If this behavior persists past a reboot, you might need to go down some general problem isolation steps:

Isolating issues in Mac OS X

There used to be an article (it's gone or I can't find it at the moment) that walked you through setting aside the application preferences or testing this behavior in a new user. In your case - it looks like you figured it out, but I wanted to at least mention the official guide in case others have the same symptoms but a different cause.


Notes, Drive and Keychain not syncing to iCloud from Mojave

The Notes application for macOS has been very unreliable throughout MANY macOS's so including Mojave! Even in the time it was still written as Mac OS X. So even if you cure your Mac, which you could do and I explained in https://discussions.apple.com/thread/251096810 it will most likely be temporary and at some point in time you will notice that the continuous spinning wheel in Notes will get back to nag you. And the non-syncing will be back again.

A better way is to start using Notes through the web interface, on www.icloud.com directly, and bookmark Notes for direct access.
Its interface is smooth and complete and will allow flawless syncing with all your other devices like you iPhone and iPad where you leave Notes on.

Notes on iOS and nowadays also iPadOS however is pretty stable. So if you you these in combination with the Notes web application through the icloud.com website your are fine.


Turn off WiFi if there is no user initiated network access

This is neither practical nor feasible.
Not practical.
So, in your scenario, the WiFi connection drops as soon as you load your webpage and theoretically, the computer is now waiting for you to click on something to reconnect.  Here are just two (off the top of my head) problems with that scenario:
Auto Refresh
A small piece of code embedded within the meta tags of the HTML code will auto refresh that page:
<meta http-equiv="refresh" content="5" >

This is equivalent to hitting refresh.  How is the OS supposed to distinguish between a user generated refresh and one generated in meta?  That's a lot of keyboard trapping.
HTTP Sessions.  Depending on the website you visit, they may be employing the use of cookies that track user sessions - especially so if you log in.  Once you disconnect from the network, your session will expire requiring a new login.  There is no "trapping" on the client side for this because it's a server generated session/cookie.

Not feasible.
For all intents and purposes your network settings and your browser session are "sandboxed" from each other.  Could you imagine the chaos you could cause by having an app or (worse) a browser's extension with the ability to affect the state of hardware based on what you click?  This would be an attacker's dream scenario.
Additionally, WiFi (and Bluetooth) antennas are in the LCD enclosure, not the bottom of the laptop.  So, unless you are wearing shorts made of lead or lined with a highly reflective material (reflecting out, of course), you are fully exposed to WiFi signals since they are omni directional.


What are some tips for replacing my MacBook Pro hard disk with SSD?

Allow me to recommend you the OWC ones. You have an “extreme RE” (which I believe you won’t need) and the Pro, which is arguably one of the fastest and most secure drives so far.

I’m sure you can google for comparisons with other drives but I’ve installed a various numbers of SSDs (albeit not only in Macbooks) and the OWC ones are what I’ve chosen for me.

Jeff Atwood himself made a comparison (but he didnt include the OWC at the time), which you can find in this blog post.

Don’t forget to read through the comments, as there’s value in there too.

I’d say that excluding the OWC (which I prefer), the Crucial C300 should be the next in line.


Why is my iPhone 5S overheating so much?

Although there are several other answers, I'll contribute my own $0.02 for future readers as well.

The device is overheating due to processes consuming the device's physical memory and is causing it to overheat. Activities like calling and data usage often requires a lot of battery power, which then leads to the device over-heating.

Some temporary solutions would be to:

If you are standing in the sun, remove the device from the heat.
Closing background applications when not using them to avoid battery consumption.

This also includes disabling WiFi and/or service when not in use.
Games are very bad at power consumption, "Clash of Clans"  being a major example using up to 10.3mAh/min sometimes even when not in use.
Avoid the use of 3rd party cables (as mentioned by another user who answered).

Put your phone into sleep mode every once in a while the system can cool down and regain some of the used RAM.
Delete some apps, the less apps using your battery and memory the better.

As for long term solution, get the new phone. Even though the device heating to rather hot temperatures can be normal, after a short period of data usage it shouldn't. Often times it is some faulty hardware that is causing the problems.

If you aren't in the situation to get a new phone, then a factory reset is the way to go. This will delete any apps or cached data that would be causing the battery over-consumption and would restore the device to its intended factory abilities.

Hope this helped!


Does "pmset schedule wake" work when the lid is closed at the designated time?

My understanding is no, because the act of having the lid closed is designed to put the Air to sleep (this is done with magnets). The only exception is closed clamshell mode where you need:

power connected
display connected
external keyboard + mouse or trackpad (bluetooth or USB)

You can watch the power events with pmset -g pslog so if you were to set a wake and then have terminal.app or other command line to watch the log, you could look at things when you wake up the Mac via lid open or external display. Power Nap would be the only way you might get some events run with the lid closed and not in clamshell mode.

Also, while I haven't tried doing what you're trying to, I have noticed that allowing 5 minutes for a scheduled wake event is usually a better way to go.

So you could try running the script a little later (e.g. 7:05), or perhaps setting the Air to wake at 6:56. However, as I stated above, the lid being closed means the magnet will trigger a sleep event.


How can I prevent an SSH session from hanging in OS X Terminal?

For keeping the connection alive, you can check in /etc/ssh/ssh_config the line where it says ServerAliveInterval, that tells you how often (in seconds) your computer is gonna send a null packet to keep the connection alive. If you have a 0 in there that indicates that your computer is not trying to keep the connection alive (it is disabled), otherwise it tells you how often (in seconds) it is sending the aforementioned packet. Try putting in 120 or 240, if it is still killing your connection, you can go lower, maybe to 5, if with that number it doesn't happen, maybe it is your router who is dumping the connection to free memory.

For killing it when it gets hang up, you can use the ssh escape character:

~.

That is, press the tilde and then the period, if it doesn't work, press Enter before you press that, that will kill the connection immediately.


How to move from iTunes book library to iBooks app

I finally managed it by re-creating my iTunes library as mentioned here: http://support.apple.com/kb/ht1451.

After moving the .itl file I also moved the Books folder under iTunes Music.

It takes quite some time to import, depending on the size of the library, and it will finally warn that some items could not be found - which is obvious after deleting Books.

After that the contents of iBooks appeared in the Books sync tab.

Edit: Unfortunately, all my apps for my i-devices were gone, too. I had to manually transmit them device by device via the menu item File>Devices>Transfer Purchases from (device name). This step is clearing all the apps that I haven't synched to any of the devices at this time, which might be good or bad. However, I can download them again if I'm in the need for that.


Mac Mini can't unmount disk in Recovery Mode

Way by Terminal..

Use diskutil list in a Terminal instance to list all volumes and find yours.

Then do hdiutil eject disk?

Replace the ? with your disk number, making sure you are not trying to eject the main hard drive :) It is probably called "Disk1"

Here is a Sample when I insert a USB stick and run diskutil list

disk0 is my hard drive and I can NOT eject that one

disk1 is the USB and I cam eject it.


Is there a single window application that can read CHM, PDF and DJVU?

Firefox can with plugins. Like most browsers, Firefox already has a pdf viewer built in, but there are plugins available for chm viewing, as well as for djvu viewing. With tabbed browsing, you can have many documents open in a single window.


Advice to use a Mac Mini without display, but using an iPad (sidecar / screen sharing / remote desktop?)

What you want to do is entirely possible (in fact, it's pretty close to what I do).  There are a few things to be aware of.

For initial set up you will need to connect your MacMini to a monitor, keyboard and mouse.  Once you've set it up you can hide it away (provided that you have a good flow of air for cooling) and connect from your iPad.
Due to some oddity in macOS or in the Mac Mini yourself, you won't get full performance in this configuration.  To get full performance you will need to connect a dongle to your Mac's monitor port to make it think that it has a monitor connected.  Weird, no?  But it works.  Something like this. https://www.amazon.co.uk/s?k=CompuLab+Display+Emulator&ref=nb_sb_noss

Enjoy.


How long does a macbook air battery last for

It's supposed to last for 1,000 charge cycles. How long that is in years depends on how you use your MacBook Air (but it should almost certainly be more than 2½ years). You can check your current value by clicking the Apple menu, selecting "About This Mac", clicking the "System Report..." button, selecting Power and looking at the "Cycle Count" statistic.


I accidentally deleted Macintosh HD while installing Windows?

You can Google multiple ways of creating boot-able media for OS X that you can use in Recovery Mode without having to use Internet Recovery.  Also, if you have a Time Machine backup, you could probably restore from that.

There's a chance your Master Boot Record is all messed up.  It may be a good idea to completely wipe the drive before doing this so that it gets partitioned correctly in the process.

Unless there are very specific scenarios (such as extremely limited host resources), this day in age, I really don't understand the reason for dual-booting when you can just as easily (and much more safely) install Windows as a virtual machine using VMware Fusion or Virtualbox.


How can I make Find My Friends display distance in miles rather than km?

No. The app doesn't currently have an override and simply takes the distance units from the system settings.

It surely would be nice to have finer control, but the code isn't there to make a change today.


Label the different accounts on iPhone mail

It's not evident in your question if you set up the different email accounts independently on his iOS devices or if they are linked in some other way –automatic forwarding for instance.

If you set them up independently, you can check each inbox separately if navigating through the shared inbox is confusing.

On top of the "All inboxes" view you can tap on "< Mailboxes"

and then choose which account inbox (or folder) you'd like to browse.


How do I start TextEditor from the command line?

Here are some possible answers, all using the 'open' command-line utility.

The -a option means "open the file argument with the named application":

open -a TextEdit file.txt

The -e option means "open the file argument with the TextEdit application":

open -e file.txt

The -t option means "open the file with the default application for editing text files, as determined via LaunchServices". By default, this will be /Applications/TextEdit.app; however, it's possible for this setting to get overridden:

open -t file.txt

Finally, any file that's of the "text" type will get opened by the application bound to the text type if you just say open file.txt. You can use the "file" command to reveal what the operating system thinks the file type is: file file.txt. So, for example, if you renamed "file.txt" to just "textfile" then open textfile would still open it in the default text-file editing application, as long as file textfile still thought that "textfile" was actually a text file.

