Does using the new FileVault use up less disk space than Legacy FileVault?

The two technologies share nothing except the name and cannot be directly compared.  The old Filevault created a spare bundle image file for your home folder, which was encrypted.  The new one simply encrypts the whole drive in a way that is invisible to the user.

If anything there may be a slight overheard to managing a sparsebundle which will not be there for whole disk encryption, but I doubt that it will be significant enough to make it a part of your decision to use it or not.


Where on my pc does iTunes store the backup?

From Locate backups of your iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch:

  iTunes places the backup files in the following places:

  Mac: ~/Library/Application Support/MobileSync/Backup/
  Windows XP: \Documents and Settings\(username)\Application Data\Apple Computer\MobileSync\Backup\

  Note: To quickly access the Application Data folder, click Start, and choose Run. Type %appdata% and click OK.
  Windows Vista, 7, 8, 10: \Users\(username)\AppData\Roaming\Apple Computer\MobileSync\Backup\

  Note: To quickly access the AppData folder, click Start. In the search bar, type %appdata% and press the ↩ Return key.


This looks like a basic networking issue where you might need some knowledge to sniff the packets on en0 using tcpdump.

The things that are known to prevent DHCP from reaching the OS are:

Firewalls (OS X, Little Snitch type, malware, and/or internet firewall like Symantec and others)
Network setup where the DHCP server only sends addresses to machines that are cleared for the network

You seem to have done some of the easy troubleshooting, and I personally don't ever like deleting some plist but not all plist since there are many keychains, system plist, ByHost plist and others so you could actually make a problem partially deleting information on networking.

The one thing I would do is re-connect the known machine and record the IP address that gets assigned and swap in the "suspect" machine and force the IP to be the same. If you get network connectivity then you are on the right track with DHCP issues.


How can I use my 12' MB 2015 with AC power only? (No battery)

Leaving your MacBook plugged in is not "abuse". Apple's laptops contain power management that prevents any problems. Even while plugged in, you may see the battery % indicator change from between 93% to 100%.

https://support.apple.com/en-me/HT204054#notfull

  My battery won't charge to 100%

    Occasionally, the battery might not show a full charge (100%) in
    macOS, even after the power adapter has been connected for an extended
    period of time. The battery might appear to stop charging between 93
    percent and 99 percent. This behavior is normal and will help to
    prolong the overall life of the battery.


launchd keeps restarting my binary in /Library/PrivilegedHelperTools

The launchd job ticket in the question is malformed; the root object must be a dict:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple Computer//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN" "http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd">
<plist version="1.0">
<dict>
   ...
</dict>
</plist>

Assuming this is a copy and paste error, how quickly does your com.ak.SMJobBlessHelper complete?

Some launchd configurations require the process remain running for a minimum of 30 seconds – else launchd will consider the process as crashed and automatically relaunch it.

Does your com.ak.SMJobBlessHelper conform to the requirements set out in the launchd documentation?


Does Automatic Downloads on iPhone 6 use cellular data on international roaming?

Whether to download app updates over Mobile Data is a user configurable setting. Go to Settings app → iTunes & App Store and turn off Use Mobile Data. This will ensure that app updates are not downloaded over mobile data even if it is enabled.

This setting doesn't take into account device roaming status (which itself is configurable under Settings app → Mobile Data).

Even if Use Mobile Data is enabled here, it still needs the Mobile Data itself to be enabled under Settings → Mobile Data.

If you are concerned about using data while roaming, turning off Mobile Data under Settings will ensure that no cellular data usage will happen.


You can use opensnoop to see what app writes to that location.

sudo opensnoop | grep metadata.json

  To disable System Integrity Protection, you can do the following:

  Boot into the Recovery HD by restarting whilst holding ⌘R.
  Open Terminal (from the Utilities menu).
  Run the following command in Terminal:

csrutil disable

  Restart.

Source: Disable OS X El Capitan Rootless and permit write actions to System Integrity Protection locations


High Sierra: How to resize window taller than screen?

I've always used a program called Paparazzi to take pictures of websites:
https://paparazzi.en.softonic.com/mac


app nap events are shown in the system.log (the easiest way to find them is to open up Console.app and look in All Messages).


How to change lock screen wallpaper in macOS Catalina?

No, it isn't possible on macOS.
Extra info: It may be different if you have a screensaver running and then you open the login menu.


How to debug missing libraries on macOS?

Try this:
$ otool -L /usr/bin/uptime
/usr/bin/uptime:
    /usr/lib/libresolv.9.dylib (compatibility version 1.0.0, current version 1.0.0)
    /usr/lib/libSystem.B.dylib (compatibility version 1.0.0, current version 1225.0.0)

(that's on macOS 10.11.6 but should work on newer versions)


Open the following files with read/write permissions:

/etc/auto_home
/etc/auto_master

These files are part of the autofs installation.

In the auto_home file, add a # before the + on the following line:

  +auto_home # Use directory service

In the auto_master file, add a # before the /home on the following line:

  /home          auto_home   -nobrowse,hidefromfinder

Save both files, and reboot your computer. /home should be free to work with.

To reverse the changes, undo what you've done to both auto_master and auto_home.


Update iOS on jailbroken iPhone 5S with evasi0n7 *without USB*

No, you need to be able to connect the device to a computer over USB to restore iOS.


How to view the same file in different apps in iOS?

Yes, you will need to add the file to all the apps. You should be able to use the system-implemented Open With option, but this requires the support of the app to transfer the file.

Due to the iOS sandbox, the apps aren't able to access the files from another app — the file must be duplicated to the second app.


Taking screenshots with the command line of a specific window

To capture a window using screencapture in Terminal, you have two options:

Interactively

-i         capture screen interactively, by selection or window
               control key - causes screen shot to go to clipboard
               space key   - toggle between mouse selection and
                             window selection modes
               escape key  - cancels interactive screen shot

You can use the -o option in conjunction with the -i option to not capture the shadow of the window, e.g.: -oi

Programmatically

-l<windowid> capture this windowsid

The -i option appears to be self-explanatory while the -l<windowid> option gives no additional info as with the -i option.

The <windowid>, for some windows can be ascertained by using AppleScript in the following example:

screencapture -l$(osascript -e 'tell app "Safari" to id of window 1') test.png

You can use the -o option in conjunction with the -l option to not capture the shadow of the window, e.g.: -ol

Some applications will not work with this method, however here are some alternatives:

screenshot: Better macOS screenshots via the Terminal
GetWindowID

Reference: How do I find the windowid to pass to screencapture -l?

Note: I am not affiliated with these projects.


What happens to photos that you edit using iPhoto for iOS?

If you tap the "Share" icon, you have the option to send photos to the Camera Roll or to share them with iTunes:

This interface is quite flexible, you can send the currently selected photos, all the photos, or choose the photos you want to share. Sharing with iTunes creates a folder in the "Apps" section of your device in iTunes that you can save from:


How to show newly added books in iBooks on iPad?

I don't know what iOS version you're at but there is a sort by feature in Books.app in iOS 12. Also, most of the collections also allow you to sort. I normally put them in Want to Read for quick access.


Image Renaming, Mac's PREVIEW app: When typing a new name into name field at very top of Toolbar, how can I execute the rename with ENTER KEY?

It drove me nuts and I found the answer just here:
https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/can-no-longer-rename-files-in-preview.2035115/post-24469396

The cause turned out to be a hidden setting in
~/Library/Preferences/.GlobalPreferences.plist If
NSAutomaticWindowAnimationEnabled is set to NO, then the problem
occurs. If I turn it back to YES or delete that setting, renaming
files in Preview works again.
For those of you using something like TinkerToll or Onyx, the hidden
setting is in the General area and is called "Animate opening
windows".


Loss in navigability of one's collection with update to iTunes 1.0.0.426

FYI, the feature I described was called the 3 column browser in iTunes.

According to other users, it has been removed in transitioning to Apple Music. Best we can do to get it back is submit feedback requesting that, here: https://www.apple.com/feedback/macos.html

As for searching your library, you can recover that by enabling the "Filter" field under View.


The region is stored in ~/Library/Preferences/.GlobalPreferences, as the second part of the AppleLocale variable.  Some examples of the AppleLocale variable:

en_US system language set to English, region set to US
ja_JP system language set to Japanese, region set to Japan
en_DE system language set to English, region set to Germany

You can get more info from Apple's Developer Library, which also has links to the ISO 639-2 codes that can be used.


You can join the handle table to the messages table.

select date, id, text
from message
left join handle
on message.handle_id = handle.ROWID

However, this only provides the phone number or Apple ID email address. This is because chat.db does not store contact names — this is looked up on-the-fly by Messages.

You can attach the address book database and perform a query joining tables from the two databases to get the information you need.

Start a sqlite3 session. Open Terminal and run

sqlite3

SQLite version 3.19.3 2017-06-27 16:48:08
Enter ".help" for usage hints.
Connected to a transient in-memory database.
Use ".open FILENAME" to reopen on a persistent database.
sqlite>

Determine which Contacts database to use. Contacts can come from multiple sources. In my case, all my contacts are on iCloud, so it's easy to choose the largest database. Go to

~/Library/Application Support/AddressBook/Sources

and find the folder with the largest size, or otherwise have a look through each folder's Metadata folder using QuickLook to find contacts within the database.

Once you've found the folder in Sources containing the contacts you wish, get the path to the database. Right-click on AddressBook-v22.abcddb within the folder with your contacts, hold ⌥ and select ‘Copy “AddressBook-v22.abcddb” as Pathname’.
In Terminal within sqlite3, run the following:

attach "/Users/yourusername/Library/Messages/chat.db" as cdb;
attach "<paste your path>" as adb;

Replace ‘yourusername’ in the first command and paste the path you copied in the second one.
Run this SQL. Copy and paste all these lines in.

select date, id, ZFIRSTNAME || ' ' || ZLASTNAME, text
from cdb.message
left join cdb.handle
on message.handle_id = handle.ROWID
left join adb.ZABCDPHONENUMBER
on replace(substr(handle.id, 4), ' ', '')
like '%' || substr(replace(ZABCDPHONENUMBER.ZFULLNUMBER, ' ', ''), 2)
left join adb.ZABCDRECORD
on ZABCDPHONENUMBER.ZOWNER = ZABCDRECORD.Z_PK;

Note that this SQL contains some magic numbers.

substr(handle.id, 4) presumes phone numbers from Messages start with a country code in the format of a plus followed by 2 digits.
substr(replace(…), 2) presumes phone numbers from Contacts start with a 0.

