Using Bluetooth speaker and headphone jack simultaneously

You can do this in the Audio MIDI Setup built into recent editions of OSX:

Open up the Audio MIDI Setup application (located in the applications/utilities folder)
On the "audio devices" window that opens up you'll see a list of devices on the left and a little plus icon in the bottom left hand corner. Click the plus icon.
Click "Create multi-output device" (on older versions of OSX you may only have the option to Create Aggregate device)
Add the different devices you need to this new device.

You're done, now you can send audio to this new device as if it were a single audio output.

Extra side note: You can change the name of the multi-output device if you want, something like "mic jack and bluetooth speakers".

Enjoy!


Does iOS encrypt all the data on my device when I set a passcode to my iPhone

Yes, your iOS passcode will encrypt your phone's data.

  Data protection enhances the built-in hardware encryption by protecting the hardware encryption keys with your passcode.

Source: iOS: Understanding data protection

Whilst it was generally unclear exactly what was encrypted in older versions of iOS, Apple have made it clear in their new privacy policy with regard to iOS 8:

  On devices running iOS 8, your personal data such as photos, messages (including attachments), email, contacts, call history, iTunes content, notes, and reminders is placed under the protection of your passcode.

Source: https://www.apple.com/uk/privacy/government-information-requests/


Which devices support iOS 7's burst mode?

According to TechCrunch:

  All phones capable of installing iOS 7 get a variant of burst mode, in fact, which takes pictures in rapid succession, but not at the 10fps rate of the iPhone 5s, and without the auto selection feature that suggests which shot is best.

And CNET:

  What Apple didn't mention is that older iOS devices would also be gaining the ability to take photos in succession, just not nearly as fast or with the same software powering the editing process.

TUAW:

  You can use burst mode on older models of the iPhone, and it works pretty well, but you don't get the speed nor the auto-selection mode that burst mode on the iPhone 5s has.


Macbook Air Mid 2013 screen flickering after using in clamshell mode

Putting MBA in to Sleep mode will make it write a Sleep image, that is a file that contains your last settings ect.

Now when it wakes up it tries to load that file just to find out all is different now, no monitor ?

Then it goes in to switching the display modes that creates the flickering.

My advice, skip the Sleep mode and just open the clamshell, then turn off the monitor and unplug it.


My MacBook Pro Retina display backlight doesn't work

You can try to reset the SMC by following the steps here.

If that doesn't work it looks like your backlight is broken, and you should ask for a replacement if you still have Apple Care.


I found this OS X Daily article that should answer your question.

Basically, when storage is low, iOS detects apps that take up a lot of space with old caches and temporary files and automatically delete them. It's perfectly normal. The user can't force iOS to clean apps, though.


How to disable app relaunch and window restore in El Capitan on reboot?

If you are looking for a way to permanently disable this feature so you don't have to remember the extra "uncheck the box" step every time you turn your machine off, you can simply deny OS X access to the file it uses to store your session state.

In a terminal,

# Make the file owned by root (otherwise the OS will just replace it)
sudo chown root ~/Library/Preferences/ByHost/com.apple.loginwindow*

# Remove all permissions, so it can't be read or written to
sudo chmod 000 ~/Library/Preferences/ByHost/com.apple.loginwindow*

If you wish to undo this change later and re-enable the feature, perhaps because you've suffered brain damage and now find boot-looping amusing, simply delete this file and the OS will recreate it.

# Re-enable El Capitan's obnoxious "relaunch all the things" behavior
sudo rm -f ~/Library/Preferences/ByHost/com.apple.loginwindow*


Where is the DMG saved when the hard disk is erased?

First of all, the process has evolved as newer versions of OS X and macOS have been released. Basically, you have the right idea. When booting to macOS Recovery, one or more ramdisks are created. The operating system then executes from these ramdisks. The drive (data carrier) where one wishes to install macOS can then be erased and formatted as an APFS container with a single volume. (This step is more complex when two drives are used in a fusion arrangement.) The installation files (which can consist of nested PKG and DMG files) are then downloaded from the internet. Recently, Apple published an article which gives some insight on how this may be accomplished. Here a private/tmp folder is created in the installation volume. The curl command is used to download installation files to this folder. The installation proceeds until the Mac boots to the newly installed Big Sur. Since the the installation files exist in private/tmp, these installation files are automatically erased at this point. The article refers to an installation on Macs with the M1 chip, however the downloaded software is also compatible with Macs with Intel processors.
The use of ramdisks, when either installing or booting to recovery, is not unique to macOS. When installing Linux, Grub executes an initrd command which loads a ramdisk file to memory. Windows loads a ramdisk file which is assigned the drive letter X:.


How is the top cutout handled in iPhone X screenshots?

The simulator behaves differently to an actual device. Screenshots from a real device do not have a cutout, nor rounded corners.

Screenshots taken on iPhone X ignore the existence of the notch

Guilherme Rambo on Twitter https://twitter.com/_inside/status/907743049220018176


How can I charge an iPod with an unsupported cable?

You can block the warning with an app called Pop-Up Blocker, but if you are charging with too much juice, it's on you if you fry your iPod.

You can also look for an app called "ReSupported" if you are having problems with video out cables.


What does "Do you want to erase this iPhone and sync with this iTunes library" mean?

The first part of the sync error message means exactly what it says - your iPhone can only be associated with a single iTunes library.  The second half is tricky for people that are analytical, but for most users it's meant to make them want to back up their phone before they erase it.

Regardless of how you choose to copy your content (sync manually or automatic) it maintains a connection to a single library to which is is allowed to copy music/films/apps etc to and from, and where backups/restores etc can be made. Unless you know exactly what was synced - you could be inadvertently erasing some content hence the scary general error message.

If you introduce your iPhone to a new iTunes library, then it can remove any content that is associated with the previous one.  Assuming you still have access to the old one you can copy the files from one computer to another to enable you to sync them back again after, or you can transfer the purchases to the new iTunes library assuming it has been authorised using the same Apple ID.  This is an attempt to limit unauthorised copying of music and other content etc, otherwise you could happily take your phone or iPod around to all your friends laptops and merrily copy all their stuff onto your device, where you could then happily sync it back to your iTunes library at home.

Other phone content, like emails, contacts, settings should remain unaffected, as these are not held within the iTunes library (even if you have set iTunes to be the sync mechanism for putting them on your phone, they belong outside of the library.

Rule of thumb: if the original iTunes copied the content on in the first place, it will be removed.  It won't just wipe the whole phone, just what came from iTunes.


stuck on 'loading' Tumblr in my app store

Firstly, have you tried restarting?

If so, you can delete the app while it is downloading and then re-download it from the store. To do this:

Settings > General > Storage & iCloud Usage > Manage Storage > Tumblr > Delete App

I would advise a restart before trying to re-download the app.


Open finder and use the go menu to open your home folder.

press command 2 to get the folder list view
press command j and turn on Calculate all sizes

Once you know how large these folders are, you can start determining where the "other space" is allocated. I like to sort by size, decreasing so that the biggest users of space bubble up to the top of the window.


Using an iPhone 5 (Verizon version) in Europe and India?

Yes.
Yes.
Yes.

Only quirk is you won’t get LTE data on networks other than Verizon, especially Airtel and Aircel, as Asian carriers use different bands. You are probably gonna get LTE in Europe, and that too most likely on CDMA networks, but you will have to check with the carrier. I really hate this fragmentation.


How to add a website to Safari Top Sites manually?

You can add it by dragging URL to top sites window.


How do I configure a Smart Playlist to show songs not in other Playlists?

It turns out that the screenshot, or at least the correct version, is sufficient:

No doubt in part to my tens of thousands of songs, and only a few hundreds currently classified, the playlist took sometime to populate. After reading Kyle's comment, I looked at the playlist and nearly my whole library is now present.

So the answer to this problem can only logically be:

Patience


In fact you are right, you can't search in that list on iOS.

Though you can give Apple some feedback and suggest them this particular feature.


The only way this can be restored if you have a Time Machine backup or another backup which included mail.

Restore items backed up with Time Machine on Mac

This way all MailBox folders and messages will be restored.

  If you set up Time Machine to back up files on your Mac, you can use the backups to restore lost mailboxes and email messages.

https://support.apple.com/guide/mail/restore-mailboxes-and-their-content-mail15172/mac


How do I stop MacAppStore from showing updates for deleted apps?

Usually this is a problem with spotlight.

The simplest step is to shut down the mac, disconnect all external drives, and start up to make sure no extra volumes are mounted. The next step would be to rebuild the spotlight index.

Lastly, search in other user accounts to be sure another user didn't somehow install or copy that App into their home folder.


Need script or app to convert filenames and folder names from day/month/year order to year/month/day

Apart from TJ Luoma's third-party solution (a fine solution for long-term situations, but perhaps not something you wish to pay for if this is a one-time endeavour), no one has yet offered a programmatic solution to your dilemma.

I waited until now because, admittedly, despite your screenshots, I still don't have a clear picture of your folder structure (in general, notwithstanding the two specific examples you supplied), so was hoping someone else would have interpreted what I couldn't, and posted a solution.

However, I then noticed your final comment, which spares me the need to interrogate you further about what's what:

  At the end of the day we wish to consolidate all the files into a single year folder so we need to be able to sort them in order.