A short 'help' file on open can be found by running

open --help

Or you can read the whole manual with

man open


Same iTunes, different iTunes! (whishlist shortcut disappeared!)

From (or, I hope, in) iTunes version 12.3.3.17, to show that shortcut, is necessary to enable "Show Apple Music" in iTunes's settings.


How to get money back from cancelled apple store order (visa)?

You will need to get in contact with the online store team of the country you purchased from. Here's the ways to contact Apple for order enquiries. If you can't call them, during 'normal business hours' you can chat with them.

Chat
Shopping online and have a quick question?

Our trained Chat specialists may be available to assist you during normal business hours.
Simply click the “Chat” button at the top right of the Apple Online Store page.

Phone
Have questions? Ask an Apple Store specialist:

1-800-MY-APPLE (1-800-692-7753)
Open 24 hours a day, 7 days a week


keyboard shortcut to lock screen doesn't work if finder menu visible

Without knowing your exact model of Mac and version of macOS, I have a different way for you to achieve the exact same thing without having to create an Automator service and setting a keyboard shortcut.

Follow these steps:

Go to Apple > System Preferences
Click on Security & Privacy
Select the General tab
Tick the checkbox for requiring a password after sleep or screensaver begins (if you can't tick it, unlock the Padlock at bottom left of the window). Note: You may need to enter a password to make the change.
Now from the associated drop-down, select Immediately
Exit System Preferences

Now you can lock the screen with one of two built-in macOS keyboard shortcuts (depending on your Mac model):

Control+Shift+Eject
Control+Shift+Power Button

The above macOS shortcuts will put your display to sleep, and because of the change in your Security & Privacy preferences, this will activate the password prompt upon waking it up.

Touch Bar models

If you have a 2016 MacBook Pro with Touch Bar, the above keyboard shortcuts aren't available. Instead, you can:

Go to Apple > System Preferences
Click on Keyboard
Click on the Customize Control Strip button
From here you'll see options for either a Lock Screen button or a Display Sleep button
Select one of these
Exit System Preferences

You can now lock your screen by pressing a button on the Touch Bar.


You can use Spark to set custom keybindings for nearly anything in OS X. You can set up a shortcut to execute an AppleScript and use the following script:

display dialog "Tweet?" default answer "" buttons {"OK"} default button 1
set mytweet to text returned of result

tell application "System Events"
    tell process "Notification Center"
        click menu bar item 1 of menu bar 1
        click button 1 of UI element 1 of row 2 of table 1 of scroll area 1 of window "window"
        keystroke mytweet
        keystroke "D" using {command down, shift down}
        keystroke space
    end tell
end tell

Source: TUAW


Isn't it redundant to have Versions as well as Time Machine?

No it is not the same:

Versions: It is for different versions of your documents. You change something in your document and you can revert to an earlier version. This is not possible with Time Machine in this granularity.

Time Machine: It is for backup. It handle the case that you need to recover from a hard disk crash in your mac. You can't do that with versions since versions saves your changes on the then defect hard disk.

So they have their purpose since they „solve“ different problems.


Could be Think C or Apple's Macintosh Programmers' Workshop Note links are to Wikipedia, which is probably OK for information for old computing.


Is there any way I can set up a Brother HL2030 to print on MacOS Sierra?

In the end I found that the official driver from the Brother site for the next model up - the HL2130 - worked fine. I don't know why they say they don't support the HL2030, but it seems to print OK so far.


You can simply add your export PATH... line in your bash_profile file. This file is run every time you start terminal and will modify your PATH variable as you want. You can open/edit this from anywhere in terminal using

 open ~/.bash_profile

You probably also want to check that there are no conflicting export PATH... statements that overwrite each other or something.


Lost my Macbook pro with retina display. How do I find out if Find My iDevice is enabled on it?

If you can see your MacBook Pro with Retina Display in iCloud, it has been enabled. The reason it is showing as offline is because it is either (1) shut down and not connected to internet, or (2) the device has, somehow, already been wiped, with the first option being much more likely in this situation. Computers are particularly vulnerable to this type of situation because they don't have a constant data connection like an iPhone, or data-enabled iPad, often would. The user must boot the laptop and connect to a wifi before Find My Mac will know anything about it's where-abouts or be able to perform any actions.

The first, and main thing to do is to select the the "Lock", or "Erase" option. If it is a neighborhood kid and you think some noise might provide truth, you could always do the play sound feature. This plays an alert at maximum volume. You should probably use this sparingly, and only activate it, for example, if you are within earshot of it. Chances are the user could take quick actions to dampen the sound.

As for the "Lock", or "Erase" option, it will do this as soon as the computer is connected to the internet. Obviously, if they never connect the computer to the internet before wiping it, then the Lock feature won't do any good, but at least if they do, it will help you.
Good news for you is you can erase your Mac and still be able to locate it with Find my Mac. (Another helpful Q&A on that).
And yes, you will get an email when any action occurs on your Mac - such as it being locked or found.


This is pretty simple.

In System Preferences

go to the Users & Groups Preference Pane
click on Login Options
click to unlock (bottom left) if needed and authenticate
verify Automatic Log in is on the user you wish to use
go to the Security & Privacy preference Pane
enable your user for FileVault
reboot

You will select your user from the picker and then enter your password one time and then you should be logged in. If you have a bad user, you can add a new admin user, let it unlock FileVault - remove the problematic user but do not delete the home folder. Then rename the /Users/whatever (deleted) to be the short name you wish and re-create the user. Be sure the keychain is unlocked when that new user password is set up when you log in. Authenticate the new user to FileVault and remove the "new admin" user from above.


Macbook Pro (Early 2011) to 2560x1440 monitor?

Maximum supported res for external monitor is 2560x1600 so I'd say if you used a Thunderbolt/miniDisplay Port -> Display Port it ought to work. I wouldn't be so certain of DVI or indeed HDMI.


I am sorry, but you cannot use your iPhone without entering the code correctly. You may want to refer to this question here, as suggested by tubedogg: Activation Lock Ipod 5


Is it ok to set the MacBook Pro to never sleep when plugged in?

You can leave your MacBook Pro running when plugged into an external power source. This should not dramatically reduce the life span of your computer.

Be sure to allow the display to sleep after idle time. Leaving a typical display powered on constantly can reduce the life span and cause problems.

When your Mac is not plugged in, try and follow Apple's notebook battery advice. Apple recommend running down your MacBook Pro's battery once a month or so. This will help maximise the battery's life.


Can I use 2019 iMac as monitor for Wii/Wii U?

You could use a USB video capture device to capture the video output from your Wii or Wii U.
A device like this with support for macOS will show up in QuickTime, which you can switch into Full Screen, and could allow you to use your 27" iMac as a display.


Itunes crashing even after reinstallation

Try to open your iTunes in safe mode ,(restart and hold shift) then started iTunes just fine. This same issue i had .
If this didn't solved can please post the crash report of the iTunes , when its occurring again.


This model of iMac (Late 2013, 27") has dual internal microphones, which were designed to offer better noise cancellation. This is most likely why the Ambient Noise Reduction checkbox is missing.


Typically, you still follow the traditional steps which does let you charge it for at least 30 minutes just to be sure the battery indication wasn't stuck at an incorrect reading:

http://support.apple.com/kb/TS3274

If none of the steps there work, you'll need to take it in for hardware service or a replacement.


Run a launchd job after Time Machine backup

A simple solution is to use the tmutil command to manually trigger the backup and follow it up with your process (as part of a shell script that does both these steps).

First, turn off automatic backups from System Preferences > Time Machine or using the command tmutil disable
Use tmutil startbackup --auto --block to trigger a backup once every hour (the --block option is required to make the execution wait until the backup is finished)
Follow this with launching your process

See man tmutil for more information on using Time Machine from the command line.


macOS Mojave dual monitor seperate spaces force dock on one screen

I use 2 external  monitors on my MacBook Pro. The dock jumping around drove me crazy.It is by far my biggest MacOS gripe.  I tried the auto-hiding dock but didn’t like it either.
So today I installed a 3rd party app ubar 4. It seems to work well and so far I’m very pleased. The status bar stays where it supposed to. It is very customizable and I am tuning it to my taste. It does cost $30, but it fixes a problem that Apple should have addressed.

The paradigm is similar in some respects to the menu system the Mac had pre-OS X. TBH I was never a fan of the Dock. I felt it was a step backward,but I got used to it.
But to-date Ubar  is the best solution I’ve found.


Internet connection in windows after installing bootcamp

Have you installed the BootCamp drivers? You can download them using BootCamp assistant in Mac OS X. Installing them should fix up the network issue right up. All you need to do to is burn them to a CD and load it up in Windows.

Hope this Helps!


Skype uses a separate audio configuration that can be different from the main system configuration. Go to Skype Preferences, then "Audio/Video", and check the settings there.


How do I do a clean install of macOS Mojave?

Make sure first that your hardware is compatible with Mojave - macOS 10.14. Some sources to check:

http://osxdaily.com/2018/06/05/macos-mojave-compatible-macs-list/
https://www.cnet.com/how-to/here-are-the-macs-that-will-work-with-macos-mojave/

To do a clean install of Mojave:

Make a usb install drive following these instructions.
Back up your system drive in triplicate, or whatever you're comfortable with. Ideally one would be a literal clone of your system.
Boot from the USB drive, and erase your system drive in Disk Utility. Format it as HFS+.
Quit Disk Utility, and install Mojave on the drive you erased.

If those steps don't work, I would suspect a hardware incompatibility or problem.


Mac OS X Application to Float a Window in Front of Others

Not built into the OS, but you should take a look at Afloat from Infinite Labs.


El Capitan froze and rebooted (Macbook Pro Retina Mid 2012)

Run a sysdisgnose. That is how Apple receives feedback from seeding/beta customers. The keyboard shortcut is Cmd Opt Ctrl Shift Period.

You can also run sudo sysdiagnose -f ~/Desktop/ in Terminal. The former will save to /var/tmp and the latter will save to the Desktop.

Sysdiagnose will contain pretty much A to Z.

You should be sure to check the disks.txt, diskutil.txt, errorlog.txt, logs.txt, and the diagnostics folder.


Where does music file from documents go when airdropped to connected devices?

AirDrop files are stored in the app that matches them.