This is the standard international format. This will need to be adjusted for US.
You should get an output resembling:

datetimestamp|+441234567890|First Last|Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet


Lion kills application behind the scene, how to put application on a do not kill list?

You can't. Check out this thread on the Apple discussion forum. You can also read this article from TUAW.


How to obtain the direct link to a specific podcast episode in iOS iTunes Store?

I don't think it is possible to obtain the link to a specific episode, either from the iTunes app on iOS where you can browse the store, or from the iOS music app after if has already been downloaded.

Often a direct link to the episode is included in the show notes that are included, but the built in apps have scant support for allowing you to actually view these properly, they just overlay the text (or the top section of it) without giving you a way to interact with it.

To be honest, and I know you specifically asked not to suggest other apps, but given the above should hopefully be a suitable answer in it's own right I will do so anyway.  Try Instacast, it's a far superior app for both downloading/subscribing and actually listening to podcasts.  As you can see if allows full acces to the show notes, you can just click the download link provided to copy the URL, or use the built in sharing functions.

While you are at it, you should download the Ask Different Podcast to test it ;)


iMessages - can one disable 'join/leave' messages in group chats?

As far as I know this isn't possible, I checked the iPhone, iPad and Mac version but this setting is nowhere to be found.
As for changing it through terminal or fiddling with program files, that will only change the setting on the mac.


Can iOS display the current audio input device?

You would need an adapter to make that mic work with an iPhone.  Such as this one.


Can iTunes Match grab "invisible" (placeholder) songs?

iTunes Match matches based on the audio fingerprint of the files, simply having the metadata won't do. The process has nothing to do with Gracenote's metadata in any form. If it was just based on the metadata, you could change it and pretend to have whatever songs you want, and clearly that's something Apple wouldn't want you to be able to do.


How do I fix "An email message can’t be created because Safari can’t find an email application."?

You should use the Mail.app Preferences > General > Default email reader pop-up menu:

If this doesn't work:

Select a different mail client
Close Preferences
Reopen Preferences and re-select Mail.app


How to change the colors of individual bars in Numbers 3.2

In experiencing this problem, Numbers always treated all of my bars as one series (not sure what planet that makes sense on, but whatever). You need your data treated as separate series so that you can apply a color to each series.

With the chart selected, click the Edit Data References button that appears over the chart. Then, look in the lower, right-hand corner, there will be a little tiny slightly darker gray on light gray button labeled "Plot Rows as Series" (or "Plot Columns as Series"). Change this setting and you should have separate series for each of your data points, which will allow you to change their colors.

Note that none of this is in the documentation.

As of Numbers 3.6 (possibly earlier), that's the lower left-hand corner.


How to fix iPhone 3 showing iTunes-icon after charging?

Your iPhone is in Recovery Mode. To leave it please press Sleep/Awake Button and Home button at the same time.

If this doesn't work you'll probably need RecBoot to exit Recovery Mode.


Quoting from this question:

WifiDiagnostics files filling up drive even with logging disabled

  ... that particular keyboard shortcut, command+option+control+shift+w, triggers something in OS X (possibly Catalina only; I don't have an older OS to test against) that starts the wifi logging.

So please check your /private/var/tmp.


If both people are using iChat, all the features will work over Jabber, but you are out of luck if both people are not using iChat.

The MobileMe/.Mac sign in, when I used it anyway, used AOL’s OSCAR protocol used for AIM and ICQ (you should still be able to sign in with an ICQ account by treating it as an AIM account) due to an old and separate deal between Apple and AOL, so MobileMe users can talk to AIM and ICQ users without a gateway and vice versa. Still, even talking to them, the feature ratio between AIM clients and iChat is not 1:1, so some things would probably still break, iChat Theater if nothing else anyway, unless the other party was also using iChat.

So for a full featured iChat experience, send free Macs to all of your friends. Instant Messaging clients have shaky interoperability at best beyond basic text messages, which is unfortunate. As an alternative, I can recommend Skype which works on multiple platforms, and I find it also has better audio quality than iChat (both are quite crashy for me with audio chats and screen sharing though). There is also FaceTime which IIRC does use your Apple ID, but will only work for people using Macs, iPhones and iPads.


Disk Utility does not show a newly connected new/unformatted external USB3 drive

You can see if the disk is attached easier in the command line.
diskutil list

Then if it’s recognized but not mounting, check for fsck processes. You can also click the view icon above where you selected Macintosh HD in your screenshot.


According to macosxhints iPhone screenshots have no EXIF data, so no geolocation data would be saved. Not sure if this is still the case on the iPhone 4.

  Screenshots are saved as PNG files on the original iPhone and the iPhone 3GS (the two models I had access to) and have no EXIF records. The only other metadata fields available are filename, file size, and modified, and imported dates.


How to play Flash games in iPad without internet connection?

There is no application that can play flash games without the internet. That is a pretty good idea, though.


To create a mountable disk image, use hdiutil. The straightforward way just creates a DMG which can then be mounted and written to
hdiutil create -size 500m -volname CLONEZIL -fs FAT32 clonezilla.dmg

To create a DMG with the content of an existing directory use
hdiutil create -srcfolder my-clonezilla-dir -volname CLONEZIL -fs FAT32 clonezilla.dmg

To mount it afterwards either double-click the DMG file in Finder or run one of the following in Terminal
open clonezilla.dmg
hdiutil attach clonezilla.dmg

To unmount either eject in Finder or run
hdiutil detach /Volumes/CLONEZIL


Can I view history of recently connected USB devices in OS X?

It's not likely you will have that information from weeks ago. The likely place, system.log is deleted after a week, so you'd need to have Time Machine or another backup mechanism to look at that file.

You could test this easily opening the console.app and filtering system.log for USB messages (or even look in all messages) and see what is logged when you connect the affected / intended to track device.

Since MP3 players look like storage, there's a good chance you will get some log messages to track that from OS X without needing special software as long as the event is within a week.


ISO images typically contain more than one file system, the original ISO9660 file system for CD-ROMs (hence "ISO"), the "Joliet" extension to it for long filenames, and sometimes UDF or even a HFS+ file system. It's possible that one of them is corrupt, but the others are fine.

You could try explicitly mounting with the ISO9660 file system driver, as the UDF file system seems to be damaged. First, open a Terminal window. Attach the image without mounting:

hdiutil attach -nomount /path/to/image.iso

This should output the name of the disk device node, e.g.:

/dev/disk2

Create a mountpoint for the filesystem, e.g.

mkdir /Volumes/rescue

Then try mounting the device there, e.g.:

mount_cd9660 /dev/disk2 /Volumes/rescue

If it worked, it won't output anything, but the disk should be visible in Finder. (You can "eject" it via Finder when you're done)


You probably knocked the battery connector out. Here's a link to a repair guide to replacing the whole battery, which is more than you need. Do steps 1 and 2 to open your computer up, and then make sure the battery connector in Step 3 is 100% plugged in. If it's fully plugged in and it's still not working, the battery itself is probably shot.


Hard / Factory reset iPad 3 without device password and iTunes

Yes, you can reset the iPad by booting into recovering mode.

Turn off your iPad
Connect your iPad to your computer while holding the Home button. Keep holding the Home button until you see the recovery-mode screen
iTunes will show a display an alert message saying it's detected an iPad in recovery mode.
When you see the option to Restore or Update, choose Restore. Keep in mind a factory reset will erase ALL DATA!!
Set up as new iPad


How to sync the data structure of my iPod touch with that of my iPad?

Sync your iPod Touch configuration back to iTunes and then sync your iPad with iTunes!

For syncing your iPod configuratuon you must only connect it with iTunes. Every time it will be created a backup of the device. After that you connect your iPad (which has been restored to default factory) with iTunes.

Then you can do the following steps which are described on the apple support sites (Restoring your iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch).


Yes - there are two ways to get through a firewall. So from the VPN perspective, you will want to be sure your client app and VPN pass bonjour packets so the remote iOS device can see the Mac that is advertising it's VNC screen sharing capabilities. AirPort hardware does a good job of proxying the VNC capabilities of sleeping macs and will even wake them up in response to incoming requests for screen sharing.

No - there is no iOS VNC client so your "out of the box" experience will involve going to the app store or otherwise installing an app like Screens or whatever other VNC app you prefer.

I can speak for screens working in a mixed VPN / NAT port forwarding combined network where Lion server has configured the VPN and controls the AirPort. I do use the screens connect software and location service when I am not using VPN since that allows me to locate my macs similar to Back to My Mac does using iCloud. The screens solution really works well for me with or without VPN or needing iCloud integration. You don't need the screens connect in most cases when VPN is set up, but it's nice to have and doesn't interfere with VPN either.


Prevent Photos app on OSX from launching when plugging in device

With the iPhone plugged in, open the Image Capture app on your Mac. In the Image Capture window, left lower corner, choose which app should automatically open when you plug in your phone, chose "no application"


Keyboard shortcut for switching between open windows

Witch is the way to go. I used it everyday for many years and it never let me down. The support is great and reactive. In addition, it has many option, so you can configure it to your desires and then forget it isn't part of OS X.


Using 3 Monitor DP/HDMI Setup + Charging new Macbook Pro 16'' over max. 2 Cables

Caldigit TS3+ can do 87Watt charge with a firmware upgrade, my mac even at full load have not started discharging the battery with this.

Please be aware, that there are many users (including me), that has issues with external displays connected to the Macbook Pro 16" specifically.
It will pin the Radeon GPU at 18watt+ and keep the laptop fans spinning around 3k rpm and 60 degrees C at idle.
Apple have not responded to the issue even calling support puts your trough random loops of tests that does nothing.


Googling the error message I get a plethora of different causes: e.g. no space on the main volume, broken SATA cables etc.

So restoring or rebuilding the EFI partition probably won't solve your problem.

