Can I give away my iPhone apps with my phone?

TL;DR

technically: yes

practically: no

legal: untested, your mileage may vary

Of course you can give away whatever is in your possession. Your friend can keep the apps as long as he clicks carefully and doesn't allow iTunes to delete them.

I am not a lawyer, but I don't think you own the software - just a license to use it. If you look at the current store terms, it asks us not to transfer a license among other restrictions.

  You may not rent, lease, lend, sell, transfer redistribute, or
  sublicense the Licensed Application and, if you sell your Mac Computer
  or iOS Device to a third party, you must remove the Licensed
  Application from the Mac Computer or iOS Device before doing so.

To complicate things, there may be local laws that prevent this sort of language or restriction, or other problems with an "agreement" where one party might not be able to change or negotiate any of the terms. Get legal advice if you are worried about this end of things.

Technically, the apps will run until the phone needs to be restored or the user removes one or all of the apps. The next software update will have that person either losing the apps, needing your password to download them again, or needing use of a computer that is authorized to transfer your apps to that device.

If you give them the password to your account, they could be nice and only access the apps or run up charges against your name or account (or even change your password).

The best technical workaround if you want more than one account's apps on one device is to let him sync his apps from his computer and you place your credentials on that device and download whatever purchases of yours that you want on that device. Every time the device syncs - the apps from the computer should update and it will offer to transfer your purchases - but the warning that the other password is needed to transfer will pop up each time a sync happens. Your apps won't update or delete during a sync. You could log in to update them. In practice - it's a nice way to try some things, but your friend will likely tire of the warnings and delete the apps and buy the ones he wishes to keep so his syncs are fast and warning free.

In the old days when it was just music and less powerful iPods, I seem to remember 5 being the big number to remember. 5 accounts worth of protected music could run on any one iPod. Your account would work on 5 computers and there was no restriction how many iPods connected to a mac so the whole neighborhood could have connected and gotten music from your one computer.

Now it's a little harder to remember - 5 computers get purchases, up to 10 can auto download purchases and no word on how many can manually load or how many accounts are "allowed" technically on one device. The hassle factor keeps me from getting any more than two or three accounts purchases on any one device at the same time.

I hope I didn't go on too long here - there's always that edit button :-)


How to get the amount generated by app before deleting it from iTunes Connect

The amount earned will be transferred into your bank account automatically without you having to do anything. However, when that happens will depend on a number of factors, such as whether you still have any others apps on the App Store and therefore still generate an income from them, etc.

If you have some concerns, or wish to just generally discuss this with someone, then contact the Apple Developer Program Support number for your country. You can find it at: https://developer.apple.com/contact/phone/.


When will we have LPDDR4x memory in MBs/MBPs?

The actual "bottleneck" here is the fact that your "theory" is incorrect.

The Intel CPUs used do not support LPDDR4 memory at all. It won't work no matter what you do. They support only DDR4 and LPDDR3 RAM. Only the 10th gen Intel mobile processors support LPDDR4 - and the new MacBook Pro has a 9th gen CPU.

The 10th gen Intel mobile processors have been announced and some models have just recently launched - they support the new LPDDR4 RAM, which is almost the only new feature. However, they're not used by Apple yet. It is logical to assume that at some point, Apple will switch to newer CPUs that support newer types of memory - but this time around was not it.


Where are the photos in Contacts stored on my MacBook (High Sierra)?

First use Finder and Go > Go to Folder... > (enter the following path)

~/Library/Application Support/AddressBook/Sources/

From there navigate to the only subfolder (it should be a string of numbers and letters) and lastly, enter a folder called 'Images'. You'll see your contact image files in .jpeg format in this folder.

For reference the end path should be:

~/Library/Application Support/AddressBook/Sources/#######-###-###-########/Images/

I hope this helped!


How to use macports Python in a cron job?

The result of the PATH variable is quite different in the cron world. Invoke the script with the full path to the python binary (e.g. /opt/local/bin/python2.7) and you should be good.

This can be examined by running env as cronjob and comparing it to the result of running env as yourself in Terminal:

user's cron env:

PATH=/usr/bin:/bin:/usr/sbin:/sbin
...
SHELL=/bin/bash
HOME=/Users/user
USER=user
PWD=/
...

compared to user's env:

PATH=/opt/local/bin:/opt/local/sbin:/usr/bin:/bin:/usr/sbin:/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/X11/bin
...
SHELL=/bin/bash
HOME=/Users/user
USER=user
PWD=/Users/user
...

Alternatively you may add the PATH to the crontab:

sudo nano /var/cron/tabs/user

In newer systems (probably ≥10.6):

sudo nano /private/var/at/tabs/user

Change

...

*       *       *       *       *       some command

to

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

*       *       *       *       *       some command


These are AppleDouble files. As you discovered by opening them, they contain metadata for the files that you copied.

Since the disk is formatted as MS-DOS, OS X needs somewhere to store certain metadata for the file. This metadata is stored in an AppleDouble file. Such metadata includes Finder information and extended attributes.

These files begin with a dot, so are hidden. You shouldn't unhide these files, or modify them. You can remove AppleDouble files using dot_clean -m


Location of iTunes Playlists (for restore after crash)

According to HT1660 playlist information is stored in

~/Music/iTunes/iTunes Library.itl

(and in ~/Music/iTunes/iTunes Music Library.xml but that is generated from the file above by iTunes and primarily there to give other applications access to your music library). If you restored your Music folder from the backup the file should have gotten restored as well.


Enable/Disable Sharing (SSH/File) Based on Network?

You can use ControlPlane for this. It allows you to control your context, like home and other, and set actions for it: when 'enter' home context, enable file sharing, when 'leave' home context, disable file sharing.


Downgrade to iTunes with App Store support

I ended up downloading the official iTunes installer from Apple and reinstalling it. Since it's the newest version, I didn't get any errors saying that I have a newer version.
Works as before now.


Can't boot Mac, only shows a Folder with a Question Mark?

I just went through this my self!

Your Mac can't find anything to boot from. Or more specifically, it can't find the system folder on your primary boot device.

Try booting from your OS X DVD and running Utilities -> Disk Utility to check your boot drive for errors.

To boot from your DVD, insert in to Mac, turn off Mac, and hold C while you turn it on. You have to hold it until it chimes IIRC. That'll tell it to boot from the DVD.


Freetype Code Signing Error (Xcode 7.1) App Upload Issue

The error suggests a subcomponent is not signed. Use the --deep flag with codesign:

  --deep

  When signing a bundle, specifies that nested code content such as helpers, frameworks, and
  plug-ins, should be recursively signed in turn. Beware that all signing options you specify
  will apply, in turn, to such nested content.
  When verifying a bundle, specifies that any nested code content will be recursively verified as
  to its full content. By default, verification of nested content is limited to a shallow inves-tigation investigation
  tigation that may not detect changes to the nested code.
  When displaying a signature, specifies that a list of directly nested code should be written to
  the display output. This lists only code directly nested within the subject; anything nested
  indirectly will require recursive application of the codesign command.

Apple's Technical Note 2206: OS X Code Signing in Depth provides more insight.


Missing Mail.app in Finder, but exists in /Applications folder

Thanks to the hint from @Zero, there is a way to Hide and Show individual files, including applications from Finder by using Terminal.

To Show individual files:

sudo chflags nohidden Mail.app/

To Hide individual files:

sudo chflags hidden Mail.app/

Depending upon the file, you may not need to use sudo, but it won't hurt in any case (other than needing to type in a password).

Disclaimer: I found the key to my answer mentioned in a comment here: https://apple.stackexchange.com/a/65175/84492


Favicons + text for wide tabs, just text for narrow tabs

Yes, you can enable the old horizontal tab scrolling with both favicons and titles always visible by disabling the new "Narrow Tabs" feature.
First you need to give Terminal full disk access:
Go to System Preferences > Security and Privacy > Privacy > Full Disk Access then
click the + button and select Terminal.app to give it full disk access.
After giving Terminal full disk access, you can use Terminal to set user defaults in Safari allowing you to disable the new "Narrow Tabs" feature.
Method #1:

Close Safari
Run Terminal and type:

defaults write com.apple.Safari DebugDisableNarrowTabs -bool YES

Run Safari, it should now use the old tab behavior (horizontal tab scrolling with both favicons and titles always visible)

Method #2:

Close Safari
Run Terminal and type:

defaults write com.apple.Safari IncludeInternalDebugMenu -bool YES

Run Safari
Open the new Debug menu in Safari
Safari > Debug > Tab Features > Narrow Tabs (uncheck for the old behavior)


Let me start by saying that there are lots of good third party apps for automatically logging in to web forms. I highly recommend using one of those.

To answer your question: Yes, you can do this with a combination of Automator and AppleScript. Here's how.

Open Automator. Go to File-> New. Select Service.
Type applescript into the search bar near the top left.
Drag the Run AppleScript item to the area on the right.
Replace the purple code that starts in the box with this:

tell application "System Events"
    keystroke "username"
    keystroke tab
    keystroke "password"
end tell

Now replace the username text with your username, and replace the password text with your password.
This will have the computer type your username, hit tab, and type your password.
Now, at the top of the Automator window, set Service receives to no input and in to the app you need this to happen in.
Automator shoud now look like this:

Save this and give it a name. Now, go to the app you selected at the top right and put your cursor in the username field.

Go to the app's menu (next to the Apple menu) and choose Services-> {what you named your Automator app}.

It should run the Automator workflow and 'play back' the keystrokes.

Again, this is the hard, insecure way. I highly recommend apps like 1Password and LastPass.


An Access Point would be sufficient - & cheapest.

[just some examples from Amazon, no recommendations specifically. Note, the filter on Amazon isn't great, there are other device types in there, as well as simple Access Points]

An Access Point needs no additional functionality other than being able to push a signal further.
You wire it via your existing Ethernet to where the signal will reach the garden. All routing/DHCP functionality is then still provided by your existing router.

If you can't, for any reason, get an Ethernet cable far enough to reach, then you would need a Range Extender, which is in essence the same thing, but wireless throughout. I'd still go for an AP as first choice, if at all possible.


Resetting screen brightness setting in touchbar MacBook Pro during boot

I found this issue with the touchbar not showing anything happens only if you've file vault on.

