Rsync error after a period of syncing (error in rsync protocol data stream)

Solution in my case: update rsync.

As is clear from point 3 in the rsync "current issues and debugging" page,

  This error tells you that the local rsync was trying to talk to the
  remote rsync, but the connection to that rsync is now gone. The thing
  you must figure out is why, and that can involve some investigative
  work.

In other words, detective work is needed to isolate the root cause. One of the first things suggested is to update rsync. It turns out that Apple has not given us the latest rsync in their machines. Thus, I updated the rsync version on my Mac via Macports to 3.1.1. In addition, in order to minimise the strain on the rather weak processor of my WD MyCloud machine, I made sure to run only one rsync process at a time. After that, I have had no problems syncing.

This is no general solution, of course, but then again there seem to be no general solution for this vague error message: if this had not worked, I had had to try and debug it. For details on how, see the above-mentioned rsync issues page.


It predates Linux and was in NeXTStep from 1989.

Linux is not Unix and does not meet the Unix specification.

auto_home is the place where in a networked environment your home directory is mounted via NFS.

Any decently scripted process won't be affected by /home - if it is what else has it got wrong?

The Unix standard way to find your home directory is $HOME environment variable and home directories are not all of the form /home/X, in fact I have worked at places where the home directories have had different paths at their root i.e. some users had home directory /home/X  and others /user/Y


Scheduling a task to repeat at a set interval

There are a couple of ways of doing this, but the details depend on a couple of questions: Does the script need to run as root (Admin) or a regular user?  Does it need to run on any specific schedule, or just a 12-hour interval?

The OS X-ish option is to create a LaunchDaemon.  Create a file named /Library/LaunchDaemons/local.scriptname.plist, with contents like this:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN" "http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd">
<plist version="1.0">
<dict>
        <key>Label</key>
        <string>local.scriptname</string>
        <key>ProgramArguments</key>
        <array>
                <string>/path/to/script</string>
                <string>someargument</string>
                <string>anotherargument</string>
        </array>
        <key>StartInterval</key>
        <integer>43200</integer>
        <key>RunAtLoad</key>
        <false/>
        <key>KeepAlive</key>
        <false/>
</dict>
</plist>

Notes: 43200 is 12 hours in seconds, meaning that this will every 12 hours starting at boot.  You should replace scriptname with a more appropriate identifier in both the Label value and the filename (and if you're going to publish this, replace "local." prefix with your domain name in reverse order, e.g. "example.com.scriptname").  If it should run as someone other than root, add:

        <key>UserName</key>
        <string>usertorunas</string>

If you need it to run at particular times of day, replace the StartInterval key and value with something like this:

        <key>StartCalendarInterval</key>
        <array>
                <dict>
                        <key>Hour</key>
                        <integer>6</integer>
                        <key>Minute</key>
                        <integer>0</integer>
                </dict>
                <dict>
                        <key>Hour</key>
                        <integer>18</integer>
                        <key>Minute</key>
                        <integer>0</integer>
                </dict>
        </array>

...replacing Hours 6 and 18 (6pm) with the hours you want it to  run.

The other option is to use cron, which is more generic-unix (but works fine on OS X).  Use the command crontab -e to create/edit the crontab file.  The crontab will be created for whichever user you create it with, so if your script should run as root, use sudo crontab -e.  The crontab should look something like this:

0       6,18       *       *       *       /path/to/script someargument otherargument

Note that there's no equivalent of StartInterval here, this always runs it at 6am and 6pm.


How do I record the iPad screen with a Netflix video playback in progress?

This is generally not a possible thing to do.

Capturing contents of the device screen by taking a screenshot or video recording is restricted programmatically in the iOS/iPadOS subsystem to curb on abusing the system.

You can neither do it while using a streaming app which provides access to protected content, nor by using a Web browser.

Consider going through these links which should give you some idea:

https://stackoverflow.com/questions/46319665/ios-11-prevent-screen-record-like-netflix
https://developer.apple.com/library/archive/qa/qa1970/_index.html

Netflix app has been programmed (using the help of iOS/iPadOS subsystem APIs) to curtail users from taking screenshot or record screen to keep a tab on potential gaming of the system. A screenshot or video recording would simply produce a black screen to discourage users from doing so.


iTunes 11 does not sync apps updated OTA

if you don't want to download again, next time you plug in the phone:
in itunes right click on phone and tell it to transfer purhases.

i do this pretty regularly since i have multiple devices and don't need to download each app 4 times.  download on phone / transfer purchases to itunes / sync to others.


disk drive about full. Library folder has over 100 GB

Is this the root-level /Library, or the user ~/Library ?

The former contains things installed by applications: this could include large data like audio sample instruments for Garageband/Logic.

The user Library contains settings and preferences, but it can also contain iPhone and iPad backups, which can take up a lot of space. You can manage these in iTunes' preferences.

You can use an app like OmniDiskSweeper which will show you the contents of your disk, sorted by size. You can drill down through each folder and see what's taking up space, and delete files if you wish. However, remember that it is very easy to delete files that may be critical and necessary to your Mac.


Keychain: ask for certificate from command line

Use the supplied "certtool" program. The "r" option allows you to generate a new certificate signing request (CSR).


which certificate/identifiers/profilers should be used for python script to be distributed as a pyinstaller build/bundle outside the app store?

Outside the App Store you can use any ad-hoc or self signed certificate, but I recommend using an official developer account Developer ID for maxim ease of use.
Letting Apple notarize your app by signing your developer ID certificate, helps people trust your app.
Notarization is free for everyone except the submitter of the app. To notarize a specific item, You have to posess a current developer signing certificates. These can be obtained from an annual paid or free developer account (if you qualify for a free account).
The certificate type differs if you sign an installer vs signing an application.

https://developer.apple.com/documentation/xcode/notarizing_macos_software_before_distribution/resolving_common_notarization_issues#3087721

When code signing items like Mach-O files, disk images, bundles, apps, command line tools, photos, and so on, sign with a Developer ID Application certificate. Sign installer packages with a Developer ID Installer certificate.


Best practices for syncing two Macs using Sierra

I am going to try answering per question, except the first two. So here goes my 5p:

  Am I correct that this setup will work as intended?
  Will syncing of one user continue to run in the background if a second user logs in to the same machine? (Presumably not if the 1st
  user logs out, but what if they stay logged in while the second
  account becomes active?)

Yes, for both.

Also in addition, for best practices and keep each user's file separate, create the Documents, Pictures, etc folders inside and iCloud Drive. Now ask each child to put all their stuff in that folder.

If did not do that, it will still be stored inside the local machines' ~/Users/ folder.

  If I link all the accounts on both computers to iCloud, will I end up with duplicate copies of files that currently reside on both machines? Or will the syncing process recognize when two files are copies of one another?

Do you mean using the Auto upload feature?

  Would it be better to upgrade one machine, link all of the accounts on that machine to iCloud, then do a clean install on the second machine and create & sync new accounts on that machine to iCloud?

If you are moving all of User1's docs to their iCloud Drive, it does not matter.

  If I notice that files don't seem to be syncing automatically is there
  a way to force a sync?

Not that I know of


If you're afraid of rebuilding all of the project, and there's no support available for such cases, make a bare bone clone of the required folders in /Users/oldname which contains all the files required by the project.

Warning: This requires root password, and by default, /Users/ only contains:

All user accounts
Shared
Guest if enabled.

So I am not aware of the ramifications of the same.


What app does macOS Mojave use for screen recording?

If you start screen recording then open the activity monitor.
You will see a process name screencapture.
Click process info botton will see more detail.
It seems like a system level functions and use intel quick sync to encode.


Can HomePod be controlled using anything other than Siri?

I'm specifically hoping for some sort of remote control app for iOS.

The standard Music app can be put into a mode where it acts as a HomePod remote control: the user can queue individual tracks and playlists, and the HomePod will play them using its own connection to Apple Music and the iTunes Music Library.

It is a little tricky getting the Music app into that mode.

One way is to open the Control Center, then long-press or force-touch on the music control. This reveals separate control panels for your iOS device and any other controllable devices, including AppleTV and HomePod. Tapping the HomePod will open the Music app in HomePod-control mode.


Download Xcode from developer site vs install from app store

As far as I can tell, they are the same. The size difference might be due to additional files Xcode from the App Store doesn't download by default, that Xcode from the site might have.

I have Xcode from the App Store; the first time I opened it it asked to download the Mobile Device Framework to proceed.

I suppose this must come bundled with Xcode from the website. It wouldn't surprise me if it were, as this framework seems to be needed before Xcode can start. I suppose Apple distributes its MAS Xcode with users with stable internet connections and single-install in mind, while the website version for users who might want to deploy it to several machines, in which case it would be a drag to have to download any extra-crucial elements that don't come with the installer package.

Why wouldn't Apple just put everything that is needed on the MAS installer? Probably an issue with permissions; MAS applications aren't supposed to ask for your password to install. These Xcode components, installed later through the app, might touch delicate areas of the system which the MAS installer has no access to.

My suggestion: If you plan on using a download assistant/accelerator and have trouble with your billing for the MAS I suggest you download from the website.  I doubt there is any difference at all regarding the app itself.

PS: If you do, maybe come back and comment if you had to download any additional components or if it was a full installation straight out of the disk image, as to increase the knowledge of the community for any further reference.


How to enforce time limits on Mac with a password?

AFAIK, if you're an adult, your Screen Time settings are controlled by you.  Try setting a Screen Time passcode.  Then, at least, you'll be prompted to enter the passcode to continue using apps during a lockdown period.
If you're a minor and part of a Family (in Apple/iCloud terms) one of the adults in the Family needs to set the passcode (for your acct) from their device.


Terminal command to remove custom icon from file (HFS+)

For files with a custom icon, macOS writes the icon data as a resource fork to the file.  Use the xattr command in the following form:

xattr -d com.apple.ResourceFork /path/to/filename

For more information about the xattr command, in Terminal type the following command and press: enter

man xattr

Or just type xattr and then right-click on it and select: Open man Page

For folders with custom icon, in Terminal, change directory to the folder containing the custom icon, e.g.:

cd /path/to/foo

Once in the directory, use the following command to remove the custom icon:

rm Icon?

Note that you can also just use:

rm /path/to/foo/Icon?

