A player with global hotkeys in Mavericks for back/forward

You can use Automator to create Services that control the playback of QuickTime Player, then assign keyboard shortcuts to the Services in System Preferences.

The Automator Service:

Keyboard Shortcut in System Preferences:


Is there anyway to add the Mic icon to the Swype keyboard?

No, this is currently not possible due to restrictions with 3rd-party keyboards in iOS.

From Apple site:

  Custom keyboards, like all app extensions in iOS 8.0, have no access to the device microphone, so dictation input is not possible.


Is it possible to use an Amazon Echo with HomeKit?

Philips Hue Bulbs are controlled by the Philips Hue Bridge or other ZigBee compatible bridge. HomeKit and Apple TV don't function as a true bridge or hub as it requires other hubs and bridges to connect to smart devices. The Apple TV simply gives you a remote connection from Apple TV to iOS over internet via iCloud.

Hue Bulb --(ZigBee)--> Hue Bridge --(LAN)--> HomeKit via Apple TV --(LAN/WAN)--> iOS device

Now, you can't use Amazon Echo with HomeKit, but this doesn't matter. Amazon uses Hue Bridge's built-in APIs to connect to Hue. Amazon and Hue can connect regardless of your HomeKit setup.

Hue Bulb --(ZigBee)--> Hue Bridge --(LAN/WAN)--> Amazon Echo

You can use both HomeKit and Amazon Echo (including Dot, Plus, Spot, and Show) in conjunction with HomeKit via iOS and Apple TV, provided you have the Hue Bridge as your controller.


What does setting boot-args kext-dev-mode do to set the serial port?

The command has nothing to with the serial port as such.

The "sudo" part means that you want to run the command that follows with superuser privileges.

The command is nvram, which is a command that allows you change variables in the NVRAM that is used by the firmware and kernel during boot of the computer.

The variable here is "kext-dev-mode" which is being enabled by setting it to 1. Ordinary kernel extensions (mainly drivers) must be signed by the developer, and the developers certificate needs to be signed by Apple - otherwise the kernel extension cannot be loaded.

The "kext-dev-mode" is intended for development scenarios where you want to test unsigned kernel extensions. Thus allowing these to be loaded without testing if they are indeed signed.

However, kext-dev-mode is no longer used for anything. On OS X El Capitan and newer it does absolutely nothing.


Does my Macbook Pro 15" Late 2013 Geekbench 4 score indicate a faulty discrete GPU?

Short Answer

Your discrete GPU is almost certainly fine. The reason for the zero score is that Geekbench is unable to fully test this GPU due to reduced NVIDIA support. Because it can't run a full test, you're getting a score of zero, but this does not mean your GPU is faulty.

Long Answer

According to your Geekbench results, you scored a Depth of Field result of zero because it measured 0.00 pixels/sec for that metric. In other words, Geekbench itself is unable to test this metric, rather than there being an issue with your discrete GPU.

This is a known issue. According to Primate Labs:

  This is due to an issue with the NVIDIA GPU drivers provided with macOS. We’ve contacted Apple regarding this issue and Apple’s response is that they are unable to address the issue due to reduced NVIDIA support.

Source: Primate Labs Support: Zero OpenCL Score

I did check to see if there were any drivers you could download directly from NVIDIA, but non are available for macOS.

So, unless you're actually experiencing any problems using your MBP, I would just ignore this score altogether.


1 . Delete the stack from your dock and drag the download folder again into the dock and try
Download stack ? Check you download history -
sqlite3 ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.LaunchServices.QuarantineEventsV* 'select LSQuarantineDataURLString from LSQuarantineEvent'


Discovering which PCMCIA Wifi card can work on OS X Leopard

There is a list of such cards on Low End Mac up to 10.4

But I believe better way would be just to go to ebay for native Airport Extreme if your particular model is aluminum one.

If it is Titanium then CardBus is the way to go since original Airport 802.11b cards are rare, pricier and don't support WPA2.

P.S. And I wouldn't recommend 10.5 on Titanium Powerbook


“softwareupdate -l” on Mac terminal doesn't return anything

Do you have a custom software update server set? See Reset OS X Software Update server for info on how to check & if necessary reset it.

Another option is to bypass the update server system by downloading and installing the update manually. You can find updates at support.apple.com/downloads; the specific one you need is the macOS Sierra 10.12.6 Combo Update

(Note: the 12.12.6 Combo update should not be confused with the "macOS Sierra 10.12.6 Update" -- the non-combo or "delta" version requires that you already be up to 10.12.5.  You're running 10.12.4, so you need the combo update.)


Is it possible to create a new 8gig partition as installer in lion

You can do a clean reinstall from the recovery partition without needing any external media:

Hold command-R on startup
Erase the Macintosh HD volume from Disk Utility
Choose Reinstall OS X

If you don't erase the OS X volume first, Reinstall OS X does an upgrade install.

See OS X Lion: Erase and reinstall Mac OS X.

"Startup disk" probably means the main OS X volume (like Macintosh HD) here:

  Select your startup disk from the list on the left, and then click the Erase tab.

If you erase the whole drive, it also erases the recovery partition and EFI partition, and your Mac will try to start up in internet recovery mode when it is restarted.


For connecting to the TV you would need this dongle or this dongle (with cable length).

As far as wireless keyboards go, why not Apple's own one?


How to turn off Auto-show sidebar in fullscreen Safari 9

Simply copy and paste one or both into Terminal:

defaults write com.apple.safari ShowSidebarInTopSites bool=FALSE
defaults write com.apple.safari ShowSidebarInNewWindows bool=FALSE

If you don't want to copy two commands, then you can do both at the same time:

defaults write com.apple.safari ShowSidebarInTopSites bool=FALSE; defaults write com.apple.safari ShowSidebarInNewWindows bool=FALSE


Launch different apps based on file name (other than the extension)?

Just create an Applescript Droplet to read the name and extension of dropped files and triage them with if statements. This script should get you started. Save it as an application, and then you can put it in your dock or some place convenient to drop files on it.

on open these_items
    repeat with i from 1 to the count of these_items
        set this_item to item i of these_items
        set the item_info to info for this_item without size
        set theName to name of item_info
        try
            set theExtension to the name extension of item_info
        on error
            set theExtension to ""
        end try

        if theName contains "thumb" then
            tell application "VLC"
                activate
                open this_item
            end tell
        else if theExtension contains "jpeg" then
            tell application "Preview"
                activate
                open this_item
            end tell
        else
            -- open with system default app
            tell application "Finder" to open this_item
        end if
    end repeat
end open


How to download Macaulay2 for MacBook Pro?

Homebrew needs your Mac password because installing most SW (including homebrew) requires permission from an admin user, which is given by you entering your password.  Just enter the same password you use when you log into your Mac, and homebrew should get installed.  Then, you can type brew install Macaulay2/tap/M2 to install it.
UPDATE: According to https://faculty.math.illinois.edu/Macaulay2/Downloads/MacOSX/index.html you can also download the SW on a disk image and just drag the Macaulay folder to the Applications shortcut in the disk image, like this:

Then follow the instructions in that ReadMe file to complete the configuration steps needed to use this SW.  This will allow you to use this SW on your Mac without any need for homebrew.


How can I gift an iPad app from iPhone OR via Web?

At the moment, you have to use iTunes to gift an application for iPad.

If the application is universal, then you can gift the app with your iPhone.


How to clean off keyboard marks on screen?

If you are very lucky it is just dirt and can be wiped off but usually it is permanent and there isn't much way to avoid them. I have seen it happen even when a soft cloth is used to cover the keys when the lid is closed. In fact that may even make it worse as the cloth adds thickness to the sandwich and may make the contact between the high points of the screen and the keys firmer. The screen surface of an anti-glare display just isn't very hard - glossy glass is harder but can still be marked.

Using a quality micro fibre cloth with a 70% water/30% isopropyl alcohol solution is a good way to clean the marks off if they are not permanent. I have been using the cleaning solution provided by my optician for my glasses for years with no ill effects, and I love the iKlear blue microfibre cloths (for both glasses and displays). They call it "terry" as opposed to their "chamois" cloth.


How can I install a new dictionary on OS X for use with the "Word of the Day" screensaver?

On a rather obscure comment thread, someone explained where you might find the word list that Apple uses to power the screensaver. It is at /System/Library/Graphics/Quartz\ Composer\ Plug-Ins/WOTD.plugin/Contents/Resources/NOAD_wotd_list.txt. The file looks like this:

m_en_us1282510  quinsy
m_en_us1273791  orbicular
m_en_us1220945  alimony
m_en_us1250517  genome

It is a list of tab-separated entries. On the right you have the word, and on the left, what looks like an ID. But what's it an ID for, and how would you be able to find it for another word not already on the list?

As you might expect, the ID refers to an entry in Apple's default dictionary, the "New Oxford American Dictionary". (That's what "NOAD" stands for in the word-list path above.)

How to find the IDs for other words?

A fellow named Joseph Gentle, in a series of blog posts, shows how to get at the data underlying Apple's dictionaries. In his "Apple dictionaries, part 2" post, he points to code that unpacks the relevant binary file (stored in /Library/Dictionaries) into XML. Using the dedict.c and strip.c files found here, and following Gentle's example, I used the following bash commands to get at the NOAD's XML (these commands are run from the directory where you downloaded the dedict.c and strip.c files):

clang dedict.c -Wall -lz -o dedict
clang strip.c -Wall -lz -o strip
./dedict "New Oxford American Dictionary" | ./strip > dict.xml

When I head-ed the first few lines of the dict.xml file, I saw something promising, with entries that looked like this:

<d:entry xmlns:d="http://www.apple.com/DTDs/DictionaryService-1.0.rng" id="m_en_us1219333" d:title="abode" class="entry">

Notice that id param... it's an identifier that looks exactly like the one in the screensaver word list!

I wrote the following Ruby script to parse the XML, and then, using my own word list, create a new screensaver file that maps my own words to their IDs in the dictionary:

raw = File.open("./dict.xml").read
my_words = File.open("./word_list.csv").readlines.map { |line| line.split(',')[1] }

word_id_map = {}

raw.scan(/<d:entry .*? id="(.*?)" d:title="(.*?)" class="entry">/).each do |entry|
   word_id_map[entry[1]] = entry[0]
end

my_words.each do |word|
  if id = word_id_map[word]
    puts [id, word].join('  ')
  end
end

When I replaced the original screensaver file with this new one, it worked. You can now have a "Word of the Day" screensaver that gives definitions for the words you choose.