For example, pictures will be saved in your Photos app. A presentation will be saved in Keynote. Contacts will be saved in Contacts. And so on.

After you've sent or received an AirDrop file, check the app that matches the file type to ensure it went to the right place and was saved. It should automatically save and open in that app's files.


How can I sync my iTunes music library between two Macs for free?

It's possible to keep libraries in sync using rsync. Google for iTunes and rsync and you'll find some solutions.


Terminal command to delete all images in folder and subfolders?

To just list them (for review/verification):

find MYFOLDER -type f \( -iname '*.jpg' -o -iname '*.png' -o -iname '*.gif' \) -ls

To move them to the Trash:

find MYFOLDER -type f \( -iname '*.jpg' -o -iname '*.png' -o -iname '*.gif' \) -exec mv '{}' ~/.Trash/ \;

To delete them directly (no way to get them back unless you have a backup):

find MYFOLDER -type f \( -iname '*.jpg' -o -iname '*.png' -o -iname '*.gif' \) -delete


iMessage fails to send despite 'delivered'

Blue print applies to another iPhone. Green print is a non-iPhone. The users phone connection could be down for some reason or out of range of a cell tower. You get a Delivered message but later get a message that the sent message could not be delivered. If a blue message arrives immediately is could be you've lost connection or phone is hidden from cell tower. Check your signal strength and try again.


Here are the steps I used to install and use xpdf via Homebrew.

Install Homebrew's dependencies:

xcode-select --install

Install Homebrew from their website:

/usr/bin/ruby -e "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Homebrew/install/master/install)"

Do what it tells you to complete the Homebrew installation.
Verify that Homebrew is happy and functioning to spec.

brew doctor

Next install xpdf and its dependencies:

brew install Caskroom/cask/xquartz

brew install xpdf

Finally, use pdftotext, a package that comes with the xpdf suite:

pdftotext Some_Document.pdf Some_Document.txt

The first file name is an existing PDF; the second is the destination.  The results were much better than with an (admittedly old) version of Adobe Acrobat. Edit: New (2019) versions of Adobe Acrobat have shown similarly poor results.


Resetting user permissions to their default mode

Here's the tentative solution I have found to my own problem:

print initial state: ls -l
remove ACL permissions: chmod -R -N /Users/fr/
equalize all permissions: chmod -R 755 /Users/fr/
rebuild Spotlight index: sudo mdutil -E /
print new state: ls -l

The -N option, which is well hidden in the man chmod documentation but mentioned here, removes the + sign that indicate ACLs, just like @ indicates a hidden file extension or a custom icon (as far as I can tell). Using Repair Utilities on ACLs should have done that but did not.

By using chmod with the 755 mode, I lost all custom permissions in the process, but did not need any. Rebuilding the Spotlight index then guarantees that all files get properly indexed. That solution worked, through without explaining how the initial problem emerged.


Mac do not have hardware activation lock. Read the last paragraph of the "FAQ" for confirmation.

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201365

You would want to check for a Firmware Password which might need another question if you don't know what that is, but iCloud cannot prevent you from reinstalling an OS or activating any Mac that has shipped thus far.

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204455

Since a bad actor could use the lock function to remotely set a Firmware Password, your step of logging in and signing into your iCloud and successfully activating Find My Mac and locking it would ensure you have exclusive control of that device going forward.


I have to turn my Apple TV on to make it discoverable by laptops/phones

In my experience, the "sleep after X" is the solution. If I can't see on my apple tv the power diode on - the device is at sleep and I will not be able to use it as a target for airplay.

It should be said my apple tv is only connected through wifi. I wonder if connecting it through ethernet would make any difference (although I suspect it wouldn't).


Windows 8 won't recognize audio device on Macbook Pro (late) 2011

Yes, it worked for me, however- I had to go back into bootcamp and download the Win setup drivers again and grab them from inside the display folder ( I am assuming from that that they are part of the graphics card). It did not like the ones downloaded from the web.


How can I get iTunes to use a library on an external HD?

Hold down option when clicking on the iTunes icon and browse to the media library on the external.  It will set this as the new default, which is what you did when creating a new library "temporarily".


Two keys on keyboard suddenly switched roles

When a new keyboard is connected, macOS will show the Change Keyboard Type button in System Preferences > Keyboard. This is used to detect the type of keyboard. For mine, it would have had to be ISO, but it seemingly got wrongly configured in the past, and the button would not show.
Deleting /Library/Preferences/com.apple.keyboardtype.plist and rebooting made the button reappear and I could set up the keyboard correctly again.


iMac 2012 RAM upgrade with mixed voltages

I wouldn't use anything but 1.5v RAM in the 27-inch iMac (Late 2012) as that's what my go-to Apple Memory site lists as compatible.

Ramjet recommends DDR3-1600, 1600Mhz, Non-ECC, Unbuffered, 1.5V, 204pin SO-DIMMs

I also can't believe I'm seeing 32 GB of memory for sale for just under $260 as that just seems too cheap to be true.

If you are looking elsewhere for RAM, I would encourage you to select non-stacked chips on the SO-DIMM as we don't know how warm these devices run and the last generation of 27-inch iMac put out significant heat and had a lot more aluminum to radiate that energy before a fan and convection were needed to assist in heat dissipation.


Is there a way to minimize open windows from the command line in OS X Lion?

I agree that pretty much any solution you can get for the command line would have to rely on AppleScript. And your solution will work. However, rather than scripting System Events, which depends on UI events (actually moving your mouse and clicking) it's a much cleaner approach to script the application's window directly.

This way, if you move your mouse while the script is executing, it won't affect it. For minimizing all Firefox windows you could do something like:

tell application "Firefox" to set miniaturized of every window to true

The property is called miniaturized for Firefox and most OS X applications, but some third-party apps, like Google Chrome, call the property minimized, so if one doesn't work, the other should. This functionality is part of the Standard Suite that pretty much every AppleScript-able application has.

For applications that don't support AppleScript at all, you can fall back to your approach and use System Events to access the windows belonging to the application's specific process running on your machine.

If I were you, though, I'd try to rely on the application to minimize itself rather than through System Events where possible, as this will be much more reliable.


Why can't I browse the internet with Safari, but Chrome is working?

As we have found the solution using Comments, here's the formal response.
Whenever you experience issues with Safari, App Store, iTunes and any other service that uses the "same" WebKit, but seem to see no problem in Google Chrome or Firefox, it's good to check if you have your Proxies configuration clear. Since sometimes Chrome (and Firefox) override these settings (for their own multi platform stuff), they may work while the formers fail.
This is easily checked by opening Safari -> Preferences -> Advanced -> Proxies (Change Settings).
Make sure Autodiscover is not checked. It should probably look all empty like this:

note/off-topic: the Use PASV FTP is usually a good idea if you are behind a router/modem/NAT like Airport Extreme or AirportExpress (or any other to be honest), since FTP was not designed to be used behind these "hacks". In any case, if you don't know what it is, you can safely ignore it, but if you have FTP problems every now and then (or FTP is slow as hell), check that and try again.
The local ignores for proxies was added by the Operating System, but it's usually a good idea to have your local stuff ignore the proxy. ;)


For all kind of hardware-related issues, I will recommend that following,

Reset your SMC, NVRAM. You can find guides for SMC here, NVRAM here.

If that doesn't help, boot into Safe Mode, you can the guide here.

The last step, is of course, to Time Machine it and reinstall the OS. Reinstall, not upgrade.

The very last thing is Genius, or repair it.

Update: some other fixes

I forgot the following things to do before giving up.

a) Create a new user account and see if it works

b) Clear your cache with things like CleanMyMac or other free alternatives.


What is the recommended amount of video memory to assign to OS X El Capitan running in VirtualBox?

Your allocated video memory depends on what you are going to be doing with your VM.  For instance, I use 8MB for my headless FreeBSD machines and 256MB for my Windows 10 VMs.  Windows Servers 2008 or 2012 get anywhere from 16 to 128MB of RAM depending on what they are used for.

However, if you set it to 256MB (max for one monitor) you should have ample memory to run El Capitan.

I do recommend maxing out the memory in your iMac, however (32GB RAM).  That has made all the difference for me.


Prioritize bluetooth tether over Wifi on an iPad

I am guessing that the problem might be related to the DHCP server on the WiFi network, telling your iPad to use a 'default router' on its network.

If the DHCP server sends a value for the 'default router', then the iPad (or any computer, for that matter) will use that router address for all traffic that is not within any of the subnets to which it is attached. This is expected behaviour.

If you have access to the DHCP server's settings, try telling it not to give clients a 'default router', and the problem should go away.

Another suggestion is to turn off DHCP in the WiFi settings on the iPad, and allocate yourself a static address. Again, it helps if you are involved with network administration here, as otherwise you might allocate yourself an address that is already in use, and badness will ensue. But you could allocate yourself an address, a subnet mask and DNS server(s) - and do NOT set a 'router' address.


I found it to be my password for iCloud.  It dropped out after the update.  I entered it back in and verified it and the calender came back online.  Stupid update errors! enough to drive you bonkers!


iTunes University: Items Not Available from U.C. Berkeley

Interesting. Turns out this is neither an issue on my end nor on Apple's.
I will post the pertinents, even if they are off-topic, because it is pretty "WTaF?"
From: http://www.weeklystandard.com/berkeley-goes-offline/article/2007201

A few years ago, an adjunct professor and disability-rights activist named Stacy Nowak went to take a look at a college course offered online by the University of California, Berkeley. ...
Since 2012, UC Berkeley (among many other schools) has offered video and audio recordings of many of its courses to the general public, via YouTube and iTunes U. The Seussian acronym is MOOCs, for massive open online courses. Over the years Berkeley's catalogue of MOOCs has grown to more than 40,000 hours of high-end pedagogy. There are introductory courses in economics, European history, statistics, physics, geography, and pretty much everything else. More advanced courses range from "Scientific Approaches to Consciousness" and "Game Theory" to "The Planets" and "Philosophy of Language," this last taught by John Searle, the country's, and maybe the world's, greatest living philosopher. ...
After Nowak notified the National Association of the Deaf of her frustration with Berkeley's MOOCs, NAD went straight to the white-hot center of the American grievance industry, the federal government's Department of Justice. The organization filed a complaint with DoJ on behalf of Nowak and a Gallaudet colleague as "aggrieved individuals." The government lawyers got to work. ...
The easiest course, administrators concluded, was simply to pull all the MOOCs from the Internet, so that disabled members of the general public will no longer have to be subjected to such discriminatory offenses—and, also, so that the federal government won't sue UC Berkeley. ...

