How to change JAVA_HOME with a Bash script

When you are executing a script, you are creating a new process off the interactive shell that lives for the length of your script.

By default this child process inherits your interactive shell environment, and you can alter/modify it. So the contents of the JAVA_HOME environment is altered in the child process, but the child process can't affect the environment of the parent process in your interactive shell.

You can setup the environment for your interactive shell in various places depending on the shell (~/.bash_profile is one for bash as you alluded to in your question).  See the linked answer in the comment to your question for the best way to 'permanently set' environment values.


It seems to me that if your okay with the work being done on Macs, the starting point would be to check out Apple's own iBooks Author (free, app store). It has a variety of layout choices and distributes through the iBookstore (including at a price of free, if that's what you want). I'm not exactly sure what you mean by "there's no revenue model" but this sounds most promising to me.


Can I remove one partition on an external drive, while keeping the other intact?

Disk Utility can't do it, but iPartition can - http://www.coriolis-systems.com/iPartition.php

Tested on both GUID & MBR formatted drives.


How can I archive automatically on reply in mail?

Apple's Mail.app doesnt have a feature to toggle for this, but you /can/ do this in Sparrow.

Sparrow has a lite version that might suit your needs, but the full version does what you ask.


6GB of "other" on my iPhone 3GS, should I do a clean install of ios?

You can remove all settings and information from your iPhone using "Erase All Content and Settings" in Settings > General > Reset.

If that doesn't help you can also try the same from iTunes, see here for details.

Connect your iPhone to your computer
Select it when it appears under Devices
Select the Summary tab, and click the Restore button
verify to reset to factory settings and erase all data

Afterwards you can restore your data again from a previous backup in iTunes.


Sharing Internet with Mac and Buffalo WHR-HP-G54?

Short answer: you're doing it wrong.

The Buffalo device you've got is a wifi router. Normally this kind of thing sits between your cable modem (or whatever you've got connected to the wall) and the rest of your home network, and redistributes your Internet connection to multiple devices in your home.

If you turn on "internet sharing" on your Mac, you're essentially turning your mac into a wifi router as well. There is no reason to do this. And you're probably creating a "double-NATing" situation as well, which is undesirable.  I'm not sure how you've got your network wired up physically, but that could be part of the problem too, I imagine.

So, in short, either get rid of the Buffalo entirely and rely on your Mac's internet sharing to do the same thing, or use the Buffalo to distribute your Internet connection and turn off Internet sharing on your Mac. I would do the latter. So your setup should look like this:

Wall socket -- Cable Modem -- Buffalo -- Computer
                                      -- Another Computer
                                      -- Yet Another Computer

This is the case both on a physical level and on a logical level—the Buffalo sits "upstream" of your computers in terms of networks traffic, whether it connects to them over an Ethernet cable or wifi.


Will Safari 7.0 run on OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard?

No: Snow Leopard runs Safari 5.1.10 at the newest (via and also).

I recommend using Chrome or Firefox if you downgrade back to Snow Leopard. There are messages that Chrome and Firefox no longer support Leopard, but both seem to still support Snow Leopard.


Are there any car stereos out there that support AirPlay?

AirPlay works over UDP and it requires that both the sender and receiver device exist on the same TCP/IP-based network. That's generally not possible in your car because you aren't running an 802.11-based wireless network in that space.

For wireless audio streaming in your automobile you want to look for a head unit that  supports the Advanced Audio Distribution Profile (A2DP). This is a BlueTooth spec that lets two BT-enabled devices exchange high quality audio streams. Your iDevice supports it, you just need an A2DP compatible head unit and you can stream your music to your car system without any wires.

Happily, there are many head units that support A2DP on the market today, both aftermarket and OEM.


Extract .zip directly to external hard drive

Terminal (Hackers way)

Open the Terminal.app  (Hidden in Applications -> Utilities -> Terminal) and Navigate with cd to your Folder where the zip file is stored.

Example:

cd ~/Desktop/

And extract the ZIP file with the OSX command line tool unzip

unzip /path/to/the/archive.zip -d /Volumes/USB_Drive/

the -d switch let you set the extraction Archive - the second path is your external HDD - you may have to change the name USB_Drive (Tipp: Type /Volumes/ and the hit the Tab-Key twice to see all Volumes.

Software

Keka

I know the Software Kea.app where you can specify in the Setting a custom folder for the extracted folders.

StuffitExpander

Also StuffitExpander will let you choose for every extraction the location in a Finder Window

I hope it helps - and happy extracting


Notifications and quick settings panes stop working on iPhone

This sounds like a software fault, the best solution is to backup and reinstall our phone.

This guide on Apple.com will explain how.


Do I need to upgrade iOS before creating backup to be restored onto new iPhone?

No - you should probably always backup before any upgrade just in case the upgrade fails. I would get a backup as soon as you can in general as well as in specific when you are about to move or upgrade.

The good thing about your situation is the iPhone X and iOS 11 setup assistant will remind you to make a backup of the old device and even let you start the setup and wait for the other backup to complete.

