What launches an ancient "Update Helper" and how do I confirm it's not a trojan?

As others have mentioned, this discussion has some good tips for accomplishing this.

I have not tested any of these solutions as I still frequently use Google Chrome and do not want to delete these files myself.

If your Library contains a install.py file:

python
~/Library/Google/GoogleSoftwareUpdate/GoogleSoftwareUpdate.bundle/Contents/Resources/GoogleSoftwareUpdateAgent.app/Contents/Resources/install.py --uninstall

or:

python
/Library/Google/GoogleSoftwareUpdate/GoogleSoftwareUpdate.bundle/Contents/Resources/GoogleSoftwareUpdateAgent.app/Contents/Resources/install.py --uninstall

If your Library instead contains a ksinstall file:

~/Library/Google/GoogleSoftwareUpdate/GoogleSoftwareUpdate.bundle/Contents/Resources/GoogleSoftwareUpdateAgent.app/Contents/Resources/ksinstall --uninstall

or:

/Library/Google/GoogleSoftwareUpdate/GoogleSoftwareUpdate.bundle/Contents/Resources/GoogleSoftwareUpdateAgent.app/Contents/Resources/ksinstall --uninstall

Test if it worked by running defaults read com.google.Keystone.Agent. If it worked you should see Domain com.google.Keystone.Agent does not exist.

Alternatively you can also disable the updater without removing it completely by running:

defaults write com.google.Keystone.Agent checkInterval 0. The 0 essentially tells the updater to never check for updates.


Is it safe to delete "My First Project.rcproject" file in the "iMovie Projects" folder?

That is the default name of your first project. If you haven't done any work with it, you should be able to delete it.


Unable to login to MacBook, worked fine with Active Directory account on corp. network

You might be out of luck. Sounds like the AD authentication isn't caching your credentials locally so you can login when you're away from your AD server.

You can go brute force on the problem:

Hold down the power button your MacBook Pro for ~5 seconds until the machine shuts itself off. Power it back on and use your local credentials to log in instead of your AD credentials.

Once you're back up and running run /System/Library/CoreServices/Directory Utility. Click the lock icon to unlock the settings. Highlight Active Directory in the list and click the pen icon to edit the settings. In the window that pops up click the Show Advanced Options and make sure that Create mobile account at login is checked. This ensures you can login when the AD server isn't present.


How to reset Apple ID password without email access

Go to Apple's iForgot page and enter your Apple ID. From there, choose the Security Questions option and answer the questions. If you are correct, you should be able to reset the password. If not, you may have to contact Apple Support or go into an Apple Store.


How to keep alarm silent during a phone call on my iPhone6?

Alarms are automatically silenced by a phone call. The alarm will still go off, being displayed on the screen, but no noise or vibration will occur.


How do I go invisible in Messages (OS X)?

You don't get invisibility using Apple's Messages app on OS X. According to Google, their client also does not support invisible status, so perhaps it's a limitation of their API and only something you can set using their web app. They get to serve you ads when you are on the web, but not on a client so perhaps that was a factor in deciding to code that function in one place over the other.

Apple's Messages app on OS X will set an invisible status for AIM accounts, but not for Google Talk, so it's less like a Messages oversight as an account/API design issue from Google.


Suggested hardware requirements for Xcode 7

This question is primarily opinion-based, but in my experience, your MacBook Air should be good enough for you to use to begin iOS programming. I currently use a 15-inch Mid-2009 MacBook Pro (2.66GHz Intel Core 2 Duo, 4 GB RAM, 256 GB Intel 530 Series SSD) for my iOS app development and it's alright. Would I like a newer MacBook? Of course. But, it's not like I'm making a complex 3D-platformer using Metal or something, I'm just developing a simple 2D game. Apple does a good job of supporting older hardware, so it may be a few years before I get a new Mac. In short, yes, you should be able to use your MacBook Air for learning how to do iOS app development, just don't expect to have an easy time developing complex 3D games on it. The fact that this machine is lean on RAM is compensated for by it having an SSD. This will greatly help with the memory intensity of running a dev env including a simulator.


Is it normal to have a hidden file named .file in /?

You can query the package receipt database.

pkgutil --file-info /.file

on a machine running OS X 10.6 the results are

volume: /
path: /.file

pkgid: com.apple.pkg.BaseSystem
pkg-version: 10.6.0.1.1.1249291854
install-time: 1252683091
uid: 0
gid: 80
mode: 0

pkgid: com.apple.pkg.Essentials
pkg-version: 10.6.0.1.1.1249291854
install-time: 1252683099
uid: 0
gid: 80
mode: 0


How to force quit the "Force Quit Applications" window

You can close it with ⌘ cmd+w.

There's a list of the official keyboard shortcuts on apple.com


The first piece of the puzzle for you is to get your list of trusted devices and trusted phone numbers updated.

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204915

Be aware there is an older two-step process and a newer two-factor process so I usually print out the article and keep notes when helping someone so we don’t go down the wrong path for the other process.

The FAQ at the bottom of the article might cover your exact situation, so start there.


I don't know how to fetch that window to the current space, but if you switch to the appropriate space where that window is located, you can click on the window title and while holding down the mouse button, press control + 1 to return that window the first space (or hold down control + whatever number space you want to drag it to).


Safe to change permissions/ACLs for `~/.ssh/known_hosts`?

It's perfectly safe. The unix permissions you have set there are enough. I don't have an ACL on my known_hosts file.


How do I read show notes while playing a podcast in the iOS Podcasts app?

1. Tap on an individual subscription or "Unplayed Episodes":

2. Tap on the blue disclosure indicator:

3. This will display the show notes for that episode:


Can't get Terminal to Display Colour (Mavericks)

Try:

echo $'\e[34m''some text'

or

echo $(tput setaf 1) some text

For more detailed information, see this post:
https://superuser.com/questions/33914/why-doesnt-echo-support-e-escape-when-using-the-e-argument-in-macosx


System storage not being correctly represented in 'About This Mac'

Try reindexing spotlight:

Go to System Preferences>Spotlight
Go to the Privacy tab, and add Macintosh HD the list.
Restart/Reboot your Mac.
Go back to System Preferences>Spotlight>Privacy and remove Macintosh HD from the list.

WARNING: This will consume large amounts of power (at first you can expect about 1% of power loss every 15 seconds or so, but it will slow considerably). It will also slow you computer considerably, using up almost all of one of your CPU cores, and about 2 GB ram. This is from my experience on a 1 TB hard drive, so it may be less or more intense for you.

P.S. Plug in your charger before doing this.


Finally I have solved my problem by simply installing VNC Viewer, before it I was using Remmina. Now it's working fine without prompting for user name. But it has very poor performance.

I also found another solution for my issue is TeamViewer on LAN, and it's much better than VNC Viewer in terms of speed.


You can export it as a QuickTime movie and choose the Manual Advance Playback mode. It will behave exactly as a Presentation (click to advance and so on) and you will not loose any of the effects (animations, transitions, etc).

Once you have it in Quicktime then you can just present it in a window. Make sure you select Full Quality so you get the best possible movie out.


My MacBook Air is receiving messages from my parents' phones. I want it to receive messages from only my phone though!

In Apple world if you are using same Apple ID, your messages and information are shared across devices.  That is the reason why you are seeing the messages sent by your family members on your macbook.

I would advise you to create separate Apple ID for every individual or disable iMessage from their personal devices. So that the device that was disabled for iMessage would not sync messages across devices.

Hope this helps!


All PowerBook and MacBook models support analog audio in via the headphone jack.
In your specific case, it is possible to use external microphone on MacBook pro and Air 2012 Models.
It looks like Apple has redesigned it to be a multifunction plug, without telling us in plain English. What they do say is you can use the Apple iPhone headset with microphone! Now that is a Hint !

Since there are multiple options to connect a microphone lets take a look.
1 - For stand alone microphone with cable you could use a USB connector type or Audio to USB converter.
2- You could use a BlueTooth type microphone/Headset.
3 - And last not least, you could actually use your Headphone (as marked) the 1/8 inch plug, but NOT with standard audio plug.
Here is the how: The plug is like the headphone port on iOS devices, this jack supports audio input as well as output—with as described in Apple specification.
Looking under the hood of Apple "About this Mac" you get the answer (it says it does support it).

The microphone or headset in question must be of the three-ring variety, just like Apple’s headsets. The fourth pin (ring) is for the microphone !

OK, what now? Lets assume you insist on using your microphone!!!
Get the 3.5mm 4 Position to 2x 3 Position 3.5mm Headset Splitter Adapter - M/F

... this headset splitter adapter breaks the audio port out into two distinct ports - one that can be used for a microphone input connection, and the other for connecting external (output) speakers.
I found stores in Europe (for about €10), but sure you can find it where you are.


Accessing the AppStore through Notifications Edit

The system preferences are locked since some people need to ensure the settings for the app aren’t changed casually.

Launch the App Store application itself from spotlight or the dock or the Apple menu. This avoid the system preference pane that can be locked and unlocked or messing with editing the notifications settings.


How to implement shortcut commands to the "Share > Email" under contextual menu?

The New Email With Selection service is basically the same, but it's available in more applications and views.


Looking for a free system monitoring tool

There are two that come to mind immediately (since you mentioned iStats Menu).

1) MenuMeters is a free CPU, memory, disk, and network monitoring tools for Mac OS X. It can run in the menu bar just as iStats Menu does.

2) atMonitor offers a better alternative to Apple's own "Activity Monitor" and combines the best of the features of many other existing monitoring utilities. It also adds an extensive list of unique features of its own. In addition to the standard CPU, Disk and Network info, atMonitor allows interaction with processes, setting up triggers, logging, purging RAM and much more. atMonitor can be displayed...

As a standalone floating window...

As a menu bar...

Of the two, atMonitor is the one I prefer, but, as always, YMMV.


Macbook Pro connects an external monitor only after reboot

This is the solution:

The 15 inch Macbook uses 2 graphics cards. I use gfxCardStatus application to control which graphics card is used - OS X too easily allows apps to request the more powerful card, which drains the battery too quickly. Skype is an example of such an app.

I just discovered that the integrated graphics card (the weaker one) cannot support a second monitor for some reason. Even though in my 13 inch Macbook it can. So only the "discrete" (or the more powerful) card can do this.

In essence, either stop gfxCardStatus app or go to "Discrete Only" mode in it.