Try to return everything back:

diskutil resizevolume disk0s2 R

and then:

diskutil resizeVolume disk0s2 480G jhfsx InstallOSX 10G

  Resizing a volume that is currently set as the computer’s startup disk
  will invalidate that setting; use the Startup Disk System
  Preferences panel or bless (8) to reset the resized volume as the
  startup disk.


Remove app preview from iOS 7 multitasking

No, this isn't configurable on iOS 7.

We'll have to see what the jailbreak community comes up with for people wanting an alternate idiom or design for fast switching of apps.

As a sidenote, you can still use four finger swipe gestures to switch apps.


How can I reduce the time it takes to sync my ipod touch

From everything I've read, photos do seem to be the biggest factor in long sync times.

Exhibit A: This blog post suggests to not sync photos:

  If I have photos unchecked, everything syncs and it's fast (7 seconds).

You can give that a shot to see if your sync time improves (as a troubleshooting measure)

Exhibit B: Apple Support suggests that importing the camera roll can improve sync times

Worst case, as @hobs mentions, you can restore your device as a new device from a backup (see this Apple Support page for details).


Using Apple Compressor, it's automatic, depending on your machine & settings.

Hardware acceleration is enabled automatically within Compressor. If your system has the right set of chips, and you select the right compression setting, hardware encoding kicks in.

Hardware encoding is available on all shipping Macs that use an i5 or i7, Sandy Bridge or Ivy Bridge processor; except the new Mac Pro.
Hardware encoding is applied to QuickTime and MPEG-4 compression that uses the H.264 codec; but not to Blu-ray Disc compression.
Hardware encoding cannot be used for multi-pass encoding. In fact, turning on multi-pass encoding turns off hardware encoding.

Source & for further analysis : Compressor 4.1: Hardware Acceleration


Photos getting deleted from favourites album

Short answer: Yes. At least for iOS9.

A bit longer answer: The Favorites Album in the Photos App in iOS9 generates a link to all photos that is marked with a "heart". If you delete the photo then the link in the Favorites album also disappears.


Is there a way for AppleScript to detect when a Desktop is switched?

http://piyocast.com/as/archives/5502
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8kZbMs1LJt8&feature=youtu.be

You can detect the switch of desktop. Though, Full-screen mode is detected as desktop switching.

Enjoy!


Remap function key on external logitech keyboard

It is possible to do with the Karabiner-Elements app.
As you have completed the installation, head to the app. In the very first tab choose the input device you wish to make a key remap for, then add a new item and define the initial key and target key (they are in the top section of the drop down).
This is it, no need to reboot. It effects immediately.
PS. it also allows you to remap the Eject key, which becomes useless if DVD drive is taken out for an extra HDD/SSD.


It isn't in the nature of email itself for emails to go missing.

This means that mails go missing either because:

(a) someone is accessing your account and deleting the mail,

(b) there's a server problem where data is lost,

or

(c) software has been setup to intentionally delete emails

You indicate that you're using Gmail, but also Mail.app on iOS and Mac. If you store your email on Gmail exclusively, it doesn't sound likely that (b) happens several times for you.

If your account is secure and you haven't shared your password with anyone else, I don't think the problem is related to (a) either.

So the most likely culprit is reason (c). This could be a spam filter, antivirus/antimalware software, etc. that is setup to identify and delete suspicious emails. As you're using multiple clients to access mail, this could have been setup directly on Gmail, in Mail.app on your Mac or on an iOS client.


Resolution of pictures hopping from iphoto to imovie to idvd

This issue may have been caused by a variety of issues:

The resolution was only at 720p.
iMovie compressed the movies.
The "encoding quality" may not have been up to par.

These programs have been updated significantly now, however. iPhoto has been replaced with Photos, and iDVD isn't supported now.


Mount FAT32 partition (external drive) on Mac

mkdir /fat_mount
# create area to mount FAT partition
mount -t msdos /dev/diskXXX /fat_mount

^ Thats how to mount fat drives/partitions in Mac OS, also useful for single user mode recovery. Note I think some versions may ship with "mount_msdos" as opposed to using "mount -t msdos" but I haven't used enough to say for sure.


Unable to enable PHP in OSX 10.8 mountain lion

If the line doesn't exist commented-out, then just add it separately. i.e. put a line in  httpd.conf that reads AddModule mod_php5.c.


Define different screen resolution when external monitor is plugged in

You don't need any apps, Snow Leopard and Leopard (and possibly earlier versions) do this out of the box.  I just tested it and it worked without any effort at all.

Go to System Preferences > Displays
Select the checkbox 'Show displays in menu bar'
Connect your external display
Arrange them however you like
On your menu bar, you'll see an icon shaped like a screen with two legs, click it
Set your resolutions and that's it

When you disconnect your external screen, your MacBook screen will return to the original display setting, if you plug the external screen back in, the resolutions you setup last time will be automatically selected.

Note: I tried this with a Mini-DisplayPort cable because that's all I have.  I don't know if behaviour is different if you use a different connection.  I'm on a 13" Unibody 2009 model and running OS X 10.6.6


Unable to Run Update From 10.7 Lion to 10.11 El Capitan

Alright, so it turns out that a stick of RAM had gone bad, but OS X didn't see that it had gone bad. I ended up testing both sticks to make sure that one of them worked, and now I've successfully installed Lion, and upgraded it to El Capitan. Thanks for the suggestions.


You can use iTunes that will transfer your old phone data to your Mac (and back to new phone)

or

You can use iCloud that will back up your old phone to iCloud (and back to new phone)

Do not forget the actual Phone function (the SIM card), use the old or use the new (if you got one).

Very specific instructions for all methods above are available from Apple here..

I personally prefer the iTunes to my Mac method.


How to create a calendar event but keep my external calendar default alert times?

I had the same problem. I use Calendar all the time for email alerts and this has become very tedious.

Here's a workaround:

Make a Calendar entry as a template:

Create a generic email alert for one day ahead. Use a title you will remember like "one day alert," or maybe "1D" for a short name.

Use the template for a new Calendar entry:

If it's not immediately visible, make a same-date copy of the alert (I use option-click-drag).
Retitle as desired & add any needed details.
Change the date (the date the template resides in) to the date you want. Doing this last will avoid an additional email alert.

Hope that helps.

Ps. You have to do this for each different lead-time you want for an alert. I nearly always use one or two days, so I created a template for each. I also made one that does both a one day and a two day alert.


What is the function of the triangles and circles that appear in the ruler when working with text in Keynote?

The outer two are Margin guides [the edge of the printing area], the inner ones are Tab-stops; Markers that text & numbers will line up to if you separate them by using the Tab key instead of just some spaces.

The orange lines are mine, for illustration.
'Right tab' in the picture unfortunately has an accidental space after it, which stops it lining up with the orange line properly - my bad - but it illustrates that the space itself is included in the tab-stop.

You can see & edit a Tab function by right clicking a Tab marker...

BTW, if there's not enough room for the tabs, compared to the typed text, they simply don't [can't] work.

One last note - Tabs are set for that line only unless specified globally before you start typing, or if you Select All.


You were close you had an errant 'my' which you do not need.

set deptList to {"dept1", "dept2", "dept3", "dept4"}

    set dept_name to {choose from list deptList}

Also you should pay attention to the colour code of the text. this will give you a clue as what the Applescript thinks the syntax is you have typed


How to copy folder items on disk mount automator

One way to do this is to use Automator:

create a Folder Action on /Volumes
trigger an Applescript or shell script when a new drive is mounted
do the copy
grab a coffee (optional).

You'll probably want to scrape the output of system_profiler SPUSBDataType to make sure you're not messing around with DMGs.

Oooh, option 2 from stack overflow (copy/paste as a block quote below):

  You can use launchd for that purpose. Launchd can be configured
  to automatically launch a program when a file path is modified.

  For example the following launchd config plist will launch the program
  /usr/bin/logger when the desktop folder of my user account is
  modified:

<?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>
    <key>Label</key>
    <string>logger</string>
    <key>ProgramArguments</key>
    <array>
        <string>/usr/bin/logger</string>
        <string>path modified</string>
    </array>
    <key>WatchPaths</key>
    <array>
        <string>/Users/sakra/Desktop/</string>
    </array>
</dict>
</plist>

  To activate the config plist save it to the LaunchAgents folder in
  your Library folder as "logger.plist".

  From the shell you can then use the command launchctl to activate
  the logger.plist by running:

$ launchctl load ~/Library/LaunchAgents/logger.plist

  The desktop folder is now being monitored. Every time it is changed
  you should see an output in the system.log (use Console.app).  To
  deactivate the logger.plist, run:

$ launchctl unload ~/Library/LaunchAgents/logger.plist

  The configuration file above uses the WatchPaths option.
  Alternatively you can also use the  QueueDirectories option. See the
  launchd man page for more information.


Is Wifi enabled in iOS 5 even when the device is put to sleep?

iOS 4

If the phone is connected to a power source, then Wifi remains enabled, even if the phone goes to sleep. If the phone is not connected to a power source, then Wifi is disabled once the phone goes to sleep.

This of course was by design in an effort to reduce battery consumption.

iOS 5

iOS 5 looks to have altered the behaviour of the device. If iTunes wireless syncing is enabled and iTunes is running, the device will listen to any Wifi connection and wake for it (even SSH, which requires a jailbreak to install). I've tested the device with iTunes not running and it indeed behaves as it did in the previous iteration of iOS, refusing to allow a connection through SSH until I woke the device.

However, it seems this is not consistent. Leaving the phone unconnected and iTunes running, I started an SSH session and began transferring some files. When the phone went to sleep, the connection was lost. So it looks like the answer is "yes, but don't count on it?" Clearly iTunes wireless syncing throws us a curveball here.


How do I enter superscript text with Preview's PDF annotation feature?

I think you need to input Unicode superscripts via the Character Viewer or a text replacement shortcut.  Superscript 2 is U+00B2  ²


Is there a way to differentiate in iOS mail notifications by account?

That is not possible using the default Mail app. It only allows you to differentiate between VIPs and regular senders (by placing a ☆ next to VIPs).

If you want to differentiate which account received an email within a notification, you would need to use a separate app for one of your accounts. You will then get separate notification settings for that app, and a different notification icon as well.


How to export Text replacements from the Keyboard System Preference from shell?

