macOS briefly falls back to console after login

It seems like you have filevault enabled. You also have verbose mode enabled.
Because of this macOS needs to finish booting into the decrypted drive and it shows verbose output.  To avoid this disable filevault or verbose mode. That should fix the problem.
To disable filevault go to system preferences->security->FileVault and disable it there. If you want to disable verbose mode then I think you need to change back boot-args by running sudo nvram -d boot-args.


From https://www.airbeam.tv/faqwd/how-can-i-uninstall-the-airbeamtv-audio-driver-2/

First, find out what driver version(s) you have installed. Go to
System Preferences -> Sound -> select the Output tab. Look at the list
of the sound output devices.
If you see “AirBeamTV Audio”, you have
the audio driver version 2. To uninstall it, you need to delete
/Library/Audio/Plug-Ins/HAL/AirBeamTVAudio.driver
Detailed instructions:

Open Finder
Use the menu “Go” -> “Go to folder…” (or press Shift + Command + G)
Copy the following path: /Library/Audio/Plug-Ins/HAL
Click “Go”
Delete “AirBeamTVAudio.driver”. You will need to enter the administrator password because this is a system location
Reboot your computer. After the reboot the driver will disappear in the system sound preferences

If you see “AirBeamTV”, you still have the audio driver version 1. To
uninstall it, you need to delete /Library/Extensions/AirBeamTV.kext
Detailed instructions:

Open Finder
Use the menu “Go” -> “Go to folder…” (or press Shift + Command + G)
Copy the following path: /Library/Extensions
Click “Go”
Delete “AirBeamTV.kext”. You will need to enter the administrator password because this is a system location
Reboot your computer. After the reboot the driver will disappear in the system sound preferences


How can I get a OSX mountain lion installer for deployment testing?

Developers registered with Apple's Mac Developer Program can download older editions of Mac OS X for development and testing purposes.

The screenshot below shows OS X Mountain Lion is still available to developers.


How do I get vim to work at 256 colors in iTerm?

OK, so...

I just started vim again, and colors where there. Since then I did make a changehowever, I installed XCode. This is the only thing I did change, so there must be something in there that fixes this.

Thanks for the effort!


VMWare Fusion - Where does a shared folder appear if the Virtual OS is “Snow Leopard Server”?

I received a correct answer on VMWare community forum:

  Using VMware Shared Folders requires VMware Tools be installed in the Guest OS, have you installed VMware Tools?

  If yes make sure you have Shared Folders turned on in the Virtual Machine Settings and have added a shared folder.

  If that has been done there should be a VMware Shared Folders alias on the Guest OSes Desktop.

  Also look in /Volumes for a directory named VMware Shared Folders as that is the mount point in OS X for VMware Shared Folders.


Move an app to applications when it's installed itself elsewhere

tl;dr: drag SmartGit.app to your applications folder (or wherever you want to install it) and eject (remove) the img (drag this SmartGit 18.1.2 folder to trash bin)

You didn't install it yet, you only opened a disk image (hint, the format of the file you downloaded is probably .dmg) which contains the app itself (the .app file). You can now drag this app to your applications folder or wherever you want it. Usually these installers contain these steps, and a shortcut to default applications folder, so you just drag a few steps. But it's the exact same thing.


Insert vector-based PDF to Powerpoint WITHOUT losing resolution

PowerPoint 2011 and 2016 don't retain vector graphics from PDF files, but merrily convert everything into bitmap graphics when the presentation is saved. To embed vector graphics in the presentation file, it's necessary to use an .EMF or .WMF file (Enhanced Metafile / Windows Metafile) instead of PDF. These  are Microsoft's own portable graphics formats from the Windows world and can contain bitmap elements and vector elements. The EMF format is preferable over its older version WMF because EMF supports vector graphics better.

To embed vector graphics from a PDF file, the PDF file will need to be converted to an EMF file, but if possible, it would be preferable to use an EMF file exported directly from the software that was used to create the graphics in the first place. Vector graphics editors like Adobe Illustrator and Inkscape as well as OpenOffice Draw all can export .EMF files. (Affinity Designer currently not so.) The possible downside is that more complex graphics and effects from advanced applications like Illustrator may be rendered wrong in the EMF format, which then makes it necessary to convert the vector graphics into bitmap graphics after all.

For conversion, there are commercially sold utilities and free websites. There are also tools to convert PDF files directly to PowerPoint presentations (.pptx files), but I'm not sure about the quality of these solutions, e.g., they might just convert the vector graphics into bitmap graphics...

Using vector graphics applications for export or conversion:

• Adobe Illustrator can export to EMF format. So if AI is at hand, this is the tool of choice: Open the PDF file (or the original .AI file) in Illustrator and choose File > Export…, then choose "Enhanced Metafile (emf)" from the format selection in the dialog box.

• Inkscape (open source software) can export to the EMF format (File > Save As…), and placing the these files in PowerPoint seems to work fine. But when importing and re-exporting existing PDFs with complex graphics, e.g., from Illustrator, the result may differ from the original.

Wikipedia has a comparison of vector graphics applications with their export formats.

If this is all too much trouble and you want to keep at least a high-resolution bitmap image, the best workaround is to convert the PDF into a high-resolution image yourself, e.g., by using the Preview application to open and export the PDF as PNG. (Beware: Depending on the source of the PDF file, it may contain low-resolution bitmap graphics, which can not be 'upscaled' without visible pixelation.)

After placing the image, it's important to adjust PowerPoint's automatic image compression setting before you save the presentation: Choose File > Reduce File Size, and in the dialog box select "Keep Current Resolution"from the drop-down menu.


Can Aperture be migrated or reinstalled from iMac to MacBook Pro (which has no DVD drive)?

Two options:

Option 1) Share the DVD drive from your iMac to your MacBook Pro.

Go to the "Sharing" panel in System Preferences on your iMac.

You can then install the software over your LAN connection.

However, this doesn't always work, and it's very slow.

Option 2) Make an ISO of your installation CD/DVD.

This requires using the Terminal.app, but it's fairly painless.

Insert the disk in the iMac
Go to Terminal.app and type mount and press return, and you will see something like this:

/dev/disk1 on / (hfs, local, journaled)
devfs on /dev (devfs, local, nobrowse)
map -hosts on /net (autofs, nosuid, automounted, nobrowse)
map auto_home on /home (autofs, automounted, nobrowse)

except that you will also see a "/dev/disk" entry for your DVD drive. I'll use "/dev/disk2" as an example but yours will (probably) be different.

Then you want to enter this in Terminal:

/bin/dd if="/dev/disk2" of="$HOME/Desktop/Aperture.iso" bs=2048

once you press enter you will hear the DVD drive spin up, but Terminal won't say anything.

Note: if you get a message about the device being "busy" launch DiskUtility.app and "unmount" the DVD (but do NOT eject it).

Terminal will just work quietly for awhile and then after 10-20 minutes (or more or less, it depends) it will say something like "18397+0 records in" and "18397+0 records out" (note: I just made up '18397' as an example, the point is that the records "in" and "out" should be the same.)

This will leave you with a file called "Aperture.iso" on your Desktop.

Eject your Aperture DVD/CD now (if you used DiskUtility to unmount it, use DiskUtility to eject it now)
Once the DVD is ejected, double click on the Aperture.iso file, and it should "mount" just as if you had inserted the DVD again.

If it did not work, you probably had the /dev/disk wrong or there was an error reading the disk.

If it mounts as expected, simply copy the ISO file to your MacBook Pro and use it as the installer.

I have been doing this with all my DVD installers since I bought my MacBook Air a few years ago. It's a nice backup and installation from an ISO is a lot faster than from an actual DVD too.


Audio settings in High Sierra resetting after reboot

If the audio device you're using is always connected, please try these instructions (relevant portion below, although there are some other suggestions in that post that could be worth trying).

However, keep in mind that if the device is disconnected when your system starts, it will revert to the system default. (It is also possible, that if you are loading certain applications on startup, that they are resetting the preferred default, but we'll need more details on your system configuration/startup items in this case.)

You could also, depending on your situation, use an AppleScript method to create a one-click type approach to your audio selection.

Suggested first attempt to solve this issue:

Go to /Applications/Utilities and open Audio MIDI Setup. Select the device you want to use, click the gear, and then Use this device for sound output.


How to report a deceptive in app purchase

When you open the App Store, near the top on the right is a link to support. This takes you to iTunes support where you can search or submit a question.  I searched on your question and found the following:

  Contact the iTunes Store Customer Service department using the form on
  their   Support page (select the category and subcategory closest to
  the issue you're reporting and you'll find either an "Express Lane"
  button - just follow the instructions to get to the contact form - or
  an "Email Us" button) and explain your situation to them.


Using same Snow Leopard CD on two MacBooks

In writing this answer, I'm assuming that you're speaking the truth when you say your workplace lost the install CD for the laptop--that is, you have the legal right to install it, but not the physical medium with which to do it. I'm not in any way encouraging you to pirate software.

That said, when you install Snow Leopard, it won't ask you for a serial number. If the installation disc came with a computer, it will likely only install on computers that are the same model as the one the disc came with--so, for example, the installation disc that came with an iMac won't work on a MacBook Pro. The retail version of the OS, however, will install on the laptop, run normally, and download and install updates without a problem. It will do all of this even if you've used the same disc to install the OS on another computer, because there is no protection scheme in the OS to prevent this.

Edit: As Samantha Catania says in another answer, the discs that come with a computer are machine-specific, in the sense that they will only install on a very specific model of computer. If your work laptop is a different model than the model the disc came with, it just won't install at all. It'll stop before it does any damage, though, so (again, repeating what Samantha already said) it wouldn't hurt to try. Most likely, though, you'll need either an installation disc for the exact same model you're trying to install on, or a retail disc.


MacBook Pro: necessary specs for virtualization

Depends on specs and activity of the boxes. 15x one core and 512MB RAM will run on a Core i5 and 16GB RAM. If the boxes are going to need more RAM, you'll need to run fewer boxes at a time. A VM typically requires about 100MB RAM on the hypervisor side, macOS and any tools you might have running also need some memory, so those are the constraints of the system you'd be working with. More RAM isn't an option, it's soldered on, and 16GB is the limit.


What are the differences between journaling HFS+ and non-journaling HFS+?

I don't have numbers to back up the statement, but using HFS+ non-journaled is a good idea in certain volumes that require absolute speed, without worrying (too much) about a possible "data loss" or "data corruption" in case of power failure or similar.

When is using HFS+ Non-journaled a BAD idea?