Fortunately per: https://lbry.io/news/20000-illegal-college-lectures-rescued

Today, the University of California at Berkeley has deleted 20,000 college lectures from its YouTube channel. Berkeley removed the videos because of a lawsuit brought by two students from another university under the Americans with Disabilities Act.
We copied all 20,000 and are making them permanently available for free via LBRY.

Maybe iTunes U will pick them up, but I doubt it.


Partitions uses in default Mac OS installation?

You need to keep the EFI partition in order to be able to boot OSX. You could, however, install an alternative boot loader, such as "rEFInd".

You do not need to keep the "Apple Recovery" partition, but you should, because if you mess up the normal Mac partition so that you cannot boot from it any more, you might still be able to boot into the Recovery partition and fix the OSX system from it.

You could also copy both the EFI and Recovery partitions to a new disk, e.g. to an external disk, and then boot from it. If that works, then you'd be safer playing with the partitions on your main drive, seeing what works, and still be able to boot from the external disk, because the Mac's boot ROM will search every connected internal and external disk for an EFI partition in order to see if it can boot from it.

To test this, hold down the Option (alt) key when the Mac starts up - then you will get a list of bootable partitions.

For installing Linux, I suggest you do these steps:

Get a large enough external disk and make a backup of each of your partitions, using a block copy method, or by using OS X's Disk Utility, with the "New disk image from ..." command from the File menu. You could also try my tool "iBored" for this.
Boot OSX and open Disk Utility. Select the disk, then "Partitions". Select the large OSX partition and click the [+] button to add a new partition. Make it large enough for your Linux system. This will then make the OSX partition smaller if there's enough free space on it. Now you have a new free partition to install Linux on.
See if you can install rEFInd and see if that supports booting into Linux (it should, but I have not tried it myself).
If something goes wrong, you can always restore from your external backup.


I was able to resolve this by exporting the bookmarks as shown here:
https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/export-firefox-bookmarks-to-backup-or-transfer

(suggested by @dwightk )

Exporting my passwords using password export addon
http://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/password-exporter

and then re-installing firefox.


Final Cut Pro 10.4.3 Mojave Compatibility

I just upgraded to Mojave on the weekend and FCP works fine for me. I'm running FCP 10.4.4. Maybe you should update to that version?

I can't recall when I updated FCP, but it was before upgrading to Mojave. Good luck! :-)


I've bought a number of OWC products include SSD's for older MBP and MBA models. Always been satisfied.

That said, I recall reading a review that said there was a problem installing Bootcamp on the latest upgrades so I'd check with OWC tech support before ordering.


rsync on macOS Catalina : filename overflows max-path len by 2

Rsync has internal buffers to hold the names of files. These are hardcoded to have a value MAXPATHLEN which is defined to be an OS dependant value or  1024 in the code from https://github.com/WayneD/rsync/blob/d2a97a7ab492e0d0548708251309e077e6aa8c8b/rsync.h
So you path names are too long for either macos or rsync


How to keep an SSD in shape on Yosemite?

EDIT 3:

Yes! Since the release of 10.10.4, Apple now provides a new tool called trimforce, allowing users to activate TRIM also on unsupported disks. So now the ultimate and final answer is:

sudo trimforce enable

/EDIT 3

EDIT 1:

Finally I found a way! Apparently there is a neat trick hidden in the fsck tool as this answer says.

So in the future I will boot into Single User Mode (press ⌘+S at boot screen) from time to time and issue the command fsck -fy. It will check the disk and finish with the message Trimming unused blocks.

/EDIT 1

EDIT 2:

So there is a new tool called Disk Sensei that specializes on exactly that problem. It has a manual TRIM command and helps you turning Yosemite's kext signing on and off.

/EDIT 2:

Furthermore, I read about DiskFresh which would somewhat accomplish what I was originally asking for. This Windows (Bootcamp partition required) tool will rewrite all data of partitions or an entire disk. This approach seems a little less painful than wiping my SSD and restoring it from a backup. However, it also comes with the downside of doing an additional write cycle.


My 2017 iMac is unable to print! But my old Mac Mini prints just fine! Any insights?

HP asked Apple to disable the HP software last Friday and then re-enable it.  You can change the driver to AirPrint and know it you need to apply updates and reinstall your print drivers if that works.
See my answer here for how to manually install a fix if you don’t want to let Apple software updates fix your HP.

HP Easy Scan - "HP Scanner 3" will damage your computer
https://ftp.hp.com/pub/softlib/software12/HP_Quick_Start/osx/Installations/Essentials/hp-printer-essentials-S-5_14_8_4.pkg


How can I get Final Cut Pro to reload my Motion projects without restarting it?

Hey Peeja… the "official" way is to simply REPLACE the title or whatever in the timeline with the original from the browser. Select in the timeline, then select in the browser and hit ⌥R to "Replace from Start". Or drag from the browser ontop of the timeline instance and select replace from the pop-up.

It's because the edited version only exists in the browser and the instance in the timeline is independent of it.

The UNofficial/Power User way … simply CUT the title or whatever from the timeline and… PASTE. Done.

Cheers.


Is there a HDD/Hard-Drive testing tool for mac?

Why not use Disk Utility to write zeroes or if you have more time, interest in being sure it works repeatable, set it to write more passes of random data.

The drive will report IO errors in the system.log if there are hardware errors. If you have an SSD or want a tool to read back the random bits to ensure everything not only wrote properly, but can be read back with perfect fidelity, see the free tool stressdrive written by rentzsch.

You might also like to read over What is the best free hard drive diagnostics app for Mac OS X?


Is there a shorcut for the 'plus' symbol on every mac window

You can assign a custom shortcut for the Zoom menu item in System Preferences:

Or if you want to always maximize windows to fill a screen, see this question.


Searching by Finder Tags not working in Spotlight on macOS High Sierra

After searching the internet a little bit, I found a recent post in Apple Discussions explaining the reason for bug. In non-english versions of macOS (at least German and Slovak), searching by

tag:<name_of_tag>

query does not work. Replacing the tag keyword by kMDItemUserTags fixes the problem and properly shows relevant files even from Spotlight:

kMDItemUserTags:<name_of_tag>


Relevant section from the manual: https://support.apple.com/kb/PH21294?viewlocale=en_US&locale=en_US

Summary: you can delete photos/videos through Photos/iCloud (https://icloud.com), but they are not removed immediately. They are moved into a Recently Deleted album (like the Trash on your Mac) and deleted automatically later. (They are kept for 40 days so it tales a long time for them to disappear)

Note in Photos.app this is not a normal album but accessible by File->Show Recently Deleted.

You can open the Recently Deleted album and delete the videos/photos from there to remove them from the device permanently. Make sure that you have a backup, because you can not undo this operation.


What are the differences between Dreamweaver_14_LS20.dmg and Dreamweaver_13_LS20.dmg?

Dreamweaver CC came in two major versions: the initial CC release (v13) and the CC 2014 release (v14). From the file names, you can infer which is which.

As for a "full installer", there is no such animal now. You install CC apps individually through the Creative Cloud Manager which downloads and installs the selected app(s).


How do you get a stack trace of a running process?

Maybe this is what you are looking for?

Open Activity Monitor.
Select the target process.
Click on the gear icon in top left.
Select "Sample Process" from appeared menu.

It will display detailed info about process:


There are a few restrictions with .files, mainly because they are usually files important to the system. For example, aside from being hidden by default you can't rename a normal file to ".file" (You will get a system alert, I'm pretty sure), nor you can rename a ".file" directly from any Finder window, like most other files: you need to "Get Info", and rename it from there.

One plausible solution I can think of is perhaps renaming it before you send it, though if you want to avoid this (because they are sensitive files after all) you can compress it and then rename the zip file you get. Simply:

Control click on the file and select "Compress ..."
Control click the zip file and select "Get Info"
Under "Name and extension" you should be able to change the name of
the file. Simply remove the period.

I know its kind of a log workaround, but its the best I could find. :/ Hope it helps though!


The recommended method to expand Macintosh HD is to backup and remove your Windows partition with WinClone, expanding your OS X volume and restoring the Windows partition. This can also be done with dd and fdisk. Both methods require an external drive.

A very non-conventional method exists to expand Macintosh HD by using the internal Logical Volume Manager (CoreStorage).

Your main volume is already part of a CS Logical Volume Group – probably because it's encrypted. This can be seen by checking the partition type of disk0s2: 53746F72-6167-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC.

After adding a partition in the unallocated disk space, formatting it as JFHS+ volume and adding it as physical volume, you may expand the logical volume Macintosh HD into the free space of the now enlarged logical volume group.

The method outlined below was tested in a VM and it works. Since I can't install Windows with the Boot Camp Assistant in a VM I can't assure that Windows is bootable afterwards. If Windows booting fails you can use fdisk to modify the pMBR to make it bootable again.

Preparation:

Backup your data.
Detach any external drive (especially your external Time Machine backup drive).
Restart to Internet Recovery Mode by pressing alt cmd R at startup.
The prerequisites are the latest firmware update installed, either ethernet or WLAN (WPA/WPA2) and a router with DHCP activated.
On a 50 Mbps-line it takes about 4 min (presenting a small animated globe) to boot to a recovery netboot image which usually is loaded from an apple/akamai server.

I recommend ethernet because it's more reliable. If you are restricted to WIFI and the boot process fails, just restart your Mac until you succeed booting.