This means that, provided all the images in question are located within a single directory tree that doesn't contain other images files that aren't intended to be processed along with them, I can hopefully solve your problem for you:

property this : a reference to current application
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
###USER-DEFINED PROPERTIES
property rootdir : "~/Example"
property imgTypes : ["tif", "tiff", "png", "jpg"]
property moveFiles : no
property moveTo : rootdir
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
###IMPLEMENTATION
#
#
tell the directory to filter by imgTypes
reformatFilenames() of imageFiles

if moveFiles ≠ yes then return
tell the imageFiles to move
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
###SCRIPT OBJECTS & HANDLERS
#
#
script directory
    use framework "Foundation"

    property NSDirectoryEnumerationSkipsHiddenFiles : a reference to 4
    property NSFileManager : a reference to NSFileManager of this
    property NSPredicate : a reference to NSPredicate of this
    property NSString : a reference to NSString of this
    property NSURL : a reference to NSURL of this
    ------------------------------------------------------------------------
    property images : null
    ------------------------------------------------------------------------
    to recurse thru directory
        local directory

        set FileManager to NSFileManager's defaultManager()

        FileManager's enumeratorAtURL:(NSURL's ¬
            URLWithString:((NSString's ¬
                stringWithString:directory)'s ¬
                stringByStandardizingPath())) ¬
            includingPropertiesForKeys:{} ¬
            options:NSDirectoryEnumerationSkipsHiddenFiles ¬
            errorHandler:(missing value)
    end recurse

    to filter by filetype
        local filetype

        recurse thru rootdir
        set images to (result's allObjects()'s ¬
            filteredArrayUsingPredicate:(NSPredicate's ¬
                predicateWithFormat:("pathExtension IN %@") ¬
                    argumentArray:[filetype])) as list
    end filter
end script

script imageFiles
    use framework "Foundation"

    property NSMutableArray : a reference to NSMutableArray of this
    property NSRegEx : a reference to NSRegularExpression of this
    ------------------------------------------------------------------------
    to matchString against pattern from str into fmt
        local pattern, str, fmt
        local results

        set results to NSMutableArray's array()

        NSRegEx's regularExpressionWithPattern:pattern ¬
            options:(NSRegularExpressionCaseInsensitive of this) ¬
            |error|:(missing value)

        set RegEx to the result

        repeat with match in (RegEx's matchesInString:str ¬
            options:0 range:[0, str's length])

            (results's addObject:(RegEx's ¬
                replacementStringForResult:match ¬
                    inString:str ¬
                    offset:0 ¬
                    template:fmt))
        end repeat

        return the results as list
    end matchString

    to reformatFilenames()
        tell application "System Events" to repeat with img in ¬
            (a reference to |images| of the directory)

            set fp to the POSIX path of (img as alias)

            set [fname] to (matchString of imageFiles ¬
                against ("(.+)/(.*?)( )?" & ¬
                "((\\d{2})(\\d{2})(\\d{2}))" & ¬
                "( )?([^/]+)") ¬
                from fp ¬
                into "$1/19$7-$6-$5$3$2$8$9") & {null}

            if fname ≠ null then set ¬
                [name of file fp, fp] to ¬
                [fname, fname]

            set contents of img to file fp
        end repeat
    end reformatFilenames

    to make (dir as text)
        tell application "System Events" to if not (folder named dir in ¬
            folder moveTo exists) then make new folder at ¬
            folder moveTo with properties {name:dir}
    end make

    to move
        tell application "System Events" to repeat with img in ¬
            the directory's |images|

            set y to the first word of (img's name as text)
            tell imageFiles to make y
            move img to the folder named y in folder moveTo
        end repeat
    end move
end script
---------------------------------------------------------------------------❮END❯

System info: AppleScript version: "2.7", system version: "10.13.6"

What This Script Does:  Given a path to a source (root) folder under which all your images are contained somewhere within any subfolder, this script will obtain the entire contents—files, folders, packages, aliases, etc.—of the directory tree whose root is at the source folder specified.  Hidden files are ignored.  It then filters all of these items to isolate only those with a file extension matching a pre-determined list of valid extensions supplied.  The filtered array of files is then iterated through one-by-one to rename each file according to your already-stated specifications (more about this below).  If needed, the renamed files are moved to a new location, organised under a top-level directory specified by the supplied filepath that points to an existing folder on your system.  The files are sorted into subfolders labelled by year, e.g. "1994".  If the subfolder does not exist, it is created.  Pre-existing files were not overwritten in my testing, but this may be dependent on your version of AppleScript and macOS.

Utilising This Script: You can copy and paste this script into Script Editor and run it from there.  There are four user-defined properties near the top of the script that you can (and should) edit to your needs:

rootdir: The top-level folder of the directory tree within which the image files to be processed are located.  The files can be located in the top-level folder itself, or in any sub-directory contained therein.  This should be a posix path (slash notation), and using a tilde (~) to represent the home directory is fine, as would be a full filepath.
imgTypes: A list of file extensions (without the leading period) that will be used to discriminate the types of files to be processed.  The images in your screenshots all have extension "tif", so you can leave this property as it is, or add extra extensions if needed, e.g. "gif".
moveFiles: yes to have files relocated to a single folder after being renamed; no to leave them where they are (don't put quotes around yes or no).
moveTo: The destination directory to where the images will be moved and organised into subfolders after renaming.  If moveFiles is set to no, this property is ignored and won't affect anything in the script.  Otherwise, the path supplied must, once again, be a posix path to an existing folder, which can be the same as rootdir, or any other folder on your system.  The subfolders for the images need not exist beforehand, as these will be created on a per need basis by the script.

A Few Warning Guidelines: Note that this script uses System Events to handle the file renaming and moving.  Therefore, there are no undos.

Unless you're confident with AppleScript (and specifically AppleScriptObjC) and regular expressions (used in reformatting the filenames), I'd advise against editing any other parts of the script yourself.  Doing so would likely just cause the script not to work, which would be fine; but it might instead end up processing and renaming files you didn't intend it to, and you don't want that.

For this reason, I would also suggest you trial this script on a small set of dummy files and folders yourself to ensure it does do what you are wanting before you apply it to your actual files.  It's also worth making a backup of your photographs beforehand, just to be extra safe.

All warnings aside, I don't anticipate any problems if I've understood your needs correctly, and you've understood what this script is designed to do.  If you're not sure, feel free to ask for clarification.

I've tested it on files with file name variations, and various distributions throughout a nested set of folders without no issues.  (But, naturally, this only means there are no issues under the conditions that I was able to think up).

How Files Are Renamed: If a file is to be renamed, it's current filename must contain a six-digit number representing a 20th-century date in the format ddmmyy.  If there are more than one occurrences of a six-digit number pattern in the filename, it is the first occurrence that is assumed to be the date string.  The rest of the filename can be anything, both before and/or after the date string, e.g. "%prefix% %ddmmyy% %suffix%.tif".  Neither the prefix nor suffix part of the filename, nor the spaces, are mandatory, so a filename consisting simply of "%ddmmyy%.tif" is considered valid for processing.  The filename is then reformatted by swapping the positions of the prefix (if present) and the date string, leaving the rest as it is.  The date string is also reformatted into ISO-standard international date format, i.e. yyyy-mm-dd.  This includes the hyphens (let me know if you want the hyphens omitted, as I know this wasn't part of your original specification, but it's standard filenaming practice to have them present).  To summarise the filename change by way of examples:

① "Editorial Com Mins 080594 003.tif" → "1994-05-08 Editorial Com Mins 003.tif"
② "1994-05-08 Editorial Com Mins 123456.tif" → "1956-34-12 1994-05-08 Editorial Com Mins.tif"
③ "080594.tif" → "1994-05-08.tif"
④ "1994-05-08 Editorial Com Mins 02.tif" → "1994-05-08 Editorial Com Mins 02.tif"

Note in the second example that the filename might already have been formatted appropriately to begin with, however the presence of a six-digit number pattern meant that it was processed by the script.  However, in the fourth example, the absence of a six-digit number pattern leaves the filename unchanged.


Are non-public Game Center Profiles not listed in "friends in common"?

In the current, iOS 5 version, of Game Center, in order for friends in common to appear (as "shared friends"), they must also have upgraded to iOS 5 (and have accepted the new ToS).


iOS development: GameCenter and In-App activated default

You cannot deselect them. As apple mentions here they are automatically added to explicit app ids. The only way to do not have them is to create a wildcard app id (which is not a solution in most cases as it has many drawbacks).

Think of them as libraries added to your app. You do not have to use them and they change nothing to your project or to the way your app appears in the app store (unless you use them of course).


Find, select and move/copy multiple files at once via Terminal

You get cp: /found_files: Permission denied because the script in the linked post, in its current form, is written to copy the listed files to the /found_files directory. The /found_files directory doesn't exist on your Mac and cp interprets found_files as a file located in /. Since / is not writable, you get the permission error.

I modified the script so that it works with other destination directories and expanded it to support copying and moving files:

Launch Terminal. Select a directory where you save your scripts, for example ~/bin:

cd ~/bin

Create a file named cplist.sh with these contents:

#!/bin/bash

source_dir="$1"
destination_dir="$2"
file_list="$3"

# Sanity checks
if [[ $# -ne 3 ]]; then
    echo "Usage: $0 <source dir> <target dir> <file list>"
    exit 0
fi
if [[ ! -d "$source_dir" ]]; then
    echo "$0: '$source_dir' could not be found"
    exit 1
fi
if [[ ! -d "$destination_dir" ]]; then
    echo "$0: '$destination_dir' could not be found"
    exit 1
fi
if [[ ! -f "$file_list" ]]; then
    echo "$0: '$file_list' could not be found"
    exit 1
fi

# Copy or move?
if [[ $(basename $0) == "mvlist.sh" ]]; then
    command="mv"
    action="Moving"
else
    command="cp -a"
    action="Copying"
fi

# Copy files
while read filename
do
    echo "$action file '$filename'"
    if [[ -f "$source_dir/$filename" ]]; then
        find "$source_dir" -name "$filename" -exec $command "{}" "$destination_dir" \;
    else
        echo "File '$filename' is listed in '$file_list' but could not be found"
    fi
done < "$file_list"

Make the file executable:

chmod a+x cplist.sh

Link the file to mvlist.sh:

ln -s cplist.sh mvlist.sh

To copy a set of files, use cplist.sh as follows:

./cplist.sh <source dir> <destination dir> <file list>

where <file list> is a text file that contains file names, for example:

file 1.pdf
file 2.pdf
...

To move a set of files, use mvlist.sh as follows:

./mvlist.sh <source dir> <destination dir> <file list>

For example:

 ./mvlist.sh
 Usage: ./mvlist.sh <source dir> <target dir> <file list>

 ./mvlist.sh /tmp/ /nonexistentfolder filelist.txt
 ./mvlist.sh: '/nonexistentfolder' could not be found

 ./mvlist.sh /tmp/source/ /tmp/destination filelist.txt
 Moving file 'file 1.pdf'
 Moving file 'file 2.pdf'
 Moving file 'file 3.pdf'
 Moving file 'file 4.pdf'
 Moving file 'file 5.pdf'
 Moving file 'file a.pdf'
 File 'file a.pdf' is listed in 'filelist.txt' but could not be found
 Moving file 'file 6.pdf'
 Moving file 'file 7.pdf'
 Moving file 'file 8.pdf'
 Moving file 'file 9.pdf'


Individual apps from the App Store can't be passcode protected in this way without jailbreaking which you mentioned you don't want to do. Restrictions are only available for pre-installed apps and features.

