sell it.


Is it normal that iPhone 4S touch screen is not working correctly when charging

That's definitely not normal behaviour!

It could be something to do with earthing or voltage though as the screen is capacitive, so try charging from another source to see if it does the same thing. e.g. if you're charging from USB on your computer, try it on another computer if possible, or with the mains adapter. If that fixes your problem, it's possible you have a voltage issue or earth leakage issue on the port.

If it doesn't fix it, then the problem is likely with the iPhone itself.

I've had problems in the past where I was charging my iPhone on a work PC and sometimes when I touched the phone it would reset it. Luckily there was no damage caused, but it was a little weird.


Can I manually re-calibrate the iPhone 4 compass?

There is no setting in the standard iOS that allows this. The easiest way to bring that recalibration screen back up is to briefly put a magnet near your phone.


Swiping Gmail messages to trash not working on iPhone

Go into Settings > Mail, and tap on your Gmail account. Then tap account again, then Advanced. Look for "Move Discarded Messages Into" section and tap Deleted Mailbox.


try renaming /System/Library/CoreServices/Captive Network Assistant.app, i used "no Captive Network Assistant.app" and restarted my Mac.

It's not a real solution just a workaround, it might be related to Apple Servers or something, but it works. Still waiting for Apple to solve this issue. Hope this helps!


I don't think Spotlight keeps a search history. I have confirmed this with numerous web searches. Sorry.


Restore Terminal Tabs with Session History

The saved state of Terminal is stored in this folder.

~/Library/Saved Application State/com.apple.Terminal.savedState/

Quit Terminal, copy the contents of this folder from your backup, then open Terminal.


How to insert new line on return key press in iMessage on Mac OSX

Press option+return or control+return to enter a new line.

Edit: Added additional key combo re: smoooosher's comment to the OP


How to install Windows 8 on a MacBook Pro with OS X Yosemite, using Boot Camp, without a USB drive or DVD

Installing Windows on a Mac via Boot Camp you only have two choices, DVD or USB.  You also need a Windows DVD (Full Install Media not Upgrade Media) or an ISO Image of the Windows DVD to create the USB Installer via the Boot Camp Assistant.

Yes, you'll be able to use the USB drive to store other files after the Boot Camp Assistant has written the files necessary to install Windows via USB.  However you need to first backup what you have on the USB drive as it will be removed in the process of creating the USB Windows Installer.

Note: For use in installing Windows the USB drive will be formatted FAT32 and as such you'll not be able to store files over 4GB in size for use with the "other files" you want to have on the USB drive.


Keyboard option keys work as command keys

Do you have the Logitech Control Center (LCC) software installed?

if so uninstall it and see what happens.

(I had a few issues when I had it installed with crashing and strange things happening to my keyboard (I only had a Logitech Mouse) which at the time all the knowledge on the interwebs told me was down to LCC being a pile of horse puckey.)


Will a thief be able to access the data on my iPad 2 by bypassing the passcode?

Sadly yes, the thief can access your data. All bets are off when they have physical access to your device.

The easiest way for the less scrupulous to gain access to your data is to back up the device through their iTunes via a traditional sync. Once done, they can access that back up with a variety of third party utilities, like iPhone Backup Extractor. They can gain access to your entire profile's contents, like you Address Book entries, pictures, and even your messages.

The process is outline here. This particular place talks of restoring it to another device, but with programs like iPhone Backup Extractor, that is not necessary, as you can pull the data right from the backup.

If you've got access to iCloud, I would strongly suggest a remote wipe of the device. Failing that, pray the thief isn't concerned with your data and just wants the lucrative device for their own use (which is usually the case).


System-wide Keyboard Shortcut for Moving to Sidebar/Next Column

Thinking outside the box:

If the only reason you want the keyboard shortcut, is to avoid your mouse, have you considered a trackpoint keyboard?

Because I had RSI in the past, trackpoint keyboards are about the only ones I can use (even at clients, I usually bring my keyboard, or work from my laptop that has such a keyboard).

The big upside of those keyboards is that you don't have to take your hand of the keyboard in order to use the mouse.
For trackpads I still need to (somehow using my thumb is far less accurate on trackpads than using my index finger, o I still need to lift my hand for pointing).

It takes a little while to get used to a trackpoint, but I can't do without them any more.
USB trackpoint keyboards work equally well on Mac and PC.

--jeroen


How to open boot camp Windows 7 machine in Hyper-V?

Microsoft offers a free conversion utility that is designed to move/copy a physical system to a virtualized environment, specifically Hyper-V: Disk2VHD.

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/ee656415


Optical out does not work on my new 2011 Mac Mini

New macs have 90 days of free phone and online support. Do get the hardware checked out since the optical switch in the port could be faulty or need cleaning from shipping debris.


MacOS, how to get folder size (physical size on disk)

You should go to the terminal and from the terminal cd to the folder you want to get the size of. Once there type: du -h. The last number it prints is the directory size.


A partial solution is to create an "Automation" with the "Shortcuts" app that enters Do-not-disturb mode whenever the smart-alarm app is opened. Then one has to manually exit Do-not-disturb mode every morning upon waking up. Not a perfect solution by any means, but I think it's probably good enough.


Can we use only the bottom mic while recording audio using iPhone 6

Both Filmic Pro and MoviePro lets you select which mic to use for recording.


The surest way to resolve this is to create a fresh Photos Library by following these steps:

⌘ cmd-Q out of Photos.
Go into  → System Preferences → iCloud → Photos Options… and uncheck iCloud Photo Library.

Reboot if you want to be safe, though it shouldn’t be necessary.
Launch Photos with ⌥ opt-click.
Click Create New… and name your new Photos Library.

Go into Photos → Preferences → General and click Use as System Photo Library.

Go into Photos → Preferences → iCloud and check iCloud Photo Library.
Wait for your photos to be redownloaded from iCloud.

If you’d rather try to keep your existing Photos Library, follow these steps instead:

⌘ cmd-Q out of Photos.
Create a backup of your Photos Library.photoslibrary file.
Launch Photos with ⌘ cmd-⌥ opt-click.
Click Repair.