External (USB, FW, ESata) drives that are connected and reconnected often: It's usually a bad idea, since these drives tend to be accidentally disconnected very often and or their power sources unplugged.
Partitions where data integrity is important and protection from an unexpected power loss is a must. (Documents, Music, Videos, Backups, etc).

When is using HFS+ Non-journaled a GOOD idea?

Scratch, Temp, trivial storage and similar drives and partitions, where speed is > data integrity in case of power fail. You want your Final Cut scratch volume to be non-journaled (you do have an UPS anyway, don't you?). You want your Photoshop temp to be non-journaled. Drives to copy stuff around (a Pen drive for example if you take care of properly ejecting).
Any other drive that requires portability and compatibility like you correctly pointed out.

Remember, maintaining the journal adds a small overhead, but the benefit in case of improper volume dismount are important, no only to avoid a full disk "scan" at startup or re-mount, but also in terms of making sure that data is not corrupted in the first place.

Mounting a non-journaled drive that has been incorrectly unmounted, will cause a fsck scan, whereas the journaled drive will be able to be up and running in a shorter period of time (scanning the journal and applying uncommited transactions).

Regarding Speed and tests, I don't have much info to back up the above claim, however, as far as I know the speed difference not only is very small and even hard to notice, but in some case Journaled filesystem is faster than non-journaled.

Turn out that despite the overhead of the journal, some operations can be made asynchronously in the Journaled drive, whereas the non-journaled version has to perform things synchronously.

For reference I googled a little bit trying to find an old comparison (the numbers are probably valid since HFS+ hasn't really changed much since their first iterations in OSX, other than adding Inline Attribute Data records, and access control list file security and maybe something else.

Here's the website with the charts:

Comparison Between HFS+ Journaled vs HFS+ Non-journaled

TL;DR:

  The file copy/duplicate/copy sequence
  was pretty much equally fast for both
  journaled/non-journaled HFS. The same
  sequence with the folder was again
  somewhat faster with the journaled HFS

(emphasis mine)

Conclusion

I am somewhat surprised to see the above results, as I was kind of convinced that using Non-Journaled was really faster for some operations, but apparently the little cases where it can make a difference, it's overweighted by the "safety" of Journaling.


launchctl plist has a stderr that talks about how getcwd operation not permitted so how do I fix it?

Analysis

After a long chat session, it turns out that the root of the problem was that bash can't fully access the Documents folder. The OP had shortened the actual path for makeTodaySym.sh: instead of being located in /Users/kim/journals, the script resides in a subfolder of ~/Documents.

The Documents folder is sandboxed, as explained in this Apple document:

  In macOS, data in critical areas is itself sandboxed — which ensures that users remain in control of access to files in Desktop, Documents, Downloads and other areas from all apps, whether the apps attempting access are themselves sandboxed or not.

and bash can't read its contents from within the .plist file.

Two solutions

Place the script outside of ~/Documents

Interestingly enough, although bash can't read the contents of the Documents folder, it can write to it.

So one solution is to move makeTodaySym.sh outside of ~/Documents. For instance, if placed in /Users/kim/bin/makeTodaySym.sh, this should work:

<key>ProgramArguments</key>
<array>
  <string>/bin/bash</string>
  <string>-c</string>
  <string>/Users/kim/bin/makeTodaySym.sh /Users/kim/Documents/Apps/CompanyLevelApps/OILD/16-journals</string>

(Tested on macOS 10.15.5 Catalina.)

Grant full disk access to bash

Another solution is give bash full disk access. Just add /bin/bash to System Preferences>Security & Privacy>Privacy>Full Disk Access.

Note that even with full disk access, permissions would prevent bash from reading arbitrary files in the file system, but you have one fewer level of protection.

(Tested on macOS 10.15.5 Catalina.)

Two suggestions

I'd suggest that you do the following two changes to your configuration:

Remove reference to working directory

I've noticed that setting a working directory in the .plist file:

<key>WorkingDirectory</key>
    <string>/Users/kim/Documents/Apps/CompanyLevelApps/OILD/16-journals</string>

causes this error:

  job-working-directory: error retrieving current directory: getcwd: cannot access parent directories: Operation not permitted

Your script doesn't need the WorkingDirectory key to successfully create the symlink, so you may want to remove it to get rid of the error.

Create symlink with relative path

Your script creates the symlink:

ln -sf "$file" "$folder/today.md"

with an absolute path:

  today.md@ -> /Users/kim/Documents/Apps/CompanyLevelApps/OILD/16-journals/2020-06-10 Wednesday.md

To may want to use:

ln -sf "$(basename "$file")" "$folder/today.md"

instead to create a relative symlink that is easier to read:

  today.md@ -> 2020-06-10 Wednesday.md

Full path in plist file

It's important to note that providing the full path for makeTodaySym.sh (as explained in jksoegaard's answer) was a necessary change for the .plist to work properly, as relative paths are not supported.


What photo organizer software can store keywords/tags in EXIF without mangling other EXIF metadata?

digikam can do this, but requires compilation via macports.


How to get Internet Sharing (Ethernet to WiFi) with Server on OS X 10.10.5

Check the IP address assigned to the device via DHCP.  Does it match the IP range for the DHCP Network configured in Server.app's (disabled) DHCP service?  I.e., is the IP address in the 192.168.1.0/24 range?)  Also, try ifconfig -a on the Mac mini and look for a bridge that contains your WiFi device as a member.  In the example below (MAC address obscured), I see that my WiFi device (en1) is in bridge100.  Does the inet range for the bridge differ from the IP range assigned to your device?

bridge100: flags=8863<UP,BROADCAST,SMART,RUNNING,SIMPLEX,MULTICAST> mtu 1500
    options=3<RXCSUM,TXCSUM>
    ether xx:xx:xx:xx:xx:xx
    inet 192.168.2.1 netmask 0xffffff00 broadcast 192.168.2.255
    inet6 fe80::c82a:14ff:fe55:fc64%bridge100 prefixlen 64 scopeid 0xa
    Configuration:
        id 0:0:0:0:0:0 priority 0 hellotime 0 fwddelay 0
        maxage 0 holdcnt 0 proto stp maxaddr 100 timeout 1200
        root id 0:0:0:0:0:0 priority 0 ifcost 0 port 0
        ipfilter disabled flags 0x2
    member: en1 flags=3<LEARNING,DISCOVER>
            ifmaxaddr 0 port 5 priority 0 path cost 0
    nd6 options=1<PERFORMNUD>
    media: autoselect
    status: active

If so, try deleting the Network from the DHCP service in Server.app.  This fixed the problem for me.  After deleting the Network (I think I had to renew the DHCP lease, too), my devices are now assigned IPs in the range of the bridge.

I think that when Internet Sharing starts, it creates the bridge to support Internet Sharing.  So your devices should get IP addresses in its range.  I don't know why the Server.app's DHCP Networks interfere with Internet Sharing, since the service is off, but maybe because Internet Sharing forces DHCP on behind the scenes, and the Network settings are picked up regardless.  I'm also not sure why an IP in the DHCP service's Network doesn't allow for internet connectivity, but I guess it may have something to do with not matching the bridge's network mask and/or some configuration of pf that Internet Sharing does behind the scenes.

I hope this helps.


What does a 2012 Mac Mini need for microphone input?

The audio-in port on Mac Minis is a line-level port, meaning that a standard PC microphone may not be audible without some sort of amplifier.

On any Mini from 2010 and later, you can use the Apple headset (the kind that comes with the iPhone), but you have to plug it into the headphone port, not the audio-in port. There are also adapters available that allow you to use any standard PC headset with that port.

On older Minis, you'll have to use a USB audio adapter. The iMic is a popular one, but there are many others out there.


To answer your questions:

I haven't tested it myself (but I'll in the near future), but there are SIM cards available, comparable to the Gravy SIM (but here is no need to dial 112), which will unlock your iPhone. It's not that expensive, so I would give it a try.
Sorry, it looks like this SIM only supports the iPhone 4S.
You can unlock the iPhone with any AT&T card, no need for the original card. At least, that worked with my T-Mobile locked iPhone. So I would guess it's the same for your AT&T locked iPhone.

Do you know you have a return policy on eBay? And in a matter of fact, if you've paid with PayPal, you can set-up a conflict and ask for your money back... But this just for your information.


Access iCloud mail on iPad without setting up device

The problem is that the page www.icloud.com recognizes Safari on iPad and iPhone as a mobile iOS browser and then presents the page with the setup message.
But you could try to access the page with Google's chrome. It has an option to open pages in a desktop version. That might help.


Could Not Sign In: A server problem is blocking Apple ID sign in. Try signing in later."

I had the same problem. I found that if I set up the Touch ID and Passcode, it went through. I then could turn off these features after. Hope this helps.


You have to set None as the payment type.

For more information, see the apple support or discusson.


Stop my Mac from downloading Apple TV content

Make sure that you have "download pre-orders when available" disabled in your iTunes preferences by going to iTunes > Preferences under the Store tab. Then, untick If you have this selected in itunes you are telling itunes to download all new shows that you watch. If you untick it new future shows will not download.


automatic save before "Run in Terminal" in BBEdit

Contact Barebones, the developer's of BBEdit, about recreating this Text Wrangler behaviour in BBEdit.

Barebone's support is at support@barebones.com

They will be able to help.

BBEdit 11 Release Notes

The BBEdit 11 release notes mention the following:

  The #! menu has been rearranged, and some behaviors for running #! scripts have been changed, as follows:

  "Run…" has been changed to "Run with Options…". This brings up a dialog which lets you control what is done with the script output. The options to "Run in Debugger" and "Run in Terminal" have been removed, since you can do that explicitly from the #! menu itself (and scripts run that way don't get their output back into the application anyway).


I figured out the answer myself.  Apparently the bash version in OS X supports square brackets, but not curly brackets.  Weird.  It's bash 3.2.53.  This command works:

diskutil eraseVolume HFS+ FreshMag /Volumes/*[R45R,R4G5]

However, in this particular case, it's actually better to use a more specific command like this:

diskutil eraseVolume HFS+ FreshMag /Volumes/[A-Z][0-9][0-9][0-9][R,L]???

It should be noted that if more than one volume matches this wildcard, the command will fail, because the wildcard expands to both filenames.


If you didn't back up the photos, they're gone, sadly.

If you connected the iPod to the computer, iTunes may have backed them up without you realizing it, So check there first.

If you enabled iPod backups, you can send iPod on any other device and manage the storage to see if the iPod has a backup. If so, you can restore that back up on to pretty much any device.