After booting my system I just assumed it was at the login screen and asking for password. After entering the password it logged me in and the touchbar controls appeared again.


Can iTunes change metadata on the actual CD?

Audio CDs contain no metadata at all. They are also incapable of being written to.

The data, as @dwightk guessed, is stored locally after consulting the CDDB. If the 'album' in question has never correctly been reported to the CDDB, as is often the case for home recording or limited distributions, then it can make poor guesses.

It was certainly possible at one time to correctly report an album back to CDDB to give them the correct data, but I haven't done this in 10 years or more & no longer remember the procedure, sorry.
As far as I'm aware - again this is not something I can test right now, once iTunes has fetched the data from the CDDB, it then a)saves it to any converted MP3/AAC files it makes & b) saves the 'original data' with a fingerprint to recognise the same CD if inserted again, so it doesn't have to perform the lookup in future.
Deleting this will only make it find the same incorrect data a second time, so your 'fix' is to get the CDDB updated with correct information. I would guess the data is stored inside the iTunes Library.xml, which is not a structure you can readily edit. Perhaps deleting the "CD" whilst it is inserted would clear the data & make it consult the CDDB again, once their data has been corrected.

Late addition
I found this link which sets out how to send the data; it claims to work for iTunes but I cannot test it.
7 Steps To Add Your Songs To The CDDB Database

  Insert the CD (whether homemade, replicated or duplicated from a master image) in your computer CD drive
  Do not import the CD yet
  Select all the tracks, right click and select Get Info
  Click the Info tab and enter the album title, artist name, year and genre
  Right click in each song title fields (Track 1, Track 2, etc.) or double click to edit to  the individual track names. Double-check for
  typos and make sure you have the track order correct.
  When you are all done, click, OK.
  If you want other users to also be able to see the correct album title, artist information, and track titles, highlight all the tracks
  again, go up to the top menu bar, and click Advanced / Submit Track
  Names to upload them to the CDDB Database. That’s it.
  If you want the database update to happen a bit faster than a few days, repeat this process from another computer/iTunes account. This
  speeds the Gracenote “verification” process up because you are
  essentially “verifying” the database entry from another computer.


I think we could use some more detail about your VPN, I'm guessing it's openvpn?

From memory you should allow 'route all comms' in the server settings and create a default route from your vpn-client subnet to the server's gateway or exit nic. You'll also want to make sure firewall settings allow traffic between the IPs & ports you want.

Finally, check what can ping what else to determine the point of the problem. Check if your client can ping the server's internal VPN IP address, its external interface while traffic is routed through the VPN, then its default gateway. If that doesn't highlight the problem and you can ping the external gateway while traffic is routed through the vpn (use traceroute to confirm the path) check if the server can actually reach the external hosts you're attempting to connect to.


Filling the inputs of SecurityAgent if they exist?

This worked

set appName to "username"
set appPass to "password"

tell application "System Events"
    repeat while exists (processes where name is "SecurityAgent")
        tell process "SecurityAgent"
            if exists (text field 1 of window 1) then
                set value of text field 1 of window 1 to appName
                set value of text field 2 of window 1 to appPass
            end if
            click button "Allow" of group 1 of window 1
        end tell
        delay 0.2
    end repeat
end tell


Connect 3 External Displays to iMac (Retina 5K, 27-inch, 2017)

I have attached 3 external displays to my MacBook circa late 2011. I stumbled across this nifty product:
Diamond USB Multi-Display Adapter

1 monitor is via the MiniDisplay port and 2 are attached to a USB hub (at USB 2.0 speed).

However, on some forum (that I can't even find anymore) someone mentioned this could possibly cause my CPU to overheat. I have used this 3 monitor config for a few days with no problems and I just started monitoring CPU temp.

I suspect that the performance on those USB monitors is awful? I've no idea. I know so little about graphics, I don't even know how to test them for performance...


Possible to use airport extreme as second hard drive?

Do you mean a USB drive attached to the AirPort Extreme?

The router does not itself have a hard drive. And the facility to add a hard drive is meant as a backup or network storage not as a second hard drive per se.

That being said, you could use this option for storage of seldom used files that may be taking up too much room on your MBP. But accessing them will be much slower than files on your computer. If that is acceptable to you then it will work out well for you.

Good luck!


Go the to the Apple menu (top left) => About this mac.

The existing versions are following :

OS X 10.10 Yosemite
OS X 10.9 Mavericks
OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion
OS X 10.7 Lion


iPhone 5 always asks for username when connect to Wifi

The problem is that iOS is detecting your network as an Enterprise network that requires username and password.
The work-around:
Manually enter the network type into iOS. To do this with iOS 7.1:
Settings / Wi-Fi / Choose a network, and select "Other".
Put in the name (SSID) as it is advertised on the previous screen.
Under Security, choose WPA2 or WPA (try both). Do not choose the "Enterprise" network. Enter the password.
My experience is you have to try 3 or 4 times before it works; don't know why, maybe fat fingers.


How to stop some devices from receiving my iMessages?

The only way you can do what you want is to turn off iMessage in each device that uses the same AppleID, where you do not wish it to receive iMessages associated with the AppleID.

I too share my AppleID  with my family, but I share it so that there is a singular iTunes account where all devices can access the apps and music purchased on the shared account. (Family share does not work well).

The trick is have multiple AppleIDs.  Dedicate one to iTunes, but then provide one for each user for iCloud.  I don't want messages, photos, and other iCloud connected items to be shared, so the shared AppleID is used ONLY for iTunes. For iCloud uses, each person has their own AppleID, that they use for iCloud purposes.  These family members do not use their own iCloud accounts for iTunes.

iTunes AppleID: all devices log into iTunes using this AppleID
Personal AppleID: each device is logged into iCloud using a personal AppleID.


Hide "This iPhone is managed by your organization" message from the lock screen

Removing the management profile

Someone else mentioned how to remove the management profile from the phone. That has some potential issues:

Your boss may not want you to remove the profile, which may lead to undesired consequences like being fired
You may lose access to any resources the profile allows you to access
You may start sending things unprotected directly over the Internet rather than through the VPN your profile sets up for you

Why the message probably can't be removed

As far as leaving the profile there, it's very likely that you can't remove the message because a lot of people are used to their personal iPhones being secure and private and they need to be informed when their privacy may be at stake because they may be being watched.

If they're issued a work phone, they may incorrectly assume that the security and privacy are just as good as their own iPhone.

If they let an untrustworthy acquaintance use their personal iPhone, they may have no idea that it's even possible for the acquaintance to take a few minutes to begin managing the phone and to then spy on them later.

Imagine if the boss or the untrustworthy acquaintance could just turn off the warning right after beginning to manage the phone. The user of the phone would then be kept in the dark about potential spying.

There's no easy way for an iPhone to distinguish between a spy disabling the message and the user disabling the message, so there's no easy way to allow for what you want while still ensuring users receive that vital information.


What part do I need for my broken iPhone 3G?

I'm not sure which part you need exactly, but one resource that has helped me repair my iPhone 3G is iFixit.com. Especially their iPhone 3G page which lists many of the iPhone's parts.

They even have a Q&A section specifically targeting iPhone 3G repair which you may find of use.


Hotkey switching between spelling dictionaries

You could assign shortcuts to scripts like this:

tell application "System Events" to tell (process 1 where frontmost is true)
    set shown to title of windows contains "Spelling and Grammar"
    if not shown then keystroke ":" using command down
    tell (window 1 where title is "Spelling and Grammar")
        delay 0.1
        tell pop up button 1
            click
            click UI element "Deutsch" of menu 1
        end tell
        if not shown then click button 1
    end tell
end tell

It's probably not possible to use the setLanguage: method in NSSpellChecker in DefaultKeyBinding.dict.


How do I merge tracks from audiobooks so they are one file instead of 100 separate tracks?

I do this in the terminal with ffmpeg.

Install ffmpeg. Download it from https://evermeet.cx/ffmpeg/, extract the 7z archive, and copy ffmpeg to /usr/local/bin. Alternately, if you use Homebrew or MacPorts, you can brew install ffmpeg or sudo port install ffmpeg, respectively.
cd into a directory containing all the audiobook segments you want to join together. Make sure the file path does not contain any spaces.
Run: ffmpeg -safe 0 -f concat -i <(for f in $PWD/*.EXT; do echo "file '$f'"; done) -codec copy full.EXT, replacing both instances of "EXT" with the file extension used by your audiobook (mp3, m4a, etc).

This will, of course, not work with DRM'd audiobooks. The same will be true for any tool that does not strip the DRM.


Set custom iPhone word *definition* dictionary

There is an application in the App Store named Dictionary Appender. You can import dictionary files into the application via iTunes file sharing (on your computer) and install them in Dictionary Appender (on your iPhone). Then your iPhone will use your selected dictionary when you mark some text and choose Define.


Error when using pkgutil to flatten an application bundle into a flat package

pkgutil is the wrong tool for this.  Use pkgbuild instead.  The syntax is...

pkgbuild --root /path/to/application_bundle.app --identifier com.company.application --version 1.0 --install-location /Applications /path/to/flattened_package.pkg

Some MDM's require a product archive instead of a flattened package. If that is the case, you can then use productbuild to create a product archive. The syntax for that is...

productbuild --version 1.0 --package /path/to/flattened_package.pkg /path/to/archive.pkg


could there be any damage or security risk if Spotlight is interrupted
  indexing everything?

No.

  Is it safe to shut down Mac while Spotlight is still indexing?

Yes.


Preview changing lines I draw and adding text box

To draw a line in preview go to the Tools menu and select Annotate. Under the Annotate option is an option for a line. This will put a single line on your page.
You might have hit rectangle instead on line. I can't guess very well what you did wrong.


My Mac would turn on but it would get stuck on the white screen upon startup after chime

Wow, it looks like you did almost everything already. What I have left for you are reinstalling your OS X and Reset PRAM.


How to allow an AppleScript terminal push as raw code instead of executable?

If you want it not to be a binary file and easily viewable, then save or export as text. It will be saved as plain text with a .applescript extension.

Also, by default, when saved locally and double-clicking on a .applescript file, it will load in Script Editor, where it can then be either saved as or exported as a .scrpt, .scrptd or .app.


You can try to recover your Apple ID here . It’s the only one legal way.