Wait for macOS to repair your Photos Library. A full sync should take place once the repair has completed.

Some screenshots courtesy of OS X Daily.


iCloud needs to check that the restore from backup is the same as the current state on iCloud Drive, so it's not uploading the entire file where it already exists on iCloud Drive but instead just comparing hashes.
This process should be much faster than re-uploading the entire iCloud Drive contents. The progress reported by Finder (in GB) is the size of the files that still need to be checked, not the amount that will be transmitted over the network.
This will also happen in other circumstances where iCloud loses track of the local copy of the drive, such as after a logout of iCloud.


Can't Interact with Second External Monitor

You could try using the program I wrote, displayplacer, which was developed to deal with the wonkiness of macOS screen layouts. For your particular situation, you'll want to run displayplcer list to output your current monitor setup. Then, edit that profile so that it isn't mirroring. Mirrored monitors are after the + sign in the id section. It'll take a bit of fiddling. Once you get it working though, you can assign that displayplacer command to a hotkey. Then, whenever this happens again (usually every time you plug in), type the hotkey to set your monitors to the correct layout.


Ho can I put my custom made emoji designs into keyboard on phone?

To have your custom emoji's appear on your phone, you will need to create a custom font that includes them, and install that font on your phone.  But since these emoji's are not part of the Unicode standard, nobody else will ever be able to see them (unless they also install your font), and you will not find them on any normal keyboard.  To input them and see them on your own phone you would have to also create a custom keyboard which accesses the codepoints of the custom font where they are placed.

Perhaps a better approach would be to create graphics which you could place in emails or messages.


Can Find My iPhone password be different than my Apple ID?

In short, no.

Your alternative would be to use the Find My Friends app, which should be already installed in anything since iOS 9.


Excel 14.4.7 - Issue saving "read only" excel spread sheets

There is a pop up question for you to answer when opening the "read only" file from email attachment.

You have to select "No" as answer if you plan to modify and save in the "original" name.

If you answer "Yes" it will change the file name when saving.


Can I stream music from my laptop to my iPod Touch over wifi?

You can use the Windows version of Airfoil to send any audio to an Airport Express connected to a stereo.  The page above claims it can do the same via an iPod Touch as well.  And you can try it for free.


Can I transfer an Application and its data to a different Mac

You can use the built-in Migration Assistant to move your settings, apps, and documents to the new computer.

  Move your content to a new Mac Use Migration Assistant to copy all of
  your documents, apps, user accounts, and settings to a new Mac from
  another computer.

Here's a document about how to use it (although it's pretty simple and it looks like you're an experienced Mac user).  I can't say for sure that all your customizations will copy over but it's the easiest, most complete, and free option available.


How to determine what kind of Safari plug-in for streaming video is missing?

If you click on the "Missing Plug-in" message in the Safari window it should display a pop-up message that says. This is telling you that you need a plugin that allows you to view WMP (or Windows Media Player) content.

  This page contains content of “application/x-ms-wmp” type. You do not
  have the plug-in required to view this content. This page may have the
  plug-in for you to download and install:

  http://www.microsoft.com/Windows/Downloads/Contents/Products/MediaPlayer/

  Do you want to open the page?

  [Cancel] [OK]

If you click on OK it will then attempt to load that page which, after being redirected a few times, should lead you to http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/personalize-windows-media-player. Unfortunately this page is not very helpful but there is a link to "Get other versions".

If you click on "Get other versions" it takes you to http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/download-windows-media-player which near the very bottom, beside "Mac OS X" has a big purple "Get it now" button.

If you click "Get it now" you are taken to http://www.telestream.net/flip4mac/overview.htm which offers the Flip4Mac plugin as mentioned by Tetsujin in the comment above. Previously Microsoft used to subsidise/sponsor/pay Telestream to distribute Flip4Mac for free but stopped as of May 2004. In theory if you are just wanting to play WMV videos (like the one on that site you linked above) then the 5.95 USD Flip4Mac Player should be enough.

However in my own testing if you purchase and install the Flip4Mac plugin within Safari it still does not work with this site. You just get an error "The operation couldn't be completed. The file is not a movie file. (-2048)" I don't think this is a problem with the plugin necessarily because it works fine on other sites. It just doesn't work for me on this particular site.

I get the same error in Chrome. Even after enabling the soon to be removed NPAPI plugin support that is required for this type of plugin as described here https://support.google.com/chrome/answer/6213033.

So that is how you determine which plugin is required to play video on that site. Sorry I didn't have a more positive answer for you. Hope this helps in some way.


Which USB ethernet classes does iOS support

I don't think Apple has published a publicly available list. However, some manufacturers do seem to have a collaboration with Apple on USB-ethernet devices, so they probably have received documentation from Apple on what's recommended.

I'm currently working on the exact same as you, and have found that CDC ECM does not work, nor does RNDIS over ACM work. And as you describe, it seems devices using CDC NCM can be made to work. I have also tried EEM, but couldn't get it to work - that might be due to errors on my part however.

I haven't got any further information than that at the moment. If you figure out more, please update this space!


Mount Drive based on connection with if else statement (applescript)

Your set ping to statement should have the closing quote after the IP address

In general you are missing a number of end statements. Each try should have a corresponding end try, each tell should have an end tell, each if should have an end if.

The try statements should surround the script action, not inside them. So move them before the tell statements. As you are using them without the 'on error' clause, the try statements aren't very useful - but no harm.

The application should be just "Finder"

Here's a briefer example:
try
    set ping to (do shell script "ping -c 2 192.168.1.240")

    if ping contains "64 bytes" then
        try
            tell application "Finder"
                mount volume "smb://192.168.1.240./music"
            end tell
        end try
        display dialog "Mapped Drives to 192.168.1.240 Network."

    else
        try
            tell application "Finder"
                mount volume "smb://192.168.0.240./music"
            end tell
        end try
        display dialog "Mapped Drives to 192.168.0.240 Network."

    end if
end try


I am retiring and my apple ID and email will be cancelled by my employer. How do I keep some of the content from apple id?