There is an unofficial command line tool, which does exactly what you want, its called shortcuts.
As mentioned on GitHub, you can install it via homebrew

brew install rodionovd/taps/shortcuts

and then list your current replacements via

shortcuts read

and add new ones via

shortcuts import <input.plist>
shortcuts create <shortcut> <new phrase>
shortcuts update <shortcut> <phrase>
shortcuts delete <shortcut>

for details, see the documentation.


How to access my .ssh folder for Transmit or Cyberduck?

In the find file window, press Command-Shift-G.  It'll ask you what folder to navigate to.  Enter ~/.ssh and press return.


I would call or open a ticket with Apple Support so they can advise - they’ll be able to let you know how to differentiate the accounts if needed or just fix whatever issue in the back end has flagged your situation to be in error or fix an actual server side error if that’s what has happened.
They have the best insight as to which steps you can take to resolve this rapidly.


Sshfs or its substitute in Apple products?

You can get sshfs with MacPorts. Just download macports and run

sudo port install sshfs

in a terminal window.


Delete all files of a resolution Apple Photos

You can identify low-resolution photos in Photos.app using AppleScript and collate them into a single album that would then allow you to select them all in one go for deletion.
Ordinarily, this code snippet (run from inside Script Editor) would find the low-resolution photos (and videos) and put them into a new album called "Low Res":
    tell application "Photos" to add ¬
        (every media item whose ¬
            (height > width and height ≤ 480) or ¬
            (width > height and width ≤ 480)) to ¬
        make new album named "Low Res"

However, on MacOS 10.13 with the latest updates installed, it throws an error, reporting that it can't retrieve the specified album.  This is probably a bug in Photos.app.
So, I decided to assign a description to all of these media items instead:
    tell application "Photos" to ¬
        set the description of ¬
            (every media item whose ¬
                (height > width and height ≤ 480) or ¬
                (width > height and width ≤ 480)) to ¬
            "Low Resolution"

    display alert "Done."

Then, within Photos.app, I created a Smart Album with the following search criterion:

After clicking OK, the album was populated by the photos (and videos) that were marked as being of low-resolution.
Now, assuming there's nothing in there you'd like to keep, you would simply press Cmd+A to select all of the items, then Cmd+⌫ to delete them all from the library (it actually moves them to the library's Recently Deleted folder, meaning you can retrieve any items you didn't intend to delete).
A couple of notes:
If you don't want video files to be included in the cull, then use these criteria for the smart album instead:

Note the match selection is set to all.  This excludes videos and gives you an album populated only by photos of low resolution.
Finally, bear in mind that the AppleScript has to search through your entire library and compare the height and width of every item it comes across.  Depending on your library size, it can take a few minutes.
My Photos.app library has 8000 photos in it and it took about three minutes to on a MacBook 1.2GHz m5 to complete.
If Script Editor times out, wrap the code inside a timeout block and specify a length of time in seconds to allow the code to run to completion:
    with timeout of 300 seconds
        tell application "Photos" to...
        ...etc...
    end timeout

    display alert "Done."


Why doesn't my MacBook Pro automatically reconnect to the Wi-Fi when resuming from sleep?

It should automatically reconnect but it might take a couple of seconds, more depending on the speed of your wireless router.  How long are you waiting?

It will automatically join a network if you have configured it to remember networks you have previously joined.  You can check this in the System Preferences>Network page. Click on the WiFi entry then on the Advanced button.  In the Wi-Fi tab is a list of Preferred Networks.  Make sure your network is listed, with the correct security mode.  If it is listed but not at the top, perhaps the laptop is trying other networks first.  Move your preferred network to the top of the list.

If that still doesn't work, try deleting it from the list, click OK, click Apply.  Then turn off the Wifi by clicking the "Turn WiFi off" button above.  Then turn it back on and choose your network, making sure that it is set to remember.  Save/Apply and close the System Preferences and try sleeping again.


New WD External Drive Can't Eject & Files Won't Display on MacOS

Restart your Mac

At the risk of stating the obvious (as you didn't say you've tried this), have you fully shutdown your Mac and then rebooted to see if the drive appears and functions okay then?

Use a different port

Shutdown your Mac and try connecting the drive to another port. What happens?

Safe Mode

If restarting your Mac and trying a different port makes no difference, can you restart your Mac in Safe Mode and let us know how that goes?

Follow these steps boot your Mac into Safe Mode:

Fully shut down your Mac
Restart your Mac
Immediately press the Shift key and keep it down
Let go of the Shift key when you see the login window (NOTE: If you have FileVault enabled you may need to log in twice).
Take a note of what happens (i.e. could you boot your Mac okay, is the issue still present, etc)
To exit Safe Mode just restart your Mac as normal

Once you've booted into Safe Mode, let me know how you went and we'll go from there.

BACKUP

Finally, you really should have a backup of your data. You've made it pretty clear you have valuable footage on this drive you can't risk losing, so you really should have a second drive for backup purposes.


Device enrollment fails, error: server certificate is invalid

This issue is resolved.  When installing the SSL cert from GoDaddy in Lion server there are two items that need to take place outlined in GoDaddy's guide for OS X Server 10.6:

Install Intermediate Chain
Install Certificate

The Intermediate Chain had not been completed and thus the Certificate was from showing as coming from an unsigned authority. Once the Intermediate Chain had been installed I was able to successfully enroll the device.


My 2014 MacBook Pro is not able run external monitor at high refreshrate

There is no issue, 60Hz is the highest refresh.
According to the official specifications, that model Mac has a refresh rate of (HDMI)

Support for 1080p resolution at up to 60Hz
Support for 3840-by-2160 resolution at 30Hz
Support for 4096-by-2160 resolution at 24Hz

As for DisplayPort, the released standard for  DisplayPort at the time this Mac was released, was 1.2a.  The maximum resolution and refresh rate was 4K (3840x2160 @ 75Hz) or 5K (5180x2880@ 30Hz).  That doesn’t mean Apple “enabled” those resolutions/refresh rates. They’ve been known to “cripple” features like daisy-chaining which was possible with DP 1.2 but not possible with the MacBook Pro.
The cable may be able to support the bandwidth but, more importantly, the graphics chip must be able to drive that frequency.


Macbook Pro 2011 : After disabling the dGPU using Arch, normal boot hang halfway but working in safe boot

The problem that you're having is that you're not quite following the instructions correctly.

More specifically, you've run the diskutil cs list command correctly, but the purpose of running this command was to identify the Logical Volume UUID. And, the reason you needed to identify it was because you need to actually use it in the next command.

In other words, instead of entering:

diskutil coreStorage unlockVolume UUID

you need to enter

diskutil coreStorage unlockVolume 3F7CB47E-F743-4DBF-9BF1-10E574F85D13

instead.

NOTE: This answer is designed to clarify how you needed to follow the instructions you're following. As your question only quotes a portion of those instructions, I cannot directly vouch for the accuracy or validity of the full instructions you're trying to follow.


Safari 7 is documented in many Mavericks reviews to be better at extending battery life and CPU usage. That ethereal link has an animation in the background, I'm assuming that's what's using your CPU.


How can I automount a shared network drive for Time Machine backups?

I think I can get you started, but using terminal commands, which you said you'd prefer to avoid. Apologies, but it might give you a starting point. All of the following you could put in a bash script and run as a login item.

You'll need to first share out the target drive(s) (MyBook in the examples below) using file sharing (System Preferences > Sharing > check the File Sharing box, add the drives you need and set appropriate permissions - I just use Everyone to keep it simple).

You can mount a remote machine and/or its associated drives using mount like so:

Make a directory as the mount point (obviously call test whatever you want):

mkdir /Volumes/test

Now mount the remote drive. I'm assuming this is already connected to your iMac and appears when you connect to your iMac using Finder:

mount -t afp afp://<your mac's name>/<drive name to mount> /Volumes/test

On my remote Mac Mini, to connect to my MyBook attached to it via USB, that would be:

mount -t afp afp://bobs-mac-mini/MyBook /Volumes/test

If you need to authenticate (I got error -5000 when trying to mount my home folder), you can also do this using

mount -t afp afp://<username>:<password>@<your mac's name>/<drive name to mount> /Volumes/test

However, the password would unfortunately have to be in the clear. So again, this might be:

mount -t afp afp://binarybob:password123@bobs-mac-mini/MyBook /Volumes/test

You can also connect to your home folder using the above method, just by replacing MyBook with the name of your home folder.

The drive you mounted should now appear in the finder and you should be able to use it like any other locally mounted drive. When you're finished, you can do:

umount /Volumes/test

to remove it. BTW, if you're not an administrator, you might need to add sudo in front of each command and type an administrator password.


Are Applescript dictionaries shareable or available without access to the app?

The AppleScript Dictionary, an XML file with a .sdef extension, for a given app is typically found within the application bundle, e,g. for iTerm2:

/Applications/iTerm.app/Contents/Resources/iTerm2.sdef

You can copy the .sdef file to your computer and open it in Script Editor.

That said, you may not be able to compile the script without the App installed, so debugging your code may be difficult.

A trick I've used, to just compile the code but not test the code, is to create a dummy application bundle of the target application. Just make a folder of the application's name with a .app extension.


Google Apps – Mail couldn't discover the account settings for the Mail server

It appears that you may be in the United Kingdom, and it appears that there is an issue with how you need to set up email accounts within Apple Mail for .co.uk domains.

Apple provides this web app to allow you to enter your email account and returns a page such as this:

As I am trying this from the States, it is likely that the web app senses my location so it will likely be different settings for you. I am not sure if this will give you something different than what you have already entered, however there may be some weird Server Port that you need to set in order for Apple Mail to work with a UK based Mac and your @unknowndomain.co.uk Google Apps account.

You will need to go under Mail>Preferences>Accounts, then select the gmail account and click on the Advanced tab to enter in the port that the web app returns.

Apple also has Mail Connection Doctor; which can help to diagnose if you still have no joy.

It may also be that you have not enabled IMAP on your Google Apps account. Follow these instructions on how you do that in gmail. This support page for Google Apps administrators may also have additional information that you need to follow.

It appears that you do not want to go the Application Specific Password route for a specific reason. I still think that the problem is likely something to do with the ports that you need to enter or enabling IMAP on your Google Apps account.

I hope you find an answer.

Update

Maybe this will help, or at least explain why it may not be working for you?...

Autodiscover for Google Apps


Can I control QuickTime Player with the keyboard?