Office 2016 activation issue after migration to a new computer

What ended up working was going to https://portal.office.com/account/ then Install Status, deactivating the license, and then signing in and activating the application (e.g. Word) again.


where are python packages installed on Lion?

/Library/Python/x.x/site-packages

(x.x designates the version).


How I can get OSX to recognize Canon MP560 Scanner again?

Canon has updated most of their software (Easy-PhotoPrintEX, MP Navigator) and their drivers (printer, scanner) around the time when Lion came out. Make sure that you have the latest drivers installed.

You can download all the Canon software for your MP560 Scanner here.

Also, be sure to connect your printer via cable in order to use it as a scanner:


Try this code:

set targetFile to quoted form of ((POSIX path of (path to temporary items)) & filename)

That will give you a proper POSIX path to the standard temporary folder. On my machine, for instance, this gave me:

'/private/var/folders/rl/zwlvv_hd6ss4c4yhb6nxxfz80000gn/T/TemporaryItems/<somefilename>'

I've used the quoted form of command in case the filename used contains a space or other special shell character.

You could also use System Events.app, like so:

tell application "System Events"
    set targetfolder to quoted form of (get POSIX path of file filename of temporary items folder)
end tell


It generally is located in your Application folder, though may also be in a folder entitled iWork within Applications.

You can try using Spotlight to find Numbers, if necessary...


Think twice before you do this.

All your purchases, music, movies, TV shows, etc, will disappear from your purchases.

I did that when moving from the UK to Australia. Now I'm trying to go back to the UK store and its also near impossible due to another subscription.


How do I access my .plist with JXA (Javascript for Automation)?

I just had to figure out how to open and read a plist with JXA myself, and it was not intuitive at all. The documentation on JXA is frankly terrible. I searched the dictionaries in Script Editor, but also made liberal use of the properties() method in Script Editor, which will show you all the properties of many objects.

I finally did figure it out for myself, and I think this will work for you:

let app = Application.currentApplication()
app.includeStandardAdditions = true

let systemEvents = Application("System Events")
let cats = systemEvents.propertyListFiles.byName("/Users/iain/testing.plist").contents.value()['catsList'];

Results in the log:

/* Blog,Devops,Drupal,Formal Methods,Parish Councils,Scripting */


Windows not booting up on VM Fusion. Need to get a file off of windows

What you need to do is as follows:

create a new VM
Install Windows on that VM
Shutdown the New VM
In the New VM preferences, add the .vmdk for your old VM as a secondary drive on the new VM
Start up your new VM and you old drive should now be visible as a secondary drive

Browse to the files you need to retrieve, copy to the new VM and you are done, all bar reversing the above and deleting the old VM


How to Poll USB mouse through terminal in El Capitan

For any regular USB device, use:

diskutil list

This brings up the disk utility command line interface's "list" tool, which provides you with information on internal and connected disks, be it through USB, SATA or PCIe. It's much simpler than looking through /dev (which includes ttys and a lot of other stuff), and gives you much more information like capacity, partition tabling and the S.M.A.R.T. status (if supported) of your drive.

If you'd like to look through /dev though, try

ls /dev | grep disk

This will show only the entries with "disk" in them (disks and connected devices in OS X are mounted as /dev/disk[number]).


Is it safe to delete large OS X font files?

Deleting any fonts in /System will require the disablement of System Integrity Protection ("rootless feature") on OS X El Capitan. SIP reduces the potential attack surface for system exploits; disablement is not recommended.
The recommended method of deletion for any other fonts is through Font Book (rather than a direct deletion using Finder, Terminal or a cleanup application).
This question and accepted answer were originally linked to a Lion issue, but the basis should still apply:

You can save several dozen megabytes by deleting certain Asian fonts if you don't need them. Don't delete system fonts directly in the Finder.
Rather, do it through the Apple Font Book application, which will prevent you from deleting the "reserved" system fonts that Mac OS X expects to see when it boots up, but permit you to delete "non-essential" fonts.

If OS X is unable to render the character set with the required font, it is likely that a "substitute symbol character" will appear instead.


Short-circuit power outlet with two macbook chargers and one cable

Nothing will happen.

You are not directly connecting anything from the mains side of the power adapter to the USB side of things.  The low voltage side (USB) actually isolated from the high voltage side.  The highest amount of voltage being passed is +/- 5V which is more of a data sense connection.  It’s looking to see if there is a device making a request to be charged.  Since power adapters don’t make this request by design, it will never send higher voltage.

Now, it's not fair to say absolutely nothing will happen as it's conceivable that you might blow the USB controller (the chip that does the negotiation). However I would bet that the engineers designed the circuitry to be one way only. I don’t have access to the schematics, but I would bet there are diodes on the 5V connection’s to ensure a one way connection - they are there on the older MagSafe adapters so it only makes sense they would still be there on the newer  USB adapters (see above link)

From a pragmatic point of view, engineers would design to accommodate this sort of behavior - they design things to fail safe to the user not fail to protect itself.  That said, don’t do it because the shock you'll get is the one that comes from having to replace two previously perfectly good power adapters.


Does replacing an iPhone/iPad battery reset the battery stats?

The battery contains the "battery info", not the logic board. So if you put a new battery, what the logic board reads is based on the current battery only.

Capacity and Charge are two different things. You're battery can be at 80% of it's design capacity but will still charge to 100% (of said capacity). It's just that a fully charged battery that is at 80% of Design Capacity will not last as long as a new battery that is at 100% Design Capacity.

As far as your battery, it is at the lower limit. 80% of Design Capacity is okay but as you use the battery and as it ages, it will continue to degrade. The difference between an iPad and an iPhone is that we typically don't use the iPad all day so even if the charge is low a few days later, we just charge it when were not using it. On an iPhone, it is constantly in use (various radios) so we quickly notice reduce battery lifespan.

Test your battery over time and when it gets below 70%, you may consider having it replaced but it will really depend on how you use your iPad on a daily basis more than anything else.


According to EveryMac that machine can only support one external monitor, at 1920x1200 resolution.


Getting list of running processes on iOS Simulator

Command to find list of running apps and their pid for iOS simulator is

xcrun simctl spawn booted launchctl print system


'sed' replacement does not seem to work on the command line

The following works:

sed -E 's:(((chronograf|influxdb|kapacitor).[0-9.-]*/)|telegraf/):aefgae:g'<<<'/tmp/ansible_gN946Q/chronograf-1.4.0.1-1/etc/blue'

Outputs:

/tmp/ansible_gN946Q/aefgaeetc/blue

Differences between your implementation and mine:

Using -E option with sed

Interpret regular expressions as extended (modern) regular
     expressions rather than basic regular expressions (BRE's).  The
     re_format(7) manual page fully describes both formats.

Using <<< instead of echo and |
Using : as a seperator instead of / in the sed expression because the input has / in it.
Using ' instead of " around input so no shell expansion occurs on input.

Note: You could still use echo and | however it's a needless use of echo when it doesn't need to be used. Otherwise, the other differences, using -E and : as a separator instead of /, because input has / in it, is really what fixes what's wrong in your implementation.


GCC 4.7 (via brew) keeps including from "/usr/include/c++/4.2.1"

that note just refers to the 4 libraries gmp, mpfr, libmpc, ppl and I think means that if you use these they need to be before the standard search path.

Your issue is where is the compiler looking for standard library headers (and later libraries). gcc defaults to /usr/include which is installed for Apple's compilers and that gets redirected by version to the path you see.

You need to explicitly set the paths to look in the hombrew compilers path first


iCloud Photo Sharing doesn't work on my iPhone in iOS 11

I had/have the same thing. Mine appeared when something happened in the photo stream. So get someone to add a new picture or like/comment and then that'll push them across (Or do it yourself on the iPad)
Mine still aren't right though as I see comments with no names next to them (From people on ios 10 I assume)


Dictionary not remembering my selected dictionaries

Even a reset doesn't work for me, but it seems like only the Notes app has permission to actually write to the dictionary settings, so you can solve this by:

Open the Notes app
Highlight a word and select Define
Touch the cloud icon for the dictionaries you want to enable
Open any other app and now those dictionaries will remain enabled


Is there a way to decolorize Safari 12 pinned tab icons?

The app Faviconographer hacked favicons onto Safari tab prior to the feature officially rolling out.

https://timingapp.com/faviconographer/

It would likely be fairly straightforward to modify the app to re-grayscale the icons.

  If you have a legitimate interest in the source code, contact me.

Try asking the dev for the feature, or for the source code and build it yourself.


How do you disable or speed up the character/emoji keyboard animation?

Found the answer -- though this will also affect other animations:

defaults write -g NSAutomaticWindowAnimationsEnabled -bool false


Can a Mac be programmed to simulate pressing a key at a certain rate via software?

I found a way to do this in a bash script:

#!/bin/sh
# Simulates hitting a key on OS X
# http://apple.stackexchange.com/a/63899/72339

echo "tell application \"System Events\" to keystroke \"$1\"" | osascript

Save as hitkey, chmod +x hitkey, hitkey k to hit K.

From there it's simple to use Automator to loop over the script several times or make an iCal alarm to initiate the script at a specific time.


good dictionary which support text to speech or real voice pronunciation?

OSX has a built in speech synthesizer which is quite good if you're looking for English pronunciation.

You can open up the terminal and enter the following command:

say "Hello! How are you?"

For dictionary I use the Dictionary application which is shipped with your OS as well. You can import multiple dictionary files into it. Here is a tutorial to do that.

The best part is that you can type ⌘ + ctrl + d to bring up the inline dictionary in cocoa applications. It's really handy.


Changing my display cable from HDMI to Display Mini lead to resolution issue mac

Ok, now it wasn't the adapter, but the cable VGA cable which was not working out for me.

As I was suing the original Apple DisplayPort adapter.


Simple answer: No. The UI clearly states there is only one location:

and there appear to be no preferences one can set through the UI, or anywhere else, for that matter, to move it elsewhere.


Wacom Bamboo Create Driver for MacOS 10.12

On 10/12/2016, Wacom posted Driver 5.3.7-6, which is certified for macOS 10.9x - 10.12x. I installed the driver and it works as expected.

Updated Wacom driver.