This is a very hard process to generalize, but we have someone that has written about it exceptionally clearly.

https://www.brianstucki.com/blog/how-to-manually-merge-two-apple-ids-to-one/

The process does take a lot of steps as e@ch bucket of data may or may not be fungible, but I would start with a good backup that you know you can restore before you try any changes. Perhaps you do not even need to merge things, but just change the email from school to home and keep the account, erase the school machines when your retirement day draws close.


Best solution to force MacBook Pro 2011 to use integrated graphics (discrete graphics still working though)

The only walk-around, that works is described here: How to disable discrete graphics card and use only integrated graphics MacBook Pro Early 2011?. In short: remove kernel drivers for the discrete gfx card. It will make the MacOs work in the fallback mode without 3d acceleration.

To control the brightness of your screen, I recommend to use: brightness slider. Because, the standard way of changing screen brightness will not work.

ps. The only way, I know, is to overheat your Mac as suggested here and use gfxstatus to force MacOS to use the integreted gfx. Still, MacOS might switch back to discrete gfx for some applications.

If you want to change OS, check this question: Can I use Linux in a 2011 Macbook Pro with a defective discrete GPU?


Haven't used it myself, but Textastic ($10) should help you with a lot of what you're looking to do.

http://www.textasticapp.com/


Is there a system keystroke (interrupt) I can press to force a coredump on OSX?

Sure. Here is the main list of shortcuts.

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201236

First get a sysdiagnose with shift - control - command - option - period

How do you get system diagnostic files from macOS?

Then choose whichever restart or shutdown option you want from Apple’s list.


iPhone Wi-Fi disconnecting when I watch YouTube

Try to troubleshoot, it sounds like you have some problems, which are not related to the application itself.

Some ideas to check:

check the WiFi signal, how many bars do you see in the place where you normally watch it, it could be you covering the signal with someting (phone stand, hands, walls, furniture, etc), and signal goes weaker, until totally lost;
try to connect to another WiFi access point, with the same video application or even the same video clip, and check if you experiencing the same issues;
check the settings on your WiFi router (or data plan limitations with your provider), may be it has some bandwidth limitation, and when you watch videos which are heavy on traffic - it just cuts the bandwidth, or something;
connect another phone of your friend, preferably with the same phone model to the same WiFi access point, to understand if the issue is connected to specific phone, or to specific access point.
try to reboot WiFI router, and the Iphone, to see if this will help as well, it could be some temporary hardware/software glitch.
if your WiFi router has several WiFi bandwidths: 5GHz and standard - try switching to one mode, without 5GHz, sometimes it helps, as phone is shifting between them and might loose the connection.

Hope this helps you to troubleshoot!


MacOS Sierra - Automator/Shortcut to disable proxy?

Instead of using Watch Me Do for scripting System Preferences UI interactions, add a Shell Script action with the following:

networksetup -setautoproxystate Wi-Fi off

where ‘Wi-Fi’ is the name of the network service you are modifying, shown selected in the left sidebar when viewing the Network preference pane.


No bookmark icon next to bookmark item in Safari 8.0.7 (Yosemite 10.10.4)

I too miss that, I actually use Chrome at the moment, and it was one of the big things I missed.

Unfortunately there is no way to recover this behaviour, Safari is a much faster browser option on OS X than Chrome or Firefox at the moment.

I choose to use Chrome still, but you might just get used to it...


MacBook Pro new battery not charging. Defective?

That certainly looks like a dead battery.  iFixit sells a replacement kit starting at $99 (USD).


how to not show two version app when open file in mac osx?

If you don't want the older applications on your backup drive to appear in the Open With menu you could drop the Applications folder of the backup drive in the "Prevent Spotlight from searching these locations" box within the Spotlight Privacy tab within System Preferences.

When Spotlight removes them from the index they should be removed from LaunchServices services as well. If after an short while they haven't disappeared then you might need to give LaunchServices a little nudge with the command from Chris Magnussen's answer.


It may be fried, although 4 years is much shorter than expected lifetime.
When it was "was chugging along nicely" until now, I think a FW update will not succeed, nor be the cause of this stroke. It may be too full also.
I suppose that you already tried to see it in the Recovery Partition (start with CMD+R) and "repair disk" it with DiskUtility.


What Photogrammetry software is available on Mac OS X?

Have you tried:

VisualSFM is a GUI application for 3D reconstruction using structure from motion (SFM).
MeshLab is an open source, portable, and extensible system for the processing and editing of unstructured 3D triangular meshes.
bundler_sfm is a structure-from-motion system for unordered image collections.
123D Catch is a free app that lets you create 3D scans of virtually any object.
openMVG is a library for computer-vision scientists and especially targeted to the Multiple View Geometry community.

Several more here:

Open Source Photogrammetry: Ditching 123D Catch
http://wedidstuff.heavyimage.com/index.php/2013/07/12/open-source-photogrammetry-workflow/

and here:

Software - Photogrammetric Vision Lab
http://www.photogrammetric-vision.com/software.html


Will macbook pro mid 2012 gt650m show 2560 resolution on a 4k display?

No it will not. According to http://support.apple.com/en-us/HT6008:

"You can use 4K displays and Ultra HD TVs with these Mac computers.

MacBook Pro (Retina, Late 2013 and later)
Mac Pro (Late 2013)
iMac (27-inch, Late 2013 and later)
Mac mini (Late 2014)"


Can the mid-2010 Macbook support more than 4GB of RAM?

It depends on your particular model, but I believe that the answer is YES!  The great people at Other World Computing sell RAM upgrade kits for MacBooks.

To be sure:

Go to Apple -> About This Mac
Click More Information.
Look at the Model Identifier.

If it is MacBook 5,1 or 6,1 or 6,2 you can put 8GB of RAM in it.

http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/memory/Apple_MacBook_MacBook_Pro/Upgrade/Macbook_selector


Virtual Hosts Not Working on OSX Mavericks

It looks like you have nearly everything correct. I'm running Mavericks with a couple dozen virtual hosts, so this should work for you.