Yes, there are certainly ways of achieving this result on QuickTime Player. Here are two ways:

You can use the spacebar to play/pause the video as long as your
active (front) window is QuickTime Player and not another software,
perhaps the one that you use to transcribe.
If you use the left and right arrow keys, you can jump backward and forwards a frame - keep it pressed to speed things up. When used in combination with the Command Key, you can achieve x2 speed rewind/forward, then hit the spacebar to stop at the desired point in the video.

I have to admit that this method requires a little bit of fast keyboard action (compared to other apps) but that is something one can get used to. There is a full list of shortcuts that you can look at in case there is anything else you might find useful. Perhaps slowing the video down is an option.
Anyway, let me know how you make out.


I don't know if this option was also available in Snow Leopard, but if you are on Lion you could try the following:

Set up the native cisco client - if you don't know how, you can use this handy guide I created a few days back
Once you have tried and confirmed that everything works, your VPN connection should show up as one of the options in the Internet Sharing part of Preferences Sharing.
select the connection, choose on which network connection you'd like to share it and you're done.


Unable to delete third-party app from iPad

From this site:

Sometimes iPhone applications get stuck waiting or loading when installing. These apps might be frozen with a blank icon and no way to remove them for days. Holding down on the home screen to delete the stuck app won't even show the black circle with an "x" that appears on other icons. Here are instructions on how to delete these waiting applications:

Reboot your iPhone normally. See this link for instructions on how to restart your iPhone.
If the apps are still stuck on the home screen, try logging out of the App Store temporarily. Navigate to Settings -> iTunes & Store -> Apple ID -> Sign Out. Now open the App Store and Navigate to the Featured section. Scroll to the bottom of the page and touch the Sign In -> Use Existing Apple ID. Log in and the stuck apps should reset.
Still have strange icons on the screen or frozen downloading apps? Connect your iPhone to the computer and open iTunes. Navigate to the app store. Install the apps you are having a problem with on the computer then sync your iPhone.


Can using a non Apple USB cable damage an iPhone?

They are generally safe to use.  And they don't have a chip (at least the ones I've used).

The charger itself may regulate the current, but the cable itself doesn't.  I've used a multitude of cables from a multitude of vendors over the years and I've never had a problem with damaging devices.   Build quality is a different matter.  Too cheap, and the cables inside can break.   Rare but does/can happen.


You will want to select the tack and press Command + I, this will allow you to edit the album. Give the album a name. After that, you change the name of each album (track) to the first one you chose When you name it the track will be added to the first album and become an individual track in the album.


changing notification sound for different notifications

Open Settings.

To change the system's notifications, navigate to General > Sounds:

Currently there is no way to set apps' notifications unless there is a setting within the app. I recommend you thoroughly look through the apps' settings if you want to do this.

Edit: In regards to our conversation in chat about this topic, here's some more info.

System apps, again, you can change using the above method. Other apps depend on a per-app basis: It is entirely the developer's choice whether to support functionality for customizing notification tones. Facebook, for instance, does not.


How to recover data from formatted encrypted external hdd?

Unfortunately, it’s gone.

When you encrypt your drive, it gets scrambled with a randomized key so, if you were to look at the actual sectors of the drive, it would just be a jumbled mess.  The key is what takes that “mess” and turns it into usable data.

Recovery programs can’t rescue your data because a) they can’t distinguish between the encryption you did the first time versus the second, and b) being encrypted it can’t “see” the actual file structure to associate what blocks go with what.  This is why and how encryption protects your data from nefarious actors; your data can’t be recovered.

This is also why having a backup is extra critical when you go this route.


Do iPhone 5s LTE bands vary from country to country?

There are actually 4 different international variations for the iPhone 5s/5c. Thankfully, Apple has a page outlining them with their model numbers, supported frequencies and countries/carriers you can use them with.

A quick look over that breakdown seems to suggest that Belgium (at least, Mobistar) uses LTE bands 1, 3 or 5, which the US AT&T model also supports. However, I would recommend you contact your carrier to ensure what frequencies are needed to function best on your network.


OSX - Only show apps with open windows in the dock?

Hide the Dock, then use Contexts for Mac to switch between active windows. Contexts has an option to show only the application with active windows regardless it’s running in background or not. You can read my review here.


Adding a "Fax Number" when adding a new contact in my iPhone 5, ios6

On your contact, click on the label type :

And it will give you access to the label types.

These are iOS 7 screens, but it's the same on older versions !


Enable URL rewriting (mod_rewrite) using .htaccess files in ~/Sites on Lion

You should make sure that in your /etc/apache2/users/username.conf you have the following:

<Directory "/Users/username/Sites/">
    Options Indexes MultiViews FollowSymlinks
    AllowOverride All
    Order allow,deny
    Allow from all
</Directory>

The FollowSymlinks and AllowOverride are essential here. While you are hinting at both in your question, maybe you did not configure these correctly in tandem.

Make sure in httpd.conf /private/etc/apache2/extra/httpd-userdir.conf is included as well. It is by default.

After any modifications, restart the web server for the changes to take effect.

If you are still having problems, maybe there is a problem with your actual rewrite rules. Were you using them in a .htaccess context before as well? Note that in a .htaccess, the rewrite rule regex is matched against a request URI without the leading slash and always relative to the directory where the .htaccess resides, whereas in a global httpd.conf the URI must match with a leading slash and is relative to the web root. Because assumedly you have your .htaccess in a subdirectory of ~/Sites, your rewrite rules might behave different from when the .htaccess resides in the web root of a (virtual) host.

To debug mod_rewrite you can enable rewrite logging. You should enable that in /etc/apache2/httpd.conf:

RewriteLogLevel 3
RewriteLog /path/to/rewrite.log


Can I keep my iPhone screen off during voice navigation with Apple's Maps app?

I know this doesn't solve the Apple Maps portion of the question but Google Maps does not behave like this and IMHO is better than Apple maps.


How to avoid password prompt in terminal?

Ok, thank you Batman for suggesting to edit the sudoer file. Instead of crontab or launchd to schedule it once a day (which wasn't good enough anyway), I instead wrote that applescript to do it more regularly and so far it seems to be working:

repeat
    repeat
        try
            do shell script "ping -t 15 8.8.8.8"
            exit repeat
        on error
            display notification "Reconnection attempt"
            do shell script "sudo networksetup -setnetworkserviceenabled ethernet off"
            do shell script "sudo networksetup -setnetworkserviceenabled ethernet on"
            delay 9
            display notification "Connection should be established"
        end try
    end repeat
    delay 5
end repeat

I'm adding more details: I exported it as an .app then I edited the .plist of it with the lines:

<key>LSBackgroundOnly</key>
<string>1</string>

To make it invisible when it runs (no dock icon) and finally I made it run on login.


What is /dev/cu.Bluetooth-Incoming-Port and /dev/cu.iPhone-WirelessiAP

They are virtual serial ports matching paired/connected Bluetooth devices. For example "iPhone-WireeiAP" refers to tethering your computer to your iPhone to use its internet connection from your Mac. This can be implemented via a virtual serial port served over Bluetooth - however, it is obviously not done from your Arduino flashing tool.

The menu just lists any serial port found on your system - it does not indicate that they can be flashed. For example you cannot flash your iPhone this way.

If you try and flash them anyways, most probably nothing will happen at all. You will risk that while flashing you're sending something that the remove device (could be anything really) interprets as a correct command. Then you could risk for example altering settings on the device, or any other type of facility offered through the virtual serial port. Most likely everything will just be rejected as invalid commands though.


'unknown file attribute: i' error on DefaultKeyBinding.dict file

Or use Karabiner-Elements, the supported successor to Karabiner.


Run an AppleScript that requires keystrokes while the screen is locked?

No i'don't think you can do this the way you want.

Every Human interaction on a PC during Screensaver tries to deactivate it. (Like moving the Mouse, pressing a Key e.g.)
Applescript most time is used to Script some GUI (like in your case --> tell application TextEdit -> does nothing other than opening Textedit like you would do it by double clicking)

So to bring you a way which should work:

do a applescript which writes the text to a file directly and then open the file with the text in it if needed.

something like this:

tell application System Events
    do shell script "echo 'your text that you wanna type' > /path/to/the/file/where/the/text/stands/in"
end tell

tell application TextEdit
    open /path/to/the/file/where/the/text/stands/in
end tell


RMB menu on document title in Preview gone with Mavericks?

If you secondary-click the text for the title (and not the arrow next to it), it should still open the menu:


How to set the default font size of a new Stickie?

Change the font size of a selected Sticky note (⌘ Command T), then go to Window → Use as Default


How to fix message spam from usbmuxd in console (_SendDetachNotification/_SendAttachNotification)

Open Console and highlight the usbmuxd spam, then click [ignore sender] in the toolbar:

To re-enable usbmuxd spam, click the [^] symbol in the lower bottom left corner then (x):

This will allow you to safely ignore any Console spam you would like without actually disabling anything other than the message that you see in Console.


How can I increase the font size in the Help system?

Click into the text area and just press ⌘ Command +


AFAIK, OS X doesn't treat 'special' folders like ~/Movies any more special than others - it just doesn't let you delete them via the Finder.

I could upload the Movies folder ICNS file, but if I did, you wouldn't get proper icons for different sizes (see screenshot.)

I guess a method would be to create a new user account, get the Movies folder from that and then copy it to your Home folder.


rMBP early 2013 15'' fan noise with 4K display?

I have the same machine and the fans do run when trying to display 4k... it's a pain but it appears that whenever the dedicated graphics card comes online it immediately tries to cool the machine... I'm also running OSX Yosemite if that helps.


Syncing photos doesn't appear to do anything

The "photos" tab in iTunes is for syncing photos on your computer to your iPhone. To download the photos off your iPhone, use some software that downloads photos off cameras, such as Windows Photo Gallery.


iOS 13 App Store update missing from the Account panel

It turns out that the update section doesn't appear in the account list at all until an update is available or has been automatically applied.  Any updates applied on the prior phone with the older iOS don't show in the list.

I had hoped to figure all this out right away when I was doing the phone change so I would know that the phone transfer had worked successfully.  (I initially feared that the transfer had partially failed and that I wouldn't be able to do updates on the new phone.)  But I ended up needing to wait for an app to need an upgrade to get my answer for sure.  So hopefully this question and answer will help somebody else who is going through that to know that the transfer worked out fine and not to worry about that.


Automator Keeps Opening Multiple Untitled Files

Delete the Saved State files.