Instead, you can passcode the device, which will prevent access to the apps on the device, including WhatsApp. Go to Settings → Passcode to set it up.


macOS: Is /etc/fstab file deprecated? What is the recommended config file then?

afaik, fstab doesn't exist by default. You have to create one, first time.

From your linked instructions...

  7) Edit (or create) an fstab file by typing the following and pressing enter:
       sudo vifs

Will do precisely that, edit - or create - an fstab file.
Once you've got it set up, it ought to work as expected. I have mine set with ACLs so it will let me edit it without jumping through hoops every time. iirc, by default it's set to root/wheel.

fstab.hd seems to be a red herring, but no amount of Googling has turned up what it is or was used for :/


Is there any way to use Safari 5.1's rendering engine for browser testing on OSX 10.8 (Mountain Lion)?

I found a project online which i think uses an old WEBKIT renderer..
http://michelf.ca/projects/multi-safari/ gives old versions, but i don't know which ones you will be able to run on your new machine. For myself,  I'm running 4.0.5 because of the reduced RAM usage.


Can't see keychain passwords on another mac

A lot of processes will keep the keychain open, and may not realize that it has been replaced by another keychain.  For example, right now I have

sudo lsof login.keychain
Password:
COMMAND     PID USER   FD   TYPE DEVICE SIZE/OFF     NODE NAME
CalendarA   500  ats  txt    REG    1,4   753764 14974132 login.keychain
ubd         949  ats  txt    REG    1,4   753764 14974132 login.keychain
Dashboard  8779  ats  txt    REG    1,4   753764 14974132 login.keychain
Safari    29631  ats  txt    REG    1,4   753764 14974132 login.keychain
NetAuthSy 29809  ats  txt    REG    1,4   753764 14974132 login.keychain
WebProces 29823  ats  txt    REG    1,4   753764 14974132 login.keychain

You may need to restart things when you replace the keychain, or make sure only to sync the keychain when logged out.  (Which won't work well with dropbox.)

You might want to investigate something else like Keychain2Go which knows about the contents of keychains and makes sure to sync in a fashion that works while other things have it open.


Can I load and play audibooks on the iPod shuffle 2GB?

Yes you can load audiobooks onto the shuffle, The amount you load depends entirely on the size of the books. But to answer your question a 5 CD audio book uses about 120mb of data.

The formatted iPod Shuffle has in the region of 1966mb of free space. So using those numbers you will fit on average 16 full audiobooks on to the iPod Shuffle.

You can download audiobooks from anywhere iTunes, Audible or even Audio CD's you own, as they can be imported into iTunes.


Native RNDIS USB tethering support for OSX

Since then, this driver has come out. It's FOSS too.

http://www.joshuawise.com/horndis


Go to the iTunes preferences then the devices tab and tick the box about automatic syncing.


How to display google calendar "reminders" on macOS calendar app?

You can use Fluid to make a stand alone Google Calendar app using https://calendar.google.com as URL.


How can I use Windows via Parallels or Fusion with MINIMAL HARD DISK space?

Both Fusion and Parallels give you the option of creating dynamically sized virtual hard drives. They allow you to specify the maximum size of the virtual hard drive, but do not actually consume (or reserve) that much disk space on the real hard drive. So to answer your question, just be sure to create a dynamically sized virtual hard drive. (I believe this is the default in both Fusion and Parallels.)


How do I get .wav files made on the iPad into dropbox?

You can access the exported .wav files using the iTunes app on your Mac or PC when the iPad is plugged in through USB:

Select the Apps collection in the Sidebar, then scroll that window down to File Sharing. In the File Sharing list, you'll find iELECTRIBE, with all the exported .wav files. Drag the files from this list to your Desktop or folder. There seems to be no other way but to drag.

Until the developer creates the hooks that allow it to access Dropbox or Drive, this is the only way, other than SoundCloud.


Installing Apache Hadoop on Mac Mavericks

In my case start-all.sh tells it is depraciated and i should use start-dfs.sh and start-yarn.sh. Both give no errors nor warnings on output (for both local and local cluster hdfs).
In Hadoop 2.4.1 jars with shared libraries are located under /libexec/share/hadoop/ and following subdirectories. To run simple MapReduce apps it is enough to add mapreduce/hadoop-mapreduce-client-core-2.4.1.jar and common/hadoop-common-2.4.1.jar.
I use the brew version, so mine is located under /usr/local/Cellar/hadoop/2.4.1/. To make it easier, I use env variable to point to the directory.

I'm not sure, but 4 GiB of ram should be enough to test the environment with some apps. It should not hang.


On your iPhone, navigate to Settings > General > Usage.

At the top of this page there will be a list of apps in order of how much space they use. You can use this to decide what to delete to make more room for your music.

You can delete apps on the home screen by holding down on them until they start to wiggle. Hit the little "x" on any app to delete it.

You can delete music by sliding it to the left in your Music app. Then hit, "Delete."


This is sometimes a problem when there are a large number of apps open at once, or the iPad is otherwise running low on memory.

I have an iPad 1, and unless I set the quality fairly low, there is no guarantee I will get a decent viewing experience.

To try and fix this, first close all apps but youtube, then, if that doesn't work, reboot your device.


You can download the app Photoshop express (free) that has this feature.


iMac 2009 Mac OSX 10.7.5 Mem 16 GB 1067 MHz DDR3

There are a couple of things to look at here.
The first thing is to ctrl+click on All My Files in the sidebar in Finder and select Show Search Criteria. Make sure that All My Files is selected and remove any bizarre criteria that may have gotten in there. The default selection criteria are:

Any of the following are true
-- Kind is Document

Some apps may install their own search criteria. For example, I also have "Kind is Other com.microsoft." due to running Microsoft Remote Desktop and how it stores RDP connection files.
If fixing your search criteria doesn't restore your results, you may want for reset your Finder preferences by deleting a couple of .plist files:

com.apple.finder.plist
com.apple.sidebarlists.plist

You'll find those by choosing 'Go' from the Finder menu, pressing option and then selecting 'Library' and navigating into the Preferences folder. Delete these files and then 'Force Quit…' Finder from the Apple menu or restart your system. That should get things back to order for you.


External display connected via USB-C > VGA goes to endless sleep/wake loop

I just had to put the mac in to sleep using external display. Also closing the LID won't work, you have to sleep the external display first, then you can close the LID.


Alternative to Windows Snipping Tool for Mac OSX

There is now a blog entry about Taking Screenshots in a Snap.

It's built into Mac OS.

⌘+⇧+3 captures the whole screen
⌘+⇧+4 captures a custom rectangle
(click and drag over the screen region you want to capture)
⌘+⇧+4 then space captures a specific window (move the mouse cursor over the desired window, then click)

Press esc to cancel.

Screenshots are saved onto your Desktop and timestamped.

Holding control in addition to any of the sequences above causes the image to be copied instead of saved to the desktop.

By default the image format is png. However, you can change the format by typing in the Terminal:

defaults write com.apple.screencapture type image_format
killall SystemUIServer

Where image_format is one of jpg, tiff, pdf, png, bmp or pict (among others). If you omit the second line, you will need to log out and in again for the change to take effect.

The settings for the shortcuts in the system preferences are located at:
System Preferences → Keyboard → Keyboard Shortcuts → Screen Shots

The MacOS X application that enables screenshots is called Grab. It is located at /Applications/Utilities/Grab.app


Looking for app to fill credit card info on form after swipe from a card reader

They clearly exist, but not necessarily free; I googled a bit and found

http://idtechproducts.com/component/content/article/438-mobile-readers/125-imag-pro-mobile-magstripe-reader.html

Assuming you already have a card reader, have you tried contacting its manufacturer to see if they have any recommendations?  Most iOS app/reader combos will be full POS or transactional systems, like Square.


How do I connect my calendar on my Macbook, ipad and iphone?

Since you have Apple products listed, iCloud calendars would be the place to start.

Go to:

https://www.icloud.com

There is a link in the top right on the instructions for setting up each of your devices to use iCloud for calendar syncing:

https://www.apple.com/icloud/setup/

Start with one device - then check in the cloud using https://www.icloud.com/#calendar once the cloud and one device sync, move on to the next device and repeat until they all have syncing enabled.


Select and drag text on Mac OS X 10.6 doesn't allow me to drag

As far as I know there's no preference to enable this, it's just a built-in feature with no on/off switch.

My best advice is to make sure that you hold down the mouse before starting to drag the text. There's some delay built in such that if you try to drag too quickly, you'll just end up selecting more text.

The process that works for me is:

Select the text you want, then release the mouse button.
Left-click and hold on the selection for a second.
Drag the text to wherever you want it.

The holding before dragging is the key.

I made a quick screencast to demonstrate how this works for me on 10.7.5.


Permission to buy notifications no longer received

You need to be logged in on your Mac to the Apple Store to receive Ask to Buy notifications.


Unable to block contact on iMessage for Mac OS 10.14.2

As a workaround, you can add a phone number as blocked in the FaceTime app on macOS, and it will also register as blocked in Messages (at least it worked for me, and I had the same issue on 10.14.3).


Mail talks to the mail server to show you messages. Only IMAP accounts can be synchronized as that is a formal way for the server and the mail client on your mac to double check all messages to make sure everything is in sync between the two.

Get mail focuses on the Inbox and relies on the Mail app having a "correct" view matching the data on the mail server.

Synchronize allows for noise/errors/lost messages, incorrect statuses and other real life bumps and errors. It basically double counts and double checks each and every message to make sure things are 100% correct. Synchronize also checks all folders recursively to get everything accounted for - not just the subset of folders that are marked as having new mail.

Even more "deep cleaning" would be if you told mail to rebuild the account or the mailbox. That means that the local storage that mail uses on your mac has problems getting mail or synchronizing. It's the last step before deleting the account and starting over to download things cleanly from the server.

In a nutshell - synchronize should normally do nothing - but it will fill in any gaps as needed. (of course it will get new mail as part of a total synchronization - but it's going to be a lot slower and use more resources on the mac than just asking for new mail)


Why is AU Lab not saving my output device settings?

