How do I hide the Spotlight icon on Yosemite, but keep the Spotlight functionality?

So I got fed up with this and decided to fix it the hard way.

I found out where Spotlight initializes the status bar item, and I just patched the status bar size to zero. This requires editing the Spotlight binary. (Note that Search.bundle is just the little stub that gets loaded into SystemUIServer to allow Spotlight.app to control the status bar).

You'll have to use the Terminal to execute some commands.

For OS X 10.10 (Yosemite):

cd /System/Library/CoreServices/Spotlight.app/Contents/MacOS
sudo cp Spotlight Spotlight.bak
sudo perl -pi -e 's|(\x48\xb8\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00)\x42\x40(\x48\x89\x47\x10\x48\xB8\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x36\x40)|$1\x00\x00$2|sg' Spotlight
cmp -l Spotlight Spotlight.bak
sudo codesign -f -s - Spotlight
sudo killall Spotlight

For OS X 10.11 (El Capitan):

cd /System/Library/CoreServices/Spotlight.app/Contents/MacOS
sudo cp Spotlight Spotlight.bak
sudo perl -pi -e 's|(\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x47\x40\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00)\x42\x40(\x00\x00\x80\x3f\x00\x00\x70\x42)|$1\x00\x00$2|sg' Spotlight
cmp -l Spotlight Spotlight.bak
sudo codesign -f -s - Spotlight
sudo killall Spotlight

The cmp -l line should print out something like the following:

248855   0 102
248856   0 100

If it prints out nothing, then the patch failed. I have tested this on OS X 10.10.3 (Yosemite) and OS X 10.11.5 (El Capitan; SIP off).

What this patch is doing is replacing the status bar width value (36.0, or 0000000000004240 in floating-point hex) with zero, so that when the status bar item is loaded it simply renders with a width of zero, i.e. it is invisible and doesn't affect the layout of the bar.

Screenshot before doing this hack:

Screenshot after doing this hack:

Menu icon is gone but Cmd+Space continues to work.

To revert, do the following:

cd /System/Library/CoreServices/Spotlight.app/Contents/MacOS
sudo mv Spotlight.bak Spotlight
sudo killall Spotlight


Changing MAC Address and undoing changes

To your first question "is it permanent"--

No it is not, it will revert to the original when you restart.

The reason is a MAC address is given to a network adapter (card) when it is manufactured. It is hardwired or hard-coded onto your computer's network interface card (NIC) and is unique to it, so when you restart system will get the hardwired MAC address from the network card.

However there are ways to keep it permanent, but that is another question and method.

To your second question:

OS X uses en0 and en1 to identify the network type.

Depending on the configuration those could be:

en0 for the Ethernet (cable) interface

en1 for the WiFi interface

But it is better to look up your specific configuration.

To find out the currently used MAC address run ifconfig en1 | grep ether or ifconfig en0 | grep ether in your Terminal app.


How to avoid iMessages services carrier charges after every restart?

Apple messaging service works with an AppleID and your iPhone mobile number. Since SMS activation is only required if you want to use your phone number with Messages / Facetime chat, removing your phone from  Messages should stop the request for repeated SMS activation.
To remove your phone number from Messages follow these steps:

On your iPhone, go to Settings > Messages > Send & Receive. Select your Apple ID and tap Sign Out.

Then go to Settings > FaceTime, select your Apple ID and tap Sign Out.

Additionally, some may require to go back to Settings > Messages > Send & Receive and  Tap “Use your Apple ID for Messages” and sign in with your Apple ID.

(Note: If Messages and / or Facetime section in settings is disabled / greyed out, go to Settings > Screen Time > Content & Privacy Restrictions > Account Changes and tap 'Allow')
Source: Add or remove your phone number in Messages or FaceTime on all your Apple devices.
ºº(This didn't work for me on an old iPhone with an outdated version of ios and still kept asking for SMS activation. So update ios on your device if you still have issues.)

I consider this an issue with Messages / Facetime design and I would even label it a bug, even if Apple doesn't consider it so.
This issue is even more irritating for users who have to pay international rates for the SMS that Messages / Facetime wants to send to Apple for activation.
This is an Apple issue and not a carrier / cellular phone provider as this is about activation of an Apple service (iMessage / Facetime). So talking to your carrier support won't help with this.
Before you can use Messages / Facetime chatting service on your iPhone, it requires that an SMS be sent from your phone to Apple to activate it. This SMS is sent the first time you try to use Messages / Facetime or if ios thinks your Messages needs to be activated. So for me, and many others outside US, it sends a costly international SMS to Apple.
This SMS activation is required if you want someone to also be able to locate you using your mobile phone number. (Note that by Messages I mean message that is sent through iCloud and internet and not SMS, which are messages sent through your carrier network. You can always send SMS through the Messages app without requiring any such Apple activiation).
I presume that Messages / Facetime keeps asking to send SMS activation on every restart, because it probably wants to verify if you have changed your SIM card or phone number.
There is currently no known method to avoid sending this SMS to activate Messages on the iPhone. (Apple iPad and iPod Touch don't require SMS activation for using iMessage as you can only use your AppleID for Messages on these devices).
The only way to avoid paying the SMS charges is to change your plan to one that includes free SMS (but this option will work only for US citizens, as no plan I've heard of includes free international SMS!). Or to a different carrier that has an understanding with Apple to not charge for such SMS sent to Apple. (Yeah, I know both options suck).

Note: If you frequently have to restart your iPhone because the phone seems to hang or struggle, it may be time to change your iPhone's battery. As your battery becomes older, ios throttles your phone so that the battery is not strained and can give you longer battery life. But ofcourse, this means that your phone becomes slower and everything feels sluggish.
More information on this can be found here -

iPhone Battery and Performance
What is iPhone throttling and why does it happen?


One way is to make a custom keyboard layout using

http://scripts.sil.org/ukelele

Another option might be to use system preferences/language & text/text/symbol and text substitution to set up substitutions for the input of the base character plus ' generating the accented character.  But I no longer have 10.6 and can't remember if this feature is present there.


Automator Start Capture action doesn't detect stop in Quicktime in OS X 10.8.2

There's a lot that doesn't work with respect to automating QuickTime under Mountain Lion. This is ugly, but it appears to be a workaround that has the key virtue of actually working.

In your automator flow, use the action "Run AppleScript". Use this as the script:

tell application "QuickTime Player"
    activate
    set x to new audio recording
    tell x to start
    delay 1
    set lastLength to duration of x
    delay 1
    set newLength to duration of x
    try
        repeat while lastLength is not equal to newLength
            delay 1
            set lastLength to newLength
            set newLength to duration of x
        end repeat
    end try
    --  display alert name of document 1
    set v to file of front document
    set thePath to POSIX path of (path to desktop)
    tell x to activate
    delay 1
    tell application "System Events"
        keystroke "S" using {command down, shift down}
        delay 1
        keystroke thePath
        delay 1
        keystroke return
        delay 1
        keystroke "specific file name"
        keystroke return
    end tell
end tell

This isn't pretty, but it's a workaround.

Just about all the code-based ways to script the save command in QuickTime via AppleScript appear to be broken in Mountain Lion. I can't access the path of the frontmost document. I can't export. I can't close saving. It all fails either silently or with an error message. What does seem to work is to send the appropriate keystrokes to simulate a manual file export. So that's what I've done here.

I suspect you want your file saved with a name different than "specific file name" and perhaps somewhere other than your desktop. Make the appropriate substitutions in the script so that can happen. The file will then be there on disk; subsequent actions in your workflow can take advantage of it.

Note that if your file already exists, you'll get a confirmation dialog in the QT save command, and the script doesn't handle that automatically.


Can I release a new App for iPad 1, as of 2017?

32-bit apps will be rejected, but that's not the whole story. Providing the app supports 64-bit, you can provide a 32-bit version alongside in the same app bundle. This way there is a 64-bit version for newer devices/iOS (iOS 11 removes 32-bit app support), but also a 32-bit version for older devices.

To add 32-bit and 64-bit support to your app bundle in Xcode, you need:

to target iOS 5.1.1. Targeting earlier versions of iOS doesn't support the combined app bundles. Later versions of iOS aren't supported on the iPad 1.
a version of Xcode which is able to target this iOS and also provide the combined bundle functionality, such as Xcode 5.0.2 or 5.0.3.
to change your project to build both 32-bit and 64-bit. In your project build settings, change Architectures to ‘Standard Architectures (including 64-bit)’.

You can then build your app to support 32-bit and 64-bit which will successfully submit to iTunes Connect.


Is there a way to determine when an iOS upgrade was installed?

If you have updated iOS through iTunes, you can look in your iTunes data folder, on a Windows machine that will be:

C:\Users\[username]\AppData\Roaming\Apple Computer\iTunes\iPhone Software Updates\

Then check out the timestamp on the iPhone..._Restore.ipsw file. That will be the date you upgraded (or downloaded) our latest iOS update.

If you updated it directly on the device, I don't think it is possible to retrieve its date.


Mavericks - ssh to host under search domain

Have you tried to SSH to the IP address? It may be simple enough to work. Take the DNS out of the picture if you have the IP addresses of the hosts.

Whenever I use SSH out of Terminal I have always used the IP address and never had any issues.


Photo Streams from two or more iCloud accounts into same iPhoto library?

Currently it can't. Photo Stream settings are detected via the iCloud preference pane and is global to your machine. Until it can support multiple iCloud accounts, iPhoto can only connect to one Photo Stream at a time. Since it's only a temporary store of the last photos taken I am assuming Apple will most likely not make this possible.

I normally move my photos from the Photo Stream to Flickr to achieve this since you can have multiple Flickr accounts.

Look into Dropbox with photo upload if you want to merge photos from multiple devices into one collective stream. From there you can use the Mac client and Folder Actions to automate importing, processing and other tasks as needed.


How to move individual apps & files from old to new macbook pro

Turn off the 10.8.6 computer.
Connect it to the new computer with either a Firewire or Thunderbolt cable.
Hold T down on the 10.8.6 computer.This will boot it into  Target Disk Mode
The 10.8.6 computer's disk should now be mounted on the new computer. You can transfer just the files that you want and then unmount the older computer.

Transferring the files with a USB flash drive would work as well.


Do I need to be enrolled in Apple Developer Program to publish apps as a part of organization

You do not need to be enrolled in Apple Developer Program personally if your Apple ID is a member of an organisation which has already enrolled. Speak to your organisation if you seem to be unable to publish apps under their program membership.


Is there a way to see overall status of iCloud Drive in macOS?