Recreating a/the EFI partition should be easy though:

Create some OS X installer thumb drive
Detach your external drive
Boot to the thumb drive.
Open Terminal in the menubar > Utilities
Enter diskutil list to get the disk identifier of your internal disk (probably disk0) - you will get about 12-14 disks almost all of them related to the thumb drive. Check the sizes to get the right one - below I assume it's disk0.
Unmount disk0 with diskutil umountDisk disk0
Check partition table:

gpt show -r /dev/disk0

Remove the two existing partitions:

gpt remove -i 1 /dev/disk0
gpt remove -i 2 /dev/disk0

Create a new partition and re-add the other two:

gpt add -i 1 -b 40 -s 409600 -t C12A7328-F81F-11D2-BA4B-00A0C93EC93B /dev/disk0
gpt add -i 3 -b 1952255592 -s 1269536 -t 426F6F74-0000-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC /dev/disk0
gpt add -i 2 -b 409640 -s 1951845952 -t 48465300-0000-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC /dev/disk0

If the disk is stubborn destroy the gpt and a add a new one:

gpt destroy /dev/disk0
gpt create -f /dev/disk0

Now repeat the previous step and add the three partitions.
Attach the external drive
Get the disk identifier of the external drive with diskutil list (probably disk14 or even higher - below I assume it's disk14)
Unmount disk0 with diskutil umountDisk disk0
Unmount disk14 with diskutil umountDisk disk14
Clone the EFI partition of the external drive to your internal drvie with:

dd if=/dev/disk14s1 of=/dev/disk0s1 bs=1m

Enter reboot to reboot your Mac


I think the only way to prevent this from happening right now is to increase your standby time.

The reason it goes to sleep is that iTunes 11 does not set a "power assertion". Here's an Open Radar bug report on this issue: http://openradar.appspot.com/12791690.

Hopefully Apple will change this in an update because I'm having the same annoying problem.

Update 2012-12-13: iTunes 11.0.1 just came out and the missing power assertion has returned. Your computer should no longer sleep when streaming to the AppleTV.


Is there a way to convert a video from iOS (QuickTime) format to Windows (WMV or AVI) format?

Videos recorded with iOS (your iPod 5) have the extension "MOV", but they are normal "MP4" (containing H.264 and AAC). Which means that you can change the extension to "MP4" and they will be playable on Windows.

In this case (recorded on iOS and with the extension "MOV") it is not necessary to convert these files. Same for "M4V" and "M4H" (other extensions which are used sometimes by Apple products on iOS).

There are two ways to change the extension of a file for Mac users:

Directly in the Finder

Select the file
Hit ENTER to edit the filename
Select the extension "MOV" (without ".")
Change the extension to "mp4"
Hit ENTER to exit editing

In the Finder information window

Select the file
Select "Information" in the File menu (or press CMD + I)
Select the extension "MOV" (without ".") in the field "Name & Suffix"
Change the extension to "mp4"
Close the information window

Both ways will show a dialog to confirm the changed extension.

For Windows users, please read the help from Microsoft.

Uppercase or lowercase of the extension is the same, but I prefer lowercase.


You did need permission — Finder asked you for your password and you provided it. That gave Finder permission to use root access to delete the file, because the staff group are in sudoers.


Which version of macOS introduced /System/Applications?

This is part of a larger macOS Catalina feature wherein system files/apps are located on a read-only filesystem and user data is located on a read/write filesystem. This is to further protect the operating system against malicious or inadvertent damage (i.e. to prevent security problems and OOPS! moments).

The read-only and read/write filesystems are stitched together to present as one unified filesystem through some underlying filesystem and logical volume "magic".

Sources:

https://support.apple.com/kb/HT210650
https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2019/10/macos-10-15-catalina-the-ars-technica-review/11/#h1


Try using AppCleaner, it's free, deletes Mac apps and remove any of its related files. To use it, just drag and drop the app you want to remove onto AppCleaners window.


Late 2013 RMBP switches to SCO(very poor quality) codec when using earbuds microphone

None of this will work.

The Samsung Galaxy Buds+ require Bluetooth 5.0
The 2013 MacBook Pro's AirPort adapter Bluetooth is 4.0 and was a nice, industry standard PCIe slot so you could swap it out for another
The next Mac with Bluetooth 5.0 is the 2018.  Unfortunately, it doesn't use the old "tried and true" Broadcom chipset - it uses a proprietary Apple/USI (Universal Scientific Industrial) Bluetooth module.  So, the question becomes, even if you could source a BT 5.0 module from a different vendor - where are you getting the drivers?

What bugs be about Apple is this need to be so rediciliously proprietary that upgrade-ablity concept has been literally thrown out the window.  Like you asked...

If so, can a Bluetooth 5.0 replacement for the network card be purchased somewhere?

The answer should be yes.  You should be able to get a PCIe WiFi/BT card from a different manufacturer like Dell or HP (or even Apple themselves) and upgrade it for additional features.  However, Apple immediately puts a stop to that by tweaking the AirPort card's firmware so that only its drivers will work.
If the 2018 MacBook Pro had continued to use the PCIe slots instead of soldering to the board, you could have theoretically swapped out the AirPort cards from one to the next and still have all the native Apple drivers.  Unfortunately, you can't.
Your solutions are limited:

Get BT 4.0 headset/earbuds specifically for you Mac
Upgrade your Mac
Try an external BT dongle (not recommended)

Apple has traditionally not played nicely with more than one BT dongle attached so I would avoid.  You can try - it won't break anything (physically) but macOS probably won't appreciate having two BT devices and you could break some functionality.


Macbook white A1181: Startup manager, just mouse pointer

You need to either insert a Mac OS installer DVD in the optical drive, or a Mac OS installer USB drive in a USB port. You then need to boot from the installer by holding the option key while starting the computer up, then clicking the installer in the list of available devices.


Much of this depends on the setup you have done in ITerm and setting up shells.

By default iTerm runs the shell in /etc/passwd as a login shell. By default the shell is bash but the user has changed this to zsh

zsh has several files that are used at startup see zsh manual $ZDOTDIR is by default your home directory

  Commands are first read from /etc/zshenv; this cannot be overridden.
  ... ...

  Commands are then read from $ZDOTDIR/.zshenv. If the shell is a login shell, commands are read from /etc/zprofile and then $ZDOTDIR/.zprofile. Then, if the shell is interactive, commands are read from /etc/zshrc and then $ZDOTDIR/.zshrc. Finally, if the shell is a login shell, /etc/zlogin and $ZDOTDIR/.zlogin are read.

So when items starts a login shell (and assume no global files in /tc) the following files are sourced

/etc/zshenv
~/.zshenv
~/.zprofile
~/.zshrc
~/.zlogin

If zsh is started from a shell prompt it is not a login shell and so only the following are read

/etc/zshenv
~/.zshenv
~/.zshrc

If you get different behaviour in the two cases then look at your  ~/.zprofile and  ~/.zlogin .

In this case one of them probably is sourcing ~/.zshrc. Note that this differs from bash where a login shell reads ~/.bash_profile and a non login shell reads ~/.bash_profile and this the normal bash use is to source ~/.bashrc in ~/,bash_profile so to stop the need to duplicate code.


How do you disable Printer Sharing via terminal?

Use lpstat -v to get the appropriate printer name, then use:

lpadmin -p Printer_Name -o printer-is-shared=false


Could not log in; restarted MacBook Air; icons exchanged position; Got a login warning at my iPhone

Sometimes things unexpectedly happen and won't occur again. The alert on your iPhone was probably related to iMessage communicating with Apple's servers after the restart in an odd way and not something to worry about if it happened right at that time.

  A box appears asking if I want to open the applications that were open before the computer restarted because of a problem

This happens whenever an unexpected or forced shutdown occurs, and is to prevent the cause of the shutdown from reappearing if it's an application, etc.

You can reorder the icons in the menu bar by holding the command key and dragging them to the appropriate location.

Spotlight indexing also sometimes occurs after a restart. Unless it is completely losing your indexed state (which would take a long while to reindex!), then this is also expected behavior.

If you're worried about the computer, then restart it and see that it restarts smoothly. If it does, I would take no further action unless it happens again.


This is a certificate issue. In my .mbsyncrc, I included as CertificateFile the entire certificate chain (Gmail -> Google, Google -> GeoTrust, GeoTrust -> Equifax). This started intermittently throwing the error you're describing around the time I fixed the curl SSL issue.

To fix it, use only the Gmail certificate in your .mbsyncrc. If you're unsure which of the certificates is the Gmail one, run:

openssl s_client -connect imap.gmail.com:993 -showcerts 2>&1 < /dev/null | sed -ne '/-BEGIN CERTIFICATE-/,/-END CERTIFICATE-/p' | head -n 27 > gmail.crt

and use the resulting gmail.crt file.


WiFiAgent.app is part of OS X and is the agent responsible for all things Wi-Fi in the GUI.

This includes everything from managing the menu bar item to showing dialogs for entering the wireless key of the network. The agent runs in the background on all Macs with a wireless service.

Here's a converted version of the WiFiAgent.app Localizable.strings which shows some of the features of the agent through the messages that can be localised.

The reason why WiFiAgent.app is shown in Finder as "Wi-Fi.app" is because of the InfoPlist.strings file defining CFBundleDisplayName:

{   CFBundleDisplayName = "Wi-Fi";
    CFBundleName = "WiFiAgent";
}

Contents/Resources/InfoPlist.strings


Mobile Safari - link to MP3 and show album art?

I'm just guessing here, but have you tried using an AAC-file with either that or Apple's M4A-extension? You could also try use the MP4-extension and see if it thinks the artwork is a frame from a video-file.


How to prevent from changing volume when using 2 to 1 RCA connector

It is dropping in level because the end of an audio connection usually has a termination point. and/or the signal is being routed to electronics that are adding slight resistances to the signal.  (in simple terms there is a cap on the end :-)

The least solution, would be to use an isolation transformer to one of the connection point, then one of the Yed signals could be isolated from the other device.

The most solution would be to use an audio distribution amp. Or to  route through a device that would passthrough the audio (unterminated) Like some amps or pre-amps. or to use other devices (like a equaliser) that would have 2 seperated outputs.


Alternatively use ImageMagick which support jpeg, png and other popular formats, example usage:

import -window root screen.jpeg

Install by brew install imagemagick --with-x11


What are the best practices for battery longevity?

Final Conclusion
Given the sources and explanations below. I am officially going to do the following to optimize my battery life:

Keep my battery as cool as possible.
Don't worry about whether it's plugged in or not. When it doubt, keep it plugged in so it uses AC power instead of battery, unless getting hot.

It turns out that the two methods I originally posited are largely moot. The only thing that really matters is temperature.

  "Temperature was the most significant factor contributing to the cell degradation, with state-of-charge (SOC) and discharge pulse length of  secondary importance." (Liaw et al.2)

Furthermore, it turns out that the decay can be accurately mathematically modeled:

 (See Ramadass et al.1 for explanation of terms)

However, the dominant model is that of the Arrhenius formula, which generically predicts time-to-failure as a function of temperature.

The figure below shows the capacity at various cycle counts. Just look at the capacity on the x-axis. The top graph is at 25ºC, the bottom at 50ºC.

After 600 cycles, the cooler battery had ~2x the capacity

While I could still find no evidence on the behavior of Mac power circuitry, there was helpful information on the official Dell website. Two items specifically stood out.