Quit Automator.
Bring Finder to the front.
Hit  Cmd ⌘   N  for New Window, then  Cmd ⌘   Shift ⇧   G  for Go To...
Copy/paste ~/Library/Saved Application State/com.apple.Automator.savedState
Delete the folder contents.


Is there a way to move a window without the mouse?

I upgraded Xquartz and the problem went away.  Windows open below the osx title bar now instead of underneath it.


iPad Contacts app incorrectly formats telephone numbers

The phone number format is set in Settings -> General -> International -> Region Format.

But believe it or not, it seems like your carrier is actually able to override whatever you've got set there (on my WiFi iPad, changing the Region Format updates Address Book's format, but on my iPhone it doesn't have any effect).

While researching it I saw some mention of Verizon fixing this issue by dialling *228, waiting for it to connect, then dialling 1 and waiting for it to disconnect.

Is it a 3G iPad? Perhaps while you were in England, something got switched over.


GMail compose on Firefox on Mac cmd+leftarrow cmd+rightarrow

I accidentally found a nice solution for this. I just started using textbox.io for Firefox and the Cmd+← and Cmd+→ work like a charm.


How long do I have before the battery status changes from service recommended to replace now?

It depends on how much you use it and even there is no way of really knowing.


Proper way to connect a macbook to an external monitor

No, there shouldn't be any harm in doing that. Thunderbolt is hot-swap so you can insert and remove the cable at any time while the machine is running.

Going from Thunderbolt to DVI shouldn't require an expensive adapter. Thunderbolt 1 and 2 includ


Simulate iOS's "reduce white point" feature on OS X El Capitan

This is a solution that work nicely, but it is not free.

Gamma Control - is a professional app to control the brightness of color on your mac. Really useful to correct color & black on any projector, that's why I paid for it at first ~25$.

Get it in the App Store

The put these setting on:

1- Max brightness on you mac

2- In Gamma Control put the White Point Luminance as you like (between 0.3 and 0.6 I enjoy)


Why is it not possible to change username on an Exchange account of Mail.app?

Maybe this is because you are connected to that Exchange server.
You could try to disconnect from it by taking that account offline (Mailbox -> Online Status -> Take "YourAccountName" offline) and try to edit the account then.

If that does not help, try to delete that account and create it again with the corrected credentials.


Are there good jailbreak apps that will improve the performance of iPhone 3G?

Not a jailbreak solution, but... turn off SpotLight.

Go to Settings > General > Home > Search Results, and turn everything off.

This should result in a noticable speedup.


Disable Haptic Touch on IOS 13 (keeping 3D Touch)

Apple discontinued 3D Touch in iOS devices starting with iOS 13.  3D Touch relied on special screen hardware to determine the amount of pressure being applied.  Newer iPhones (anything after the iPhone XS and its variants)  do not have that type of screen.

The only way to return to 3D Touch on older devices with pressure-sensitive screens is to revert back to an older iOS version.

There's no way turn off Haptic Touch on iOS 13 (the latest iOS version as of now).  You can adjust the sensitivity and duration by going to Settings -> Accessibility -> Touch -> 3D & Haptic Touch.  You can turn 3D Touch on and off here.

From here you can adjust the "Touch Duration" to see if that helps you.


Always Asked to Configure Firewall for iTunes

I looked at Am1rr3za's article, and eventually it just said to reinstall iTunes, which I did.
That worked.
Am1rr3za, post as an answer if you want the points. Otherwise, I'll accept this one.


How to completely delete Bluetooth and network driver from MacBook Air?

Note: this is not a direct answer to your question, but provides some alternative points to investigate.

Within the strict definition of 'permanently', anything software is typically undoable with enough intention (e.g. boot from alternative media or operating system, or single user mode, reinstall or enable drivers, etc). Leaving USB accessible will not prevent a USB to ethernet adaptor or wireless adaptor from being installed given enough motivation.

Depending on the model of your MacBook, you may be able to pop the lid open and physically remove the wireless & Bluetooth adaptor. I suspect the ethernet will be soldered to the mainboard so hardware disabling might not be practical. Some non-conductive resin in the ethernet socket might solve that issue…but the USB to network adaptor will still be an available route.

To summarise, it depends on your interpretation of 'permanently', and to an extent the underlying reasons for wanting/needing to do this.


My output sound on my laptop is really quiet however, I cannot change the output volume. Anyway to make my MacBook Air louder?

If you have gone to System Preferences, Audio and everything seems normal, it’s time for a Genius Bar appointment.

Do not be like me and have all the audio panned to the left (it happened to me more than once and it’s very embarrassing). Ensure your “balance” is centered. Your device list will likely be different (I have a bunch of Audio interfaces) but still, you should have Internal Speakers selected (and maybe as the only option, that’s normal).

If balance is centered. If output volume is decent and you still can’t hear very well, there may be a hardware malfunction and the Genius Bar is the way to diagnose it.


Open Favourites Page in Safari with Javascript

Navigate to the URL topsites://.

document.location.href = "topsites://";


Starting Preview without opening previous PostScript documents

Do you want to disable the App re-open the documents when you launch the App?
So, you can go to "System Preferences" > "General" and enable the "close windows when quitting and app" option.


Is a there a simple solution to avoid problems with hotspots?

From your screenshot it looks like your browser is opening (and later failing to open) a login screen in a new window. Try using a different browser.

You might also try

System Preferences -> Network -> [with "Wi-Fi" selected] Advanced ->
 uncheck "Remember networks this computer has joined"

and / or

Keychain Access -> [with "System" keychain selected] -> delete the AirPort network password


What is the workflow between iWork apps with iCloud?

There is no iCloud-enabled version of iWork '09 on the Mac as of yet. Right now the way to save to iCloud from the Mac iWork apps is through the website.

Enabling iCloud for iWork for Mac is a bigger deal than I think most people realize. We've still yet to see any sort of UI for saving documents to iCloud on a Mac. So, for example, in iWork, will you see a standard "iCloud" folder in the Finder? Will you see a UI pane similar to the iOS versions of the apps? But in that case, how can you save a standard file to on your computer? Apple hasn't yet answered these questions, and I believe they are still working out some of these major details.

Aside from the UI issues, the Mac versions of iWork still have more advanced capabilities than the iOS versions. My guess, and hope, is that Apple will not enable cross-platform iCloud auto-saving until they are sure that changes will persist exactly across both platforms.


Bluetooth connects, but does not play sound

I have the same problem.  I have a GTA Pure Bluetooth system in my 2007 Honda Civic. I have an iPhone 5S that connects automatically to play music about 5-10% of the time. To work around, I have to go into iPhone Settings, Bluetooth, select the ! symbol next to GTA Car Kit, Disconnect, back up one level and reselect GTA Car kit and it then connects 100% of the time. Kind of a pain.

It is almost like there are two levels of Bluetooth connectivity.  My phone connects perfectly 100% of the time but my music does not connect much at all.  In iPhones, look for the tiny headphone icon in the top-right corner of the screen when you have successfully connected to play music.


Will the new iPhone 7 be compatible with other wireless headphones?

In a word, yes.
The iPhone 7 & 7 Plus both use Bluetooth 4.2 technology.  Considering the vast majority of wireless headphones use bluetooth, this means the iPhone 7 & 7 Plus will be able to pair with them just as previous iPhone models have in the past.
From Apple's iPhone 7 / 7 Plus technical specifications page, under the Cellular & Wireless section:

802.11a/b/g/n/ac Wi‑Fi with MIMO
Bluetooth 4.2 wireless technology
NFC


possible malware called FISE in Accessibility (Privacy & Security)

I found the same thing on my Mac and it seems it's and Android File Transfer app bundled with Wacom driver software for some reason https://www.reddit.com/r/wacom/comments/7m7pib/wacom_without_bloatware/


Analyze the EQ curve for audio coming from the Lightning port of an iOS device

Firstly, I doubt it's the phone, unless you have a user EQ curve applied, so I wouldn't start by trying to measure the phone's output, I'd measure how the in-car is dealing with it.
Do you have a good, flat mic you could use on another device as a reference?
This is the kind of task, if I wanted accuracy, I'd just get the phone playing back some quantifiable white or pink noise as though it was an iTunes song on a loop, then measure the result on another device; tweak the EQ curve on either phone or in-car as you go.
tbh, though, it's the kind of task I would normally do just by ear [I'm a retired sound engineer so I'm not too bad at it;) especially for something like a car, where road noise is going to be a huge influence. I'd do the initial test & tweak stationary with engine off; again with engine on & re-balance, then drive a while & listen; park up & mod to suit the noise difference. Rinse & repeat until happy.
Watch out for if your in-car has any kind of 'loudness' control, where bass is emphasised at lower volumes. these can be tricky to fight against work with…. and flatten any EQ curve already applied, at least to start with.
I've never noticed any iPhone/Pod/Pad to be anything other than 'flat' or at least within decent tolerance so long as there's no EQ curve set by the user [& boy, have I seen some massive fails programmed in by users thinking they're 'improving' the sound]. It's usually the in-car that's the issue.
For a semi-related issue, see my answer on How to do speaker correction on a MacBook Pro Retina where I set out some dramatic curves to fix cheap computer speakers ;)


iOS8 how can I reduce the amount of system alert dialogs that I'm being asked?

These popups are the base of the privacy features of iOS.
Also they are only displayed once if you allow the app to access the given service.

I should not bother much than that.


SwitchRes X might be able to help you, it can modify screen settings that are usually inaccessible.

There is a custom resolutions section


There are two programs that I am aware of which will easily allow you to configure your Mac to send email from the command line.

I have written up HOWTOs for both of them:

mailsend
msmtp

Of the two, I suggest msmtp.

Configuration is complicated enough that I'm not sure if I should replicate all of the steps here, but I will mention that if you use
Homebrew
you can install msmtp using

brew install msmtp --with-macosx-keyring

Then the rest is just a matter of setting up the related configuration files

The first is /usr/local/etc/msmtprc

# Begin msmtprc
# Set default values for all following accounts.
defaults
tls on
logfile ~/.msmtp.log

# A first gmail address
account example@gmail.com
host smtp.gmail.com
port 587
protocol smtp
auth on
from example@gmail.com
user example@gmail.com
tls on
tls_starttls on

# this next line is crucial: you have to point to the correct security certificate for GMail.
# If this doesn't work, check the mstmp documentation
# at http://msmtp.sourceforge.net/documentation.html for help
#
# This next line should all be on one long line:
tls_trust_file /path/to/Thawte Roots/Thawte SSLWeb Server Roots/thawte Premium Server CA/Thawte Premium Server CA.pem

# Set a default account
# You need to set a default account for Mail
account default : example@gmail.com

# end msmtprc

Note that tls_trust_file line should point to wherever you have downloaded and installed the certificates from https://www.thawte.com/roots/index.html.