Yosemite
You can watch individual files in Finder, but there's no GUI for the progress of iCloud changes.
El Capitan
In El Capitan and later a progress bar can be accessed by clicking on the wheel in the Finder sidebar.

https://georgegarside.com/blog/macos/all-the-little-things-osx-el-capitan-hidden-features/#icloud-drive-upload-progress-indicator (my blog)


You needs to put one of the computer in Target Disk Mode (Press T on startup) and connect another USB-C equipped Mac with a USB-C cable (or USB-C to USB Adapter/Cable for older computer) Note that the USB-C cable that come with your MacBook Pro 2016 does not work.

There are a more complicated method (and this requires a Thunderbolt 3 Cable (or use a Thunderbolt 3 to Thunderbolt 2 Adapter and a Thunderbolt 2 Cable for older computers) and both computer have to be a Mac that support Thunderbolt. But this does not requires Target Disk Mode. Connect both Macs with the Thunderbolt cable (or with the adapter) and go to System Preferences > Network on both Mac. Go to Thunderbolt bridge (add one if it doesn't exist) and there set configure IPv4 to manually on both. Now set Subnet Mask on both to 255.255.255.0, now give two IPs to both computer (i.e. 192.168.2.1 and 192.168.2.2). Now you can use File Sharing (and other shadings) with the two Macs by Thunderbolt when you use the IP address.


...any other tricks I can try myself to see if I can repair this or at
  least retrieve the data without paying for a service or software?

Based on everything you said, there are only two conditions that exist:

The USB enclosure has failed.  This is the least bad scenario.  The "enclosure" has a USB to SATA controller that is the interface of the drive.  It's not out of the realm of possibility that it "reports" back the drive, but refuses to mount/read/write/etc.
The SSD drive itself has failed This is the worst case scenario.  If the drive has failed, there's nothing you're going to do to force it to start working.

How can you find out which scenario is the one you're dealing with?  I wrote an answer to a similar question that addresses this situation exactly. It involves a cheap USB to SATA adapter to remove the enclosure from the equation.  If the drive works, it was the enclosure;  you get the added benefit of the adapter being a temp solution until you get the enclosure fixed (or another external drive).  If it doesn't work, then you know the SSD has died.


OS X software for copying from Windows File Shares

You could use the SAMBA protocol (or Apple's implementation of it), to connect to a Windows Share.

Either open Finder and choose "Go" -> "Connect to Server" in the menu bar.

Now connect to your share(s) using the SMB:// as protocol definition. If activated it will ask you for authentication afterwards. Then the share will be mounted like any other mount point.

Or you could use the terminal to mount the file system using the

mount_smbf

command.

After you've mounted the Windows Share you should be able to use any command line tool or GUI software do to your copying. Instead of robocopy you could use rsync for example (which is built in and pretty powerful).

One note: Just remember that saving files directly from within apps on a share could cause some troubles if they are using Apples's Versions feature, which is not supported by FAT or NTFS file systems.


After Mavericks upgrade Chrome font is terrible

It's not a Mavericks issue.

Google Chrome has (currently) a bad support of Webfonts.


The Music app on iOS can be confusing. For some conceptual help see this page at Apple Support. I find it easier to create Playlists (either on my Phone, or better yet, in iTunes on my Mac,) and and use them instead of playing the entire library.

Here's some guidance from Apple:

Play your music

If you want to listen to an artist's entire collection of music that you've saved to your library, find the artist in Library > Artists. Tap Shuffle All  to play all of their music.

Create a playlist

You can create playlists to listen to or share with friends. From the Library tab, tap Playlists, then New Playlist. Fill in details for your playlist, such as the title and description, then add music. If you like, you can also add an image. When you're happy with your playlist, tap Done in the upper-right corner.
If you don't see Playlists under Library, tap Edit in the upper-right corner, then tap Playlists to turn it on. Tap Done to return to Library.

Up Next, Shuffle, and Repeat

Also on the Now Playing screen, you can rewind, pause, or fast forward a song, control the volume, read song lyrics, and more.

Swipe up on Now Playing to show your Up Next queue, which lists all of the songs that you’ve selected for playback.

Drag songs with  to rearrange the order, or swipe left to remove a song that you’d like to skip.

Tap  Shuffle to shuffle the songs in a playlist or album.

Tap  Repeat once to play an entire playlist or album on repeat or twice to repeat one song.

Tap  a third time to clear the repeat.


What is the shortcut for changing my primary display?

It's not 100% clear how you're using your screens, but perhaps the following will work for you.

Let's assume your Primary monitor is on the sitting desk. When sitting this is fine, but when you're standing you could just use the Command + Brightness Down Keyboard shortcut to turn display mirroring on so that what's on the sitting screen appears on the standing screen. Then, you can use the same keyboard shortcut to turn display mirroring off when sitting again.


rm all mdfind results, handling pathnames with spaces

You can use mdfind -0 to print a null character after each path.  Then, xargs -0 to parse the list on each null character instead of using the default whitespace.


Yes, you can use command line tools to issue your own self-signed certificates. These need not be limited to one year.

There is no difference between Keychain Access created certificates and those you create using command line tools.

openssl

With openssl you can create certificates of any duration. The question and answers for how to create a self-signed certificate with OpenSSL will get you started. The command is effectively:

openssl req -x509 -newkey rsa:4096 -keyout key.pem -out cert.pem -days 730

The command above will result in a two year self-signed certificate.

Automatic versus Manual

Regarding safety, there is no difference in safety between certificates created by Keychain Access's graphical interface and those by command line tools.

The safety of self-signed certificates can be an issue. Self-signed certificates are not signed by a trusted third party. This third party signature typically only matters when the certificate is being used outside of your immediate environment – which it is not for this situation.

Ad-Hoc

You can also ad-hoc codesign an application without a certificate:

sudo codesign -f -s - /Applications/Xcode.app


"df -h" is showing about 1/2 "Available" disk that the "Disk Utility" shows for same internal SSD. Which is correct?

They’re both correct in that they are measuring two completely different things.

Disk Utility is measuring the volumes on the disk itself whereas df is measuring the file system.  To draw an analogy, one is calculating the surface area of the dining table and the other is measuring the surface area of the plates.

So, the important bits here are the available space.  Disk Utility is telling you that the disk itself has 120GB of available space.  df is telling you that on this particular partition/volume you only gave 53GB available.

So, the space isn’t missing, its just not allocated by the filesystem.  How do you claim it?  Create a new partition, resize an existing partition, etc.


On my El Capitan I have Xingkai SC:

This font can probably also be used for Japanese.

For Korean, MacOS has a calligraphic font called Nanum Brush.

For other Asian scripts, you would have to download something from a 3rd party.


Configure iPhone to send smaller pictures as e-mail attachment?

You do it right at the point of sending an email…
right after you hit send, this screen appears…


Is there a way to read the Spotlight comment in Automator workflow

Since it appears that Automator doesn't have a "Get Spotlight Comment" action (surprisingly), maybe you can do this with AppleScript.
(See this forum)

Something like:

tell application "Finder"
    set thisItem to "Macintosh SSD:untitled folder"
    set Comm to comment of folder thisItem (* get comment *)
end tell
return Comm (* to return the Comment string for editing *)

This returns the Comment (in the Get Info Window) of the specified folder on my Desktop, and could be modified to modify the comment of all items passed in by Automator.

In Automator, you'd have to add the action "Run Applescript" and insert a script like this there.
Unfortunately I don't think you can have the script take both the files & new comment as input from the previous Automator action.
So you'd probably have to hard-code the comment modification part, and add a set comment part, perhaps like so:

on run {input, parameters}

    tell application "Finder"
        set thisItem to the input as string
        set Comm to comment of folder thisItem (* get comment *)
        (* manipulate the comment strings*)
        set comment of folder thisItem to "NewCommentString" (* set comment *)
    end tell
    return input (* to pass the file list to next automator action)

end run

This script currently only modifies a single file's comment - I believe you'd have to loop through the file list to do it on many files.  (To make the new comment modifiable at run-time, maybe use "Show this action when run" on the *Run AppleScript" action?). Or you might end up moving the entire script to AppleScript.


Is there a replacement glass panel for iPad that is "matte"?

If I were you I would:

repair screen at local apple authorized service provider
cover new new screen with a new matte screen protector for ipad 1

1 Please read reviews before buying one, because some people complain about different issues like a little blurred screen, grain etc.


Don't save drafts !!!
Drafts are auto saved by OS.


Had no free disk space on my iPhone 5... but now I do?

You can try to do the most obvious and smart things that free up space on your iPhone. Which are

Upgrade to iOS 10.3: Apple’s new file system, Apple File System (APFS) included in iOS 10.3 is optimized for flash and solid-state drive storage. According to [Apple Insider][1], there has been a gain of space of almost 8GB in a 256GB model. But don’t expect a gain of 6-8GB in your 16GB or 32GB. As Apple Insider explains, the more memory you have, the more free space iOS 10.3 will reclaim.
Backup Photos using Google Photos: Google Photos is basically a cloud storage for your photos. It works great with iOS too. Google Photos offers unlimited photos and videos for free, up to 16 megapixels and 1080p HD. Photos that are safely backed up can be removed from your device’s storage in just a tap.
Remove “Other” Data on your phone: When you connect your iPhone to a computer and open iTunes, you would encounter the “Other” section in little iTunes usage bar graph. Check out this tip by OSXdaily on how to manage this issue. http://osxdaily.com/2013/07/24/remove-other-data-storage-iphone-ipad/
Use Progressive Web Apps (PWA): Although PWA offers to free up app space, iOS doesn’t fully support it at this point. Some features
such as Add to Home Screen and Push Notifications, are available in
some form in Safari but are not implemented in standard ways. To
give you a comparison of the Space utilization for an App VS PWA,
the Twitter app has a size of 196 MB in the app store. But the PWA
app for twitter is just 1-2MB!
Stream your music instead of downloading them
Remove offline reading list data in Safari: This can be done by navigating to Settings and then General > Usage > Manage Storage > Safari. Then, go to Offline Reading List and tap Delete.
Clear the Safari browser cache: To clean up the cache, simply go to Settings > Safari > Clear History and Website Data.
Remove items from iBooks
Disable using My Photo Stream: Go to Settings > iCloud > Photos, then turn off My Photo Stream
Delete Burst Mode photos
Don’t keep both photos when you enable HDR mode. Go to Settings > Photos & Camera, then deselect Keep Normal Photo

If you have tried most of the above-mentioned tips and still find yourself with less storage space then follow this trick to gain more space.  This trick forces iOS to clear it OS cache. There has been an ongoing argument that since this is a system level cache it would have been freed anyway when you actually needed the space. But this does not seem to work if you are in the middle of taking a video and run our of space.
http://techathlon.com/free-gbs-space-iphone-deleting-photos-apps-files/.


How to diagnose an unknown apache setup?

You can use lsof to find out which processes are listening on which ports.