UPDATE -> macOS 10.13 High Sierra

(9/17/2017)
The current drivers work after upgrading to macOS 10.13 (High Sierra), but the installer removed the Prefs Pane (System Preferences) module. This means that you can continue to use the Bamboo after upgrading, but you will not be able to make any changes to the settings. I have put in a trouble ticket with Wacom on this, and will post any updates here as I receive new information.

I will also do some more research to see if there is a way to get around the prefs pane issue.

SECOND UPDATE -> macOS 10.13 High Sierra

(10/22/1017)
Wacom has posted updated drivers that support macOS 10.13 High Sierra:
http://www.wacom.com/en-us/support/product-support/drivers

But they do not support the older devices, which include the Bamboo Create.


Any trick to use my 2008 iMac (mini-DVI) as a secondary monitor for my MacBook Pro?

Yes - add a Mini DisplayPort port to your iMac. Should only take an engineer and a machine shop to accomplish.

In all seriousness, the mini-DVI port on your iMac is an output-only port, whereas the Thunderbolt/Mini DisplayPort ports also accept input. No amount of software, cables or dongles will change that.


After installing openssh 8.2 via brew, how do I add keys to keychain?

Keychain integration is a feature added by Apple that is not in the standard release of OpenSSH. As you have now installed the standard OpenSSH release from HomeBrew, you won't have this functionality anymore. You have discovered this as the UseKeychain option now gives configuration errors - adding the IgnoreUnknown configuration only makes the error message go away, it won't actually bring back any functionality.
In order to get Keychain integration, you will want to uninstall the HomeBrew version of OpenSSH and use the version supplied by Apple.
The version in HomeBrew will not for the foreseeable future have Keychain integration - it's not that they can't make it work at all, but rather that they have found the implementation that was made to be too big a risk for the project, as it's a big change that doesn't come from the OpenSSH project itself. You can read about that discussion here.
If you look at the link, you'll see that you can still download the old patch, and try that out if you like. However, as it is no longer maintained, it is a security risk.
Similarly you can download a third party mod to add Keychain support here. However that hasn't been updated since 2017 it seems, and as such would also be a security risk.


Why can I boot into the recovery partition without entering a password even though I have FileVault 2 with full-disk-encryption enabled?

This is because you are booting into a separate partition on your hard drive. FileVault identifies volumes via partitions so when you encrypt your "hard drive" it is the partition that contains your boot volume and data only. The recovery partition and any other additional partitions are never encrypted.

This isn't cause for certain though since booting to the Recovery Partition does not expose your encrypted volume nor does doing so grant you access to it. As a matter of fact, if you need to repair your user folder's ACL's and permissions; which you would do through your recovery partition, you would have run some terminal commands to unlock your encrypted partition before repairs can be done.

Boot Camp would serve as a good example of this. With Boot Camp, your hard is now partitioned into two volumes; One for Mac OS and another for Windows. This would add up to three partitions on your hard drive. FileVault would only encrypted your Macintosh HD partition and not touch your Windows and Recovery partition; but at no point would you be able to access your Macintosh HD's content via Windows or Recovery Mode.


Is it possible to switch the desktops of multiple displays without moving the mouse? (Mavericks)

Keyboard Maestro can do this using a macro such as the following:


Two days ago I received an email from apple support. The author told me

  Leider muss ich Ihnen mitteilen, dass es nicht möglich ist, iTunes Accounts miteinander zu verbinden.

which means

  Unfortunately I have to tell you that it is not possible to merge iTunes accounts.


Control click on the desktop away from any icon and select Clean Up By and choose one of the options. This will test that the desktop file is viable.

If it isn't you can delete it or run Disk Utility to repair the volume

Open terminal and type

rm ~/Desktop/.DS_Store

Then try to move icons or clean up again. You can then choose to keep things arranged or use clean up periodically or arrange them by hand.


I'm afraid not.

From Everymac

  *This model supports a simultaneous maximum resolution up to 2560x1600 on two external displays via Thunderbolt. Alternately, it can support a single display up to 2560x1600 via Thunderbolt and a single 1080p display at up to 60 Hz, 3840x2160 at 30 Hz, or 4096x2160 at 24 Hz via HDMI.

From Apple

  You can use 4K displays and Ultra HD TVs at the following resolutions and refresh rates via the built-in HDMI port.
  3840 x 2160 at 30 Hz refresh rate
  4096 x 2160 at 24 Hz refresh rate (mirroring is not supported at this resolution)


Seems you can edit the XML if you're really stuck:
  https://discussions.apple.com/thread/2626026?start=0&tstart=0


Error when connecting USB Drive to VirtualBox virtual machine

I assume the you have downloaded and installed the "Oracle VM VirtualBox Extension Pack". This enables support for USB 2.0 and USB 3.0 devices, VirtualBox RDP and PXE boot for Intel cards.

In the Ports window pane, I do not see where you have added a USB Device Filter. Below is where I added a 2 GB USB flash drive.

An alternative to ejecting the USB external drive would be the following:

Unmount the USB drive before starting the virtual machine. The timing is very important, since OS X will try to remount the drive automatically. Use the Terminal application command

diskutil list

to determine the identifier for the external USB drive. For example, say the identifier is disk1, then the command to execute, just before you start the virtual machine, would be

diskutil unmountdisk /dev/disk1

Update:

Actually, I was able to gain access to the USB flash drive after starting the virtual machine. All I had to do is execute the

diskutil unmountdisk /dev/disk1

command while the virtual machine was running.

Accessing the External USB Drive as a Virtual SATA Drive

The following Terminal application commands create the file share.vmdk needed to access the external USB drive as a virtual SATA drive. This file will be stored in the folder named Share on the your Desktop. I assume the identifier of the external drive is disk1.

cd ~
cd Desktop
mkdir Share
cd Share
diskutil unmountdisk /dev/disk1
sudo chmod go+rw /dev/disk1*
diskutil unmountdisk /dev/disk1
vboxmanage  internalcommands  createrawvmdk  -filename  "$PWD/share.vmdk"  -rawdisk  /dev/disk1

Note: The effects of the sudo chmod go+rw /dev/disk1* command are temporary. The permissions may revert, if you restart the computer or eject the external USB drive.

You can now add the share.vmdk file as a second drive in your virtual machine. Note: Before clicking on the "Open" button, you will need to execute the command diskutil unmountdisk /dev/disk1.

Before starting the virtual machine, you will be required to execute the command diskutil unmountdisk /dev/disk1.

  Note: You can stop OS X from automatically mounting the external USB drive by creating/editing the file /etc/fstab. See man fstab for more information.

Accessing a Read/Write .dmg File as a Virtual SATA Drive

Use the Disk Utility application to create a new blank disk image. Below is a example where the share.dmg is created in the ~/Desktop/Share folder. (This was done using Yosemite OS X 10.10) Other types of disk images can also be created and used.

Again you need to create a share.vmdk file. The commands are given below.

cd ~/Desktop/Share
diskutil unmountdisk /dev/disk1
vboxmanage  internalcommands  createrawvmdk  -filename  "$PWD/share.vmdk"  -rawdisk  /dev/disk1

Next, execute the same steps already given to access the USB drive.


iTunes totally unresponsive. Wont open or close

I would suggest to use the Force Quit method on a stuck process.

Hold alt+cmd+esc then select the iTunes from the list to force quit.

Now restart iTunes and see if it behaves.

Following the above use Terminal to see which processes died in the past 7 days.

ps aux | grep -w Z


Why do I see a "Put Back" menu item in the trash for only some items?

You only see Put Back if a file/folder was deleted by the Finder, not any other process.
It will silently fail to Put Back if the folder it came from is gone, but it will still offer.
Tested on Mojave.


An app for looking at sound levels for surround sound channels?

Try Soundtrack Pro from Final Cut Studio 2009. This is simple and robust application. There's surround 5.1 under its hood and moderate set of audio professional tools.


Getting performance measurement tools from Linux on Mac OS X

I've used Instruments in XCode - not sure if it covers all of the functionality of the Linux tools you mention, but Instruments seems to be the preferred performance analyzer on Mac.


Uploading Time Machine backups.backupdb to cloud service?

You will not be able to backup/copy all or part of your Time Machine (TM) backup to the cloud in a form that would allow recovery from the cloud to recreate a TM 'backup'.
But, I have a few suggestions on how to proceed.
For an 'archive' (a point-in-time copy which will remain untouched for a long time) you can copy folders from your Mac to a cloud service like an AWS bucket.  The folders you copy could be directly from your active documents, photos, etc. or could be from a chosen TM date.  If you should need to recover files/folders from this archive you would just copy them back to your computer (TM would not be involved).
In my view a better way to proceed is to use a cloud backup service which will maintain a daily (or more frequent) backup of your files maintaining versions of files from all times in the past in a storage efficient way - just like TM.
You should not expect a cloud backup to provide complete system restoration. Rather to recover documents, photos, etc. in the event of a disaster which might just be mistaken deletion of a single file all the way up to complete loss of your computer system and its external disks.
I suggest you explore Backblaze and Arq.
Backblaze is frequently recommended though I have reservations regarding its failure to backup some file metadata.  It provides both a backup application and cloud storage in a single plan.  It is intended to be be simple to use and by default does backups of nearly everything.
Arq (my favourite) is most commonly used as a backup application with whatever storage you choose to use - e.g. AWS, Google, etc.  I use Arq with cloud storage from both OneDrive (part of Microsoft Office subscription) and Backblaze's B2, though is unnecessary to use 2 storage providers.  Arq is similar to Time Machine in that it does scheduled backups and thins old backups to one a day and then to once a week. Compared with Backblaze it requires a little more configuration.
Please note that cloud backup does not replace the need for Time Machine (or some other local backup).


Totally normal if on the low side. If your CPU is less than 15% idle, I expect you to get to 85 C internal for CPU proximity and higher for all the on die thermocouples. Running just unde 100 C is how the silicon is designed to operate at max thermal generation and high sustained load.

Also, if you use the command line tool to check temperatures or thermal load once every 15 minutes instead of having graphs checking every second you may find your CPU runs much cooler. After all, having those graphs update live in real time prevents the CPU from sleeping.

 pmset -g thermlog

Lots of people are surprised or at least concerned by temps:

Are these temperatures alright?
CPU Die temperatures reaches 90° C, is that normal?
Is it normal for a 27" iMac to have CPU core temperatures around 95C under 100% CPU load?
Retina MacBook Pro running very hot?