Getting a backup now is good since backups to iCloud and backups to iTunes tend to be incremental so they save several backups and the next backup will just need to save changed data and often completes very quickly.

The only time you might consider upgrading is if you have a really old version of iOS and skipped several major versions. I do like always updating right before a transfer since sometimes minor updates fix issues with setup so you can skip those bugs by updating everything after you have a good foundation backup.


After using a virus scanner to clean my Mac, it will no longer start

Since we do not know what was deleted, I suggest you

Press Command-R during startup

That will start from the OS X Recovery System

to repair your OS.


OS X remote sharing without needing to install an app on the client

In Yosemite (not sure about other versions) there is a Screen Sharing function built into Messages, if you get the iMessage addresses of your team you'll be able to screen share with them. This can be done manually with the built-in Screen Share app, but isn't nearly as easy and convenient as just clicking on them then hitting Share Screen in a Messages conversation.


plistbuddy command value from csv, search and insert

Here's a three-line shell script for bash. Assume the CSV file is named hosts.csv.

h=`hostname -s`
c=`sed -nE -e "/^$h, ?/s/^.+, ?//p" hosts.csv`
/usr/libexec/PlistBuddy -c "Set :2ndfloor:com.apple.print.preset.settings:ManagementCodeValue $c" ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.print.custompresets.forprinter.CMI2ndFloorColor.plist

The script sets the shell variables $h to the host name, and $c to the code that matches the host. Get the name of the host from the hostname command. Use $c in place of the value "1001" in the PlistBuddy command.

By default the hostname command returns domain information. Therefore if the CSV file has host names without domain information, use h=`hostname -s`, otherwise use h=`hostname`.

The sed command matches a line from the CSV file that starts with the $h host name followed by a comma and an optional space character. For the line that matches, sed removes everything but the code from the line.


Permissions of User directory are wrong after manual restore

The right command for changing the owner is chown

$ chown owner:[group] file_name

you can type the following line for retrieving more information

$ man chown

You can also try to run Disk Utility, wihch provide a tool for fixing the wrong Disk Permissions.

Open Disk Utility
Select your HD
Click Verify Disk Permissions
After looking at the result you can run Repair Disk Permissions


Is there a toggle for zoom/bigger text in OS X?

There's no direct equivalent in OS X - the closest is probably to simply decrease the resolution.

TinkerTool has options to change system and application font defaults, but doing so may cause application or OS crashes.


What setup to use with in a famliy with 2 (or 3) Persons?

You need to understand that an Apple ID is not (or may not be) the same as an iCloud Account, which is not (or may not be) the same as an iTunes Store Account. An Apple ID is the credential set you use for accessing various services by Apple. Once you have an Apple ID, you can associate it with different services from Apple.

Anyone can create an Apple ID by visiting My Apple ID. Once you have an Apple ID (or more), you can choose how you would wish to use it.

For your case, you need three Apple IDs to keep things simple:

One Apple ID shared between all the members of your family for content purchases from the iTunes and App Stores
One individual Apple ID for your wife for iCloud, iMessage and FaceTime
One individual Apple ID for you for iCloud, iMessage and FaceTime

Here's how you would use these Apple IDs on the devices and PCs:

iTunes Store Purchases - In the case of a family (and specifically for you), you would have one Apple ID whose credentials are known by all family members so that all content purchased from the iTunes and App Stores can be shared across all devices.

You configure this on your iPhone, your wife's iPhone and your infant's iPod Touch under Settings > iTunes & App Stores menu option.
You configure this in iTunes on your PC as well as on your wife's PC from the Store > Sign In... menu option.

iCloud Services - In almost every case, this would be an individual Apple ID so that Find My iPhone, Mail, Calendar, Reminders, etc., are segregated by user.

You configure your Apple ID on your iPhone under Settings > iCloud.
Your wife would configure her Apple ID on her iPhone under Settings > iCloud.
You do not configure this in iTunes on the PCs. However, if you use the iCloud Control Panel for Windows, you can configure it there.
You do not configure this for your infant at this point in time.

iMessage - In almost every case, this would be an individual Apple ID so that each person receives and manages messages intended for that person.

You configure your Apple ID on your iPhone under Settings > Messages.
Your wife would configure her Apple ID on her iPhone under Settings > Messages.
You do not configure this anywhere on your PCs.
You do not configure this for your infant at this point in time.

FaceTime - To avoid confusion, this would be an individual Apple ID for each person.

You configure your Apple ID on your iPhone under Settings > FaceTime.
Your wife would configure her Apple ID on her iPhone under Settings > FaceTime.
You do not configure this anywhere on your PCs.
You do not configure this for your infant at this point in time.

On content sharing between devices, you can use an account with up to 10 devices. Here's what iLounge says based on Apple's policy about "More than five family devices sharing a single iTunes account":

  Actually, the limit of five devices per iTunes Store account only applies to authorizations for computers using iTunes. Apple actually allows you to have up to ten devices authorized in total for features such as iTunes Match and re-downloading previous purchases from iTunes in the Cloud, up to five of which can be computers running iTunes. So in other words, you could have anywhere from 10 iOS devices and no computers up to five computers and five iOS devices or any combination in between. You can view the number of devices that have been authorized for these features by going into your iTunes Store account information from within iTunes and choosing the Manage Devices option.