When that model was released, the mainstream boot support was FireWire and APT and not GUID format. If you can’t try that, you’ll want to get a USB to sata controller ($5 to $10) and write the data to a sata drive and connect that bus.

You should be able to USB boot on Intel Macs, though and the only articles I can find show 10.4.5 adding boot support, so I think you might also just have a hardware issue.

Mac pro early 2008 won´t boot from pendrive with yosemite install app
https://support.apple.com/kb/SP11?locale=en_US
https://www.engadget.com/2008/12/18/mac-101-yes-intel-macs-can-be-booted-from-an-external-usb-drive/


I have not seen this issue before. I unfortunately can not duplicate this issue at my office. Two MacBook Pros and a MacBook all respond to ping requests. All units are running Mac OS X Lion 10.7. I used Network Utility to preform the ping to the IP address and host name.

About how old are these computers and do you know the model name? What software is running on these computers? What software are you using to ping the computers? Are you pinging the IP or host name? If the Apple Firewall is off, do you have any other software running for security? What router are you using? Is there a firewall in the router or a feature such as 'wireless isolation' turned on? If more than one router or switch is involved, are the computers on the same subnet? Are these computers wirelessly joined or wired to the network?

I would think the answer to the problem would be found in one of the questions I have asked you.


It's normal to not have a Macintosh HD volume and other volumes after you've erased the disk since the disk is now empty without an operating system installed.
It's normal to have many little ‘disk image’ disks show up in diskutil list since that's how the Recovery environment works (diskutil list shows 20 disk partitions, I only know 3, what are the rest?).
It's not normal to be unable to erase a disk to enable journaling. However, journaling is only an option on HFS formatted disks, and you should be using APFS.
In Disk Utility, with the top-level disk selected, Erase, then enter a name like Macintosh HD, choose APFS as the format and choose GUID Partition Map for scheme. Once the disk is erased, exit Disk Utility (don't reboot, just close the app) and choose Install macOS from the recovery dialog.


How can I install .deb files for Cydia manually (without wifi)?

You can add .deb files and install apps from apptrackr, etc.. using the app iFunbox. I actually just used it the other day to locally upload my custom sms-tone pack. So download your needed .deb files from online, then transfer and install them via the program iFunbox.

http://www.i-funbox.com/


How can I remove Applications from Security & Privacy?

To remove all apps from a particular Privacy category, open Terminal.app and type the following command, then type the Return key:
tccutil reset CATEGORY

where CATEGORY is one of:

Accessibility
AddressBook
AppleEvents (i.e. Automation)
Calendar
Camera
Microphone
Photos
Reminders
ScreenCapture (for the Screen Recording list)
SystemPolicyAllFiles (for the Full Disk Access list)
SystemPolicyDesktopFolder
SystemPolicyDeveloperFiles
SystemPolicyDocumentsFolder
SystemPolicyDownloadsFolder
SystemPolicyNetworkVolumes
SystemPolicyRemovableVolumes
SystemPolicySysAdminFiles

If you want to remove only a particular app, you need to first determine its Bundle ID. Once you know that, issue the command:
tccutil reset CATEGORY BUNDLEID

Note: Specifying an app's Bundle ID appears to require macOS Mojave (10.14) or later.
You could also remove all apps from all categories:
tccutil reset All

Though this might freeze your Mac on macOS 10.15 and later, see comment below.

In the example given in the question, the following commands would remove Terminal and Chrome from Calendars.
First, determine their Bundle IDs:
osascript -e 'id of app "Terminal"'

shows com.apple.Terminal. Same for "Chrome" gives: com.google.Chrome. Now we can reset them:
tccutil reset Calendars com.apple.Terminal
tccutil reset Calendars com.google.Chrome

Pro tip:
This is a one-liner doing the same:
tccutil reset Calendars `osascript -e 'id of app "Chrome"'`

More info in this blog article: Managing Mojave’s privacy protection: Privacy controls.


Can I use a Time Machine backup to recover deleted Notes that were stored in iCloud?

What is possibly happening is iCloud is overwriting your restore. Be sure sync is turned off before you attempt to restore the database files. Then, manually update Notes and turn sync on so your local copy is the newest one. I believe it will attempt to merge.


How to make bootable ISO of Mac OS X Snow Leopard Install DVD on Windows

I read that you can use MacDrive.app (it is free for 5 days).

This is what they say about them self:

  MacDrive gives you complete control of a Mac disk all from your PC.

  You can access Mac disks from your desktop or favorite software, as
  well as create and partition Mac disks. MacDrive even includes robust
  tools to help repair Mac disks that are damaged or unreadable on other
  computers.

The key is it can partition the disk in Mac OS stile, which is must have to make bootable OS disk.

Next step would be to open/extract the OS installer from the OS package (dmg) from your DVD an so on.


iTunes fails to sync with iPod Touch, suggests I should reset it to factory defaults

Can you tell us what version of iOS you're running? Unless it's really old, you can sync contacts to your iCloud account, and if you go to iCloud.com and log in with your Apple ID you'd see them. You can also do an iCloud backup. Regarding songs, how did you get them on your iPod initially? If they were already on your computer then you should be able to put them back again after the restore. If you purchased them through iTunes you should be able to re-download them for free.


Has Apple any policy for dead/stuck pixel in MacBook Pro Retina

My guess is that it would be covered under AppleCare.  They may opt to either fix it or replace it.  But I'm not 100% certain.


When you access the school's forums, are you on a VPN? If so they may be filtering larger files, as suggested in a comment.

This animated .gif file works fine for me in Safari. Make sure its not working for you before we go looking for local causes to your problem, rather than forum or gateway problems you and others have alluded to.


Macbook Pro A1706, Glass Screen Repair (not the LCD)

You have to replace the whole assembly.

The LCD and the glass are glued together so it's next to impossible for the average repair person to separate the two. (Technically, they can be unglued, but it requires specialized equipment).

These are tough to source and expensive (PN# 661-05095).  You may have to get it from a Apple repair shop or surf eBay for a "parts" MBP and salvage the screen.


How can I be auto logged in with the computer locked?

I outlined how to do this at https://www.engadget.com/2011-03-07-terminally-geeky-use-automatic-login-more-securely.html but I will summarize it for you:

set your account to autologin
create a login item (using launchd) which calls:

/System/Library/CoreServices/Menu\ Extras/User.menu/Contents/Resources/CGSession -suspend

NOTE: that command should be ONE LONG LINE not two lines with a line break/line feed.
A more thorough explanation is available at TUAW, so I won't repeat it all here, because those are the relevant details.
What it does:
The idea is very simple, your account is set to auto-login, so all of your login items will run, however, one of those login items (the CGSession command listed above) will tell the loginwindow to appear. If you have used Fast User Switching before, you will be familiar with how it works.
"But what if someone holds down the shift key to stop autolaunching?"
In my testing, that will also prevent the user from being automatically logged in.
Is this 100% as safe as not using auto-login?
Probably not, but I'd consider it close to 99.999% as safe.
That said, use at your own risk, etc.


iMac can't unzip password protected PC zipped file

macOS has built-in support for password protected Zip files, but if he encounters problems have him get The Unarchiver. It also does other kinds of file types.


Use MacPorts. It's machine work to chase dependencies, not yours.


Can the identifier of a partition be changed without modifying the partition?

The specific problem detailed in this question was solved automatically upon restart (not the first restart however).

Unfortunately, this was not the cause of the BootCamp issues (or any other issues), which were due to the size of my hard drive being greater than 2.2TB. This caused BootCamp Assistant to fail to partition the hard drive because it did not believe that it would work with a hard drive of this size, although the bug in question had already been patched.

To resolve this, the partition was created in Disk Utility. Contrary to what most sites dictate, the Windows partition was not in the first 2.2TB of the hard drive and was not formatted as FAT. This is because it was deleted and recreated as a valid format upon installing Windows. Note that this did not work first time in this case, with Windows giving an error. If this occurs, just delete the partition again (still from the Windows installer) and create a new one. Before doing any of this, all data should be backed up, as if one of the steps fails, it may wipe your data.

The install disk was created with BootCamp like usual.

Edit:

Running diskutil list outputs:

/dev/disk0 (internal, physical):

   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      GUID_partition_scheme                        *3.0 TB     disk0
   1:                        EFI EFI                     209.7 MB   disk0s1
   2:                  Apple_HFS Macintosh HD            2.5 TB     disk0s2
   3:                 Apple_Boot Recovery HD             650.0 MB   disk0s3
   4:         Microsoft Reserved                         16.8 MB    disk0s4
   5:       Microsoft Basic Data BOOTCAMP                500.2 GB   disk0s5
/dev/disk1 (external, physical):
   ...

Running sudo gpt -r show /dev/disk0 outputs:

       start        size  index  contents
           0           1         PMBR
           1           1         Pri GPT header
           2          32         Pri GPT table
          34           6
          40      409600      1  GPT part - C12A7328-F81F-11D2-BA4B-00A0C93EC93B
      409640  4881805104      2  GPT part - 48465300-0000-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC
  4882214744     1269536      3  GPT part - 426F6F74-0000-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC
  4883484280         392
  4883484672       32768      4  GPT part - E3C9E316-0B5C-4DB8-817D-F92DF00215AE
  4883517440   977014784      5  GPT part - EBD0A0A2-B9E5-4433-87C0-68B6B72699C7
  5860532224         911
  5860533135          32         Sec GPT table
  5860533167           1         Sec GPT header

Running sudo fdisk /dev/disk0 outputs:

Disk: /dev/disk0    geometry: 97451/255/63 [1565565872 sectors]
Signature: 0xAA55
         Starting       Ending
 #: id  cyl  hd sec -  cyl  hd sec [     start -       size]
------------------------------------------------------------------------
 1: EE 1023 254  63 - 1023 254  63 [         1 - 4294967294] <Unknown ID>
 2: 00    0   0   0 -    0   0   0 [         0 -          0] unused
 3: 00    0   0   0 -    0   0   0 [         0 -          0] unused
 4: 00    0   0   0 -    0   0   0 [         0 -          0] unused


What is the meaning of an icon that appears next to the Location field in Calendar app?

You can find what the exclamation point means in Calendar Help>View events>Calendar symbols:

The explanation "the item isn’t recognized as a valid entry by the server" is somewhat misleading. Even when the event is created using Google's web interface (so you would expect the server validated your location information) Calendar complains about the location and shows the dreaded exclamation point.

There seems to be some kind of mismatch between the information Google calendar exports through CalDAV and what Calendar expects. This is probably also the reason why location information in an imported Google calendar is shown inside a bubble:

That's not the case for iCloud Calendar events.