For example:

lsof -Pnl +M -i4 | grep ":80"

(assuming the process is running on port 80)

You can then use ps to figure out the name of the process for that processID:

ps -p <pid>


Help with Mountain Lion installation on USB - Wont boot internally

I was able to get it to successfully boot by creating a Time Machine Backup, then restoring that to an internally formatted disk.


controlling a machine with usb boot or target mode

If you boot your Mac into Target Disk Mode, you can access all of its files (provided you have the pertinent credentials) using another Mac. To start, reboot while holding down the T key on the Mac of which you would like to access the disk.

Once booted into Target Disk Mode, connect it to another Mac. This can be done using a FireWire or Thunderbolt cable, or using a USB Type C > USB Type A cable if you have the MacBook (Retina 12") (note that Apple does not sell this cable, but Belkin will soon. You can use your standard USB Type C cable if you're connecting it to another MacBook).

Then, to get to your displays preferences, open the property list located at ~/Library/Preferences/ByHost/com.apple.windowserver.<uuid>.plist. It's binary plist, meaning that you must either open it using a tool like Xcode, or convert it to XML by running plutil -convert xml1 com.apple.windowserver.<your_uuid>.plist on the command line in the appropriate directory to make it suit for opening by text editor. (Note that after this you will need to convert back to binary using plutil -convert binary1 com.apple.windowserver.<your_uuid>.plist).

When it's all said and done, you should be able to change your display settings back to ones appropriate for your display.


Make iTunes handle albums with different artists

Select all the files you want to combine, make a right click and select "Information", go to tab "Options" and set "part of a compilation" to yes...


How do you take a Verizon iPhone 4 CDMA phone and get it connected to Straight Talk?

The iPhone 4 built for Verizon's network is a CDMA-only device that is not capable of operating on a GSM network that requires a SIM card, such as StraightTalk (which uses T-Mobile's network). It will never work. It does not have the radios built into it that would be necessary.


Special character codes are displayed in the Terminal for diacritics when connecting to an Ubuntu Server

The LC_ALL variable having an empty value was causing the problem.

So the solution of this problem can be found on SO here:

On mac, the LC_ALL variable is not set by default. So writing:

export LC_ALL=en_US.UTF-8

in your ~/.bash_profile fixes the problem. I assume that You have a default SSH config that has LC_* in the SendEnv configuration.


The CPU percentages shown in Activity Monitor are 100% for each virtual core. If you have a quad core processor with hyperthreading, 'real' 100% is 800% in Activity Monitor.


How to keep apps separate per user in iTunes?

If you have separate profiles set up already, your husband's apps shouldn't be transferring over upon restore EXCEPT if the iPhone backup already contains your husband's apps. Make sure to:

Remove all of your husband's apps from the iPhone
Back up the iPhone using your iTunes profile

The next time you restore, the apps should only come from your Apple account.


Where does Mac OS X store contacts in my Address Book?

The path is ~/Library/Application Support/AddressBook/ on both Snow Leopard and Lion.

Note that you can't see the Library in your home folder (as it is hidden by default). You can type in chflags nohidden ~/Library in Terminal to make it appear permanently, or hold down ⌥ Option while in the "Go" menu of Finder.


MacBook Air mid 2011 - Handoff not supported

As of 10/23/2014 The creator of the tutorial below (@dokterdok) has released a software tool to automate the process.

Below is from the original macrumors post...

  (@dokterdok)

  Update 23.10.2014: I've released a Continuity Activation Tool. No more
  painful manual hacking. Link.

This is how i fixed it (according to this wonderful MacRumors Tutorial mentioned by @Hank):

  Download and install 0xED in your Applications folder, you can get it from here: http://www.suavetech.com/0xed/
  Download and install KextDrop in your Applications folder, you can get it from here: http://www.cindori.org/software/kextdrop/
  Open Terminal and type : sudo nvram boot-args="kext-dev-mode=1"
  Restart your machine.
  Open Finder, type CMD+Shift+G and go to /System/Library/Extensions/
  Copy those two files to your desktop and then delete the originals: IO80211Family.kext IOBluetoothFamily.kext
  Go to Terminal, and type: ioreg -l | grep "board-id" | awk -F\" '{print $4}'
  Your result should look like : Mac-742912EFDBEE19B3, (yours might be different.). Copy it to your clipboard (Select and CMD+C). Don't
  close terminal yet.
  Open Finder and hit CMD+Shift+G, go to ~/Desktop/IO80211Family.kext/Contents/Plugins/AirPortBrcm4360.kext/Contents/MacOS
  Note: if you have a different OS language, you might need to replace
  "Desktop" in the path with your local translation.
  Right Click on AirPortBrcm4360, and choose OPEN WITH: OTHER: 0XED
  Press CMD+F, search for "Mac-" (without the quotes). Make sure the search type is Text and not HEX.
  Look at the first result, for example, it might be Mac-C3EC7CD22292981F
  Go back to the FIND box, in the FIND field enter that first "Mac-" number that you found.
  In the REPLACE field, enter the number you got in Terminal, (remember you left it open.)
  Click REPLACE
  Repeat steps 11 to 15, but this time for the last "Mac-" result that you can find in the file.
  Click SAVE
  Open Finder and hit CMD+Shift+G to open the "Go to" popup, and go to ~/Desktop/IOBluetoothFamily.kext/Contents/MacOS
  Right Click on IOBluetoothFamily, and choose OPEN WITH: OTHER: 0XED.
  Press CMD+F.  In the SEARCH field type: MacBookAir Click FIND NEXT.
  You will find a block of text containing 'MacBookAir4,1''MacBookAir4,2''Macmini5,1''Macmini5,2''Macmini5,3'
  Manually replace the numbers with ones only so they all look like:
  'MacBookAir1,1''MacBookAir1,1''Macmini1,1''Macmini1,1''Macmini1,1'
  Click SAVE (the red circle button) and quit 0xED.
  Open KextDrop, and Drag and drop the IO80211Family.kext that you modified into the window.
  Click INSTALL.
  Repeat steps 23 and 24 but for your modified IOBluetoothFamily.kext
  Go Back to Terminal, and type the following commands. Wait for each one to finish. sudo kextcache -system-prelinked-kernel and
  sudo kextcache -system-caches
  Reboot. Make sure you have an Internet connection for the next steps.

  Last: SignOut and in again your Mac and iPhone, reboot both.

Here is how it should look like after this:


How to add the PATH for mysql bin on Mac?

You need a space after vi and before the . so vi .bash_profile not vi.bash_profile.

If you are not in your home folder you can also use vi  ~/.bash_profile to specify the location as mentioned in ankiis answer below/above.  Again you need a space after the vi.

Alternatively, instead of using vi you can add your path to .bash_profileusing echo 'export PATH=/my/path:$PATH' >> ~/.bash_profile as explained in this answer.


Time stamp for pictures actually taken before being sent to recipient on iphone

This website
Can show you some of the metadata/exif about an image. It should show you the date of when the picture was taken.


Only small contact photos since iOS 6 facebook integration

Currently, no.
That is the way it works in iOS 6 (if you ask me, it's a better way).
But...
This month, there should be a massive redesign with iOS 7 - maybe this design will be improved/changed.


On the Presonus forum it appears I am not the only one with this connection problem. There are very many unhappy un-users on there...

I uninstalled and reinstalled their Universal Control software several times and tried different approaches. One thing I did discover is it is very important to open the Security and Privacy section in Mac system preferences and change the settings to allow third party software.

I also followed the advice of a contributer on the Presonus forum, advice which is not mentioned in the Presonus setup information...
Following an install of the Universal Control software you switch off the Quantum and unplug the TB cable. You reboot, reconnect the TB cable and switch on the Quantum and it worked. Thanks for the advice and happy recording.


OS X: Can the App Switcher be modified to be more intuitive?

Context

OS X has two modes, depending on whether you adjusted the 'Displays have separate Spaces' in System Preferences > Mission Control.

In the default (enabled) mode you'll find that which ever screen has focus (i.e the front window is on that screen and you can type into it) will have the app switcher. This is indicated by the fact the Menu Bar at the top is sold rather than translucent.

In the disabled mode you'll find which ever screen is allocated as the primary display in System Preferences > Displays > Arrangement will have all of the OS related GUI on it, i.e. the Menu Bar, Dock, and other system level interactions will only show on that screen.

Answer

You can change your application switcher with Witch to allow more Windows like window switching rather than application switching. Maybe this would be more intuitive to  you, alternatively try using mission control F3 which shows you all the applications on each screen on the screen they are on.


iPhone 6s with iOS 12.4 not connecting to MacBook Pro mid2015 with macOS 10.14.6

Workaround 1

This is the only reliable workaround for my iPhone.

I came across a similar question. The most up-voted answer lets me charge my phone. However, I consider it rather a workaround than a solution.

Launch "Activity Monitor" > select the usbd process > click the cross icon in the top left corner > select "Force Quit". Sometimes the process has to be repeated once.

Unfortunately, this workaround does not work for my iPad mini 4, which will say Not Charging after quitting usbd.

Workaround 2

This is a weird one... I noticed that sometimes the Trust this Computer? dialogue appeared for a split second. However, it did not appear long enough to actually click  the Trust button (left button). After playing whack-a-mole for a while, I accidentally opened the Calculator App. There I was able to catch the dialogue and then I was asked to enter my Passcode. After repeating this twice it worked even after rebooting the computer. The phone will work randomly for a while.


It seems to be possible to install Windows 7/8 to an external drive but a lot of work is necessary to overcome Boot Camp/Windows 7/8 restrictions.

The following guide is shamelessly stolen at bleeptobleep.blogspot.de.
All credits go to the the respective  persons/groups of persons.

To keep the formatting and improve readability i didn't choose the quote tags.

Mac: Install Windows 7 or 8 on an external USB3 or Thunderbolt drive without using bootcamp

Introduction

After I received my new iMac with a 3 TB Fusion Drive, I was disappointed when I realized that Bootcamp was not running on this model and prevented me from installing Windows on it. I wanted to take advantage of the powerful iMac hardware to play games but I couldn't.
There are a few ways of working around this limitation, but I found most of them quite complex and most of the time they required formatting the internal hard drive or repartitioning it and go for a brand new installation of Mac OS X. I was not comfortable with that.
But there is another way, and that is to install Windows on an external hard drive, using either USB or Thunderbolt. Personally I used a Lacie Rugged 1 TB drive that has both USB3 and Thunderbolt connectors. Both work very well.