In AU Lab, go to Preferences > Document, and untick the "Use preferred audio device when opening documents". The next time you'll open AU Lab, it will keep the "Built-in audio output" as output device!


I have done something like this before, and what made my life easiest was pbcopy and pbpaste. They allow you to either read the current clipboard or write to it.

So you go to Safari, copy some text, run an automator action.
Action is run shell script
schell script is just basically just wget `pbcopy`


How to stop Finder deleting "Favorites" bar shortcuts that don't open instantly

This seems to be a somewhat prevalent issue, without a clear fix yet. Here's a link to one of the Apple Support threads that I think is a similar problem: https://discussions.apple.com/thread/5556541?start=45&tstart=0


What to do about keyboard protector grime left on MacBook Pro screen?

Cleaning is easy. Follow the steps Apple recommends.

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204172

For glass, that means

  To clean the screen on your MacBook, MacBook Pro, or MacBook Air, first shut down the computer and unplug the power adapter. Dampen a soft, lint-free cloth with water only, then use it to clean the computer's screen.

The 3M gray microfiber cloth is a great option if you don’t have lint free cloths around.

Anything else risks damaging the surface coating, which is what you likely have. The physical rubbing first erodes the anti glare covering and then if it continues, etches and erodes the glass itself.

No solvent or cloth will repair that damage, just mask it temporarily with some types of glass cleaners.

https://www.3m.com/3M/en_US/company-us/all-3m-products/~/3M-Glass-Cleaner/

These can damage hardware so use with sense and caution. Depending on your damage, these may make the glass look worse.


Where does the Apple Workout app "save" completed workouts?

You can view all your past workouts (per day) on the iPhone Activity app! It gives you all the same information you see when you save the workout on your watch.

You can also view past workouts in the Health app (Workouts data in the Fitness section).


How to get filename of image used as image fill in table cell?

Yes, you can find the information you need.

Save the Keynote file.
Locate the file in Finder
⌥+Click or Right Click on the file
In the Dropdown, select Show Package Contents
There you should see a folder Data containing all the resources including images used in the file.

Keynote files are really packages of files that the application uses to build the presentation.


MacBook Pro suddenly not connecting to HDMI

In System Preferences > Displays > Arrangement > turn Mirroring on or off, whichever it wasn't set at.

Then resetting the NVRAM again https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204063

and the last opportunity is to change the Mirroring back to what is was before and reset after that the NVRAM again.

I hope I could help you..


What scenarios benefit from Mac OS X allowing apps to run when no document windows remain?

When you are using Windows and you open an application like MS Word or Adobe Photoshop, it will open up the application window with some sort of empty background. When you do this on a Mac however, there is no background, there is simply the menu options in the very top bar. So say you had a file open in Photoshop in Windows and you closed that file, you would see the same blank application window that you saw when you started up Photoshop. On a Mac, you will see the menu in the top bar, but again, since there is no background you simply see the desktop. So really, there is no difference in the way that Windows and Mac OS X handle the applications, other than one had a visible window and the other doesn't.

The benefit of doing it the OS X way: If you DO plan on keeping the application open, it keeps you from having to minimize the app like you would in windows. All you have to do it click on something else in the background and it will make the applciation lose focus. To close it, simply right click on the application icon in the dock and choose 'Quit'.


Is there such a thing as unsafe cpu levels on mac?

No. Your CPU will thermally throttle itself if it becomes too hot.  If it goes beyond its thermal limit, it will shut itself off.

The only thing you actually have to worry about is reduced performance.


make on OS X does not appear to support color out-of-the-box, and recompiling is painful.

However, I found this make wrapper which does the job.


Path Finder looks like it's modifying the "NSFileViewer" preference. You can set this manually from Terminal to point to ForkLift (I tried this, and it seems to work):

defaults write -g NSFileViewer -string com.binarynights.ForkLift2

(The -g sets this preference globally for all applications.)

However, be warned that the Path Finder website lists some applications that don't respect this setting, such as the Dock and Firefox.


What sleep charting software exists for Mac OS X?

I have this one here, very happy with it.

http://www.fitbit.com/

The last I checked, you can sign up for a fitbit account and use their web application to manually enter sleep times and get nice graphs and statistics using your web browser to see the data.

I don't think there is an export function and it's clearly not a traditional app where all the data exists on your Mac.


how to add the white border and 'peeling' shadow to a photo in Pages?

I'm not sure it's the same effect you're looking for, but to apply different borders in Pages I followed these steps:

Place the picture where you want it in your document
Open the Inspector by holding CMD+I
Go to the Graphic tab:

Go to the Stroke menu and choose Picture Frame from the drop-down menu.

Now you can choose a picture frame and alter its appearance by using the Scale slider.


It is a bit hard to say from the picture you have shared but you may not be doing anything wrong at all. Here is a chart I created with similar data with yours.

I just selected the numbers to be charted (but did not select either the header row or the header column) and then clicked on Chart in Numbers toolbar at the top and selected the icon representing the 2D line chart.

Numbers behave in a weird fashion sometimes in creating charts in my experience. This happens to me occasionally even when I am creating simple charts. When this happens, I create a new file, copy the data only to the new file and create a new chart usually using the same steps. Those steps that have failed in my first trial usually work in the second trial!


Deleting photos that have been backed up iCloud

Yes, it could be gone over a period of time as more backups are made and you're forced to delete older backups (or if you remove Camera Roll from the backup selection). The next time the iCloud backup happens, it will create a backup without this photo. The older iCloud backup with the photo will continue to remain for as long as you have space available on iCloud and you don't delete old backups.

To view the available iCloud backups for your device, go to Settings > iCloud > Storage & Backup > Manage Storage.

Note that iCloud backup happens  automatically over Wi-Fi every day (only once every 24 hours) while it’s turned on, locked, and connected to a power source. You can also trigger it manually from Settings > iCloud > Storage & Backup > Back Up Now.


Best way to use LED Cinema Display & Thunderbolt Display with Macbook Pro 2016

Thunderbolt is a multiplexing of several signals - PCIe bus, USB 3.1, power and DisplayPort.  On the 2017 MBP you have at least 2 Thunderbolt 3 ports.  This means you don't need to convert from TB to DP/mDP as the signal is already there.

The LED Cinema display uses an mDP interface and the Thunderbolt display requires a Thunderbolt connection.

So, all you need is a USB-C (Thunderbolt) to DisplayPort cable for the LED display, and a Thunderbolt 3 to 2 adapter you mentioned along with the Thunderbolt cable you already own (from the previous setup) for the Thunderbolt monitor.


How do I make my external Thunderbolt 27" display's brightness match my iMac's brightness?

The best, albeit somewhat expensive, way is to use a spectrophotometer to create accurate color profiles for each of the two monitors. Short of that, you can use the built-in calibration software, accessed using the Monitors control panel, to create the profiles by eye.

According to Apple's documentation on Calibrating displays with built-in ambient light sensing you should disable the automatic feature while creating the color profile. They claim you can then re-enable it, but for color critical work I would consider leaving this function disabled and controling the environmental light instead.

Unfortunately, there are reports of Mac OS X 10.7 not working properly using different profiles for two monitors. You may have to manually (or use an Automator script to) assign the correct profile to each monitor after every restart.


iPhone plays podcasts in seemingly random order

Did you have shuffle on while listening to music? If you did, the podcasts will also be shuffled.


How to disable iChat's popup "You are not connected to the internet"?

You should probably use another app for screensharing and messaging.  If you choose to do this, I reccomend Adium for messaging and TeamViewer for screensharing.  I searched the contents of the whole iChat application, and I couldn't find anything, which leads me to believe that the pop up (I've had it too) is not actually part of the iChat application, but used by iChat.


Will a "Mac format" iPod nano (2gen) work on a PC?

No, but if you connect it to a Windows machine and restore the iPod using iTunes, it will reformat it to work with Windows. If you want to learn a bit more, read this Apple support article: http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1335?viewlocale=en_US


using hidutil to map two keys to a single key

There's a third-party application called BetterTouchTool that will let you do this (and a ton more) quite easily.  Unfortunately, it's no longer a free app. However, it's an amazing app that's worth far more than it costs if you ask me.

For the record, no, I'm not related to the product in any way.  To the contrary, I'm a long-time paying customer who donated long before the dev started charging for it. At this point its so critical to my daily use on a Mac I feel completely lost without it.)


What are some alternatives to the Mac App Store?

If you want an app-based app store alternative, then try Bodega.  It's a pretty good app that allows user to download/buy apps that existed before the app store did.  However, if that's not enough, you can always use different websites such as www.macupdate.com, www.iusethis.com etc.


Apple ID and Primary Email Address - providing that I change my primary email, will my purchases be kept?

If you change your primary email, the purchases should be the same.  As long as you hit "edit" next to the primary email address field of your AppleID on appleid.apple.com, you should be fine.  Call AppleCare if you have any questions, they should be able to answer your AppleID questions.


Maybe you could try restoring the iPod touch? If you enter DFU mode (described below) and click Restore, you'll get the iPod back up and running.

To enter DFU mode...

Press and hold the Home and Power buttons until the device turns off.
When it does, hold Power for three seconds.
The device should turn on. Now hold the Home and Power buttons (DON'T LET GO OF Power) for ten seconds. The device should turn off - that's fine.
Let go of Power -- keep holding Home until you hear your PC recognise the device.

The iPod touch should subsequently be available in iTunes as if it were in recovery mode; you should now be able to restore the device.


How do I uninstall the Proxinator Security Agent Plugin?

Simple answer: If you are able to log in, you can uninstall Proxinator specifically by running it, and selecting "Reset Proxinator" from its menu.

Complicated answer: You have to edit the Authorization DB using security authorizationdb read and security authorizationdb write. See this StackOverflow answer.


Parallels Desktop: Run windows application with command line arguments

Install, configure and launch Bitvise SSH Server (Personal Edition is free but has some restrictions compared to the licensed server) in the Windows VM.

Launch Terminal on the OS X host, ssh to the ssh server and execute any command required.

I also tried PowerShell which allows Win2Win remote access after enabling it on the hosts, but the OS X version still lacks this feature.


Switching to Straight Talk From T-Mobile on an iPhone 5

Try using http://www.unlockit.co.nz to set the APN to StraightTalk.


Password incorrect after enabling FileVault

I had an image of the system disk on an external harddisk. This image was encrypted. I started up in recovery mode with this disk connected, and selected it as boot partition.