To share calendars, see iCloud: Share a calendar with others.
To share reminders, see iCloud: Share a reminder list.


How to find a telephone number strored in contacts by searching for a substring on iPhone

There is an app for that. :-)

One of the first apps I installed: Contact by Number.

Actually, there are a few others, and this one hasn't been updated since 2008, but it does what you want and has served me well.


USB device drawing too much power resulting in whining fan noise

Try resetting the SMC -- Apple recommends this if you are experiencing, among other things, fan and power issues, as well as slowdowns:

http://support.apple.com/kb/HT3964


Can I buy a refurbished Macbook in the offline London Apple Store

In the United States you cannot buy a refurbished product and have it shipped for in-store pickup. Have you tried to see if you can do that through the UK online store?

In general the retail stores stock a subset of all of the standard models in some cases they even stock custom build versions that are popular in that specific location. Also, refurbished products are so limited compared to the normal production that it all gets held at central shipping locations and you can only buy it online. I have heard of businesses ordering tens or dozens of Macs when there's enough inventory for refurbished products, but you would then be working with a business specialist in that case to work up your quote and they could answer all of your questions during the pre-sales discussion.

You could try looking up the contact information for the specific store you intended to shop: http://www.apple.com/retail/storelist/

My understanding, is that the stores are staffed to handle the people that walk in physically as opposed to field phone calls and email messages from potential shoppers. That being said, a polite email or short call might be worth your time to gather information about refurbished products in that specific market.

Either way, you should go visit the stores in London for I hear they are amazing to witness in person.


System restore macbook air with broken screen?

You should be able to connect it to an external monitor.  All you need to do (in principle) is this:

Close lid, let computer go to sleep
Connect both the power supply and external monitor

About a second after you connect the external monitor, it should wake up and direct all output to the external monitor.  (It will only do this if the lid is closed, external power is connected, and something is connected to the video output port.)

Note that depending on the speed of your computer and other factors, it may take a little while for anything to show up on the screen.  Give it at least a minute if you don't see anything at first, before assuming something didn't work.


How to setup OS X Server to not to be accessed via localhost, but other different host?

I think that the issue may be that both MAMP and OS X Apache (VIA the Server.app) are both listening on the default port 80. If you use SCUTIL to set the host name it will change the hostname for all servers on that Mac, I believe.

What I would do is check the settings in MAMP and make sure it is not listening on port 80 and if it is change it to something else. I believe if you restore defaults it will listen on a different port. Then you will have two independent web servers each listening on a different port. The server.app web server will listen on port 80 and MAMP on whatever port it is set to.

Now you can get to the MAMP site by adding a colon and the port number after localhost. Assuming MAMP is set to port 8080 it would look like this:

http://localhost:8080

and for the server.app server instance:

http://localhost

If you don't specify a port, it defaults to port 80.


iPhone/iPad lock screen as a digital message board

Currently, apps cannot change the wallpaper as you describe. I do not believe it's possible for wallpaper to be synced between devices, either. (You can sync the photos being used, but I don't believe you can sync the choice of wallpaper.)


Use of the requested audio unit(s) require lowering the security settings

I have come across one (!) reply on the Apple boards.

I want anyone who reads this to take it with a grain of caution. This 'answer' does not seem to ring as '110%' accurate.

  You are using a Codec component that is not compatible with macOS Sierra. That Codec component was a part of a library that conflicts with macOS Sierra and in order for Quicktime to load would require to change the "Quick Look UI Helper" security settings. If you really need that Codec component you can proceed by clicking "Quick Look UI Helper" Lower Security Settings.

(Here's the link; https://discussions.apple.com/thread/7948198?start=0&tstart=0)


Download 'El Capitan', 'Mavericks' or 'Yosemite' from external link

If you've updated your MacBook Pro with the newest firmware update you may start to Internet Recovery Mode and reinstall the original OS X (probably Lion).

Install your new HDD
Detach any external drive (especially any 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.
In the opening window choose Disk Utility.
Partition your drive: 1 (or more) partition, GUID partition table, Journaled HFS+.
Quit Disk Utility and open Restore OS X
Choose your new volume to install OS X there.
After successfully installing and configuring OS X, open App Store and install the latest OS X (El Capitan).


I noticed in the debug output that there is mention of port '22' even though I specified '2222'. It like you need to put a '-p' flag in when using terminal:

  ssh -p 2222 myname@xx.xx.xx.xx

This seems a bit weird as with other terminals I was using:

  ssh myname@xx.xx.xx.xx:2222


What are pros and cons for installing apps natively vs. through MacPorts?

Installing Natively

If the developer releases pre-built binaries for your OS, then this will likely be the quickest, easiest and most up-to-date (in terms of the application itself) method of getting an application. This relies on the developer (or some trusted third party) to be keeping the builds up to date with changes in both the application and in Mac OS X (e.g. rebuilding against the latest Mac OS X SDKs as they are released).