This guide may interest you if:

You have an internal hard drive of more than 2TB and you can't run bootcamp at all (like late 2012 iMacs with a 3TB drive)
You have limited space or you don't want to dedicate disk space on your internal hard disk drive to a Windows installation

What this guide will make you do:

It will make you erase all your data from your external USB3/Thunderbolt hard drive
It will make you install Windows on your external USB3/Thunderbolt hard drive
It will make you install bootcamp drivers

What this will not make you do:

It will not make you modify anything on your internal Mac hard drive
It will not make you use or install the bootcamp assistant
It will not activate the Preference Pane for the default boot drive. You have to boot by pressing the ALT key to manually select your boot drive each time you want to boot Windows.

What you'll need

An external hard drive with a USB3 and/or Thunderbolt connector. This drive will be formatted so ensure you saved your files before going further. You can use either an SSD drive or a classic hard drive.
A Windows 7 or 8 install DVD or ISO (check whether to install 32 or 64 bits versions based on your Bootcamp drivers) and the corresponding Windows serial number.
One of the following:

Mac OS X with a Windows 7 or 8 Virtual Machine (use VMWare Fusion or Parallels Desktop for example. Note: VMWare Fusion seems to have some issues with Thunderbolt and USB3. Plug your drive to a USB2 enclosure or hub to work around this -it worked for me-, or use another VM software) → Read the important note below
A PC running Windows 7 or 8 → Read the important note below

Windows AIK (free) running on your Virtual Machine or on your PC, or just the imagex.exe file (the rest of the Windows AIK package is not needed)

Download imagex.exe
Download Windows AIK 7 or Windows AIK 8 (this download and installation is not required if you have already downloaded imagex.exe)

Bootcamp drivers for your Mac. You can get these either by running bootcamp from your Mac (Applications > Utilities > Bootcamp) or, if like me you have a 3TB drive and can't run bootcamp at all, use the direct download links here.
A USB stick to store your bootcamp drivers

IMPORTANT: If your Mac has a 64 bits processor, your Windows Virtual Machine on OSX, your Windows installation on your PC and your Windows DVD/ISO must also be in 64 bits!

Step by Step guide

Step 1: Get the install.wim file

If you have a Windows ISO file:

Mount the ISO

If you're on OS X: double click on the ISO file
If you're on on Windows 7: Use a software like Virtual Clone Drive (free)
If you're on Windows 8: double click on the ISO file

Open the mounted drive, then go to the "sources" folder and locate the "install.wim" file. Save this file to C:\wim\ on your Windows installation or virtual machine.

If you have a Windows DVD: open the "sources" folder on the DVD and locate the "install.wim" file. Save this file to C:\wim\ on your Windows installation or virtual machine.

IMPORTANT: If instead of a "install.wim" file, you have "install.esd", you can not continue this step by step guide. And an ESD file can not be converted into a WIM file. So you must get a version of the Windows installation DVD/ISO that has an install.wim file.

Step 2: Clean, partition and format your external hard drive

On your Windows installation or virtual machine, plug in your external hard drive (can be plugged using USB2, USB3 or Thunderbolt at this stage)
Open the command prompt in administrator mode (cmd.exe). To run it in administrator mode, right click on cmd.exe > Run as admin.
Type the following and hit enter to open the disk partitioner utility:
diskpart
Type the following and hit enter to list your drives:
list disk
This will display a list of disks mounted on your computer or virtual machine. Make sure your drive is listed here before you continue.
Identify the disk ID of your external hard drive. Replace # by your real external disk ID in the command below:
select disk #
Clean all partitions by typing the following (warning: this will erase all data from your external drive!):
clean
Type the following to use MBR as partitioning format:
convert mbr
Create the boot partition by typing the following followed by the enter key:
create partition primary size=350
This will create a 350MB partition on your external drive
Format the partition in FAT32 by typing the following:
format fs=fat32 quick
Set this partition to active by typing:
active
Assign a letter to mount this partition. We will use letter B in our example. If B is already used on your PC, replace B by any other available letter:
assign letter=b
Windows will detect a new drive and probably display a pop-up. Ignore that.
Create the Windows installation partition using all the remaining space available on the external drive by typing the following:
create partition primary
Format the new partition in NTFS:
format fs=ntfs quick
Assign a letter to mount this partition. We will use letter O in our example. If O is already used on your PC, replace O by any other available letter:
assign letter=o
Windows will detect a new drive and probably display a pop-up. Ignore that.
Exit the disk partitioner utility by typing:
exit

Step 3: Deploy the Windows installation image

Still using the command prompt in admin mode (you didn't close it, did you? ;) ), locate the imagex.exe file mentioned in the "What you'll need" section and access its folder. In our example, we have put this file in C:\imagex\imagex.exe
Your Windows installation ISO has probably several installation options in it. So in order to identify the right one, type in the following:
imagex.exe /info C:\wim\install.wim
Now identify the INDEX number of the installation that you wish to deploy. You will use it in the next step.
Type the following and hit enter. Replace 1 with the INDEX you identified in the previous step. Also remember to replace o: with the letter you have chosen in the previous step:
imagex.exe /apply C:\wim\install.wim 1 o:
This will take some time. The Windows installation image is being deployed to your external drive
Once done, type the following to create the boot section (remember to replace o: and b: with the letters you've chosen in the previous step):
o:\windows\system32\bcdboot o:\windows /f ALL /s b:

If you get an error message saying that you can't run this program on your PC, then most probably you are running on a 32 bits installation of windows and you're trying to deploy a 64 bits install. This means you did not read the important notes in the beginning of this guide ;)
If you get an error message on the options that can be used with the BCDBOOT command, then it's because you're installing Windows 7, and the /f option is not supported. If that is the case, remove /f ALL from the command and retry.

Step 4: Boot from your external drive and install Windows

Plug in your external drive:

If you've done all the previous steps from a Windows PC, unplug your external drive from your PC and plug it to your Mac, either on a USB3 or a Thunderbolt port.
If you've done all the previous steps from your Mac using a Virtual Machine, ensure the external drive is plugged in to a USB3 or Thunderbolt port. Using USB2 should also work but you'll get very poor performance so I don't recommend doing that.

Reboot your Mac and once the bootup sound is over, immediately press the ALT (option) key and release it only when the boot drives selection screen appears. If you did not get the boot drives selection screen, reboot and try again. The timing to press the ALT (option) key is quite short. It must not be too early or too late.
On the boot selection screen, choose "Windows" using the arrow keys on your keyboard, then press enter.
The Windows installation starts. Follow the on-screen instructions as normal. The installation program will restart your computer one or 2 times. Don't forget to press ALT (option) right after the bootup sound, and boot on Windows again each time to continue the installation.

Step 5: Install bootcamp drivers

Once the Windows installation is complete, plug in the USB stick where you stored the bootcamp drivers (see "what you'll need" section), open it and right click on "setup.exe" and select "Run as admin". Follow the on-screen instructions.

If you have an error saying that you can't run this program on this PC, obviously you have installed a 32 bits version of Windows and the bootcamp drivers for your Mac are made for a 64 bits version. You have to restart the whole guide and make sure to get a 64 bits version of Windows this time!

Once the bootcamp drivers are all installed, reboot and press ALT (option) after the bootup sound to boot on Windows again. And Voilà, you have Windows installed on your USB3/Thunderbolt drive running on your Mac.
Now each time you want to boot on Windows, press and hold the ALT (option) key after the startup sound and select "Windows", then press Enter.

Credits, sources and big thank you to:

tweaks.com where I got the info on how to install Windows to go on a USB external drive
Chris F Caroll where I finally found where to download the bootcamp drivers without running bootcamp
Macrumors forums for the very helpful forum members

To answer your second question about performance drop:

I don't have a Boot Camp partition so i can't compare Windows Boot Camp to a Windows VM.
But i may give you a Mac <-> Mac VM comparison and single Windows 7/8 VM benchmarks:

Geekbench 3 Benchmark:

iMac14,2 3.5 GHz i7 4 cores 8 threads 32 GB 10.9.5: single-core score: 4009 multi-core score: 14951
iMac14,2 3.5 GHz i7 2 (virtual) cores 4 GB 10.9.5 Parallels VM single-core score: 3870 multi-core score: 7127

Windows Experience Index:

Windows 7 Parallels VM, 2 (virtual) cores, 4 GB (WEI: 1.0-7.9):

Processor:        7.3
RAM:              7.9
Graphics:         7.8
Gaming Graphics:  7.8
Prim. Hard Disk:  6.0

Windows 8.1 Parallels VM, 2 (virtual) cores, 8 GB (WEI: 1.0-9.9):

Processor:        7.5
RAM:              7.9
Graphics:         8.2
Gaming Graphics:  8.2
Prim. Hard Disk:  7.5


How to delete photos from iPhoto/Phots with a particular filename format?

I'm not sure either iPhoto or Photos would be keen on you deleting pictures from inside the app folder framework.

They both expect to be 'in charge' of the editing & deleting process.

I think, long term it may be better, if you want your 'originals' in a single format in each of the 3 locations to use Image Capture to do the import, to a distinct 4th location; folder on the desktop etc.

Then do your file trimming & only afterwards import to iPhoto, Photos & finally move the files to your Pictures folder.

Automator might be best to do the initial file cull.

This example 'Folder Action' will throw out anything NOT containing '_highres'
Note the 'None' parameter in the filter, circled in red.
Folder Actions will trigger every time the Target folder is changed, by adding or removing content.


Your iPhone is bound to a specific machine. It won't automatically sync to a machine. You have to manually force it to sync. When you do this, it will ask if you wish to erase all data on your iPhone and sync with the new machine.

Beware, if you do this, it will wipe your contacts, music, apps, videos, etc, and replace them with what is on your current machine. The only way to avoid doing this is to copy your entire iTunes library folder from your old machine to your new one, and replace the existing library.

To summarise, the iPhone thinks your new laptop is a new machine, and so won't automatically sync to it until it's re-associated. Any questions, just shout.


Are there any apps on Cydia specific to AppleTV?

Perhaps pedantically, I'd like to point out that while you can play back 1080p video through an Apple TV 2, you will still get 720p output. From the XBMC FAQ:

  At present, though the ATV2 can decode
  1080p video (using Apple's private
  VideoToolBox API for
  hardware-accelerated decoding), it is
  limited to 720p output. The 1080p
  video is decoded, then down-scaled in
  hardware to 720p.

Slightly off-topic, but I find Plex to be a superior Apple TV client to XBMC. I prefer the Plex interface to XBMC. You will, however, need to set up a Plex server, as Plex for iOS is a client that needs to hook up to a server, which does media management and transcoding as needed.


Why does my Mac take a long time (30+ seconds) to find my home wifi?

In my professional experience, if you travel a fair amount and use hotel & other free wifi nets, the list of preferred networks can grow unwieldy, and your home network may be way down on the list. @Robuust's suggestion should be amplified to include deleting all preferred networks in that list you may never use again, in addition to any regularly-used networks with connection problems.

In addition, I suggest that once you have re-established connection with your home wifi, that you drag it to the top of the list with this option:

Naturally, if it is your only network, this step is superfluous.