However, you cannot use quotes, single or double, if the pathname has spaces and must escape the spaces with a backslash, \, e.g.:

rm /path/to/foo\ bar/Icon?

Quoting the pathname will just return the following error:

: No such file or directory

By default, Icon? is a hidden file and the ? in Icon? is actually a linefeed, \n, character.


How can I prohibit network users from accessing other user's home folders using Server permissions?

Launch Server.app
Click "File Sharing."
Click "Users."
Use Minus Sign to Remove Certain Users from Certain Folders.


How to send text message when they also what imessage

If you press and hold on the iMessage it will let you choose Send as Text Message. If you do this enough it will automatically start to send as a text message.

Also tell your brother to visit https://selfsolve.apple.com/deregister-imessage to deregister his iMessage so this doesnt happen with anyone else.


Do I need to be a member of iOS Developers program to develop and install an app on my iPad?

UPDATE: With XCode 7 it is now possible to deploy an app on your own iOS9+ device for free. Only if you need to publish your app to the AppleStore will you need the paid membership. See qqbenq's answer for more details.

Without being a member, you can only run your app in the simulator. You must be a paid member to be able to install the app on a device.

Free:

  Start developing for iOS and Mac OS X with the Xcode IDE, Dashcode, Instruments, Interface Builder, iOS Simulator and a suite of additional developer tools.

Paid:

  Test and debug your code on iPad, iPhone and iPod touch to finalize your applications.


MacBook Pro 2016 (sans touchbar) – headphone jack not going all the way in

My MBP 13" with Touchbar won't fit all the way in either. Probably this is Apple's intention.


How to delete or change the words "My card" under my own name at the top of "Contacts"? (iOS 13.5.1)

You can’t change those words. They are hard coded into the application and it shows them to identify which contact in the app identifies you.
If you don’t want that contact to be identified as you, go into the preferences for the contacts app and choose a different card under “My Info”. If that doesn’t work, you can delete the card and re-add it, but without choosing the card as your contact details.


Filtering a photo of a document to look like a proper scan

You can use ScanTailor.

  Scan Tailor is an interactive post-processing tool for scanned pages. It performs operations such as page splitting, deskewing, adding/removing borders, and others. You give it raw scans, and you get pages ready to be printed or assembled into a PDF or DJVU file.

The program is developed for Windows, GNU / Linux, and other Unix-like systems such as Mac OS X. See Installation . You might need to build it from source though.


does a 7mm 2.5" inch SSHD fit a Mac mini 9.5mm HDD area without any additional work?

I think there ought to be enough play in the connectors that it will fit without further modification.

The only real issue with a mini is that the drives are fixed from underneath rather than from the top. This will move the connectors by 2.5 mm from where they initially were.

Judging from the iFixit guide on adding a second drive, there would appear to be enough play in that connector strip that you will get away with that small move.

Compared to all the effort to get in there, though, if you find you don't have enough play in it, packing out the top by a couple of mm really shouldn't be much of a challenge. We're talking beermat depth, or a couple of pieces of folded card, not major engineering work.


Is there an easy way to obtain all of the Boot Camp drivers hosted by Apple by using Windows, and not relying on macOS?

You can until the 2015 model year. This is when Boot Camp Assistant application starting installing Windows without the use of a DVD or USB flash drive. Basically, the previous answer explained the drivers can be found using the links provided on the Apple webpage Install Windows 7 on your Mac using Boot Camp. These downloads are in the form a zip files which can be unzipped by Windows or macOS. As I already explained, the Snow Leopard ISO must be mounted on a Windows machine in order to access the Boot Camp files. If you mount the the ISO using macOS, the you will get the Snow Leopard files.

You should also note that the Boot Camp Support Software (Windows Support Software) includes Apple Update which often downloads updates to the the Boot Camp Support Software. This no longer works with many of the older versions of the Boot Camp Support Software. However, when you install other Apple Software, an updated version Apple Update may be installed. These updated versions have been know to download updated drivers from Apple, but rarely update Boot Camp itself. Also, Windows Update will also download updated drivers for Macs.

The previous answer included a BASH script/function which produced a list of URLs based on a given Mac identifier. When one of these URLs in pasted to Safari, a .pkg file would download containing the .dmg file, which contained the Boot Camp Support Software. I realize this requires a macOS, but the same thing can be done in Windows by using Microsoft Edge and some free third party software.

For example, installing git by default provides a BASH window which can execute the GetPkgUrl function.

The .dmg file can be extracted from the .pkg file by using Easy 7-zip.

After clicking on the OK button.

The result is access to the Boot Camp Support Software, which can be extracted from the .dmg file by using Easy 7-zip.

Did not check every model identifier, but for the iMac14,1 (2013) through iMac19,1 (2019), there is only one .pkg file per identifier. I theorize this is probably true for all 2013 and newer Macs. Therefore, it may to be too difficult getting the Boot Camp Support Software for the latest model Macs.

I realize what you are really looking for used to exist. When OS X was delivered on DVDs, the current version of the Boot Camp Support Software was included on the DVD. This covered all model Macs up to the release of the DVD. After Apple starting eliminating optical drives starting in 2012, there was a website providing links to the zip downloads. However, by 2015 Apple was switching from websites to the use of the Boot Camp Assistant to download the Boot Camp Support Software.


FYI, I had a similar problem but eventually noticed (via spotlight search for 'xcode') that rather than installing the actual app, it had downloaded an app in /Applications called, "Install XCode" which was 4.58 GB.

Running that does the actual install of XCode 4.


Using two different drives with Time Machine

You can have Time Machine backup to several drives, it will rotate among all configured and mounted drives. Two caveats

if you disconnect a backup drive, Time Machine will alert you the next time it‘s up for backup
If you disconnect a backup drive for a week it‘s next backup most likely requires a full scan of the source drive

It might be better to keep the two drives connected all the time and do alternating disk image backups to two other drives (and store those offsite).


iMac does not wake from sleep on Bluetooth action

I noticed that when I connect the charging cable to either the mouse or keyboard and the MAC, that device starts working (because it's functioning as wired instead of BT). So I have my keyboard permanently plugged in to the charging cable and I have a wired mouse to use on standby when the BT mouse fails to wake.


How can I keep my iPhone headset untangled?

For ordinary earbuds like the Apple stock product I repeatedly fold the cable in half until I have just enough length to tie the bundle into a loose overhand knot. (Sounds like heresy, but I learned this technique for storing cables from a "big time" touring concert sound company.) Been practicing it with all sorts of cables for better than twenty years without any negative fallout.

I added this photo of my cord knot after this answer was accepted by Torben, who I believe was most interested in the Devil Horn Technique mentioned below.

After tying the initial knot in this particular cord bundle the loose ends were a little too long for pocket carry so I tucked them back into the center of the knot and pulled gently to tighten them into place, converting the initial overhand knot into a Double Overhand Knot

However, I do coil my good earbuds neatly and keep them in a little pouch. Same for the Jlab phone headset I use for every day carry.

If none of these techniques suit,  there are many practitioners of what, for lack of a better description, is referred to as  The Devil Horn Technique

  Pretend you’re at a Def Leppard concert and make the devil horns with your left hand. (Don’t pretend you don’t know what I mean — middle and ring fingers bent and held down by the thumb, index and pinky extended.) Tuck the buds underneath the middle and ring fingers to secure them and use your devil horns as posts around which to loop the cord. (Some people advocate a figure-eight wrap, but I find a simple loop works fine.) Leave a couple inches of cord at the end. Slide the loop off the devil horns, and wrap the remaining cord around the middle of the loops, creating a little bundle. Thread the plug end through the loop opposite the buds and give it a gentle pull to tighten the bundle. This little package now fits neatly in your pocket, is almost entirely tangle proof, and unravels with ease.


Just got it fixed by the help of Apple Support following this Apple support page: How to Reset NVRAM on your Mac

  Resetting NVRAM

  Shut down your Mac.
  Locate the following keys on the keyboard: Command (⌘), Option, P, and R.
  Turn on your Mac.
  Press and hold the Command-Option-P-R keys immediately after you hear the startup sound.
  Hold these keys until the computer restarts and you hear the startup sound for a second time.
  Release the keys.

  After resetting NVRAM, you may need to reconfigure settings for
  speaker volume, screen resolution, startup disk selection, and time
  zone information.


Can I use Thunderbolt to mini display port?

Actually yes, you can use your 27" iMac as a external display for you MacBook. It will only work if you are going from thunderbolt to Mini-Displayport though. Refer to this article for questions.  http://reviews.cnet.com/8301-13727_7-20043524-263.html


Shortcut for toggling hidden files in Finder with AZERTY layout

In Finder use this combination: shift+cmd+fn+.


How do I restore the "Quick Start" migration from my iPhone X to a newly bought iPhone 11 Pro Max?

You can’t resume an interrupted Quick Start. You can start again by erasing your new phone (Settings → General → Reset → Erase All Content and Settings) which will start the phone back at Setup, where you can begin Quick Start again.


Map screen sleep (ctrl+shift+eject) to F19

As suggested out by Mateusz Szlosek, BetterTouchTool solves this for me where I very simply could set F19 to execute the Sleep Display action.


Can you determine exactly when iMac was disconnected from power?

You would need to look through the system log for the last "Shutdown Cause" code.

There won't be anything in cron because it was deprecated in favor of launchd.  However, launchd (or cron) wouldn't be of help because those logs show when things are started or error out, seldom do they show when things are shutdown - especially if powered off properly (no error)

To search the log, use the following command:

$ log show --predicate "process == kernel" | grep -i "shutdown cause"

See this answer for further details on how to search the log.


What is the easiest way to 'save as' in iWork?

Best practice would arguably be to Duplicate the document the moment you open it, then proceed with your edits. However, sometimes we open a document and start working, only to realize that it's now (in our mind) a "new" document based on the original.

Applications that support Lion's versioning will give you the option to Duplicate and Revert, meaning that they will make a copy of the current document in it's current state, then revert the original document back to its last saved state.

If some unwanted changes have been saved within the original, you can use Revert to restore the original to the state you prefer.

If a document hasn't been opened for a period of time, it will open in a locked state and you will be prompted to either unlock or duplicate it before you can make changes.