Alternatively you may start from a bootable installer thumb drive (Mavericks or Yosemite) or a thumb drive containing a full system (Mavericks or Yosemite). If you boot to a full system you have to prepend sudo using some commands (e.g. gpt or newfs_hfs)

Verify and repair the disk and the volumes with Disk Utility

Modify CoreStorage stack:

Open in the menubar Utilities/Terminal

First you should get an overview of your disks and the partition layout:
Enter diskutil list, diskutil cs list and gpt -r show /dev/disk0
Unmount the disk containing the logical volume Macintosh HD and you main disk. Below I assume the logical volume (residing in disk0s2) has the disk identifier disk2 – check your diskutil listing for the proper identifier and use that one below.

diskutil umountDisk disk2
diskutil umountDisk disk0

Add a partition in the unallocated disk space:

gpt add -b 325078016 -i 5 -s 165156696 -t 48465300-0000-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC disk0

Format the new partition:

newfs_hfs -v "Expansion" -J /dev/rdisk0s5

Add the partition to the logical volume group. The lvgUUID (the UUID of the Logcal Volume Group) can be found in the diskutil cs listing:

diskutil cs addDisk lvgUUID /dev/disk0s5

Expand the logical volume. The lvUUID (the UUID of the Logcal Volume) can be found in the diskutil cs listing:

diskutil cs resizeVolume lvUUID 0g

0g is a magical number here and it will expand the LV to the max size.
Verify and repair the disk and the volumes with Disk Utility

The partition map finally looks like this:

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   96408680      2  GPT part - 53746F72-6167-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC
   96818320    1269536      3  GPT part - 426F6F74-0000-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC
   98087856       1104
   98088960  226988032      4  GPT part - EBD0A0A2-B9E5-4433-87C0-68B6B72699C7
  325076992       1024
  325078016  165156696      5  GPT part - 53746F72-6167-11AA-AA11-00306543ECA
  490234712          7
  490234719         32         Sec GPT table
  490234751          1         Sec GPT header

Your Macintosh HD will now span disk0s2 and disk0s5 (similar to a Fusion disk but with one disk only).


Why does a short video recorded on the iPhone have almost the same file size as a full HD movie?

The answer boils down to how much work the compression algorithm can do to squeeze the file down, and how much quality loss you are willing to tolerate.

Dark Knight on Blu-ray uses VC-1 encoding at 24Mbps, and it's around 27GB on disk. Good thing BDs have so much room! The goal is to give really good quality.

The iPhone encodes things around 17Mbps (according to the file I just checked) using h.264 with the High@L4.1 profile. It has to encode things in real-time because it can't stream the raw video to flash. Doing things in real-time limits the amount of work the compressor can do and results in higher file size than slower compression. The iPhone could probably choose to degrade the quality of the video in order to get smaller files, but since you can never get quality back, it makes sense to keep quality there at the beginning.

The BD rips you're talking about have two things in their favor.  One is that people are willing to accept a much lower quality than the BD in order to shrink the file size. Also, they have plenty of time to compress the files, so they can easily compress at half or quarter real time.  That lets the compression algorithms find a lot more ways to shrink the file size without degrading quality.

If you want to store the iPhone videos yourself for later viewing, you can certainly transcode them yourself and shrink them. You probably would not want to use the results for a television ad but they would be perfectly good for keeping memories.


How do I update iMovie to the latest version

Yep, just go to the Updates pane on the bottom right of the Mac App Store and then click "Update" on the right of iMovie.


Does my 2015 MacBook 12" produce 4K on the LG UltraFine 4K Display

Hard to tell about your hardware since it could have issues, but that hardware in general supports 4K in general and in specific for the LG display that Apple sells directly.

https://support.apple.com/kb/HT207447
https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT206587

I’ve happily used that model Mac for almost 3 years now and my LG 4K display has been awesome first came out and I bought it.


How do I make an application's window span the whole width/height of my screen?

Yes, there is actually a cool way to do this on macOS Sierra! Just double click the bottom/right/bottom right of the window when the cursor turns into a resize cursor, and voila!


Why won't Subversion remember certificates?

This doesn't sound like a Terminal problem, but a subversion and/or permissions problem. Did it work at one point in the past, or has it always been a problem?

Most likely the issue is somewhere inside of ~/.subversion/auth/. You could try blowing away the directory, though that will require you to recreate all your credentials. (Maybe something in there is borking up authentication process.)

I suggest you try to recreate your problem with another user profile, computer, or operating system, and compare ~/.subversion directories with your broken system.

If you are convinced its the Terminal's fault, you can try iTerm2, though I expect the same results in the same environment. Good luck!


macOS Mojave CalendarAgent runaway process

Well, it appears that somehow the upgrade must have left the calendar info in a weird state, because this seems to have fixed it:

Disable all Google calendar accounts (Calendar.app -> Preferences... -> Accounts).
Wait for the CalendarAgent process to subside. Eventually it will; use Activity Monitor to check. A reboot may help at this point.
Enable each Google calendar account, one by one: every time one gets enabled, the CalendarAgent process will get excited for a while. Wait for it to idle before enabling the next account.


How do I download Xcode 4.4 without using the App Store?

Now

Xcode 4.4.1 amongst Downloads for Apple Developers

4.4 was made available 2012-07-26.

4.4.1 was made available 2012-08-07:

xcode_4.4.1_6938145.dmg

Freely available to members of the Safari Developer Program, and to others.

Don't rush to also download the disk image for command line tools. You may find these tools amongst the installation and update options that are integral to Xcode.

Looking ahead

Apple's software update catalogue

index-mountainlion-lion-snowleopard-leopard.merged-1.sucatalog sometimes refers to downloads that are not advertised at Apple - Support - Downloads.

Nothing for Xcode in the index dated 2012-08-09T03:35:35Z … maybe later.

Munki approaches to Xcode

Nothing there yet for 4.4 or greater but we might find something in due course.


safari "find" does not work for partial word

This is by design. Clicking on the magnifying glass next to your search shows a menu that allows you to switch between Contains and Starts With, with the latter being the default.

There is a hidden setting to change the default to Contains.

Quit Safari. (Safari menu > Quit or Command-Q)
Open Terminal. (Applications > Utilities > Terminal)
Copy/paste the following line exactly and press Return:

defaults write com.apple.Safari FindOnPageMatchesWordStartsOnly -bool FALSE

The next time you run Safari, substring matching (which is what you are trying to do) should work correctly.


itunes error(-1) coming when restoring iPhone 4?

Turns out, the .ipsw I was using was not the right one. I tried using iOS 5.1.1 .ipsw with stiched blobs and restored my phone, and it worked like a charm. So if anyone finds this in the future, do not try to upgrade to iOS 6.1.3 because:

1: The sHsH blobs for iOS 6.1.1, 6.1.2 and 6.1.3 are corrupted on the cydia server.
2: If you update to 6.1.3 without preserving baseband, you will lose your unlock.


Why does my MacBook Pro suddenly die instead of remaining in sleep mode?

You may need to recalibrate for the new battery. Use the computer until you get the warning message. Then, shut down and plug it in. Let it charge fully before you turn it back on. Doing this will allow the system to calibrate for the new battery so that it can more accurately tell how much charge is remaining, which could help if it thinks the battery will last longer than it does.


Yosemite upgrade–continuous slow screen redraw

I had this problem and I solved it by resetting the PRAM/NVRAM, which is done via:

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


How to retrieve photos back after iTunes backup upload in iPhone 7 and iOS 13?

You can check to see if you have any backups of your iPhone on your computer with a tool like iBackup Extractor. You can access and browse the contents of such a backup (free) to see if your photos are there. If you want to extract more than 20 photos, though, you'll need to buy a licence.


Can I move a movie rental from my Apple TV to my iPad?

Quote from Apple Support Pages:
"Movies rented on your Apple TV are not transferable to any other device and can only be viewed on your Apple TV."

If you have a iMac or Macbook at home, rent it through that computer, and then stream it to Apple TV for watching there... Movies rented on that Apple computer can be transferred with a click over to your iPad.


How to import Live Photos, in full resolution jpg form, from an iPhone 6s to a Windows computer?

There should be a matching JPEG for every MOV file, which contains the full resolution photo.


Why does Apple iCloud photosharing use googleapis.com?

Why your device communicates with google is simple - it’s where the bits are stored (among other places).

It’s widely reported that Apple will encrypt and store iCloud data in anonymous fashion on several cloud platforms with Google cloud (GCF) joining Microsoft Azure and Amazon (AWS) as vendors to Apple.

https://www.engadget.com/2016/03/17/apple-icloud-google-cloud-platform/
https://www.computerworld.com/article/3045439/hybrid-cloud/apple-amazon-google-cloud-platform-itbwcw.html
http://www.zdnet.com/article/apples-hybrid-cloud-plan-google-aws-microsoft-azure-like-most-companies/
https://www.apple.com/business/docs/iOS_Security_Guide.pdf

The last Apple link/pdf explicitly acknowledges Apple uses AWS and Azure. I haven’t seen an updated doc publicly confirming that google cloud is part of the mix, it you are correct in seeing the traffic go there by design.

  Each file is broken into chunks and encrypted by iCloud using AES-128 and a key derived from each chunk’s contents that utilizes SHA-256. The keys, and the file’s metadata, are stored by Apple in the user’s iCloud account. The encrypted chunks of the file are stored, without any user-identifying information, using third-party storage services, such as Amazon S3 and Windows Azure

So my reading is that Apple keeps the hashes and keys and identifiers in their own datacenters and on your device but then farms out bits of encrypted files all over the place so that they can keep the privacy and security promises made in the iOS security guide.


How to change behaviour of function keys when launching Steam game?

I ended up using Fluor. It’s free and open source and has a nice UI as well.


Time Capsule full system restore to a new Mac

Unfortunately, Time Capsule won't back up your Windows partition. You'd have to do that separately.

I'd suggest using a program like Crashplan to backup your entire Windows hard drive to an external HDD (free with Crashplan). Then format and/or restore you Mac OS X hard drive from Time Capsule without changing the partitions, and finally format and/or restore your Windows partition from the Crashplan backup.

Of course, Windows being Windows, needing a format every now and then (yes, I'm prejudiced) and not having a proper "restore entire OS from backup" option like Mac OS X, an easier road might just be to backup the actual important data of your Windows partition, like documents and application preferences, onto an external hard drive, and to then format the partition and install a fresh copy of Windows to which you copy your important stuff. That's probably what I would do.


Why would a macbook running OS X 10.7.5 boot up on its own at the same time every night?

Lets find out

Launch the Terminal and type the following at the command line:

  syslog |grep -i "Wake reason"

The simplest reason is you have the set up in Wake up doing it :)

Check it in system preferences > Energy Saver > Schedule :):


How to make a Mac forget it ever saw an iOS device?