Additional information edit:

You might also want to try deleting the associated login key to this network in Keychain Access.


What keys / "switches" are available for Alternate Pointer Actions?

You're not going to be able to assign a complex keyboard shortcut to the Accessibility/Alternate Control Method.  The reason for this is to simplify the process of right clicking, not to remap it to something else.
From Apple Support:

We build powerful assistive technologies into Mac to give people with physical limitations more ways to be creative and productive. Switch Control lets you navigate what’s on your screen with a single tap. And a range of settings let you adjust interaction sensitivities for an experience that works for you.

What this is looking for a a whole different device (like a key switch device) that where the user presses a button, it will be mapped to something else.  You can use the function keys, but you'll have to un-map them first (F11 and F12 aren't mapped, so they're "available.")

... they're a bit of a stretch for my hands so I was looking for something closer to home row.

Finding something on the home row is really not feasible.

⌥ Option and any of the charachterss on the home row are already bound to unicode characters:  åß∂ƒ©˙∆˚¬…

⇧ Shift⌥ Option as well: ÅÍÎÏ˝ÓÔÒÚÆ

You may have some luck with ⌘ Command⌥ Option and assigning it a shortcut, but is this really easier than a single keypress like F11?

You could "make" a separate device with a USB or Bluetooth Ten Key (Number Pad) and with USB Overdrive or ControllerMate program one of the keys of the keypad as either right click or left click.


This can be accomplished manually.

Changing cell border line weight

Select the desired row(s) [Multiple rows can be selected using the ⌘
+Click method.]
Select Cell tab in the Format inspector pane
Select the desired border [i.e.: Top, bottom, left, right, all]
Change the line style and thickness (weight)

Repeat for each desired row.  The Copy Style / Paste Style buttons can speed up your work as well.


How to have two different versions of MongoDB installed at same time?

I know this is an old question but I was looking for a way to have version 4.x and 3.x and found this to be the easiest solution.

Install the versions of MongoDB you want with brew.

You can find which versions are available with brew search mongo. If you don't see the version you want run brew update. I'm installing the latest version (4) and version 3.6:

brew install mongodb
brew install mongodb@3.6

Start the version you want with brew service

brew services start mongodb

Switch to a different version:

Make sure you are backwards compatible:

mongo --eval 'db.adminCommand({setFeatureCompatibilityVersion: "3.6"})'
Stop mongod:

brew services stop mongodb
Unlink the current version of MongoDB:

brew unlink mongodb
Link the new version of MongoDB:

brew link --force mongodb@3.6
Start MongoDB version 3.6:

brew services start mongodb@3.6
Check your version:

mongo --version


MacBook erased by thieves but still shows on FMM

To answer your actual questions, if they did not erase the hard drive and you did not encrypt it using FileVault, they could simply reboot in Recovery Mode and open a root terminal to change the password to your user account and have full access to the file system.

Regardless of whether or not you were using FileVault, I believe if they remove and re-insert the memory, it will unlock automatically.  Sorry for your loss. This is probably one of those times that it would benefit you to "know a guy," and by "guy," I mean a vigilante badass.

It depends on your police jurisdiction (or more specifically, how helpful the cops are and how well you know them), but I have heard of friendly cops tracking down a stolen iPhone using Find My iPhone and getting it back to the rightful owner within the same night, but in most cases, they have bigger issues to worry about, especially if you live in a big city.


Images have an older (correct) timestamp within the Photos app but exported files show the current date and time

At least with Photos v3.0, it does export the photos with the current date and time (which is undesirable) but the photos still have the original (correct) timestamp inside the EXIF data. That sounds like it may differ from your experience, so go ahead and check with Photos v3.0

If when you do export your photos again they still retain the correct EXIF timestamp but show the wrong Created timestamp on the file, then try using "Better Finder Attributes" app to first copy EXIF date to creation date, then to copy the creation date to the modification date.
(I have no affiliation with the "Better Finder Attributes" app, I'm simply a user of it).


Can I have iTunes 11 revert to filtering by word instead of phrase?

I was able to revert to the old functionality by clicking on the magnifying glass in the search box and unchecking "search entire library".  This had the side effect of speeding up the searching greatly as well as filtering in place instead of taking me to a different screen when I clicked on the search result.


Is it generally advisable to get anti-virus software for Mac OS X?

There is anti-virus software available for Mac OS X:

Intego VirusBarrier
ClamXAV (Free)
Norton AnitVirus Mac Edition
McAfee VirusScan for Mac
Sophos Anti-Virus for Mac (Consumer Version is free)

Is it worth it? That's largely up to you. Personally I'd say unless required there's no reason to so long as you practice "safe computing" (eg. not opening files from just anywhere, being aware of what is installed on your computer, etc.). However there are some companies that require any computer (regardless of OS) to have up to date anti-virus software installed and operational.

There are no viruses available for Mac OS X but there are several pieces of malware and trojan horses that a user must manually download and install. The anti-virus products (and actually a feature in Mac OS X Snow Leopard) will help fight against these threats but the primary defence is actually user education as the attack vector is primarily social engineering and not using any security hole.


Closing lid for clamshell doesn't make external monitor primary under 10.7.3 on MacBook Air 13"

According to Apple Support, the clamshell mode (lid closed) requires:

  Power adapter
  External keyboard, mouse, or trackpad
  External display

You meet all three criteria. The support article goes on to provide steps for both wired and bluetooth keyboard & mouse combos:

  If you are using a wired keyboard and mouse:

  Make sure the computer is plugged in to an outlet using the AC power adapter.
  Connect a USB keyboard and mouse to your computer.
  With the computer turned on connect the Apple portable (using the appropriate Apple adapter if necessary) to the appropriate port on the
  external display or projector and turn the display or projector on.
  After your computer's Desktop appears on the external display, close the computer's lid.
  When you close the lid:

  In OS X Lion, the external display will change to a blue screen, then will show your desktop.
  In Mac OS X v10.6.8 and earlier, wake the computer up by clicking the mouse button or by pressing a key on your external keyboard. You
  should now be able to use your Apple portable as you normally would,
  with a USB keyboard and mouse.

Perhaps you could try opening and closing the lid again.


1x: Standard Definition
2x: "Retina" Definition
3x: "High(er)" "Retina" Definition

They've added more pixels than needed, because the screen resolution for the size of displays they use is already "retina". Which means that you can't see any individual pixels from a certain distance off of the screen. For iPhones it's like 30cm I believe.

Now that they've added more pixels then needed, they are capable of maximizing brightness and color ratio's, as well as contrast.

Update: Apple seems to be using a default resolution of 568x320 for assets (pictures, mostly). I suppose they call this retina for assets, so 3x retina would enlargen the picture 3 times, which makes 1704x960. I'm not quite sure about why this resolution is specifically chosen, but it might have something to do with the new 1080p display on the iPhone 6 Plus


MacBook Pro upgrade to SSD migrating OSX and Bootcamp partitions

Update 3:

There were a two reasons I wanted the output from diskutil and fdisk. First I wanted to check if rEFIt was installed on its own partition. It is not. This leaves either the EFI partition or the OS X partition. The normal (automatic) installation would be OS X, which is backed up with Time Machine. To be safe, you could backup the EFI partition. This is not a problem since it is only 210 MB in size. I usually just make an exact image copy of the entire partition. The command is shown below. The image file efi.img will be stored in the root directory of the OS X partition.

sudo dd if=/dev/disk0s1 of=/efi.img bs=10000

I do not know if Time machine will backup the "Recovery HD" partition. It is only 650 MB in size. Again, you can just image it to the root of OS X using the command below. My outline did not include migrating this partition to the new disk. Therefore, you probably will never use this file.

sudo dd if=/dev/disk0s3 of=/RecoveryHD.img bs=10000

The second reason, for running the diskutil and fdisk commands, was to determine if you are using a GPT or hybrid GPT/MBR partitioning scheme. You are using hybrid GPT/MBR. I assume then that Windows is using the legacy BIOS method of booting and not using the EFI to boot.

According to your original post, you intend to upgrade to Yosemite after migrating to the new drive. It just so happens, I am trying to help someone (riznad) who has already done this. See here. Upgrading to Yosemite disabled rEFId and created a new "Recovery HD" partition. So you may need to reinstall rEFId. I would not recommend upgrading to rEFInd.

I am not sure why you felt the need to use the rEFId boot manager. I use the System Preferences in OS X to boot to windows. Apple provides Boot Camp to boot from Windows back to OS X. On startup, you can hold the alt key to choose an operating system. I rarely need to do that. In riznad's case, rEFId makes sense, that computer has a third partition running the Fedora operating system.

If you wish to have a partition writeable by both OS X and Windows, now would be a good time to create it. This can be done by creating the partitions in the following order using the Disk Utility. First create the MS-DOS(FAT) partition for windows 7. This partition will be changed to NTFS by Winclone. Format the next partition as MS-DOS(FAT) or ExFat. Finally, put the OS X partition last.

Update 2:

Just FYI, the output of chkdsk can be viewed in the Event Viewer. An example is shown below. You can "Open Image in a New Window" to enlarge.

An example output is shown below.

Checking file system on C:
The type of the file system is NTFS.
Volume label is Orca.

One of your disks needs to be checked for consistency. You
may cancel the disk check, but it is strongly recommended
that you continue.
Windows will now check the disk.

CHKDSK is verifying files (stage 1 of 3)...
  123136 file records processed.
File verification completed.
  171 large file records processed.
  0 bad file records processed.
  2 EA records processed.
  50 reparse records processed.
CHKDSK is verifying indexes (stage 2 of 3)...
  168030 index entries processed.
Index verification completed.
  0 unindexed files scanned.
  0 unindexed files recovered.
CHKDSK is verifying security descriptors (stage 3 of 3)...
  123136 file SDs/SIDs processed.
Cleaning up 12 unused index entries from index $SII of file 0x9.
Cleaning up 12 unused index entries from index $SDH of file 0x9.
Cleaning up 12 unused security descriptors.
Security descriptor verification completed.
  22448 data files processed.
CHKDSK is verifying Usn Journal...
  36677272 USN bytes processed.
Usn Journal verification completed.
Windows has checked the file system and found no problems.

 107460604 KB total disk space.
  30413860 KB in 94522 files.
     64108 KB in 22449 indexes.
         0 KB in bad sectors.
    228944 KB in use by the system.
     65536 KB occupied by the log file.
  76658804 KB available on disk.

      4096 bytes in each allocation unit.
  26865151 total allocation units on disk.
  19164701 allocation units available on disk.

Internal Info:
00 e1 01 00 e3 c8 01 00 a5 53 03 00 00 00 00 00  .........S......
bf 03 00 00 32 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00  ....2...........
11 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 03 00 00 00 00 00 00 00  ................