Converting .rtf to .doc/.dox with a service

Here is a wrapper of the textutil utility. Download this workflow to convert various file types. It's very useful when converting in batches. Download it from the below address.

http://automatorworld.com/download/convert-text.zip


If you would like a GUI, then CrystalClear might be for you. However, it is a bit outdated. Geektool is another great alternative, however you will have to find the modules yourself.


We are having the same issues since the last Server update, which deprecated file sharing, and relegates it to OS X (we have a mini). Besides the issues you are experiencing, it seems like we went back years in compatibility since High Sierra.

All of our workstations are Windows 10. When we updated to 10.13, the first issue was anytime opening an AutoCAD file, all MS Excel links required us to acknowledge read-only, which hasn't been an issue in at least a couple years (but it's back). Then when we went to 10.13.2 and the corresponding server app, we had all the problems you mentioned. Additionally, our Windows workstations are slowing to a crawl. Issuing a save command from any application takes at least 5 sec in any application. Windows explorer (desktop and file explorer) crashes when it needs to copy/overwrite a file from the workstation to the server. It actually seems like it's getting worse each day.

Anyway, we've been doing this dance with Apple for 10 years and I don't think they are going to do anything. We just ordered a Synology DS918+ NAS to take over file sharing. I'll keep the mac mini server running Website and Mail until they are deprecated in the next OS X Server "update".


Disable HDMI sound output when using optical (TOSLINK) output on AppleTV

You could always use an HDMI cable that doesn't carry sound, not too expensive these days.


How to serve the personal website from different folder?

If you're up for it, httpd.conf should be in /etc/apache2/ on Lion/ML. Some mac-centred help is at this blog.

Have a look at "How to turn Mac OS X Lion into a web server?" for instructions on the Web Sharing pane, and doing similar things in Terminal under Mountain Lion.


On what basis does the Finder update the file copy progression bar?

To make a somewhat educated guess

The bar shows "time spent" vs. "overall time expected"
"overall time expected" is somewhat dynamic, depending on current throughput. So if you start of with a lot of small files (which usually take longer than a large one) transfer seems to speed up later (and vice versa)
I'm not aware of any way to change this

PS: And no, I don't have a reference for that, just years of observation


Saving files on lost focus in console Vim

:help FocusLost says:

  …
  Only for the GUI version and a few console versions where this can be detected.
  …

Poking around in the code revealed the function ui_focus_change whose comment says:

  Used for the GUI or for systems where this can be done in the console (Win32).

Based on searching for callers, that statement seems accurate (it is only automatically called (asynchronously) from the GUI code for various platforms and (synchronously) from the non-GUI Windows code).

An answer to a related question (“Can I make Tmux tell Vim when its pane loses focus?”) over on Unix & Linux pointed out a new Vim plugin called Vitality. The plugin makes a series of Vim configurations to enable FocusLost and FocusGained autocommands for instances running under iTerm 2:

It configures Vim to send a special control sequences that cause iTerm 2 to send “focus out” and “focus in” control sequences when the iTerm 2 window loses/gains focus (though apparently iTerm 2 currently fumbles these sequences a bit when switching tabs inside a window).
It configures Vim to recognize the “focus out” and “focus in” sequences as rarely used keys (F24 and F25).
This is done instead of just mapping the sequences so it is possible to enable ttimeout and use a short ttimeoutlen to avoid causing delays when pressing Escape by itself.
It maps those keys to trigger FocusLost and FocusGained (via doautocmd).

Vitality is only designed to look for iTerm 2, but other terminal emulators also support the same “focus notification” control sequences:

xterm from 10.6 supports them (probably xterm from most other platforms, too)
Terminal from 10.6 does not support the sequences
I do not know about 10.7’s Terminal

If you have some other terminal emulator that supports the same focus control sequences as iTerm 2/xterm (for the details, see doc/vitality.txt, or search for “Focus” xterm’s ctlseqs), then it should fairly easy to extend Vitality to detect your terminal emulator (or you could just fake being iTerm 2 by setting the ITERM_PROFILE environment variable (export ITERM_PROFILE=not-really-iTerm)—the environment variable is the only thing that Vitality uses to check for iTerm 2)


How does Twitter or Vine remember login credentials in between of installations?

The iOS Keychain is not deleted, when the app is deleted. So if the keychain still contains the necessary credentials the app can just log in.


In Applescript, how can I correctly obtain values for a process window that is the not the front window?

You could specify a different window, e.g. second window; however, it will do you no good to specify a different window as System Events can only send a keystroke or key code to what's frontmost.


Because I am new to Stack Exchange, I am unable to ask a followup question as a comment. I am aware that I am not to ask these kinds of questions in a reply, so I am going to make some assumptions about this situation. If any of these are false, let me know and I'll reconsider.

I am assuming you were not doing an update when the iPhone froze. If you were doing an update, you may have some other issues. I would like to know what iOS version you are running, but I can live without that info.
I know you mentioned the steps of hard rebooting, but it sounds like the reboot was not successful. I apologize if I have misinterpreted this. That being said, hard reboot this phone. For iPhone 8, hard rebooting is a bit different than in other iPhones. After hard rebooting, you may encounter the loading screen again, but it should start loading. Please follow these instructions
Please note that one hard reboot may not work, but three hard reboots in quick succession (meaning when you see the Apple logo appear, hard reboot again immediately) can cure a LOT of software problems. Also note that it is entirely possible that this is a fluke. I work as an iPad specialist for a school corporation, and I have noticed on several occasions that three hard reboots have solved some unusual iOS issues.
If the three hard reboots still fail, please try another hard reboot and hold in the side switch to force a "connect to iTunes" message (information about doing that can be found on the same link I mentioned earlier). Plug iPhone into a computer, and have iTunes update the software (if it hasn't already).

Good luck!


I have updated my software on my Mac and this problem has stopped. Thank you all for helping me with this issue.


There is no Trash any more - instead there is Recently Deleted, same as on the iPhone etc. which will countdown 30 days before final deletion unless purged manually or recovered beforehand.

In OS X 10.10 Yosemite, you can access it from the File Menu > Show Recently Deleted. In OS X 10.11 El Capitan, there is no menu item, but it can be accessed from the "Albums" tab, where you'll find the recently deleted folder in the familiar shape of the trash bin of yore.

You exit, once finished, by clicking any other category, or if you don't have the Sidebar open, any Header - Albums etc.


I have another solution to this circumstance if you can avoid an option of cloning different Apple IDs. The main objective is to have an app on your developer's iPad.

Make Sure Your Device is Backed Up.

First, your iPhone or iPad should be backed up either to iCloud or to iTunes on your computer. If it's not, plug it in and launch iTunes. When you see your device in the sidebar, right-click on it and choose "Transfer Purchases from..." (if you have the sidebar disabled, click File > Devices > Transfer Purchases from....) to get those apps off of your device and onto your computer.

Copy the App to a Safe Place for Future Installs.

Once your purchases are transferred, visit the Apps tab in iTunes, find the app you want to back up, and right-click it. Select "Show in Explorer" (Windows) or "Show in Finder" (OS X) to reveal its file location. Then just copy the IPA file to Dropbox or any other location for safekeeping. When you're ready to install it again, sideload it. Just drag a copy back from that safe location back into the apps list in iTunes when your new device is connected. You'll need to log in to your Apple account (here you can change your password or you can log in by yourself), but once you do, iTunes will install the app on the next sync.

I hope this solution also makes sense for you as you are looking to have an old application install on other iOS devices.


No 3G but have wifi- have been on phone with apple and provider for 5+ hours total. Ideas?

I'm not sure if you said where you got your phone fixed (I double checked, but I could be missing it), but who fixed it? Was it Apple, a friend, a repair shop? It sounds like something could have been either damaged or disconnected and not reconnected correctly in the repair process.

If you have done a full restore to the device (both from an iCloud/iTunes backup and set it up as a new device) then it is probably damaged physically. You need to contact whomever repaired the sleep/wake button.


Partition my HD with Disk Utility, cannot resize the partition WITHOUT installing Windows. WTF?

Here are instructions for undoing a Core Storage conversion (source - this method worked for me). It should be non-destructive, but as always, take a backup first!

Boot into Recovery HD. If for any reason you don't have Recovery HD, then you'll have to make a bootable Yosemite drive and boot into that.
In the Menu Bar, select Utilities > Terminal.
Run diskutil cs list. You'll get an output that looks like this (credits to the Ask Different user in my source):

Select your Logical Volume ID (the one highlighted in the screenshot) and copy it to the clipboard.
Run the Terminal command diskutil cs revert Paste-Your-Logical-Volume-ID-Here.
Run diskutil cs list to verify that your computer can't find any CS volumes.
You're done! Now Disk Utility should be able to do everything you need it to do to your HD!


Text substitution and change cell background colour. Numbers & AppleScript

I offer this with the disclaimer that I am unable to test this, as I do not use Numbers. However, with the help of this page, I am proposing this code as an example of what might help you achieve your objective:

        repeat with c in cells of column "B"
            if value of c contains "TRUE" then
                set value of c to my SUBSTITUTE(value of c, "TRUE", "RICHTIG")
                set background color of c to {0,65535,0}
            else if value of c contains "FALSE" then
                set value of c to my SUBSTITUTE(value of c, "FALSE", "FALSCH")
                set background color of c to {65535,0,0}
            end if
        end repeat


Repairing permissions twice gives the same result

The errors with Safari are because -rwxr-xr-x should be lrwxr-xr-x where the l indicates symbolic link. I'm not sure how this is something to 'fix' from a permissions point of view as either something's a symbolic link or it's not. Repair Permissions has been removed in El Capitan so support for it with updated versions of Safari is likely to be overlooked.

The error about the InstalledPrinters.plist looks like a normal permissions discrepancy and I don't know why it wasn't repaired. The printer daemons may be resetting this.

It's normal for the ARDAgent error to be shown, as the error is included in this list by Apple of messages to ignore.


How can I setup my Macbook Pro (2017) & Parallels to use all function keys?

Problem solved. In my case, I turned off the F11 and F12 function key usage.  Specifically, I had to go to System Preferences > Keyboard.  From there, select the Shortcuts tab, and then select "Mission Control" from the left-hand list.

Within the Mission Control shortcuts, disabling Show Desktop and Show Dashboard restored F11 and F12 key-usage in Parallels.  I'm not sure what's special about these keys and why the others seem to work without issue, even though they are assigned as Shortcut keys.  Regardless, this fixed my issue.