I put mine in ~/Dropbox/Thawte Roots so that I can have it on all of my Macs.

Then you need a ~/.mailrc file to say where the msmtp binary is located. If you use brew it will be /usr/local/bin/msmtp so the file would look like this:

set sendmail="/usr/local/bin/msmtp"

The last but crucial step is making sure your Keychain has the information exactly in the format that msmtp will expect it:

I think that covers most of the details. See http://www.tuaw.com/2010/05/04/msmtp-a-free-tool-to-send-email-from-terminal/ if you want a few more specifics.


Stuck on Bootlogo After Upgrading to iOS 8.1 can't enter recover/dfu mode

Well a sleep button would be nice but without it I don't think there is a way of fixing it. Does it show up in iTunes? I guess not. Just go to an apple store and let them fix it. (And if you don't have AppleCare that should not matter since it is clearly their fault)

(Sorry I can't comment, too few reputation yet :/ )


What did I do wrong - Safari 6.0.5 on 10.8.4

For what it is worth, I generally recommend to people who don't want to update their OS that they use chrome. Apple only updates safari when they update the entire os, so you are better off with a third party solution for a browser.

(Mavericks came out after this question was posted, so this answer is only effective for people looking for an answer to the question now that it has been released.)


Upgrade from Lion to Mountain Lion but not Mavericks

You can purchase OS X Mountain Lion still via Apple online:

Buy OS X Mountain Lion

Once you buy it for $19.99 they will send you an App Store link.


Accuracy of "Data Sent/sec" in Activity Monitor on MacOS Catalina

The main reason is that Activity Monitor shows the sum of data sent/received on all network interfaces, whereas your router only shows the data actually routed through it.

This means that there is traffic that your router does not see, and thus does not count into its statistics. This could for example local area network traffic directly between your MacBook Pro and other devices on the local area network reachable without routing. Another very common example is the loopback network interface, found on all Macs, which offers communication internally within the same computer (i.e. between different processes/programs running on your Mac).

This means basically that you cannot equate a number from the sum in Activity Monitor and any sort of "my internet connection is used at this speed".

If you want to figure out what exactly is the cause of the discrepancy - i.e. even if you say that you're "reasonably confident" that there's no other data transfers, there actually must be other data transfers - you can identify them by measuring or sniffing the traffic on all your network interfaces seperately. An easy to use tool for this could be "Wireshark", which will allow you to sniff, dump and do statistics on data transfers on all network interfaces, including WiFi, cabled ethernet, VPN virtual interfaces and loopback interfaces.

The only explanations that can fit your observations, if you're correct that there are no other data transfers, are that either (1) Activity Monitor is flawed and does not display the correct values, or (2) your data transfer comes with an extreme amount of overhead. Both explanations seem very unlikely.


Is it possible to receive SMS with the Messages beta for OS X?

No. Messages beta works like it does on the iPad and iPod Touch. You can only message other Apple iOS 5 (or Messages) users.


iTunes trying to sync every app I have on my Mac?

This might be because of the change of iTunes apps layout or the apps couldn't be determined

Check here for more information
https://discussions.apple.com/thread/3395256?start=210&tstart=0

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/2744493?start=45&tstart=0

  2enjoy
  Re: Sync Apps from iphone to itunes changes the apps layout
  Sep 14, 2012 10:00 PM (in response to CybermanSG)
  so who wants the real answer??  its very simple...

  as mentioned, first of all TRANSFER PURCHASES from iphone to itunes. check the SYNC APPS check button. yes this will cause itunes to reorganise your folders (for now), however, then close itunes. you will get a window pop up asking if you want to apply the changes. Select YES. itunes will then close. now re-open itunes and PRESTO!  itunes will now show all of your apps as selected and they will all be in the same folders as in your iphone. you can now sync away without losing your personal folders...

  this was done on a iphone 4S running 5.1.1 on itunes 10.7.0.21
  hope that helps.. enjoy!


Are you looking for actual thunderbolt connections so you can daisy chain devices? Or just looking to avoid using a dongle to connect to a monitor? If so any display port monitor will work with a mini-dp to dp cable.


Is there a way to turn off iOS 9 update reminders?

TLDR - Go to General > Storage & iCloud Usage > Manage Storage (under Storage) > Select the update item (should have the settings icon and named iOS 9.x.x) > Delete Update

There is a much easier solution to the nagging reminders explained in the following link.

https://discussions.apple.com/message/29004014#29004014

  Yes there is a way to disable it. First let me explain why you are getting that notification. Even if you have automatic updates turned off, the new IOS update still downloads to your phone and iPad. It is already in your phone and iPad right now waiting for you to completely install it. It is not installed but it is sitting there in your phone and iPad waiting for you to click on it to install. So what you must do is the following:

  Click on the Setting icon. Then click on General. click on Storage & iCloud  usage. It might just say Storage on your device. When the next page pops up you will see at the top the word Storage. Under it you will see Manage Storage. Click on it and wait till the list is fully populated. Depending on how many apps you have this can take a couple of seconds to about half a minute. Look through this list till you see the new iOS update. Delete it. Then your pop up notice should go away. Don't worry about loosing the update. You can always get it later in the future. If in the future you get the pop up again, then that means Apple has again downloaded it to your phone or iPad without your permission. Simply do the above all over again to delete it and get rid of the new pop up. This is the only way to get rid of the pop up without installing it.


Where is the insert key on a MacBook Air?

FN + Return = Insert

(MacBook Air 13)

Also Works on MacBook Pro.


How to change the hostname for the Xcode service on Mac Server

It is easiest in the Terminal. SSH into the server and then at the command line :-

sudo scutil --set HostName new_name

You will be asked for your password and then the name will be changed.


Which APP should I use if I want to draw a workflow with mathematical expressions on Mac?

Keynote on the mac can do both. It has standard shapes and the ability to draw lines connected to those shapes.  It's a simple way to draw a flowchart. If also supports mathematical expression thru latex. There is an option to insert an equation and you can define anything you like by using latex.

Here is a link to help you with Latex. On this link, you can see what the latex command is for most any symbols you can imagine. I use this page to help me find the correct latex command to put in Keynote.

I have included a very simple and crude flowchart I made in about 5 minutes using Keynote.  The math equations are bogus as I was just trying to show the capabilities of Latex.


Are true dynamic folders (NOT a "Smart Folder" SavedSearch) possible?

I have found a solution to create a dynamic "soft link" folder:

Preface:

$HOME is the result of the environmental variable HOME here. When you log in as user example_user, $HOME is then the path to the home folder of example_user: /Users/example_user.
If $HOME appears in the text below you have to replace it yourself with /Users/your_user_name/ (e.g. saving the launch agent). If $HOME appears in a code box below (e.g. in the shell script) it will automatically expanded to your home folder by the (bash) shell while executing the script.
mdimport -A|sed $'s/\t\t/;/g;s/(null)//g'|tr -d \' shows a lot of metadata attributes to choose from as search criteria (e.g. kMDItemAudioBitRate or kMDItemDurationSeconds)
mdls /path/to/file lists all metadata attributes of a chosen file

Creating a dynamic link folder:

Create a shell script samples.sh in $HOME/bin/sh/ with the following content:

#!/bin/bash

# Define folders
# Source folder (including files in subfolders)
MusicSamples=$HOME/Music/Samples
# Destination folder
DrumFoldr=$HOME/Desktop/Samples

# Remove orphaned soft links in the destination folder
find $DrumFoldr -type l -exec sh -c 'for x; do [ -e "$x" ] || rm "$x"; done' _ {} +

# Add soft links in destination folder depending on some criteria (here: BitRate and UserTag)
for File in $(mdfind -onlyin $MusicSamples 'kMDItemAudioBitRate >= "44000"  && _kMDItemUserTags = "Sample"')
do
    ln -s $File $DrumFoldr
done

# Remove soft links in the destination folder depending on some criteria (removing UserTag from original file)
for File in $(mdfind -onlyin $MusicSamples '_kMDItemUserTags != "Sample"')
do
    filename=$(basename "$File")
    rm $DrumFoldr/$filename
done

In the shell script define your music folder containing the sample files (in my example that's a Samples folder in the Music folder) and the "DrumFoldr" containing the soft links later (in my example that's a Samples folder on my Desktop).

Now choose some Spotlight search criteria (in my example I have chosen the bit rate and a user defined tag "Sample" - you can define user tags by right-clicking a file > Tags... and adding a tag by just writing something. The user defined tag is then available for other files and folders.

The above shell script will add only files with a sample rate of 44000 or higher and (this is a logical and!) with the user tag "Sample" as soft link to the DrumFoldr folder. So the destination folder will not contain links to files without the Sample tag but with a sample rate of 96k or files with the Sample tag but without a kMDItemAudioBitRate (like txt files or pdfs). It also does some cleansing in the DrumFoldr folder.

BTW: the music length can be searched/determined by using the key kMDItemDurationSeconds: kMDItemDurationSeconds <= "2".
Create a file usr.samplesync.plist in $HOME/Library/LaunchAgents (that means: /Users/<username>/Library/LaunchAgents/) with the content:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN" "http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd">
<plist version="1.0">
<dict>
    <key>Label</key>
    <string>usr.samplesync</string>
    <key>ProgramArguments</key>
    <array>
        <string>/bin/bash</string>
        <string>/Users/<username>/bin/sh/samples.sh</string>
    </array>
    <key>RunAtLoad</key>
    <true/>
    <key>StartInterval</key>
    <integer>10</integer>
</dict>
</plist>

Replace <username> by your short user name. The shell script will be executed every 10 seconds. You can increase the interval depending on your needs and environment to higher values (e.g. 60 = 1 minute or 600 = 10 minutes)
Load the launch agent with:

launchctl load $HOME/Library/LaunchAgents/usr.samplesync.plist

If you want to save the shell script somewhere else you have to apply the path in the plist accordingly.

Caveats:

the original sample files mustn't contain spaces in their paths or file names (I try to solve this restriction later)
the original sample files mustn't be moved or the removing of the user tag won't delete the soft link

Things to improve:

don't create a soft link if a proper one already exists


I think I found the equivalent:

sudo arp -S 10.0.1.1 b8:8d:12:57:2d:50 ifscope en0


What are the advantages and disadvantages of iBooks and Kindle books for my iPad?