Windows has finished checking your disk.
Please wait while your computer restarts.

What you are looking for is the messages Windows has checked the file system and found no problems. and 0 KB in bad sectors.

Update 1:

It is my understanding rEFIt installs in the OS X partition. According to the rEFIt documentation, it is also possible for rEFIt to be installed on a separate partition or on the hidden EFI partition. No mention of being installed on the Windows partition.

Assuming rEFIt was installed using the automatic installation, then it should be saved by Winclone followed by Time Machine. But to be honest, I have never used rEFIt.

To be safe, it would be useful for you to post the output from the following commands. They can be entered from a Terminal application window. The first one will ask for your login password. This is normal.

sudo  fdisk  /dev/disk0
diskutil  list
diskutil  cs  list

Other than Winclone creating a backup of Windows on you OS X partition, the procedure does not change the files on your original disk. If you wish, you can also backup Windows to a external disk that is HFS formatted (Mac OS Extended Journaled). This way Windows does not have to pass through Time Machine.

I don't know where you are living. Where I live, I would go to Microcenter and buy an enclosure for the new disk. I would then plug the enclosed drive into a USB port on the Mac. Transfer everything over. I would also boot OS X on the the enclosed drive and test things out. From my understanding, you can not boot windows. You might be able to from Parallels. I have never used Parallels. I would then remove the drive and return the enclosure for a full refund. (Actually, have done this a few times with 3.5" drives.) The drive could then be installed in the MacBook Pro.

If you proceed, it would be a good idea to run CHKDSK on the windows partition before backing up with Winclone. CHKDSK (Check Disk) has be around since the original IBM PC-DOS 1.0. The best way to do this is to open a Command Prompt window as an Administrator under Windows 7 and enter the command:

fsutil  dirty  set  c:

After entering the command, reboot (restart) Windows. It usually is not necessary to see the results, but if you wish, I will post how to do so using the event viewer. (You can also watch the screen during boot up)

I can outline the basic steps using the Winclone product.

Purchase, download and install Winclone to your OS X partition.
Use Winclone to backup Windows to your OS X partition.
Make sure OS X is backed up to Time Machine.
Install the new disk
Do a internet recovery boot. This involves hold the cmd-alt-R keys
down at startup and booting over the internet.
Partition the new disk using the Disk Utility. Format the OS X
partition as "Mac OS Extended (Journaled)" and the  Windows
partition as "MS-DOS (FAT)".
Restore OS X using time Machine.
Reboot the computer to the new OS X partition.
Run Winclone to restore Windows 7 back to the new 80 GB partition.
Drag the Winclone Windows 7 backup to the trash to recover the
 space on the OS X partition (Optional).
You are done.

If you wish to proceed, let me know. Also, if klanomath happens to post, I would recommend any of his solutions. He has more experience with Time Machine than I have.


External monitor randomly lowers resolution adds black borders

I forgot about this question, but I eventually did find an answer.

It was a bad cable. The VGA cable was faulty (the Mini DisplayPort adapter was fine actually) - once that was replaced, everything worked fine.


How can you create a valid/reliable disk image of APFS drives?

I FOUND THE SOLUTION to using Apple Disk Utility to create RELIABLE disk images of APFS drives. The ONLY path to make a viable re-usable disk image formatted as APFS in 3 simple steps is (though finding the solution was not simple to figure out nor straight-forward):

First create a blank image file formatted as APFS and Read/Write (requires pre-determining size of image file).
IMPORTANT NOTE: The image (destination) cannot be stored on the same drive or partition (source) from which you are going to create the image.

use Restore from  to clone to newly created image file
(Highlight destination  then click [Restore] button and select Restore From .

convert image file to Compressed format (Image > Convert).

ONLY THEN do you have a reliable APFS image, especially w/bootable macOS. I have done this repeatedly and it works fine. The important distinction with this solution is that it not only creates a valid disk image, the image can then be used to re-create a boot volume, which is after all, the point of this.
ANY other options/paths, are greyed out, yield "Resource busy" or "image is not APFS format" errors or produces image that is not reliable. Even using Apple Internet Recovery tools/boot was the same.
NOTE: you do NOT need to do ANY of this using Recovery tools. You can do this from a live boot of macOS drive. If you do not have a destination to store the image file other than the same internal drive, you can create a partition large enough to store the image file, using Disk Utility. And yes, you can partition macOS boot drive live.
CAVEAT: Tested only using Mojave 10.14.4 on 2019 27" i9 iMac w 40GB RAM and 512GB SSD (no T2 chip), so YMMV.
Apple needs to fix Disk Utility to work straightforward like it used to but with better support for APFS.
HTH.
BTW, I posted original answer in the open forum here: https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/mojave-and-hfs-it-can-be-done.2125194/page-2#post-27595211

In my search for an answer to the above question, I could not find the correct answer... several threads on this site and others give the WRONG answer, essentially, "it is not supported" or "it cannot be done"... This is the WRONG answer.
In the answer section I post the CORRECT answer, which I discovered through a lot of experimentation. This corrects the answers provided at each of the links below, which are all wrong:
Create a disk image for recovery
"Create disk image" disabled
How to Make Bootable APFS Volume From Disk Image
(for this thread you need the equivalent terminal commands to do what is described above).
The info provide by @grg (in the first thread) is not correct. Even in the image provided it shows that you cannot create an "Image from SSD" because it is greyed out. Even booting into Recovery does not accomplish the desired results in that answer...


Effective uid is not 0, is sudo installed setuid root?

Boot to Recovery Mode(cmdR)/Internet Recovery Mode (altcmdR).
Get the name of your main system volume: df
Usually it's the "Mounted on"- name of the device disk0s2 (e.g Macintosh HD) - simply check the sizes.
Enter chmod 4511 /Volumes/Name_Of_Sys_Vol/usr/bin/sudo

Replace Name_Of_Sys_Vol by the volume name found in the previous command. If the name contains spaces, escape them with \. Example:

chmod 4511 /Volumes/Macintosh\ HD/usr/bin/sudo

Check with ls -l /Volumes/Name_Of_Sys_Vol/usr/bin/sudo which should yield:

-r-s--x--x  1 root  wheel  168448  7  9  2016 /Volumes/Name_Of_Sys_Vol/usr/bin/sudo

In Sierra with SIP enabled you wouldn't have been able to modify the permissions of sudo to 777. Therefore I assume Sierra isn't installed or SIP is disabled.

If Sierra is installed and SIP is enabled you have to disable it before applying changes to sudo..


Can iOS use Wi-Fi to get location even if Wi-Fi is off?

No.

If Wi-Fi is off, the radio is disabled, and it is no longer augmenting Location Services.

Often, you'll receive a message like the following to alert you to this:


Does the iPad Air automatically switch to 4G if Wi-Fi is down?

It works the other way around but the result is the same.

By default it uses the cellular network unless there is a Wifi network. If there is a Wifi  network I will use it to send and receive data.


I need a keyboard shortcut for Adding Bookmarks for multiple tabs in Safari

OK, so the AppleScript required to click that menu item is quite simple:

click menu item 8 of menu 1 of menu bar item "Bookmarks" of menu bar 1

  To come up with this particular incantation I used UI Browser.app (there's a free Trial). In UI Browser.app choose your Target app, use the column browse to find the menu item you are interested in, then use the AppleScript dropdown to copy the required snippet to your clipboard (or press Alt+Cmd+T).

  I made a small edit to the snippet to reference only the Bookmarks menu item by name.

The AppleScript snippet needs to be dressed up a little more to be useful:

activate application "Safari"
tell application "System Events"
    tell process "Safari"
        click menu item 8 of menu 1 of menu bar item "Bookmarks" of menu bar 1
    end tell
end tell

The works for both Safari and Safari Technology Preview, which is nice.

Running this in, say, macOS Script Editor.app will remotely click the referenced menu item and display the expected conformation dialog.

  Note: you could add additional AppleScript to manipulate and/or dismiss the confirmation dialog; I'll leave such changes as an exercise for the reader.

Finally, we need to add a shortcut key to access the menu. There are a number of different ways to do this and choice will depend on personal preference and/or software at hand:

Alfred: workflow with NSAppleScript Action + Hotkey Trigger
Keyboard Maestro: AppleScript Action + hot key trigger
Automator: Service + Shortcut key via macOS System Preferences (see this answer)
FastScripts Lite (free for up to 10 shortcut keys): shortcut

  Note: it is no longer possible to assign a shortcut key to an item in the macOS Script menu, so I've not included that method of calling the script.

The last of the options above, FastScripts Lite, is the one that comes for free, and also the easiest method, so I'll use it in this answer.

Enter the above "activate...end tell" snippet into macOS Script Editor.app and save the resulting script to ~/Library/Scripts/Applications/Safari/Save Bookmarks for Current Window Tabs.scpt.

In FastScripts Lite.app you'll now have a menu item that is effectively an alias for Safari's "Add Bookmarks for These X Tabs..." menu item, and that can be assigned a shortcut key using FastScripts Lite.app > Preferences > Script Shortcuts.


Installing Ubuntu on Mac with macOS and Windows already installed

An update version of this has been posted here.

  Note: These instruction have been updated for use with Ubuntu 18.

This answer installs Ubuntu on your computer without the use of third parity tools for either the installation of booting of Ubuntu. The Ubuntu file I downloaded was named ubuntu-16.10-desktop-amd64.iso. I assume you have created a bootable Ubuntu USB flash drive installer and have verified the contents. I also assume you have verified hardware compatibility by successfully booting the live version of Ubuntu. These instructions have been divided into the three main sections listed below.

Create Space on the Drive for Ubuntu : This is accomplished by using the MacOS Terminal application to enter commands.
Install Ubuntu : This uses the Ubuntu flash drive installer.
Add Ubuntu to Startup Manager - Here you basically use the MacOS to move the necessary files to the proper locations. This will allow
Ubuntu to be selected from the Startup Manager. You will not need
rEFInd to boot Ubuntu.

  Note: If another user has a different partition scheme than shown in this example, the post a comment to me and I will try to update my answer.

Create Space on the Drive for Ubuntu

For the purpose of illustrating the steps needed, I created a drive slightly larger than your actual drive.

  Note: macOS 10.11 and above have System Integrity Protection (SIP). You must disable this before following the commands below.

The output from diskutil list disk0 is given below.

/dev/disk0 (internal, physical):
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      GUID_partition_scheme                        *256.0 GB   disk0
   1:                        EFI EFI                     209.7 MB   disk0s1
   2:                  Apple_HFS Macintosh HD            180.7 GB   disk0s2
   3:         Microsoft Reserved                         16.8 MB    disk0s3
   4:       Microsoft Basic Data BOOTCAMP                70.1 GB    disk0s4

The output from sudo gpt -r show /dev/disk0 is given below.