I'm not sure exactly, but I can help you figure out which files changed after you plugged in the device.  Hopefully you're comfortable with Terminal.

Start a timer.  Plug in your new device, treat it like you would any other new device - trust it, let it sync, whatever.

Once that's all done, stop your timer, see how long it took and round up in minutes.  Let's assume it took 5:18.  We're going to round up to 6 minutes.

$ find ~ -type f -cmin -6 > ~/Desktop/files_modified.txt

Now you have a file showing all of the files that changed in the last 6 minutes.  Some of these files are going to be relevant and most aren't: when I ran this experiment I got lots of files changing related to Safari, for example.

Good luck, I hope that helps.


Why do texts from my computer show that they come from "myname"@icloud.com?

If you open Messages, then go to Messages -> Preferences -> Accounts -> "myname"@icloud.com, you can see the option to select where new conversations are started from. For me it lists my iCloud email, my personal email (which is my iCloud login), and my cell number. Choose your cell number from this list and everything should be OK.


Select several cells
In the Menu, select Format -- Table
Should be the second menu item from the bottom


Ping to stackexchange.com is less than 60 ms. But web pages are taking ages.

You're conflating Ping speed and actual download speed, something that can't be done.

Ping (how fast a small amount of data takes to travel) is different than download speed (how much data your computer can get through your router per second). It's download speed that determines how fast websites load, not your ping score (as an aside, a ping as high as 60ms indicates to me that your cellular connection is pretty slow, for me ~10ms comes with fast download speeds on LTE).

So how can you find out your download speed? Just search google for what's my download speed (or go to speedtest.net) to measure it. As a baseline, any speed 25 Mbps or faster means the web page will load at a speed I would perceive as "fast" and any speed below 2 Mbps is close to unbearable.

tl;dr: Having low ping does not mean websites will necessarily load fast; download speeds determine how fast a webpage will load.


Want to update from OSX 10.6.8 to OSX 10.9

Mac OS X Lion - 10.7 was (is) a paid upgrade. From there, you can then ride the free major upgrade train as far as your hardware allows.

Upgrade Macbook Pro from 10.6.8 to 10.8

I’ve heard of people jumping to ElCapitan, but never experienced it since I have lion digitally as well as on a USB key so I just rolled that path in the past.

Upgrade iMac12,2 from Mac OS X 10.6.8

You may run into issues, so feel free to ask a specific question if you run into a specific block knowing you can’t just upgrade in one step.


What tool is best for removing pages from a PDF?

For the command-line I can recommend:
pdftk, the PDF Toolkit (for the Snow-Leopard installer you can try Pacifist to get the binaries or use the older version)

Merge PDF Documents
Split PDF Pages into a New Document
Rotate PDF Pages or Documents
…

If your PDF is edit-protected, you may want to try qpdf (via e.g. homebrew) to remove the restrictions first.

QPDF is a command-line program that does structural, content-preserving transformations on PDF files. It could have been called something like pdf-to-pdf. It also provides many useful capabilities to developers of PDF-producing software or for people who just want to look at the innards of a PDF file to learn more about how they work.


I solved this by adding the following to my .bash_profile

shopt -s direxpand
complete -r cd


Does an iCloud restore on iPhone overwrite iTunes contacts/calendar etc?

iTunes doesn't sync Calendar & Contacts unless iCloud [over-the-air] sync is off, so there is nothing to merge.


Which disk to choose when doing a clean install of MacOS Catalina?

What worked for me was erasing the parent volume of these partitions as "Macintosh HD", leaving one partition.

Another option, as per lx08's comment, is to delete "Macintosh HD - Data" and erase "Macintosh HD".


A quick search reveals a range of steganography software and solutions for Mac.

The following all appear on the first page of results:

iSteg
SilentEye
Stegosec

As @patrix mentions, security through obscurity provides little security. Be sure to encrypt files and information being embedded in images first.

Tools exist for mass checking images for embedded information and alterations. Search for an image potentially containing embedded information is a task well suited to those with plenty of computer power.


Uninterruptible Power Supply not shutting down Mac Mini running Yosemite

I had the same problem with my new Eaton 3S 550 UPS. I gave installing 10.10.2 beta a try (build 14C99d) and now it works! So hopefully the functionality should be back for other UPS models as well once 10.10.2 is released.


Mac login not working after initial screen

May be the trash became full and not enough memory to bootup. You try boot in target mode , mount the disk in another mac machine and clear the trash.
or
In Recovery mode open "Disk utility -> repair disk" may help.


Is there a way to request iMessage history from Apple?

Unless you store your iMessage data on iCloud (New feature introduced iOS 11.3), Apple does not directly store your iMessage data. There may be instances of iMessage data in iCloud Backup. This data can be extracted by various recovery programs, but not "requested" from Apple.

Even if you do store it on iCloud it is encrypted is not accessible in the fashion you are requesting it.

You can however request a copy of all the data Apple has.


Switch to MacPorts SSH by default 10.8/10.9

You can list the /opt directories before the system path and the shell will prefer the first match for ssh unless a script explicitly calls the system version.

By default, MacPorts lists /opt/ in your $PATH before the standard system paths.  I would inspect your ~/.bash_profile carefully to make sure there are no typos.


So - looking over http://www.apple.com/batteries/maximizing-performance/ you should see that charging warms the device and your measured temperatures risk the device shutting itself off and permanent damage to the battery.

Yes, the battery is replaceable, but there's risk and cost there. I would tether over bluetooth or WiFi and disconnect the USB so that the unit doesn't have added heat load from the charging circuitry and chemistry (lithium batteries give off heat when charging) to keep the operating temperature of the iPhone to a level that's within Apple's recommendations.

Removing case or other external cooling might help a bit - but you can weigh the cost of an eventual battery replacement with the cost of a different tethering option and make your best choice.


What do I do about a broken screen replacement (flickering while unlocking)?

The quick answer is that there isn't really much you can do on your end.

What can I do?

You could take apart the phone and attempt to fix the display manually, but by no means does this guarantee a fix (or even an improvement). By doing this, you would also run the risk of damaging your device further.
If Apple replaced your screen when it was broken, take it back to them and let them know it was not fully fixed. They should fix it again at no charge (if it was serviced within the last 90 days).

  Apple covers defects if they arise from authorized service for 90 days or the remaining term of your iPhone warranty, whichever is longer.

If a third-party dealer replaced your screen, take it back to them. Generally, third-party iDevice-fixing stores will repair it a second time, if they did not correctly repair it the first time (in order to keep your business).

Will my warranty be void?

Your AppleCare Coverage does not apply to:

  damage caused by accident, abuse, misuse, liquid contact, fire, earthquake or other external cause

  damage caused by service (including upgrades and expansions) performed by anyone who is not a representative of Apple or an Apple Authorized Service Provider (“AASP”)

  defects caused by normal wear and tear or otherwise due to the normal aging of the Apple Product, or if any serial number has been removed or defaced from the Apple Product.

What are Apple's Prices?

With AppleCare Coverage (screen replacement)

iPhone 6 - $109
iPhone 6 Plus, iPhone 5s, iPhone 5c, iPhone 5 - $129

  If your repair isn’t covered by Apple’s One Year Limited Warranty, AppleCare+, or AppleCare Protection Plan, your iPhone might be eligible for out-of-warranty service.

Out-of-Warranty (any repair)

iPhone 6 Plus - $329
iPhone 6 - $299
iPhone 5s, iPhone 5c, iPhone 5 - $269
iPhone 4s - $199
iPhone 4, iPhone 3GS, iPhone 3G, Original iPhone - $149

Note: An out-of-warranty battery replacement is $79, but only available if the battery fails Apple’s diagnostic tests.

What is AppleCare?

  Purchasing AppleCare+ extends the hardware coverage to two years from the original purchase date of your iPhone and covers two incidents of accidental damage, each with a $79 service fee plus applicable tax. AppleCare+ also includes Express Replacement Service so you can get a replacement before sending in your iPhone.

  If you didn’t buy AppleCare+ with your iPhone, you can buy it within 60 days of purchase. Take your iPhone to an Apple Retail Store or call Apple. We’ll verify the purchase date and confirm that your iPhone has no existing damage.

What are Apple's Repair Terms?

  For all service orders, Apple warrants to the extent permitted by
  law that (1) services performed will conform to their description for ninety (90)
  days from the date of service, (2) except for batteries described in the subsection
  below, all parts or products used in service will be free from defects in materials
  and workmanship for ninety (90) days from the date of service, and (3) batteries
  installed as part of Apple’s battery replacement service for Apple portable Mac
  computers will be free from defects in materials and workmanship for one year
  from the date of service. This warranty is an express limited warranty. If nonconforming
  service is provided or a defect arises in a replacement part or product
  during the applicable warranty period, Apple will to the extent permitted by
  applicable law at its option, either (a) re-perform services to conform to their
  description (b) repair or replace the part or product, using parts or products that
  are new or equivalent to new in performance and reliability, or (c) refund the sums
  paid to Apple for service.


When saving files to Desktop on Mac OS X (Lion), why are they placed in an erratic order?

This is normal behavior when the desktop has no particular order or arrangement specified.

Try going to the Finder and setting a "Sort By" option.

Go to the Finder and click on the desktop.
Click View > Sort By from the menu bar
Then try selecting an option other than "None" with in the "Sort By" Menu.


I have a problem with my signatures too, and perhaps, this may help.

My problem was, that on my Mac, my Apple ID (my mail address) was used not only for login but also as mail address and alias for the iCloud mail account. And I can't change it.

After deactivating the iCloud mail account, I was able to use the signatures of my normal mail account again.


IMO messenger seems to be a bit better, at letting the message get to other clients as well


Any way to have windows be restored to the correct space when opening an app?

It's unclear from your question whether you have done the obvious so I will mention it just in case.
When looking at a specific space, right click (option click) on the icon (in the dock) of the app you want to "pin" to the specific space . There will be two options shown that say something like "this space" or "any space" (I'm sorry, I'm not on my Mac so I can't be more precise, but I think you will be able to understand this method)


Every time I wake my Macbook it switches applications after wake. How do I fix this?