The iBooks app is better. But Amazon Kindle Store is cheaper and has a superior selection.

The books

Publishers are responsible for creating and making available the books in each store. Sometimes a book is exclusive to one store. In that case, you have no option of where you purchase it.

When a book is available in both stores, you must compare the price and quality on a book-by-book basis. This is easy to do because both stores offer free sample chapters. Books tend to be better formatted in the iBooks Store than in Kindle's Store. This can be critical for some genres, such as technical/programming books with graphics, code samples, and tables.

The ecosystem

iBookstore purchases can only be read on iPhone/iPod touch/iPad/Mac. Kindle purchases can also be read on Amazon's dedicated Kindle devices, Microsoft Windows, iOS, BlackBerry, Mac OS X, Android, webOS, Windows Phone, as well as in a web browser.

The apps

iBooks app:

better interface (you even can turn off the skeuomorphic design features, if you prefer)
it has less features, but the features it does have are better: dictionary, highlighting, type/fonts, footnotes, navigation, look and feel
better PDF support
iBookstore built-into-the-app for convenient browsing and purchasing

Kindle app:

Sharing feature where you can publicly publish snippets from your book to kindle.amazon.com for linking-to in Twitter/Facebook. Example.
Amazon creates an email address for you to send documents to your Kindle via email. E.g. yourname@kindle.com
Con: You have to jump out to the web browser to browse and purchase content.

On an iPad, I prefer reading in iBooks because Apple executes the fundamentals better. Amazon's Kindle app has some nice differentiating features, though. All that said, at the end of the day, nothing's better than reading a basic novel on a standalone e-ink Kindle device.


Unexplained memory usage in iPad iBooks?

A few PDF files of 500 pages with high quality graphics could easily fill up that amount of space. Check how large the PDF files are (easiest way is via iTunes under application data).


Has the retina screen effectively made dead pixels moot?

You will still be able to see the defect.

What retina means is that once two items with similar contrast get close enough together, you can't tell them apart - it appears to be one item.

Along a line, for instance, you can't tell where each pixel that makes the line is, but you can clearly see the edge created by the line on the contrasting background.

A dead pixel creates a contrast you'll be able to see.  If you have two dead pixels next to each other, you might think you only have one.  But you will be able to see them if the pixels surrounding them contrast.


Calendar problems with iOS 7 right after updating the device

Make sure you have a Calendar set up in iOS, either an iCloud calendar (Settings -> iCloud) or another one (Settings -> Mail, Contacts, Calendars). If your only calendars are read-only, like Facebook Events and Birthdays, you won't be able to create events.

In iOS 7 and 8, you can check the calendars that have been set up by tapping "Calendars" at the bottom of the calendar view. If you don't see an iCloud calendar or another one you can edit, you'll need to create one.


Can I export an Applescript as a Preference Pane?

Xcode Required
No, Xcode is required to build a preference pane on macOS. A preference pane is a specialised CFPlugIn bundle that registers a set of callback functions. From there, an Objective-C runtime can be set up and a view provided to the host application.
Today, with macOS 10.15, the CFPlugIn plug-in architecture appears to be supported but not widely promoted by Apple. Applications using plug-ins require additional sandboxing/hardening requirements. I expect they will be phased out or required to operate within their own isolated processes.
Simple Preference Pane Example
Apple's archived Implementing a Simple Preference Pane provides a tutorial that may be enough to convert your AppleScript approach to a Preference Pane.
Having written and supported a commercial product that used a preference pane for much of macOS's early years, I recommend sticking with an application approach.


os x terminal -remove files older than x days

Never suggesting -exec rm ....

rm is simply too dangerous command. Always dry-run first. IMHO it is better using this:

find /Volumes/Groups/Projects/530_BFAMI/test/ -ctime +30 -print0 | xargs -0 -n1

this will show the dry-run and only when you satisfied you can add the rm to the end

find /Volumes/Groups/Projects/530_BFAMI/test/ -ctime +30 -print0 | xargs -0 rm

If you start using this piped to xargs version, you can always add more filters, like:

find /some/where -mtime +3d -print0 | grep -ziE '\.(jpg|png|gif)$' | xargs -0 rm

and similar (more) powerful combinations.


Is it possible to jury-rig Internet Sharing to share an internet connection wirelessly, when my Mac already connects to the internet wirelessly?

In short, not likely to be possible using a single Airport card.

99% of the time when a workstation's WiFi card connects to a standard wireless access point, it does so in WiFi "client" mode, which has certain physical (i.e. radio-frequency) requirements.

When operating in "client" mode, your workstation's WiFi card cannot act as a repeater or quasi-router for other clients. ("Ad Hoc" wifi mode can support multiple simultaneous connections to different devices, but Ad Hoc and Client modes are mutually exclusive.)

What should work fine is for you to add a second, separate WiFi interface to your Mac, for example a USB-to-WiFi adapter. (cheap, $19! And no, I don't work for OWC.)

That independent WiFi interface can then be separately configured for Internet sharing to give your DS (or other devices) a "temporary hotspot" connection. USB 2.0 has a minimum latency of 0.125ms and an average bandwidth of 25 to 35MB/sec -- probably plenty for your gaming needs, unless you're going to be connecting more than 3 or 4 clients.

Also, this question is closely related to Wi-Fi Connection sharing on Macbook Air via USB dongle , which is still unanswered.


There is no ready-made solution for this AFAIK. This article tells how to backup and restore the whole wiki or just a single wiki (or blog?), but the output created by "wikiadmin export" seems to be some binary dump of the database which can be fed only to "wikiadmin import".

The Lion Server Blog/Wiki itself is kept in a Postgres database named "collab", which you can access from the server's command line: sudo -u _postgres psql collab. The table structure seems quite complex, though - I have a test wiki with 2 documents and it still has 67 tables. You might want to try some graphical frontend for Postgres
 to look through the tables and export those needed.


tata photon plus not working after upgrading OS X Yosemite?

If you try to download the drivers directly from Tata Photon + or Service Provider ( Tata) website it will not work as the drivers are not compatible with the Mac ( Yosemite).

If the manufacturer of your device is huawei, go directly to their driver site and download the drivers.

Use the following link to go to driver site

http://consumer.huawei.com/en/support/downloads/detail/index.htm?id=31322

Search for following driver for tata photon+

Mac-V200R003B015D11SP00C983(for Mac10.10)

Once you install the driver, it will create mobile partner in your launchpad. Make sure you Use mobile partner and don't use the auto connect app of tata photon+.

If you have any query you can reach me at khushindergill@icloud.com or khushindergill@gmail.com


There are instructions on how to set this up on Apple's support site, see towards the end of https://support.apple.com/HT204053.

Basically you open Settings on your iOS device and

configure/use one AppleID to log into iCloud
configure/use the other ID to log into iTunes & App Store

Having said that, I would still recommend to address the issues you have with your current account. To verify your billing details, log into the Store and update your information (if it doesn't work in the iOS device, you can use any computer running iTunes for this, just don't forget to log out within iTunes afterwards); to recover your second account, start with https://iforgot.apple.com/.


Can I switch between iOS 5 & 6 (and possibly Android/Windows 8) on my iPad?

None of what you want is possible. And it never will be possible until suddenly Apple and Microsoft get married and the marriage is watched on live television by more than 50 million people worldwide.


Something similar happened to me when I first downloaded Xcode 7 onto my MacBook Pro. My solution was to copy the app onto my external hard drive, delete the copy on my internal drive, run the app on the external drive, then copy it back over to the internal drive. I've never had any problems with Xcode 7 since.


Best file system for an external hard drive sharing between OS X and Windows

Which versions of OS X and Windows do you need it to work with?  If they're recent enough, ExFAT is probably the best answer.  Support for it was added to OS X sometime around 10.6.5 and AIUI it's built into Windows 7 and available via updates for everything since Windows XP.

BTW, if you're formatting via the Partitions tab in OS X's Disk Utility, be sure to use Options button to select the MBR partition scheme.  If you use the Erase tab, just select the disk (not the volume listed under it) and it should automatically use MBR partitioning.


Finding Where Alias Points Even With Deleted File

In the finder : Cmd+I or  Right click > Get Info


How do I change iTunes Wi-Fi Synch Settings

Is your iPhone setup in the new laptop's iTunes ?? If it is, then it should be this iTunes library it will use.


I installed latest Xcode (4.3.2) which comes as package, can I delete the older versions?

Can I safely remove old versions of Xcode which are using a lot of space?

Yes.

  If I can, what should I do?

Run:

sudo <Xcode>/Library/uninstall-devtools --mode=all

Where <Xcode> is usually /Developer but can sometimes be ~/Developer depending on whether you installed it with sudo privileges or not.

Once you've run that script you can just move /Developer or ~/Developer to the trash, you don't need it any more.

You can can get more details about uninstalling by reading the About Xcode.pdf document in your  directory.

If you also have a /Developer-old directory you can just move that to the trash.


Do Time Capsules still work with macOS 10.14 (Mojave)

I have an old Time Capsule that I’ve had for years.  Recently, I updated my laptop to Mojave and my Time machine backups still continue to work with the Time Capsule.  So the answer is, yes Mojave works with Time Capsules.  One thing to note is that Time Machine can only backup to HFS+ formatted disks.  So make sure that the Time Capsule disk is formatted as HFS+.  Which, I think, is its default format.


Apple Mac OS X Lion: the cost and release date

There's no way to know that right now. Apple does not disclose such information.

Wait for Apple's June event where they might specify the launch date.

One thing is for sure, you'll have to pay for it, there won't be a free migration path from Snow Leopard, unless you bought a Mac computer the week before Lion's release.


How to access Mac OS web server from mobile by local name?

If you can get to your web server via IP address but not by hostname that means that you do not have DNS configured. DNS is designed to translate between so-called "friendly names" and IP addresses via a DNS server.

You can't edit the /etc/hosts file on iOS without jailbreaking your iPhone.

What you need to do is be able to manually configure your router (assuming you have a common home router provided by your ISP) to point local addresses to specific local host names. Unfortunately most home routers don't let you modify DNS settings, instead they pass DNS through to the ISP's DNS servers or use a public DNS server.

So what you would need to do is set up a DNS server on your local network to point local IP addresses to specific host names and then set up your iPhone to use that DNS server in Settings > WiFi > [your Wifi network] > Configure DNS > Manual.