Set environment variable for the process before startup

By "main", do you mean the Info.plist file of your .app ?
That's Apple recommandation so far: https://developer.apple.com/library/mac/#documentation/General/Reference/InfoPlistKeyReference/Articles/LaunchServicesKeys.html#//apple_ref/doc/uid/TP40009250-SW1


iTunes shows 'ghost' songs on my iPhone that are not there, how do I fix this?

I had exactly the same issue, it's commonly called "ghost songs" and it still exists in iOS 10.x There was no way to remove these songs using iTunes (I could deleted them there but on next sync they were just back) or any delete function on the phone itself (I deleted all music on the phone, but iTunes kept showing the ghost songs while the phone said there are no songs on the phone).

Here is how I was able to fix it:

Be sure to have a restorable backup of your iPhone content!
Download iFunbox
Kill the Music App on your iPhone
Connect your iPhone to your computer
Make sure iTunes is not running
Start iFunbox
Choose Raw File System
Delete the following files and folders:

Downloads
iTunes Control > Sync > Media
iTunes Control > Music
iTunes Control > iTunes > MediaLibrary.sqlitedb
iTunes Control > iTunes > MediaLibrary.sqlitedb-shm
iTunes Control > iTunes > MediaLibrary.sqlitedb-wal

Unplug your iPhone
Reboot it the hard way: Press&hold Home+Start button > 5 sec
 (do not power it off the normal way, which is pressing just Start button > 5 sec and then using the slider to power it off. I did that at first and then the ghost songs came back!)
Once rebooted, connect to your computer.
Open iTunes
Check all your sync settings are still set correctly
Sync

After that the ghost songs were gone.


Cannot connect to my SMB server on MacOS

I would use WireShark to capture the SMB2 packets and see what's happening.

Install home-brew if needed - https://brew.sh
Install wireshark brew cask install wireshark
Get a capture to the IP address of the server going and then filter for SMB2 traffic. You can tip open any responses and see exactly what's happening.

This is much better than just trying another server or another client or trying to look at the Mac console in my experience. If this is overkill, you could open console.app from /Applications/Utilities and see if there are relevant messages / errors at the time when the error is posted to your screen.


Wrong number text that resulted in Maybe?

iOS can detect when someone you don't have in your contacts says "My name is..." or "This is..." and will automatically show that name in the contact information as "Maybe [name]"


transfer photos from iPhone to computer **without** importing to Photos

Try the Image Capture app. It should allow you to import all your pictures with very little hassle, and comes bundled with macOS.


Pure guess…

Open ~/Library/QuickLook
Open Library/QuickLook
Remove all plugins
Test
Replace one at a time until you find the crasher.
See if there is a newer version.


Can I use iCloud Photos on an iPhone without every new photo being uploaded to the cloud?

No, iCloud Photo is an all-or-nothing type of thing.  You can't selectively decide what photos are synced to your devices are what are not.
The only way that I know you can keep trivial photos off iCloud is to disconnect iCloud Photos from that iPhone.  You'd still be able to keep the existing photos in iCloud but you'd have to manually add any new photos from that device.  You said in the comments that's not what you want to do but I'm adding that info here in case the comments get deleted.


where is keychains of my lost user account

The login keychain is in /Users/username/Library/Keychains/login.keychain. If the Library folder is hidden, you can select it with shift-command-G.

You can import the keychain to the current account by just opening it.


OS X Yosemite resolution "jump" when logging in

Press and hold the Option-Command-P-R keys immediately after powering on. This will reset the login screen resolution


How can I use an external HD to boot from in Snow Leopard?

You will need a USB drive (8GB) and access to another Mac or a functioning CD ROM drive. You can use any external drive instead of a USB drive, but be aware that you'll have to format the drive and you'll loose any content on it.

The procedure to make the external HD bootable is explained at Upgrading to Snow Leopard without optical drive


Using a iPhone 5 as a bluetooth receiver/audio sink

I have the same question (but PC -> iPhone)

Here is a bit more information to help, connecting iPhone -> PC you are able to have an audio sink service on the PC where all sounds from the phone will play through the computer speakers but not where the phone is the sink (receiver)

If you connect a laptop to a PC you are able to have either as the sink (receiver).

Answer:

As far as I am aware Apple has blocked the Bluetooth Audio Sink Service on (at min) the iPhone (4S IOS7)


Firmware Update 1.0 for MacBook Air 2012 Not Installing

Do you happen to have FileVault enabled? If so, you cannot update the firmware on the drive at this state.

The firmware update happens before the OS decrypts/unlocks the drive, thus at FW update time, the drive is not accessible.

The only solution I know is a bit of a pain:

turn off FileVault
run the update
turn FileVault back on


How do I setup a cron job on OSX to launch a website in safari every 4 hours?

0 0,4,8,12,16,20 * * * open "http://google.com/"

The 0,4,8,12,16,20 is every hour that the cron will run (in this example, every 4th hour).


iPad does not do automatic screen rotation

Is rotation lock on? Open Control Center by swiping from the top right of the screen (iOS 12+), then tap the rotation lock icon on the top row.

If you see  in the status bar, Orientation Lock is on. To turn it off, swipe up from the bottom of the screen to open the Control Center, then tap .
If you have an iPad with a Side Switch and don't see the Rotation Lock icon in Control Center, make sure that the Side Switch is off.

If the screen doesn‘t rotate on your iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch


Install OS on iMac with blank hard drive

Is is possible to get a late 2010 iMac with a blank/new hard drive up and running with the latest OS and XCode?

Yes.  The late 2010 iMac (both 21" and 27" models) had the capability of having their EFI upgraded to support Internet Recovery.
There are a few caveats here:

Internet Recovery (hold ⇧Shift⌥Option⌘CommandR) will install the last version that was installed on that Mac.  If it's pre High Sirra, you'll have to install that version then upgrade.

The EFI should have been patched via normal system upgrades.  It's unlikely that the iMac wouldn't have been upgraded in the last 8 years, but if it hasn't, you need to install Lion (10.7.3) and then install the patch (download here)

You need a "decent" Internet connection.  You'll be downloading not just the installer, but the entire OS.  If your connection is flaky, it's likely to fail.

Options

Use Internet Recovery as detailed above
Take to an Apple Store and they will assist with the download and install
Have a friend, colleague, or family member create a USB installer for you.

Finally...
Once you have your system installed (even before you install XCode), do a Time Machine backup so that you have an image of your system in it's pristine state in case you have to install macOS on a blank drive again.


If you choose the crop tool in the Photos app, and then tap the crop presets button at the top right (looks like solid rectangle in another rectangle), you get some presets: Original, Freeform, Square, 9:16, 8:10, 5:7, etc.

But you want 4:5?

Just use 8:10. 4:5 = 8:10, right?


LDAP Network Account Logins in Mavericks

It's possible that you need to set the Authentication Search Path inside of Directory Utility -> Search Policy -> Authentication...Make sure "Search" says "Custom Path", and that your Active Directory domain is listed below.

If you do not see your AD domain in the list, you can authenticate to Directory Utility by clicking the lock in the lower-left corner, and then add a new search path by clicking the "+" button below the list of paths. Your domain should show up under "Available Directory Domains".

This setting should allow users to authenticate against Active Directory when connecting to your server. However, if AD users can authenticate against your OS X server successfully, the Search Path is not likely to be the culprit.

Alternatively, Workgroup Manager still exists, and may allow you to investigate the AD node more explicitly.

Lastly, you may be required to enable cleartext authentication to be able to authenticate your AD users to your OS X Server hosted wiki (the article applies to Mountain Lion and lower systems, but may be the same procedure that is required for Mavericks).


com.apple.ScriptEditor2 is the CFBundleIdentifier for AppleScript Editor.app.

The 0.4KB of iCloud data associated with ScriptEditor2 is likely to be a shared preference file created by AppleScript Editor on your Mac.


Strange characters in Console .awd reports

This behavior is caused by the Console app attempting to read the .awd binary data as text. All computer data is binary, and the file type/extension indicates what those 1s and 0s mean.
Though I am not familiar with .awd files I have encountered garbled text like this when, for instance, opening .png files in a code editor. Try opening them in another application.


Can I use basic iPhone 5/5s/5c with Aio Wireless "Aio Basic" plan?

Yes, it would appear that this is allowed, but only as long as you go the Bring-Your-Own-Device route.

In the Bring Your Own Device option of ordering the 40$/mo Aio Basic plan, you can search for Apple iPhone 5 and, subsequently, select the Nano SIM Card option (the only option available), where they will also ask you for your IMEI number.

This also has been confirmed by a service representative through the online chat function:  you cannot purchase an iPhone 5 together with the 40$/mo plan, but as long as you bring your own device, going with the 40$/mo plan is completely OK.  They also claim that the throttling past the allotment would be down to 256kbps, although this is not written anywhere on the web-site itself so far.

At 40$/mo, this plan would be more expensive and with less data that T-Mobile USA's online prepaid special 30$/mo 100 minutes + unlimited data with 5GB @ 4G plan (available only online and through Walmart), but it's still a great deal for what it is.


Why does running afconvert result in error -43

Drop the -o flag, I think. You are specifying input.mp3 as an output file, and then tone.m4r becomes the input file. See the output of afconvert -h.


How splash-proof and knock-proof is the iPod nano?

The iPod Nano can be knocked around pretty good and still keep going, but getting them wet is another story. The units have moistures sensors (much like nearly all of Apple's handheld line) are not to be got wet. The phone strap would provide some protection against this, but it doesn't make it water resistant or turn the device into an actual wristwatch capable of getting weathered. Washing your hands with the phone attached to your wrist would certainly get water in the unit (potentially leading to damage and inoperability) or at the very least, trigger the moisture sensors.

An iPod Nano is still an electronic device that should be kept clear of all water and as much perspiration as possible. If the moisture sensor is triggered, your warranty is void. With that said, the units are sealed quite well and would typically only allow water in the headphone jack and the proprietary cable connection port at the bottom (these are were the moistures sensors are located).


I think you got two options:

Enable function keys to work like normal keys and to activate their special functions – like increasing volume etc. – when pressing fn beforehand.

Open System Preferences
Select preference pane Keyboard
Select Keyboard tab
Activate option Use all F1, F2, etc, keys as standard function keys

  Image taken from OSXDaily.com

Set custom app shortcuts for your programs that need function keys in their shortcuts.