A Google search shows many posts of other people who have the same problem. Nobody seems to have found a solution, though. I don't think you can do much about it.


How can I type quotation marks directly without hitting space in different app?

Go to System Preferences > Keyboard > Input Sources and get rid of the item called "US International PC".  Instead use US or ABC.

(US International PC is a special layout where those characters are deadkeys for typing accent marks used is various European languages).


Aside from dd there is also ddrescue although it's not a native OS X/macOS utility, however it can be installed in a number of ways. Personally I prefer to compile directly from source code however Package Managers like Homebrew can be used, or a precompiled binary if one is comfortable accepting a precompiled binary from an non-authoritative source.

Note that to compile from source code or use a package manager you need to have Command Line Tools for Xcode installed. You do not need to have the full Xcode installed, just the Command Line Developer Tools which are only a couple hundred megabyte vs many gigabytes.

The Command Line Tools for Xcode install can be started from Terminal with the following command:

xcode-select --install

To use ddrescue read its manual page, man ddrescue in Terminal, or online: GNU ddrescue Manual


Why do Chinese EarPods not work with German MacBook Pro?

According to this post from Apple's official Chinese-language discussion forum, the EarPods that come bundled with iPhones sold in China comply with the OMTP standard which uses black rings, which is the official standard for 3.5mm earphones in the country whereas those from other countries and the standalone EarPods sold in China use the CTIA standard, with the white rings.

The channels used by the two standards are different: the order of the rings on the OMTP standard are :Left audio, right audio, microphone, and ground; whereas  the CTIA standard have the ground and microphone sockets switched over, so, given that information, we can safely conclude a German MacBook Pro is incompatible with the OMTP standard, however all Apple 3.5mm EarPods should be compatible with all iPhones, as indicated by the question and the linked forum thread.


Numbers as a spreadsheet operates very well for its intended design, calculating, storing and displaying (in a pretty way) tabulated data.  However many people try to use spreadsheets as databases.  When emulating a relational database, of sorts, using a spreadsheet is clunky at best.

Making links to individual cells in different tables on different sheets is easy, but filtering entire rows remotely on a separate table is quite another task.

Databases use a unique ID in so as to reference data between tables.  You can use this to do so with formulas in Excel and Numbers but to automate this process may require scripting.  (In the case of Excel, VBA.  Numbers can be scripted with Applescript.)  iWork Automation has several tutorials and examples on how to script Numbers.

What I have used to good success in referencing data from a master sheet or table is the following formula:

Index ( Match ())

There is a plethora of information on the Internet as to how to use this formula, and there are many ways to implement it.  Getting the Nth row based on criteria without a filter is tricky, however.

This answer for Excel VBA on Stackoverflow may be a start that can be used as a base (with proper syntax formatting of course) for an AppleScript service that may work.


keycode 58 + 36

tell application "System Events" to key code 36 using {option down}

a handy link on applescripty
 - http://eastmanreference.com/complete-list-of-applescript-key-codes/


Two factor Auth code sent to same device

This is not a bug. The attack that is being prevented here is the case where someone would steal your password and log into your account from their own machine.

So in this case, two factor helps us establish trust by proving that it is in fact you who is trying to log into iCloud and not some attacker who stole only your password. The ways in which we can achieve this can be classified as "something you have", "something you are" and "something you know".

In this case, your password is "something you know". Your iPhone and Mac are both "something you have". Remember, your Mac is signed into iCloud already and is trusted by Apple on system level.

If someone did steal your password (the something you know), they would still require access to either your Mac OR your iPhone. These are both "something you have". As stated previously, your Mac is already trusted by Apple, so presenting this two factor code on your Mac is no less secure than presenting it on your iPhone. For an attack to be successful, the attacker would have to steal your password as well as obtain access to one of your trusted devices (your Mac or iPhone). So two factor is just as valid being presented on your phone as on your Mac.


Can I sync changes made on MacOS Photos app with Photos in iOS?

Yes - if you opt in to iCloud Photo Library on your Mac - the changes you make to any photo in the Photos library (the main system one - not any extra libraries you create past the first one) sync up to iCloud.

Then on iOS - opt in to the same iCloud Photo Library and those changes will merge up and sync.

Worst case, you'll have some duplicates, so be sure to make a backup of both the iOS device and the Mac library - before you turn this on in case everything gets duplicated.

I have been using this on two to three Mac and 3 to 5 iOS devices without any snags or errors or issues for about 4 years and am quite happy with having my main Photos library stored in the cloud and syncing up / down to all my devices.


Creating a bootable macOS installer errors with ‘dyld: Library not loaded: @executable_path/../Frameworks/IAESD.framework Versions/A/IAESD’

Encountered this very same issue on my MacBook with Yosemite (10.10.5)
sudo /Applications/Install\ macOS\ Big\ Sur.app/Contents/Resources/createinstallmedia --volume /Volumes/MyVolume

dyld: Library not loaded: @executable_path/../Frameworks/IAESD.framework/Versions/A/IAESD
  Referenced from: /Applications/Install macOS Big Sur.app/Contents/Resources/createinstallmedia
  Reason: no suitable image found.  Did find:
    /Applications/Install macOS Big Sur.app/Contents/Resources/../Frameworks/IAESD.framework/Versions/A/IAESD: mmap() error 1 at address=0x1021F8000, size=0x00008000 segment=__TEXT in Segment::map() mapping /Applications/Install macOS Big Sur.app/Contents/Resources/../Frameworks/IAESD.framework/Versions/A/IAESD
    /Applications/Install macOS Big Sur.app/Contents/Resources/../Frameworks/IAESD.framework/Versions/A/IAESD: mmap() error 1 at address=0x102211000, size=0x00008000 segment=__TEXT in Segment::map() mapping /Applications/Install macOS Big Sur.app/Contents/Resources/../Frameworks/IAESD.framework/Versions/A/IAESD

However the very same command on my newer MacBook with Sierra (10.12.6) just runs fine! I suggest building USB install disks from newer macOS if possible.


How to install newest Ruby version without Homebrew?

@nohillside has reminded me in his comment:

  The recommended way is "switch to your admin account, install ruby, switch back".


Export PATH directly from command line in Yosemite--where is my PATH?

On June 3 you posted the following comment

@DavidAnderson So if I understand correctly, running export PATH... from an interactive shell session only affects $PATH for that session and the newly added path is not saved anywhere (and therefore there is no file where the newly added path can be edited). E.g., if I run export PATH=/test:$PATH but I meant to export the /testing_123 dir instead, then my best option is to simply start a new session rather than attempt to locate and edit a file containing the erroneous /test dir (because there is no such file). Correct?

My response to your comment

From the manual page for bash, I have extracted the following.

A parameter is an entity that stores values.  It can be a name, a
number, or one of the special characters listed below under Special
Parameters.  A variable is a parameter denoted by a name.  A variable
has a value and zero or more attributes.

PATH is the name of a variable. Normally, this variable has only the export attribute turned on. The export attribute marks a variable for export to subsequent  commands via the environment. The export command turns on the export attribute, but in the case of the PATH variable, the export attribute is already turned on. Therefore, for the PATH variable, the next four commands are equivalent.

PATH=/test:$PATH
export PATH=/test:$PATH
declare PATH=/test:$PATH
typeset PATH=/test:$PATH

As for your comment, you are correct. There is no such file.

In the case of a mistake of the type you mentioned, I do not think starting a new session would be the best option. I would enter the command

declare -p PATH

and then highlight the output. You can then cut and paste the text as your next command. Before hitting the return key, use the other keys to correct your mistake.

For more information on this subject, see the manual page for bash. Either enter the command

man bash

or visit the site: bash - GNU Bourne-Again SHell.

In response to your Edit:

Yes, you are suppose to lose /test in your PATH variable when you reboot. This is why you need to put an export command in your ~./profile file.

Original answer:

You seem confused when the ~/.bashrc, ~/.bash_profile, and ~/.profile files execute. Maybe this will help.

Here is how I set up my computer. I have three files: ~/.profile, ~/.bashrc and ~/.bashcm. If you are missing any of these, you can create them.

When I start the Terminal application or select "New Window" from "Shell" on the menu bar, an interactive bash login shell is invoked. This shell executes the ~/.profile script at startup. You can substitute ~/.bash_profile or ~/.bash_login for ~./profile if you wish. If an interactive bash shell that is not a login shell  is  started,  the shell reads  and executes commands from ~/.bashrc. The purpose of ~/.bashcm is to provide a common script to be executed by both ~/.profile and ~/.bashrc.

Here is an example of a .profile file

echo in .profile
source ~/.bashcm
export PATH=$PATH:~/bin
echo exit .profile

The purpose of the echo commands are to illustrate when the scripts are executed. Once you are comfortable, you can either comment out or delete them.  The .profile file executes .bashcm script, then modifies the PATH variable and exits. An example .bashcm file is shown below.

echo in bashcm
PS1='\h:\W \u\$ '
alias home='cd ~'
echo exit .bashcm

Other than the echo commands, .bashcm only sets the prompt and an alias. The example .bashrc file shown below simply executes the .bashcm script. Again the echo commands are just for illustration purposes.

echo in .bashrc
source ~/.bashcm
echo exit .bashrc

If I start the Terminal application and enter the commands

echo $PATH
alias
bash
echo $PATH
alias

in the window, I get the following.

Last login: Wed May 27 14:48:19 on ttys000
in .profile
in bashcm
exit .bashcm
exit .profile
Steelhead:~ davidanderson$ echo $PATH
/usr/local/bin:/usr/bin:/bin:/usr/sbin:/sbin:/Users/davidanderson/bin
Steelhead:~ davidanderson$ alias
alias home='cd ~'
Steelhead:~ davidanderson$ bash
in .bashrc
in bashcm
exit .bashcm
exit .bashrc
Steelhead:~ davidanderson$ echo $PATH
/usr/local/bin:/usr/bin:/bin:/usr/sbin:/sbin:/Users/davidanderson/bin
Steelhead:~ davidanderson$ alias
alias home='cd ~'
Steelhead:~ davidanderson$


There is a simpler solution in 4 steps and a small shell script:

make your own spool directory:

/usr/bin/sudo mkdir /var/spool/my_printer

write the following shell script within your usual local bin directory
let's say /local/bin

cd /local/bin

copy the following inside my_spooler:

#!/bin/sh

# go into the spool directory
cd /var/spool/my_printer

# main loop: loop till end of time
while : ; do

    # check for any newly arrived text file
    for _file in * ; do

       # if _file is a normal file, print and remove it (-r option to lpr)
        [ -f "${_file}" ] && lpr -r "${_file}"
    done

    # don't loop like a fool
    sleep 300
done

make your my_spooler executable:

chmod u+x my_spooler

start it:

my_spooler &

it should start without a full path if /local/bin is within your PATH
if it isn't, then start it this way:

/local/bin/my_spooler &

The ending & means start it in background so as not to block your session waiting until the end of time.