  Q. When docked or AC adapter is plugged into a wall outlet, am I using my battery charge?

  A. No.

  http://www.dell.com/content/topics/global.aspx/batteries_sitelet/en/batteries_faq?c=us&l=en&cs=19#faq9

  Q. Should I totally discharge, then recharge my Dell laptop battery occasionally to make it last longer?

  A. No, discharging and charging does not increase the life of a Lithium Ion technology battery.

  http://www.dell.com/content/topics/global.aspx/batteries_sitelet/en/batteries_faq?c=us&l=en&cs=19#faq27

However It is important to note that Apple and Dell charging circuits may be different. Although, given that Dell does this, I assume apple does as well. On this assumption, unless someone can provide sources to claim otherwise, I will assume that the Apple charging circuitry is smart enough to know this.

I encourage anyone to continue exploring this question and challenge my assumptions. Please see the sources below if you're curious for a more detailed explanation.

Sources

1 Ramadass, P., Bala Haran, Ralph White, and Branko Popov. "Mathematical Modeling of the Capacity Fade of Li-ion Cells." Journal of Power Sources 123.2 (2003): 230-40. Web. http://www.che.sc.edu/faculty/popov/drbnp/WebSite/Publications_PDFs/Web33.pdf.

2 Liaw, B., R. Jungst, G. Nagasubramanian, H. Case, and D. Doughty. "Modeling Capacity Fade in Lithium-ion Cells." Journal of Power Sources 140.1 (2005): 157-61. Web. http://electrochem.org/dl/ma/204/pdfs/0253.PDF.

[3] Ning, G. "Capacity Fade Study of Lithium-ion Batteries Cycled at High Discharge Rates." Journal of Power Sources 117.1-2 (2003): 160-69. Web. http://www.che.sc.edu/faculty/popov/drbnp/website/Publications_PDFs/Web38.pdf.

[4] Ramadass, P., Bala Haran, Parthasarathy M. Gomadam, Ralph White, and Branko N. Popov. "Development of First Principles Capacity Fade Model for Li-Ion Cells." Journal of The Electrochemical Society 151.2 (2004): A196. Web. http://www.che.sc.edu/faculty/popov/Publications/Premanand1.pdf

[5] Zhang, D., B. S. Haran, A. Durairajan, R. W. White, Y. Podrazhansky, and B. N. Popov. "Studies on Capacity Fade of Lithium-ion Batteries." Journal of Power Sources 91 (2000): 122-29. Web. http://www.che.sc.edu/faculty/white/2000studiesoncapcaityfadeofzhangharandurairajanwhitepodrazhanshkypopov.pdf.


How can I prevent "Open With..." from accessing external drives?

The apps that are displayed in "Open With..." are taken from the Launch Services database which keeps track of what apps can open which file types. In your case it would seem that Launch Services thinks you may have an appropriate app on your Firewire disks (even though you there aren't any - it is wanting to look).
Older versions of macOS seem to be particularly susceptible to this database becoming somewhat tangle/messy.
The solution is to rebuild the Launch Services database.  You can do that at the terminal with this command:
/System/Library/Frameworks/CoreServices.framework/Versions/A/Frameworks/LaunchServices.framework/Versions/A/Support/lsregister -kill -r -f -v -domain local -domain user -domain system
It is running the lsregister app to reset the database.  It may take sometime to complete. And you should check that the location for lsregister is correct for your version of macOS.
If using the Terminal is a challenge you can use the highly regarded Onyx to rebuild the database. It is on the Maintenance pane.  Make sure you disable all the other choices before running the rebuild task.  Note there is a different version of Onyx for each macOS version.
This has been covered before. For example: Finder "Open With" very slow.
For a more in depth discussion of Launch Services, read these:
Recent Items, Launch Services, and SharedFileLists and Launch Services database problems


OSX App Store updates with multiple users

Applications downloaded from the App Store are available to all local users, there is no way (and also no real reason) to buy and download the same application twice. For updates you must be logged into the Store with the Apple ID used for the initial purchase.

In the situation described in the question the asker can

log into the Store with the "other" Apple ID to get the download
ask whoever purchased the application to log into his/her account and get the update


Some process is slowly taking over disk space...how do I find out what this is and how do I deal with it?

It’s a combination of the page file (virtual memory) and the hibernation file that gets written when you put your computer to sleep. Of course, other processes may also leave temp files that get deleted when you restart. There isn’t really much you can do to improve that without affecting your computer’s performance.

You can get a utility like WhatSize, Daisy Disk or similar to visually inspect the contents of your hard drive and see where is the “abnormal” file or directory.

You can also use Monolingual to reduce the size of your executables and remove unwanted languages and files.

Update:

The virtual memory file is located in

/private/var/vm

and the hibernation/sleeping file in

/var/vm/sleepimage

Please not that you can’t (and shouldn’t) delete the vm file while OS X is running.


How do I know if a graphics card is sufficient for a given external monitor? (Time-sensitive)

According to EveryMac.com, the mid-2012 MacBook Pro can support an external monitor with a resolution of 2560x1600.

This means that your Intel HD Graphics 4000 chip is capable of supporting your monitor.  However, you should be aware that the HD 4000 uses shared memory (meaning it takes up to 1.5GB of RAM from the system).

Personally, I would upgrade your memory to the maximum amount and again, according to EveryMac.com, you can upgrade it to 16GB of PC3-12800 SO-DIMM Memory.  This will ensure that your integrated graphics chip and the system has enough memory to deliver the best graphics performance it possibly can.

Also, regarding the monitor connection, I would avoid converting DisplayPort to HDMI and just stick with DisplayPort (go mDP to DP).


need link to apple mac appstore's server application for 10.10 (version 4.?)

someone named JohnnyNorCal knew a solution.

if you install 10.10, and try to buy the 10.11 version of server, it will ask you about installing the most recent compatible version.

this is all it took..

thanks Johnny.


No music contents on iPhone after synchronization

I think this might be your problem: Windows 7 64

If you can, try to sync your phone from a 32 bit machine. Since the dawn of the iPhone Apple hasn't played nicely with 64 bit flavors of Windows. This fellow says there's a HotFix from MSFT to fix the issue.


When you say "going to bootcamp assistant -> continue" do you mean you did something similar to the steps in this Apple support answer? Note that there are different steps depending on if you have a single or multiple internal drives.

If you are using the Disk Repair Utility, have you tried booting into the Disk Utility (hold down command+r when you boot the computer or restart)?

Especially if you have a single internal drive you may also want to create a bootable USB drive, and then boot to it to use Disk Utility to alter the boot drive partitioning (so the drive is not reading and writing to the same physical media). Holding down option when you start allows you to select the startup drive.


Copying only files without a special string in filename


How do I set up a Mac to use both FileVault and Boot Camp?

It is possible to use Bootcamp with the new Filevault.  The exact method of achieving this may differ depending on if you already have Filevault turned on, and want to install bootcamp, or if you already have bootcamp, and want to turn on Filevault...

Either way, you will need to ensure that you use the very latest bootcamp drivers package (4.0), which either need applying to your existing windows install or writing to CD/USB stick prior to beginning the bootcamp installer.

To check your current BootCamp level, run Boot Camp Assistant and select About from the menu bar, at the present time the current version is Version 4.0.1 (429).


No entry sign on 2017 Macbook Pro--will replacing the hard disk work?

Why not install a fresh copy of macOS on an external drive before you make any changes to the internal drive. This Mac supports internet recovery so you can boot to internet OS - use Disk Utility to erase / prepare the external drive (USB or Thunderbolt is fine) and then download the installer from the internet while in recovery boot.

Now you can boot to the external drive and make sure the system is healthy and see if you can wipe the internal or need a repair.

If you have nothing to lose on the Mac, follow Allan’s excellent answer for how to erase and install without pausing to work on an external drive.


How does one stop the "Select A Wireless Network" prompt on iOS 10 Beta?

Firstly, make sure to report the issue using Feedback Assistant. Then, try toggling the setting in Settings, as it might fix the issue. If it doesn't, try restarting the iPhone. Then you could also try backing up the iPhone, erasing all data on it, then restoring the backup. But, if that still doesn't fix the issue, and it really bothers you, you can always downgrade to iOS 9.3.2.


Tor Browser

Have you considered using Tor Browser instead of tor?

  The Tor Browser lets you use Tor on Windows, Mac OS X, or Linux without needing to install any software. It can run off a USB flash drive, comes with a pre-configured web browser to protect your anonymity, and is self-contained (portable).

Still need tor? Use brew

You can use the homebrew project to install tor on your Mac.

Follow the instructions on homebrew to install the brew command:

Launch Terminal.app
Paste in the one line command from brew.sh:

/usr/bin/ruby -e "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Homebrew/install/master/install)"

Run the following command to install tor and any dependencies:

brew install tor

Easy Removal

If you decide later to remove tor, you can use the command:

brew uninstall tor

Alternatively, you can probably use MacPorts.


In Terminal, how to erase typed command quickly?

You can cancel current command with ⌃ CTRL+c.
You can clear command to the beginning with ⌃ CTRL+u.
To clear line after the cursor press ⌃ CTRL+K.

Here are some great answers on StackOverflow.


A non-closed circle icon in macOS menu bar that I cannot remove

Assuming you just want to remove it, you could check your Login items:

Go to Apple > System Preferences > Users & Groups
Make sure your User Account is selected at top left
Click on the Login Items tab
Look for any items listed in the list of login items
Now remove any items you don't want to start automatically by clicking on its name (so it's highlighted) and then clicking on the minus - button
Once it's removed, exit System Preferences
Restart your Mac to test to see if the icon is still there


How to set environment variable permanently on macOS Catalina?

Sorted, vi ~/.zshenv.
Added the exports, save and exit, restart terminal, my system was using the zsh terminal.
Or without restarting the terminal, just add:
source ~/.zshenv or source ~/.profile
After editing.


how to disable birthday reminders in iOS and still view them in the calendar app?

Yes. This should work. As you are aware, when you (or the Facebook contact) inputs their birthday into the contact, iOS creates a new calendar called "Birthdays". On both iOS and OSX you have control over the notifications that you receive for each birthday that is on that calendar.

Like you said you could can go and turn of the notifications which should prevent notifications from actually appearing. Note, however that the birthdays should still show in Notification Center.

You can also disable the Birthday calendar on your iOS device altogether by opening the Calendar.app, tapping "Calendars" in the upper left corner, and scrolling down to and tapping on "Birthdays". You will see the check mark next to it disappear and the birthdays will no longer show in your calendar.