Open System Preferences
Select preference pane Keyboard
Select Shortcuts tab
Select group App Shortcuts
Press + and add your needed shortcuts – those already existent in the editor. Just select the corresponding app, insert the shortcut name (name in the menu connected to the shortcut) and enter shortcut already set by the program.

  Image taken from Geeksays.com


This solved the issue for me:

Make sure you have a recent backup
Quit Safari (if it is running)
In Finder, type Shift-Cmd-G and enter ~/Library/Caches/com.apple.Safari
A Finder window will open, with the com.apple.Safari folder selected
Delete the whole folder
Restart Safari


How do I remove a substring from system_profiler with a posible if then?

Here's a solution using awk with system_profiler :

 system_profiler SPHardwareDataType | awk -F ': ' '/Model Name/ { print $2 }'

We change the field separator to : <space> then search for a line with Model Name in it and print the second field. Or instead of using a pipe use process substitution to feed awk

awk -F ': ' '/Model Name/ { print $2 }' < <(system_profiler SPHardwareDataType)


Having text message notifications on my iphone (and apple watch), despite receiving notifications on macbook

Couldn't find anything, so I wrote a python script checks for new messages, and send me notifications via pushover. I turned it into an app and added it to login items, so i only get notifications this way when the macbook's lid is open. It's not clean, but it works.

import sqlite3
import pathlib
import time
import logging
import sys
import requests

logger = logging.getLogger('message-notifier')

def dict_factory(cursor, row):
    d = {}
    for idx, col in enumerate(cursor.description):
        d[col[0]] = row[idx]
    return d

conn = sqlite3.connect(str(pathlib.Path.home() / 'Library' / 'Messages' / 'chat.db'))
conn.row_factory = dict_factory
notified = set()
try:
    while True:
        logger.info('running')
        x = conn.execute("select is_read, ROWID from message "
                         "WHERE is_from_me = 0 "
                         "order by date desc limit 10;")
        for msg in x.fetchall():
            if not msg['is_read'] and msg['ROWID'] not in notified:
                logger.info(f'pushing notification for {msg["ROWID"]}')
                notified.add(msg['ROWID'])
                try:
                    requests.post('https://api.pushover.net/1/messages.json',
                                  data={
                                      "token": "token",
                                      "user": "user",
                                      "message": "msg",
                                      "title": "tit"
                                  })
                except:
                    logger.exception('encountered:')
                continue
            if msg['is_read'] and msg['ROWID'] in notified:
                logger.info(f"removing {msg['ROWID']} from notified msgs")
                notified.remove(msg['ROWID'])
                continue
        time.sleep(5)

finally:
    conn.close()


Unable to remove file or change permission on mac as root.

There are a 2 reasons I can think of why this file (well, directory) might not be deletable.

Check for the "restricted" flag. This is part of SIP, and you should be able to see it via ls -lO /Library/Extensions/FileProtect.kext. If following the group you see "restricted" then this file is flagged as being protected via SIP. This shouldn't normally be the case for a file under /Library/ but people do the weirdest things.
The kext itself is blocking the delete operation. As it's in /Library/Extensions, there's a reasonable chance it's loaded automatically. If it implements a kauth vnode scope listener or a MAC policy, it can arbitrarily deny file operations, including deletions.

In either case, the solution is to boot into the recovery environment and to delete it there.


Macbook pro, black screen with chime only after using Casper/JAM

If I understand your problem right ... it only happens after you join Mac to the domain using Casper/JAMF !

Try following.. hold option on boot and manually select the boot drive again while holding control to set it as default


gfxCardStatus can do this — when the GPU changes, you'll get a notification:

You can see the dependency by clicking the menu bar item.

It also works the other way round — you'll get a notification when it switches back to the integrated graphics.


Short answer: No.  This feature does not exist on Macs.

On a side note, it's also useless in Windows too.

A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away, CTRL+ALT+DEL sent a hardware interrupt to the PC's BIOS (which would immediately reboot the computer in the DOS days).

That interrupt also had the happy side-effect of breaking things like keyloggers and programs designed to steal your password, so when Windows NT arrived on the scene, Microsoft trapped that interrupt to prove that you were a real, live human sitting in front of a keyboard.

That has not been the case for many, many years.  I have no idea why we're still dragging this stupid three-finger salute around after all these years (tradition maybe?)  It offers no meaningful security these days and I personally disable it with Group Policy on every domain I administer.


generic approach to finding the correct name to run an app from the command line

Bot Sublime Text and Kaleidoscope are special cases as they install either a helper utility or themselves somewhere in your $PATH.

The easiest way to open any application from /Applications is to run

open -a APPNAME

in Terminal, e.g.

open -a Pages       # opens Pages
open -a "App Store" # opens the App Store


Set Services keyboard shortcut via script OSX

@chrisKnadler made a good point of using Applescript to do this.

I have used this before in the past but discounted it because of the new problem in Mavericks of preference being cached system wide.

Meaning you could only use the unix command

  defaults write...

to get the results to actually change instead of manually changing them or using Applescript plist item commands.

But just now having a look around found a suggestion that you can simply flush the cache and initiate a the system to read the preference again by just calling a

  defaults read ...

on the plist file you have change. This does indeed seem to work.

  set theServiceName to "(null) - Print to PDF - runWorkflowAsService"
set libPrefPath to POSIX path of (path to preferences folder from user domain as text)
set PlistFile to "pbs.plist"
set PlistPath to libPrefPath & PlistFile as text
set mainPropertyItem to "NSServicesStatus"
set theKey to "key_equivalent"

tell application "System Events"

    set gp to (get property list item theServiceName of property list item mainPropertyItem of property list file PlistPath)

    tell gp
        --set value of property list item "enabled_services_menu" to true
        --set value of property list item "enabled_context_menu" to true
        set value of property list item theKey to "@^h"

    end tell

end tell

do shell script " defaults read " & quoted form of PlistPath & > /dev/null

You may still need to quite individual apps for them to show the change ( as is normal)

UPDATE:
Small change.

Added  > /dev/null to the end of the defaults command so only errors are returned.


Did you miss the Easter Egg?

For Software Updates, right-click the description text right under the title:

Got it from here: Hide Software Updates from the App Store in Mac OS X (last comment), though they say it doesn't work for Yosemite. I haven't checked if you can hide regular app updates the same way. I'll "update" this when one comes along.


No one- and two-finger tap in Better Touch Tool?

Seeing as my original question was brought up due to a lack of compatibility with Mountain Lion from MiddleClick, I think that this answer should suffice:

As of 19AUG12, MiddleClick has been updated to support Mountain Lion and is now available for download.


What is the bottom thumb swiper bar called in iOS 14?


How to access to the '.config' folder on mac?

You don't have access rights for this directory. Run
sudo chown marienfarge ~marienfarge/.config
chmod 711 ~marienfarge/.config


What's the most recent version of OS X I can run on a 1999 iBook and where can I buy it?

The maximum OS version is 9.2.2 for Classic Mac OS or OS X 10.3.9 (Panther). I'm not sure which one to recommend. OS 9 might be faster, but OS X is certainly more powerful and will be far better supported by software (though Panther is so old that you'll have to use old versions of many apps).

You'll probably have to go digging on Craigslist or eBay for install discs that old.


You basically have two options:

If you don't want to open up machine then install Snow Leopard as leanest of them all. It will be fast though few resource hungry apps or web pages can bog it down.
Another minus of the path is that Snow Leopard being released July 25, 2011 is going to be unsupported soon if not already. At least latest NTP patch doesn't apply to it.
If you do to open it. And it is not that hard really with this machine see instruction. Then I would say add 8GB while you are there. It supports up to 2x4GB SO-DIMM DDR3-1066 modules(choose big names like Hynix, Samsung, Crucial for compatibility). Regarding OS X choice it is either 10.9 as more polished or 10.10 as the latest. Clearly 10.9 behaves a lot more solid on the machine. But if you need 10.10 it will also be fine. Safari is definitely snappier on it.

Regarding 10.7 Lion. It just doesn't make sense. It is no faster than Mavericks on 2GB but it is definitely slower than 10.6 Snow Leopard.

I put 8GB RAM and 128GB SSD in place of Superdrive in same machine recently, installed 10.10 and it will be fine for few more years for light to medium tasks. Good luck


How to open Google Drive links directly in Google Drive app

Apparently you can prepend the url with the respective Google app to which it belongs. So if it is a Google Sheet, prepend the url with Googlesheets://. If it is a doc, I'm guessing you would use Googledocs://
So if the url is http://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/Google-document/, amend it with the appropriate app prefix (in this case Googlesheets:// like so: Googlesheets://http://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/Google-document.
PS: The issue is discussed at length here.


Prevent files in a folder from being moved?

You can use Access Control Lists for this. Run

chmod +a "USERID:deny:delete_child" DIRECTORY

to prevent the user USERID from deleting anything from the directory. To undo, run

chmod -a "USERID:deny:delete_child" DIRECTORY

PS: If you want to have it applied to current and future subfolders beneath DIRECTORY as well, use

"USERID:deny:delete_child,directory_inherit"


How do I access BIOS on my MacBook Pro (13 Inch - middle 2012)?

The closest equivalent is holding option at start. That runs the firmware that allows you to select network boot or external or internal bootable OS.

There is no open firmware anymore where you can enter commands, so you can just reset NVRAM or let the option boot read the current NVRAM settings. Anything you would set in bios, you can write to the non volatile ram from any OS X booted OS and then those variables and settings are applied next boot.

There is no bios and no concept of a user navigable hierarchy of settings to adjust before any OS loads to Apple hardware. Most of what you might do “in BIOS” isn't possible.


I got it working by resetting app permissions with tccutil https://apple.stackexchange.com/a/344086
First, you need to find the bundle ID of your app via Terminal:
mdls /Applications/Forecast\ Bar.app | grep kMDItemCF (note that folder of your app may be different)
Then run tccutil to reset permissions:
tccutil reset All [bundle ID]
Application will ask for permissions once more, but now it will be saved correctly


Mac OS "Go to desktop #" keyboard shortcourt

As defined in System Preferences > Keyboard > Keyboard Shortcuts, you can use ^N, where N is the number of the desktop, to move between desktops.


I installed the Stamps.com Connect to my computer and I can't uninstall

Your application is probably running in background, so you have to "kill it" before you can uninstall it.

Using Activity Monitor, find the Stamps.com Connect process and double click on it (using Acrobat as an example because I don't have Stamps.com; the process is the same, however).