First, and this might be all you need to do to fix things, you need to enclose your DocumentRoot in quotes. So,

DocumentRoot /Users/gdboling/Sites/rocket-gen

becomes

DocumentRoot "/Users/gdboling/Sites/rocket-gen"

Next, add the following to your /etc/hosts file, on the line immediately following what you already have. Your hosts file should be:

You have this part:

127.0.0.1    local.rocket-gen.com

Now add this right below:

::1     local.rocket-gen.com

I have each of my vhosts set in hosts this way.


You can check the battery's capacity to see if there's a problem with that. I use the free CoconutBattery. It will give you the percentage of the battery's full capacity (what it had when it shipped) that it has at this point.

It's possible that you may have some errant process running that are eating up your battery. Open Activity Monitor and click the CPU column head so that it sorts by CPU usage. Is there anything there that shouldn't be?


iPhone asks for Apple ID password on third party app launch after iTunes sync

I can't answer the part about if what is going on is fishy but I have a similar experience when I log in iTunes with a DIFFERENT account than my phone but this is apparently not your case.  As far as the second part of the question no this does not happen to everyone.


What does Mail do when it sends Windows friendly attachments?

According to http://www.ncmug.org/tips/mail_attachments.html:

  By default, Mail assumes your recipient is also a Mac user and therefore includes the resource forks (if any) of attached files. Normally a Mac user sees such attachments as a single file, whereas a Windows user sees two individual files - one containing the data fork of the file and the other containing the resource fork.

  When you choose "Windows Friendly" attachments, Mail strips the resource fork so that Windows users receive just one file, not two (one of which would be unusable anyway). In most cases - at least for files created with modern applications - all the crucial parts of files are in the data fork; as long as the filename has the correct extension and they have an appropriate application, Windows users can open the file.


Open a single Pages document in two windows?

It's pretty clear to me that the ask is for two views into the same document, either two windows, or a split screen — as has been offered in Word and many other word processors and text editors for a long time.

I believe the short answer is no.

See https://discussions.apple.com/thread/1972415?start=0&tstart=0


Can I delete old iOS installer files on my macbook?

iOS installer files (IPSWs) can be safely removed.

IPSWs are not used as part of the backup or backup restore procedure, only for iOS restore, and as you can only restore signed IPSWs the older IPSWs can't be used anyway (without exploits).

You can always re-download IPSWs from Apple's site if you need them in the future.


Applications sometimes reopen at start-up in Mountain Lion

Here are a few places to check:

"Under the hood" locations:

Be careful when working with the plist files in the folders listed below. Some of them may be full programs, others may be "helper apps".
Don't touch any plist files for programs you use that may have "behind-the-scenes" assets.
If the plist filename is ambiguous, you can look inside the plist files for the name of the application. If there are remnants from old programs you have uninstalled or were before upgrade, move the file(s) in question to your desktop one folder at a time (/Library/StartupItems), then reboot.
If your system works as expected (meaning nothing catastrophic happens and the program you were trying to kill is gone), throw the plist files on your desktop away, then proceed to the next folder and repeat the process.
When working with files in the Library folders, you may need to authenticate deletes as an administrator.
/Library/StartupItems
~/Library/StartupItems (if it exists)
/Library/LaunchDaemons
/Library/LaunchAgents
~/Library/LaunchAgents (if it exists)

System Preferences: Take a look at Users & Groups in your System Preferences and click on the Login Items button at the top of the window. Check if any programs that automatically load after reboot are on the list and set to run at login.

While there may be other ways to clean house, including formatting your hard dive and a fresh install of Mountain Lion (Check out Lion Diskmaker for a thumb drive installer for 10.8), these will give you a good start.

Happy cleaning!


Why is this dialog being displayed when I start firefox?

This isn't a dialog, this is the result of mounting (opening) the Firefox.dmg (think of it as an archive or drive image). For mac users it's obvious - you should drag the FF icon to the Applications folder shortcut (the blue folder). This will copy the Firefox application in the /Applications/ folder. Then just unmount (eject) the Firefox.dmg archive and start Firefox from Applications (like you start the rest of your applications).


Start or Stop Apache without having to give a password?

Open Terminal and enter sudo visudo to modify the file /etc/sudoers.

Change the part:

## User privilege specification
##
root ALL=(ALL) ALL
%admin  ALL=(ALL) ALL

to

## User privilege specification
##
root ALL=(ALL) ALL
%admin  ALL=(ALL) ALL
your_username ALL=(ALL) NOPASSWD: /usr/sbin/apachectl

and save the file.

If you don't know vi: after entering sudo visudo you have to change to insert mode by hitting i. Enter the additional line as indicated above. To leave insert mode hit esc. Then enter :wq and the Enter key to write the modified file to disk and quit vi.

Starting and stoping Apache with sudo apachectl start or sudo apachectl stop doesn't require a password anymore.

apachectl requires root/sudo to execute it. Only the root user can execute the command without entering a password. Neither adding a user to the admin group nor to another group (e.g. _www) allows to execute (sudo )apachectl without password.

So, the least intrusive method is adding a user - even a standard user - in the sudoers file and restrict the account to execute /usr/sbin/apachectl only. The added user is not allowed to execute any other command as sudoer!


Getting Individual Filenames in Automator

Note: This answer was written based on the original posting of the question and in particular the first three paragraphs of this answer, sans this note. Since then, the OP has been updated to address what was expressed in the first three paragraphs and they may now seem out of context. However, looking at the edit history of the OP one can see the relevance in context of the original question. They will remain for now until I have the time to make an appropriate edit.

Sorry, but your question is not that well defined and it's not totally clear what actions you added to the Automator Folder Action workflow, sans the obvious Run AppleScript action. Nor is it clear if there are any actions added before or after the Run AppleScript action. Additionally, it's not clear what code is in /Users/jeffolaa/pointer.sh or all of what it's doing. Which leads me to believe that just passing the name of the file to pointer.sh may not be enough. Although without seeing the code in pointer.sh, at this point only you know.