It, of course, would be easy to turn them back on temporarily in the future if you wanted to look up someone's birthday.


Mac OS X's idle time measurements require a Graphical User Interface (GUI) to provide the "user inactivity" measure.

Without this measure, the operating system can not determine if the Mac is unused long enough to sleep the display.

Disabling the WindowServer will restrict most of OS X's unique features. Have you considered booting to a headless Linux or other operating system?


Safari - Reload Page from Origin, does what exactly?

This loads the page and any same-domain resources requested by the page without using the cache. Resources located on other domains may still use the cache. You can completely bypass the cache using the Network tab of the Web Inspector as just ⌥⌘R is insufficient.


AppleScript - How to identify buttons and press them?

Here's a little trick:
Obtain the screen coordinates of that button.  You can do this by initiating a screen capture with crosshairs, usually by pressing ⌘⇧4 (⟨Cmd⟩⟨Shift⟩⟨4⟩).  Navigate the cross hairs over the button within its clickable region.
I did a similar thing with a dialog box in Script Editor:

You can just about make out the coordinates of my button are {896,674}.
Next, in Script Editor, enter this line of code, inserting your coordinates as appropriate:
    tell application "System Events" to click at {896, 674}

I can assume you already have the right accessibility privileges granted from the context of your post.  Therefore, you can simply run this script.
Just ensure the button is visible before you run the script, and that it hasn't changed position on the screen.  Make sure there are no windows obscuring or overlying it.
All being well, two things will happen:

The system will issue a click and it'll click that button;
In the results pane at the bottom of the Script Editor window, you'll see something like this:

    button "Done" of window "Open" of application process "Script Editor" of application "System Events"
That is the reference to the button object, which you can copy and paste into your script.
It works for any GUI item on the screen: just isolate its coordinates, issue a click, and it will return the object reference.
UPDATE:
Having just acquired a copy of TechTool Pro version 8, I have learned that the application is not GUI-scriptable.  Therefore, this explains why the trick I described failed to return an object reference (because there is none), and unfortunately, you won't be able to automate the running of TechTools using AppleScript.


Can I upgrade the RAM on my 2011 MacBook Pro

Yes, the mentioned model of MacBook Pro is user upgradable.

The maximum RAM supported by the Late 2011 MacBook Pro is 16 GB. You can refer to the specifications for this model here:

Table of second generation MacBook Pro models

Look for the column corresponding to the mentioned model (Late 2011).

  Memory                       4 GB (two 2 GB)

  (Two slots)                 Expandable to 16 GB


iPhone 4S w/ iOS 6, any risks in finally upgrading to 8.4?

To answer your questions in order:
1. No, you can only update to 8.4.
2. I don't have any problem composing emails with 8.4. I believe that there is an Accessibility setting for font size, anyways.
3. YMMV. My iPhone 4S ran great on iOS 8, but some don't have that great of luck.
4. I think 2.5GB is enough to download.
5. I believe any connectivity issues with iOS 8 were fixed within the first few updates.

iOS 8.4 ran well on my iPhone 4S, but when I gave it to my Mom, when I upgraded to an iPhone 5S, I've noticed that for whatever reason it doesn't work as smoothly as when I had it. Also iOS 9 is right around the corner in the fall, likely next month, stability and performance are what iOS 9 is mainly addressing and the iPhone 4S will get that update, so you might just wait for that.

I haven't really ever had any major problems with iOS 8, I think it is pretty safe to download.


iPhone 4 (iOS 7.x.x) - Unable to make video calls from any app other than FaceTime

Although WhatsApp is compatible with iOS 7, the video calling feature requires iOS 8 or later.

FaceTime is available only for Apple's iOS and macOS. You can make a FaceTime call to your contacts using iPhone/iPad (iOS 7 and later) or Mac (OS X 10.9.2 or later). It is not available for other mobile or desktop platforms.

There are various other popular cross platform messaging apps with support for video calling (Viber, Hangouts, Google Duo, Skype) but they all require iOS 9 or later to be installed.

You can give Zoom a try. It claims to support iOS 7 and later.


Slow write speeds with APFS encryped external SSD

According to these benchmarks performances found here on APFS, APFS encrypted, HFS and HFS+ encrypted, your loss of nearly 40% may be surprising as you are writing and not reading.

Testing environment summary :

Hardware : 2017 MacBook Pro, 16 GB 2133 RAM

OS : macOS 10.13 High Sierra

Have you encrypted your already APFS formatted SSD to an APFS encrypted or have you completely reformated your APFS drive to an APFS encrypted ?

If you didn't reformat before your second performance speed test, this may be a cause.

Finally, if you did completely reformat your hard drive, this answer may be interesting :

Extremely slow write speed to encrypted external drive on Mavericks


Safari prompting for local user account password on Apple websites

This is a new feature with safari on macOS and Catalina when you are signed in to your iCloud / AppleID on trusted and keychain synchronized devices when communicating to some Apple secure services online.

Your local admin password unlocks they key store and sends a secure token rather than your iCloud password to authenticate you through Safari to Apple’s web site.

Ways to opt out:

Sign out of iCloud on that Mac.
Use a different browser.


Adding Mac-specific directory to PATH when home is shared

Test the output of uname; it will be Darwin on OS X and Linux on Linux.

if [[ $(uname) == Darwin ]]; then
    export PATH="$HOME/SW/bin_mac:$PATH"
fi

Alternately, you could just add an appropriate directory on each machine, which will be useful if you find yourself needing a separate Linux bin directory as well in the future.

export PATH="$HOME/SW/bin_$(uname):..."

and either mv or ln -s your bin_mac to bin_Darwin; then you can create a bin_Linux directory in the future if you need it, and it'll just work.

(You could also test $HOSTTYPE, which is set by bash, but it contains more information than you're likely to need.)


Detect whether clipboard item is image data using AppleScript

Having to write and maintain an osascript command as you have is really not the best way to go in this use case IMO.
Using a Run AppleScript action, instead of a Run Shell Script action, the following example AppleScript code will resolve the issue you are currently having, and makes the code much easier to read and edit:
on run {input, parameters}

    set cbInfoAsString to (clipboard info) as string

    if cbInfoAsString does not contain "«class furl»" and ¬
        cbInfoAsString contains "TIFF picture" then

        set formattedDate to do shell script ¬
            "date -j '+%Y-%m-%d at %I.%M.%S %p'"

        tell application "Finder" to set thePath to ¬
            (insertion location as alias) & ¬
            formattedDate & ".png" as string

        do shell script "/usr/local/bin/pngpaste " & ¬
            the quoted form of the POSIX path of thePath

    else if cbInfoAsString contains "«class furl»" then

        tell application "System Events" to ¬
            keystroke "v" using control down

    end if

end run

Notes:

POSIX path is a part of Standard Additions not Finder, and should not be wrapped within a tell statement of Finder.
If not setting the date with the date command, use the -j option.
I modified your date command to use 12-Hour Time as typically 24-Hour Time does not use AM/PM and have added made additional modifications to make it more readable, and in line with the system default used with screen shots.
If you want  24-Hour Time then use e.g.: "date -j '+%Y-%m-%d at %H.%M.%S'"
As coded, if there is anything other than a file(s)/folder(s) or just an image, the script will not attempt to process text if that's what's on the clipboard.


Using WhatsApp iOS app without granting it access to contacts

Disclaimer: I have only used the Android app, so this may be incorrect for iOS.

I was able to be initially messaged by someone, and thus have them perpetually avaiable in the WhatsApp-internal contact list, all without sharing my device contacts. This was done by getting a "first-class" user who has already forked over their contacts to message me first.

The user who first messages you must allow WhatsApp contact access on their personal device. I know of no way around this, but to be fair, if you're trying to use WhatsApp then you're probably trying to connect with someone who has already done this.

Here is how I managed it:

Install WhatsApp and repeatedly deny any Contacts access.
Have another party who has already forked over their contacts attempt to contact you on WhatsApp.
When they are presented a list of their contacts, they should select "New Contact" or something of the sort.
The other party should enter your phone number into this new contact. They should complete this step even if they already have you as a contact on their phone. This step forcibly exposes the phone number to WhatsApp, while it otherwise would not show that you are a WhatsApp user.
The other party can now message you as normal, add you to groups, etc. You can message back.
(Optional but recommended) Initially, WhatsApp will continually ask you whether the message you have received is spam. There seems to be no way to do this in the mobile app without actually adding the person to your WhatsApp-visible contacts (and thus forking over your contacts). However, WhatsApp for Desktop or Web makes it really easy to simply mark the conversation as "not spam", so for the best experience, sign in to one of those apps to do just that.


Can two iPhones share same backup space on cloud?

Yes, you can backup as many devices as you have the ability to sign in to and have space for the backups in your iCloud, but iCloud Backup can only back up to the main iCloud account on a device.


Creating a Lion USB Drive from the Lion installer?

Simply re-download Lion from the Mac App Store and then use Disk Utility to restore the DMG file to a USB stick.


Export photos from an iPhone 4s using iTunes without iCloud

I don't connect my iPhone to my WinXP box, but a bit of Googling returned this instructional which shows how to get the result you are looking for using XP's built-in "Scanner and Camera Wizard".


If you are defragging Mac hard drive just to increase its performance, then you can resolve these issues very efficiently by the help of below mentioned free tips: -

1.Quit all the open apps to free up some memory. Many times, they become the primary cause of system slowdowns.

2.Reboot your Mac system. It will clear all the caches, free up memory and also allows the user to install any necessary core updates

3.Updates your Mac OS X to the latest version to perform better than the previous version and updating OS X will fix certain bugs

4.Try to make sure that you have at least of 10-15 % of your total hard drive is available at that time to adequate proper cache and other temp files

5.You also need to check for a failing drive using the help of Disk Utility. If the drive is failing and won’t repair, then you need to fix it using the help of proper methods like the one mentioned here.

Older version of OS X needs to be defragged, if necessary. You may consider one such application mentioned here. However, Mac OS Yosemite and its later version don’t need defragmentation.


If you have registered for the paid iOS developer program, you should be able to see Xcode 4.2 for Snow Leopard available in the iOS Dev Center.

Here's what I see from a paid account:

Here's what I see from a non-paid account (there's no Xcode 4.x for Snow Leopard):

This also explains why Xcode is a paid download in the Snow Leopard App Store, but is free in the Lion App Store.


How to access history of podcasts I have listened to in iphone?

I am sure the phone logs this information. I have been wondering the same for as long as the Podcasts app came out in the App Store.