You will then be presented with another dialog which will allow you to quit the running process:

Select "Quit."

You should then be able to uninstall the software.  As for uninstalling it, I recommend using AppCleaner.  I have used it for many years and it has been successful in removing even the most stubborn of Apps.  Plus, it's free.


Hidden Folder not showing in Finder with show all hidden files

I think Finder is out...

    Mac OS X does not show you companion files unless you use Terminal, and sometimes not even then.  (It shows invisible files rather easily, but to Mac OS X, both "MyFile" and "._MyFile" are two parts of the same file, and it doesn't normally return two directory entries for one file.)  You only see these companion files on non-HFS disks that you move to other operating systems.

http://lists.apple.com/archives/applescript-users/2006/Jun/msg00180.html

So, the only Options I see is using VCP7, or Paralles, etc., to have a pseodo way to see them in Finder, or....

Write a script to list those files in a window & maybe link them back the the real ._ files.


How to change cell background color in numbers according to some rules?

Select the cell where you want to apply the rule. From the menu choose Format -> Show Conditional Format rules. A window opens which allows you to enter rules.

For example (this is the rule you asked for):


Right now no automatic solution exists. Also, I don't see any new solutions coming up in the short term.

This is mainly due to the fact that Apple does not allow apps to take screenshots of other apps running on your device. Therefore it is hard to get the information into the translation app. With the newest iOS versions it is possible for an app to record the screen of the iOS device as a video - given that the user has to enable it each time, and has to permit it. Video does not provide a good input source for this use case, as screenshots are much easier to process for OCR and automatic translation.

So unless Apple provides their own solution for this, it does seem that a slick solution is still some time away. However, it is always hard to predict - especially about the future.


How to share files with an iPad app in El Capitan itunes?

It should still be there on the Apps panel, though it's more confusingly-located than I seem to remember it used to be. You have to scroll right down past the Apps section where you can add/remove/arrange apps, and you'll eventually get to a File Sharing section with a list of apps that support file sharing.

If you found your way there but the list is empty, then something else is afoot... if nothing else, you should see the iWork apps there, if you have those installed.


iOS7 Moving Backgrounds - file type and creating your own

You are confusing parallax and dynamic.

Parallax is the name given to the effect whereby a still image is moved in response to input at a greater or lesser extent than other on screen elements, to provide a sense of depth. The image used is just a static image file that is slightly larger than the screen size, to allow it to move slightly without introducing blank areas.

Dynamic backgrounds are the animated ones that move according to their programming, not just your input. I suspect they are simply quartz composer files like an OSX screensaver.


Macbook Pro intermittently unresponsive/dark screen after waking from sleep

You may want to rule out a graphics card issue, which impacted select 2011-2013 MBPs:

http://www.apple.com/support/macbookpro-videoissues/

And if you haven't done so already, run Apple Hardware Diagnostics:

https://www.lifewire.com/use-apple-hardware-test-over-internet-to-diagnose-problems-2259973


File Menu > Duplicate [Cmd/Shift/s]
Delete extra clips.
File Menu > Export > Audio Only...  will save as .m4a

Repeat for each clip.

Tedious, but the best I can figure...


Show When Applications Were Opened and Closed


Stop AppleUSBMultitouchDriver From Trying

I have an older OS X, but try with:

sudo kextunload -b  com.apple.driver.AppleUSBMultitouch


Troubleshooting is often a process of elimination, so patience is often required. There's quite a few things you could do to try and narrow things down, because even from the info you've provided the cause could be RAM, your battery, or something else altogether.

For example, if it works fine in Safe Mode then it's more likely to be some sort of software issue/conflict.

To start with I'd do a NVRAM and SMC reset (in that order) as there's really no harm in trying that first. Before following the steps below, ensure you have no external hardware connected and that you're using the built-in keyboard.

Reset the NVRAM

Reset the NVRAM on your MBP as follows:

Shut down your machine. Yes, a full shut down, not just logging out.
Press the power button and then press the commandoptionpr keys. You have to make sure you press these keys before the gray screen appears or it won’t work.
Hold those keys down until your MBP reboots again and you here the startup chime a second time.
Let go of the keys and let your MBP reboot normally.

Note: When you log back in you may need to readjust some of your system preferences (e.g. speaker volume, screen resolution, startup disk selection, time zone information, etc).

Reset the SMC

To reset the SMC on your model MBP, follow these steps:

Shut down your MBP
Disconnect the MagSafe plug (power cable) from the computer
Remove the battery
Press the power button for 5 seconds and release
Put the battery back in
Reconnect the MagSafe cord (or power cable)
Turn your computer back on with the power button

After resetting both the NVRAM and SMC, use your computer to determine if the issue still persists. If it does, I'd test your hardware as with Apple Hardware Test.

Run Apple Hardware Test

Your model MBP uses Apple Hardware Test. To use this, follow these steps:

Shut down your MacBook Pro
Restart your MacBook Pro
Press and hold the D key before the gray startup screen appears.
After a while, Apple Hardware Test (AHT) will start.
When prompted, select your language and click the right arrow.
When the AHT console appears, you can choose to run Basic tests by clicking the Test button. However, I suggest you select the "Perform extended testing" checkbox before you click the Test button.
Your test results will appear in the window in the bottom-right of the console.

Note 1: that the extended test will take some time. Take a note of the results and report back.

Note 2: If pressing and holding the D key at Step 3 doesn't work, start again at Step 1 and, at Step 3 press and hold both the OptionD keys instead. This will try and run diagnostics from the internet instead, so you will need to allow more time for it to complete.

If your MBP passes all hardware tests, then I'd try using it in Safe Mode.

Boot into Safe Mode

Follow these steps to boot your MBP into Safe Mode:

Fully shut down your Mac
Restart your Mac
Immediately press the Shift key and keep it down
Let go of the Shift key when you see the login window (NOTE: If you have FileVault enabled you may need to log in twice).
Take a note of what happens (i.e. can you use it without it restarting)
Exit Safe Mode by restart your Mac as normal and test again

If you find that your MBP works fine while in Safe Mode, but not when booted normally, then let me know and I'll explain the process of identifying the culprit (it's likely to be a login item, corrupted font, or kernel extension).


Disable message / call notifications for one specific contact

Leave them under your contacts and then click the "do not disturb" when you click on the info of their text message.


How do I remove authenticated Open Directory binding to itself?

While trying to get this done I accidentally found a way to do this:

On the server, in Directory Utility, in Services/LDAPv3 I tried to
add another copy of the local server (127.0.0.1). The same name was
not accepted so I went manual, created it with the name localhost
This was created, but then it turned out that it had overwritten the
previous OD. All my users, everything was gone. Panic.
I stopped OD in Server.app
Ran "sudo slapconfig -destroyldapserver" in Terminal
Ran "sudo slapconfig -restoredb 20200112-albus-odbackup.sparseimage"
(I did make a backup before I went mucking about)

My OD is now up and running again, the users are back it took Server.app a while to sync with reality) and the authenticated binding between the server and itself is gone. /LDAPv3/127.0.0.1 only shows one computer, so I'll need to reauthenticate the client machine.

Probably not the way to do it and certainly not for the faint of heart.


Applescript- I made an auto scrolling code and need to know how to stop it

I have redone the script, again. That code before was ridiculous tbh. I got a little ahead of myself... Let's try this again... Save this as a "stay open" application again, named anything. You'll just have to quit it when you want to stop scrolling, and start it up again when you want to continue. I advise putting it on your Dock for easy access:

global script_PID
on run
    tell application "Google Chrome" to activate
    delay 1
    tell me to activate
end run

on idle
    tell application "Google Chrome"
        tell active tab of front window
            set urlName to URL
            if (execute javascript "if (window.pageYOffset + window.innerHeight >= document.body.clientHeight){true;}else{false;}") is false then
                execute javascript "window.scrollBy(0,window.innerHeight - 40);"
            else
                tell me to quit
            end if
        end tell
    end tell
    return 1
end idle

Tell me if you have any issues with this.


Why can I only have 2 partitions on my 3TB Apple Fusion Drive?

It's indeed impossible to create a third regular partition in Disk Utility.

The +-button is greyed out (please check the screenshot below):

The superior HDD is my CoreStorage Volume Group, the inferior HDD is my CoreStorage Volume (spanning over disk1s2 and disk2s2) and HDD 2 is a simple JHFS+ non-CoreStorage volume.

The complete volume list and the partition table of disk1 looks like this:

root# diskutil list
/dev/disk0
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      GUID_partition_scheme                        *3.0 TB     disk0
   1:                        EFI EFI                     209.7 MB   disk0s1
   2:                  Apple_HFS test1                   1.5 TB     disk0s2
   3:                  Apple_HFS test2                   1.5 TB     disk0s3
/dev/disk1
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      GUID_partition_scheme                        *68.7 GB    disk1
   1:                        EFI EFI                     209.7 MB   disk1s1
   2:          Apple_CoreStorage                         33.1 GB    disk1s2
   3:                 Apple_Boot Recovery HD             650.0 MB   disk1s5
   4:                  Apple_HFS HDD 2                   34.7 GB    disk1s4
/dev/disk2
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      GUID_partition_scheme                        *17.2 GB    disk2
   1:                        EFI EFI                     209.7 MB   disk2s1
   2:          Apple_CoreStorage                         16.8 GB    disk2s2
   3:                 Apple_Boot Boot OS X               134.2 MB   disk2s3
/dev/disk3
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:                  Apple_HFS HDD                    *47.3 GB    disk3

root# gpt -r -vv show /dev/disk1
gpt show: /dev/disk1: mediasize=68719476736; sectorsize=512; blocks=134217728
gpt show: /dev/disk1: PMBR at sector 0
gpt show: /dev/disk1: Pri GPT at sector 1
gpt show: /dev/disk1: Sec GPT at sector 134217727
      start       size  index  contents
          0          1         PMBR
          1          1         Pri GPT header
          2         32         Pri GPT table
         34          6
         40     409600      1  GPT part - C12A7328-F81F-11D2-BA4B-00A0C93EC93B
     409640   64562272      2  GPT part - 53746F72-6167-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC
   64971912    1269536      3  GPT part - 426F6F74-0000-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC
   66241448   67714096      4  GPT part - 48465300-0000-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC
  133955544     262151
  134217695         32         Sec GPT table
  134217727          1         Sec GPT header

After booting to another boot disk and deleting HDD 2 (disk1s4), I added two new partitions (hdd2 and hdd3) instead with gpt add...(check screenshot below)

The partition table of the same disk (the DiskIdentifier changed meanwhile from disk1 to disk0):

root$ gpt -r -vv show /dev/disk0
Password:
gpt show: /dev/disk0: mediasize=68719476736; sectorsize=512; blocks=134217728
gpt show: /dev/disk0: PMBR at sector 0
gpt show: /dev/disk0: Pri GPT at sector 1
gpt show: /dev/disk0: Sec GPT at sector 134217727
      start       size  index  contents
          0          1         PMBR
          1          1         Pri GPT header
          2         32         Pri GPT table
         34          6
         40     409600      1  GPT part - C12A7328-F81F-11D2-BA4B-00A0C93EC93B
     409640   64562272      2  GPT part - 53746F72-6167-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC
   64971912    1269536      3  GPT part - 426F6F74-0000-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC
   66241448     158552
   66400000   30000000      4  GPT part - 48465300-0000-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC
   96400000     200000
   96600000   30000000      5  GPT part - 48465300-0000-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC
  126600000    7617695
  134217695         32         Sec GPT table
  134217727          1         Sec GPT header

Result:

Apple is right: you can't add a third volume with Disk Utility. But it's no problem to add a second and a third (and probably even some more) regular JHFS+ volume from the command line booted from another boot disk.