Also, the form of the AppleScript code you've shown in the OP is not the proper form for an Automator Folder Action workflow using a Run AppleScript action. The on adding folder items handler is of the type used in an AppleScript script (.scpt) file that is manually assigned to the target folder using the Folder Action Setup... command from the Services context menu in Finder, not Automator, where you need to use the on input handler in the Run AppleScript action.

You also have no error handling code, which is important in Folder Actions and the type and amount can depend on what you have coded in the pointer.sh. In other words, you might want to filter the items added to the folder by type, making sure it's a file not a folder, or a particular type of file with a given extension, etc. This can be done in Automator before it gets to the Run AppleScript action, or in the code of the Run AppleScript action, or in the code in pointer.sh, or a combination of any or all of them.

With that said, the following example AppleScript code is a minimal coding of what makes sense to be able to pass the quoted fully qualified pathname of the file(s) added to the target folder you set in Automator's Folder Action receives file and folders added to [folder] to pass to  pointer.sh, as that's typical of an argument passed to a shell command.

Minimal example AppleScript code for use in a Run AppleScript action in an Automator Folder Action workflow:

on run {input, parameters}
    repeat with i from 1 to count input
        try
            set thisItem to item i in input
            set thisItemsPathname to quoted form of POSIX path of thisItem
            do shell script "/Users/jeffolaa/pointer.sh " & thisItemsPathname
        end try
    end repeat
end run

Minimal example AppleScript code for use in an AppleScript script (.scpt) file manually assigned to the target folder using the Folder Action Setup... command from the Services context menu in Finder:

on adding folder items to thisFolder after receiving theseItems
    repeat with i from 1 to count theseItems
        try
            set thisItem to item i in theseItems
            set thisItemsPathname to quoted form of POSIX path of thisItem
            do shell script "/Users/jeffolaa/pointer.sh " & thisItemsPathname
        end try
    end repeat
end adding folder items to

Note: To use an AppleScript script (.scpt) file using the Folder Action Setup... command from the Services context menu in Finder, it first must be added to the ~/Library/Scripts/Folder Action Scripts folder that's within your Home folder.

To test the above code, I created the /Users/jeffolaa/pointer.sh file with the following code in it:

#!/bin/bash

mv "$1" "$HOME/Test/"

Which simply moves the files back to the folder from which they were dragged from to the target folder the Folder Action is assigned to, which is a folder within the Test folder. This let me know it was working properly as coded.

Now if it's just the name of the file you want to pass to pointer.sh, you can use the following:

Minimal example AppleScript code for use in a Run AppleScript action in an Automator Folder Action workflow:

on run {input, parameters}
    repeat with i from 1 to count input
        try
            set thisItem to item i in input
            set thisItemsInfo to info for thisItem
            set thisItemsFileName to quoted form of name in thisItemsInfo
            do shell script "/Users/jeffolaa/pointer.sh " & thisItemsFileName
        end try
    end repeat
end run

Minimal example AppleScript code for use in an AppleScript script (.scpt) file manually assigned to the target folder using the Folder Action Setup... command from the Services context menu in Finder:

on adding folder items to thisFolder after receiving theseItems
    repeat with i from 1 to count theseItems
        try
            set thisItem to item i in theseItems
            set thisItemsInfo to info for thisItem
            set thisItemsFileName to quoted form of name in thisItemsInfo
            do shell script "/Users/jeffolaa/pointer.sh " & thisItemsFileName
        end try
    end repeat
end adding folder items to

Note: To use an AppleScript script (.scpt) file using the Folder Action Setup... command from the Services context menu in Finder, it first must be added to the ~/Library/Scripts/Folder Action Scripts folder that's within your Home folder.

To test the above code, I edited the pointer.sh file with the following code in it:

#!/bin/bash

say "$1"

Which simply says the name of the file held in thisItemsFileName, which let me know it was working properly as coded.

Note: The example AppleScript code above is just that, and sans wrapping it in a try statement, does not include any other error handling as may be appropriate/needed/wanted, the onus is upon the user to add any appropriate error handling for any example code presented and or code written by the oneself.

That said, if you'd update your question to fill in the missing pieces as mentioned in the opening paragraphs of my answer, I'll be glad to edit these code examples to reflect what appropriate error handling should be added. There's just no sense adding it until I know the particulars.


Does plugging in an iPhone/iPad make a difference to its battery lifespan?

Deeper discharge/charge cycles shorten an Li-Ion battery's lifespan faster that shallow ones.  (e.g. One 100% cycle is more wearing that four 25% cycles, etc.)  Therefore, keeping an iPad or iPhone on a charger or always topped off between short uses will tend to lengthen the battery's total lifespan by reducing the number of deeper cycles per annum, all other thing being equal (such as total time of use).

"Calibrating" has almost nothing to do with the battery lifespan.  It's mostly needed to help the battery gauge icon behave more accurately.  Once or twice a year is probably good enough for that purpose.


I had to format the Mac and did a clean install. This solved it.


place text over image without imagemagick

You could try using a scripting language that comes installed with OS X, such as  PHP or Ruby, and write a command line script using that.

Here's an example using PHP:

<?php

/*
Usage
php addtext.php input.png "The text"
*/

//  The source image (taken from the command line argument)
$image = imagecreatefrompng($argv[1]);

//  The text (taken from the command line argument)
$text = $argv[2];

//  Red colour
$colour = imagecolorallocate($image, 255, 0, 0);

//  Change font as desired
$font = '/Library/Fonts/Impact.ttf';

//  Add the text
imagettftext($image, 20, 0, 20, 30, $colour, $font, $text);

//  Save the image
imagepng($image, 'out-image.png');

//  Free up memory
imagedestroy($image);

?>

Save this script to a file called something like addtext.php and then run it like this…

php addtext.php image.png "Some text to add"

This example script should output an image called out-image.png with the text added, using the Impact True Type font that's installed with OS X, in the same directory as the PHP script.

You may want to read up on PHP's imagettftext function to play around with the text rendering.

Something similar could be done in Ruby, Python, etc. but I'm not sure of the "in-built" image manipulation / creation commands / libraries that come installed with OS X for those scripting languages.