How can I change the meta key on OS X Lion's Terminal.app?

Are you sure that it's not to be found?  If I look at Preferences → Settings → Keyboard, the checkbox for Use option as meta key is at the bottom.

I am on 10.7.1 so it may be something overlooked in the GM of Lion and fixed in the first patch.


Keyboard Shortcut for switching to Desktops #5 and higher

The desktops you want to set in the shortcuts menu should exist when you open te preferences. When you add one with the settings screen open, it doesn't refresh the list.

Just open and close the preferences.


What special about Apple AirPort Extreme?

Wireless is a complicated topic and you need to consult a speciality website like smallnetbuilder.com if you want to understand things like range, performance, and capabilities of different routers.

The Apple Extreme/Express are more expensive, require an Apple utility that runs only on iOS/OS X/Windows, and are not the most feature rich.  However, they are simple to use if you live in a mostly Apple world and have some unique Apple features that can be useful in that world.  For example, it's dead simple to wirelessly extend an Extreme/Express network and Apple Express routers can be hooked to speakers to use with AirPlay.

I just used three Expresses to replace an old 802.11g network (it used four old Linksys routers wirelessly extended to get about 50% coverage) at a friend's condo.  It's only a single floor with about 2500sf but the walls are all steel-reenforced concrete so wireless range was extremely limited.  It took all of about 10 minutes to install three units and network them with a single SSID and WPA password.  I would have preferred wired connections but it wasn't a practical option due to the construction.

I can't see much advantage to the Extreme over the Express with the current models unless you want to use the gIt might have better antennas and thus better performance but I think that's an edge case. It also may have some additional features so you'd need to do a feature-by-feature comparison.


Drag both slo-mo handles over each other so that they are both either at the beginning or at the end of the video.
E.g. drag the right slo-mo handle all to the left or vice versa.


How to get rid of (base) inside terminal app in 10.14.6?

It's a conda's environment indicator that none of the "new" environments is active, instead the default one is active. "new" here refers to those created by: conda create --name NameOfEnv python=3.6 or similar.

For getting rid of it, add the line conda deactivate at the end of ~/.bash_profile.

Verify by conda info --envs.


Strange situation in making backup on an external disk

I'm guessing that volume's format is FAT32 and you're trying to copy file bigger than 4GB. That's FAT32 limit. Check this for a reference.

As the first point of investigation, check what's the format of your partition. If it's FAT then that's the reason. Change it to exFAT, NTFS or native OSX.

So available free space has nothing to do here and can be misleading.


Users cannot change their password when connecting to OS X Server Mavericks

I have a Mavericks server with this issue, I have found that if a client is using Mountain Lion or earlier, it resets fine. But Mavericks or El Capitan... no dice. So bizarrely, it may in part be a client issue. Hope that helps you get to the bottom of it.


Press the power button then hold the spacebar down.

If the keyboard is working, the system firmware will interpret that as a request to force eject the CD/DVD before continuing to start the OS.

Unless the firmware or hardware are faulty - then you might need to disassemble things to rescue the CD.


How do I remove the menu bar icon associated with an app without deleting the app? (macOS Catalina)

Bartender will let you organize and hide icons on your menu bar. This is probably the best-known solution.

Another alternative that you might want to check out is Vanilla.

I use Bartender and highly recommend it, but it’s worth downloading both and checking them both out.

Before you ask, no, there is no way to do this without 3rd party software, unless that feature is added by the developer.


Macbook Pro battery life with Android Studio 2.2 running

There was a long-standing problem with Oracle JDKs/JREs causing the discrete video card rather than the integrated one to be used on Retina displays, with a consequent hit on battery life. The problem became apparent when JetBrains started bundling Oracle's JRE with IntelliJ-based IDEs (see, for instance, IDEA-119858 in their bugtracker). Android Studio is based on the IntelliJ platform so would have suffered from the same problem.

That said, the problem has been fixed for quite some time in JetBrains IDEs like IntelliJ IDEA, and issue 80173 in the Android Studio tracker says it was fixed in Android Studio 2.2. So since you say you're using the latest version perhaps your problem has another cause, or perhaps the problem's not in fact fixed in all cases. gfxCardStatus (as linked from the JetBrains bug report) might be useful in checking which card is actually being used. I used the tool for a while on my own mid-2012 Retina MacBook Pro back in the days when IntelliJ IDEA was suffering from this problem.


AppleScript / Automator to sort files based on filename

Apologies in advance if you only wanted a script. I would have commented, but I'm 5 rep short. This isn't an applescript/automator, but it still might help.

You can use Find any file. Website description:

  Find Any File is a program for Apple's Mac OS X that lets you search
  for files on your disks.

  Contrary to Spotlight, it does not use a database but instead uses    the file system driver's fast search operations, where available. This lets you search for file properties such as name, dates, size, etc., but not for file content (that's what Spotlight is best at!) — unless you want to find plain text only).
  Find Any File can find files that Spotlight doesn't, e.g. those inside bundles and packages and in inside folders that are usually
  excluded from Spotlight search.
  Finally, it is quite fast. A search only takes a few seconds    on an internal hard disk or SSD. Try for yourself!

Basically, it's like "Everything" for mac. But what you could do is search for any file that ends with "_h264.mov" within the folder (whatever folder you feel like. If you want to automate, I suppose you could do a GUI script of find any file, but you might find another solution.

Example image:


Microsoft Natural Ergonomic Keyboard function keys unreliable

I also have the Microsoft Natural Ergonomic Keyboard. In my case the simple solution was to press the F Lock key at the far right of the function row (left of the Print Screen button). I didn't realize the button even existed until now.


Am I able to get Spotify on my Apple Watch?

Spotify does offer an Apple Watch app. Link.

Check out this Apple Support article on how to add or remove apps from your Apple Watch.

  All you need for Spotify to show on your Apple Watch is the Spotify app installed on your iPhone and an account with us. Just open it on your watch and log in to start playing!

To get offline songs and playlists you will need a Premium Subscription:

  Apple Watch allows your to add up to 2GB of local music to it directly. So you can add downloaded Spotify to your Apple Watch to listen them offline without a iPhone nearby. However, Spotify music are protected by DRM, only Premium users can download and save Spotify songs offline.

The Spotify Premium page lists the pricing options and lets you purchase a subscription. Currently, it costs 9.99 EUR/month for a single subscription.

In the future to see if an app is available for an Apple Watch you can go to the App Store on your iPhone or iPad and on the app page you’ll see a note saying offers Apple Watch app.


Remove entire time machine backup on external drive


Left mouse click for external mouse not working after upgrading to Lion

The solution was to disable the internal trackpad. The trackpad, one of the older style pads with the separate button along the bottom edge, had a malfunctioning button and that seemed to be at the heart of the problem.

As soon as I disabled the trackpad the mouse would word. And as soon as I re-enabled the trackpad the mouse would cease to work.

For details on how to disable the trackpad see this question and answer.


iPhone App for Displaying Email on a Locked Screen with Exchange Support

iOS 5 has added this feature to operating system, and no app is needed to accomplish this task.


If the machine has an Internet connection, worst case you can use iCloud.com —> Find my iPhone, which will also show your Mac. You can put it in Lost Mode, which will wipe the drive, but let you log in with your iCloud password. You need a backup though since this will zap all the files on the machine.


Copying one file multiple times and then renaming them

Try this:

for i in $(seq -f "ThatDoc%03g.docx" 5 110); do cp ThisDoc.docx /path/ThatFolder/$i; done


Apps that are dragged into the /Applications folder by a user will be owned by that user - e.g. the Unix owner attribute will be that of the user that did the dragging. Apps from the Mac App Store and apps that were delivered via an installer package tend to have root as their owner.

drwxrwxr-x@  13 root  admin    416 28 Nov  2012 Adobe Photoshop CS6
drwxr-xr-x    3 root  wheel     96  8 Oct 12:31 Affinity Designer.app
drwxr-xr-x    3 root  wheel     96  8 Oct 12:31 Affinity Photo.app
drwxr-xr-x    3 Ben   admin     96 31 Oct 13:03 Affinity Publisher.app
drwxr-xr-x@   3 root  wheel     96 23 Jul  2019 App Store.app
drwxr-xr-x    3 Ben   staff     96  3 Oct  2012 Art Directors Toolkit 5i.app

The apps here with owner "Ben" were downloaded and dragged into the /Applications folder. The root-owned apps are OS-bundled, from the Mac App Store, or installed via a .pkg.

The group varies, but is largely irrelevant.

Should it be happening at all?

No. Creating a new user account should not change the ownership of these apps.

Is this Unix related, or macOS related?

MacOS is Unix™. But yes, it's happening at the Unix/POSIX level of file attributes.

Why is this happening?

Without more information, this is unknown.
The only reason I can think of relates to User ID numbers. Every user has a unique ID number. The first user created is number 501. Subsequent accounts will be numbered 502, 503, etc.

It may be that the original account used to move these apps to the /Applications folder was deleted, and the new user account has been given the same user ID number, thus inheriting its ownerships.

You can determine the UID of a user with id -u <username>.

As long as the app has the read and execute flags set for all users, then everyone can launch the app. The ownership only matters for deleting the app.


The tool I would start with is MicroSnitch if no one has a hunch or guess what would enable intermittent sound input.

https://obdev.at/products/microsnitch/index.html (Free trial and more details here)

Another thing that's quick to check is Siri. That could trigger a short and intermittent mic active event (and doesn't show in the Microphone section/tab of Security & Privacy). Other apps should show in system preferences for all other apps entitled to mic input before you redo or tear down the main sound processing setup.


How do I improve my performance of my MBP (2009) after upgrading to 10.8.2

I have the same MacBook Pro model.

Upgrading your RAM to 8 GB will help a lot, as the others suggested. You might also look into adding an SSD using something like the Data Doubler by Other World Computing (macsales.com).

Then you could do something cool like this: http://reviews.cnet.com/8301-13727_7-57550128-263/how-to-make-a-custom-corestorage-drive-in-os-x/


Mac App Store Download Failure - Clear Cache?

Got this sorted out.

Quit App Store.