The reason why Apple doesn't allow to add more volumes in Disk Utility is beyond my knowledge.


Using Apple Remote Desktop to view External HD files

I can not advise regarding Apple Remote Desktop since I do no have access to this software and I do not wish to purchase said software.

However, Apple's Back to My Mac free software can provide remote access to your home computer files and screen sharing.

  Note: The instructions shown below were copied from this Apple website.

If you have an iCloud account, and you have several computers connected to the Internet, you can share the screen of one computer with other computers.

For example, if you have a Mac at home that’s connected to the Internet, you can share its screen with a Mac you use at work. You can control that Mac, move files and folders, open or close apps, and even restart it.

Set up Back to my Mac
Follow these steps for each computer whose screen you want to share.

Choose Apple menu > System Preferences, then click Sharing.
Select Screen Sharing or Remote Management.
Next to “Allow access for,” select “All users” or “Only these users.” If you permit only listed users to have access to the screen, click the Add button  and the Remove button  to edit the list.
Choose View > iCloud to open iCloud preferences.
If you aren’t already signed in to iCloud, enter the Apple ID you use with iCloud, then click Sign In.
In the list of iCloud features that appears on the right after you’re signed in, select Back to My Mac.

To stop sharing your screen using Back to My Mac, open iCloud preferences, then deselect Back to My Mac.

Connect to your remote Mac

To see your remote computers in the Finder sidebar, choose Finder > Preferences, click Sidebar, then select Back To My Mac in the Shared section.
Open a Finder window. If no shared computers appear in the Shared section of the sidebar, put the pointer on the word Shared and click Show.
Click the remote Mac, then click Share Screen.

If you don’t see the Mac you want, click All to see all the available computers, select the one whose screen you want to share, then click Share Screen. All computers that are signed in to iCloud using the same Apple ID as your computer and use Back to My Mac are shown at the top of the list.

Back to My Mac requires a router that supports NAT Port Mapping Protocol (NAT-PMP) or Universal Plug and Play (UPnP) to share services. Check the documentation that came with your router to make sure it supports NAT-PMP or UPnP.

Some Additional Notes

To access files on the remote Mac from the local Mac, the remote Mac must have file sharing must turn on. To turn on file Sharing, apply the following steps to the remote Mac.

Choose Apple menu > System Preferences, then click Sharing.
Select File Sharing.

The external drives on the remote Mac are not automatically accessible from the local Mac. To make an external drive accessible from the local Mac, apply the following steps to the remote Mac.

From the Finder application, right click on the external drive icon.
Expand General to view the Shared Folder checkbox.
Make sure Shared Folder is checked off.

If a remote Mac computer, folder or drive does not appear in the local Mac's Finder application, try relaunching the Finder application by applying the steps shown below.

Press the ⌘+option+esc key combination to view the Force Quit Applications window.
Select Finder.
Click on the Relaunch button.

You do not have to be logged in on the remote Mac computer. You can also login while the Mac is logged into someone else's account.
The remove Mac computer can not be a sleep. You must disable sleep in the Energy Saver pane of the System Preferences application.
While Screen Sharing, the Finder application on the local Mac computer had access to drives on the remote Mac computer.
You can mount the drives of the remote machine without sharing the screen. This will require entering a user name and password.
If you mount the drives of the remote machine using someone else's user name and password, then select screen share, you will login to that person's account on the remote Mac.


OS X 10.10 Copy / Paste Source file count does not match destination file count

Is it possible, that there are hidden files in the source folder?

You could use this shortcut in Finder to switch between showing/hiding hidden files.

  CMD + SHIFT + .

If you want to make sure to copy the whole content anyway, open Terminal.app and enter

  cp -pr /path/to/source /path/to/destination

After typing "cp -pr " in Terminal, you can drag&drop the folder names vom Finder window to Terminal window.


How can I back up apps which are no longer available?

I eventually figured out a solution.  iTunes has an option to back up apps from the phone, which is called "Transfer Purchases".  It moves around in every version of iTunes, but it should be there.  Because I was using an iTunes installation associated with a newer iPhone as well, I had newer, incompatible versions of apps already downloaded, so transferring would not overwrite them with an older version.

In order to transfer the apps, I created a new user account on my mac, authorized it with my apple id, and then I was able to transfer purchases off the iPhone 3G to this new account.  To be safe, I then copied the files out of the iTunes Media folder, just to ensure that I won't accidentally do something in iTunes to destroy these files.


You could try to unload the daemon

sudo launchctl unload /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.storedownloadd.daemon.plist

Or the best thing to do is pause the updates in the App Store


Send audio output of MacBook to iPhone for remote listening

Yes, using Airfoil for Mac (also available for Windows) and the companion app Airfoil Speakers Touch you can stream any audio from your Mac to your iOS device.

I haven't tried it much myself, and reviews are mixed, but you can try it for free before shelling out the money for it.

This can also be used to send audio from a MacBook to a bluetooth headset connected to an iOS device. Something which is very difficult otherwise.


Alternatives for using USB stick when USB/Thunderbolt ports not working

There are several options...

You can use a NAS (Network Attached Storage). This can be from a dedicated device like a Synology NAS Station (I personally use this device) that not only has physical drives served across the network, but you can attach USB external drives.  I actually have a hub with 3 external drives (for backup and Time Machine) and a USB flash that holds my music collection.  I love this setup (bottom left).

You can use a router with NAS functionality.  The Apple Airport Extreme (above right) is a good example of a router with this type of functionality.

  AirPort Extreme can turn your external USB hard drive into a secure drive you can share across your Wi‑Fi network and access securely over the Internet. All the documents, videos, photos, and other files instantly become available to anyone on the network, Mac and PC users alike. It’s perfect for file sharing, collaborative projects, and more.

Though I am not a huge fan of "putting all your eggs in one basket," this will make do in a pinch.

Wireless USB Flash Disks. SanDisk has a wireless flash drive and  I had the opportunity to use one the other day.  I have to admit, it was neat bit of kit; it's not as fast as directly connected USB, but pretty neat and convenient.

Share the USB folder from another Mac/PC. By turning on File Sharing, or remote login, you can access the USB by remotely connecting into the machine with the good ports.  Under System Preferences just enable file sharing and add the folders (including the /Volumes/[NameOfUSB] folder) into the "Shared Folders" list.

If you know how to ssh into your machine, you can use scp to copy the files.  You can get more info on how to do this from this answer

Hopefully, one of these methods will allow you to access the files on your USB.


Lion Server:Cannot enable address book server

Ok. So googling the error messages in the Console app didn't yield results.

However googling the generic 'error reading settings' message the Server app was displaying found this page:

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/3189397?start=0&tstart=0

Basically I had to copy overwrite my httpd.conf file with the original .default version.  Doing this while Server was shutdown and then starting it back up has allowed Address Book, Calendar sever, iChat Sever, and all the rest to start up.


'alt vs option': Is the 'option' key still used somewhere? Where exactly (geographically)?

Images from Apple KB - How to identify keyboard localizations

US Keyboards say  alt
Option

Other keyboards say   alt
⌥

Basically, it's one & the same key.

Best guess is there are so many people who know Alt is but don't know Option that the terms have just merged over the years.

I haven't had a keyboard in at least a decade that actually said Option, though I remember they all did back in the 90s.

I found this 'keyboard history' article from 2007 - though it's not the main topic, it is mentioned - How Apple Keyboards Lost a Logo and Windows PCs Gained One

  Mac Integration with Windows.
  As it became increasingly useful for Mac users to emulate Windows or work in shared environments, the Option key on Macs became equated with the Alt key on PCs, and the Command key was associated with the ineffectual Windows Start button.

** After comments & other answers
It appears that the Apple have changed the keyboards over the years since they made the keyboard layout page, but not updated the page to cover every current keyboard.
The answer is still really it depends - some do, some don't, in every conceivable combination ;)


How to view text/rtf message part in .eml files which are ignored since Mail 6.0 upgrade?


To answer your first question:

If you control-click (right-click) on an SVG file, select "Get Info" from the menu.  A window will open, with several sections.  One is "Open with:".  You may need to click the triangle next to it, but you should see a selector where you can choose the program which should open the file when it is double-clicked.

Since you want the same behavior for all .SVG files, press the "Change All..." button, and it should work.


Can ghost app updates be cleared in OS X?

In almost all cases, this is one of two things:

somewhere on your Mac, an older copy of the App is lying around and in need of an update (even though the version in /Applications is up to date)
spotlight is messed up

The first is much easier to fix, so eject all disks and network volumes and then quit and re-launch the App Store. If you still show an update, check for other copies of that app using spotlight.

Once you are sure it's not a case of more than one app, you can go down the more complicated path of spotlight triage/repair. I like to add all drives to spotlight’s privacy pane and delete all copies of the problem app and reboot. Then turn on spotlight for just the boot volume.

Once spotlight is done indexing that drive, go reinstall the problem app. If things are clear, enable spotlight on all remaining volumes. If not, we can cover that bigger spotlight issue in a different thread.