Hope this is a good starting point.


MacOS Catalina change word delimiter language region setting

To choose a region go to System Preferences and then to Language and Region. In Language and Region there is an option to select you region.  Mine was initially set to United States which is what I want.
You can try putting quotes around the name with dashes in it. and see if that works. or convert - to _ and use that.
I'm running Big Sur on an iMac.


OS X Lion, Safari: could not turn off antialiasing

It looks like the code to handle that was stripped out finally in May, 2011. It conflicted with the new way of drawing and it's not clear if we can influence the threshold in the same way.

It might be best to ask / file a bug against WebKit which drives Safari's rendering.

To me, the new code works so much better, I don't need the speedup or the control.

See http://www.ichemlabs.com/618 for details, but here is the nice chemical rendering that shows the differences between the old and new default behavior. Full size, it's impressive how much better the rendering is at the same (or better) rendering speed.


how stop google calendars repeating events on additional calendars

After extensive research, it seems google knows about this, and apologizes and is working to fix it.

http://productforums.google.com/forum/#!topic/calendar/AWJSWllOt9Y/discussion


There are two places you need to check, both under "Settings": "Mobile" and "App Store." Under "Mobile", find Use mobile data for: and scroll down until you find App Store. Make sure the switch is toggled to green. Next, go back to Settings and scroll down until you see "iTunes & App Store." Click on that and make sure "Use mobile data" is toggled to green.

If you are in the US or another region, "Mobile" may be labelled "Cellular" and "Use mobile data" may be "Use cellular data"

Here are two screen shots to help direct you:

And this:


Get Info shows incorrect volume size for ZFS pool on MacOs Catalina

You don't need to worry, I think.
Short and quick explanation

Get Info's "Available" is correct, but "Capacity" is not what you intuitively expect it be. It's actually used space + available space of the corresponding ZFS dataset (not the pool! it's the dataset inside the pool).
Moreover, Get Info uses decimal units, zfs uses binary units.

A more detailed explanation follows.
There are two different things going on here.
Decimal units and binary units.
First of all, Finder's Get Info returns Kilobytes, Gigabytes and Terabytes in base 10 (KB, GB and TB), while command line tools such as df, zfs and zpool report values that use base 2 (KiB, Gib, TiB).
This means that 1GB = 1000^3 = 10^9 bytes, not the same number of bytes as 1GiB = 1024^3 = 2^30. In fact, 1GB = ~0.931GiB. Google provides a handy digital sizes converter to play with these conversions.
This is true of any filesystem you use on your Mac. On my system, I have a HFS+ partition. Its size is reported as such:

60GB by Get Info;
56G by df -h.

Capacity, as reported by the ZFS datasets to the OS, is not the underlying pool size, but something else.
ZFS is not just a filesystem, but a Volume Manager too. You could have any ZFS Dataset inside your pool, sharing the same available space, each consuming up a portion of it. You start with a root dataset, but you could add any number.
What does your "Get Info" report? Hint, it's not the size of your pool, even though intuitively, you were probably expecting that. My guess is, it probably reports a number regarding your root ZFS dataset (which is not the same as your pool!), and that number should be USED bytes + AVAILABLE bytes.
Let's check it on a real system.
I have a pool named Tank on my system. zpool list's output is:
NAME   SIZE  ALLOC   FREE
Tank  1.81T  1.32T   509G

I have three datasets inside it: the root, Tank, and two nested datasets, Tank/DataOne and Tank/DataTwo. zfs list's output is:
NAME           USED   AVAIL   REFER
Tank          1.32T    451G    336K
Tank/DataOne  45.9G    451G   45.8G
Tank/DataTwo  1.27T    451G   1.21T

Note that I don't keep any real data inside the root dataset. USED reports all space consumed by the datasets, its snapshots, its nested datasets and their snapshots. REFER reports space used by the filesystem itself at the current time (no snapshots, no nested stuff). You can see that most of the data is in DataTwo, with 0.06TiB of snapshots too. There are finer grained options to zfs list if you want to: zfs list -o space adds also the columns USEDSNAP USEDDS USEDREFRESERV USEDCHILD).
Let's go on and see what non-ZFS tools say. df -h output is:
Filesystem        Size  Used Avail
/dev/disk2s1      451G  336K  451G
Tank/DataOne      497G   46G  451G
Tank/DataTwo      1.7T  1.3T  451G

Get Info says:
Name     Capacity  Available
Tank     483.81GB   483.81GB
DataOne  533.02GB   483.81GB
DataTwo    1.82TB   483.81GB

Conclusions
You can easily see that the values of df's "SIZE" and Get Info's "Capacity" are the same number of bytes, with different units. Rounding up the results: 483.8GB = 451GiB, 533GB = 497GiB, and 1.82TB = 1.7TiB.
More important, let's see if the sum of zfs's AVAIL + REFER values equals df and Get Info values, or not.
NAME    AVAIL  + REFER
Tank     451G  +  336K = 451GiB = 483GB
DataOne  451G  + 45.8G = 497GiB = 533GB
DataTwo  451G  + 1.21T = 1.65TiB = 1.81TB

The last value differs slightly, but I think it's due to rounding ups here and there that skew the result. Apart from that, everything checks perfectly.


iPhone battery life continually worsening

The symptoms you report are common of lithium power cells that are failing.

Why not have it looked at by Apple as they have online battery diagnosis available from web support and if you bought it from an Apple Reseller or Apple Directly, the warranty should cover the problem if the battery isn't performing correctly.


Automator fails. Is there a better solution?

You can add certs to a keychain with the command line tool security

It's been a while since I've used it, but IIRC the command would be:

security add-trusted-cert -r trustRoot -k /path/to/keychain /path/to/cert

Read the man page:

https://developer.apple.com/library/mac/documentation/Darwin/Reference/ManPages/man1/security.1.html


Is there a way for me to view my work or my whole iMac screen in grayscale?

Yes you can!