Use Terminal or Activity Monitor to quit/ force quit  the following processes and to delete the following folders:
 killall storeaccountd
 killall storeassetd
 killall storedownloadd
 killall storeinappd
 killall appstoreagent
 rm -rf ~/Library/Caches/storeaccountd
 rm -rf ~/Library/Caches/storeassetd
 rm -rf ~/Library/Caches/storedownloadd
 rm -rf ~/Library/Caches/storeinappd

Restart App Store and hold the option key down to cancel any stuck downloads.

Then try a download again


Looking for VNC client solutions that work reliably on a Mac running OS X 10.9.5

The built-in VNC client with OS X works just great with most VNC servers I've tried on FreeBSD.  I've mostly been using TigerVNC from ports (seems to be the fastest with OS X's VNC client), and the only issue I have is when I restart the VNC server while connected to it.  The OS X VNC client will reconnect (great!) but it sizes the window oddly, and I can't resize it.  Since scaling is turned on, this usually results in a small screen that cannot be read.  Just restart the VNC client (or close the window and open a new connection, if you've got multiple connections open), and it's all OK again.

Since I have xterms open all the time on my mac, I generally do it like so:

open vnc://<host>:<port>

where <port> is the TCP port on which the server is running.

E.g. if it's :1, you'd use 5901 as <port>.  You can even install the avahi port, and set up a service, so the VNC session shows up in Finder (although there's a Finder preference to change to make them show up since OS X 10.8, IIRC), just like a Mac that has "screen sharing" enabled (i.e. it's running a VNC server).


How to read Google Play Magazines on iPad iOS 8?

Recent update to the Google Play Newsstand App (Version 3.2 - 14 July 2015) has added "Magazine support"!

The experience is pretty much identical to the Android version.


Macbook Pro Early 2015 13 inch Retina Cycle count reset

The cycle count of a battery is like an odometer on a car, if you reset it (which you can't do though conventional means), you will have a reading of "zero" but the car will still have all the "mileage" on it.

The cycle count on a battery is just a gauge.  Just because it's at or near 1000 cycles doesn't mean it's going to fail instantly. 1000 cycles is not the max.  It could, conceivably continue to function for many, many more cycles.

It's a good idea to start budgeting for a new battery now knowing that in the near future it will (begin to) fail and you'll need to replace it.


Is there an external bluetooth GPS antenna for Google maps on iPod touch WiFi?

Take a look at this http://xgps150.dualav.com/

My friend has this and he is using it with an app named Navigon (http://www.navigon.com/portal/int/produkte/navigationssoftware/mobile_navigator_iphone_eu.html)

I am not sure whether it works with inbuilt google maps, He is using Navigon for voice navigation and other useful features of Navigon.

Hope this helps and answers your question


spotify doesn't care about mission control settings

Spotify doesn't support multiple windows. The reason for this statement is absence of New Window in File Menu. So it switches to the desktop it is at.


There has often been problems with AMD based GPUs and their reporting of video memory usage in iStat Menu. This has in the past been for example always reporting 100% usage, always reporting a climbing usage, etc.

If you haven't got any performance degradation, and your computer usage really isn't affected by this - I would just ignore the readout.

There's no tool to do a manual release - it doesn't really make sense. If the VRAM is actually in use, "manually releasing" it would make programs crash or behave unpredictable - nobody wants that.

If you really want you could probably lower the VRAM usage by logging out, or by killing WindowServer in its entirety. There's just no real reason to do so - unless you're experiencing a performance degradation, and then it would be better to analyze that specifically.


Go to ~/Library/Logs/ find the log file, and delete it. Or, if there isn't a log file for Automator there, go to /Library/Logs and find the file there.


Make Hard Drive appear as Bootcamp for Parallels

A late reply to this, hopefully you have already found a solution.
Just because I was having a similar issue getting my Windows install on an external SSD to recognise the internal SATA drive in the iMac. For me it was because the AHCI/SATA controller would fail with an error 10 and after much testing with driver updates etc I believe I found a solution.

The problem for seems to be do with how the drive is formatted / partition table as whenever I do so with Disk Utility then Windows fails to load it. However this was not the case when the bootcamp partition was on the internal drive or even when Windows booted from the external drive but still had a Windows partition on the internal one.

As Windows setup can see the internal drive during installation then you could use this format a partition created as FAT32 in OS X, which is pretty much what Bootcamp creates. That or just use the Bootcamp Assistant to create the partition and instead of going through with installing Windows stop after the part where you format the destination as NTFS.


Why could turning off my external data store hang my Mac, and how do I fix it?

The command sudo systemsetup -liststartupdisks lists all bootable volumes and where to find the file boot.efi.

sudo systemsetup -liststartupdisks
/System/Library/CoreServices

The command mount lists all mounted volumes:

mount
/dev/disk1s2 on / (hfs, local, journaled)
/dev/disk0s2 on /Volumes/Data (hfs, local, journaled)

The first and the second command show that you have one bootable volume at

/System/Library/CoreServices

on disk1s2.

If you'd have second bootable volume on disk0s2 the first command would show a second entry like:

/Volumes/Data/System/Library/CoreServices

The command diskutil list is similar to mount but shows all partitions of all attached drives and disk images as well as the state/kind of the drive (internal|external|disk_image|APFS/CS_container).

Since your external drive contains the only boot volume with all required system files and folders, turning it off means crashing your Mac. Turning the Mac on without the system drive attached (the external drive!) means no bootable system volume (= ...get the "no drive" folder-with-question-mark hold screen...).

Solution: simply swap the drives! (Victim of a prank?)


Copying to targets where the files already exist: skip or stop

I don't know what makes Finder choose one dialog over the other, but you can make the Skip button appear by holding down Option.


How to add iPhone to my product list if it's already registered to another apple ID?

As far as I know, an iPhone is linked to an Apple ID until it is released by the owner or by Apple techs (like when your phone is traded for a new one, rather than being repaired and returned to you).

This is intended to prevent theft; you can't just take someone's phone because they have to release it from their Apple ID first. If they don't, the phone will be very trackable by the owner of that Apple ID, the phone can't be reset without the owner's Apple ID & Password, and you can't get any new apps or anything because you won't have the Apple ID & password to enter for a purchase or to enter in order to remove the Apple ID from the phone.

If you got this phone legitimately, you'll have to contact the "tech. service" you used and ask them what they'll do to fix the issue. They may be able to take it back, and, as an authorized Apple repair center, send it to Apple to have the Apple ID cleared. I'm not sure they would or could do that.

There's nothing a user can do to release a phone without the original Apple ID & password, and this is intentional. If Apple set up 'online support' and allowed any user to release any phone from the Apple ID associated with it, then it would be much easier to steal and sell iPhones.

...again, as far as I know... ;)


Is it true that iOS devices use a hard coded time.apple.com dns for an ntp server?

Yes it's true and yes it is very hard coded.  Yes it uses standard port 123 UDP.

Jamf is the Apple Business Manager for iOS devices and there is no setting in there either.  See https://www.jamf.com/jamf-nation/discussions/11772/ntp-server-for-ipads

Like the article says create an A record for time.apple.com and set the IP to your NTP server and that's it.


Why can't I send/receive files in iChat?

This link is old but may help,
http://www.macobserver.com/tip/2007/02/14.1.shtml

I also noticed that it might help to just drag and drop the file you wish to send over the person you wish to send it to in the drop down chat menu and drop it there instead of on the chat box, it will then ask you if you want to send, click yes and it should work.


Is Python Pre-Installed on Every Mac Version?

Python has been installed on the Mac far back, though some of the earlier versions of the OS will have particularly old versions of Python. You can discover the installed version of Python by running python -V at the command line. MacOS 10.11.6 has Python 2.7.10 installed.

If you want Python 3 or a later version of Python 2.7 then I would recommend using either Homebrew or Anaconda (if you want Python with a bunch of bells and whistles pre-installed) to install it. Homebrew and Anaconda currently install Python 2.7.12


Can't change volume or mute Sony headphones connected to Mac

Try holding down the fn button, located at the bottom far left corner of the keyboard. Your keys might have somehow got switched up because I have found that if the buttons at the top do not work, holding fn and pressing the button makes it work


High Sierra 10.13.6 - Security update 2019-003 failing install

Well it looks like following this should resolve the issue but its not for the faint of heart...

https://davidsimpson.me/2018/11/14/fixing-failed-macox-10.13.6-security-update-2018-002/

Unfortunately the issue doesn't appear to be simple.

Using terminal and running these commands seem to reset the update so it quits trying to install on shutdown.

sudo rm -f /Library/Preferences/com.apple.loginwindow.plist
sudo rm -f /private/var/db/.AppleUpgrade
sudo rm -f /private/var/db/.SoftwareUpdateAtLogout
sudo reboot

Black Screen With Cursor on Logout in Yosemite


Keyboard does not appear when adding a new contact

Keyboards on iPhone 6 are know to be buggy. My suggestions would be:

Update to the latest iOS version which is 8.4. Do this in Settings > General > Software Update.
If you are using third-party keyboards, disable them in Settings > General > Keyboard and use the default keyboards.
Try closing the Contacts app and then restarting it. (Do this by double pressing the Home button, swiping up the Contacts app, pressing the Home button and then opening the Contacts app again.)
Restart your iPhone. (Hold down the power button on the side for a few seconds, swipe to turn off, wait for your iPhone to completely turn off (can take up to a minute) and then holding down the power button for a second or two until the Apple logo appears on the screen.)


How to configure resolv.conf options with scutil on MacOS?

scutil allows changing the computer name, local host name (for Bonjour) and/or global host name (for gethostname).
macOS always performs a rotate when more than one DNS name is returned.
The DNS resolver for macOS is self-optimizing and far more advanced than the resolv.conf parameters can convey.

TLDR: macOS doesn't use resolv.conf. It auto-generates one for applications that need to see such a file, but its DNS resolver is auto-optimizing and auto-configuring.


IOS 13.1.3 does not have a sync over wifi button on my phone, what do i do

This button was removed in iOS 13 for no apparent reason. Since then, this button is missing so you have to wait for a fix for this in a new update.


How to bypass iCloud login for iPhone 5 running iOS 7 when email and password was forgotten?

Since you can not bypass the activation lock itself, you need to contact Apple and get control of that account. If you are the original purchaser of that hardware, you might also be able to get them to reset the lock with proof of purchase and identity.