This Apple Support article overviews a similar issue. This is on a Early 2010 macbook pro, and OP on the linked thread tied the cause to the "require password after 5 minutes" setting in Security and Privacy. OP solved this issue by switching to "require password immediately"

Have you done all updates up to 10.7.5?


How to reset the terminal before command execution?

What you're looking for in BASH is equivalant to what is built-in precmd in ZSH. This built-in function would be executed prior to executing a command. A work around is mentioned in https://superuser.com/questions/175799/does-bash-have-a-hook-that-is-run-before-executing-a-command. I hope it gives you a hint of how to solve your problem. The reset has to be called within this function.


Yes it hung. I restarted this and I was able to downgrade successfully. I used these materials:
how-to-downgrade-ios
downgrade-ios-3664217


I never saw Base system on any of my Macs since 2008. Recovery partition is not created in all cases (for example, if you used PGP WDE or other disk encryption software or you installed your OS from the USB key created by a Disk Utility). You may recreate a recovery partition though. See http://hints.binaryage.com/recover-lost-recovery-hd-for-filevault/ (too long to quote here).


How can I merge two photos using software that is provided with OS X?

You don't need anything special at all, you already have the tools you need to give it a go - frankly it's worth a pop in Preview.

I'll have a quick and dirty go in this answer and see how we go.  I've taken 2 photos, one with my eyes open, and one with them shut.  I will transfer the eyes from one to the other to create a composite picture of the two.  Excuse the poor quality, but they are taken from my webcam in a dimly lit room:

Eyes Open:

Eyes Shut:

Opening the picture I want to copy from (just double clicking it should use Preview as the default app on most systems) ensure first that you have the correct edit tool bar showing, and select the elliptical select tool:

Now, draw a nice oval around one eye, starting in the top left and moving right and down.  If you get it wrong, just single click anywhere outside the selection and start again.  Repeat until you have got a good outline of the eye.  You can fine tune by grabbing the handles on the selection tool and moving them a little:

Now simply copy this selection, open up the other picture, and paste it in, moving it to the required position (and potentially resizing a tiny bit if required).  To remove the selection marks, click anywhere outside them to "set" the paste.  If it's not in the right position, click undo, and paste again:

Repeat with the other eyes, and here is a finished composite:

Top tips:

This works better with smaller snippets, obviously the more closeup it is, the more accurate your cropping has to be and the more obvious the effect is.
Your photos need to be pretty similar in terms of lighting, zoom levels etc to get a consistent look.
Zoom in if required to get more accurate selections.
If it's a group shot as you say, then chances are everyone's face is quite small unlike my full face image example, and any imperfections are less likely to be spotted
Keep your selections as small as possible, copying a couple of eyes is going to be easier and look better than trying to move a whole head, or person.
Other software will provide for more complex features like smoothing the joins over to reduce any hard lines where the colouring is marginally different etc
If you had to copy say a piece of eyebrow in order to get the whole eye, and it will not line up in the new picture, then use an intermediate empty picture file, paste it in, cut out the bit you don't want, re-copy it and carry on.


How to Auto Restart a 2010 MacBook Pro/High Sierra after Power Failure

Try doing that in the boot sector.

Use Restore > Disk Utility > Terminal

pmset autorestart 1


What folders should I be backing up? Are there any I should avoid?

Some people recommend backing up your entire ~/Library folder. But I find there are a lot of things in there I wouldn't want replaced if doing a clean install. So I selectively back up certain contents of that folder, along with certain contents of the system level /Library folder.

You should poke around in ~/Library and see what's in there that you need. Here's a list of what I backup to get you started:

~/Library/Application Support and ~/Library/Preferences are where most of your application settings live. You should go through each of those folders' subfolders and see which ones you need.

Notably, Address Book's database is stored in an Application Support subfolder while some other Mac OS preinstalled apps have their folders directly at the ~/Library level. It's a good idea to look through the folders at that level as well. For example:

~/Library/Mail has your Mail.app data.

~/Library/Calendars has your iCal data.

~/Library/iTunes has all your iOS device backups and iTunes specific scripts.

~/Library/Scripts is probably where you install scripts if you use AppleScripts as folder actions.

~/Library/ScriptingAdditions holds any AppleScript additions you've installed.

~/Library/Keychains is the default location using Keychain Access to save passwords.

~/Library/Fonts for all fonts installed for the current user.

~/Library/ColorSync for all color profiles installed for the current user.

~/Library/Safari/Bookmarks.plist has your Safari bookmarks. The other stuff in this folder is a good example of what I'd like to NOT be restored after a clean install.

The structure of the system level /Library folder closely matches that of the ~/Library folder, so if there are things in there (fonts, color profiles, scripts etc.) installed "for all users", you should back those up too.

Hope that helps you get started!


Is it possible for an AppleScript .app file to retain its custom icon, even after edits have been made to the code?

I followed your exact same procedure and found the exact same problem on operating system Sierra as well. After trying a few things I decided (in addition to changing the main Applications icon in the get info window) to do the exact same thing in the get info window of the applet.icns file and change it's icon as well.  I then opened that script editor app in scripteditor and saved the file.  The new icons remained as I changed them.  Tested in script debugger also and my custom icons remained untouched.


The output of git log is sent to a pager for display, which can be configured via git config (variable name is core.pager). By default, less is used, so you may want to compare the value of $LESS on both systems.


Shortcut Keys for Moving Desktops in Mission Control in Mountain Lion 10.8.x?

Regrettably I don't believe this is possible. As you've probably noticed, there are no user-accessible options for this in System Preferences' Keyboard Shortcuts. As far as I can determine, there aren't any scriptable interfaces either (plists, Applescript). Options for building your own program seem to be pretty limited as well, according to a mailing list post I found. The most you seem to be able to do programmatically is get the current number of open spaces.

The only way to possibly do this without some serious OS X hacking is to use something like Keyboard Maestro to do some GUI scripting to do the dragging for you. However GUI scripting is always a bit messy, and you'd need to account for the changing positions of the desktops, depending on how many are open, etc. I suspect that's not exactly what you were looking for, but it's probably the closest you'll get, unless someone finds something I didn't. Sorry.


Pocket's customer support gave this information to another user who had a very similar problem (albeit in 2014):

  [When an item has] been Archived or Deleted ... we attempt to remove all associated files. However, we have learned more recently that some information can be retained under certain circumstances. This is why logging out and back in dropped Pocket’s storage usage so dramatically.

Logging out and back in causes the entire local storage to be cleared, at which point only items on your List (not Archived) are re-downloaded.

They also said they were adding a way to limit storage usage as well as make cache cleanup more efficient, though that does not seem to be true in your case.


How to ignore faces permanently in iPhoto?

When you click on "search faces", you will be presented with groups of four faces. Hover with the mouse over the picture of a face, and a small circle with an "x" will appear in the top left corner. When you select this x, this face will never pop up again.

But you have to do this for every instance of that face. If you have hundreds of images with one particular person which you will not add to your known faces, you will need to click on every instance of it.


Is there any way to disable the Home button on an iPad?

iOS 6 now has a software feature to block variable parts of the screen and hardware buttons. The feature is called "Guided Access". A PIN is needed to unlock the device afterwards.

How to use Guided Access


Can AirPods be used “seamlessly” between Mac and iOS devices?

I'm an AirPods user and so far I have not found them to switch seamlessly between my 2016 MacBook Pro and iPhone 7 Plus.

The switching is manual: select AirPods on the MacBook Pro, or connect Bluetooth on the iPhone. If a call comes through on the iPhone whilst on a Skype call on the MacBook Pro, you will have to pick up on the phone.

The "simultaneous" promise, so far, is marketing BS. Maybe it will work in a future software/firmware release.


Create a Smart Mailbox with "Message is Unread" and sort it by Date Received.
I have this setup as my default mailbox for processing my email. I also have the Mail.app dock icon badge set to point to this Mailbox so I can see how much unread mail I have, though in your case this won't be an advantage.

Pro Tip. Just mark all those messages as unread read. You're never going to read them.


Lion Server: If I create two websites with the same domain name but different ports, web service won't start

The creation of __shadow.conf files might not be stopped in Lion Server.

Apache can be stopped from loading these __shadow.conf configuration files by modifying /etc/apache2/httpd.conf.

There is a section at the bottom that looks like:

<IfDefine WEBSERVICE_ON>
    Include /etc/apache2/sites/*.conf
</IfDefine>

You could change that to for eample (expand the list to match all tld's that your are hosting):

<IfDefine WEBSERVICE_ON>
    Include /etc/apache2/sites/virtual_host_global.conf
    Include /etc/apache2/sites/*_.conf
    Include /etc/apache2/sites/*.nl.conf
    Include /etc/apache2/sites/*.com.conf
</IfDefine>


Outlook notifications keep coming in spite of uninstalling app

Check your Internet Accounts in System Preferences in your Mac. Mac sure that it is deleted.


Accessing Mac's Virtual Hosts from Parallel's XP

Assuming there are no firewall issues, it may be worth double checking that you are using the correct IP address to connect to your Mac. When using Shared Networking, Parallels creates a separate sub-network that is used between Parallels and your Mac. As such, your Mac will be using a different IP address to communicate with Parallels than it will to communicate with your external/local network.

Here is an example configuration:

Mac

Local Network IP: 192.168.1.10
Parallels Network IP: 10.211.55.2

Parallels

Parallels Network IP: 10.211.55.3

Network

Parallels Default Gateway: 10.211.55.1

Because all of these IPs are non-routable, attempts to connect to your Mac using the 192.168.1.10 address will fail from Parallels. You will need to use the 10.211.55.2 address to connect to your Mac. Note that this is not the same as the Gateway address.

It is also worth pointing out that the IP address for the Parallels network is assigned via DHCP and has the potential to change. This means that you would need to change the entries in your hosts file.*

And finally, make sure that Apache is listening on the Parallels Network IP address. The default configuration should listen on all ports, but would be worth checking if you have changed the Apache configuration.

*There are instructions here to change the Parallels network adapter on the Mac to use a specific address, but this is for Tiger.


Can't connect to iCloud or iTunes on my iPad

Control if you can open Settings -> iCloud. At the top there will be your name. Click it and enter your icloud password and reach to your account. Look if any area in payment method  waiting for your update there. (red)


will running Google Latitude (or any similar app) in the background significantly affect battery life?