One downside is you are trusting whoever built it not to have maliciously modified the source before doing so, and/or whoever is hosting/mirroring the download not to have done the same. Generally a non-issue, but that's why there are often MD5 checksums for downloads.

A possible downside is that you don't have control over which version of any dependencies the developer builds against (e.g. for things like Python, or the C++ STL, or OpenSSL). For example, if they build against native Mac OS X SDKs, these are generally a little behind the current versions of most libraries. They do get updates, but not necessarily very quickly (except in some critical security situations), as Apple need to do their own QA/testing before they can include updates to libraries they bundle with the system.

Some developers may include the latest libraries in their application bundle, especially if they rely on new features of said library which haven't yet made it into the base Mac OS X set. Basically, you can't control this, so it may/may not be a downside.

Building from Source Manually

This might come under 'installing natively', since its not macports as such, but basically means getting the latest source, and building it yourself against 'native' Mac OS X SDKs and/or your choice of versions of dependencies.

Advantages are that you're going to be building on your system, for your system, so all dependencies match your runtime environment and are the version of your choosing (e.g. recently updated to latest source to include bug fixes and security patches). Of course the obvious downside is you need to make sure you have all those dependencies (YMMV depending on the project).

You're also not needing to trust someone else's binary build (though you still want to make sure you've got the 'official' source code, without any chances of malicious modifications!).

Compared to installing from binaries:

Pro: You get more control of dependencies, you can choose to use the Mac OS X bundled libraries or your own builds of them (e.g. for things like Python, OpenSSL, libstdc, etc)  ...
Con: ... but you have to manage the dependencies (obtain/configure/build/install), especially if there's no in-built version at all.
Pro: Runtime dependencies are definitely compatible, because you built against them...
Con: ... unless you change them later for another project!
Pro: You aren't blindly trusting someone else's binary build...
Con: ... but it may take much longer to build from source than simply downloading binaries

Installing from MacPorts

This is typically much like building from source, but much of it is scripted and tested by thousands of others, so you tend to have fewer issues getting projects to build. Further, MacPorts keeps track of all the projects you build, and their versions, and makes it really easy to check what's out of date, upgrade to new versions, switch between versions, etc.

Of course you're relying on the application/dependencies to be in MacPorts, which requires someone (possibly even you!!), to have made a MacPorts project for it. Also you're relying on the MacPorts project to be kept up-to-date with the original application, and likewise for the dependencies. If the MacPorts scripts aren't updated when new versions of the source are released, you won't get access to them.

Compared to Installing Natively from Binaries

Pro: You're possibly not relying on someone else's binary build (or if you are, it's at least checksum tested) ...
Con: ... but you may have to wait while MacPorts builds your project.
Pro: You will often have more current versions of dependencies than are shipped with Mac OS X ...
Con: ... but MacPorts will need to update/build them as you go, which can take a while.
Pro: MacPorts will often have newer versions of system libraries than Mac OS X...
Con: ... but this means it must build & install a second version of many base libraries, whether they're strictly needed or not.

Compared to building from source yourself

Pro: It's often much easier, just typing a single command, than obtaining/configuring/building/installing various dependencies ...
Pro: And MacPorts keeps track of all your versions, so its easier to make sure all your applications that rely on some common dependency are updated when you update it ...
Con: ... But in all cases, you're at the mercy of the port maintainers to keep ports updated, so it might be a little (or a lot!) behind some official releases of applications/libraries.
Con: ... And you can't choose between the Mac OS X bundled system libraries vs MacPorts re-building those libraries; it always builds its own if they're open source.


Partition Type : FFFFFFFF-FFFF-FFFF-FFFF-FFFFFFFFFFFF

The issue was fixed based on this answer: OS volume shows as type 'FFFFFFFF-FFFF-FFFF-FFFF-FFFFFFFFFFFF'

It's unclear why the partition type was changed. On the original boot drive (disk0) Yosemite is installed. On the second "broken" drive (diisk1) an APFS partition was detected with the sudo dd if=/dev/disk1s2 count=3 | hexdump method from the linked answer.

After removing the second partition on drive1 with sudo gpt remove -i 2 disk1 the MBR blocked adding the partition with the proper type. So the gpt had to be destroyed:

sudo gpt -r show disk1 #get the details
sudo gpt destroy disk1
sudo gpt create -f disk1 #create a new partition table

Adding all previous partitions with the proper types:

sudo gpt add -i 1 -b 40 -s 409600 -t C12A7328-F81F-11D2-BA4B-00A0C93EC93B disk1
sudo gpt add -i 2 -b 409640 -s 820115416 -t 7C3457EF-0000-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC disk1
sudo gpt add -i 3 -b 820525056 -s 156248064 -t EBD0A0A2-B9E5-4433-87C0-68B6B72699C7 disk1

Verify the disk:

diskutil verifyDisk disk1

Since the version of the boot system is 10.10.5 (Yosemite) which can't deal with APFS volumes, it wasn't possible to verify the volume.