      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  352968704      2  GPT part - 48465300-0000-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC
  353378344       4056
  353382400      32768      3  GPT part - E3C9E316-0B5C-4DB8-817D-F92DF00215AE
  353415168  136818688      4  GPT part - EBD0A0A2-B9E5-4433-87C0-68B6B72699C7
  490233856    9766151
  500000007         32         Sec GPT table
  500000039          1         Sec GPT header

The output from sudo fdisk /dev/disk0 is given below.

  Note: After repartitioning the drive, you should verify that the values shown below have not changed. Certain changes will cause Windows to view the drive as hybrid partitioned. If this occurs, Windows may fail to boot or malfunction.

Disk: /dev/disk0    geometry: 31123/255/63 [500000040 sectors]
Signature: 0xAA55
         Starting       Ending
 #: id  cyl  hd sec -  cyl  hd sec [     start -       size]
------------------------------------------------------------------------
 1: EE 1023 254  63 - 1023 254  63 [         1 -  500000039] <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

I decided to allow total of about 40 GB for Ubuntu. If you need a different size, then make the appropriate adjustments. I will be creating 3 new partitions for Ubuntu. A description for each is given below.

A Swap partition. The size of this partition should be between 1 to 2
times the size of the memory installed in your Mac computer. I will be
using a size of 800 MB. Obviously, the size you will be using will be
much larger.
A Ext4 Journaling file system partition to hold Ubuntu. This
partition will consume most the approximately 40 GB of space I
allocated for Ubuntu.
An EFI System partition. This is required for Ubuntu to appear on the
Mac Startup Manager. This manager appears when you turn on or restart
your Mac and hold down the option key. The Startup Manager
can be used to change the default startup disk (i.e. operating
system) or can be used to temporarily boot from a startup disk. I
have chosen size of 500 MB for this partition.

I have chosen to allow the Ubuntu installer to actually create the 3 new partitions. So at this point, I only need to shrink the MacOS partition by approximately 40 GB and create 3 new placeholder partitions. The placeholders will be replaced later by the Ubuntu installer with the actual partitions described above.

The command to change to partitioning is given below. Since the MacOS partition is about 180 GB, I used a desired value of 140 GB (140G). Also, I used a value of 800 MB (800M) for the size of the new Swap partition. Since you will desire a larger size, then you will need to make the appropriate substitution. Note: The two values of 200 MB (200M) were chosen arbitrarily, these values will change later.

diskutil resizevolume disk0s2 140G 3 jhfs+ part1 800M jhfs+ part2 200M jhfs+ part3 200M

The output from this command is shown below.

Started partitioning on disk0s2 Macintosh HD
Verifying the disk
Verifying file system
Checking Journaled HFS Plus volume
Checking extents overflow file
Checking catalog file
Checking multi-linked files
Checking catalog hierarchy
Checking extended attributes file
Checking volume bitmap
Checking volume information
The volume Macintosh HD appears to be OK
File system check exit code is 0
Resizing
Waiting for the disks to reappear
Formatting disk0s3 as Mac OS Extended (Journaled) with name part1
Initialized /dev/rdisk0s3 as a 763 MB case-insensitive HFS Plus volume with a 8192k journal
Mounting disk
Formatting disk0s4 as Mac OS Extended (Journaled) with name part2
Initialized /dev/rdisk0s4 as a 191 MB case-insensitive HFS Plus volume with a 8192k journal
Mounting disk
Formatting disk0s5 as Mac OS Extended (Journaled) with name part3
Initialized /dev/rdisk0s5 as a 37 GB case-insensitive HFS Plus volume with a 8192k journal
Mounting disk
Finished partitioning on disk0s2 Macintosh HD
/dev/disk0 (internal, physical):
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      GUID_partition_scheme                        *256.0 GB   disk0
   1:                        EFI EFI                     209.7 MB   disk0s1
   2:                  Apple_HFS Macintosh HD            140.0 GB   disk0s2
   3:                  Apple_HFS part1                   800.0 MB   disk0s3
   4:                  Apple_HFS part2                   200.0 MB   disk0s4
   5:                  Apple_HFS part3                   39.5 GB    disk0s5
   6:         Microsoft Reserved                         16.8 MB    disk0s6
   7:       Microsoft Basic Data BOOTCAMP                70.1 GB    disk0s7

  Note: The last 200M was ignored by the diskutil command. Instead, most of the remaining free space was allocated to the disk0s5 slice.

The output from sudo gpt -r show /dev/disk0 is given below.

      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  273437496      2  GPT part - 48465300-0000-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC
  273847136     262144
  274109280    1562496      3  GPT part - 48465300-0000-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC
  275671776     390616      4  GPT part - 48465300-0000-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC
  276062392   77057864      5  GPT part - 48465300-0000-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC
  353120256     262144
  353382400      32768      6  GPT part - E3C9E316-0B5C-4DB8-817D-F92DF00215AE
  353415168  136818688      7  GPT part - EBD0A0A2-B9E5-4433-87C0-68B6B72699C7
  490233856    9766151
  500000007         32         Sec GPT table
  500000039          1         Sec GPT header

The output from the command sudo fdisk /dev/disk0 is unchanged from what was given above.

Install Ubuntu

Insert the Ubuntu flash drive and restart the Mac. Hold down the
option key to invoke the Startup Manager. Select to EFI
boot from the USB flash drive. When prompted, choose the option
shown below.

  Note: For a better view, either click on the image or open the image in a new window.

Select language.

I choose to select both options below.

Choose the option shown below.

Select the partition shown below. This partition should be the same
size as previously specified for the Swap partition when the
diskutil resize volume command was entered.

Click on "Change..." and select "swap area" in the popup window as
shown below. Do not change the partition size. Next, click on
"OK".

Select the partition shown below. Next, click on the "-" to delete
this partition.

Select the free space as shown below.

Click on the "+" to open a "Create partition" popup window. Select
"EFI System Partition". Also, change the size to 500 MB and click on
the "End of this space" button. Next, click on "OK".

Select the partition shown below. Next, click on the "-" to delete
 this partition.

Select the free space as shown below.

Click on the "+" to open a "Create partition" popup window. Select
 "Ext4 journaling file system". Also, select "/" as the "Mount
 point". Do not change the partition size. Next, click on "OK".

Click on the "Install Now" button shown below.

Click on the "Continue" button shown below.

Select your desired location.

Select your keyboard.

Continue and install Ubuntu Linux. When finished, restart and hold
 down the option key to invoke the Startup Manager.
 Select to boot from the MacOS volume.

Add Ubuntu to Startup Manager

After installing Ubuntu, the command diskutil list disk0 produced the following output.

/dev/disk0 (internal, physical):
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      GUID_partition_scheme                        *256.0 GB   disk0
   1:                        EFI EFI                     209.7 MB   disk0s1
   2:                  Apple_HFS Macintosh HD            140.0 GB   disk0s2
   3:                 Linux Swap                         800.0 MB   disk0s3
   4:           Linux Filesystem                          39.3 GB    disk0s4
   5:                        EFI NO NAME                 500.2 MB   disk0s5
   6:         Microsoft Reserved                         16.8 MB    disk0s6
   7:       Microsoft Basic Data BOOTCAMP                70.1 GB    disk0s7

The command sudo gpt -r show /dev/disk0 produced the following output.

      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  273437496      2  GPT part - 48465300-0000-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC
  273847136     262144
  274109280    1562496      3  GPT part - 0657FD6D-A4AB-43C4-84E5-0933C84B4F4F
  275671776       1312
  275673088   76732416      4  GPT part - 0FC63DAF-8483-4772-8E79-3D69D8477DE4
  352405504     976896      5  GPT part - C12A7328-F81F-11D2-BA4B-00A0C93EC93B
  353382400      32768      6  GPT part - E3C9E316-0B5C-4DB8-817D-F92DF00215AE
  353415168  136818688      7  GPT part - EBD0A0A2-B9E5-4433-87C0-68B6B72699C7
  490233856    9766151
  500000007         32         Sec GPT table
  500000039          1         Sec GPT header

  Note: The 3 placeholder partitions have be replaced by the partitions specified while installing Ubuntu.

To make Ubuntu appear in the Startup Manager, execute the following steps.

Mount the EFI System partitions by entering the commands given
below.

sudo diskutil mount disk0s1
sudo diskutil mount disk0s5

Use the Finder application to copy the EFI folder from volume
EFI to the volume NO NAME.
If you are not installing Ubuntu 18 or newer, then you can skip steps 4, 5 and 6.
Move all the folders and files in the EFI/Boot folder on the EFI volume to the Trash.
Copy the file bootmgfw.efi on the EFI volume from the folder /EFI/Microsoft/Boot to the folder /EFI/Boot.
Rename the file bootmgfw.efi in the /EFI/Boot folder on the EFI volume to the name bootx64.efi.
Remove the folders and files that were added to the EFI volume
during the Ubuntu installation. To accomplish this, move the folder
EFI/Ubuntu on the EFI volume to the Trash.
Remove the Microsoft related files from the NO NAME volume. To
accomplish this, move the folder EFI/Microsoft on the NO NAME volume to the Trash.
If you are installing Ubuntu 18 or newer, then you can skip steps 10, 11 and 12.
Move the file EFI/Boot/bootx64.efi on the NO NAME volume to the Trash.
Copy the file grubx64.efi on the NO NAME volume from the folder /EFI/ubuntu to the folder /EFI/Boot.
Rename the file grubx64.efi in the /EFI/Boot folder on the NO NAME volume to the name bootx64.efi.
Empty the Trash.
(Optional) Download a collection of icons from the sourceforge web
site Mac icns. Use the Finder application to open the
downloaded file mac-ices.dmg, then enter the command below to copy
the Ubuntu icon file os_ubuntu.icns to the NO NAME volume.

cp /Volumes/mac-icns/os_ubuntu.icns "/Volumes/NO NAME/.VolumeIcon.icns"

This will add the following Ubuntu icon to the Startup Menu.

  Note: When finished, you can use the Finder application to eject the mac-icns volume.

Use the Finder application or enter the commands below to unmount
the EFI System partitions labeled EFI and NO NAME.

diskutil unmount disk0s1
diskutil unmount disk0s5


I have a 2020 iMac and I dont turn it off at night. Will this hurt the SSD

Yes, you will be wasting energy and cooling and no the hardware won’t suffer (especially if you let the backlight go off).
Power cycles cause our Macs to fail three to five years before those we leave on all the time. The longest running Macs we have are the ones that run always.
We happily replace batteries and drives when they fail, but the stats are clear for us that if you can leave the gear running, you generally have the longest life. We don’t have as many iMacs as mini and pro and even laptops in rooms due to space, but I see no reason why their engineering would be any different than the rest.
This pattern followed from the Motorola to PPC to Intel transitions and I can’t wait to see how Apple Silicon changes the hardware and what doesn’t change.