After rebooting, it turned out that the problem I had with booting an encrypted partition happened once again. I rebooted once again into recovery mode, then selected this partition, and selected the bottom option (keyboard not working when trying to login). This option decrypts the partition. Another restart, and I could login to the system on this external partition.

Once logged in, I could unlock the internal system disk, which was not possible anymore after I re-enabled encryption last week. Now I could use Superduper to copy the internal disk to a second external disk, which is unencrypted. After completing this, I could reboot from this disk, which was an up-to-date system. This is a rather slow HDD, even with USB3, compared to the internal SSD. Booting takes ages.

Having this setup, I could copy the system back to the internal SSD, unencrypted.

This Macbook Pro Retina (2015) has 2xUSB3 and an internal 120GB SSD. The setup was as follows:

MacOS: System disk: 1st external HDD via USB3 (this is an older backup)
SSD: Not working internal system disk: 120GB internal SSD
Backup: 2nd external HDD via USB3

Superduper actions:

Unencrypt 1st external disk, because it wouldn't work encrypted as well.
Superduper copy encrypted SSD to unencrypted Backup disk, running MacOS on 1st external disk.
Remove 1st external disk and startup from backup disk which now has a copy of the internal system.
Superduper copy of external backup HDD to internal SSD, unencrypted.

The second step took 3 hours for 100GB. I then removed some folders which were not important, after which 80GB remained. It took 16 hours to complete step 4. I don't understand this, but I'll create another question about this.

All in all, I have a working system right now, although unencrypted, and for the time being I'm not going to encrypt again. Options are to create an external test SSD with a copy of the current OS, stripped down, encrypt that and see how that works out. Another option is to install from scratch, encrypted, and see how that works out, while keeping a synced SSD available.


From searching online, I think I may have run into an edge case. My best guess is that, having just installed Mojave, one of the many new permissions dialogs was generated but hidden behind another window. As I closed programs, some permissions dialogs appeared, including for Chrome. This doesn’t make much sense as a cause but it was related to a major system change so it’s my best guess.

I wound up resolving the issue by rebooting.

Edit: I had the problem again a few more times. Today, FlowVPN wouldn't force quit. I had to hard reboot because macOS was waiting for FlowVPN to close and it wouldn't.


OS X: When a notification is closed in one computer why it is still present in another computer?

The only way to remove notifications, at the time of writing, is to take action on the notification. For example, closing a message notification doesn't close it anywhere else, but tapping the message notification and opening Messages does.

You can provide feedback to Apple here:

http://www.apple.com/feedback/macosx.html


Nothing at all looks odd or out of place. Each of those measurements shows the battery is very good and reporting new cycles.

The circuitry that measures this is desiged to capture long time periods so I wouldn’t check back until the battery has 25, 50 and 100 charge cycles. The estimates are derived as time series of voltage measurements that are integrated, so external temperature, CPU / GPU have a large impact in adding noise to the measurements.

Averaging all of the measurements made so soon seems prudent. Unless and until you’re at 80% FCC - these won’t really tell any compelling story in my experience.

If you have a dramatic failure outside the normal aging process, that also is so clear and logged to different diagnostic logs - trying to read these tea leaves of 1% either way isn’t going to tell you anything about the condition of your device.


Quit if idle for X time, problem when saved script as app

I think this is what you're looking for: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/38530412/exit-infinite-loop-by-quitting-application#38531544

More info from Apple: https://developer.apple.com/library/content/documentation/AppleScript/Conceptual/AppleScriptLangGuide/conceptual/ASLR_about_handlers.html#//apple_ref/doc/uid/TP40000983-CH206-SW7

And another reference: https://scriptingosx.com/tag/idle/

Basically, instead of your repeat, you want to do an on idle, instead of the repeat


macOS Terminal command to test Internet speed

There is a CLI version of Speedtest called, appropriately, speedtest-cli.

You can install it via Homebrew:

brew install speedtest-cli

It's also available via MacPorts

Just execute it by running the command:

$ speedtest-cli

Retrieving speedtest.net configuration...
Testing from ACME Cable (xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx)...
Retrieving speedtest.net server list...
Selecting best server based on ping...
Hosted by ServerPronto (Miami, FL) [22.39 km]: 25.419 ms
Testing download speed............................................................
Download: 70.16 Mbit/s
Testing upload speed............................................................
.Upload: 5.92 Mbit/s


Yes, not only is it possible to upgrade and jailbreak, it's very easy.

Updating to iOS 8.4

Install the latest version of iTunes on your computer.
Tap here to download the iOS 8.4 .ipsw file (operating system).
Plug your device into your computer.
In iTunes, select your device.
In the Summary pane use the following on the Check for Update box.

Windows: Shift + Click
Mac: Option + Click

Select the .ipsw file and update.

Jailbreaking iOS 8.4

Download the TaiG jailbreaking software.
Connect your device to your computer using the USB cable.
Temporarily Disable Passcode from Settings > Touch ID & Passcode.
Temporarily turn off Find my iPhone from Settings > iCloud > Find my iPhone.
On Windows, launch the jailbreaking application as an Administrator. To do this, right click on the executable file and select the “Run as Administrator” option.
The software will take some time to detect your device. Once you confirm that it is showing the correct firmware version, deselect the 3K Assistant 2.3.0 (TaiG’s App Store), just below Cydia 1.1.18.
Click on the green Start button to proceed.
After the jailbreak is complete, your device will reboot automatically, and you should see the Cydia icon on the Home screen.


I tried updating my iPhone, but now it says "SIM is invalid"

This means that the phone was software unlocked (which requires a jailbreak). Because you updated the device using iTunes, you have removed the jailbreak and the phone is no longer in a state of carrier unlock. This is actually common practice and a great number of people end up getting burned (they either just don't know better or are lied to and told the phone is factory unlocked).

You can call the carrier the phone is originally locked to and have them unlocked it (they may charge a modest fee or if you luck out, do it for free as that particular model no longer being manufactured) or re-jailbreak the device and software unlock it yourself, provided you have a baseband revision of 06.15.00 or older.

Note: Apple can't help in these matters.


How to easily delete duplicates from iTunes

If you hold down the option key, you get “Check Exact Duplicate Items.”

The songs above would not have matched had you used that option.  You’ll still need to do some manual parsing, but you probably want to do that anyway.


Can I charge the 12" macbook with Nintendo switch charger?

I have tested on the 2015 MacBook 12". Works perfectly. Charges at 15.3V @ 1,9A = 28,7W. The MacBook 12" charger also works on the Switch.

USB-C and recent USB Power Delivery standards make this a fairly safe bet in terms of cross platform interoperability. As long as the charger or cable aren't knockoff, you should expect reasonable results mixing vendors.

Reasonable is a 15 inch MacBook Pro clearly won't run and charge from a 30 watt adapter (whether Apple or Nintendo), but if powered off, it will slowly and safely charge itself at the rate the connected adapter provides.


Handbrake Settings for New iPad (3rd Gen)

The iPad 3's H.264 playback chip is the same as the iPad 2 (and the new Apple TV's) - that is it will support up to:

1920x1080
30 FPS
High Profile at level 4.1

The biggest difference you'll find is that the 8x8 Transform option is now respected instead of being discarded when making sure the resulting settings matches Baseline or Main Profile specs.

  The 8x8 transform is the single most useful feature of x264 in terms of compression-per-speed. It improves compression by at least 5% at a very small speed cost and may provide an unusually high visual quality benefit compared to its compression gain. However, it requires High Profile, which many devices may not support.

From Handbrake's tooltip on the 8x8 transform.


How to create solid blocks of colored background in Apple Pages?

These blocks are simply Shapes that are in the background.  In the template you reference, they are locked.  Click on the "Block" and you will notice little 'x' in the corners.  To unlock so you can move them, select Unlock on the Arrange tab in the inspector.

To create your own shapes, select the insert shape icon on the toolbar.  In the Style tab on the inspector you can change its color, position and other attributes.  See the screenshot below.

Just know that Pages, like many other apps, uses layers.  So move your shapes to the back in order to display text or pictures on top.  You may have several layers as desired for effect.


My MacBook Air won't stay on unless it its plugged in

This is typical when the current isn’t enough to run the computer.

If you hadn’t had liquid damage, I’d recommend the following:

If you think of a battery storing electrons as a tank stores water - the current is how much volume can come out of the tap. The voltage is the pressure at which the water exits the tap. The battery being “full” or charged is simply the total volume in the tank being “full” regardless of how much pressure and/or volume can come out right now.

Take it in for service or plan to replace the battery would be the logical next steps when your computer doesn’t work with the battery it has.

Since you have liquid damage, I wouldn’t spend any money on the battery since corrosion is likely and you should either pay for a total rebuild of this Mac or keep a good backup until it no longer works at all and replace it.

No sound (speakers/jack) + microphone's dead after spilling water

Like the linked question - it’s not clear if your battery is the problem or your logic board is pulling too much current or has other problems. Liquid damage can do that - break all sorts of things or multiple sorts of things. The liquid also could be totally external and no damage whatsoever - you have to open and inspect all the parts to know and that’s about an hour of trained technician time in most cases to open / look / close everything.


How to have my MacBook Pro safely hibernate when out of juice?

Newer versions of OS X support restoring state when you log in. This means that any applications that were open when you lost power, shut down the machine or rebooted would open back up to where they were previously.

Using this mechanism, there is no need to write the 'hibernation state' to the disk, which (a) uses a big lump of hard disk space, (b) takes time and (c) is risky - if there's not enough power to complete writing the data, you lose all of the state.

You can use the following Terminal command to configure this if you prefer:

sudo pmset hibernatemode 25

per the help at man pmset:

  hibernatemode = 25 (binary 0001 1001) is only settable via pmset. The
  system will store a copy of memory to persistent storage (the disk),
  and will remove power to memory. The system will restore from disk
  image. If you want "hibernation" - slower sleeps, slower wakes, and
  better battery life, you should use this setting.

...but please heed the following warning in the help (man pmset):

  We do not recommend modifying hibernation settings. Any changes you
  make are not supported. If you choose to do so anyway, we recommend
  using one of these three settings. For your sake and mine, please
  don't use anything other 0, 3, or 25.


Why is my attempt at downloading Big Sur failing?