The website https://appleid.apple.com has instructions on resetting your iCloud password if you do not remember it.

You can retrieve the email by erasing the iPhone from iTunes when the device is in normal recovery mode and you will be prompted to enter the password for the email account. Also, if the device is not locked, go to the settings app and look in iCloud for the AppleID that has locked that device for firer activations.


Alias to folder on external hard drive disappears from sidebar when the hard drive is ejected

Try creating an alias on the desktop or a folder, and then either copying that or creating an alias to it in Finder's sidebar (that is, an alias to an alias).


On iOS how to view the tweets of a particular user in Twifferific and Tweetbot

In Tweetbot you can easily do it the following way:

Go to the search tab and use the “Users with“ option. Than type type (or paste) the twitter handle (e.g. @BarackObama). At the top of te search results you find the profiel of that person. Tap on it and go to tweets.

This works quite similarly in the official Twitter app.


Can a Operator locked iPhone be updated to iOs 7?

There is no reason this should not work. Assuming your model supports iOS 7 of course.

I'd like to be able to tell you more. But there is just not much to say.

The lock to a certain provider is not affected by an upgrade to iOS 7. Provider settings will just be the same as well.


Partition space with the command diskutil partitionDisk

Note: I made the assumption you would want the volumes to be journaled. So I used jhfs+ instead of hfs+.

The command you are looking for is given below.

diskutil partitiondisk disk2 jhfs+ 14 15887144s jhfs+ 15 15887144s jhfs+ 13 R

To have 3 partitions of 8G and one with the remaining space, enter the following command.

diskutil partitiondisk disk2 jhfs+ 14 15887144s jhfs+ 15 15887144s jhfs+ 13 15887144s jhfs+ Combo R

Actually, the command you entered reserved exactly 8 GB of space for the 14 and 15 volumes. However, this includes 134,217,728 bytes of free space between each hfs+ formatted partition. These kinds of obscure requirements generally go away when APFS is used.

Here is how I determined the correct value was 15887144s. The sector size is 512 bytes. So 134,217,728 bytes is 262,144 sectors and 8,000,000,000 bytes is 15,625,000 sectors. Add these two values together and you will get 15,887,144 sectors.

The amount of free space, between each partition, can be determined from the output of the command given below. This is how I came up with the value of 262,144 sectors.

gpt -r show /dev/disk2

The sector size can be found by entering the command given below.

diskutil info disk2 | grep "Block Size"

Also, if the output from the gpt -r show /dev/disk2 command shows a Pri GPT table size of 32 sectors, then the sector size is 512 bytes. Otherwise, you can assume a sector size of 4096 bytes.


If you go to the "Sharing" system preference pane you will see a field at the top that allows you to change the computer name. Click the lock at bottom left of the window and when prompted enter your password and you will be able to edit the field.


How do I downgrade an iPhoto library from version 9 to version 8.1

I know your pain. I have a 2006 iMac 24 inch and up graded to version 9 iPhoto and every thing went haywire when I opened the program (pixelation, blank screens, frozen screen etc.) I dealt with Apple help over the phone for over 8 hours over a couple of days. They took control of my computer and took snapshots of various screens and sent to their IT for analysis. They got back to me about a week later and said version 9 is not compatible with the GeForce 7300GT GPU. The choice was downgrade to my previous IPhoto version or upgrade the vid card. I chose for the downgrade. The Apple tech took over my screen by remote and spent close to an hour doing wizardry and got it done. BTW He did not lose any of my pictures either. I guess although I provide no help with your problem since the tech did all the work (and I really know nothing) I want you to know there is a solution to your problem out there, somewhere.
Sorry I can not be of more help.
Oh yeah Apple gave me a full refund for the iPhoto ver 9 that I purchased. Apple Help line did everything possible to help me and I was impressed with there attitude and effort.


Setting an alarm using Siri on Apple Watch does not set an alarm on iPhone

Unfortunately, this is just how the Apple Watch handles alarms and timers. You can set an alarm or timer on your iPhone and get it on both your Apple Watch and iPhone, but an alarm or timer on the Apple Watch only goes off on the watch.

If this is something you are interested in having added in future iOS releases, perhaps send some feedback to Apple via this form. No guarantees on effectiveness of these feedback forms, but it's certainly better than nothing.


My first thought is the screen--maybe it's booting but the graphics aren't working or the screen isn't working. I have that periodically with an old ThinkPad running Linux. Try connecting to an external monitor and booting.

Another thought: try booting with an external startup disk.


As a workaround, you could remap your modifier keys. In System Preferences, choose Keyboard, and click on the Modifier Keys ... button on the Keyboard tab. There, you can (for instance) have Caps Lock act as your Control button.


How can I stop my iPod connecting to my computer when I plug it in?

Sorry but it isn't possible from just a configuration change.  Neither the iPod nor Windows have options to not mount it.

I had the same requirement and ended up making my own USB cable that only passed the power but not the data connections.  If you look around online, you can find the same thing for sale for only a few dollars


Receive notification when battery 100% charged on iOS device

10 apps for full charge alarm :

http://appcrawlr.com/ios-apps/best-apps-full-charge-alarm

Sound an alarm when your iDevice battery has a full charge :

http://www.cultofmac.com/208576/sound-an-alarm-when-your-iphone-battery-has-a-full-charge-ios-tips/

And the associated google search :

https://www.google.fr/search?client=safari&rls=en&q=alert+battery+ios+full+charged&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&gfe_rd=cr&ei=808WVryqK6m40wXgt7HoBQ


How to delay hibernation after sleep in Mac mini?

Yes, you can increase the standbydelay value:

sudo pmset -a standbydelay 18000

The value is in seconds, so 18000 is 5 hours. sudo pmset -a standby 0 would disable standby mode completely.

See man pmset:

standby causes kernel power management to automatically hibernate a
machine after it has slept for a specified time period. This saves power
while asleep. This setting defaults to ON for supported hardware. The
setting standby will be visible in pmset -g if the feature is supported
on this machine.

standby only works if hibernation is turned on to hibernatemode 3 or 25.

standbydelay specifies the delay, in seconds, before writing the hiberna-
tion image to disk and powering off memory for Standby.

Standby mode is also documented in http://support.apple.com/kb/HT4392.


Does installing Xcode and it's mobile components slow down regular iTunes with iPhone syncing and performance?

I have been a developer for little over a year and had have not noticed any slowing down since and because of Xcode - the only thing is that sometimes making backups takes a long time, if you do not backup your iOS device everyday - but I don't see that being related to Xcode.


iPad 4 not charging solution with usb 3.0 dual ports Y adapter

A few years late, but something like this will help.

SinLoon-Enhancer Y splitter Hub Adapter Cable-Female-Charge-Extension

It's a Dual Male USB Cable, one of the male connectors are for power, the other for power + data.  It should give you a full 1AH with the power connectors from both USB ports, assuming your hub can output more than 500mah total.


Itunes run whenever the windows start, how to block no run?

A third party application is likely starting iTunes.  (such as plex media server)

Beginning with iTunes 12.2 the Library.XML file is no longer automatically generated. Enabling preferences > advanced > "share iTunes library xml with other applications" seems to solve the problem of some third party applications starting iTunes.  Apparently if the XML file is not present then the 3rd party application opens iTunes to access the library, if the XML is present there is no need to open iTunes.

Apple didn't explain this change well, and in fact the option isn't even included in the iTunes help file yet (at least windows iTunes help). Instead Google "share iTunes library xml with other applications" to learn more.


Attaching an external GPU to a MacBook Pro via Thunderbolt has been tested and tried, yes. The specific GTX 1080 has not ofcourse, as it hasn't been released yet.

You will need the chassis. There's no way to connect the GPU over Thunderbolt without the chassis (or similar device - it doesn't actually have to be a metal box, but the electronics needs to be there).


How to remove new line from Terminal on launch?

Comment out or remove the following three lines from ~/.zshrc
#echo -e "\033]6;1;bg;red;brightness;18\a"
#echo -e "\033]6;1;bg;green;brightness;26\a"
#echo -e "\033]6;1;bg;blue;brightness;33\a"

Each echo actually creates a new line (on BigSur 11.2.3) and together they create 3 new lines on every new window/tab.


You can try to fix your mp3 file, there are some great software for that.

  MP3val is a small, high-speed, free software tool for checking MPEG
  audio files' integrity. It can be useful for finding corrupted files
  (e.g. incompletely downloaded, truncated, containing garbage). MP3val
  is also able to fix most of the problems. Being a multiplatform
  application, MP3val can be runned both under Windows and under Linux
  (or BSD).

Src : http://mp3val.sourceforge.net

I don't really know if it's because your mp3 files are broken, but it's possible. Perhaps QuickTime and VLC are more permissive than iTunes...


Why do I have 3 extra contacts on my phone when using Google contacts?

These additional contacts may be included in the SIM card you got from your provider. To easily find them, turn off Google Contacts in Settings->Password&Accounts->"your Google account" and select "delete synced contacts from iPhone" (don't worry, they still we be stored on Google itself). Then open the Contacts app, you now should see only these three contacts.


XQuartz: Enable ‘Allow connections from network clients’ via command line

Thanks @nohillside♦ and @dan for your answers.
In my case the command defaults write org.macosforge.xquartz.X11.plist nolisten_tcp 0 had had no effect. After some investigation I've figured out that the plist filename is a bit different in my system. So the command that ultimately worked for me is:
defaults write org.xquartz.X11.plist nolisten_tcp -bool false

Note that macosforge has been shutdown and projects moved to other places - so removing macosforge from the default name makes sense.


Any Cycle Playing Option for QuickTime for videos

It should be simple using the QuickTime menu.

Go to View and select loop.

or use alt+cmd+l


Windows File Sharing for Local Network Directory accounts in macOS Mojave

Think of macOS like a unix server. It runs it's own directory service and unless / until you bind it to another directory (like LDAP or NIS or AD) - you get any local account / password only when a SMB share tries to authenticate. It typically allocates user id number 501 to the first user so when a lot of Macs share files, the file server will see all the initial Mac accounts as the "same 501 account"

If you're OK setting up one Mac server - then I would go with Server.app to set up your small number of accounts but this gets unwieldy after a dozen to a few hundred accounts and you'll want to set the Mac to join an external domain. Then you could have people sign in to the shares using that scheme to issue unique ID numbers and accounts to each person to keep things straight.