From an engineering standpoint, the MacBook Pro and the iMac in the Mac Pro and iMac Pro all have the same power envelope design and push their CPU to 100 C when the work is available.  Once the CPU is at Max normal operating load then the kernel task begins to idle potential work so as not to exceed the final design for the processor.


Macbook Pro extremely slow when using video chat

It is more than likely that the increased demand on the GPU (processing and RAM) by supporting both the external monitor and the MacBook Pro screen while using Skype or Zoom causes the MacBook Pro to lag. Since you mention that the GPU is rather old and has only 1 GB of RAM, this is probably the problem.

Skype may give you the ability to lower the video quality and resolution, putting less demand on the GPU. If you can still Skype with the external monitor disconnected, this may be the best solution.


One solution is to use virtualization to have another instance of Mac OS X running on your computer. Many virtualization applications (such as Parallels Desktop) let you decide how much resources an instance can have (e.g. memory or cpu). Lion increased its support of virtualizing Mac OS X.

If you do decide to go with Parallels, there's a useful how to article describing how to set up an instance of another Mac OS X Lion.


You can use defaults or plutil command line tools.

For defaults it looks like this:

defaults write /absolute/path/to/Info.plist CFBundleExecutable -string <Executable>

For plutil:

plutil -insert CFBundleExecutable -string <Executable> Info.plist

Value after -insert is a key path separated by .. For example

plutil -insert CFBundleDocumentTypes.0.CFBundleTypeExtensions.1 -string "scss" /Applications/Safari.app/Contents/Info.plist

will insert "scss" string deep in the path. Numbers after . are for arrays (they are starting with 0).


If I purchase an app on my iPad can I get it on a Microsoft PC

Generally, no.

However the decision is ultimately up to the app’s developer to sell a single license across multiple platforms. So you’d have to check on a case-by-case basis (just don’t hold your breath).

As far as the actual executables, iOS and Windows apps run on completely different architectures, so there’s no way to copy an iPad app onto Windows and expect it to work. You can’t even do that on a Mac.


Deactivate automatic mark as read in Apple Mail 7.3

I've been using Mail Act-On. It's overkill (does a lot more than just keep messages unread) and kind of pricey at $30 (with free trial), but since it's a paid app, they keep it up to date. Even when TruePreview was being maintained, it'd sometimes be weeks or months before it was updated to work with the latest version of OS X.


I created a 'Image from Folder" using Disk Utility, with Encryption and Files are Invisible

The 'Image from Folder' will use the existing ownership/permissions of the folder and files.

First off, is the disk image a read/write image?  Are you able to add new files to it?  If not, the instructions below won't work if it is read-only.

The permissions you've listed, "-rw-r--r--@", mean that the file is read and writable by the owner and readable by everyone else.  The @ at the end means there are extended attributes to the file, which might include some kind of invisibility option.  You would have to get a directory listing with -@ to show the attribute keys.
For example, here is a listing showing an image that I manually set to be hidden.

$ ls -l@
-rw-r--r--@ 1 insom  staff  - 64832 Dec  6 18:56 FunnyImage.png
    com.apple.FinderInfo       32

If all your files also have a com.apple.FinderInfo attribute, use Terminal to change into the directory of the files and run the following command to unhide the files.

chflags nohidden *

Now, if your dir listing doesn't show the com.apple.FinderInfo attribute then they are not being hidden using this method but something else is going on.

Have you tried rebooting?  What about copying the disk image to a different computer and mounting it?


Difference between du and Finder file sizes

Difference is in units they use.

du uses BLOCKSIZE=4096 bytes by default (rounded  if Human Readable format option -h i.e. df -h)
Finder uses BLOCKSIZE=1000 by default

$du -h /usr/lib/libblas.dylib
4.0K    /usr/lib/libblas.dylib

and same in Finder.


Inconsistent app update sizes in App Store and Launchpad

The App Store supports compression and differential downloads that saves you time and bandwidth by only downloading the differences between the current version and the version, you already have installed.

This explains why the updated version can be listed at 7.8 GB while only 3.59 GB are downloaded.

Note that it is not possible to download differentials in all cases. In those case you download the full package. Also note that if a differential download fails (for example due to the internet connection breaking up) - then a full download is attempted on the next try.


What takes place during an iPhone hard reset?

I do not know for sure that this happens but I was told that in order for IOS to do anything except just it's usual booting functions you actually need to do a hard reset three times in a row.

Not sure why, and this was advice I read (don't remember where) several years ago. Perhaps 3 hard resets in a row trigger some sort of flag that forces IOS to do some special maintenance, not really sure but I am throwing it out in case someone else has heard this or knows is it complete and utter BS.


How to print to a Ricoh Aficio printer requiring authentication?

User codes are setup via either WIM (using the machines IP address in a browser on same network) or on the device itself it is called User code Authentication.

Now you can assign a prompt for a suer code on all services (Aside from printing as this is handled by pacing the code into the 'Valid access' tab on the driver.

On newer models you can edit the driver to force a prompt on the driver to access the user code.

To enable user code auth. see the following:

User Tools/123 key --> System Settings --> Administrator Tools --> Next --> User Code Authentication.

Select User Code Auth.

Select the options in which you require a user code to authenticate.

Press Ok.

Now you need to add a user code, select the previous key.

Address book management --> New Program --> Add a name --> Select the Auth info. tab --> Apply a user code.


How to fix partitions if disk utility is not able to?

You should be able to delete the Windows partition, which will allow you to resize the OS X partition.

Normally you can simply click on the expansion icon located in the bottom corner of your OS X volume, which allows for easy resizing. However, Disk Utility won't allow this if there is another partition below the one you want to resize:

https://support.apple.com/kb/PH22240

  Enlarge a volume If you have multiple volumes on a device and one of
  them is running out of space, you may be able to enlarge it without
  losing any of the files on it.

  To enlarge a volume, you must delete the volume that comes after it on
  the device, then move the end point of the volume you want to enlarge
  into the freed space. You can’t enlarge the last volume on a device.


AppleScript and Growl: How to choose the display style?

Each Applescript you use Growl with registers itself as a different application with Growl.

After the first time you use a script, you can go to Growl's settings. Look for the application name you registered the script as. (This is configurable in the register as application "Application Name" line when scripting Growl.)

Once you've used the script once, it should show up in Growl's settings. In there you can customize the display location and style specifically for that script, or as Growl calls it, that "application".

If you need more info about using Growl with Applescript, I have a blog post here, which explains how it works and provides a pre-built Applescript handler that you can drop into your scripts and call with a single line of code.


I figured it out eventually. Turns out all I needed to do was restart the CUPS daemon.
A simple killall cupsd followed by refreshing the web interface did the trick.

I got the option to add an "LPR through SSH" printer, and it shows up Print & Scan as well as my applications.


Create a table from other table depending on a value NUMBERS

I don't know how to remove empty rows from the second table, but I can make only the ones with YES show up.

Making it happen

First, select the first cell of your second table ("carrot", the headers don't matter), and type this in it:

=if(

You'll see it transform into a function. Then click the YES/NO column of the same row to add it to the table. Click on the dropdown in the new addition to the formula box, and check "Preserve Column".

This will allow you to copy and paste over the entire row without worrying about the referenced column changing. Add = "YES" to the end. You should now have something like this:

IF(<Table 1::$B2> = "YES"

Next, add a comma, and click the corresponding cell in your first table:

IF(<Table 1::$B2> = "YES",<Table 1::A2>

Do not preserve the column on this one. You want it to show the corresponding cell in the table. Add ,""), like so:

IF(<Table 1::$B2> = "YES",<Table 1::A2>,"")

Hit the big green checkmark, and copy and paste the cell to fill the second table (or just as many items as you want to show), and you're done!

So what does all this gobbledygook mean?

The IF command has three parts:

IF(condition, if-true, if-false)

If the condition is true, it shows the if-true portion, otherwise it shows the if-false portion. So it shows the value of the other cell if the deciding cell is "YES", or blank ("") if not.


Bootcamp - Apple SPI Device driver missing - Touchpad/Keyboard don't work

After doing some more messing around (and a bunch of trial-and-error) I was able to identify and manually install the keyboard and trackpad drivers!
To manually install the keyboard and trackpad drivers to their respective SPI Device entries in Device Manager, I clicked 'Update Driver'>'Browse my computer...'>'Let me pick from a list...'>'Human Interface Devices'>'Apple Inc.'>Apple SPI Keyboard/Trackpad'
On my 2016 MacBookPro touch bar, this is how the Apple SPI Devices correlated to the drivers, based on the value in Properties>Details>Property: Hardware Ids:
SPI\VID_05ac&PID_027b&MI_01 (SPI Bus Location 1) - Apple SPI Keyboard

SPI\VID_05ac&PID_027b&MI_02 (SPI Bus Location 2) - Apple SPI Trackpad

However, I still need to determine which drivers go with the remaining 3 unknown devices. Their hardware IDs are:
SPI\VID_05ac&PID_027b&MI_00 (SPI Bus Location 0)

SPI\VID_05ac&PID_027b&MI_03 (SPI Bus Location 3)

SPI\VID_05ac&PID_027b&MI_04 (SPI Bus Location 4)

Does anyone have any ideas as to what these 3 hardware devices are?


I have the iphone 4s and it will not record videos

Go to your settings, press general, then usage. See how much space you have left. There may be something else taking up your space.


USB ethernet adapter not working with 2012 Retina MBP

The old driver probably doesn't work with El Capitan. As indicated on the Linksys website Belkin is working on creating a Linksys driver package for the OS X 10.11.

Meanwhile you may try the RealTek beta driver here.


Mountain Lion is stuck with "See network administrator" when joining Wi-Fi network

I faced a similar issue on my MacBook Pro with one particular WIFI connection. It was giving me the "Connection time out" error message.

I was able to workaround it by:

1) Removing the WIFI connection: System Preferences > Network > WIFI > Advanced > Select the relevant connection and click the "-" sign > Click "Show All" or close the window.

2) Adding the connection manually: System Preferences > Network > WIFI > Advanced > Click on the "+" sign > Enter the connection settings manually.

This has worked for me and that particular connection never gave me issues afterwards.

Hope this helps.


How to prevent a thief from using my iPhone ever?