The short answer is sorry, but there seem to be no driver to support the external input in the headset. My solution that works is to get a cheap USB to headset audio adapter that support the 4 pin 3,5mm jack of the headsets. Here is one that works, but you can surely find others in your local market:

https://www.wentronic.com/de-en/index/artikel/USB-2-0-sound-card-audio-adapter-headset-adapter-96291


iOS' Music app - "Object not available" "This item can't be played"?

This is how I solved it.

I first disabled music syncing for this device in iTunes to start over completely but interestingly enough, the tracks and playlists were not removed. I then manually deleted all playlists in the Music app and synced again (music sync was still disabled). This removed the playlists from iTunes (make a backup of your .itl-file before doing this if you follow these instructions) but left the non-playing tracks on the phone. After this I restarted the phone, but it didn't change anything.

Finally I changed the language (!) of the phone (because I wanted the error messages in English for this post) and lo-and-behold, suddenly the Music app was empty (except for the stupid U2-album Apple shoved down our throats some years ago). I then enabled music sync in iTunes again and suddenly it all synced as expected with all tracks playable.

If someone follows these instructions, I would suggest that you

Disable music sync in iTunes
Sync
Disconnects the phone
Change the language
Open the app selector and kill Music app
Launch Music app again

Please let us know if this solved the problem.


Extremely slow write speed to encrypted external drive on Mavericks

I have the same problem, which I'm pretty sure is due to a combination of the way write operations work on flash memory and the way core storage (or any whole-volume) encryption works.

First, write behavior: unlike volatile memory (the stuff used in the memory of your computer) or hard disks, where any bit can be written to 0 or 1 at any time, flash memory has two main states: written and erased. Within "written" are 0 and 1. When you need to write to flash memory you must write an entire block that is currently in the erased state. File system software in the OS may know what blocks are free, but the controller and storage on a flash device don't. A special way for the OS to tell an SSD to make blocks available has been devised for "bus-connected" SSDs: it's called TRIM. USB protocol stacks don't, to my knowledge, support TRIM. So, basically, flash memory continues to fill up until there are no actual erased blocks, at which point the file system has to erase and rewrite blocks by reading them, merging in the new data, erasing, and writing them back out. That's why you see small-file write performance degrade on SSDs over time.

The special circumstances of encrypted volumes is interesting: depending on the way the encryption works, it may actually encrypt an entire volume, filling all the blocks with what appears to be random data even if the blocks are actually unused and would contain zeroes. So when you turn on FileVault (or otherwise enable core storage encryption), it basically consumes the entire volume, leaving no space for write operations. The file system has to constantly read, erase and rewrite blocks so that it can rewrite them with any encrypted data you want to put on it.

Now I will say right here that this is speculation based on a reasonable understanding of how things work, but there are people who actually know the details, who may correct or improve my explanation and I hope that they will do so.


Parallels Desktop Minimum Hard Disk Space to allocate?

If you check the space each VM actually takes it is dynamic. For example Windows might say 64GB of space remain, but in reality the size of the image it is in is actually a lot smaller. See here:

As you can see it only takes up 34GB rather than 64GB. A way to reduce space would be to uninstall applications or features you do not need within windows. I have done this with my Windows 8 VM.


Display thunderbolt is working, thunderbolt bridge is not

This question may be a duplicate. Try some of the suggestions here: How to force Thunderbolt-ethernet connection when switching networks without restarting computer?

It sounds to me like an issue with connecting to your router.

Try the suggestion to renew your DHCP lease under System Preferences > Network Preferences > Advanced for the Thunderbolt Ethernet. Or if you have a static IP address, make sure the right IP address, Subnet Mask, and the correct DNS server are entered.

Is there a reason you are trying to go through the Thunderbolt Bridge setting and not Thunderbolt Ethernet?

Also click on the Apple icon in the Menu Bar and look at your Locations. If something other than Automatic is selected, those Location preferences could be stopping your MBP from connecting to the Router. You will also see this at the top of the Network Preferences for your connection.

UPDATE

  Is there a reason you are trying to go through the Thunderbolt Bridge setting and not Thunderbolt Ethernet?

I asked you this above. When I looked at my MBP connected with a Thunderbolt Ethernet Adapter, I checked under Thunderbolt Bridge and saw the exact message you have.

The thing is that I am Connected via Thunderbolt Ethernet and all of my configurations for my connection to the router are there.


This answer is a continuation of my answer to the question: APFS - Is it possible to install 2 macOS versions inside one APFS container?

You can use Disk Utility under High Sierra to remove the APFS volume containing Mojava. However, removing Mojave also requires steps where commands are issued in a Terminal application window. Below are the steps I used to remove the Mojava.

Open the Disk Utility application.
Get the file system UUID of the Mojave 1 volume . Right click the icon labeled Mojava 1 in the Disk Utility application and select Get Info. In my case, the file system UUID is 0FF6C520-6C07-40ED-9AED-FD6E28A6E406.
Use Disk Utility to remove the APFS volume containing Mojava. Right click on the icon labeled Mojava 1 in the Disk Utility application and select Delete APFS Volume....
Boot to macOS Recovery.
Open a Terminal application window.
Enter the command below to disable System Integrity Protect (SIP) on next restart.

sudo  csrutil  disable

Boot back to High Sierra.
Open a Terminal application Window.
Enter the commands below to remove Mojava from APFS Volume Preboot.

diskutil  mount  disk2s2
cd /Volumes/Preboot
rm  -Rf  0FF6C520-6C07-40ED-9AED-FD6E28A6E406
cd  ~
diskutil  unmount  disk2s2

Enter the commands below to remove Mojava from APFS Volume My Recovery.

diskutil  mount  disk2s3
cd  "/Volumes/My Recovery"
rm  -Rf  0FF6C520-6C07-40ED-9AED-FD6E28A6E406
cd  ~
diskutil  unmount  disk2s3

Reset the SIP settings, by entering the command given below.

sudo  csrutil  clear

Restart the Mac


Macports has a port of it: https://trac.macports.org/browser/trunk/dports/devel/util-linux/Portfile

I did try to make a homebrew recipe for it, but there were some issues getting it to compile. It's definitely possible, but there are some problems to work out.

Update:

I've made a formula that can be installed with:

brew install mkdryden/homebrew-misc/namei

This is the original version, not the version pulled into util-linux. (not sure how much has changed since the original)


Different partition configuration between gpt and fdisk

Update 1

This step will involve configuring Master Boot Record (MBR) of your physical internal drive. The MBR is stored on the first 512 bytes of this drive. This space is shared by boot code and the MBR partition table.

  This step can not be preformed under OS X 10.11 (El Capitan) with System Integrity Protection (SIP) turn on. (This is the default setting.) If you are using OS X 10.11, you must disable SIP, complete this step, then restore SIP. See the link: How do I disable System Integrity Protection (SIP) AKA “rootless” on OS X 10.11, El Capitan?.

In a Terminal application window, enter the following commands. The first fdisk command flags the Windows partition as the active partition. The second fdisk command changes the Windows partition id to 7.

INPUT=$(printf  "f  4\nq\ny")
sudo  fdisk  -e  /dev/disk0  <<<"$INPUT"  &>/dev/null
INPUT=$(printf  "s  4\n7\nq\ny")
sudo  fdisk  -e  /dev/disk0  <<<"$INPUT"  &>/dev/null

You may need to restart your computer after completing this step.

Original Answer

The command fdisk displays the contents of the Master Boot Record (MBR) partition table. This table can only contain 4 entries and is stored at address 0 of your disk. The command gpt displays the contents of the GUID partition table (GPT). This table can contain 120 entries and starts at address 1 of your disk. (A backup GPT is also stored at the end of the disk.) Legacy systems use a MBR scheme while more modern computers use a GPT scheme. Normally, OS X uses a GPT scheme. When the GPT is employed, the MBR table still exists, but is now called a Protective Master Boot Record (PMBR) table. This PMBR table contains a single entry with ID of EE. This fools any legacy applications, that only use a MBR scheme, into seeing the disk as occupied by a single partition.

Older Mac computers install Windows using the MBR scheme. It is my understanding this is also a requirement for Windows 7 installations. To accommodate both schemes simultaneously, Apple shrinks the EE partition in the MBR table to end at the same location as the first partition in the GPT. Usually, the next three partitions in the GPT match the last three partitions in the MBR table.

Anyway, as far as I can tell, if you enter the command given below in a Terminal application windows, your partitions should be fixed.

sudo diskutil eraseVolume "Free Space" name /dev/disk0s4

While the above command should fix the partitioning, the 4th partition in the MBR partition table will not be marked as "active". So if you still can not boot to Windows, let me know and I will include steps to mark this partition as "active".


Hold down the Command and R keys at startup to start the computer from the Recovery system. The Recovery menu that appears includes the option to restore from a Time Machine backup.

First: delete your SSD drive using Disk Utility. (Mac OS Extended (Journaled))
Second: Choose for Backup from TimeMachine.

And now we wait...

It would be wise to connect your machine using an network cable instead of WiFi.


Running Say Command When Mac Is Logged Out

You would either have to wake the computer first, or you'd be locked out if the settings in system preferences disallowed you from such a thing.


How would I go about making a stand alone app on my dock to open a game using a terminal command?

create the following plain text file:

#!/bin/bash
cd /Users/Max/.wine/drive_c/Program\ Files/Electronic\ Arts/Dead\ Space/
exec wine Dead\ Space.exe

save it as dead_space.command

in Terminal, change it to an executabe:

sudo chmod +rx dead_space.command

Now, the file dead_space.command should start your game when you double click on it.


How to import my data from Android into my new iPhone?

You can use Apple's official Move to iOS app, available on Google Play. This automatically moves the content you select from your Android phone to your iPhone. Install the app on your Android device and follow the instructions.

Move from Android to iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch - Apple Support


Cycle through windows with keyboard in Adobe Acrobat

You can try Cmd + F6. It's working on both Mac OS & PC.


How can I automatically tether on Macbook when I don't have wifi?

The priority given by your Mac to the various connections are determined by the order of services listed in your Network settings. To view this:

Go to System Preferences > Network:

So the best way to achieve what you want is to use a USB connection for your iPhone tethering and then change the order as follows:

Click on the Cog/Gear icon (on the right of the minus '-' sign at bottom left)
Select Set Service Order...
In the Service Order window that appears, click and drag the Wi-Fi connection so it is at the top and then move your iPhone USB connection so that it’s second)
Click OK
Exit System Preferences

Now, if your Mac has no Wi-Fi connection it’ll go to the next one in your Service order to see if that’s available and so on.