Further similar questions (and solutions) on this site suggest that the problem is related to the SIP protected MBR. Yosemite doesn't recognize SIP protected items but newer systems do. Here it was possible to kill the MBR, but on newer systems SIP has to be disabled.


Mac Mail - move IMAP message to Exchange folder

I don't know what is causing the error, but I can tell you where on the filesystem you can find your messages. Perhaps you can move them manually in Finder?

The default location for mailboxes is:

~/Library/Mail/V2/

in Finder, choose Go To Folder from the GO menu or use the shortcut ⬆⌘G and paste that path into the dialog box.  That folder should contain folders for each of your mail accounts, each containing mailbox folders with labels like INBOX.mbox which are simply folders themselves. You'll likely have to traverse down several levels of folders with arbitrary names before you reach a Data folder containing a Messages folder which is where you will finally find your email messages. Hope that helps you out.


If you replace the "Display Webpages" task with a "Run AppleScript" task you can control what it does (i.e. add a delay)... I've posted sample code here:

https://discussions.apple.com/message/27244343?ac_cid=op123456


iOS Photos app: Inappropriate photo on People & Places section under Albums

Assuming this is coming from "people" and not "places"
In Photos, tap on the "People" and scroll until you find that person. (It may be aonther picture than the annoying one) Tap on the person and then tap the "..." in the top right corner. Then select Remove from People Album.

If that is too drastic, "Unfavorite This Person" might work if they are showing up because they have been favorited."

Finally, if neither of those works, (or you don't want to do them), you can open Photos on your mac (assuming you have one) and see if the image still exists there to be deleted.


Better way to create signature for preview than holding a paper in front of the camera

It can't be done directly.

Best authority I can find to back up this statement is Linc Davis, on the Apple Support Communities. - https://discussions.apple.com/thread/3667416

It is possible to create one that way in Acrobat Pro/DC, but I'm not then certain if that would then also work in Preview. It would depend if Acrobat creates the signature as a true Keychain Signature item.

It's not clear from Acrobat Help /
Sign PDF documents but implies Adobe use their own cloud service to keep tabs on signatures rather than the Keychain.


Can the stand in a Mid-2011 21.5" iMac be removed?

iFixIt.com have some of the best step-by-step guides for repairs on just about any Apple device.

I found their guide for removing the stand of your iMac here:
https://www.ifixit.com/Guide/iMac+Intel+21.5-Inch+EMC+2389+Stand+Replacement/113471

I see it as a little bonus that it's based on steps - that way you don't have to pause the video multiple times.

Good luck!


Is it possible to make Finder order on modified at, recursively?

Solved it by creating a script which watches for file writes and touches the written file's parent to update its modified timestamp.

fswatch is needed too watch for writes.
Install through homebrew with brew install fswatch.

Then follow https://stackoverflow.com/questions/6442364/running-script-upon-login-mac/6445525#6445525
TL;DR

Start Automator.app
Cmd + N
Add "Run shell script" (from the Actions/Utilities)
Copy-and-paste your script into the window

fswatch -0 ~/ | while read -d "" event do touch -cm $(dirname ${event}); done

You can modify ~/ to a path of your liking.
Save it as touch_parent.app
Go to System Preferences → Accounts → Login items
Add touch_parent.app

Next time you restart it will start the script


Can I run iPhone apps on iPad Mini 3 using iPhone 6 compatibility?

Nope iPads can't run as iPhones. An iPhone app on iPad will run with compatibility mode (which is has not exactly the same behaviour as an iPhone). You'll have to test it either with a real iPhone or with the simulator.


Is there a way to display how much of the hard drive's read/write capacity is being used?

You're reading exactly what you want. A percentage throughput would not give you more information, just less accurate information as to the state of your I/O. Your drive should be pushing about 150MB/s at the most (Spinny disks aren't too fast in general, and worse when mostly used).

I am interested in helping with your main issue of slow and choppy HDD performance. If this is a MacBook or MacBook Pro unibody non-retina, you may have a degraded SATA cable. My first one went out after 2.5yrs in a 2012 MBP. A friends' went bad after five years in her 2010 MBP. It's very common across the support forums too. If you feel data access has gotten slower, or you've started having issues with freezing, spinning beach balls, and/or crashes and reboots, swap the cable before the drive, or both together. Not changing the cable led to my frustration over the slowness of two day shipping twice too often now.


Can't swap two columns in a Numbers table by clicking and dragging

If you have already tried clicking and dragging on a row/column header without any success, it might be because a cell in in the row/column you are trying to drag has been merged with a row or column which you aren't dragging (note: this cell may be hidden, and it still will not work). This will cause clicking and dragging to fail (without any feedback to hint that it is failing because of that reason).

This might have been why you were unable to switch rows.


iMessage only works between apple devices. If you were using an iPhone it would be able to use SMS instead of iMessage when the other person has a non iOS device, but since you are using an iPad you can't contact them.


Turn off Lock Screen notifications completely, notifications keeps showing even when disabled

What you're trying to do is actually quite simple, but you will have to do it individually for each app. First, make sure you have the latest release of iOS 8 (this is not completely necessary, but recommended). Next, go to the Settings app and scroll down until you find the application you want to disable notifications for on the lock screen.