These Articles HT201472 and HT201365 from Apple clearly explain what you can do to in case your phone is lost or stolen.

To Answer all of your questions:

Yes there is a way to prevent anybody from using your phone. When the phone gets stolen you put your device in lost mode as explained in the articles above. No one will be able to re-use / re-active your phone without your Apple ID and password because of the Activation Lock that is enabled when you put the device in lost mode.

With Activation Lock, your Apple ID and password is required before anyone can:

Turn off Find My iPhone on your device
Erase your device
Reactivate and use your device

To put your device in lost mode:

From any iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch, log into the Find My iPhone app using your Apple ID. You don’t have to log in Find My iPhone from a device that you own (ie. it could be a friend’s device), but you must login using the same Apple ID/password as the device you are trying to put into Lost Mode.
Once logged in, Find My iPhone will show a map and a list of devices that are linked to your Apple ID. Tap on the device you have lost or that was stolen to select it.
Tap on the “Actions” button at the bottom of the screen, then tap on “Lost Mode.”
You will be asked to confirm you want to turn Lost Mode on. Tap on “Turn On Lost Mode…” to continue.
If the device you are trying to put in Lost Mode doesn’t have a passcode, Find My iPhone will require you to set one up on the spot. Type in a passcode and type the new passcode again to confirm. If you already have a passcode enabled on the device, then you can go straight to the next step.
You will now have the option of entering a phone number where you can be reached. This phone number will be displayed on the Lock screen of your device. Although optional, it is highly recommended you add your phone number so people can reach you if they find your device. Tap “Next” when done.
Finally, you can enter a message to display on the Lock screen along with your phone number. By default, the message is “This iPhone has been lost. Please call me.” but you can customize it the way you want. Tap “Done” in the upper right corner to activate Lost Mode.
If someone tries to plug your iPhone in iTunes to restore it, they won’t be able to and they will see the following message, asking them to first turn off Find My iPhone.


How can I name desktops/spaces in El Capitan?

This is something that I wanted for ages, so I finally got around and built an open source solution!

It behaves similarly to TotalSpaces in that it uses SIMBL to hook into the display functionality, and uses an application with a top menu bar button to rename the desktops.  To install it, just head over to my GitHub and follow the installation instructions!

Screenshots:

Edited Names

Name-changing UI


Still possible to override iSight webcam LED for iMac's and Macbook Pro's 2019 & 2020 & on?

From a practical stance, macOS now blocks all apps from the camera in software so you can easily know all apps that could even request access to the microphone or camera.

In 2009 the firmware of the hardwired cameras was secured with encryption. I haven’t seen a credible report that this is broken, but depending on your threat model, you might close the lid if you can’t trust Apple to secure things.

Does a newer MacBook's camera light need to be activated when the camera turns on?

Whether you trust the LED auto-functions and cannot fail as an intrinsic part of the operation would need to trust someone who can forensically examine the hardware (likely destroying it to be certain how it works) and assuming all are made the same.

I think you the camera is the least revealing or worrisome part, but it’s fine to question and learn even if it’s a small risk or no risk or you have easy mitigation options.

Also, all Mac cameras are hardwired. Just the security is far better hardware wire since 2009 and software side many steps better but with SIP and Catalina it’s really a hardened target for the software to get compromised.


Set timeout on idle for VPN (Cisco IPsec)?

Go to System Preferences > Network. Select your VPN connection from the sidebar. Click on Advanced. In the first tab ("Options"), there should be the option "Disconnect if idle for X minutes".


Logs are in /var/log/System.log, you can also access them by running Console.app
Memory consumption of a process can be checked in Activity Monitory.app, at least as long as the process is running


Will running the fans at maximum rpm all the time hurt the computer?

Depends on what you mean exactly.

It will most likely mean that the fan itself will have a shorter lifetime before it fails. How much shorter is very hard to say - it might not mean much in practice.

The rest of the computer will definitely not be hurt by the fan running faster than usually.


Mounting an External HD Accessible Through Finder

ext4fuse /dev/disk2s1 /Volumes/Linux -o allow_other

Try with the '-o allow_other' argument? At least I can view my Ubuntu home dir in this way.

You may also want to use sudo.


Try to manually delete them (swipe right in the list view, then you should get a delete button) on the device.


You can use either Parallels Desktop or VMware Fusion to run older macOS versions. The virtualization runs on top of Catalina so there won‘t be a need to reboot. And unless your games are very GPU-intensive you should get decent performance as well.


How can I easily select the word my cursor is currently inside?

This has been covered in a screencast on the Ask Different Blog. I encourage you to watch the video, but I'll summarize here.

First, create a little AppleScript that presses the two keyboard shortcuts. Open AppleScript Editor (in /Applications/Utilities) and paste this in:

tell application "System Events"
    key code 123 using option down
    key code 124 using {shift down, option down}
end tell

Save that as a script in ~/Library/Scripts (create the folder if it doesn't already exist).

Now, install the app FastScripts. It's free for up to 10 scripts.
Open the FastScripts preferences, find your Select Word script, and assign a keyboard shortcut to it.

Now you can press your chosen shortcut in any app and the current word will be selected.


How can I make the Eject Key to behave as the Insert key?


Why is my Mac constantly trying to connect to another server?

Check System Preferences>Accounts>Login Items to see if there is a disk that is supposed to mount when you login. Make sure you check all of the user accounts.


I struggled a lot with building my DMG just the way I want it, then I've found dmgbuild. It basically lets you configure every possible setting with ease.

dmgbuild is a command line tool to create Mac OS X disk images (aka .dmg files). While it is possible to create disk images easily enough from the command line using the hdiutil program that ships with Mac OS X, there is no easy way to configure the appearance of the resulting disk image when the user opens it. Some people have used AppleScript to automate Finder to adjust the appearance, but since Finder saves its .DS_Store files asynchronously, it is hard to guarantee that the changes will actually be saved when you want them to be. It also means that you need a GUI session, with Finder running, in order to build your disk image.
dmgbuild does not rely on Finder; nor does it rely on deprecated APIs (like the Alias Manager functions). Instead, it uses the ds_store and mac_alias Python modules, which know how to construct the relevant data in Python code.


Error message, "hpPlugInInit.kext was installed improperly"

Manually deleting hpPlugInInit.kext under /System/Library/Extensions/ gave me a solution.


It is not an issue with rvm, but with homebrew:

Since 15th of December 2013 zsh is not longer build with the --enable-etcdir flag by default. Therefore /usr/libexec/path_helper is no longer used to initialize $PATH and all path in /etc/paths as well as in /etc/paths.d are completely ignored. (I know, I just found out myself and am speechless as well.)

Therefore either run brew update; brew reinstall zsh --enable-etcdir or add the following to your .zshrc:

if [ -x /usr/libexec/path_helper ]; then
    eval `/usr/libexec/path_helper -s`
fi

For more information on why this was removed, check this ticket on github.


"Do Not Disturb" on iOS iMessage does not work

This is how Do Not Disturb was designed for text conversations. This feature blocks sound notifications and that’s it.

In fact, it works the same way the global Do Not Disturb works, with one major difference: going into Settings → Do Not Disturb and setting Silence to Always does NOT block banners or alerts for muted threads. The only way to disable those is by disabling them for ALL incoming text messages, or by activating the global Do Not Disturb.

If you are displeased with Apple’s implementation of this feature and believe it should work differently, I strongly advise you to voice your feedback to Apple.

Many people would agree with you, as a quick search will reveal.


Posted as answer just to be able to inline pictures...

Not really sure how to test this, as I don't have a Macbook - but what happens if you use Audio Midi Setup & mute the unwanted output? It might then skip it when you unplug the headphones.

…or possibly setting up a Multi-Output device, set to be your default output, with only the used connections checked…


How can I copy songs from an iPod to a Mac without using iTunes?

Senuti is the tool of choice in these situations:

Need to recover music, playlists, or videos from your iPod or iPhone? Look no further! With Senuti, you can recreate your iTunes music library in just one click.
Want to be more specific? Preview and select only the songs and playlists you want to transfer. Senuti has helped millions around the world recover their music, videos, and playlists since 2004.


You have to select one or more categories in the list (on the right). Steps in Apple Docs


The script and the plist work perfectly well if you make following changes:

add a slash in /Users/admin/scripts/monta.sh:

#!/bin/sh
mkdir -p /Volumes/remvol
mount_smbfs //user:password@server/folder /Volumes/remvol

proper ownership of com.jo.monta.plist:

sudo chown root:wheel /Library/LaunchDaemons/com.jo.monta.plist

proper file mode bits of /Users/admin/scripts/monta.sh:

chmod 755 /Users/admin/scripts/monta.sh

load the launch daemon:

sudo launchctl load /Library/LaunchDaemons/com.jo.monta.plist


Yes this is possible. You'll have to create a contact while setting up the Create a calendar process. You can add an address and ship it to that location.

If you can't locate it, call Apple Support and they can assist you very easily with a screenshare.


I have a 2008 Mac Pro and I swapped the main HDD with an SSD and re-installed OS X and I saw a HUGE performance increase. You'll always see a performance increase when going from HDD to SSD simply because it's a different class of hardware. SSDs are, as their name implies, solid-state. There are no moving parts and there's nothing that physically degrades over time. HDDs start to wear immediately; while it's a slow process it does happen for as long as the drive is in use (that's why most operating systems tend to turn HDDs off when not in use - it prolongs their life).

That's my experience and my recommendation (my recommendation is definitely do it).


Delete iCloud bookmark only from a specific computer

As any changes performed to an iCloud-Sync service will  be pushed to all other iCloud-Sync devices, your only option would be to unsync the desired device form iCloud's Safari and then delete the bookmarks.

Bear in mind that once you re-enable the Safari's Sync, all of its data will be merged together.


I have seen some reports of this same issue, with your same MacOS version. The below (one of them, or a combination of the two) solved this issue for most:

• Disable ‘Power Nap’

• ‘Wake for ethernet network access’

Please tell me if this resolved this for you!

—Mark


Showing the current boot arguments in OS X

You can use the nvram utility.

Open Terminal.app and run nvram -p to see all the boot parameters. You can also run man nvram to see all the options. Note that to set any parameters you will have to use sudo if you are not logged in as root.


Can my Apple ID password be recovered in Keychain Access?