Should I make a backup of OSX before bootcamping Windows 10

I would strongly recommend making a backup before setting up Boot Camp. Setting up Boot Camp involves repartitioning the disk into an OS X partition and a partition for Windows, but OS X doesn't know how to format the Windows partition into NTFS. So, it formats the Windows-to-be partition in the FAT32 format, and expects you to use the Windows installer for reformat it into NTFS. If you don't do this quite right, the Windows installer may reformat the OS X partition as well, causing complete data loss.

Thus, it's much safer if you have a full backup. Just in case.


How to sync or backup iPhone contents to new Mac

I logged in, authorized and used "Transfer Purchases from iPhone" as described in @appleluntanyi's answer and the linked article.
When syncing apps, I got the dialog

Are you sure you want to sync apps? All existing apps and their data
on the iPhone "iPhone" will be replaced with apps from this iTunes
library.
Cancel / Sync Apps

When I synced anyway, it did in fact keep the app data, but it messed up the icon order and grouping.
So I would recommend syncing the iPhone to your old computer just in case, taking screenshots of your home screens if you want to remember how they were arranged, doing the login/auth/transfer as described in the article, and then syncing despite that incorrect dialog.
You can e.g. transfer the screenshots to the computer through Preview.app: File > Import from iPhone….


How to get a password hash through terminal in Recovery Mode?

You didn't specify a special macOS version but at least in Sierra it can be done by:

open Terminal.app in the menubar > Utilities
get the name of the main system volume with diskutil list (e.g. Macintosh HD)
enter in Terminal:

defaults read /Volumes/<volume_name>/var/db/dslocal/nodes/Default/users/<user_name>.plist ShadowHashData|tr -dc 0-9a-f|/Volumes/<volume_name>/usr/bin/xxd -r -p|/Volumes/<volume_name>/usr/bin/plutil -convert xml1 - -o -

Example (with the main system volume name Macintosh HD and the user name user272783):

defaults read /Volumes/Macintosh\ HD/var/db/dslocal/nodes/Default/users/user272783.plist ShadowHashData|tr -dc 0-9a-f|/Volumes/Macintosh\ HD/usr/bin/xxd -r -p|/Volumes/Macintosh\ HD/usr/bin/plutil -convert xml1 - -o -

If you specify a file name and choose a r/w volume as destination drive, you can write the file to a volume (... -o /Volumes/FlashDrive/user272783.plist)

Please check: What type of hash are a Mac's password stored in?


Move Archived Outlook Data Record to external storage

The OLM file is a standalone file, so all that you need to do is move that file to your external disk.  I have an external hard drive that I use for holding files that I want to keep but don't necessarily need daily access to.  In the Finder, I drag the file from my laptop hard drive to a folder that I've named "Outlook archives" on my external hard drive.


On Mac OS X 10.7, Java Control Panel crashes unexpectedly

For your older version of OS X, you probably should have downloaded a legacy version of Java. Try this link: Download Java for OS X 2017-001


Can you Recover Data from a Filevault encrypted harddrive externally?

What Mac are you using (Macbook Air / Pro)? Does it have a replaceable disk?

If the disk is not replaceable, I see the following options:

Access your Mac in target mode and unlock the disk from another computer. For example this article explains the procedure.
Using recovery mode: Press cmd + R : Recovery Mode
Same as above, but you manually select the recovery partition by pressing alt at boot

Sometimes the filevault2 volume cannot be opened easily. See here for a workaround.

If the disk is replaceable I would remove it, unlock the disk, and save the data e.g. with an USB-IDE adapter (like this one).


All purchases made from Apple can be restored if deleted by selecting "Purchases" then selecting the book and clicking on "Download".


Is there a way to disable a Messages account via command line?

It turns out stopping was more logical than expected:

tell application "Messages"
     repeat with s in services
            set n to name of s
            log out s
     end repeat
end tell

It doesn't seem to work the other way around. I've tried and I've tried, and I can't get no satisfaction.


Is it possible to upload MP3s to Audible's Iphone app?

AFAIK it doesn't support MP3s. It only supports .m4b or .aa


Keyboard Shortcut: How to move cursor to the next capital letter of word written in camelCase in macOS & Xcode

Use the keyboard shortcut: ⌃ + → (Control + →).


Fix iTunes Billing issue with iTunes code

I purchased 10€ via Paypal and it worked well, after reedeming I had 9.11€ left :)


Can you pull up the context menu in a Stack (e.g., Downloads)?

If the application you want to open the program in is in your Dock, you can drag the file icon from the Stack and drop it on the application icon.

Alternately, command clicking on the file in the Stack will open a Finder window with that file already selected. You would still need to control-click it and open it, but it cuts out a few steps.

Sadly, there does not appear to be a way to make the context menu appear in a Stack.


Shortcuts & gestures you can't live without


Can't fix an user account in Mavericks (frozen)

First step I would recommend is to restore the users account permissions also called ACL's. The ACL's get messed up sometimes leading to kind of problems you are having.

To do that use the following steps:

Hold Command-R during restart.
Select Terminal and run resetpassword.
Select the account in question.
Do not reset the password.

Instead click on the Reset Home Folder Permissions and ACLs at the bottom right.


Bootcamp Windows 10 - No image are available

When I used an old product Win 7 Pro product key thinking I could upgrade (iso was Win 10 single language) it stated no images available when I entered my old key.

When I skipped entering a product key, it brought up the iso image as expected.

On the second computer, I downloaded the first english image from Microsoft and it accepted the pro key.  Very strange that the single language image meant home only (not pro).


How To Delete Finder Search History? - "Downloaded From"

I believe this list is populated based on metadata stored inside files where you're searching. I would think mds/Spotlight would be indexing that data and allowing you to search on it, so I'm confused about your assertion that Spotlight is off .. but regardless.

If you're comfortable with the command line, you can inspect any given file's metadata with the xattr command. The file attribute you're looking for is com.apple.metadata:kMDItemWhereFroms. For example:

************@Themis  ~/Downloads  xattr -p -l com.apple.metadata:kMDItemWhereFroms conference_poster_5.zip
com.apple.metadata:kMDItemWhereFroms:
00000000  62 70 6C 69 73 74 30 30 A2 01 02 5F 10 54 68 74  |bplist00..._.Tht|
00000010  74 70 3A 2F 2F 77 77 77 2E 6C 61 74 65 78 74 65  |tp://www.latexte|
00000020  6D 70 6C 61 74 65 73 2E 63 6F 6D 2F 74 65 6D 70  |mplates.com/temp|
00000030  6C 61 74 65 73 2F 63 6F 6E 66 65 72 65 6E 63 65  |lates/conference|
00000040  5F 70 6F 73 74 65 72 73 2F 35 2F 63 6F 6E 66 65  |_posters/5/confe|
00000050  72 65 6E 63 65 5F 70 6F 73 74 65 72 5F 35 2E 7A  |rence_poster_5.z|
00000060  69 70 5F 10 40 68 74 74 70 3A 2F 2F 77 77 77 2E  |ip_.@http://www.|
00000070  6C 61 74 65 78 74 65 6D 70 6C 61 74 65 73 2E 63  |latextemplates.c|
00000080  6F 6D 2F 74 65 6D 70 6C 61 74 65 2F 61 30 70 6F  |om/template/a0po|
00000090  73 74 65 72 2D 6C 61 6E 64 73 63 61 70 65 2D 70  |ster-landscape-p|
000000A0  6F 73 74 65 72 08 0B 62 00 00 00 00 00 00 01 01  |oster..b........|
000000B0  00 00 00 00 00 00 00 03 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00  |................|
000000C0  00 00 00 00 00 00 00 A5                          |........|
000000c8
************@Themis  ~/Downloads 

So you can see the URL used to obtain this file is embedded in the file itself.
To remove that metadata:

************@Themis  ~/Downloads  xattr -d com.apple.metadata:kMDItemWhereFroms conference_poster_5.zip
************@Themis  ~/Downloads  xattr -p -l com.apple.metadata:kMDItemWhereFroms conference_poster_5.zip
xattr: conference_poster_5.zip: No such xattr: com.apple.metadata:kMDItemWhereFroms
✘ ************@Themis  ~/Downloads 

That bit of metadata has been removed. Now you would repeat your search and see if you get the same results once you've removed the metadata. I'm guessing not, but if you do let us know.

If you're not comfortable with the command-line, you can try a GUI-based extended attributes editor, such as this one.


Is there any particular cleaning solution for the MacBook Pro?

I use a dry microfiber cloth on my screen. I found them in a two-pack of washcloth-sized at Dollar General.

If you want a cleaning solution, the Apple Store folks, at least in Madison WI, fully endorse iKlean and use it on their display models every night. I can't vouch because I haven't used it, but I figure Apple knows Apple well.


System Preferences → General → Show scroll bars: Always


APFS Fusion Drive with external USB on 2018 Mac Mini

This is a bad idea for lots of reasons. You're lucky that the Mac can boot from a Fusion drive that's half T2 and half external USB.

I suspect the T2 disk controller is at the root of the problem. Possibly because of its built-in encryption. Perhaps the Fusion magic moves encrypted blocks off the SSD without decrypting them?

Even if it did work, using a USB thumb drive is going to massively compromise the speed of the  fast internal portion.

I don't think that 'expanding' the internal storage into a bigger logical volume, either with Fusion or RAID is going to be workable.


Easiest way to deploy a slideshow/video onto multiple iPads and have it play by clicking on 1 icon

For reference, the iOS SDK (in case you decide to create a small application that plays the quicktime video), can only read stuff that is:

Inside the Application’s bundle
the “temp” application’s user’s document directory (not shared between apps)
Use the APIs to read the user video/audio library.

Number 1 and 2 would require that you create an iOS app that includes the video as a resource (which will -depending upon the video’s size-, make it a huge app)

Also creating an APP and deploying it, requires an Enterprise Licensing from Apple (so you can deploy to your company iP/ads/ods/hones). So I don’t think thats a good (and cheap) idea.

Using option number three you could go with VLC or something but they would have to pick the video from a library.

what would I do?

I’d set up a wi-fi network, with a local webserver that hosts the page. Then create a webclip on the iPads. All hardcoded. The WebClip could point to a real webpage, but a DNS “forging” inside your closed network could point it locally while they are there. This way, when they leave, if they take the iPads with them, the link will continue to work when they regain internet, as the DNS will be correct and point to the “external” website.

If the network is “closed” you can set it up in advance. A good 11n router should handle that.

No syncing, no weird app, no need to tamper each individual’s ipods…

Any catches?