Specifically, the Latitude app (and other background location-updating apps) register themselves for location updates "on significant location change".

How the phone knows the location has changed significantly is when the phone does a cell tower handoff. It's moved enough that it's out of range of the tower it was talking to and its service is handed to the next tower. At that time, if any apps are registered for location updates, the phone fires up its GPS, gets its coordinates, and feeds them to those apps. Those apps then get to do a LITTLE work with what they were told.

When iOS 4 came out, I wrote a little app to play with this API. Basically it just sat in the background and recorded lat/lng for every update it got. Between my office and my house (like 10 miles) it got eight or nine sets of coordinates.

That means eight or nine times (call it once a mile or so) that the phone has to fire up the GPS chip, listen for signals from outer space, and do something with them. That obviously takes up more electricity than if it didn't have to do that.

Is it MUCH more? You know what? Not really. I charge my phone when it needs it (rather than, say, nightly), and I didn't notice it needing it more than usual when my little app was running. So my guess is that Latitude won't be a major battery suck. But it'll definitely suck some.


How can I change the modified date of a symlink?

You need to add the '-h' parameter to modify symbolic link timestamps.

In your case:

touch -mht 201202112109 "Users/scott/symlink"

Without the '-h' the timestamp of the file that is linked to is modified.


Remove menu bar and dock from external monitor?

Try setting your dock to autohide while leaving the displays with separate spaces. Also make your video playing app fullscreen before using the fullscreen feature built into the app.

This answer says that the menu bar cannot be hidden, but it shouldn't be showing up in full screen unless you place your mouse over the top of the second monitor.


What's special about /Applications on macOS Catalina?

I believe this is related to App Translocation.
Yes, it’s related to the quarantine attribute. I believe it is the act of manually moving the file (not just moving it to /Applications/) which tells macOS that it is safe to open.


How to reclaim all the space on a NAS RAID drive for us as a regular Mac drive

My (maybe educated) guess:

Your docking station (StarTech SATADOCK22UE) has a useless/faulty/old USB Bridge chipset firmware and you are hit by some double 2.2 TB barrier (=32bit block addressing error).

Depending on the firmware of the WD60EFRX it has a size of 6000527425536 B - 6001424400384  B (ref).

The 2 x 2.2 TB gpt barrier is 4398046511104 B. Disk size - 2 x 2.2 TB gpt barrier = ~1.6 TB!

Depending on the firmware and the real size of the disk you will only see ~1.6 TB in macOS.

Solution: get another external case and mount the 6 TB drive in there!


This is Clear key.

From Wikipedia:

  A Clear key, instead of a Num Lock key, on models with full numeric keypads, as these are dedicated to numeric input and not generally used for cursor control. In Unicode, the Clear key is represented by U+2327 ⌧ x in a rectangle box, defined as "clear key"


Using Carbon Copy Cloner 4 to create encrypted bootable HFS+ clones from APFS source

Here's what worked

Download the High Sierra installer from the App Store.
Run the installer, choosing the external clone disk as the target. This will automatically create a new Recovery HD partition associated with the target disk.
Reboot from the external disk. Hold down option key during startup to select the boot disk.
Enable FileVault encryption as usual from the Security & Privacy panel in System Preferences.

Additional Notes

You can reboot from your internal drive for better performance, after enabling FileVault on the external. The encryption task will continue as long as you're plugged into power and the external disk is connected.
It may take several hours, or even days, before encryption is done, depending on the volume of data to be encrypted.
You can view encryption task progress using the Terminal command diskutil cs list

What didn't work

There are some articles posted about how to clone the internal disk Recovery HD volume to any other drive, but I didn't have success with them:

$ diskutil list
/dev/disk0 (internal, physical):
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      GUID_partition_scheme                        *500.3 GB   disk0
   1:                        EFI EFI                     209.7 MB   disk0s1
   2:                 Apple_APFS Container disk1         499.4 GB   disk0s2

/dev/disk1 (synthesized):
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      APFS Container Scheme -                      +499.4 GB   disk1
                                 Physical Store disk0s2
   1:                APFS Volume Mac-HD                  431.9 GB   disk1s1
   2:                APFS Volume Preboot                 22.9 MB    disk1s2
   3:                APFS Volume Recovery                518.8 MB   disk1s3
   4:                APFS Volume VM                      2.1 GB     disk1s4

$ sudo hdiutil create ~/Desktop/Recovery_HD.dmg -srcdevice /dev/disk1s3
hdiutil: create failed - No such file or directory

I didn't find any articles that specifically addressed the case where the source disk is APFS format.


MacOS-Big Sur VirtualBox Error the virtual machine has terminated unexpectedly during startup with exit code 1 (0x1)

This worked for me
sudo su
csrutil clear
reboot

Then uninstall (from the official uninstaller) and re-install VirtualBox
If prompted, go to System Preferences - Privacy - General and accept the extensions
Reboot


They're built-into the OS. Just leave them switched off & ignore.

See how to delete extensions Youku, Tudou, etc... which pretty much says the same thing. Especially pay attention to anything Linc Davis ever says; he's the closest thing to an actual authority on the Apple forums.


App Store shows notification but no updates available

This happens occasionally, it just happened to me.  Restart your iPhone, that usually fixes it.

If not:

Log out of App Store
Restart iPhone by holding down power & home buttons
Log back in to App Store

If those don't work, download a free app.  That will often reset the counter.


I would suggest creating a new Service in Automator. Adding a service to the finder will add it in the contextual menu !

Create new service
Servicce receives selected  in
Add a run AppleScript Action
Paste the following code

Using just a simple AppleScript

on run {input, parameters}

tell application "Finder"
    set thePath to first item of input
    set ParentFolder to container of thePath
    set theFolder to (make new folder at ParentFolder)

    repeat with aFIle in input #For each file in input
        move aFIle to theFolder
    end repeat
end tell

end run

Save it and enjoy the new service by selecting your new service in the contextual menu of one of your folders.


Remove “Windows” Entry from Mac Boot Loader

Here, I assume the flash drive is the only external drive plugged into your Mac.

Use the Disk Utility to erase the flash drive. Use the options shown below.

Next, transfer the Catalina files to the flash drive.

If you do not want to erase the flash drive, then follow these steps.

Open the Disk Utility.
From the View pulldown menu on the Disk Utility main window, select Show All Devices.
Highlight the flash drive.
Note the Device. You should see diskN were N is a integer.
In a Terminal application window, enter the following command. Replace N with the integer from the previous step.

sudo diskutil mount diskNs1

Note the name of the mounted volume. Here, I will assume the name was EFI. If you get a different name, make the appropriate substitution when entering the command given below.

VOLNAME="EFI"

Enter the following commands.

rm -rf "/Volumes/$VOLNAME/EFI/Boot"
rm -rf "/Volumes/$VOLNAME/EFI/Microsoft"
diskutil unmount "$VOLNAME"


Yes, this is normal. If we assume that actively using your iPhone 4 for 30 minutes consumes 5% of its battery life, then you can use it actively for 10 hours. The iPhone 4 supports up to 10 hours of uninterrupted video playback OR up to 7 hours of talk time on 3G OR up to 6 hours of Internet use on 3G, for example. Your experience with your iPhone 4 sounds reasonable.


What's your favorite multi - editor on OS X?

BBEdit's latest release is REALLY good. I first encountered BB way back in the day on OS7, and it was more editor than I needed at the time, and it only confused me. Since then I've become a much heavier-duty text editor user, and when they brought out a new release a couple months ago I pulled the trigger.

It's EXCELLENT. Every feature I've wanted, it's had for me, waiting to discover. Can't recommend it highly enough. You can find it on the App Store.


How to change charger LED color on MacBook Air

I don't think that it could be possible to "change the color" of charger plug led easily without destroying it. It's hardwired. If you are good enough to work with soldering iron under microscope you could.

Here is a teardown: http://www.cqdx.ru/ham/do-it-yourself/diy-repair-the-mac-book-pro-l-type-power-supply-plug/


Is there a way to export iPhone slideshow to PC?

If you really really want it you can try a third-party app called, CoolPixel. It will let you record the slideshow as it plays. However, I am not sure of any issues that may arise from using it. (It's not in the App Store yet), but I have used it for a year now and I haven't noticed anything wrong with it. Try it at your own risk, though.


All usb c ports are working flawlessly but charging keeps flickering on and off in irregular basis

It turned out that the circuity of the power adaptor has some defects. Changed it and everything is working perfectly now.


Impacts on Hard Drive when boot externally in MacBook Pro

If I understand you correctly, you have removed the internal hard drive from you MacBook Pro and inserted it into an external caddy. When used like this, the performance of the hard drive is much better. It sounds like the internal SATA cable is damaged.

There should be no issue with using an external bootable disk. While typically the performance of an external connection is slower than using an internal connection, your case is an exception.

As you said, keep the connection to the disk secure. If the disk is disconnected before shutting down, it could lead to file corruption, volume corruption, or other data loss.

To make sure it finds the disk easily during boot, I’d recommend:

  Connect the external disk before powering on the Mac arch time.
  Select the external disk as the default boot volume in System Preferences > Start Up Disk (you may need to unlock the padlock before you can select th disk).

Finally, I would recommend contacting Apple Support. If covered by warenty, AppleCare, or Consumer Law, service may be free. Also, if a repair program is available for this issue, it could also cover the cost of repair.


So the Save... dialog box is not as tall as it used to be?

Apple hides the directory structure by default when you first go to save a document and points you to the ~/Documents directory.

To get the listing back click on the downward pointing arrow to the immediate right of the "Save..." or "Save As..." filename. That will expand the dialog box to show the directory structure and allow you to navigate to where you want to go.

Downward pointing arrow location:


How can I enable SNMP on latest Time Capsule 802.11ac?

Neither the AirPort Extreme 802.11ac nor the AirPort Time Capsule 802.11ac appear to support SNMP or syslog data to maintain or monitor these devices.

You'd have to load some custom firmware or discover an older management tool that can convince them to configure either of those services. Nothing I can find from Apple shows that either functionality remains on the current AirPort line of hardware.