Follow these steps:

Go to Apple > System Preferences > Accessibility
In the left hand pane make sure Display is selected
On the right hand side you’ll see a number of checkboxes and sliders
Tick the Use grayscale checkbox

Your iMac’s display should immediately switch to grayscale mode.

TIP: Since you only need grayscale while you’re working on this job, you can tick the Show Accessibility status in menu bar checkbox at bottom left of the Accessibility preferences. This way you can access this setting as you need directly from the menu bar.


Macbook Pro Retina 15" nearly burning my fingers, is this normal?

From what I've seen so far from others with the same laptop is that it's normal.

One possible fix/improvement to this is the latest Apple SMC update which contains some fixes for this: http://support.apple.com/kb/DL1559

It also reduces the amount of noise your fans start making with even a little bit of load so it is quite useful.


It was a known bug which has already been fixed by Apple. By running Software Update on your Mac you'll be good to go!


The first step is to make a new user account.

Does calendar app itself contain the problem with no calendar data?

Then you can isolate things from the network. Pull any wired networks and power down WiFi and restart. Retest calendar in the test account (which presumably is always fast and responsive) and your account (which is slow now).

Once you've done that, you can enable networking, sign out of your account and add your calendar source data one by one (if you maintain several calendars in OS X) to the test account to tell if your data is slowing the app.

Assuming you have a speedy calendar in the test account with your real calendar data - you can conclude that your caches for the data was the cause of the slowness. When that happens, I usually move everything over to a new account since the corruption in one app is almost always shared in another.

To make sure the disk isn't causing further issues:

delete the calendar data from the test account
make a full backup (if you like) as well as a Time Machine backup
restart the Mac to recovery HD to repair the volume with Disk Utility (or do a safe boot which runs the same filesystem check)
use the test account to remove the old account - keeping the files on disk (don't erase and don't make an image of the home folder when asked)
make the normal user account and then use that to move back the data from the old home folder


How to add OneDrive as an attachment location in iPad Gmail app?

I'm doing this via iPhone but the same findings should hold.

Question 1: I believe no is the answer, unfortunately. The closest you could get to having this button is also having Google Drive, sending from OneDrive to GoogleDrive from inside of OneDrive or a third party multi-cloud app and then using the Google Drive attachment button which exists within the Gmail app. The 'export to Gmail' option you've already found within OneDrive seems like the much better solution to me.

Question 2: I believe the answer to this one is that it's not possible to save the drafts. If you want to work on the email later and hence don't want to send it immediately, the best work-around is to send it to yourself and then edit it and send to the final recipient from your inbox.

Sadly I can't offer a better solution but hopefully this is of some help or at least offers some closure to your query.

Best wishes,

JB_199


I was just told that this is in fact my host name, and by calling hostname the mystery was effectively solved. It turned out to be because I was connected to the university's network rather than my own, which changed my hostname.

The reason I couldn't properly execute shell scripts was an unrelated oddity. Apparently the permissions on the scripts I tried were not set properly. Coincidences made me link the two problems.


Can I change the color of the current date in Mavericks Calendar?

I am sorry to say that after examining the plist for 10.9 Calendar.app I don't even see a way to change the color via command line. Sorry good sir but I gave it my best.


OS X 10.11.1 El Capitan has disabled the keyboard sound keys

What happened here is that your FN key settings got reverted - there's an option that the F-keys either transmit their assigned key (so F10 means F10), or the additional function (so F10 means mute).

Normally, this is set to function mode, so F10 means mute. You can change this in your Keyboard settings in system preferences.

If the "Use as standard function keys" option is turned on, you will need to hit Fn to access the mute key. If it's turned off, you will not need to hit Fn, but if you want to send an actual F10, then you need to hold Fn.


File don't show with "ls -a" but was detected by Malwarebytes

I would do the directory listing as root or with a sudo.  It is possible that the malware changed permissions on the plist file.


How to move movies already contained in library to external drive?

There's an easier solution to this than re-importing, and it works for both movies and songs (and probably everything else, but I haven't had reason to try it on any other media type).

In iTunes, go to the File menu, then select Library, and then Organize Library.  On the resulting dialog, check "Consolidate files".  When you hit OK, any files that have somehow gotten stored in the wrong place will move back to where they belong on your external drive.

After this has completed (it might take a couple of minutes, since I'm assuming that a movie file is big), you can test it out.  Command-click on your movie and select "get info", and then look at its file location on the General tab.  Its file location should show that it's on the external hard drive.  Then you can try to play it.  If it plays successfully, you can then delete it from your internal hard drive.


Some of my Google calendar contents just disappeared in Calendar.app

Just received a notification that Google calendar was experiencing syncing problems with Apple calendar.  Reference MacRumors


Text to Speech shortcuts with two languages

Say as …

You can use the say command with OS X's other voices to get different languages. Use the Thomas voice to get French pronunciation or Yannick for German.

In this example, I will use Thomas and French as this is what I know but Yannick should work as well for German text.

Try the following command in Applications > Utilities > Terminal.app:

say -v Thomas  "Bonjour. Je m'appelle Thomas."

If this is acceptable, you can wrap the say command up in an Automator service; which we will do next.

Automator Service

To create the Automator Service:

Launch Automator.app
Create a new Quick Action (previously Service)
Add a Run AppleScript action
Copy and paste in the AppleScript below:

on run {input, parameters}
    do shell script "say -v Thomas " & (quoted form of (input as string))
    return input
end run

Save the service as Speak in French

To use the service:

Select text in TextEdit or Safari
Control + Click to reveal the Context Menu
Select Services > Speak in French

Et voilà ! Other languages and voices are available.

This Automator approach allows you to keep your computer default voice set to your preferred language. While allowing selected text to be read in the alternative voice.

Available Voices and Languages

You can list the available voices and their associated languages with the command:

say -v ?