2020 note: looks like this is not possible anymore, keychain just stores tokens (encrypted version of password)


How to reduce Safari/WebKit logging verbosity?

While the accepted answer probably represents the right thing to do, there’s another way to narrowly answer the question, i.e. how to reduce the logging verbosity of the WebKit subsystem (permanently):

sudo log config --subsystem 'com.apple.WebKit' --mode "level: error"

Now, only error-level messages should be logged.  (Caveat:  I haven't tested it.)

But I won't recommend this;  rather just filter for the messages you need.


Low Battery Alert for Mac OS X El Capitan

Default Warning

The battery indicator in the menu bar will turn red when the battery is low. There will also be a critical low power warning when the computer needs to emergency shut down.

See Apple's About Mac notebook batteries page, in particular this section:

  The low battery warning doesn't display

  If you don't receive a warning when your battery has a low charge, generally reported at or under 15%, it may be because the battery menu bar icon is disabled. Follow these steps to enable the battery status menu item:

  Open System Preferences.
  Click Energy Saver.
  Enable the "Show battery status in menu bar" check box to display the battery status menu item.

  Note: Portables using OS X Mavericks v10.9 or later display the low battery warning when the battery has approximately 10 minutes of power remaining. Earlier versions or OS X instead report it at 15% or less.

Third Party: Power Manager

Software such as Power Manager can be used to trigger scripts, sounds, and actions when the battery level drops:

More advanced abilities such as stopping music from playing and integrating the warning into your workflows is possible. Battery levels and changes are exposed through Power Manager's AppleScript interface.

Disclosure: I am an engineer who works on Power Manager. So, feel free to ask technical questions about the product.


Why are executables called DMG (disk image) files?

.dmg files are disk images, similar to an .iso file.

You can think of them like a virtual CD. You put it into the CD drive (mount it), and its contents appear on your computer.

When used for software downloads, they are simply a way to bundle up files, like in a ZIP archive. Their advantage is that it's possible to customize the design (e.g. Finder window background and icon positions, see example below).

The actual program is in a special bundle or package directory with the usually invisible extension .app. It contains an application's resources, like image files, and the actual binary (the ".exe equivalent") that is executed when you start the program. If you want to compare it to a Windows equivalent, the closest would probably be the folder in C:\Program files\ created by a program's installer.

To install such an application from a disk image, you drag and drop it to your hard drive, e.g. the Applications directory. That's what a lot of disk images try to convey in their disk image design: You grab the application, Adium in this case, and drag it onto the Applications folder:


Is it possible to restore data deleted by Adobe Creative Cloud?

If the data is worth $120 to you, DiskWarrior may help, depending on how long ago you lost data and how much use you've had on the system prior to noticing it (more use = more chance something was overwritten and is now unrecoverable). I realize you asked for no "from backup source" answers, but if Time Machine is enabled, you should have local backups stored on the computer drive, even if you don't have access to your normal backup destination. No external program necessary, just restore the folder.


Can't record screen on Yosemite with quickTime Player

Try repairing the disk permissions. Go to Disk Utility, select your HD and then click Repair and select Repair Disk Permissions. Hopefully, this will solve your problem. Allot around twenty minutes for the process.


2 Macs sharing Displays via Spaces or something else?

Screen sharing?  It does exactly what (I think) you're trying to do.
System Preferences > Sharing > Screen Sharing.  You may need to create him an account on your machine, and vice-versa.


Pinging Mac "computername" hits strange IP address

Akamai runs a content distributions system used by major websites to provide fast web response on a global scale. It is used by Apple, Adobe, Microsoft and many others.

Port 443 is used for HTTPS - the encrypted version of HTTP web-page access.

It is quite normal to see a lot of traffic directed through Akamai.

iCloud content is stored on Akamai servers. Assuming you are using iCloud, e.g. to store Safari bookmarks, it is normal that opening Safari triggers a connection to Akamai since the actual content (= Safari bookmarks) is physically stored on Akamai distribution servers and needs to be synced when opening the browser.

More insight on it:

  On July 21, 1999, at Macworld Expo New York, Apple and Akamai
  announced a strategic partnership to build Apple's new media network,
  QuickTime TV (QTV), based on QuickTime Streaming Server.[32] Both
  companies later announced that Apple had made a $12.5 million
  investment in the company the previous month.[33] Apple continues to
  use Akamai as their primary content delivery network[34] for a wide
  range of applications including software downloads from Apple's
  Website, QuickTime movie trailers, and the iTunes Store.[35]

So to your question "is this possibly a symptom of having been compromised or virus/malware infected?" - I don't think it is compromised or infected by virus.


Time Machine alternatives to save registration information

Time Machine backs up every file on the target volume. So any method of storing the registration that involves files on your disk can be restored from a TM backup. No other software is required.

So it's up to you to restore the required files. For instance, relevant data may be in .plist files in the user or root level Library/Preferences or /Library/Application Support folders.

However, many developers understandably use hidden files and obfuscated methods to store registration details and confirm authorised usage.

If you selectively restored files and folders from your backup, then you won't have restored those hidden files. You can see hidden files in the Finder and Time Machine by pressing Shift Command .

It may be easiest just to clone the entire disk, so you may want to try SuperDuper! or Carbon Copy Cloner; though I've found that this doesn't always work: Devs may hash hardware characteristics, such as the volume's UUID, in order to ensure that the software won't work without re-registration on new hardware.

It's always a good idea to keep all the serial numbers in text files in a folder for just this occasion, which isn't usually needed very often. I also still have the emails which provided the serials when I made the purchase.


MacBook Air audio input/output, mic/headset

The port does support headphone+mic combos, which you can verify for yourself by plugging in any headset that's compatible with an iPhone. Apple notes this on the Audio section of the Tech Specs.

The reviews on the product page suggest that it works with other Macs, so it seems likely you've got defective hardware somewhere in the chain. Try testing the components individually with other known-good devices. Test the adapter + headset with an iPhone or iPad, the headset itself with a PC, and the MacBook Air port with an iPhone headset.


osx Captive Portal with USB to Ethernet adapter

There's nothing special about "USB to Ethernet"-adapters regarding captive portals. Having a "special Apple adapter" will not help you in that regard.

You must find the error in your system somewhere else.

Actually I'm not even sure that Mac OS X looks for captive portals on wired networks. As far as I recall, the Captive Network Assistant is only activated for wireless networks. Your USB adapter would count as a wired network.


Mailboxes are stored in ~/Library/Mail. You can move this to your SD card then symlink the new location back to the original location.

Move ~/Library/Mail to your SD card.
Symlink the folder:

ln -s /Volumes/SD/path/to/your/Mail ~/Library/Mail


Pages: line break appears before end of line

This might be Non-breaking space between the words. Please press ⌘ cmd+⇧ shift+i to enable non visible characters. Here's example:


How to map media keys to "short jump" in vlc?

Actually mapping any key in a specific application is built into macOS.

system preferences > keyboard > shortcuts > App shortcut

Once you are there click the + and select VLC from the Application menu at the top, then type in the EXACT menu name. Exact is important it has to be capitalized correctly and if it has "..." at the end remember that is not three periods its an ellipsis which you get by pressing Option;. Then click in the Keyboard Shortcut field and tap the key you want to assign. In your case that would be F7.

This can generally be done for any Application that does not have a keyboard shortcut already assigned. If there is one already assigned you may have to remove that first.


Import and create iPhoto Event from folder name

In addition, this is the default behavior if you simply drop the folder onto the iPhoto icon. There is no direct need to make an Automator action unless you are doing this for many many folders.


How can I disable the screenshot sound on iPad?

If your device is jailbroken you can rename the sound file.

mv /System/Library/Audio/UISounds/photoShutter.caf /System/Library/Audio/UISounds/photoShutter-off.caf

Note:

The file will be restored on an iOS update.
The same file is used for the camera shutter sound, so renaming it will remove the sound from the camera shutter.


Prevent Spotlight from indexing future hard drives

A file called

.metadata_never_index

place in the root of any volume will suppress indexing behaviour.

You can generate this file automatically

the following files need to be created as root

the following shell script will create the requisite file should an active (less than 30 days old) spotlight entry not be found.

/var/root/unindex.sh

to create this

sudo vi /var/root/unindex.sh

or use your preferred text editor

The contents should be

#!/bin/bash
# suppress spotlight indexing of new volumes
# pc 26-june-2014 v0.1
# v 0.2 27-june-2014 add mdutil

# get the last volume mounted

vol=$(df)
vol=${vol##*%}
echo $vol

# is this a volume that has been indexed in the past month

count=$(find ${vol}/.Spotlight-V100 -mtime -30 | wc -l )
[[ $count -gt 1 ]] && {

# then it remains so

logger -t unindex spotlight activity detected in last 30 days
exit 0
}

# else create index supression file
logger -t unindex creating ${vol}/.metadata_never_index
touch ${vol}/.metadata_never_index
# and stop spotlight indexing the drive
logger -t unindex mdutil -i off /Volumes/${vol}
mdutil -i off /Volumes/${vol}

make sure it can be executed...

sudo chmod a+x /var/root/unindex.sh

now add an entry to launchd, create the file

/Library/LaunchDaemons/org.misctools.unindex.plist

to create this

sudo vi /Library/LaunchDaemons/org.misctools.unindex.plist

with contents

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN" "http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd">
<plist version="1.0">
<dict>
    <key>Label</key>
    <string>org.misctools.unindex</string>
    <key>ProgramArguments</key>
    <array>
        <string>/var/root/unindex.sh</string>
    </array>
    <key>RunAtLoad</key>
    <false/>
    <key>StartOnMount</key>
    <true/>
</dict>
</plist>

now activate the job

sudo launchctl load /Library/LaunchDaemons/org.misctools.unindex.plist

the job will launch every time you mount a disk, look in the console for messages filtered by 'unindex' for it's actions e.g. from my machine

 26/06/2014 09:02:35.824 unindex[1362]: creating /Volumes/hfs/.metadata_never_index


Email stuck in outbox but can't access it

Open the AppleScript Editor found in /Applications/Utilities.
Paste in the following three lines:

tell application "Microsoft Outlook"
  delete every message of outbox
end tell

Click the Run button at the top and this should delete every message in your Outbox.