Now, click that cell and scroll down on the presented screen for "Notifications"

Now, on this screen there is a slide that says "Show in Lock Screen". Disable this (like this):

Now you're finished! Let me know if this does not work for any reason.


How do i find my WiFi password when i am already connected but it doesnt show

At present, there is no way to find out, but I am offering this as an answer anyway despite it being covered by the linked answer:

1) If you have a Mac connected to the same network, you can find the stored password in it's Keychain

2) If the router is an Apple Airport based device, you may be able to log straight into it via Airport Utility (available on Mac and iOS) to see the password at source

3) If you are patient, you can wait for iOS7 to be released, which will include Keychain Syncing, allowing the stored password on your iPad to be synced elsewhere, giving you potential to then read it in your Keychain as per point 1.


From the errors given, it sounds like it's more about setting the NVRAM than the startup disk itself.  Clear the NVRAM (previously referred to as PRAM; reboot holding command-option-P-R until you hear a second chime) and see if the problem works itself out.


How do I merge keywords in Apple Photos?

From this Apple Discussion:

  To merge two keywords "key1" and key2" I would create a smart album with the rule "keyword is key1" or "keyword is key2". Then assign the new merged keyword to the photos in this smart album.
  And then delete both old keywords in the edit mode of the keyword manager.
  It is no problem to create a temporary smart album with "File > new smart album" for the search and to delete it when you are done. I keep one smart album that I always use for searching.

  If you are using iCloud Photo Library this may result in a very long period of syncing, if you have to change the keyword in many photos.


How do I change an Application Icon in the Applications Folder?

Is is a normal behavior for downloaded applications.

After having started the application one time and accepted to open it - log out and back in.


How to make Mac Terminal restore working directories when restarting

(For reference, we’re talking about the Resume feature of Mac OS X Lion 10.7 and later.)

Terminal automatically restores the working directory if you’re using the default shell, bash. If you’re using some other shell, you’ll need to adapt the code in /etc/bashrc to send an escape sequence to communicate the working directory to Terminal so it can restore the directory later for Resume. If you’re using zsh, see my answer to Resume Zsh-Terminal (OS X Lion), in which I include the appropriate code for zsh.

If you have a custom ~/.bash_profile or ~/.bashrc you may need to ensure that you’re not undoing the default behavior by modifying /etc/bashrc’s customizations. In particular, it sets the PROMPT_COMMAND environment variable to send the escape sequence at each prompt. If you customize that variable, you’ll need to prefix or append your code to the current value, e.g.:

PROMPT_COMMAND="<your code here>;$PROMPT_COMMAND"

Also, generally, ~/.bash_profile should execute ~/.bashrc:

if [ -f ~/.bashrc ]; then
    . ~/.bashrc
fi


Cannot Erase a 64Gb exFat SD Card with Disk Utility | OS Mojave

SD cards frequently have a read-only switch. Perhaps this is on.


What type of partition will be created by Boot Camp Assistant?

Boot Camp Assistant creates a FAT32 formatted partition, not a blank partition. The OS installer you use will reformat the partition, most likely to NTFS if you are using a recent Windows installer.


app that reminds to take a break at times

There is one such tool I know, called (unsurprisingly) Time Out. It's free as in beer and seems to be well-maintained.


How does time machine handle iMovie libraries?

All Apple iLife and iWork apps are optimized for storage to make Time Machine run well.

When you see a 50 GB library in finder, you can control click and show package contents. The "library" is a highly ordered collection of files, so when you are editing clips and effects and assembling a project, only the small changes you make are backed up each time. The large clips don't change as you add them to a project and transform them.

Be sure you don't move/ trim / edit / delete any files stored inside a package directly. That will usually break the program and require you to retrieve a backup where the database that tracks all the component files matches the files you actually have on disk.

If you're interested in the command line - the tmutil compare option is handy. As soon as a backup finishes, you can run that to see the files that change often (there are tons). Then you could open iMovie (and only iMovie) and make a small change - then rerun the tmutil compare to convince yourself that small file changes mean small incremental writes the next time a backup starts.


Why Apple watch Nike+ is in same price as normal watch?

The Apple Watch Series 3 and Nike+ Edition are exactly the same hardware, just different bands and some preloaded software (which you can manually install on a plain Apple Watch).  It's the same price because it's essentially the same hardware in the box

From Apple Insider:

  Last year's Nike+ Apple Watch Series 3 wasn't much different from the
  standard version making it a bit tough to choose between the two
  models.

What's different with Series 4....

Not available in Gold or Stainless Steel
Nike exclusive faces that immediately take you to "complications" in the Nike Training App
Nike specific bands (reflective) geared toward training (can't buy separately from Apple's website; off of eBay, well that a different story)


How to stop autocorrect from putting a space after it corrects a word

If the autocorrect word is highlighted, then you can also accept it by just tapping Space. If you double-tap Space, it will accept and insert the stop, same as a regular word.

After question edits: this also works if you type any punctuation, bracket, question mark etc.