Apple servers had a documented outage to the software updates.

https://www.apple.com/support/systemstatus/

This is why failures happened globally on November 12 during the launch day of Big Sur installations.

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201475 How to upgrade to macOS Big Sur

If you are having issues on or after Friday, November 13 and there isn’t an outage listed in the status page above, and step 4 above doesn’t work follow these steps:

Close system preferences
Quit any apps that cause internet usage (All web browsers, streaming or games, etc...)
Open the Mac App Store and find Big Sur

More details are here on recent changes to this weeks releases - https://eclecticlight.co/2020/11/13/still-getting-errors-trying-to-upgrade-to-big-sur/
If you’ve done anything odd like clearing caches or run tools like Onyx, I recommend you do a safe boot to let Apple clean up properly, then run this command from your terminal.
softwareupdate --fetch-full-installer

If you get any errors, don't worry - wait 5 minutes and try again. (Especially errors about SUPreferenceManager: Failed to set object of class - those do not prevent downloading the latest full installer)


If you're indicating that you're in Safe Boot and your audio is not working on the built-in speakers of your Mac... that's expected. Safe Boot is a testing environment only and some things simply do not function there due to the imposed limitations of Safe Boot, for the purpose of testing.

If Safe Boot fixed your primary issue, then simply restart. If the issue is still resolved, then hooray. If not, then you have something causing an issue in at least one of the following locations: Launch Agents, Launch Daemons, Startup Items, or Login Items.


Boot Camp partition is on lowest brightness and will not change

Just point a small torch (I used the one in my old mobile phone) to the windows screen where it requires your password to log in and you will see slightly where is the box, click then enter your password and the windows will start then increase the brightness by using F2.

Worked for me.


Is there a way to animate the replacement of one object by another in Keynote?

It is possible to have objects run their animations at the same time. This is done in the Build Order window, which is available from the Animation palette (button at the bottom labeled "Build Order") or via the View > Show Build Order menu item. Set one of the 2 animations to fire normally, either "On Click" or "After Transition".

Set the second animation to go immediately after the first one, either by setting its build order number to 1 more than the other, or by dragging and dropping in the Build Order window so that it is immediately below the other. Select the second animation, and now you have the option in the Start menu to start "With Build x" where "x" is the build number of the animation directly above it.

So, by setting one item to have a build in of Cube and another item to have a build out of Cube and setting them to go at the same time, I can get the effect I want of having the one replaced by the other.


Macbook Pro 2010 with Maverick restarting

My one experience years ago with this was 15" Powerbook ... but Apple Support told me that was a sign the motherboard was going, and they replaced it (on Applecare)


How should I troubleshoot Wi-fi timeout issues?

You don't say what OS you are using but I would suggest looking at the LAN to see if there is any WiFi channel or address conflict with your en1 connection (Mac mini airport or NAS?); also check that the AP has a channel that does not conflict with a nearby neighbor and is at least 2 channels away from its nearest competitor (if AP is 6, any neighbors should be 8 or 4). After that, try deleting your connection on the laptop and adding the AP and network info including the DNS.
You might also check that your LAN AP is the first in line in preferred networks and that there is no other Bluetooth, FireWire, etc. network enabled.


Note: this will require soldering, and I'm not 100% sure this will work.

First, take a lightning cable, and cut roughly 2 inches off of the cable on the usb male end. Strip the main wire down a bit, and you should probably be left with 4 mini wires. Take the red and black wires, and connect them to the I/O of the solar panel, via soldering.

Again, I'm not completely sure how a lightning cable works, but I believe this should work.

Here is an example how to get this done: How to make a Solar USB charger!


How do we create a short cut for an application and pass parameters?

The apps aren't really designed on OSX like Windows apps.

The easiest way is to create a command file :

open ./AppName.app --args yourArgs


Using a Bluetooth or USB remote to advance Keynote slides?

The 2Screens iPad app works with their iPhone remote app for Keynote, PowerPoint, and PDFs through wifi. Apple's Keynote Remote app on an iPhone also offers remote control through wifi.


What file types can you convert from a Mac to Windows?

Your question is very general so here is a general answer:

Document files are all dependant on the software for compatibility, not the operating system. So files like .doc .docx .pdf .txt .rtf etc are all compatible with Windows and Mac. This is the same for files like Photoshop files or Powerpoint files.

Video files are dependent on the codecs installed on the machine; both Windows and Mac have almost the same codecs installed by default. To view .mov files on a Windows machine you need Quicktime installed. .mp4 or .mpeg files will all work natively.

Image files will all work on both systems. eg .jpeg/.jpg, .tiff/.tif, .gif, .png, etc.

Applications are NOT inter-compatible. You cannot run a .app file on Windows, and you can't run a .exe on a Mac (except in a Windows VM or possibly Wine).

As a general rule of thumb, if you have a file that needs software to open (eg a Keynote presentation) then you would need the same software to open it on the other Operating system (in this case, Windows). Since Keynote is a Mac only product, you won't be able to open it on a Windows machine. In some of these cases, it could be possible to convert the file so it is openable by Windows software; in this case, you'd export the Keynote as a PowerPoint file for use on Windows.


how to export the SMS, picture, video from iOS device programmatically

There may be other ways to do it (and there are for photos and videos such as putting them on iCloud Photo Library), but if you want to access these all together, a good program you can use is iExplorer.

That looks to do everything you want to do.  It's not free, but I think they have a free trial you can use.


How do I temporarily disable or mute Messages (iMessage) on OS X?

An update for Mac OS X 10.9 (Mavericks). You can turn on Do Not Disturb in Notification Centre to mute notifications:

You can show Notification Centre by clicking on the three-horizontal-lines icon on the far-right of the menubar, or perhaps by doing a two-finger swipe from the right edge of your trackpad (if this gesture is enabled in System Preferences -> Trackpad -> More Gestures). Then swipe up to reveal the 'Do Not Disturb' toggle (which is hidden at the top of the notification centre panel).

Update: I've also just discovered that you can option-click on the Notification centre menubar icon to toggle Do Not Disturb mode on and off.


How do I put the cursor mid-word in iOS 13 phone?

You can use Trackpad mode.
Long-press the Space bar, than slide your finger on the keyboard to position the cursor.


Mix two video tracks with iMovie on OS X

This type of alignment/syncing is why the clapboard was invented! Without one, you'll have to be a little more meticulous when you manually align the clips.

This post on the Apple Support forums suggests a few helpful features to use:

The basic feature you want to use is cutaways.
Audio waveforms can be used for visual alignment.
Playing audio from both tracks simultaneously lets you hear when the tracks are in sync.
Changing the time scale and showing the frame count allows you to make fine-scale adjustments to the clip positions. You can use the arrow keys to nudge the clips.

Read the aforementioned post for some more tips.


Imessaging when travelling and not using cellular

Providing you have Settings > Messages > Send as SMS toggled on and Settings > Mobile Data > Mobile Data Options > Data Roaming toggled off then yes, messages sent from the Messages app will go as SMS.


Is there a difference between factory unlocked and carrier unlocked?

Good question.

Yes, there is a bit of a difference, though I largely agree with bmike. I guess I should add that while there might not be a difference in the outward functionality of the phone, there are differences between the phones provided by carriers, the procedure used to unlock those, and the unlocked iPhone sold by Apple.

This past July, I went through the same unlock procedure that you did when my wife's parents gave her an iPhone 4S that was sent to them by AT&T via an insurance policy that replaced a phone they believed was lost. Anyway, their phone was located right after the new one came in the mail, so they gave it to her. The problem was that we are on Verizon, so we couldn't use the phone. I wrongly believed it was the "world" iPhone that Apple sold, so I went through the process of getting AT&T to unlock it. Unfortunately for me, I didn't pay close enough attention to the rear of the packaging, which clearly indicated that this was a GSM-only phone. Undaunted, I called the nearest Apple Store to arrange an exchange for a CDMA phone - a simple enough thing, right? After all, it was still in the shrink wrap. I spoke with the store manager, gave her the serial number of the phone, and was shortly informed that this was not a phone stocked by Apple stores. The kind of phone I had was marked to be sold only by AT&T, either out of their retail establishments or shipping centers. I called AppleCare, and they informed me of the same thing. As it turned out, no one would even accept a brand-new, still-in-the-shrink-wrap, Apple iPhone 4S. Apple could not take it's own, brand new product in return for an essentially identical device. Only AT&T could accept it as a return, and they obviously didn't have any CDMA capable phones to send in exchange. Ultimately we sent the phone back to my in-laws, and ended up purchasing our iPhone 4S devices directly through Verizon.

To add to all this as sort of a general FYI, the unlocked iPhone sold by Apple is not the same thing as the "world" model, either. From Apple's Web Site regarding the unlocked iPhone:

  The unlocked iPhone includes all the features of iPhone but without a wireless contract commitment. You can activate and use iPhone on the supported GSM wireless network of your choice, such as AT&T in the United States. The unlocked iPhone 4, iPhone 4S and iPhone 5 will not work with CDMA-based carriers such as Verizon Wireless or Sprint.

And here is the info for the "world" iPhone from the "tech specs" page:

  World phone
  UMTS/HSDPA/HSUPA (850, 900, 1900, 2100 MHz);
  GSM/EDGE (850, 900, 1800, 1900 MHz)
  802.11b/g/n Wi-Fi (802.11n 2.4GHz only)
  Bluetooth 4.0 wireless technology

The reason for posting all of this is both as a response to your question and as a general information filter for prospective buyers.


You can try putting it into DFU mode. A google search should turn it up.

Steps to DFU Mode:

Plug your iPhone into your computer and open iTunes. It doesn’t matter if your iPhone is on or off.
Press and hold the Sleep / Wake Button and Home Button (iPhone 6s and below) or the volume down button (iPhone 7 and above) together for 8 seconds.
After 8 seconds, release the Sleep / Wake Button but continue to hold the Home Button (iPhone 6s and below) or the volume down button (iPhone 7 and above) until iTunes says “iTunes has detected an iPhone in recovery mode.”iTunes has detected an iPhone in recovery mode
Let go of the Home Button or volume down button. Your iPhone’s display will be completely black if you’ve successfully entered DFU mode. If it’s not, try again from the beginning.
Restore your iPhone using iTunes.

Source


New Magic Keyboard types the wrong symbols

The problem is that your Keyboard layout is set to Brazilian and not to the Layout that you are used to..