How to use it

To use it you simply have to move any text or PS or PDF file within your own defined spool directory how you prefer. Either with the Finder or with basic command line:

cp my_file.pdf /var/spool/my_printer


Screen sharing between a MacBook Pro and an iMac

All you need is a mini display to mini display chord; one end goes in your iMac & the other end goes into your MacBpook Pro

This video shows exactly what you need & how to do it


To use Swift, download Xcode 6 and start using it to develop iOS 8 apps.  Mac apps will become available with the release of Yosemite. More resources are available here: https://developer.apple.com/swift/resources/


Apple Watch - Passbook "location aware" notification keeps appearing

Go into the Apple Watch companion app on your iPhone, then go to Notifications->Passbook & Apple Pay and check "Custom", and then a "Show Alerts" switch will appear. Switch it off and you shouldn't be able to receive any more notifications for Passbook on your Apple Watch.


Is there a way to send a music file from Finder to an iPhone's music library?

There isn’t a filesystem based local library on iOS. You will want to put it into Files app and use a different player if you really need to play files from an arbitrary box of files.

Files.app can play most songs without needing an app.

It multitasks and I have some FM radio recordings that are 2-3 hours long and they play amazingly well from Files app. I don‘t want these in my iTunes library so even though I’m all in with Apple Music and a cloud library - I have some esoteric stuff and audio books, lecture notes, radio performances I choose to store in the filesystem. Files on demand from iCloud works so well for my case I encourage anyone to try that.
Is there a reason why you’re using Music app and not syncing the libraries via Apple Music? Same question for using iCloud to sync files same as box.com / Dropbox / google and other file sync options between macOS and iOS.
It’s easy to automate moving files on macOS with services, folder actions and more, the problem here is Basically to chose a different player that works with files dumped in a directory as opposed to adding them to a music library that then syncs.
You are among some very smart and sophisticated People that have this understandable misconception about Photos / movies / books / music. Without an insight into how the ecosystem is designed, people revert to dumping files in a folder and hoping the apps read from a filesystem. No judgement, but this is a common request for something Apple design rejected about a decades ago as a sub-optimal experience on the platform. Since then Apple has doubled down time and time again on managed libraries and incremental sync. You don’t have to buy in to that, just find apps that buy in to how you like to store your data.


Safari search bar doesn't lose focus on Enter

Unfortunately this is one of the small unnoticed things that I accepted to live with. This issue has been going on for years.

I tried to bypass the issue by installing an extension from the safari extension gallery that performs searches and those work for some time and the issues ultimately comes back again.

Edit:

As of Safari 13.0.1 in macOS Catalina, I don't experience that bug anymore, seems good so far


Will disabling and deleting iCloud photos also delete iCloud shared albums?

Shared photos don’t count against your storage, but they do depend on you having an iCloud primary library on one device.
We would need to know how you manage your photo library to give any more guidance. You could be iPhone only, iPad or Apple TV or Windows and Mac in the mix. Lots of variables and a call to Apple support is the best way for you to understand your exact setup if you have questions.
In a nutshell, you could delete all the photos from your online library to shrink it and leave just the shared photos to reduce your bill and toll on the free space Apple gives to each AppleID when they activate iCloud.


I've been researching this very question for some time, and I've come to the conclusion that while there are several so-called "solutions" offered in various places, none of them really fixes the problem or makes the symptoms go away. The best I've found is techniques that change when inactive memory is swapped, such as the use of the purge command you referred to. I believe that MacLemon is correct that swapping can be disabled only in entirety and not selectively, and so disabling the swapping of inactive memory would in practice be equivalent to disabling virtual memory altogether—which could be a workable solution on a machine with really large amounts of RAM, but is impractical on machines with a low maximum RAM capacity, such as MacBooks or Minis.

The reason that none of the ad-hoc purging solutions make the situation significantly better is that there are really only two ways to force OS X to clear inactive memory: the purge command, or forcing allocation of all free memory (and since I'm not certain what method purge uses, these two may actually be more or less the same). purge, as you mentioned, takes a non-trivial amount of time to complete. Allocating all free memory simply accelerates the process by which the contents of inactive memory would be swapped out naturally, and so still takes up the same large amount of system resources. The only advantage of either of these solutions is that they allow you to choose when the swapping occurs, so it can be done before you would be normally trying to allocate that memory to something else. Whether that is actually useful to you depends on several factors, so the simplest way to find out is to just try it.

I've been testing a few of the memory-clearing utilities out there, and I've found that for me, manually forcing inactive swap requires more active monitoring of memory levels than is practical while I'm actually working, and using a utility that automatically forces the swap when free memory drops below a certain threshold is no better than letting the OS do it on its own, as I still have no control over when the swapping will occur and my apps will SPOD. So while there is an app that will do exactly what your alternative question asks for, that doesn't actually make the situation any less painful.

Until Apple's OS development team decides that the memory management system isn't working the way it's supposed to, and they figure out a way to make it work properly, the only real solution is to identify which apps are generating the most inactive memory and stop using them. In my situation, this has meant changing web browsers. I've been testing a variety of them, and Chrome is so far the one that seems to generate the least inactive memory, probably in part because every tab and every extension runs as a separate process, allowing the OS's native memory management to treat each one separately in terms of prioritizing swapping. Safari is the worst I've tried; starting with Safari 5.1, I could open a few tabs, do absolutely nothing, and watch the inactive memory rise rapidly in Activity Monitor—it would easily go from <1gb inactive to >3gb inactive within about five minutes, run the swap cycle, and then do the exact same thing. (Granted, memory that is doing nothing is exactly what makes it inactive in the first place, but it shouldn't create more inactive memory than was allocated active in the first place.) Safari 6 under Mountain Lion is a bit better, but not better enough to be worth switching back. Firefox, not being based on WebKit, ought to be better about this than either Safari or Chrome, but it has its own legacy of memory management problems, including a history of memory leaks, that make it no better in practice.

What would really fix the issue is if there was an option, likely a hidden option in the OS, telling the OS to simply dump the contents of inactive memory when needed instead of swapping its contents to disk. But I don't expect Apple to ever make such an option available.


Go to iForgot and there you can reset your password using your email or security questions.


Encrypt TimeMachine backups or rely on hardware encryption?

It is neither wrong, nor correct :) The drive uses a chip inside to do the encryption and everything depends on how powerful the chip is. Most likely Mac CPU will be more powerful.

Also if you connect over network or through USB2, encryption speed will not matter much because the transfer will be much slower than the encryption.

I would not bother with hardware-encrypted drives and just use Mac encryption. Why pay more for hardware encryption if you can do it with nearly the same speed on a Mac and you have other speed limiting factors?


Can I safely delete the "Deleted Users" directory after an upgrade or a data transfer?

The Deleted Users directory contains the contents of Home folders of deleted users, usually in the form of disk images. So unless those users had some documents/pictures you want to keep, you can delete it. Your own programs never rely on data in the Home folders of other users - you don't even have access to it, except as an administrator.


How to check if photos are already in Photos on MacOS?

If you don’t use iCloud to sync your library, it’s super easy to archive off a copy of your Photos database (in addition to your normal backup) and then just run the import and see how bad or good a job Photos does at not importing duplicates.

Many situations, you’ll have a great import and be done.

Before I cared about the faces metadata, I did also validate you can detach the library from iCloud and then do an import like above, but now that I have my face data set up amongst my various iCloud synced devices, I am loath touch anything in iCloud relating to large changes in photos. (As that implementation is too opaque, fragile and lacks tools to fix in 2019 IMO)

So, for me, I would import the photos into a second library and then use the smart merge function or a third party tool Power Photos to avoid duplicates and keep the peace in my ~180 GB cloud synced library of photos.

https://fatcatsoftware.com/powerphotos/

This software is so powerful and worth it if you spend maybe a dozen hours a year cleaning duplicates or just love having a tidy library. There’s no harm in letting Photos try to import and detect duplicates if your time budget has tons of time to clean up and your money budget is tight, but I recommend a tool that’s designed to do a better job than Photos.

This tool will let you split your large library as well easily, so it has tons of features in addition to just merging.


Is there an alternate way to get receipts from the Mac App Store

While going off of the recommendation from @Mark to contact Apple Support I found a way to (kind of) get a receipt by following the directions on this page which shows you how to get order numbers.

Basically, in iTunes, you click on your username/email-address and then log in. This will bring up your Account Information window where you can select the "See All" under the "Purchase History" section. This will take you to a list of transactions.

Unfortunately, you can't print these out directly, but you can take a screen grab of the receipt (Cmd+Shift+3 or Cmd+Shift+4) and then print the resulting graphic.

A little bit of a hack, but it gets you there.


Pale colors on external monitor with MacBook Pro M1

Have you tried to disable "True Tone" for your internal display via display preferences? This setting also impacts external monitors.


iOS 10 face recognition - how to reset the list of detected people?

So this may not be a way of resetting all face entries at once, but you can do them individually by selecting all of the photos in each entry, hit the share button, then press "Not This Person". The entry will disappear and the photos will go back in to the untagged pool.

Source: How to unconfirm faces in iOS 10?


That really depends on how many applications you have open and what Mac you have. I currently have 650 threads with minimal usage. As long as it doesn't affect your Mac's performance, it shouldn't be a problem.


What is more predominant, PyObjC or PlistBuddy?

Since /usr/libexec/PlistBuddy ships with OS X and doesn't need any developer tools or third party installation, you should assume that tool is ubiquitous and develop against that if at all possible.

I actually prefer plutil to convert things to XML or JSON and then use a script to make whatever changes are necessary, but your options are not bad ones to use either.


need suggestion, Common file system between MAC OS Mavericks and Windows 7

Enable ntfs write support in Mavericks

You can enable write support for ntfs in Mavericks.

I have linked to instructions on how to do this, but the gist of it is to edit the /etc/fstab file and add a line for each ntfs drive you want to write to:

 LABEL=device-name  none    ntfs    rw,auto,nobrowse

changing "device-name" to the name of your ntfs drive.

This is a per device hack.