The available voices can change between versions of macOS. On macOS 10.13, the command returns:

Alex                en_US    # Most people recognize me by my voice.
Alice               it_IT    # Salve, mi chiamo Alice e sono una voce italiana.
Alva                sv_SE    # Hej, jag heter Alva. Jag är en svensk röst.
Amelie              fr_CA    # Bonjour, je m’appelle Amelie. Je suis une voix canadienne.
Anna                de_DE    # Hallo, ich heiße Anna und ich bin eine deutsche Stimme.
Carmit              he_IL    # שלום. קוראים לי כרמית, ואני קול בשפה העברית.
Damayanti           id_ID    # Halo, nama saya Damayanti. Saya berbahasa Indonesia.
Daniel              en_GB    # Hello, my name is Daniel. I am a British-English voice.
Diego               es_AR    # Hola, me llamo Diego y soy una voz española.
Ellen               nl_BE    # Hallo, mijn naam is Ellen. Ik ben een Belgische stem.
Fiona               en-scotland # Hello, my name is Fiona. I am a Scottish-English voice.
Fred                en_US    # I sure like being inside this fancy computer
Ioana               ro_RO    # Bună, mă cheamă Ioana . Sunt o voce românească.
Joana               pt_PT    # Olá, chamo-me Joana e dou voz ao português falado em Portugal.
Jorge               es_ES    # Hola, me llamo Jorge y soy una voz española.
Juan                es_MX    # Hola, me llamo Juan y soy una voz mexicana.
Kanya               th_TH    # สวัสดีค่ะ ดิฉันชื่อKanya
Karen               en_AU    # Hello, my name is Karen. I am an Australian-English voice.
Kyoko               ja_JP    # こんにちは、私の名前はKyokoです。日本語の音声をお届けします。
Laura               sk_SK    # Ahoj. Volám sa Laura . Som hlas v slovenskom jazyku.
Lekha               hi_IN    # नमस्कार, मेरा नाम लेखा है. मैं हिन्दी में बोलने वाली आवाज़ हूँ.
Luca                it_IT    # Salve, mi chiamo Luca e sono una voce italiana.
Luciana             pt_BR    # Olá, o meu nome é Luciana e a minha voz corresponde ao português que é falado no Brasil
Maged               ar_SA    # مرحبًا اسمي Maged. أنا عربي من السعودية.
Mariska             hu_HU    # Üdvözlöm! Mariska vagyok. Én vagyok a magyar hang.
Mei-Jia             zh_TW    # 您好，我叫美佳。我說國語。
Melina              el_GR    # Γεια σας, ονομάζομαι Melina. Είμαι μια ελληνική φωνή.
Milena              ru_RU    # Здравствуйте, меня зовут Milena. Я – русский голос системы.
Moira               en_IE    # Hello, my name is Moira. I am an Irish-English voice.
Monica              es_ES    # Hola, me llamo Monica y soy una voz española.
Nora                nb_NO    # Hei, jeg heter Nora. Jeg er en norsk stemme.
Paulina             es_MX    # Hola, me llamo Paulina y soy una voz mexicana.
Samantha            en_US    # Hello, my name is Samantha. I am an American-English voice.
Sara                da_DK    # Hej, jeg hedder Sara. Jeg er en dansk stemme.
Satu                fi_FI    # Hei, minun nimeni on Satu. Olen suomalainen ääni.
Serena              en_GB    # Hello, my name is Serena. I am a British-English voice.
Sin-ji              zh_HK    # 您好，我叫 Sin-ji。我講廣東話。
Tessa               en_ZA    # Hello, my name is Tessa. I am a South African-English voice.
Thomas              fr_FR    # Bonjour, je m’appelle Thomas. Je suis une voix française.
Ting-Ting           zh_CN    # 您好，我叫Ting-Ting。我讲中文普通话。
Tom                 en_US    # Hello, my name is Tom. I am an American-English voice.
Veena               en_IN    # Hello, my name is Veena. I am an Indian-English voice.
Victoria            en_US    # Isn't it nice to have a computer that will talk to you?
Xander              nl_NL    # Hallo, mijn naam is Xander. Ik ben een Nederlandse stem.
Yelda               tr_TR    # Merhaba, benim adım Yelda. Ben Türkçe bir sesim.
Yuna                ko_KR    # 안녕하세요. 제 이름은 Yuna입니다. 저는 한국어 음성입니다.
Yuri                ru_RU    # Здравствуйте, меня зовут Yuri. Я – русский голос системы.
Zosia               pl_PL    # Witaj. Mam na imię Zosia, jestem głosem kobiecym dla języka polskiego.
Zuzana              cs_CZ    # Dobrý den, jmenuji se Zuzana. Jsem český hlas.


Does this happen on another user's account on this Mac? If you don't have other user accounts, go ahead and create one to test the problem - you can always delete it later - to see if the problem occurs on this new account. If it doesn't occur, then this sounds like the permissions on your user account are all munged up and you need to try the first method below. If the problem occurs with other and/or new accounts, or recurs after trying the first step with your user account, then try the second method.

The first method is to attempt to fix the permissions on your own user folder:

From the Finder menu bar, choose Go > Home. Your home folder opens.
Choose File > Get Info. An Info window for your home folder opens.
If the Sharing & Permissions section at the bottom of the window isn't open, click the triangle  in that section to open it.
If the lock icon at the bottom of the window is 'locked', click the lock and enter an administrator name and password.
Click the action menu (Gear with downward arrow) then choose “Apply to enclosed items.” Click OK to confirm the action.

The 'Apply to all items' process may take quite a while, especially if your user account has many thousands (or hundreds of thousands) of files. Once it is finished, restart the Mac or logout from your account then login again.

If the first method does not fix your user folder permissions, then you need get more drastic, you need to reinstall macOS from macOS Recovery. Details about how to do that at the Apple Support page.

Lastly, if the macOS Recovery method does not work, you need to have a backup of your Mac, then erase the startup disk, reinstall macOS or restore from backup.

Methods derived from this Apple Support page.


Getting Data back from damaged .pages file

The folder was originally a file created in Numbers not Pages.
Since I was given data as a folder with some .iwa files. When I read on internet about opening those files, all posts were regarding Pages rather Numbers. As package contents were same for both formats (.pages and  .numbers) I kept trying opening the folder (by extending .pages) in Pages.
Later on I tried Numbers (giving extension .numbers to folder) and it worked instantly.