But honestly that is a lot of trouble, I'd just use the IP address.


Prompting user for input on locking screen

Keyboard Maestro.

What you want to achieve requires a daemon that runs in the background, launches with the system, and executes customized commands/scripts after detecting a trigger. It's no a small feat if you want to write one that has good stability.

Apart from the keys, Keyboard Maestro has triggers like Startup, System Wake, Login, While Logged In, etc. With some tweaking and compromise, this is the best shot I know.


Deleting multiple songs from new itunes playlist

Select the songs that you want to delete by holding Command, then either right click and select "Remove from Playlist", or press Command+Delete.


How do I turn off "Find my iPhone" on my device without wi-fi?

You can restore your device by putting it in Recovery Mode first. This will restore your device regardless of settings on the device, including Find my iPhone.

Turn your device off.
Hold Home as you connect the USB cable until you see the following screen:

You should see the following message in iTunes:

  iTunes has detected an iPhone in recovery mode. You must restore this iPhone before it can be used with iTunes.

Restore the device in iTunes.


Keyboard shortcut to select some text in a cell in Excel

AFAIK, there is no way to select non-adjacent words in a cell in Excel. If you need to format several non-adjacent words, you need to process them one at a time.


Simplest way to prevent iTunes from automatically launching when iPhone/iPad is connected

The simplest way is to un-tick the Automatically sync this... box* on the Summary Screen for the device in iTunes when the device is connected:

This is per device.

Alternatively you can just remove the iTunesHelper service under your Login Items which will disable it irrelevant of the tick box state.


Consistent 'Quit Unexpectedly' with iFunBox

This looks like a bug in iFunBox's code, based on the error report. You'll likely either have to wait for a fix (or if you know x86 assembly, do it by hand! I'm not serious though), or see if their support can help. I very much doubt this can be fixed without intervention on their part, in some way.


Charging an iPhone from a closed MacBook

You would want to enable closed clamshell mode (search Apple.com/support) for the details on what is required on which models:

Attached external display
Connected USB device like keyboard or mouse
Connected to power charger and not running on battery

At this point, you'll get the normal USB charging or the enhanced charge if the hardware detects your iOS device as benefitting from the capabilities of the hardware to charge at a higher rate than 500mA.

If you cannot run in closed clamshell mode, set the sleep to be long enough to get a charge and prevent the lid from closing completely. Setting up power nap will also allow brief moments of charge, but that isn't intended to get a realistic charge over USB.


Will an external USB 3.0 hard drive connected to an Elgato Thunderbolt 2 Dock run at USB 3.0 speeds even though the Macbook Pro is USB 2.0 only?

The device you're mentioning, the Elgato Thunderbolt 2 Dock, provides USB 3.0 ports. As commented by someone else, Thunderbolt is a PCIe extension and thus is not limited by the USB 2.0 bus of your laptop. As such, it is possible for USB 3.0 to be something that is offered by a dock like what you mention.

USB is a feature offered (typically) by the Intel chipset and tends to be driven these days off of one of the PCIe lines from the CPU. Your computer tends to have a controller that translates the PCIe line to a USB interface (in the CPU's supporting Intel chipset) and would support only the specification that it came with. For example, a MacPro3,1 (2008) uses an Intel chipset that supports USB 2.0 devices.

An easy upgrade for those machines is to install a PCI Express card to gain support for USB 3.0 similar to what you'd do with the Thunderbolt dock, i.e. a USB 3.0 controller that sits on the PCIe bus. Of course, any devices on the PCIe bus needs to be recognized by the operating system and thus requires drivers. However, drivers for some USB controllers (e.g. the FL1100) are supported by macOS / OSX 10.8+ and will just work.

Of course, the USB connector does slightly differ between 3.0 and previous specs; the 3.0 connector has a few extra pins that are key to the higher speeds.


If you used the iTunes backup restore process or the iCloud backup restore process, then your messages should have been transferred automatically back to your phone as these are included with the iTunes/iCloud backup.

If for some reason this did not happen, you might want to try restoring again or restoring from a different backup (if available).

Reference: http://support.apple.com/kb/ht4946

Note the mention of Messages in the list of data that is backed up.

iTunes will back up the following information
    - Messages (iMessage and carrier SMS or MMS pictures and videos).


Is there a way to get a public URL for individual iCloud photos?

There is no way to get the URL from the Photos app that I am aware of. However, you can create a public album (see screenshot) which will then give you an album URL. You could scrape that page for image URLs. Psuedo Xpath to do so: //div[@class="view image-view canvas-image-view"]

(Note that the page is written in such a way that only the photo[s] visible on-screen are present in the HTML code, so your script would need to scroll through the window to scrape all the necessary URLs.)


Here are some troubleshooting steps:

Run ps aux to see which ones are actually running real time.

Next run the iostat to watch the actual CPU loading and see if you can determine if some new processes are running and whether that is increasing or decreasing the IO and CPU load on the system.

For comparison here is the output of the iostat I have.

disk0           disk1           disk2       cpu     load average
    KB/t tps  MB/s     KB/t tps  MB/s     KB/t tps  MB/s  us sy id   1m   5m   15m
   26.55   3  0.08   177.96   0  0.00    65.01   0  0.00   3  2 96  1.16 0.96 0.90

Some Git and Homebrew are know to create the problem so check your versions to latest update.


How to back up my text messages from iPhone to computer

when connecting your iPhone to your computer, head over to iTunes and make a backup. Make sure you're backup on your computer not on iCloud. Please visit this Page where you find the necessary informations about viewing saved text-messages:

How to Backup iPhone SMS to Your Computer - Hongkicat

Hope this helps :)
Cheers

moesphemie


You can use "touch -mt YYYYMMDDhhmm" followed by your file name/path, of course replacing YYYYMMDDhhmm with your desired date.  I recommend typing "man touch" into terminal to look at the manual and different command options there.


What could be the possible downsides of sticking with an old version of OSX?

there MAY be a small risk of issue long term with staying back on OS levels. However that issue is pretty minimal.  You should make sure 10.9 is updated to the latest flavor, to prevent any major issues. (I happen to know that 10.9.5 isn't missing anything from 10.10 or 10.11).

The tradeoff is that an older OS will also (GENERALLY SPEAKING) work better on a machine that's not brand new.

Personally I own 100+ Macs, and run all my personal systems on 10.9.5... I hate 10.10 and 10.11 - both are filled with issues, both slow down computers.

My recommendation would be to stick with the older OS as long as you can, understanding that you'll eventually run into issues with add-on's (Flash, youtube, etc)... The core OS will run just perfectly forever (I've got a couple in-house servers running 10.5!), but you'll want to eventually upgrade when some of these ancillary products give you problems....


The first one is Fn⌫ Delete or ^ ControlD for keyboards without an Fn key

As for moving between words, use the ⌥ Option modifier.  Example, ⌥ Option➞ to move to the word to the right.

There's an excellent list of all the predefined shortcuts on Apple's Support site.


To answer this question, you need to link up ffmpeg, but I'd run some housecleaning too.

First remove ffmpeg from your system:

$ brew uninstall ffmpeg

Now update all your brew packages and references.

$ brew update
$ brew upgrade
$ brew cleanup

Now install ffmpeg on your system, and link it up:

$ brew install ffmpeg --force
$ brew link ffmpeg

Now you should be good to go.


npm install -g react-native-cli does not work: EACCES: permission denied

Finally found the solution after many tries

sudo chown -R $(whoami) /usr/local/bin

After that running working fine without any issues.

npm install -g react-native-cli

Now it's working fine.


How to test what my audio output latency is on MacBook?

You really cannot measure the latency "through" the OS because of the overhead of queuing and managing the processes.  To be "more accurate" you'd need to write a program that could directly access the kernel so that you could evaluate the actual time between events - the beep and the keypress.

However, you can get fairly close in bash by using the time function. I've created a basic bash script that will prompt the user to press Enter after waiting for a beep to occur after a random period.

# generate a random number between 3 and 10 for seconds to wait for beep
t=$(( ( RANDOM % 10 ) + 3 ))

echo "When you hear the beep, press Enter!"
echo
echo

sleep $t

# beep the computer and get the time
time echo -ne '\007'

# wait for keypress and get the time
time read keypress

You'll get three time values twice.  They are defined as:

Real - the time start to finish of the call measured if you had a stopwatch in hand.  This accounts for all processes running at the time.
User - this is the time spent in the user space outside the kernel and is the actual CPU time spent executing the task
Sys - this is the time spent inside the kernel and is also the actual time spent by the CPU.

For more information on this see Real, User and Sys process time statistics.

So, in order of accuracy, Real is in the ballpark, User is pretty darn close, and Sys is dead on balls accurate, as far as the CPU is concerned.

Sample Output:

When you hear the beep, press Enter!

real    0m0.000s
user    0m0.000s
sys     0m0.000s

real    0m0.812s
user    0m0.000s
sys     0m0.000s

In the above example it shows that the latency according to the computers "stopwatch", there was a .812s difference between when I heard the beep and pressed Enter.  The resolution of the time utility is not granular enough to measure the time elapsed to execute each command so we assume it happened "immediately."

Running it again....

When you hear the beep, press Enter!

real    0m0.003s
user    0m0.001s
sys     0m0.002s

real    0m0.924s
user    0m0.001s
sys     0m0.002s

From this one, we can see that there was some overhead that caused the process to account for more time.  If we subtract the top values from the bottom, we can get pretty close to how much time elapsed.

But is it accurate enough?

No.  This is why you need a device called an Audiometer that is a purpose built piece of hardware that measures the time between the two events - sound and keypress.  It's much more accurate because it removes the overhead of the CPU management and gives you a truly accurate elapsed time.


This was happening to me for a long time and I did some research and found out how to fix it.
Go into terminal and run the following commands.

defaults write com.apple.dock mcx-expose-disabled -bool FALSE
killall Dock

This should fix all of your problems.


Prompt for iOS

Prompt allows you to remotely SSH into another machine. Without jailbreaking, there is no way to use Terminal to access your file system. However, I've found that if you do jailbreak your phone and want to use Prompt as a Terminal, you can set it to SSH to server 127.0.0.1 and authenticate with the standard iPhone root credentials.

Remoter: Remote Desktop (VNC) for iOS

This app does basically the same thing just a little differently. By default it allows a VNC connection for screen sharing, but it has different add ons that you can purchase that allow SSH, Telnet, and RDP.