Note: You don’t have to use a USB connection for your iPhone tethering, however I recommend this as it has the extra benefits of keeping your iPhone charged and ensures a stable connection.


Logitech K750 keyboard: § and < have switched places

It sounds like a keyboard type glitch, the machine thinks it is ANSI instead of ISO or vice versa.  See if this helps:

Sometimes a machine will forget which type keyboard is attached, with the result that certain keys get transposed from what the user expects. The fix for this is run the Keyboard Setup Assistant again. Sometimes there is a button for "Change Keyboard Type" visible in System Preferences/Keyboard. If not, you can try trashing the file

sudo mv /Library/Preferences/com.apple.keyboardtype.plist /Library/Preferences/com.apple.keyboardtype.plist.orig

Another possibility may be to open Terminal and type:

sudo open /System/Library/CoreServices/KeyboardSetupAssistant.app/Contents/MacOS/KeyboardSetupAssistant


Have you checked that it listening on the correct network interface? If connecting to localhost:21 works, but connecting to your LAN IP does not, it's likely just a misconfiguration. You can confirm with something like this:

$ netstat -an | grep LISTEN
tcp4       0      0  *.21                *.*                    LISTEN

You want to see *.21 or 0.0.0.0.21 or 192.168.0.x.21.

If you see ::1.21 or 127.0.0.1.21 then it's only listening on the localhost interface and won't be reachable from other systems.

I couldn't reproduce your problem on my Yosemite system; when I ran ftpd with the arguments you provided, it correctly listened on all interfaces (*.21).


Where's my free space gone on my MP3 player?

It might also be the trash -- I'm not sure how DiskInventoryX copes with trash directories on external drives. It might be worth emptying your trash while the drive is mounted.


Upgrade to iOS 13 gets stuck at the Apple logo and the horizontal progress bar

You may want to read If you can't update or restore your iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch on Apple's website. Essentially, You have two main options.

1. Force restart your iPhone

In other words, force your iPhone to reboot. How you do this will depend on your model of iPhone. Since you haven't specified this, refer to Force restart iPhone on Apple's website.

2. Put your iPhone into Recovery Mode

If you have an iPhone 8 or X follow these steps:

Connect your iPhone to a computer with a Lightning cable
Open iTunes on the computer
Press then release the volume up button on your iPhone
Immediately press then release the volume down button on your iPhone
Hold the side button, and keep holding it down till you see the Recovery Mode
screen (this appears after the Apple logo

If you have an iPhone 7 follow these steps:

Connect your iPhone to a computer with a Lightning cable
Open iTunes on the computer
Press and hold both the side button and volume down button on your iPhone
Keep holding them down till you see the Recovery Mode screen (this appears after the Apple logo)

If you have an iPhone 6S follow these steps:

Connect your iPhone to a computer with a Lightning cable
Open iTunes on the computer
Press and hold both the Home and Lock button
Keep holding them down till you see the Recovery Mode screen (this appears after the Apple logo)


Atom has some known issues with performance.  They've been working on them, and are getting better, but they are still there.  Until they get better performance, I'd recommend using Visual Studio Code (Free, also based on the Electron framework, but tends to perform [a little bit] better than Atom all around) or, if you want the fastest, then Sublime Text is about as good as you get in a GUI text editor, though it'll set you back $80.

There are numerous other text editors out there, all with their own pros and cons, and it really depends on what kind of development you're doing. PHPStorm, for example, has some really nice PHP-specific dev tools that are harder to set up in other editors.

As a full-stack dev, (I use Vue for front-end work, and Node.js / PHP for the backend) I've settled on VSC for now, until Atom catches up speed-wise.  I get a lot of flak from friends about using a Microsoft product on my Mac, but I am a firm believer in getting things done with the best tool for the job.  Currently, for my needs, that's Microsoft's editor running on a Mac.


How do I get the file path of an image in Spotlight?

Select the picture and then hold down the command (apple) key.
If you're not running Yosemite, the shortcut is: CommandOption

The Path'll show at the bottom of the spotlight window. It's not scrollable, you might just be able to see part of it.

Or,double click on the Spotlight result to open the image, then right-click on the image windows title.

If you want a copyable text version of the path, just drag the icon next to the window title into a Terminal window.


In Automator, can I combine 2 or more variables into a new variable?

Finally, there is no "combine variables" action per say in automator, but you can add a custom text variable, and drag another variable from the library variables into any part of the text in the value field. In my case, needing to combine paths to folders, this is the same thing.

create a "text" variable from Variables > Text & Data > Text.
Drag the desired variable into the "Value" field anywhere you need it.

Done. You can now add the text-variable you just made to the "copy Finder items" action as the destination. This enables you to use it on ANY system, ANY user. Very handy for an installation file, or any dock-app with custom paths (but still relative paths to whatever user is logged in).


You don't need a power converter, as Apple power supplies will all take 100-240V at 50 or 60 Hz, so a simple mechanical adaptor will do. Having said that, anything that will work with a PC power supply should also work with a Mac.


It looks like running the following command in Terminal, or supposedly through a script, will start the screen saver:

/System/Library/Frameworks/ScreenSaver.framework/Resources/ScreenSaverEngine.app/Contents/MacOS/ScreenSaverEngine

You could then schedule the screen saver to run a couple of minutes after the time the computer is scheduled to turn on. See this SuperUser question for some alternatives for task scheduling in Mac OS X.


Run bash command with current URL as parameter from Firefox and/or safari

You could create an automator service like this:

The service receives no input. It gets the URL of the current page in Safari, and passes it as the argument to open -a Miro.app.

You could then assign it a keyboard shortcut, et voilà.


How does “Optimize Mac Storage” for iCloud Drive interact with Spotlight and Time Machine?

Can you still search the contents of those files in Spotlight?

Yes, for a while. Spotlight doesn't purge the files from the index (./Spotlight-V100), however it doesn't particularly ensure they remain.

Therefore, when macOS stores a file in iCloud and removes it from your home folder, the Spotlight index retains an index of the contents, but doesn't actively refresh the index. For example, resetting your Spotlight index will remove the file contents from the index. To add the files back, download them from iCloud, at which point Spotlight will index them once again.

  What happens to those files in Time Machine backups?

Time Machine does not back up files in iCloud. They are ‘presumed safe’ in the cloud. They will remain on any older backups, but new incremental backups will observe the files as having been deleted.

If you restore a Time Machine backup on to a new Mac, you will log in to iCloud as part of the Setup Assistant, at which point the files will be accessible once again as normal.

  Also, what happens if you edit those files on an iPad? Will the files be automatically downloaded again to the Mac?

Optimize Mac Storage attempts to keep your recent files available on your Mac. Therefore, when a file is edited by any device, your Mac will download the file locally, in case you want to continue editing there.

  If not, can you search the new contents of those files in Spotlight?

Since the files are downloaded on editing, the new contents will be made available in the Spotlight index when the index is updated.

  Will new Time Machine backups have a local copy with the new contents, the old contents or no local copy at all?

If a backup takes place whilst the file is downloaded, the new contents will be backed up. If the file is only in the cloud when Time Machine performs a backup, the file will not be backed up.


Running script through launchd with no annoying prompts

Convert to Shell Script and AppleScript Pair

Convert your check for the battery status to a shell script. The shell script can then run regularly through a launchd job ticket without presenting any user interface.

When the conditions are met, your shell script can launch an AppleScript to interact with the user.

This assumes you use an ~/Library/LaunchAgent approach for the launchd job ticket. A computer wide launchd job will not be able to launch the AppleScript component in the appropriate user session.

Alternatively, you could use a third party tool to trigger on a battery event, such as Power Manager; this would avoid polling your battery and improve your battery's performance.


Can I re-use an email address for a new Apple ID that was previously a secondary email address?

Yes, you should be able to. Having an email address as a secondary email address on another Apple ID does not mean that the email address does not have an Apple ID already associated with it. Try to regain access to the existing Apple ID associated with the email address at iforgot.apple.com.


How to set up WebDAV (with wfsctl) on macOS High Sierra with Server 5.6.1?

And ... I found the solution (so far).

The issue was that I did not use Wiki Server before on macOS Sierra + Server. Wiki Server was turned off. However, to enable WebDAV sharing on macOS High Sierra + Server, you need to activate Wiki Server in Server.app and turn WebDAV sharing on.

The tip was found on Tod Olthoff's blog: http://www.toddolthoff.com/blog_files/c6e4e39502d35b674693ad80ac2ca042-445.html

So, the only thing I had to do to get my wfsctl managed WebDAV shares running again was to turn Wiki Server on and WebDAV sharing on in Wiki Server.


Is shutting down and restarting different from doing restart?

The only difference is power is actually (mostly) removed from the components (logic board, PCIe bus, etc.)

The difference from back in the day, was called a warm restart or a cold restart .

Why the difference?

It depends on the issue.  If you're having a hardware issue like a track pad not responding or a GPU acting weird, you may be asked to shutdown and then restart, usually removing the power cord and waiting for a period of time in between.  If you're having an issue with a service, like your web server not working, a warm restart is sufficient.

So, from a software perspective, they are identical.  From a hardware perspective, the difference is power is actually removed and reapplied.

Now, usually cold (re)boots are done.

It's important to note that an SMC reset sits in between a warm and a cold boot.  When you reset the SMC, you are "resetting" the values the chip has accumulated back to factory defaults.  You're forcing the SMC to go back to when it was first initiated and needs to "relearn" everything power, temp and fan related with your Mac.  When you reset the SMC, you actually do a warm reset as well.

  ...my computer freezes unless I do a restart about once a week.

You have a hardware issue - it's not normal to need to continually reboot a Mac in this manner.

  She further explained...the latter allows the system to more fully reset...you additionally wait ~20 seconds before turning it back on).

To truly get a cold reboot/reset, you need to disconnect all power.  So depending on your Mac model, you'd need to disconnect the battery as well.

  An Applecare engineer explain this is likely because of errors that can accumulate in non-ECC RAM, which a shutdown flushes out.

This statement from the Apple engineer is incorrect.

non-ECC memory isn't "building up" a cache of errors that must be flushed out;  that's not how this works.  While non-ECC memory won't "fix" the corrupted data, corruption is actually very rare, especially in desktop computers.    The worst that will happen is a glitch or a hung app.  If you're having this all the time, you may have faulty memory.

Start by running Apple Diagnostics (Hold D while booting).