Unfortunately I have failed to find a way to extract data around the play history of my podcasts. I think this is impossible at this time.


Why are my DVD disks in the wrong format?

It appears Parallels is the cause of the issue.  Found some instructions on paragon-software.com and executed step 1. DVDs now working great!


Mavericks or El Captain for old MacBook Pro (early'11)

Go El Cap. The marginal performance decrease (especially on your machine) is near zero compared to 10.9. You'll get better support, newer features, newer apps, etc.


Intermittent ding/sonar sound coming from Macbook Pro... even when turned off!

There is an alert noise when logic board is failing/has failed.

Have you tried various start-up options?


Occasionally, HomePod has trouble playing anything I ask it to, until I restart it. Why?

Aha — I think the solution to this is on Apple’s support forums: https://discussions.apple.com/message/33564794#33564794

In short, HomePod seems to be unable to play music directly when it was last used as an Airplay speaker for Apple TV.

I confirmed that this was what was happening by going into the Airplay screen on my iPhone (open Control Center, and force-press on the Airplay icon in the audio control widget). There was an area in there showing me that my HomePod was receiving audio from my Apple TV (even though I’d put my Apple TV to sleep). When I tapped that to stop HomePod playing audio from the Apple TV, HomePod was able to play music when I asked it to.


It’s difficult to answer your question as the answer is, to some extent, opinion-based.
In their support document, Apple used to explicitly discourage consumers: (source)

Don’t use window cleaners, household cleaners, aerosol sprays, solvents, alcohol, ammonia, or abrasives

However, it appears that Apple has since changed the wording, eliminating the »alcohol« part:

Don't use aerosol sprays, solvents, abrasives, or cleaners containing hydrogen peroxide that might damage the finish.

In a related support document, Apple suggests to use disinfectant wipes as long as they don’t contain bleach:
(Note: I’m not allowed to post more than two links as I’m a new user. However, just google for HT201294 and the document will turn up.)

Use a disinfectant wipe to wipe the area first, then use a damp, soft, lint-free cloth, and finally dry the area with another soft, lint-free cloth.
Do not use disinfectant wipes containing bleach or disinfectant sprays in general.

This suggests that Apple has stopped discouraging customers from using rubbing alcohol, or isopropyl alcohol. Note that rubbing alcohol seems to be an active ingredient in the disinfectant wipes recommended by Apple.
Apple suggests a few brands of disinfectant wipes (Lysol wipes or Clorox Kitchen Disinfecting wipes). Ultimately, it is up to you to choose a product that works best for you.


How do I use ffmpeg to convert audible files

First run these commands:

brew install chromedriver ffmpeg
sudo easy_install pip
pip install selenium requests
git clone https://github.com/inAudible-NG/audible-activator
cd audible-activator
sed -i '' 's,chromedriver_path = "./chromedriver",chromedriver_path = "/usr/local/bin/chromedriver",' audible-activator.py
./audible-activator.py

Then enter your Audible username and password and wait for a while for the eight character activation key to be printed.

If you do not run the sed command that changes the value of the chromedriver_path variable, ./audible-activator.py results in an error like 'chromedriver' executable needs to be in PATH even if chromedriver is on the path or in the audible-activator directory. If your sed is GNU sed, replace sed -i '' with sed -i.

After that run a command like this:

ffmpeg -activation_bytes youractivationkey -i input.aax -c copy output.m4b

(I edited the command above based on the comments by LiWang and marcus erronius to replace output.m4a;mv output.m4{a,b} with output.m4b and to replace -vn -c:v copy with -c copy.)

If you try to use the ffmpeg command above with an aa file instead of an aax file, it results in an error like Option activation_bytes not found. To download a book from Audible as aax instead of aa, choose "Enhanced" from the "Audio Quality" dropdown in the view for downloading a book.

aax files are encrypted mp4 / m4a / m4b files so the ffmpeg command above does not re-encode audio and it preserves metadata such as chapters. mp4, m4a, and m4b are alternative filename extensions for the MPEG-4 Part 14 container format. The m4a and m4b extensions were originally introduced by Apple. One difference between the m4a and m4b extensions is that the option to remember the previous playback position in iTunes is enabled by default for files with an m4b extension but not for files with an m4a extension. iTunes also displays files with an m4b extension under audiobooks by default.

Old versions of iTunes did not have the checkbox to enable remembering the previous playback position, but remembering the previous playback position was always enabled for files with an m4b extension, so even Wikipedia still incorrectly states that "an .m4a audio file cannot "bookmark" (remember the last listening spot), whereas .m4b extension files can." (Even though I don't know if there are still other media players which behave like old versions of iTunes in that respect.)

The UTI for the m4b extension is com.apple.protected-mpeg-4-audio and Finder shows the kind of all m4b files as "protected MPEG-4 audio" even though all files with an m4b extension do not have copy protection.


Why does AppleScript "exists" sometimes always return "false"? (part of question regarding checking documents in Pages)

This following AppleScript code should work for you.  Ultimately, this code sets a variable for the count of open documents in Pages (openDocuments)  Then if the count of openDocuments is not 0, the names of the open documents are stored in this variable openDocumentNames

if application "Pages" is not running then
    tell application "Pages" to activate
    tell application "System Events" to tell application process "Pages"
        repeat until frontmost
            delay 0.1
        end repeat
    end tell
end if

tell application "Pages"
    set openDocumentsRef to a reference to documents
    set openDocuments to count of openDocumentsRef
    if openDocuments is not 0 then
        -- Gets The Name Of The Open Files
        set openDocumentNames to name of openDocumentsRef
        -- Gets The File Paths To The Open Files
        set openDocumentsPaths to file of openDocumentsRef
    end if
end tell

-- Shows & Selects The Files In A New Finder Window
tell application "Finder" to reveal openDocumentsPaths


What is the optimal AirPlay configuration when using two Airports Express?

Funny story.

Switching B from "Join a wireless network" to "Extend a wireless network" seemed to fix the problem instantly, despite the caveat in that Apple KB doc.

Two days later, the problem has returned. It seems that I can deliberately exacerbate the problem by using extra bandwidth, such as by running a speed test (over WiFi, of course).


Find Windows incompatible file / folder names

The rules of what is a valid windows filename is extremely complex, see here. It depends on the file system and for instance also on where the Dropbox folder is mounted in Windows (since the complete path name in windows is not allowed to exceed a certain number of characters). And since OSX doesn't know where you will mount Dropbox under windows, it can't guarantee that a particular file will work.

Now, there is an easier question on whether we can find all files containing a character that is illegal in windows filenames, namely <>:"/\|?* (according to the same document). This is quite easy using the commandline:

find . -name '*[<>:"/\\|?*]*'

Run this in the Dropbox directory (or replace the . with the Dropbox directory), and it should give you a list. The rationale is that in a filename [] is being used to mean: one of these characters. So I'm asking to list any file under this directory that contains one of these characters. Within the brackets, I only need to escape the backslash.

(now note that this command will also theoretically catch many filenames that are not valid on OSX, so can never be there in the first place, but that doesn't matter).


"Family" (shared) reminders in iOS 13 are not working - how can this be fixed?

My apologies to the AskDifferent community - this was mostly just a rant due to frustration. After updating my iPhone to iOS 13.3 (like the other devices) then resharing the "Family" reminders, they started syncing with my wife's phone. I was just being a bit impatient, then those click-bait articles put me over the edge. :/


It is possible to use 2 exteral monitors via 1 mini displayport > HDMI adapter. You will need a special converter. Have a look at this youtube proof. Also Macworld wrote something about connecting more screens to your mac.


Macs are quite a bit more tolerant of what RAM they can take and handle well. If RAM can be upgraded at all. A 2011 MBP has a wide range of options. Using Apple approved RAM modules (at a small premium)  with the same specs as a non-approved module of the same brand usually only gets you small advantages: they pass the hardware test at the Genius bar without issues and are practically guaranteed to work in a Mac. But that doesn't mean the non-approved modules do not work.
It is true that the module has to meet certain specs. But as long as it is DDR3 SO-DIMM with the correct voltage and not too slow the MBP 8,2 from 2011 should be able to handle it.

That means two  DDR3-1600 sticks each at 8GB is way out of Apple's official spec. Yet the machine works fine with them. The 1333 option is playing it safe and slower. Apple's advice: is doing just that. It doesn't even matter whther they are DDR3 or DDR-3L since the L variant is rated at 1,35V but required by spec to also run at 1,5V like the MBP 2011 wants it to. But choosing the L variant doesn't give you any energy savings in this case. To summarise: the machine in question can run at least up to 16GB RAM with 1,5V at at least up to 16000MHz just fine.

And the OP already confirmed that the sticks are working in some configurations but not in others.
Concerning the OP question there seems to be a hardware fault: It might be the logic board (more specific the ram slots being even pickier). Or it might be that the two 4GB sticks have issues. "Mismatched" modules it says in the title. Absent the knowledge of how this old problem went forth the advice had to be:

Most likely at least one of the 4GB modules is somehow flawed. To hunt it down and exclude other possibilities:

reseat the modules: test one module at a time; then both, swapping modules from slot to slot (this not only should pin down any problems with the individual modules but also might clean the slots a bit. Cleaning the slots per se might be an option as well.)
stress test the modules separately at first, then together in the combinations noted above
get the logic board tested, RAM slot failure is not that uncommon
buy modules of the the capacity, same specs both at the same time together (this is belt+suspenders advice; mixing modules should work – and did as the OP demonstrated)


Safari: Shortcut to switch between developer window and safari

Switch one way: Cmd + `

Switch the other way: Cmd + Shift + `

Replace ` with the necessary language specific equivalent.
Your solution was very close. Normally the key combination you mentioned loops through available windows. In this specific case you have to return to a previous window by adding Shift.


When I tried enabling the setting (Input source options: Allow a different one for each document), new windows seemed to just use the current input source.

Anyway, you could try running sudo /System/Library/CoreServices/Setup\ Assistant.app/Contents/MacOS/Setup\ Assistant and selecting US as the default input method. (You have to go through the steps of creating a new account, but you can delete it later.) It modifies at least /var/root/Library/Preferences/ByHost/com.apple.HIToolbox.*.plist.

If that doesn't work, try running sudo languagesetup and selecting English, or sudo defaults write /Library/Preferences/.GlobalPreferences.plist AppleLocale en_US and restarting.


Is there any workaround to install iOS 7 after Apple are longer signing it?