Third party software

Alternatively, there is a lot of third party software to give you full ntfs support, such as Paragon NTFS, or the open source NTFS-3G for FUSE which is utilized in the closed source Tuxera NTFS, or an old standard from Thursby Software, DAVE

MacPorts

NTFS-3G and OSXFUSE are available for a free, package managed source or binary installation using the missing package manager for OS X, MacPorts. It is based off of FreeBSD's ports system, which is based off the finest package management system known to exist, of course I mean, NetBSD's pkgsrc. It won't let you down!

Installing MacPorts, NTFS-3G and OSXFUSE is simple enough once xcode (for Mavericks 10.9 xcode_5.1.1.dmg) is installed. Install xcode, and then enter these commands in Terminal.app :

 curl -Ok https://distfiles.macports.org/MacPorts/MacPorts-2.2.1.tar.bz2
 tar xf MacPorts-2.2.1.tar.bz2
 cd MacPorts-2.2.1
 ./configure
 make
 sudo make install #not war!
 cd ..
 rm -rf Macports-*
 sudo /opt/local/bin/port -v selfupdate
 export PATH=$HOME/macports/bin:$HOME/macports/sbin:$PATH
 export MANPATH=$HOME/macports/share/man:$MANPATH
 sudo port -vsc install ntfs-3g     # osxfuse is a dependency, macports will install it for you when you instsall ntfs-3g
 diskutil quiet repairPermissions /

MacPorts is worth getting to know as it is a mature package manager for OS X that maintains thousands of open source software commands, utilities, and applications. It will not interfere with any other package system you happen to use, and it is very easy to completely remove, if necessary.

If for whatever reason you need to remove MacPorts...

to completely uninstall MacPorts

 sudo port -dfp uninstall --follow-dependencies installed

 sudo port -dfp uninstall all

 sudo rm -rf /opt/local

 sudo rm -rf /Library/Tcl/macports*

Really, its good stuff.


Messages.app not downloading messages send/received on iPhone

I'm not sure it will even attempt to distribute messages to all possible destinations once one has definitely received it.

I had a similar issue last year when my phone would be out of range for iMessage for most of the day, but my Mac at home was happily picking them up - I didn't see any of them til I got home :(

See How to tell Messages "I'm not at home"? which is similar, but the opposite way round.
None of the proposed solutions worked for me at the time - perhaps would be different now I'm on Yosemite, but I won't get chance to test unless I get the same job this summer, in the same out-of-range location.


IMac Pro won't recognize my analog audio jack headphones. Help?

I noticed from the screenshots you attached that there doesn't seem to be any audio device installed, as far as macOS is concerned. This is the category I expected you to find:

You'll notice it lists ALC892 under Codec Name*. This is the codec used by the audio chip in my Mac. Knowing your codec would allow you to choose and install a 3rd party driver for your audio chip, and in my case this was enough to fix the issue of no output device appearing on one of my Macs. Upon further consideration however, this may not be the root issue.

I would recommend you do an NVRAM reset, if that will allow the output device to show up. Check the application again after doing so, and if the category is present take another screenshot, or write down the listed codec. Then put the machine to sleep, wake it, check if the output device is gone, and check DPCIManager to see if the category/entries went with it. Also repeat the process, and try rebooting the machine rather than sleep/waking it to see if that causes the output device/DPCIManager entry to disappear.

If it is not present after waking/rebooting the machine, the issue is most likely one I experienced on another one of my Macs, that being that the HDA (High Def Audio) handler is not loading when the machine boots/wakes from sleep.

If it is an HDA handler issue, which it sounds like it may be based on your description, the only option I know of is to install a 3rd party bootloader that is capable of emulating your Mac's NVRAM (like Clover UEFI), and configuring it to manually reset the HDA handler on every boot/wake.

The bootloader method is rather easy to set up, and I managed to fix the HDA handler on one of my Macs failing to load at boot that way. It is a bit of an involved process, but I can give you a step-by-step if you decide to go that route.

Please be sure to update your question with any further information you find, and I will update my answer accordingly.

UPDATE: In the first of your new post-NVRAM-reset screenshots I can see that your audio chip is registered and that the codec it uses has full macOS support. This confirms my theory that the HDA handler is failing to reset on reboot or wake. As I mentioned the only fix I am aware of for this issue is to install a 3rd party boot loader that can manually reset it on every boot/wake. I'll detail the steps to do so below.

  In this example I will be using the Clover EFI boot loader, as it is my personal choice when I need to use a 3rd party loader, and is the one with which I have the most experience.

    1.) Grab the Clover EFI installer from here.

    2.) Run the installer (Right Click>Open), go through the pages, and click Customize when you get to this window:

    3.) Check the following boxes:

      *Clover for UEFI booting only
      *Install Clover in the ESP

      Under UEFI Drivers drop-down

        *AudioDxe-64
        *DataHubDxe-64
        *FSInject-64
        *SMCHelper-64
        *VBoxHfs-64
        *ApfsDriverLoader-64
        *AptioMemoryFix-64
        *EmuVariableUefi-64
        *PartitionDxe-64
        *Ps2MouseDxe-64
        *UsbKbDxe-64
        *UsbMouseDxe-64
        *VBoxExt2-64
        *VBoxExt4-64

      Under FileVault 2 UEFI Drivers drop-down

        Everything

      *Install RC scripts on target volume
      *Install Clover Preference Pane

    4.) Double check to ensure everything listed is checked, and nothing that was not listed is checked. Once you have done so click the Install button.

    5.) Download the Clover Configurator from here.

    6.) Once it has been successfully installed, open it, and at the bottom of the screen click the path that reads EFI > EFI > CLOVER > config.plist.

    7.) Now go down to the Devices tab, and in the top right corner check the box labelled ResetHDA if it is not already. Make sure not to change any other options in any of the tabs. When you are done hit Command-S to save the config (only if you had to check the box, if it was already checked you are good to go.)

    8.) Reboot your machine. Once you have gone through Clover and booted back into macOS your audio output should be working fine, and the chip/jack should show up in DPCIManager and System Preferences>Sound>Output respectively.

I have encountered this issue on multiple Macs, both official and Hackintosh alike, and this has consistently been able to resolve the problem. If you need any extra details or if something goes wrong, just let me know.


Restart USB hubs without restarting the whole computer

Try this (you may need to disable SIP first):
sudo nvram boot-args="usb=0x20"

This will prevent your USB hubs from entering low power mode, which is one possible cause of unreliable reenumeration for noncompliant devices. It’s just a hunch since we haven’t done a deep dive but it’s a good quick first pass. If that doesn’t help, we can also try disabling deep idle:
sudo nvram boot-args="usb=0x60"

Make sure you reboot after running either one.


I use SoundSource (Freeware) to set my output/inputs and they persist (I have a Firewire Audio Interface and a M-Audio Pro USB).

What sound board do you have?

Why are you running 10.6.3 and not .4?


Black screen with cursor instead of login window

Ok guys - I had the same issue with my 2008 iMac and Apple support just walked me through the fix...

Shut the computer down by holding the power button for 10 seconds
Restart the computer and press shift at the same time until you see the progress bar start moving
Once you reach the point where your screen goes dark and you see the cursor, type the first letter of the username for your computer, then hit Tab, then type your password, then hit Enter.
After a moment, you should see the spinning beach ball
Your screen should then move on to something along the lines of "Completing OSX Installation" (I can't remember the exact wording).  Let it finish.  After that it should go to your normal desktop and the issue should be fixed. (If your screen goes pitch black during this process, hit the space bar.  I thought it wasn't working, but the screen was just sleeping).

Apparently it's an issue with an automatic update that never quite got past the login screen.

Hope this helps!


iPad app supporting RemoteApp RDP protocol?

The full version of Spark View supports RemoteApp. You can try it here:

http://www.remotespark.com:8080

You'll have to install the gateway to make your internal network accessible.


Stability is hard to prognosticate - even if you have all the crash data that is sent to Apple or by harvesting the logs of thousands of Mac computers. Projecting the stability of a system in general to one person't specific list of modifications generally makes these comparisons poor and subjective.

What I can say is that 10.10.5 is more secure than 10.10.0 and again more secure than 10.9.5 but neither is as secure as 10.11 (which I find to be very stable - even running the beta builds, it was as stable for me as 10.10.x)

Part of me is divided, if you haven't jumped to 10.10 yet, my feeling is don't bother. You get these few features - http://www.imore.com/os-x-el-capitan-review - continuity, Photos and no big changes under the hood as 10.9 already has compressed memory.

I would say wait for 10.11.1 and then upgrade since most of the consumer crashers and allowances needed for third party apps will be out for the .1

Office for 10.11 is fine
Virtual Box for 10.11 is fine
homebrew and shell is better on 10.11 than 10.10/10.9 in my opinion
Metal on 10.11 will make pixelmator and other apps far more responsive if your hardware qualifies for that acceleration.
You'll want to ditch iPhoto if you go to 10.11 (probably) and iTunes might work a little better - hard to say on these two, though

From http://www.apple.com/osx/how-to-upgrade/

  Metal is supported by the following Mac models:

  MacBook (Early 2015)
  MacBook Pro (Mid 2012 or newer)
  MacBook Air (Mid 2012 or newer)
  Mac mini (Late 2012 or newer)
  iMac (Late 2012 or newer)
  Mac Pro (Late 2013 and newer)


Is there any way to change language input icons on macOS?

The only way to do this as far as I know is to create custom keyboards with a app like Ukelele, where you can create any icon you want for a layout.  But Ukelele cannot make custom keyboards for complex "input methods" like Chinese and Japanese.


How to decrease the height of chooser (file-picker dialog)

The simplest method is to hold  Shift ⇧  & drag by any visible edge of the file-picker dialog. This will resize from all sides simultaneously.

Alternatively, for any open/save file-picker dialog which is not rendered as an attached sheet to the underlying window, you can resize from the top then drag the entire window up, or hold Option whilst resizing which will size from top & bottom simultaneously.

For an attached sheet, the only alternative appears to be to Esc from the file-picker, fullscreen the app, then open the file-picker again.
This will force the dialog to fit the window, allowing you to reach the bottom & resize upwards.

This size will then be remembered when not in fullscreen.


My friend, I suggest that we examine the routing table in a 'before / after' manner: before the problem occurs; after the problem has occurred.

Could you kindly post the output of the following before and after the behavior occurs:

sudo netstat -nr

I assume from looking at the ssh debug you posted that you are ssh'ing to the ip address, and not a hostname.  Is this correct?  If not, then we should look at the domain name resolution.

sudo scutil --dns

as well as

sudo cat /etc/resolv.conf

would help in this case.

Lastly, let's rule out any egress filtering on the firewall.  It is a lot of information, but better that we have the full perspective, from rules to NAT to timeouts and states:

sudo pfctl -vvv -sa

F.