Can my iPhone have more than one iCloud account on it at a time?

No - the iCloud section of the Settings app only allows for one account on iOS 5.

You can however add as many iCloud accounts to the Mail, Contacts, Calendars as you have time to set up. You will see that you can enable the majority of the services on each subsequent non-main iCloud account.

The following items work only on the main account:

Backup
Documents & Data
Photo Stream

The following item is exclusive - any one (but only one) account can have:

Find My iPhone

For example, I use one iCloud account as my primary personal account and have a second account for a consulting business. Here is what that non-main account looks like when set up.


Filtering files by source with Automator

Based on your comment, 'I want to say "PDFs downloaded from URL contains "bank name" move to folder "banking"', here is how I'd do it in Automator:

In Automator, create a new Workflow, adding the following Actions:

Find Finder Items, with settings:

Search [Downloads]
[All] of the following are true
[Kind] [is] [PDF]

Run Shell Script,  with settings:

Shell [/bin/bash]
Pass input [as arguments]
Replace the default code with the example code below.

for f in "$@"; do
    [[ $(mdls -name kMDItemWhereFroms "$f") == *bankname* ]] && echo "$f"
done

Note: In the code above, replace "bankname" in *bankname* with the actual bank name in the URL.

Move Finder Items, with settings:

To [Banking]   [] Replacing existing files

Check Replacing existing files if appropriate.


OS X prefers case insensitivity but TimeMachine seems to require case sensitivity?

The linked answer doesn't say that Time Machine requires ...Mac OS Extended (Case-sensitive, Journaled).... It only says Time machine requires an Apple specific HFS+ filesystem to store backups and it should be read as the Apple specific HFS+ filesystem.

With other words: Time Machine can't backup data directly to NTFS/FAT32 or EXT3/4 volumes.


Terminal: “Invalid Argument: dirname” (El Capitan)

Found a solution! I reinstalled El Capitan from the recovery partition (hold command-R while restarting). The errors are now gone.


How to get Pages to automatically save documents as .docx files

Pages does not support saving as a Word .doc or .docx file.  Your only option is to Export your document to that format, which obviously isn't nearly as easy as simply hitting the Save button.

It's important to note that Pages support of .doc/.docx isn't perfect.  If the document has a lot of formatting or review comments, there's a pretty good chance of lost formatting or comments when you export your document.

A free alternative to purchasing Office:Mac is to use Office Online, which will happily run in Safari or Chrome on your Mac.  If this is a short-term need, you can download a free trial of Office:Mac.  If you have an iPad, there's a free version of Word for it too.  I realize that none of these are what you've asked about; I provide them in case an alternative to using Pages will work for you.


Change m4v type from Home Video to Movie

The best approach is using Subler to open the m4v file and then fetch the metadata from the iTunes Store or MovieDB. Then, just save it and add it to your iTunes library. This is as automated as the process will get.


Take a screenshot of the top-most window

I just hacked together this little tool.

https://github.com/vorgos/QuickGrab

It is a command line tool that will capture the top most active window or any window you specify just like the -l option in the newer version of screencapture.

Hope that helped.


Change default behaviour of play/pause button

This is a old post but the software recommend Beardedspice works fine on my Mac. Please read the full answer because it provides much more detail.


Recommended way to move data when changing hard drive in a Mac

I assume you purposing making a Time Machine backup to a external third drive then use the Migration Assistant to restore from this backup. Another option would be to put the old drive in a shell and plug into a USB port. You could then just use the Migration Assistant to restore after a fresh install of macOS to the new SSD.


Anyway to add new processor to MacBook 5,1 or MacBook Air 204

Nope. MacBook Air processors (and RAM and storage, at least in that model) are soldered to the logic board, so there is no way to remove that processor from the logic board without destroying both of them.


Zip file extraction corruption/issues - no unzipping into sub-folders

This isn't answering your question, but might I suggest you try The Unarchiver - I find it much better than Archive Utility.app. I've used it for years and never seen the problem you've experienced with Apple's utility.


How can I directly access apps with single hot-keys?

There is Free app in the App Store, so far so good:

https://apps.apple.com/us/app/hotkey-app/id975890633?mt=12

It even has a super convenient Toggle visibility of application option


MacBook Air: What taking up all my hard drive space

Grand Perspective is a bit of open source software that visualises the space taken up in a folder. Run it and look for the biggest squares. Hover your mouse over a square and the bottom left of the window shows you the full path to the file you are hovering over.

I prefer it to letting the finder calculate folder sizes, because this is much faster and the results are very easy to understand.


Well, I'm in luck.  I wandered around google drive, and right-click on the relevant folder showed me activity in March.  And, strangely, 14 of the band files had been deleted. Google drive had an option to restore them, individually.  After that downloading the whole sparse bundle as a .zip file, and expanding it, the bundle is now recognized again.

I think the file deletions happened when I was messing around with google drive settings, changing it from "Ask before deleting everywhere" to "Remove items everywhere", on a computer that was sync-ing a much smaller subset of directories.

Lesson, (a) don't depend on Google for anything (although in fairness Drive did provide the tools to recover), (b) for important things, have multiple backups


Normal temp in a MacBook Pro while using an external screen

Those temps seem fine to me.

The late 2011 MBP models usually range from about 40ºC (104ºF) to 100ºC (212ºF) depending on whether the CPU is idle or under load. CPU temps (just like ambient temperatures) typically have a bearing on GPU temps too, especially within the extremely confined spaces of a MacBook.

If you're interested, you can check out the Intel Mac Temperature Database for an indication of the various temperatures that Intel Macs run at. Unfortunately the database doesn't separate out GPU temps, but it's still a useful guide.

That said, I do understand your concern considering your Mac's history. I would just keep an eye on those temps when you're in Oregon to see how much the ambient temperature affects things. But a GPU temp in the mid 70s (ºC) or high 160s (ºF) is nothing to worry about.


Why is permission denied on this folder?

To be able to list or enter a directory you need execute permission

e.g

drwxr-xr-x   2 mark  staff      68 18 Mar 14:00 example

Use chmod to change the permissions, also check the setting of umask to see the default


What is the "Sign in with Apple ID - The password for "" needs to be updated" dialog?

Since Apple stopped selling OS X on DVDs with 10.7 Lion (which was available on a USB drive, but that was a transition concession), Apple has built in the assumption that every Mac has reasonably high speed internet access (it can be brought into an Apple Store for that if necessary) and every user has an Apple ID. macOS as it is now called uses your Apple ID for lots of things: syncing with iCloud, keeping track of what Apps you have purchased/installed from the App Store, keeping track of what music you have purchased from iTunes, and lots more.
In general, macOS does not actually keep track of your Apple ID password. Instead, it uses your Apple ID password from time-to-time to create or update public/private key pairs that it uses for authentication across the internet. Those private keys are stored in your Keychain, which is protected by the login password to your local account on your Mac (and by other things).
It is a complicated system, but it allows you to do things like see which devices are "authorized" for your Apple ID and revoke authorizations for devices, or use Find My Mac to find a lost device in a way that allows you to find your device without even Apple being able to find it without your permission.
In a system like this, sometimes things get out of sync by accident and sometimes on purpose (like when you revoke access for a device). In order to resync, the system will present a dialog like the one in the post. My guess is that the bare bones dialog comes up when some faceless utility has a problem. You get a better dialog from the Apple App Store when it needs your password.
I am very security conscious and also get suspicious about dialog boxes that just pop up and ask for passwords. However, so far I am not aware of an exploit that tries to get your Apple ID password this way, and if the part in quotes is, in fact, the correct email address for the Apple ID for the account I am using, I generally suspect the request to be legitimate. Being naturally curious I try to investigate where it is coming from and why it is needed, but that has been made harder with the Console making it harder to see historical log messages, so I have not been very successful lately.
A reasonable thing to do is, if you have no reason to suspect anything has changed that would cause you to need to refresh your password, just hit cancel the first time it comes up. Perhaps run a virus scan. Perhaps reboot your computer. If you are using Catalina, there is an "Apple ID" preference panel in System Preferences, and that has a "Password & Security" section. Use that to verify everything is good, and fix any issues it informs you about.
If the dialog comes up again after that, I usually go ahead and enter the password. Then again, I monitor iCloud activity and authorized devices, and do not store terribly sensitive or embarrassing stuff in iCloud, plus I have two-factor authentication turned on, so I am not terribly worried about my password being stolen. You have to make your own security versus functionality decision.


everymac.com is an awesome source for this kind of information. They've got detailed specs for all Macs.*

Yours is listed as supporting a maximum of 6GB of RAM. Technically, Apple says that this computer only supports 4, but it has been proven to actually support 6:

  Apple officially supports a maximum of 4 GB of RAM but third-parties
  have been able to upgrade the system to 6 GB of RAM using one 2 GB and
  one 4 GB memory module.

You can buy a 6GB kit from OWC, a great company, for $120.

If you use a lot of apps and regularly run up against the edge of your available memory, everything you add will make a difference; the computer can take advantage of all of it. However, since you've currently got 2, you should consider if 4 will be enough or if you want all 6.

*In additon to Everymac, I recommend the app Mactracker for Mac and iOS (free). It has detailed info and specs for all Mac models.


macOS, Use fn + Command keyboard shortcuts work

Even with both  Backspace ⌫  & Delete ⌦ keys,  Cmd ⌘  Delete ⌦  does not clear the line forward of the cursor, even though  Cmd ⌘   Backspace ⌫   clears it rearward.
It would appear the inconsistency isn't in the  Fn   key itself, but in the OS's usage of  Cmd ⌘   Delete ⌦ .
 Opt ⌥  Delete ⌦  deletes one word forward of the cursor, as does  Fn   Cmd ⌘   Backspace ⌫ .


Automatically move old music tracks on iTunes to external HDD

Steps to perform this:

Navigate to the location you want to copy the files to and leave the
window open in the Finder.
Create a smart playlist in iTunes by Option-Clicking the new
playlist button in the bottom left of the main window.
Configure the playlist with the appropriate criteria, such as:
{Last Played} {is before} {1/1/2008} or whatever you consider
"Old."  Click Ok
Select Edit, Select All and drag the items to the folder you opened in step 1.  Wait for the copy to finish and you'll have all your old music in that folder.
To automate the process, use Automator and configure a new workflow similar to the following image:
Rig up the workflow you just created to run.  Put it in the dock, use Crontab or run it at login.