For the Mac running LDAP/OpenDirectory there are several posts here that apply:

Authenticate Mac users by LDAP

So - to address the two main points:

You don't need to do anything specific to allow SMB sharing permissions - if the account exists on the Mac due to being a local account or part of a directory it subscribes to - shares that allow all users will just work when a correct user/pass is presented from windows SMB clients (or any SMB client for that matter)
You can have multiple directories of accounts - the Mac will order them in most preferred to last checked - as long as one user is found in one directory - that user can potentially log in.

Start small with this - you can set up two or three users and test easily. Once you figure out if you want server app or just normal sharing (you might not need server.app) you can find the log files that log errors and quickly suss out when there's a problem in most cases.


Use Android File Transfer, created by Google itself, and it gives you a Finder window to at least transfer files via USB connection. I noticed, however, that you have to use the Samsung cable they provide to power the phone, and not some cheap knockoff USB cable.

It would be nice to have a way for the icon to mount on the desktop via a Bluetooth connection -- but that's just not possible yet.

There is also the free Handshaker application in the Apple Store that is more full-featured and intuitive than Google's Android File Transfer. So far, it's looking like my best option and I don't see quirks except that I had to enable Android Developer Mode and then turn on USB Debugging on, as well as uninstall Android File Exchange because it conflicts with it.


How to exclude a sub folder from iCloud drive in macOS Sierra?

Adding one empty file named .nosync to a folder will prevent that folder from syncing.

You can also use this as a file extension to specific files, but the folder treatment is quite useful.

Once you've had a folder sync, you can now also prevent it from syncing on some (or all endpoints) with a utility named Bailiff, if for some reason you don't want just to delete the files from iCloud entirely and instead want to prevent the next "initial" sync.

https://eclecticlight.co/downloads/


Is there a way to see the invisible formatting in my clipboard and/or create the formatting when piping to pbcopy?

An thing on the clipboard is actually an OO-style object which has methods to render itself appropriately in each context.  So the reason that your hex dump from PBCOPY is the same even when the object on the clipboard is different is because the text-only renderings are both the same.

Just as a file on the clip board will render as its ascii file path in contexts that only accept text pastes.  I believe that pbcopy and pbpaste only operate with this textual format for the objects on the clipboard, so you cannot use them to do what you are aiming to do.

If I understand your objective correctly, you could hack it, by using an application like textedit, and feed the application as an rtf (rich text formatted file) then send a COMMAND-A, then COMMAND-C to the text edit application  (or perhaps a text-edit specific dictionary commands).

This is really hacky, and it would result in visible action on your screen, but it would be a scripted way to get ascii encoded markup onto the clipboard.

Post a follow up, if you want help implementing this.


Best Note Application Integrated With Exchange For IPad 2

I've seen posts that say if you are synced to Exchange, the built-in Reminders app will sync your tasks; there is a slider for it in the Exchange setup. As far as a third-party app, try IMExchange2, it appears to sync tasks and notes.


What is a good program for timing activities?


iPad restarting every 5 minutes after updating to iOS 9

I'd use iTunes to update it to iOS 9.0.1, which just came out today and fixes a lot of problems with the original release.


Removing duplicate apps after migrating from Time Machine backup

I based my question on the assumption that the 'Purgeable Data' information reported in the Disk Utility app included duplicate app data. That was an invalid assumption.  Upon further investigation, the Mac Storage view showed the space as free.  The 'Purgeable Data' was actually Time Machine snapshots. I was able to trim the size of the snapshots as per the folowing article by reading all the way through and selecting the last (not checked) answer.  Be advised there is a typo in his terminal command. Should be tmutil thinlocalsnapshots / $((100 * 1024 * 1024 * 1024)) 4 I don't have the points to edit his answer but someone really should. How to Clear Purgeable Data


Show text in large type on the screen via terminal

Since you already have QuickSilver installed:

osascript -e 'tell application "Quicksilver" to show large type "your text here"'

You can use this to define a bash function (and put somewhere like ~/.profile):

function big {
        osascript -e "tell application \"Quicksilver\" to show large type \"$1\""
}

Then you can invoke it with arbitrary strings by doing

$ big "This will cause large text to appear"


Mac Crashes During Boot Camp Assistant Disk Partitioning

209 GB usable space is normal for a 256HD.  It has to do with formatted partition sizes plus the hidden recovery partition.  Totally normal.
It will likely crap out again.  Not sure why.  To fix it, you'd need to look at log files (Applications/Utilities/Console) system.log and see if there's any error or at least what its doing.  Fixing it will be a total PITA.  The most direct way to fix it, will be to back everything up, boot from an Internet Recovery (not the local recovery) and totally repartition the drive using Disk Util.  Then put the Mac OS back and your data back.  Then do it again.
Hold Command-R at boot to boot up the hidden recovery partition.  In there, use Disk Utility to check the disk for errors.  Don't format, partition, or erase your disk there - that'll kill all your data.  Hopefully, you have a full backup before starting any of this process.  good luck!


Automator use current directory location

Have your workflow figure out its own path (more robust)

This works as long as your Automator workflow lives in the same directory as MyApp.app; you can create copies of either the workflow or the app at your discretion and reuse those copies wherever you want; nothing needs to be unique.

Steps

These are the steps to automate launching MyApp.app:

Open the workflow in Automator.
Add a Run AppleScript action. Remove all the boilerplate code inside and replace it with the following lines:

set AppleScript's text item delimiters to ":"
set appPath to (text items 1 through -3 of (path to me as text) & {"MyApp.app"} as text)
tell application "Finder" to open file appPath

Save the Automator workflow in the same folder as MyApp.app.
Run the Automator workflow; it should launch MyApp.app.

Explanation

set AppleScript's text item delimiters to ":"

This means “Watch out, I’m going to split a string soon; and I want you to use the : character as the split boundaries.”

path to me as text

This instructs the workflow to figure out the path to itself; path components are delimited by a colon (:), which is a remnant of Classic Mac OS.

text items 1 through -3 of […] & {"MyApp.app"}

This cuts off the last part of the path, and appends MyApp.app to the path.

[…] as text

This pieces the path back together (again with : as a delimiter).

tell application "Finder" to open file appPath

Lastly, this final line causes MyApp.app to launch.


Google Hangouts client/app which supports group chats

Try Jitsi for OSX, it supposedly handles voice for Google Hangouts, but to be honest...

The best way I have found to do this is just to use the following Chrome extension called Hangouts, by Google: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/hangouts/nckgahadagoaajjgafhacjanaoiihapd?utm_source=plus

The thing is that Google Hangouts is no longer a open XMPP/Jabber protocol its sort of a mutant breed of this technology that is becoming more and more closed off providing features across more open traditional Jabber accounts.

The only caveat is that DON'T quit chrome or it dies, my default browser is Firefox fyi. So I run chrome, click the little hangouts bubble, close all the chrome windows and get the cool Hangouts buddy list every time I hover my mouse in the lower right corner of my screen: OSX Yosemite 10.10.4


how do I get 1080p resolution when screen recording an iPad Pro?

Try going into Settings → Camera → Record Video.  On my iPad, I have the option of choosing  720p or 1080p.  It was defaulted to 720p


Can you still track an iPhone after it has been logged out of iCloud?

No, once Find My iPhone has been removed, the device cannot be tracked.

However, I believe you are underestimating how difficult it is to remove Find My iPhone from a device. To log out an iCloud account with an active Find My iPhone service, you need to enter the iCloud password, which would require them to have this information.

Furthermore, restoring the device requires disabling Find My iPhone as mentioned above, or entering DFU mode which activates Activation Lock requiring your Apple ID to unlock the device. All the while, your device can still be tracked using Find My iPhone.


Is it possible to have only one notification for a text message until the message is read?

Wouldn't it be Settings -> Notifications -> Messages -> Repeat Alerts -> Never?


'The disk you inserted was not readable by this computer' when connecting external hard drives

Depending on the age of the DiskStation the HDs should either use EXT3/4 filesystem or Btrfs filesystem. Both filesystems are natively not supported in macOS (hence the "not readable" dialog). If the NAS HDs are formatted in EXT3/4 you can try the EXT filesystem package for macOS by Paragon software (trial is available).
https://www.paragon-software.com/home/extfs-mac/

If the filesystem on the NAS HDs is Btrfs, no luck with macOS. There is no Btrfs filesystem "driver" for macOS available. You can then only try to mount the drives on a system capable of reading Btrfs (another Syno NAS/Linux box etc.).


Send file:// links to team members through browser, have them open in Finder

Either of these should work and launch right into the Finder without launching a browser. You can test it in Slack by directly messaging Slackbot and clicking the link in the feed.

smb://servername/shared/folder/to/the/destination/

afp://servername/folder/path/to/the/directory/


Saving an iTunes playlist to USB, whilst keeping edits and track numbers in place?

I am assuming that the USB stick has no software on it and whatever is playing the music simply reads the audio from the stick/SD card. Is it a Pioneer CDJ by any chance?

Seems the best way to play the tracks from the USB/SD in the same order as the iTunes playlist is to add track numbers to the music files. That way even the most basic audio player will 'most likely' read from 01, 02, 03,... etc.

So how to rename the tracks easily.

By hand, might prove too time consuming as you say there are a lot.

Use an Applescript from Doug
https://dougscripts.com/itunes/scripts/ss.php?sp=incrementnumbertags
or the older
https://dougscripts.com/itunes/scripts/ss.php?sp=numbersongsplayorder
would probably suit your situation.

Note, renaming tracks may mess the iTunes library in a way you don't want, so maybe, to begin with, you should work with duplicates.

I forgot to add one last thing. Assuming you're using a recent iTunes you don't need to duplicate the tracks first.

The workflow would be
Select your Playlist you want on the USB stick. (make sure the playlist is in the play order you want)
Selcect the Script to add 01, 02, 03, etc to your track names in Itunes. (it won't rename your track files, just the track name you see in iTunes)
Now you have the tracks numbered you can select them all and use the iTunes convert to (whatever your import settings are set to - choose itunes plus or 320 mp3) function and a bunch of new tracks will be made with numbers at the front of the names.

The downside to this method is that you are converting from lossy to lossy, so you wouldn't want to do it a twice as the audio quality will suffer very quickly.