If I understand the question correctly all you need is to get the current directory of the application.
Quick looking through SE answers pulls out this:

  set YourPathVariable to POSIX path of ((path to me as text) & "::")


Specify Minimum Font Size in Safari 10.0, macOS Sierra

use

defaults write com.apple.Safari com.apple.Safari.ContentPageGroupIdentifier.WebKit2MinimumFontSize -int 14

… restart Safari, be happy again! (replace 14 with whatever suits you)

edit: as OP said, paste the line into terminal, sorry for omitting this initially!


I have the exact same model and had the same issue.

Originally, I took the generic troubleshooting steps (reset SMC, unplug let sit, etc.). Didn't work. I then used isopropyl alcohol to clean both the magsafe adapter pins and the magsafe input on the machine. Ran the test again (multiple times) and no error occurred. This was a temporary solution.

A few weeks later, it occurred again so I opened a case # with Apple and took it into the Apple Store Genius Bar. The machine passed Apple's in-house diagnostics. They swapped out the Magsafe charger with a new one and the issue is yet to re-occur (been ~3 weeks).

I asked them the same question about the battery and they did not give me an answer (they don't "speculate"). I assume, however, that if it's incorrectly charging the battery for many cycles, the battery would be affected.

In short, temporary fix = isopropyl alcohol to clean the pins on adapter itself and in MBP. Actual fix = defective charger/hub, both of which covered under Warranty. Go to Apple for definitive diagnosis and receive either new charger or get machine serviced.

Also: it's completely normal for the adapter to get very hot when connected to the machine and charging.


How to fix my partition table after messing it up trying to install Linux Mint

You first have to remove the swap partition and the visible Recovery HD with gpt and then you will be able to resize your Macintosh HD with Disk Utility.

Boot to Internet Recovery Mode by pushing altcmdR while booting.

Then open Terminal.app and enter (assuming disk0 is your main disk):

gpt -r show /dev/disk0

Unmount your main disk with:

diskutil umountDisk disk0

First remove the Linux swap partition with:

gpt remove -i 5 disk0

(which means: remove the partition with the index number 5 on disk0).

and then the Recovery HD with the GUID 48465300-0000-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC:

gpt remove -i 4 disk0

The Recovery HD with the GUID 426F6F74-0000-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC is the proper one. Don't delete this one.

Finally remount disk0, quit Terminal, open Disk Utility, verify/repair your main volume "Macintosh HD" and finally expand it to the full size of your disk with the slider.


2017 update: Display P3 Macs will display incorrect colours if you use the strategy below. I should write more about the setup required for the 5K iMacs and 2016 MacBook Pros.

You're well on track if you use "Don't Color Manage This Document" for your PSDs. That's part of the issue solved. And by disabling "Convert to sRGB" in the Save For Web window, you've solved another big issue (profile conversion on export shifting colours).

Emailing photos isn't really the best way to do on device previews though. If you can, use something else (there's a few apps that do it).

iOS devices have a gamma that's identical to OS X and Windows, so the main difference you're seeing is a difference in the display and their profile. Do not listen to anyone who thinks you should be assigning a colour profile in Photoshop or trying to saving colour profiles in exported images — they don't know what they're talking about. PNGs and other image formats have their embedded colour profiles ignored by iOS at runtime (in some cases, Xcode may display with colour management, so you should make sure you test on the device itself, or at the very least, in the iOS Simulator).

The real goal when designing app interfaces is to perfectly match the colours displayed on screen in Photoshop and saved in files with what’s displayed in other applications, including the iPhone Simulator. You want the colours to not just look the same, but the actual values saved into files to match the colours we defined in Photoshop perfectly.

So what you're after is for colour values entered into Photoshop (i.e. #FF0000) to remain that value on in the PSD, in the exported PNG and to be on the device, in memory as #FF0000.

It's possible and actually not that difficult.

Full instructions can be found here (I'm the author of the article, I hope it's ok to post it here):
http://bjango.com/articles/photoshop/

However, the displays found on various iOS devices (even of the same generation/type) can be subtly or quite different. The absolute best way to get good results is to do realtime device testing, using an appropriate app for that (and one that knows enough about this stuff to get it right).


You can try the following:

Go to System Preferences and manually change the date to January 1st 2016. More specifically, deselect Set date and time automatically and then manually enter the date and click Save.

After doing this, double click on the El Capitan installer and follow the prompts to install the software.

If you run into problems, a couple of additional things you can try are:

Disconnect from the internet before manually changing the date and stay disconnected until you've done the installation
Copy the installer onto the hard drive rather than running it from the USB

Let me know how you go.


Upgrades
I'll address your upgrades in the order you presented....

The iMacs from 2011 use the Intel Core i5 or i7 Sandy Bridge processors which support a maximum speed of 1333 Mhz.  (iMacs don't use the Core i7 Extreme which support 1600 MHz).    However, your particular iMac will support up to 32GB of RAM1.  My suggestion is to max out your memory.  I have used this exact 16GB kit from Crucial to upgrade my personal iMac (you will need two 16GB kits total).