Passing selected folder path to custom Service executing AppleScript

At the top of the screen, above your action, there should be a list-box that says Service receives selected <text> in <any application>.  Changing <text> to folders should give you the folders as input.


Screencapture Terminal command and then return to Shell script

The problem isn't that control is not being returned to your script, it's that the output from the echo command isn't being captured and reported to you. It could be that Alfred is closing the transient Terminal.app window that it's using to run the script. To test that add a sleep 60m to the end of the script which should keep the window on the screen.

Or it could be that all stdout/stderr from the script is going to /dev/null or something similar. Make sure Alfred isn't throwing away the output. Based on our comment conversation it sounds like that's what Alfred does with std I/O.


Need help using Homebrew 'Services' command

services was a "hidden" command in Homebrew. There were a bunch of them that weren't present in the brew help output. It has, as undocumented commands are wont to do, gone away in the official repository and has become an "external command" maintained in another add-on repository (in this case a gist as it is so simple).

You can install it in your Homebrew setup by running:

> curl -o /usr/local/bin/brew-services.rb https://gist.githubusercontent.com/lwe/766293/raw/75a7907004bbff0eb3b072d1d951be2cfe7e5020/brew-services.rb
> chmod +x /usr/local/bin/brew-services.rb
> brew services help
usage: [sudo] brew services [--help] <command> [<formula>]

Small wrapper around `launchctl` for supported formulas, commands available:
   cleanup Get rid of stale services and unused plists
   list    List all services managed by `brew services`
   restart Gracefully restart selected service
   start   Start selected service
   stop    Stop selected service

Options, sudo and paths:

  sudo   When run as root, operates on /Library/LaunchDaemons (run at boot!)
  Run at boot:  /Library/LaunchDaemons
  Run at login: /Users/ian/Library/LaunchAgents

Alternatively you can skip services and just make a plist file for it. For example, create ~/Library/LaunchAgents/org.mongodb.mongod.plist with:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN" "http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd">
<plist version="1.0">
<dict>
  <key>Label</key>
  <string>org.mongodb.mongod</string>
  <key>ProgramArguments</key>
  <array>
    <string>/usr/local/Cellar/mongodb/2.6.4/bin/mongod</string>
    <string>run</string>
    <string>--config</string>
    <string>/usr/local/Cellar/mongodb/2.6.4/mongod.conf</string>
  </array>
  <key>RunAtLoad</key>
  <true/>
  <key>KeepAlive</key>
  <false/>
  <key>UserName</key>
  <string>{your_username}</string>
  <key>WorkingDirectory</key>
  <string>/usr/local</string>
  <key>StandardErrorPath</key>
  <string>/usr/local/var/log/mongodb/output.log</string>
  <key>StandardOutPath</key>
  <string>/usr/local/var/log/mongodb/output.log</string>
</dict>
</plist>

Just change {your_username} to your actual username then run:

launchctl load ~/Library/LaunchAgents/org.mongodb.mongod.plist

to register the plist with launchd. You can now start and stop MongoDB with:

launchctl start org.mongodb.mongod
launchctl stop org.mongodb.mongod

Note, the above plist solution was taken from this excellent Stack Overflow answer.


Generally speaking this should happen rarely. That it happens with great regularity points to something wrong with the system. The easiest, first step, would be to use a utility like Onyx. Run the automate tab with no apps running and reboot. It will clean caches, do maintenance scripts and verify files.

If that did not fix it I would then look at the possibility that the Finder and Safari preferences files are corrupt. Look for said files in ~/Library/Preferences and /Library/Preferences. Move anything with safari and finder in the name to the desktop and reboot.

If you are still having problems I would find and download the latest "Combo updater" for your version of macOS. Run it, and reboot when asked. That should repair any problems with the Safari and Finder apps.

Still not working? Hmmmm.... well try those first


What are the available stylus pens for iPad?

If you want cheap, there's a youtube video on making your own stylus from the thin metallic-coated wrapper from a powerbar.

I cleaned up and cut out a narrow strip of the stuff, looped it over the tip of a comfortable but dried-out rollerball pen, and it seemed to work as well as the expensive foam tip stylus for which I paid $15.

Added: Here's the Walt MossPuppet video.


Actually, the basic functionality does not provide this feature.

You can do this by Jaibreaking your device (getting write priviligies to system partition) and installing tweaks like :

AutoProtect
CleverPin


The latest OS X 10.10.4 public beta, build 14E26a, totally gets rid of discoveryd. Go to this Apple link and sign up for the public beta program, where you'll be given a link to download a piece of software that'll get the App Store to pick up beta updates. Take a backup of everything, install Beta Access Utility, and then install and enjoy a discoveryd-free Yosemite!


Sadly, you've passed the point where you get to save your work.

Luckily, iMovie periodically saves the application database / library so you are unlikely to lose everything if you decide to shut down the Mac or force quit the application. Once you regain control of the application (you already know you can't do anything with it stuck in a state where it's no longer responding to messages, input - a.k.a spinning wheel of death) you can see if the changes you made are missing.

If they are, a call to apple support might be needed to restore the backup copies of the library it has made internally since Apple doesn't document how to restore a previous iMovie library publicly.

Going forward, you can set a timer and periodically save/quit iMovie and then back up the files. Time Machine allows you to make local snapshots if you don't have your backup volume connected.

sudo tmutil enablelocal

Then to make a point in time snapshot of all the files, quit iMovie and then run in terminal:

tmutil snap

That saves a neat point in time version of all your files that you can then recover later using the Time Machine interface.


Checking the specs of the the MacPro1,1 you should be able to upgrade to 10.7.5 if you upgraded it to at least 2 GB of RAM and you don't need Rosetta (for PPC-apps).

Since the preinstalled system on the MacPro 3,1 was 10.5.1 and both are equipped with a SATA (3 Gb/s) internal HD-interface, there shouldn't be any problem to move the "old" disks.

Your disks won't be updated with anything, except you initiate it yourself.


Mail on Yosemite 10.10.5 Can't stop Mail from downloading attachments

Fixed this issue finally. I had to go to Preferences > Viewing and unchecked "Load remote content in messages."


Why won't kern.maxfiles setting in /etc/sysctl.conf stick?

Though not directly answering your question you will find two solutions at superuser:

To adjust open files limits on a system-wide basis in Mac OS X Yosemite, you must create two configuration files. The first is a property list (aka plist) file in '/Library/LaunchDaemons/limit.maxfiles.plist' that contains the following XML configuration:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN" "http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd">
  <plist version="1.0">
    <dict>
      <key>Label</key>
        <string>limit.maxfiles</string>
      <key>ProgramArguments</key>
        <array>
          <string>launchctl</string>
          <string>limit</string>
          <string>maxfiles</string>
          <string>65536</string>
          <string>65536</string>
        </array>
      <key>RunAtLoad</key>
        <true/>
      <key>ServiceIPC</key>
        <false/>
    </dict>
  </plist>

This will set the open files limit to 65536. The second plist configuration file should be stored in /Library/LaunchDaemons/limit.maxproc.plist with the following contents:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple/DTD PLIST 1.0//EN" "http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd">
  <plist version="1.0">
    <dict>
      <key>Label</key>
        <string>limit.maxproc</string>
      <key>ProgramArguments</key>
        <array>
          <string>launchctl</string>
          <string>limit</string>
          <string>maxproc</string>
          <string>2048</string>
          <string>2048</string>
        </array>
      <key>RunAtLoad</key>
        <true />
      <key>ServiceIPC</key>
        <false />
    </dict>
  </plist>

Both plist files must be owned by 'root:wheel' and have permissions '-rw-r--r--'. This permissions should be in place by default, but you can ensure that they are in place by running sudo chmod 644 <filename>. While the steps explained above will cause system-wide open file limits to be correctly set upon restart, you can apply them manually by running launchctl limit.

In addition to setting these limits at the system level, we recommend setting the at the session level as well by appending the following lines to your 'bashrc', 'bashprofile', or analogous file:

ulimit -n 65536
ulimit -u 2048

Like the plist files, your bashrc or similar file should have -rw-r--r-- permissions. At this point, you can restart your computer and enter ulimit -n into your terminal. If your system is configured correctly, you should see that maxfiles has been set to 65536.

Adjust the maxfiles & maxproc limit as you need it

Sourced from: http://docs.basho.com/riak/latest/ops/tuning/open-files-limit/
Modifying the /etc/launchd.conf per a lot of google queries and SO suggestions didn't seem to work for me in Yosemite (10.10).  What did end up working, after numerous change/reboot/test combinations, was modifying (or creating if it doesn't exist) the /etc/sysctl.conf file.

This is what I had to put in to make it work

kern.maxfiles=65536
kern.maxfilesperproc=65536

I'm not sure if 'kern.maxfiles' needs to be in there, but when I had it in there by itself I still had the same issue, when I added the 'kern.maxfilesperproc' everything started working.

If one or both of those solutions work for you, please credit the original posters.


The quickest way to get the entire list is to use Finder's help and search for "Symbols used in shortcuts" and refer the to the canonical list of symbols. It's also in the user manual for your mac online and I believe is still shipped with all Macs in the box.

Finder contains six icons in its menu bar and safari has a couple more which visually represent a key on the standard keyboard from Apple (most of which do not share the same icon when made as a physical key cap).

Finder: ⌃ ⌥ ⇧ ⌘ ⎋ ↑
Safari: adds two more ↓ and ⇥

So the list of common symbols is pretty complete as follows:

Control: ⌃ (also ctrl or ctl)
Option: ⌥ (also alt or alternate)
Shift: ⇧
Command: ⌘ (historically the "Apple" key)
Esc: ⎋
Up Arrow: ↑
Down Arrow: ↓
Tab: ⇥

We also have some references on the "meta" side of the site where we talk about how to differentiate between what is printed on the keys and what software draws in the Menu bar (and other places).

Keyboard icons & terminology


AppleScript to tell Adobe Reader to close a certain document

"Adobe Reader" is not really scriptable, you can't access to the objects (window, document), but You can use the GUI Scripting.

This script works well here.

set theTitle to "this name.pdf"

tell application "System Events"
    tell process "Adobe Reader"
        tell window theTitle to if exists then perform action "AXPress" of (get value of attribute "AXCloseButton")
    end tell
end tell

This script requires that you enable access for assistive devices in the Universal Access System Preference pane.