Trying to encrypt external HD . GPT scheme required . Do not want to erase data

This might answer your question - though it scares me to death - https://superuser.com/questions/495672/how-can-i-convert-a-mbr-partition-to-gpt-without-loss-of-data

Alternatively, iPartition can do it - but can't handle Core Storage Volumes, so it's usefulness may be short-lived as more of these come into use. [Unless they release an update, of course]

Either way, I'd make sure to have a backup before starting.


How to turnoff screen / lock Macbook Pro with touch bar using keyboard?

you can add the sleep function to the touch bar through system preferences > keyboard > customize control strip and then drag the sleep icon to the touch bar, allowing you to put it to sleep by pressing 1 button.


What does "unauthorized attacks" mean in the iOS Security Guide?

Yes, if you authorize someone to "attack" your iOS device - that would be an authorized "attack".

This is not so far-fetched or unrealistic as it sounds. Many companies do purchase services from security vendors to do authorized "attacks" on their servers and devices in order to ensure that they have sufficient security.

However, you're reading too much into the text if you think that it states that an authorized attack will succeed just because it is authorized. That doesn't make any sense.

So all in all, nothing new, nothing to be alarmed about, and nothing that is specific for iOS devices which is not true of any other device.


Turn on bluetooth via terminal/command line

There is an answer over at Superuser. The last post there is what I found to work best, in a slightly different form. The 'checkbox "On"' did not work for me, but the following code did:

# This is only necessary, if AppleScripts are not yet allowed to change checkboxes
tell application "System Events" to set UI elements enabled to true
# Now change the bluetooth status
tell application "System Preferences"
    set current pane to pane id "com.apple.preferences.bluetooth"
    tell application "System Events"
        tell process "System Preferences"
            # Enabled is checkbox number 2
            if value of checkbox 2 of window "Bluetooth" is 0 then
                click checkbox 2 of window "Bluetooth"
            end if
        end tell
    end tell
    quit
end tell

You can execute this script using osascript.

Update: I now changed the script to just enable Bluetooth. No toggling anymore.


Finder on macOS: Search works by default with “Name matches” instead of “Name contains”

Find Any File can do this, an it's only $7.99:
https://apps.apple.com/us/app/find-any-file-faf/id402569179?mt=12
FYI I haven't tried it myself, but the developer website screenshot shows searching by Contains:
http://apps.tempel.org/FindAnyFile/index.php


How do I "blacklist" a wireless network on my Mac?

Remove it from the list of "Preferred Networks" and it will stop auto-connecting.

Go to "System Preferences" > "Networks" prefpane.
Choose "AirPort" (or "WiFi" on Lion) on the left.
Click the "Advanced" button.
In the resulting sheet, choose the "AirPort" (or "WiFi") tab. (It should be the leftmost.)
Select your neighbor's wifi network in the list and hit the "-" (minus) button.
Live with joy at never [auto-]connecting there again!


How can I fix an iPhone 2G that is stuck on the connect to iTunes screen?

Jailbreaking is the easiest way to kill the activation process, fortunately for you the 2G is cracked on such a low level is a one shot process there's a guide up on iClarified how to do it.

After that you should go have a look at which is a jailbroken firmware with a lot of the features that the iPhone 2G ended up missing out on.


How to install newer version of /usr/bin/host via Homebrew?

The folder /usr/bin/ is Apple's realm and protected by SIP. You have to wait until Apple provides an updated version of host.

AFAIK Homebrew doesn't provide a newer (or better: any) host executable.

So either use dig: dig <host> type257 or install go and dnscaa - CAA DNS Library for Go.


It turns out that for some Macbook Pros, it is common for the internal SATA cable to start malfunctioning over time. The errors I experienced does not give a clear indication that this is the case but if others come across this thread and experience spurious installation errors then here are three different ways of getting a Macbook Pro running again:

Connect hard drive via USB/SATA, cost ~12$ and easy but cumbersome to
have the drive dangling around, so mostly useful for debugging and
determining that it is the internal SATA cable that is
malfunctioning.
Connect hard drive via optical drive caddy, cost ~12$, installation
guide
https://www.ifixit.com/Guide/Installing+MacBook+Pro+13-Inch+Unibody+Early+2011+Dual+Hard+Drive/8529
Replace the internal SATA cable, cost ~40$, installation
guide:
https://www.ifixit.com/Guide/MacBook+Pro+13-Inch+Unibody+Mid+2012+Hard+Drive+Cable+Replacement/10379


Open the Inspector and select the textbox whose behavior you want to alter. Go to the Object placement tab (third icon from left on the top icon row in the Inspector) and choose Inline (moves with text).


Photos app (iPhoto) hangs when trying to open

The first thing I would try before doing anything else is giving the Photos Library Repair Tool a go.

The Photos Library Repair Tool can resolve a number of issues as it analyses the entire database and, where possible, makes repairs.

Follow these steps:

Hold down the Option + Command keys as you open the Photos app
The following message will appear:

Click the blue Repair button to repair your Photos Library.


Why in starting it opens suddenly without animation effect?

You've probably (accidentally) turned off the animation effect.

How to do enable animations without jailbreaking

Open Settings → General → Accessibility
Make sure Remove Motion is set to Off


TextEdit keeps changing file extensions when I save

Try with making the file to an Plain text file. It's under the Format tab (not in preferences).

Have you taken a look at this?

Apple support page


Use two external hard drive docks to retrieve data from RAID 0 disks

Yes - Apple's software RAID works so that once all the drives are present (or in the case of RAID mirroring - enough drives to ensure one copy of the data is present), you can then mount the RAID volume.

Unless you used a third party RAID driver in software or hardware, just getting the drives mounted should work.


Tried installing Windows 10 on MacBook Pro from a USB...failed

Try to install Windows 10 via an empty DVD by burning the ISO to it through disk utility. I used a DVD-R with 4.7GB of space on it and after the Mac restarts when BCA finishes it should boot into the Windows installer.

If the problem persists just restart the Mac again and hold Option as soon as it starts and you should see a boot menu it should show either EFI boot or Windows whether your Mac supports EFI boot.


OP here. The issue was resolved with the help of an Apple support representative back in March 2017. The solution was to delete the Ethernet entry in System Preferences -> Network, add a new Ethernet entry, and then reset the SCM as described in this article ("Reset the SMC on Mac notebook computers").


How can I close apps properly/shutdown the system via ssh?

I have to start by saying that there is nothing wrong with using halt or shutdown from the command line.

In fact if you issue either of those commands then any running applications will get exactly the same message from the system as if you chose "Shut Down..." in the Finder.

The advantage of using sudo shutdown is that you can shutdown the system regardless of which users are logged in.


Reset AFP permissions after uninstalling Mavericks Server?

You may be able to configure the AFP parameter admin31GetsSp, to allow administrators to mount entire volumes through AFP by performing this Terminal command:

sudo defaults write /Library/Preferences/com.apple.AppleFileServer admin31GetsSp -bool false

It is most likely necessary to stop and start AFP services after making this change.


Windows Excel protected sheet opened in Numbers

Numbers is not Excel.

Numbers can only do a subset of things Excel can do with Excel spreadsheets.

If you have done not basic things in Excel (eg protection) you need Excel to undo those things.

This would be true if the original was Numbers and you used Excel on Numbers file.

Each application is different and an export of their specialized file format loses some functionality.

But then again there are things that only Excel can do e.g. Pivot tables.


Retina MBP 2015 does not recognise third external monitor

It depends which MacBook you have. The cheaper ones only have integrated graphics processor (Intel Iris Graphics 6100) which runs from your CPU. The expensive ones have a separate graphics card (AMD Radeon R9 M370X) with 2Gb memory which supports more display or higher resolution displays.

Macbook with integrated Intel graphics:

Dual display and video mirroring: Simultaneously supports full native resolution on the built-in display and up to 3840 by 2160 pixels on up to two external displays, both at millions of colors.

Macbook with AMD graphics card:

Dual display and video mirroring: Simultaneously supports full native resolution on the built-in display and up to 3840 by 2160 pixels on up to two external displays, both at millions of colors.

Source: Apple MacBook Pro Retina specs - Graphics and Video support


You can try this guide at your own risk.

But just go to the View menu and you'll see there are many ways to customize how PDFs can be displayed.


Any way to "close" a group of reminders all at once on OSX?

There are two fairly easy ways to do this:
Option 1 (default):
With the default configuration of your mac, you can simply option + click the notification center icon in the top right corner of your screen. This will enable Do Not Disturb, which automatically dismisses all notifications and silences incoming notifications. If you wish to continue receiving notifications, you can option + click the notification center icon again. Your notifications that were on the screen will not re-appear.
Option 2 (creating a keyboard shortcut):

Open System Preferences > Keyboard > Shortcuts > Mission Control
Enable the checkbox next to Turn Do Not Disturb On/Off
Click none to the right of the option
Set a shortcut.

Credit: igeeksblog.com
Whenever you want to dismiss all notifications, press this shortcut twice.


vmWare Fusion guest OS display resolution broken (?)

I fixed this by, basically, screwing around with /Library/Preferences/com.apple.windowserver.plist on the guest copy of Mac OS X and getting lucky. First I tried removing that file and rebooting, but that didn't help. Next, I noticed that the 1680x1050 resolution was stored in that file, so I decided to edit it and change the numbers to 1440x900 (I figured if it's going to force a fixed resolution, I'll at least make it match the physical display) and rebooted.

The result is that the normal resize behavior is back. Changing the vmWare window size now updates the guest OS's screen resolution, as would normally be the case.

I don't know why this worked, but things are back to normal now.


How can I download legacy software for an iPad 1?

If you bought/downloaded an app on one device and want to install it on device that has an earlier version of iOS, try these steps.

Here's how to find out if there's a compatible version of an app:

Open the App Store on your device.
Tap the Purchased tab.
Find the app and download it. If there's a compatible version, a message appears and you can choose Confirm to get the latest version of the app that works for your device. If there isn't a compatible version and you can't download the app, go to the app's product page and contact the developer for help.


How do I let preinstalled python 2.7 access pip installed modules?

Given the differences in the codebase, not every library will work for both python3 and python2, unless they've gone to the trouble of ensuring compatibility.

You should just be able to run pip install name from the command line to install correctly on the system python.