How can I get Screen Time to really limit Screen Time?

Go to “always allowed” (located in the screen time settings and uncheck any apps you do not want to be accessible during a screen time lock).


How to find just deleted files in Time Machine?

Assuming you deleted the pictures directly in Finder

open (in Finder) the folder which used to contain the pictures
access Time Machine via the menulet
TM will open, showing the different time slices of your folde
Go back in time until before the deletion
Right-click on file(s) in question to restore them


Can a Verizon iPhone 5s use T-Mobile LTE?

Short answer, yes (assuming you have LTE coverage in your area by T-Mobile). But you should get the iPhone 5s from Verizon instead of getting it from T-Mobile. Also, carrier unlocking has nothing to do with 3G or LTE.

Long answer follows below.

The iPhone 5s models A1533 (GSM) and A1533 (CDMA) support the LTE bands that both Verizon and T-Mobile use.

If you look at the technical specifications for these two iPhone 5s models (A1533 GSM and A1533 CDMA), you'd notice that:

The LTE band coverage is the same across these two models
The GSM model supports only GSM (so you cannot switch to Verizon even if you want to, since Verizon is a CDMA carrier)
[Model A1533 (GSM): UMTS/HSPA+/DC-HSDPA (850, 900, 1700/2100, 1900, 2100 MHz); GSM/EDGE (850, 900, 1800, 1900 MHz); LTE (Bands 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 8, 13, 17, 19, 20, 25)]
The CDMA model supports both CDMA and GSM
[Model A1533 (CDMA): CDMA EV-DO Rev. A and Rev. B (800, 1700/2100, 1900, 2100 MHz); UMTS/HSPA+/DC-HSDPA (850, 900, 1700/2100, 1900, 2100 MHz); GSM/EDGE (850, 900, 1800, 1900 MHz); LTE (Bands 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 8, 13, 17, 19, 20, 25)]

So you would be better off going for the iPhone 5s CDMA [Model A1533 (CDMA)] on Verizon and then move to T-Mobile.

Also see:
The Verizon iPhone 5s comes unlocked just like the Verizon iPhone 5


Booting from USB to install Windows 7 on Macbook Pro, Early 2011

You need to format the USB drive to use the GUID partition type -- use the Disk Utility on your Mac.

source Apple support docs


My iPhone 5s shuts down when it has remaining battery

You have essentially eliminated software as a cause by restoring the OS. If it happens consistently around the same percentage remaining, you likely have bad cells in the battery. Batteries cannot be repaired, so you must either have it replaced at an Apple Store or authorized repair center, or consider ordering parts and tools and doing it yourself if you have some technical proficiency (e.g., https://www.ifixit.com/Guide/iPhone+5s+Battery+Replacement/19239).


Resetting Advertising ID on iPad does not work?

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT205223 explains what is under Apple's control.

  Ads that are delivered by Apple’s advertising platform may appear in the App Store on iOS, Apple News, and Stocks.

Other websites use a lot of other methods to collect advertising data

  including browser cookies, mobile advertising identifiers as well as other non-cookie technologies *

Although Safari limits tracking by "Intelligent Tracking Prevention", "Fingerprinting defence" etc., it is not fully preventable against the trackers.

What you can try is to install ad and tracker blockers. You might want to look into their permission to read and transfer content.

Also, opt-out of Google Adsense can reduce the "Behavioural" Advertising. You'll still see ads, just less relevant.
https://support.google.com/adsense/answer/142293?hl=en

*From  http://optout.networkadvertising.org/?c=1


I'm not sure how to do what you are asking.  Looking into that now, but I know how to get around the permissions problems you are having with sudo.

Your syntax is wrong for sudo, the shell redirection ">" is happening without elevated privelleges.  Try wrapping in quotes like this:

sudo -s 'apropos . > touch thedatabase'


Monitoring the Mac App Store for free applications?

You could use AppShopper to be notified of discounts of specific apps you are looking for. AppShopper works with iOS apps as well as Mac App Store apps. You can have it email you when a price changes, or you can install one of their iOS clients and have a push notification sent to you.

The nice thing about it is that you don't have to have the app running (or remember to run the app once a day) in order to be notified of price changes; it just sends you alerts whenever something happens.

If you are specifically looking for free apps, you can setup the email feature and then add a rule which deletes emails from AppShopper which don't contain "free" in their subject.


Permanently grant right to control another app to Apple Script App

A regular AppleScript saves properties and global variables (including variables in either run handler) in the script itself (the script file is modified).  This is how persistent properties have been implemented, but now this can run into accessibility permissions issues, since modifying an application will cause the system to see it as a different one - one that hasn't been given permission.

The solution is to code sign your application (you can use a self-issued certificate) or make the scripts in the bundle run-only.  You will lose persistent properties, but you can use some AppleScriptObjC to implement preferences via NSUserDefaults if you need to keep stuff between runs.


Airport Extreme mesh network over Ethernet

On the satellite AE's, set the WAN port to bridged, and make sure all three AEs have the same SSID, security, and password.  Connect satellite AEs to the main AE via ethernet cables (or all three to a switch). I do this at my house and it works flawlessly.

I believe one of the other answers is incorrect based on the information above.


How do you get a list of all your Game Center accounts?

The Gamecenter tokens are saved in your keychain.

Open it in search for it (Game). It will list all accounts you have.

com.apple.account.AppleID.appleid-token-gamecenter


Get the Sound Output Device Name with AppleScript

Just to help out a bit more:

In your main user directory /home// create a directory named 'bin' and put  SwitchAudioSource in there.

Here's some AppleScript which switches back and forth between two sources, the default 'headphone' mini jack output on the back of my Mac Mini (a laptop should be different), and my Sennheiser USB headsest.

Call me 'Captain Obvious', but here you go:

`on run

set theSwitch to "~/bin/SwitchAudioSource"
set theSource to do shell script theSwitch & " -c"

if theSource = "Built-in Output" then
    do shell script theSwitch & " -s \"Sennheiser USB headset\""
else
    do shell script theSwitch & " -s \"Built-in Output\""
end if

end run`


Zooom/2 is the closest thing I could find so far.
Sadly, it's discontinued and hasn't been actively worked on since 2011.  It is $20 shareware.
The functionality is pretty close, however it doesn't allow you to use the middle- and right- click buttons as modifiers, so it's not possible to mimic Linux functionality, but it's close enough.

The other major drawback is that it doesn't work with Photoshop :(  I suspect this is Apple's fault, however.


Regarding email attachments from gmail app on iphone

For PDF files, you can import into iBooks and simply access it from iBooks. From there you can also send the PDF as an attachment for someone else by clicking on share.

For other files, I think your best bet would be using the Google Drive app or iCloud in order to keep on viewing it on your phone. Another thing you can do is save the files in the notes app and then you can also view it and send it out from there.

For the 5S, I'm sure that you can use iBooks for PDF but I'm not 100% sure on if you can put other file types into notes (although I don't see why not).


Is there a way to rotate multiple photos at once in the camera roll?

There's no way to do this without a third-party app or a shortcut at the moment.

If you have a Mac and you are using iCloud Photos sync, you can do it in the Photos app
If you're ready to pay for an app, OneEdit Pro will do the job
You can also use a shortcut like this one : Batch Rotate Images


What do I need to know if I am going to use FileVault

Be sure to write down your password and recovery password on a piece of paper and keep in a safe place.

Be sure to have your data backed up before you leave. Using filevault reduces or eliminates your chance of third party data recovery apps succeeding ( like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PhotoRec ).  Hence, you need to up your backup game.


Guest Account as Thief Trap in case of losing MacBook

There is some literature out there for you (e.g.here or here). Basically there is different means of protection.

Locating the device (Find my Mac)
Surveillance apps (also have a look at the OS X Back to my mac, which reportedly freed some Macs from their thieves)
Data security / encryption (e.g. Filevault2 encryption, Firmware password)
Physical protection (e.g. Kensington lock)

Watch out when using Filevault2 for Full Disk Encryption. This will make your data safe but will maybe not lure the thief into reveling his / her location, since only a limited version of OS X is booted.

Setting a firmware password will prevent others to boot different disks.

But watch out. These features (filevault and firmware password) require more care with backups, etc. The risk that you lock yourself out is significantly higher.


How to connect iPhone 3GS to a computer monitor without jailbreak?

For a 3GS, no.

There isn't a way on any iOS device aside from the iPad 2 and the iPhone 4S.


Is there a way in Numbers to flip columns with rows?

With the table selected, simply choose Table > Transpose Rows and Columns.


Using the Apple Wireless Keyboard with an iPad with PC/Mac-like keyboard commands

BeeKeyboard is a tweak available via Cydia that adds the ability to create custom keyboard shortcuts. I'm not sure if it can do app-switching shortcuts, but you can install a plugin called BeeSafari to add some browser shortcuts.


If you don't mind a separate column/table for this, you can check if each cell is between 16 and 31 like this:

Table 2, A1:

IF(x::A1>15,IF(x::A1<31,TRUE,FALSE))

Table 2, A9:

COUNTIF(A,"=TRUE")


Commercial command line utility for transcribing voice memos to text?

I doubt you can find command line commercial application.

You can better use some open source library like pocketsphinx http://cmusphinx.sourceforge.net

To transcribe a file you can use latest version 5prealpha:

   ffmpeg -i file.mp3 -ar 16000 -ac 1 file.wav
   pocketsphinx_continuous -infile file.wav -logfn /dev/null

that should give you an automated transcription. To increase the accuracy you can adapt to your own voice.


Command+Click does not work in Google Scholar + Firefox

No, it's not a problem restricted to your computer:

Other Mac users (including me) have experienced similar problems with scholar.google.com and other websites when using Firefox 19.0.2 and version 20.0, or, in my case, with the same setup as yours (OS X 10.8.3 and Firefox 21).
Windows users have also reported this issue, for example here and here.

I don't think it is not a problem caused by extensions, either. The problem seems rather related to how Firefox deals with some CSS code and Javascript plugins.

The extension NoScript can be used as a workaround at the cost of reducing functionality, because it blocks, among other things, JavaScript.

After installing NoScript scholar.google.com behaved as expected when I ⌘-clicked the links. NoScript displays a yellow bar at the bottom when active:

Important: You will need to exclude google.com from the whitelist for this to work. This will also block Javascript and other plugins on www.google.com, so you may wish to whitelist it:


What do you call the OSX Window Server, Window Manager, and Desktop Environment?

macOS has implementations of the X11 protocol as you're used to on Linux. This is called XQuartz, it is based on the same Xorg as you'll find on Linux.