Go to System Settings -> Keyboard -> Input Sources...

There you will see that its the wrong input source.
To change it click on the plus symbol (+) in the left corner of the list and add the input source you want.


Keep my music on my phone but not in iTunes

This may be possible by configuring iTunes to Manually manage music and videos. Then iTunes shouldn’t require you to have the same songs on your iPhone as you do on your computer.

Another way is to enable iCloud Music Library. This is a paid service that becomes available if you use either iTunes Match ($24.99/year) or MUSIC ($9.99/month).

By now you should have been bombarded with prompts for MUSIC. To subscribe to iTunes Match, open iTunes and open Music → Store, then click iTunes Match on the right hand side:

Your iPhone will then sync music with iCloud rather than with iTunes on your computer, and you will no longer need to keep any music on your computer. In fact this makes your entire music library available for streaming so you don’t even need to keep it on your iPhone either.


Changing Text Color in Finder on Mojave Dark Mode?

Try toggling it again; it should relaunch Finder with a fully dark theme, including dark backgrounds & white text...


Installing US International Keyboard Layout in Mountain Lion

OS X comes with a version of the layout preinstalled, but it just has to be enabled in System Preferences.


Seagate expansion drive 2TB not recognized on windows after mac

Try downloading the driver directly from the Seagate site before plugging it back into your windows computer.


OSX Server: should I use Open Directory?

For a small company, it's not even clear you would set up network users to start with. The costs associated with setting up and running that might be more than it would cost to support a handful of Macs.

Without knowing a few items such as exactly how many accounts, how many Macs, how different the Mac users are (are you setting up a lab with 15 identical machines or is each belonging to a user that has software needs different than all the rest.) Also, your decisions on how much users should support themselves (or can even support themselves) would go into the decision on how best to manage IT time and dollars to support the users.

There often is no best answer other than starting with something that has a chance of working and then iterating as you learn what is really needed in your specific shop.

That being said, if you make Local Network Users they can log into client machines and use the services (file sharing, backup, etc..) from the server but not log directly into the server. Local Users get all the benefits of network users and also get a home directory stored on the server and can log in there as well.

I'd start with two resources for planning your deployment:

Take Control of OS X Server by Charles Edge (to be published by Tidbits - currently available as pre-release chapters online)
Apple Pro Training on OS X Server Essentials by Arek Dreyer and Ben Greisler

The former is easier to get started and organized more in terms of functional tasks and the latter is an exhaustive reference and covers about all the mechanics of how the software operates and is configured.


How to sort photos inside a photo album in the Photos app on an iPhone by date [PC]?

I have had the same question for years. Unfortunately, iOS uses Date Added and not Date Taken from EXIF for sorting. They even added Collections but Camera Roll sorting is still broken.
To sort the photos you could use one of the methods:

Jailbreak. A number of tweaks allow organising photos one by one or sorting by name/date. You would also be able to edit each photo's metadata on device.
Sync them as an album from a computer. First, organise them by copying or otherwise modifying the date metadata, then sync the resulting folder through iTunes. This is limited to the synced album and will not fix the camera roll.
Direct import and Photos.sqlite rebuild. Having spent another year on this and currently in the process of moving my 5 year camera roll to a new device, the method I plan to use: same as above, prepare metadata on a computer (set every possible date field correctly, e.g. with Attribute Changer). Import photos into DCIM. Delete/rebuild Photos.sqlite. Delete DCIM.plist, or set it manually for iOS to know how to name photos when you take them.
Make changes to Photos.sqlite. This should work unless Apple modifies databases. This is sort of the best option available without resorting to mass EXIF editing/renaming, and will only work/make sense if underlying EXIF/file attributes in your photos is correct. If you can see metadata is wrong, this is useless. Details are here.
N.B: double check dates on PNGs/videQuickTime files and their exif is tricky).

Further investigation confirms this appears to work on iOS 11. Only points to note on later iOSs: clear out iCloud Photo Library folders CLOUD folders in DCIM, or just turn it off), and also delete the Mutations folder in PhotoData (holds edits AFAIK, if any have the same name as the new import you'll have weird conflicts).

Also, the way iOS generates ZDATEADDED appears to be dependent on indexing order and hence naming of the files.

So if you want the Camera Roll to be ordered correctly (without having to resort to SQL commands on the db) by EXIF/file data, you'd need to bulk rename pre-sorted (by date field of your choice) files in order, and then import. The easiest attribute to pre-sort by is Date Modified since all files will have it and it generally remains the same through all the manipulations described above. Obviously, you'd want/need to use something like Attribute Changer (Win) or Better Find Attributes (macOS) to first synchronise EXIF and file attributes.


You don't get a backup of developer builds that are not ad-hoc builds (and thus synchronized with iTunes).

You also don't get backups of music, movies, podcasts. If you set the iPhone to be manually managed by you, you have to add all media back yourself. (Except ringtones and your photos)
I don't know, whether iTunes will resynchronize your media if you don't manually manage it.


Reinstalling Mac OS X on Macbook with swapped hard drive?

This question has been answered here.

Basically do the following:

To start Recovery, hold down the Command + R keys while booting. The interface is pretty straightforward after that and you should be able to figure it out.


SH script calls Perl script. Works when I double click, but Perl script fails when I call from terminal

That error indicates your pbmJson.pl is being run by a shell, and not by perl:

$ cat someperlcode
printf "hi\n";
printf "there\n";
use strict;
$ perl someperlcode
hi
there
$ sh someperlcode
hi
there
someperlcode: use: not found
$ use
mksh: use: not found
$ bash
bash-3.2$ use
bash: use: command not found
bash-3.2$ exit
exit
$

As written, I see no error in what you've posted:

$ cat code
#! /bin/bash

perl someperlcode > output
$ chmod +x code
$ rm output
$ ./code
$ cat output
hi
there
$ rm output
$ sh code
$ cat output
hi
there
$


Will my user directory be enough for offsite backup?

To be safe, and assuming bandwidth/storage space is not a big issue, I would recommend backing up everything. A good argument could be made that you don't always need all of it, but unless doing so would cause great inconvenience to you, it will probably be worth it to have the additional security of knowing everything is recoverable. There ARE files outside of just your user directory that even a casual user could find important. Many settings/preferences, application support files, etc. are stored on a higher level than your user directory.

That being said, folders outside of your user directory probably do not need to be backed up as frequently as the ones inside it, so you could probably get away just fine with backing up the system folders, say, once a week, while your user directory should be backed up daily.


Does "Sync with this iPhone over Wi-Fi" use encryption?

iTunes Wi-Fi Sync does not use encryption as it is performed on your local network only.
Your data is not transferred over the internet, so it's as secure as your local network is.

(The link about MobileMe is extremely old; Yahoo! Mail and Windows Live didn't use HTTPS.)


When creating a RAID 1 mirror set, do you need to have both disks available or can one be added later?

This can be done from the Disk Utility app or from the diskutil command line.  Be warned that you should definitely make a backup before doing anything.  I had an issue where the diskutil appleraid enable mirror disk1s2  command I ran wrapped the volume in a RAID set but the partition is now called Apple_RAID_Offline and no longer accessible.  Ironically after restoring from backup to a new volume (I'm still trying to figure out if I can recover that original), I was able to create the one-sided mirror just using the Disk Utility.app.  I simply dragged the volume into the RAID window and it gave me a warning that it would be changing the volume to a RAID set but that the data would not be lost.  Not sure what happened with the command line attempt but it's slightly disturbing.  In either case once the one-sided mirror is created you should be able to drag another partition into the Mirrored RAID set to complete the mirror.  or use the diskutil ar add member <disk> <RAIDset> command.

In your case it should be easy to create the one sided mirror first and then transfer your data to the new volume and then format the ntfs disk and add it to the mirror set.


Macbook Pro - install operating system on SD card?

Short answer: Yes, but it will not be ideal

Long answer:
Yes, it is possible to install macOS onto a SD card, but SD card have low read/write speed (unless you get one of the SDXC II card which can get 280MB/s which is still pretty slow for daily use, and they are expensive, cheap ones won't do anything in speed) my SSD can get around 465MB a second, and that is not the best SSD. So make sure you don't care about being slow with installing OS into them. Also by the way you can't really make large amount of writing into it or else it will break: they are not designed to have a system installed onto it.


What is the difference between `on` and `to` in AppleScript handler declaration

There's no difference between them. Both on and to are acceptable.

From Using Handlers/Functions

  Listing 13-3 shows a variation of the handler in Listing 13-1, which uses the to prefix instead of on. Either syntax is acceptable.

From Handler Reference

( on | to ) handlerName ¬
   [ [ of | in ] directParamName ] ¬
   [ ASLabel userParamName ]... ¬
   [ given userLabel:userParamName [, userLabel:userParamName ]...]
      [ statement ]...
end [ handlerName ]


Not enough free space on OS X Base System while installing El Capitan with VirtualBox

By accident I tried to install OS X to the OS X Installer DVD iso file (mounted to the virtual VBOX CD-ROM device) itself.

Erasing/partitioning the VBOX HARDDISK disk (see images in question) and creating a new HFS+ Journaled formatted volume seems to work.


Can I inherit a Time Machine backup if I clone my HD?

Time machine uses the UUID (drive ID) to identify the source disk. So, inheriting time machine backup to continue with the swapped Mac machine is not possible rather you can use this command:

sudo tmutil associatedisk -a

Moreover, you can create an image of time machine partition and restore the data from the created image.


Using Garage Band sounds for commercial purposes

Actually, you can't. The linked article specifies exactly that you can't:

  to create your own original music
  compositions or audio projects. You
  may broadcast and/or distribute your
  own music compositions or audio
  projects that were created using the
  Audio Content, however, individual
  audio loops may not be commercially or
  otherwise distributed on a standalone
  basis, nor may they be repackaged in
  whole or in part as audio samples,
  sound effects or music beds."

(emphasis mine)

You can create as many songs as you want using all the sounds you have in the loops and sell the songs. But you will be packaging the sounds (or repackaging) as audio samples of your application which seems to be forbidden.


Can I create a private calendar appointment with an iPhone?

No you can not.

I assume you're using Exchange for you calendar, although you didn't specifically say so.