There is a jailbreak available for iOS 8.1 now!  PanGu will jailbreak the iPhone 5, but you have to manually install Cydia.  Either using WinSCP for Windows or Cyberduck for Mac in conjunction with a command line and SSH into the iPhone 5.  One more thing, there is almost nothing available for the iPhone as the jailbreak just came out and everyone is scrambling to update tweaks to run on iOS 8.1.  But you can have at, "Hey Siri" all you want while taking phone calls on your iPad and sending texts from your Mac!

Oh, and I know you posted this a month ago, but figured this MAY help!


Hopefully you have a Time Machine (or other) backup that you can restore the files, which are located in

~/Library/Mail/V5/MailData/Signatures

and the files seem to be called by some sort of PID string ending with ".mailsignature"

Restore those files from backup to get your signatures back.


WiFi keeps turning off (logging out) automatically

One possibility is that your phone is determining that the data connection is stronger/faster than the wireless connection and is purposefully changing to the more powerful connection. To test if this is the case, you can disable Cellular data on your phone when you want it to be connected only to the wifi. Not an optimal solution, but one that guarantees your data plan is saved.

Disabling the Cellular Data is under Settings > General > Cellular > Cellular Data and disable the option.

If the phone continues to disconnect with Cellular Data disabled, it's possible that your phone is experiencing the access points in the area having a channel conflict either with each other or with other wireless broadcast points in the area. This can happen if someone has one of the portable wireless access points broadcasting or when the access points in the area are not properly configured (or are on automatic channel select). There is also a possibility that the access point nearest you is on channel 1 and iOS devices really tend to prefer channel 6 or especially 11.

I work for a company that provides public wireless access at various locations and have experienced all of the above possibilities at various points with customers on iOS devices. If you feel like any of the above possibilities are what's occurring, you'll have to contact your college's wifi tech support or IT ops department because the


Why does syncing pictures take so long (even when there are no new pictures)

iTunes actually checks every file for change. That's inefficient and takes time - the only way to optimize this way of doing is either not having that amount of pictures (aka reducing the amount of files) - or putting the files into an own directory on the device and viewing them with iFile (applies to jailbroken devices) +(so that iTunes doesn't check them files..)


Advantage of doing a clean Install of Mountain Lion?

Installing cleanly gives you the advantage that you will know if an error is due to the "as-shipped" condition of the software before you add your data and applications to the mix. The installation of a new OS is the primary time when people notice corruption of a filesystem or other hardware type errors since a machine can often keep running well with some little errors. But relinking all the kernel extensions and drivers and knowing that your accessories and applications will all take to a major new OS is a lot of change. Spending a little extra time up front can help isolate issues if you have them.

By running the migration later, you have more control over things and can also choose to hand migrate anything first that you don't trust the tools to automate.


Is it possible to regress to previous versions of an app? (iBird Pro)

Yes, assuming you have backups of your Mac/PC, the right version of iTunes (or some other software capable of syncing apps) and that the old version of iBird Pro still runs on the version of iOS you have on your iPad.

Essentially what you would need to do is check what version of iBird Pro is stored with your iTunes Library on your Mac/PC (or within your Time Machine or other backups)? Basically you need to go back far enough in your backups to see whether you still have the old version:

If so: you can select and sync the iBird Pro app from your iTunes library to your iPad.
If not, and you have a Mac: Your Time Machine backup should have backups of all the apps previously downloaded/synced with your iPad. These will be located within your iTunes Library. So you could go back far enough to find a version of the iBird Pro app that will work with your iPad and restore that version to your iTunes Library. Then select and sync that version to your iPad from within iTunes.
If not, and you have a PC: Assuming you have past backups of your iTunes Library, you can do the same as above (i.e. copy back a version of the iBird Pro app that will work with your iPad to your iTunes Library. Then select and sync that version to your iPad from within iTunes.

IMPORTANT:

You should read the following before proceeding, as Apple has recently changed whether iTunes can still do the above. In a nutshell you will need iTunes 12.6.3 or earlier if you're on a Mac, or you'll need to use 3rd party software such as iMazing.
You should delete the current version of the app from your iPad prior to syncing an old version across.


How do I delete most of my reminders on the iPhone?

I am not aware of any iOS or web app that will allow bulk deletion of iCloud reminders but that is something that presumably could be written.

The only mechanism I am aware of that will bulk delete reminders is the Automator app running on OS X.

Here is a screen shot of something that would find all reminders older than 20 days and delete them summarily.

You can see I searched for reminder and chose a task to select them and another to delete them. DO NOT RUN THIS unless you are prepared to lose all your reminders or test things on a second iCloud account.

For testing, I would add a second condition and watch the script run before letting it loose on a thousand reminders. I'd hate to be the one to find a bug in the time logic of the Find Reminders action by working on live data that's not backed up (and I don't know a good way to back up the reminder data and have it re-syced back to the cloud easily).


MacBook 7,1 randomly shutting down (shutdown cause -102)

On a ten-year-old laptop with a non-removable battery, I suspect that the battery chemistry has aged to the point that it can't reliably provide an appropriate supply of power. I'm vaguely surprised that it's over voltage protection, but the chemistry of an aging battery is a complex topic.
iFixit indicates that you can get a replacement battery for $95 and that the replacement process is easy (only five steps!). Their guides are generally excellent, and this one looks like no exception. They'll even sell you the weird trilobe screwdriver you need to pull it off.
Even if this doesn't solve your problem, it will almost certainly improve your overall experience with this aging laptop.


Stopping false positive malware warnings in Catalina?

Unfortunately, this appears to be an issue with HP printer drivers and/or Catalina 10.15.7 - I'm one of many people with the same issue. Lots of us are reporting the same symptoms on the HP Support forums, but at the time of writing there's no fix. Based on experiences so far, HP are ignoring the issue, hanging up on phone calls, or claiming that you'll need to buy a new printer.
All indications at the moment are that there's some kind of issue with the driver signing. Using AirPrint may be a workaround.
I'll update this answer if anything substantial changes.
UPDATE: The issue has now been resolved. We can assume that Apple and/or HP has reinstated the code signing certificate, or added the signature to a whitelist, or some other behind-the-scenes magic. No user intervention was required for me - no reinstallation of drivers or anything else, the printer that was failing to start a few days ago now works without any problems.


Find my Friends displaying email addresses, not contact portraits or names

I suffered from the email-address-instead-of-name problem after replacing my phone's local contact info with a sync copy from my gmail account. this seemed to work for me (ios7):

click on the contact name in the 'find my friends' window
click the 'contact' button at top left
click 'add to existing contact'
select the relevant person in your contacts list; this will seem to add a duplicate email address, and you might want to clean that up later

restart Find My Friends... is now showing names (for me at least)... good luck.


The best/safest way to install Java on macOS is with Homebrew; just type this:
brew cask install java

Or if you don’t have Homebrew installed already, just type this command first:
/usr/bin/ruby -e "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Homebrew/install/master/install)"
brew cask install java


This depends how you changed your path.

If you changed it in your shell, just close the window and open a new shell.
If you changed it in a profile, change it there.

Your path should look something like this:

PATH=/usr/bin:/bin:/usr/sbin:/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/X11/bin


Create SavedSearch Criteria Using OR not AND

Yes, you can:

Select Finder. Create a Smart Folder using the key combination Option+Command+N
Click the + icon. Kind is any is the default search rule. Leave it for now.
Most important step: Hold down the Option key. You will see the + icon change to …
Simply click the … icon to add conditional criteria. Use the default, "Any : of the following are true”
Specify the criteria using two rules: Kind is Document and Kind is PDF
Now, delete first search rule made in Step 2. Here is a screenshot of the result:

As you can see, “any of the following..” functions as “or” (versus “all of the following..” which functions as “and”)


How to delete info from a connected device on mac even system information?

By any chance do you mean delete everything on the MyBook Studio drive?

If so open Disk Utility, select the drive in the left-hand pane and then click the "Erase" tab, select the format you want (best bet: Mac OS Extended (Journaled)) and click erase.

Everything (and I mean everything) on that drive will vanish in a cloud of unseen bytes.


Try decompiling first, then editing this NIB file.

/Applications/Utilities/Console.app/Contents/Resources/English.lproj/LogWindow.nib


Reboot from the command line (stuck processes)

If you can't kill something with -9, and sudo reboot doesn't work, you're pretty much out of options. The process is deadlocked in a manner that has prevented the OS from shutting down.

Have you closed all other Windowed applications? talagent is apparently the process that manages Resume, your guess is as good as mine in determining why it's deadlocked; Errors communicating with a process it was trying to save before closing, disk errors, etc. Since it's attempting to exit, it's unlikely that anything else (forcing system sleep, closing the process it was waiting on) will cause this process to work out it's lock.

The power button is necessary at this point.


How do I kill the "server connections interrupted" window/process?

If the issue is not common enough to find a solution on the Apple Knowlegde Base then it is most probably a rare issue caused by a corruption in the operating system or a 3'rd party application. Under these circumstances I would recommend one of the following:

Reinstalling OS X (after performing a backup, preferably with Time Machine).
Find someone else with identical hardware and software to see if their laptop does the same thing under the same circumstances (might be a compatibility issue with your wireless access point or router?)
Make a reservation at the Apple Genius Bar, they are great troubleshooters and will be able to tell you if there is something wrong with your laptop hardware or software.
A lot of troubleshooting information can be written to the OS X Console. Just have it running (and visible) while replicating this issue and it might print some information related to the issue.

I hope one of those steps can help you diagnose the issue, as it does not seem to be common enough to find a single solution for :-)

UPDATE: Since it appears that you are running "ADMitMac" which probably integrates with OS X in a significant way, and considering your issues are network related, there is a rather large red flag surrounding this software. I would strongly recommend uninstalling it as a trial to diagnose the issues you are encountering.


Will iTunes recognize existing apps when it "overwrites" the apps on my iPhone?

When using the standard iTunes/iPhone sync mechanism:

a) iTunes won't copy over an app to the iphone unless the app in iTunes is newer
b) It won't have an affect on app settings
c) If you only sync apps then it won't touch data/music


Unless you know that you've tinkered with the permissions on the file, it should be:

  -rw-r--r--  1 root  wheel  0 Oct 18 11:02 /private/var/log/coreduetd.log

This logfile is empty on the 5 Yosemite Macs I have access to.


Is there an iOS spreadsheet app that can do data filters?

Microsoft Excel is available for iOS for free.

Downloading and viewing Excel spreadsheets can be done once it is installed.

Editing (including filtering) can be done if you signed in to Microsoft's service inside the app.  You can log out immediately after having logged in, if you prefer not to be signed in.

Some features will not be available until you subscribe to Office 365.