You can use many of the same desktop environments on top of macOS and XQuartz as you can on Linux. It is the exact same programs, just recompiled on macOS.

The terms for these things on macOS are the same as on Linux as it is the same technology (i.e. built on the X11 protocol).

Wayland is a different display protocol than X111, and is not currently supported on macOS.

However note that "native macOS apps" do not use the X11 protocol, Xorg or anything like that. Instead they use the native Apple supplied systems.

Here the window server is the process named simply "WindowServer" on a default macOS installation.

The "Desktop Environment" does not have a single counterpart on macOS rather it is a combination of multiple macOS parts - most notably WindowServer, Dock and perhaps Finder.

Regarding the Aqua, Quartz and XQuartz:

Quartz is a 2D text and graphics rendering library. There's also a Quarts GPU accelerated compositor On Linux, the counterpart 2D library is Cairo or similar.
XQuartz is simply an X11 server built on top of the Quartz rendering library.
Aqua is the name of the Apple graphical user interface. It defines the looks of widgets/controls, menus, etc. The counterpart on Linux would be something like GTK and Gnome, or QT and KDE.


Safari extension for timed automagical tab switching. Does it exist? Can I create one?

This should be possible. The extension API gives you access to the SafariBrowserTab class, which allows you to activate a specific tab in a specific window. So adding an extension toolbar button that started/stopped the looped switching should be pretty straightforward.


How to Multicast audio stream on my laptop - MAC-OSX - Mavericks - the source and destination is same here?

Note that VLC does not support streaming from live video or audio sources on Mac OSX


It appears that as of today (Oct 23, 2020), this is a known bug.  Apple is aware of the issue but no GM fix has been issues yet.  It's been reported that un-pairing/re-pairing the AW doesn't resolve the issue.
There's a Watch and iPhone OS versions in beta right now, you can try installing one of those to see if it fixes the problem (installing beta OS's has its own risks so be sure you're aware of them before installing).
Otherwise, you'll have to wait until Apple puts the fix out for everyone.


Go to

Contacts
Locate the person you're talking about
Click Edit right on top
Remove the custom ringtone which has been set
Save it and return to springboard
Everything should be back to normal


The Command Option CTRL 8 keypress inverts the video signal of the display. It does not alter the 'true' colour properties of images, nor does it affect printing.

You can effect an inverse colour transformation to an image in Preview, using the method described here:

https://osxdaily.com/2019/07/27/how-invert-image-mac-preview/

Essentially, this involves switching the position of the Black point and White point sliders in the Adjust Colors panel.


Oh boy I have seen this case so much... In my case, I live in Peru, and most carriers and cellular plans here have a limitation to send SMS just locally, not worldwide. iMessage activation requires that the phone sends an SMS to servers on UK (I don't know why), so the limitation blocks it and the phone stays forever on the "Waiting activation" screen.

The solution (for this situations, at least) is to buy some prepaid charge for the phone number. The prepaid ammount have no restrictions and can be used to call or send SMS worldwide, so it just takes another try disabling and enabling the iMessage service and this time it will work. It does take a couple of minutes on activating it, though.

Please keep in mind that this might be a country/carrier-specific-solution, but overall, you get the idea.


For some reason or another, Apple has made it impossible to access junk messages from a Smart Mailbox.

If you are able to set Message is in Mailbox to Junk, you must be setting it to a special 'Junk' mailbox that you have created (or that was created automatically by whatever email service you connect to). So, messages in Mail's built-in Junk folder won't appear in your mailbox.

However, you can get around this without too much trouble. To do this, make a Mail rule that automatically moves junk mail to your special Junk mailbox. Here's how:
Go to Mail-> Preferences-> Rules. Click Add Rule. Set the description to something like Move to special Junk. Set the popup in the first box to Message is Junk Mail. Set the first popup in the second box to Move message, and use the second popup to select your special junk box.

Now, any incoming messages that Mail thinks are junk will go to your special junk mailbox. You can use this one in a Smart Mailbox.

Hope this helps!


How can I make/receive Google Voice calls in Mountain Lion?

The telephone app in the app store is a great one to use, i'm using it in mountain lion and it works perfectly, was by far the easiest softphone I've ever set up. http://itunes.apple.com/nz/app/telephone/id406825478?mt=12


yes, two partitions of the same physical drive would allow you to run in this configuration.  It would be your best option.

you can partition and format the storage partition to whatever flavor you'd like (fat or GUID, etc)... The backup partition, however, needs to be HFS+. That is the only format Time Machine will work with.


Can Mac App Store installs & upgrades be automated?

Most people can just turn on automatic updates and let Apple manage all updates. If there’s a reason why you can’t or won’t do that, a command line tool does exist to automate App Store installs and updates.

One notable open source tool to replicate the Mac App Store from the command-line is mas:

https://github.com/argon/mas

To install:

brew install mas

Once it's in, you could update all the apps that are available with:

mas upgrade

If you don't want to trust third party software with your Apple ID, you could also automate your UI and can store the account name and password using keychain.

The Apple solution for non-App Store security patches and updates is to run the softwareupdate tool from the command line to update all software that Apple intends to be installed without user intervention or going through the App Store UI.

Currently on Lion and Mountain Lion - this means that the Mac will hit a local OS X server that is caching downloads for system updates and software installed outside the App store. If you don't have a local software update server, it will of course download files directly from Apple.

For Mountain Lion 10.8.2 and lower, - everything still comes through the App Store - so the Apple software like OS X updates is fully scriptable using this tool for updates and non-App Store updates only.

What isn't scriptable (yet or perhaps ever) are apps that are installed from the App Store like Xcode and Pages and third party applications. This means that you cannot just have one tool to update all the software without opening the App Store app and entering a password at the user interface screen.

What you can do is download the apps once and then copy the app to multiple macs as long as the Apple ID used to download the first copy of the app is also used on all of the Macs that will run the app.

I know of several institutions that buy one copy of each app for a lab of 20 computers to get a license for each seat, but then deploy one file to all the Macs so that once one update download is accomplished, a tool like Apple Remote Desktop or Caspar or a home made tool like scp or rsync is used to move the updated version of the app to all Macs in the lab.

If you go the route of individual Apple ID for each machine, you will not be able to script the installation of App updates since each will request the password for each account unless you are comfortable knowing all of the passwords and performing UI scripting where AppleScript can enter the correct username and password programatically and then click the button to begin the download process for each machine's updates. The way that app store apps are code signed makes it hard to just slide in an update without invalidating the package or somehow reverse engineering / jailbreaking the whole app store process and sidestepping the normal flow of letting the app installer do it's work.


Can Camera+ 2 iPhone app record video while playing music?

I've got an answer for the first part of the question: Camera+ 2 doesn't have record video function. It's only to make photos.


What does Apple normally announce at events?

This is an open ended question;

Traditionally Apple at events such as MacWorld, WWDC, etc. run down as follows:

Run down of current company progress showcasing how much Mac OS X has grown
New hardware updates with technical details and great product shots.
New software - whether it's upgrades or completely brand new products. Lots of demos.
Occasionally a one more thing, usually the biggest thing of the show if it occurs.


Rather than try to fix a broken Apple software setup, I shall suggest a third-party solution. I think iMazing (not free) can load apps onto iDevices without the need for iTunes now.

“Need to install IPA files on your phone? Done!” — https://imazing.com/features/ios-app-management


iOS 8 and problems with iWork's accessing iCloud

It seems that you've inadvertently upgraded yourself to iCloud Drive via Pages for iOS on your iPhone, but not on your iPad.

To activate iCloud Drive on your iPad, follow these steps:

Go to the Home Screen.
Find and open Settings.
Scroll down to iCloud, and tap iCloud.
Tap iCloud Drive.
Toggle the switch to the right of the text "iCloud Drive" to the ON (green) position.


RSS reader with Instapaper or Readability integration?

Reeder (for both the iPhone and Mac OS) can send articles to Instapaper.


Fullforce on iPad 4 uses iPhone keyboard instead of iPad keyboard

Nope, it is not possible to change that. The tweak works, but is limited in what it can do.


Saving macOS Catalina Screen Recordings Cache to External Drive

You can try the following option:

$ cd ~/Library/Containers/
$ mv com.apple.QuickTimePlayerX/ com.apple.QuickTimePlayerX.backup/
$ ln -s /Volumes/<NAME_OF_VOLUME>/com.apple.QuickTimePlayerX/ .

If the above option didn't help, then I would suggest you to:

Check the first comment on this page shared by bmike.


Building boot caches on boot helper partition failed

I have fixed my problem. Before the crash of my hard drive, I was using Yosemite as OS. Apparently you cannot restore a backup made in Yosemite with a bootable USB of either Mavericks or Sierra or with the network restore of Lion.

I eventually made a bootable USB drive of Yosemite and reinstalled a new copy of Yosemite on my new HDD. After installation I used the Migration Assistant to retrieve my data. This took several hours, but afterwards I could normally reboot my computer. I had tried this same procedure with Lion, Mavericks and Sierra, but that didn't work and the computer wouldn't boot.

So if you find yourself having to restore a time machine backup, use a bootable macOS of the same macOS version you were running.


'Now Playing' button not working, bad ipod?

I just tried this on my iOS 5 iPhone, and I had no issue.  I would try restoring your device at Settings -> General -> Reset -> Reset All Settings and see if that fixes some glitch or something with your iPod.  But, this is a software issue, so returning your device for a new one shouldn't be the only solution.


Xcode/WatchKit - how do I run the regular app on iPad/other devices?

Turns out this is a completely non-issue.

Restart the device.

Answered here to keep the keywords for search, in case (like I did) others assume that it's a WatchKit issue, not a device/xCode connection issue.


Does iCloud backup overwrite existing data?

Restoring an iCloud Backup will cause you to lose existing data. As part of the procedure to restore an iCloud Backup, one chooses Settings → General → Reset → Erase All Content and Settings. Therefore your data on your existing device is gone.

It may be possible to perform a delta restore of an iTunes backup. Make sure both devices are running the same version of iOS, then…

Backup your current device (and your new device in case anything goes wrong) using iTunes.
Using iBackupBot, open the backup you made of your old device and find the messages data in the messages container in the backup.
Use iBackupBot's restore functionality to restore this data on to your new device.


I found that as of High Sierra, I needed to use a different date transformation. The 8 extra 0's on the date field versus the date_read field was the clue:

datetime(message.date/1000000000 + strftime("%s", "2001-01-01") ,"unixepoch","localtime")