You can't necessarily create a private event, but you can create a subcalendar in Exchange that you can control the permissions of so that only you can see it. You can do this by:

Open Outlook
Go to Calendars
Right click on your current main calendar and click New Calendar...
Create the new calendar under your Exchange account's Calendar section
Right click on your new calendar and select Properties.
Go to the Permissions tab.
Make sure the "Default" user is set to None.
Set your own permissions to "Owner" and remove any other users from the list.

This calendar should show up on your iPhone fairly quickly. If it doesn't, try disabling Calendar syncing in Settings → Mail, Contacts, Calendars → Exchange.


Is there a way to input values and then run aliases in iterm2

aliases are not set by terminal or iTerm they are a part of your shell.
By default in BigSur it is zsh, for most other versions before the default shell was bash
aliases do not take a parameter they just do a text replacement of the alias by the text to the right of the =  If you need to do things with parameters then look at functions in the shell manuals.
As to your case an alias will work as the alias is expanded and then the rest of the command line is passed to it.
A simple example is to get a long list of files
alias ll='ls -l'

Call this by ll ~
and you get the same result as ls -l ~
I think in your case you just need
alias youtube='youtube-dl -f best '

Then type (where link is the URL you want)
youtube link


I was thinking possibly have a look at fstab or chflags. Although these methods may not achieve exactly what you need but they may help to avoid unwanted or accidental interaction with the external drive.

One caveat that I have found with chflags is that you don't seem to have Finder access to the disk unless you unhide it. It does support having an iPhoto Library on the external disk. I tried this by making an test iPhoto library on a disk without chflags hidden and then hiding it with chflags nohidden. iPhoto can access the disk but it does not show up anywhere besides the apps such as Disk Utility.

To see the chflags options do:

man chflags in the Terminal.app

Here are two articles relating to fstab and chflags that you might find interesting and possibly help you achieve what you have described:

http://www.macissues.com/2014/08/27/how-to-hide-a-hard-drive-partition-on-your-mac/
http://julipedia.meroh.net/2007/01/hide-volume-in-mac-os-x.html

As far as accidentally un-mounting goes I guess if you have something open on that drive the system will automatically protect it. You might be able to use a LaunchDaemon of some sort to detect requests to unmount a drive also. On the other hand, there is no protection against physically pulling out the cable.

I hope these help.


How to recover iPod touch 2G stuck on green screen and Apple logo?

I have been able to start the ipod in DFU mode and restore it with iTunes and now it starts up again but half the screen is dead.


Concerns in testing a potentially water damaged Macbook battery

If you have the Apple Service Toolkit, that is the easiest way, if you don't... there aren't may programs out there really suited for this type of work.

If you are showing that the battery may be holding or attempting to obtain a charge, the battery probably will be OK to be used. I am sure that enough time has passed in where the battery has been completely dry.  In many cases you could submerge the battery, dry it off and it will work. The batteries are pretty much air tight to begin with.

If a battery had a crack in it, or something of the sort you'd know.

The best thing to do is to attempt to get a charge out of it, if the battery holds one you are fine, if not then you may be able to go down to an Apple Store and ask if there is a way to view how much life is left in the battery.

Of course, this is assuming the battery hasn't been saturated in salt water either, if it has, you may just want to throw it away.  Otherwise I think you will be safe to use it as long as it holds a charge that is.


Adding a dictionary in different language and enabling spellchecking for that language too?

You set the language for spellcheck in system preferences > keyboard > text > spelling, and at the app level in Edit > Spelling and Grammar > Show Spelling and Grammar.

Some non-Apple apps, like MS Office, have their own internal settings for this function.

You set your preferred reference dictionaries in Applications > Dictionary > Preferences.


Possible to use Siri to trigger custom actions?

That’s one interesting idea. It seems to be possible by registering custom vocabulary in your app. Since there is SiriKit it should be possible. Besides people from Homebridge achieved the same you want with garage doors and so on.
https://github.com/nfarina/homebridge/blob/master/README.md

Things like custom vocabulary can be found here:
https://developer.apple.com/documentation/sirikit/registering_custom_vocabulary_with_sirikit

So if I understand the docs correctly you can specify

IntentPhrases that allow you to react for a word shell for exemple

But I love the idea. First thing I will connect will be ‘fastlane’ and I will shout ‘deploy!’


Is it  possible to create a folder in iBooks?

Yes, as long as you're running the latest version.

Tap the button a the top of the bookshelf where it likely says "Books" (though it might say "PDFs") -- this is the Collections button.
Tap "New" to add a new collections folder with a name of your choice.
Tap the "Books" collection and you'll see all of your books.
Tap the "Select" button in the upper-right corner, then tap on all of the books you want to move into a collection.
Tap "Move" and select the collection you want to move the books into.

Poof, they're now out of the default "Books" collection and now in the collection you chose.


Can I use an AirPort Express to extend a wifi network that has a Cisco base station?

I would say without doing the research on the specific model (generation) of Airport and the specifics on the firmware on the Cisco device - they may work but it's certainly not guaranteed.

It's almost inconceivable the first part would fail. The express will join almost any network and AirTunes will work as long as it is in range.

The extending is where you want to do your homework if you need that to work as well to not be disappointed with a purchase. WDS is the main standard - so be sure you read up on the Apple WDS documentation as well as whatever Cisco provides.

WDS in and of itself isn't necessarily a bad protocol, but it makes your network much more complicated and much more likely to fail since any one part failing cascades to the rest. Many people (even professionals) have lost days to trying to make WDS work and maintain/troubleshoot it when problems arise.


Should I buy the 2 year Apple Care, for my Macbook Pro with faulty butterfly switches?

Unfortunately, it's too late to buy AppleCare for you MacBook Pro. From Apple's MacBook AppleCare page:

  Purchase AppleCare+ with your new Mac. Or buy it within 60 days of your Mac purchase:

If you are at all concerned about the faulty switch, you should get it to Apple before the one year warranty runs out.


-bash: /usr/local/bin/nmap: Bad CPU type in executable

I decided to go the site :

https://nmap.org/book/inst-macosx.html

Click on Download

https://nmap.org/dist/nmap-7.80.dmg

I downloaded that .dmg, installed it, now my nmap working again.

  Note : I will leave this post since, it might help others in the future.


Is there a way to run a macOS guest virtual machine on an M1 / Apple Silicon host?

The macOS guest on top of macOS host running ARM hardware is not supported officially by parallels.

https://www.parallels.com/eu/products/desktop/resources/

Today, there are five OS guest options with Parallels:

Windows 10 on ARM Insider Preview
Ubuntu 20.10, 20.04
Fedora Workstation 33-1.2
Debian GNU/Linux 10.7
Kali Linux 2021.1

Only Windows and Linux ARM OS run on the Apple Silicon (M1) production build.

https://www.vmware.com/products/fusion.html

The VMware Fusion hypervisor doesn’t officially support Apple Silicon (M1) yet.
Today, the answer is no supported macOs guests running on the commercial products with wide adoption.


I have a directory behaving very strangely

If I had to put money on this I would bet on a disk problem -- Generally speaking the filesystem won't just hang for no reason: It's usually because it asked the disk to read or write something and the disk is taking its sweet time responding.

If you are not already using it, I strongly suggest installing and using the latest version of SMARTreporter to monitor your drive for failure signs.

If SMARTreporter gives your drive a clean bill of health try running "Verify Filesystem" and "Repair Disk Permissions" (available through Disk Utility) -- If "Verify Filesystem" finds problems you may need to boot off your OS X install/recovery disk in order to repair the problem.


Problem installing Huawei E3131 3G modem on 2012 MacBook Air

My personal experience with Huawei is that their installation app doesn't even run on a recent Mac for some reason. When I used it, I used to look into the package content to find another installation app that would actually start. If that is not the problem, please put more details.

pmjordan might be right as well as far as 32/64 bit-ness of their installation app. USB2/3 should be backward/forward compatible as per their specs as far as I know.


Time Machine stops after a few gigabytes, without any visible error message

Problem seems to be solved, I am not sure how.

I deleted the erroneus file, but I don't see why it would cause problem in the first place
By a friend's suggestion I've moved physically closer to the Time Capsule, maybe it is getting older and the wifi connection is weaker
I've deleted a volume from boot APFS container (but it wasn't mounted anyway)

I am still somewhat puzzled, but maybe someone coming by with same symptoms can make use of any of these.


How to distinguish multiple OS X installations from each other in the bootloader?

Get a 16gb or 32gb usb stick
Partition it with GPT (to have EFI partition on it) if you trying to install os x on non apple hardware = hackintosh use MBR and manually add an EFI partition (EFI specification says it can live with mbr as well)
restore InstallESD.dmg with Disk Utility to a partition for each Installer Image you wish. Just make sure your partitions have at least 5gb space.

Your partition table on your USB stick could look like this

/dev/diskX1 - EFI

/dev/diskX2 - Osx Lion

/dev/diskX3 - Osx Mountain Lion

/dev/diskX4 - Osx Snow Leopard

/dev/diskX5 - Osx Whatever

install rEFIt on the usb sticks EFI Partiotion to have a boot loader. EFI Partitions are 200mb, named EFI, filesystem type is FAT to check if you got one on your usb stick enter in terminal
diskutil list and look for EFI in the lists, shoud be '/dev/diskX*s1*' since it's the first partition on GPT based tables

if trying to use install OS x on non Apple Hardware (==osx86) use Clover V2 instead of Refit. Put your Usb into your computer and boot from it. If you don't see a boot menu on Mac after installing refit - read the readme file and bless the disk from terminal.

Be happy with your uber usb installer


I've had similar issues. A laptop stand seemed to help.


Plist Not Running AppleScript using launchctl

Try adding /usr/bin/osascript as the first ProgramArguments. This will explicitly tell launchd to use the osascript to run your script.

Direct Approach

Do you need to use AppleScript for this launchd job? If not, you could avoid a level of abstraction by calling directly to node:

<key>WorkingDirectory</key>
<string>/Users/user/Desktop/Projects/node/webmasters-cli</string>
<key>ProgramArguments</key>
<array>
    <string>/Users/user/.nvm/versions/node/v4.3.2/bin/node</string>
    <string>app.js</string>
    <string>DesktopUSA</string>
</array>


iPhone 5 won't activate without SIM card

You cannot activate an iPhone 5 without (nano) SIM card. You could go to a local store and ask if they have one for you just to activate and you're fine to go.

There is no point in buying a SIM card if you don't have plans to use it as phone.