"Failure while executing" error when trying to install GCC

brew doesn't need root permission. Do you have Xcode installed? If you do have you opened it up and agreed to the license?


I reassembled a Mac Pro A1186 and have extra parts left over. What do they go to?

I'm posting this as a pure guess, just so I can add a picture...

The underside of the drive bay has a lot of screws like the ones in your picture, & also the pic shows one of many areas, under the PSU housing, that uses that type of 'spacer' as sliding locks - just in case they're not actually spacers.
Picture is from the Mac Pro 3,1 Service source - the yellow-circled screws are from the PSU & are dome-heads. The ones similar to your pic, button-heads, are the non-circled screws.

The red-circled area is what I meant for the 'spacers' - drive locks perhaps, activated by the release handle at the back of the Mac [I've 3 different Pros here, but all are in use so I can't take them apart to check ;)

I've never taken the mobo out of a Mac Pro, so never seen underneath to know what the spacers may look like.


In your window, click the "Go Back" button until you get to the selection screen.

Note: Also, don't get illegal copies of OSes. If you want a free copy of Windows 10, sign up for the Windows Insider Program. You can get a free ISO file from there.


The short answer is via iCloud Drive.

Your WhatsApp backup(s) are stored in a hidden folder of iCloud Drive on your MacBook (if you signed into iCloud and turned on iCloud Drive).

To find your WhatsApp backup(s):

Launch Terminal (in /Applications/Utilities folder)
Type the following commands

cd ~/Library/Mobile\ Documents/
find *whatsapp*

You should see all the files related to your WhatsApp backup(s).

If you don’t see anything, then make sure that iCloud drive is turned on.
If you only see *.icloud files, then turn off “optimize mac storage” in the icloud system preferences.

To my knowledge, you can’t access directly the messages as they are stored in an encrypted SQLite database.

The documents, pictures and videos are stored in separate, unencrypted archives:

Document.tar (PDFs and other attachments)
Media.tar (pictures)
Video.tar (videos)
To extract what’s in there, copy those files to your desktop via the following terminal command:

cp *whatsapp*/Accounts/*/backup/*.tar ~/Desktop

Then, double-click on the .tar files to extract a folder structure containing the files organised by conversation.

Note: If you have multiple WhatsApp accounts backed up to the same iCloud account, you’ll need to replace the ‘*’ between “Accounts/” and “/backup” by the desired phone number.

Hope this helps!


cd /Users/Odinulf/folderone
jar cvf myjar.jar foldertwo

For example:

/Users/ian/code/tmp [ian@Ian-Cs-MacBook-Pro] [19:13]
> jar cvf myjar.jar 8779
added manifest
adding: 8779/(in = 0) (out= 0)(stored 0%)
adding: 8779/.DS_Store(in = 6148) (out= 355)(deflated 94%)
adding: 8779/logs/(in = 0) (out= 0)(stored 0%)
adding: 8779/logs/MasterLog.txt(in = 3044043) (out= 207357)(deflated 93%)
adding: 8779/logs/StartLog.txt(in = 6984480) (out= 685836)(deflated 90%)
/Users/ian/code/tmp [ian@Ian-Cs-MacBook-Pro] [19:13]
> ls *.jar
myjar.jar

Breaking it down, the options are:

c - create a jar file
v - be verbose when you do it
f - put the bitstream in to a file instead of standard out

Then you give it the file to put the bitstream in to. In this case myjar.jar. And then you give it a list of directories and files to put in to that jar bitstream. Relative and absolute pathing for contents is generally maintained so be careful with that.


In itunes connect, can the app seller be different than the name on the associated bank account?

This seems like a legal arrangement that would be fine with Apple according to this section of the banking help:

Does the Account Holder Name field have to match the Legal Entity Name field?
No, the account holder name for your bank account doesn’t have to match the legal entity name for your agreement.
The information you provide for the Account Holder Name field, though, should exactly match the name your bank has on file for your account. Make sure this is correct to avoid any issues with your payments. If you’re not sure what name your bank has on file, check a recent bank statement or ask your bank.

My only recommendation would be to have a written contract with your friend lining out whatever agreement you have with them. Your entering banking information to Apple is a legal agreement, so you'll have a hard time getting any money back should you ever expect that once Apple pays the bank account you elected. As long as you control the account, you can update the bank (subject to 24 hours or more delay of course when you elect a change) but you'd likely not be able to claw back or get relief if you don't intend for them to get all the proceeds.
You would certainly be in hot water once the taxes are due on these funds since you are the seller no matter which bank receives the funds. I would pay someone to advise you alone on the banking and tax decisions before relinquishing any payments to an account you don't totally control.


Change EXIF meta-data of multiple images in single click

ExifTool is the one to go for.

It has a time shift feature that allows you to shift the dates.

    Date/Time Shift Feature

  Have you ever forgotten to set the date/time on your digital camera
  before taking a bunch of pictures? ExifTool has a time shift feature
  that makes it easy to apply a batch fix to the timestamps of the
  images (ie. change the "Date Picture Taken" reported by Windows
  Explorer). Say for example that your camera clock was reset to
  2000:01:01 00:00:00 when you put in a new battery at
  2005:11:03 10:48:00. Then all of the pictures you took subsequently
  have timestamps that are wrong by 5 years, 10 months, 2 days, 10 hours
  and 48 minutes. To fix this, put all of the images in the same
  directory ("DIR") and run exiftool:

  exiftool "-DateTimeOriginal+=5:10:2 10:48:0" DIR

  The example above changes only the DateTimeOriginal tag, but any
  writable date or time tag can be shifted, and multiple tags may be
  written with a single command line. Commonly, in JPEG images, the
  DateTimeOriginal, CreateDate and ModifyDate values must all be
  changed. For convenience, a shortcut tag called AllDates has been
  defined to represent these three tags. So, for example, if you forgot
  to set your camera clock back 1 hour at the end of daylight savings
  time in the fall, you can fix the images with:

  exiftool -AllDates-=1 DIR

  See Image::ExifTool::Shift.pl (download in PDF format) for
  details about the syntax of the time shift string.

Some things to note:

Test on a small batch of copies first until you get the date syntax you want.

I suggest you copy or move your images to a new folder first.
And run the command on that directory.

If you run exiftool on a directory it will look in sub directories and modify any image files it finds.

Exiftool WILL automatically append '_original' on the end of your original files and create a new copy for you with the modifications.

You can override this by using the '-overwrite_original' option.

exiftool  -overwrite_original -AllDates+="0:2:1 10:48:0" /Users/UserName/Desktop/testFolder

This example shifts forward   0 years, 2 months, 1 day,  10 hours, 48 minutes, 0 seconds.

Using a single set of time shifts i.e instead of "0:2:1 10:48:0" you use "10:48:0". Exiftool will see this as hh:mm:ss.
And you can omit 0 where you do not want to put a shift.

exiftool  -overwrite_original AllDates+="9::" /Users/UserName/Desktop/testFolder

This example shifts forward 9 hours.

   exiftool  -overwrite_original -AllDates-="9::" /Users/UserName/Desktop/testFolder

This example shifts back 9 hours.

Notice AllDates-="  and AllDates+="  , one has a plus one has a minus.

Also Remember you are shifting time not stamping a time stamp.

So if my original date was :
2011:07:21 01:41:29

and I used exiftool  -overwrite_original -AllDates-="24::" /Users/UserName/Desktop/testFolder

Then I would get : 2011:07:20 01:41:29

Do download the PDF with the syntax

And make sure you look at the difference with the options -overwrite_original_in_place  and -overwrite_original
Documentation


In iTunes Store, how can you view the full name?

If you press the small 'i' button to the right of the description column, the information is shown again, in a pop-over box.  This does seem to show the full name.


Running ARM code on macOS

See How to emulate an ARM architecture under OSX 10.6 (“Snow Leopard”)? The answers to this question include suggestions for:

QEMU

  QEMU is a generic and open source machine emulator and virtualizer.

QEMU can be installed from Homebrew: brew install qemu

Skyeye

  Skyeye is a multi-architecture, multi-core, and highly scalable hardware simulation platform. Cur- rently it is implemented by the core library libcommon.so and a series of plug-ins based on the composition of the core library. SkyEye supports the system structure of ARM, Blackfin, Coldfire, PowerPC, MIPS, SPARC and x86.

Skyeye may be no longer under active development.

Cross Compiling ARM with Xcode

Getting Xcode to correctly cross-compile non-iOS device ARM code on the Mac appears to be possible, if tricky. You may find focusing on command line compiling easier.

embedXcode

  embedXcode is a template for Xcode, Apple's official IDE on Mac, and eases development for the most popular embedded computing boards.

Alternative Approaches

Cross compiling ARM static lib with GCC for Mac iOS xCode projects
Add a custom compiler to XCode 3.2


2FA code sent to wrong unknown number (Iran)

You need to begin the account recovery process with Apple. Nobody on this site can help you change your 2FA settings or reset your password because this site is not run by Apple Employees.


Adding a bookmark or a web page to the reading list in Safari causes freeze

Try to reinstall Safari.

Uninstall by...

...dragging /Applications/Safari.app to the trash.
...using a free cleaning tool. This tool will also remove preferences files in the library. Therefore bookmarks and extensions will be removed aswell.

Download Safari from the apple website and reinstall it.


Can I make/receive calls on a MacBook if connected to same iPhone's personal hotspot

No - the method by which your Mac connects to the internet doesn't affect whether it can hand off calls to your cellular service in general. I've tested this mostly in the US with US carriers, but it's possible you have different rules and would need to check with your carrier.
I suppose your network could be broken or firewall or traffic is preventing a properly set up set of devices from working, but the more common cause is the carrier setup didn't finish.
I would focus on undoing and re-doing the steps needed for the carrier to talk to the iPhone and then the settings on the iPhone to enable WiFi calling.

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT203032


Any way to get a Screenshot of entire webpage WITHOUT repeating elements?

I use Paparazzi and it works fine taking full-length screenshots of webpages with fixed elements, as far as I can tell.


How do I remount USB Flash Drive or SD card?

There's a difference between unmounting and ejecting.
I'm not familiar with the CLI of diskutil, so I'll explain it using Disk Utility.app

When you have a mounted SD card you can unmount it by clicking the Unmount button in the Toolbar:

The SD card stays in the list, but it is faded out.
Then if you want to remount it again, just select the SD card and click Mount:


Why does my USB hub hide a directly attached drive from the boot menu? (post-Filevault)

Its because the hub is able to connect drives so the hub shows it similar to how an empty optical drive shows up.