Swapping out the SuperDrive for a optical bay drive caddy and making a fusion drive2 is an excellent idea.  I have done this exact thing in MacBook Pros with excellent results.  However, in the iMac, you will find a 3.5" hard drive which I would swap out for an SSD and then install a laptop hard drive instead of the SSD in the optical bay caddy.

If you haven't changed out that hard drive, keep in mind, it's going on 6 years old now which means it near the end of it's useful life.  You are taking the time and effort to do this upgrade, now is an excellent time to address the drive before it fails on you.  What you can do is get a USB drive enclosure and turn it into a Time Machine back up drive.
If you need step-by-step directions on how to do this, ifixit.com has an excellent guide.
Make a Time Machine Backup
Before doing any of this, do a Time Machine backup so that you have something to fall back on (and migrate your data from).
Do a clean macOS install.
Do a fresh install, don't restore from Time Machine.  Instead, use the Migration Assistant.  Doing a clean install will ensure that orphaned files and apps you no longer need is no longer "floating" around your system.
Before beginning your upgrade, it's a good idea to take inventory of the Apps you have and want and any custom settings.  Doing a clean install is like getting a new Mac and an excellent opportunity to evaluate your workflows and preferences.

1 EveryMac.com:  Official Max 16GB, 3rd parties have verified that it will support 32GB of RAM
2 Macworld:  How to make your own Fusion Drive


I had a similar problem with my Apple Watch series 3 (I have the LTE model)
No matter how long I charged it, it capped at 94%. So I did a simple hard reset (hold down on the side button and the crown for at least 10 seconds or until the apple logo comes up) and that seemed to fix my problem. I think it is a glitch from the most recent watchOS.


How to execute python script by terminal?

If you want to list all files/folders in a directory, you should type ls not Is. It is L, not i.

To learn python, you won't need to reach ~/.bash_profile unless you need to change versions. Just use which python or  python --version and use the syntax for the version that appears. Or use online compilers for quick testing.

Suppose you have your file learn.py at Desktop, you type cd ~/Desktop, type ls to confirm, and then to run the file as a script, type python learn.py. To enter python console, type python and use it.

Wherever your file is, you could type cd in Terminal, then drag your file into Terminal window and press Enter. Terminal will resolve the path for you.

For further help, refer to Stack Overflow.  :)

If you want to see bash profile, open Finder, type command + shift + . to reveal hidden files and then command + shift + G and type ~/.bash_profile in "Go To". But don't edit it unless required.


Ejecting USB-Partitions on boot - works but not entirely

As Harald suggested the solution is to use "diskutil eject" not unmount.

For anyone else looking at this thread, my login script looks like this:

delay 5
try
   do shell script "diskutil eject \"/Volumes/MYPARTITION\""
end try

Thanks again!


Changing the prefix part of the names

defaults write com.apple.screencapture name "My Screenshot"
killall SystemUIServer

Changing the format of the names

f=/System/Library/CoreServices/SystemUIServer.app/Contents/Resources/English.lproj/ScreenCapture.strings
f2=~/Desktop/ScreenCapture.strings
sudo cp $f $f2
sudo chown $USER $f2
plutil -convert xml1 $f2
open $f2 -a TextEdit

Change

<key>%@ %@ at %@</key>
<string>%@ %@ at %@</string>

To something like

<key>%@ %@ at %@</key>
<string>My %@ %@ at %@</string>

(The default format is currently something like Screen Shot 2012-06-12 at 8.02.40 AM depending on the locale settings.)

sudo chown root $f2
sudo cp $f2 $f
killall SystemUIServer

Changing the default location

defaults write com.apple.screencapture location ~/Pictures/
killall SystemUIServer

Using custom scripts

I've disabled the default shortcuts and have assigned shortcuts to scripts like screencapture -i ~/Desktop/`date '+%y%m%d%H%M%S'`.png.


Firefox won't access my webcam in Google Meet; will access it for other sites

It seems that Google Meet is choosing camera using it's own form, unlike the other websites (i.e. mentioned onlinemictest.com).
To access this form from the lobby:

click on the "three dots button" (⋮)
choose "Settings"
select "Video" tab
you should be able to select different WebCam, i.e. your Logitech USB WebCam


Time Machine backup taking a loooong time, is this normal?

350 GB is a lot of data, especially to transfer wirelessly. It will take a long time. In the future, only changed files will be backed up, so the backup will be much faster. To make the initial backup faster, you could try connecting the drive directly to the computer using the fastest possible port (see this question for a discussion of which ports are fastest). You will still be able to use the drive through the airport for future backups.


Is there an app that's similar to Calendar + Wunderlist?

I will suggest you the Clear App.
Is a minimal to-do app that allows you to create multiple lists and items within that lists. Furthermore, will allow you to set reminders for every item in your lists.

The app is really minimal which help you keep organised. Another feature of the app is that the higher an item or a list is in your app, then the higher the priority is and therefore the colour (first item is dark red, indicating importance and the last one yellow, indicating not that important).

Is also available for iOS (iPhone, iPad), Apple Watch and Mac OS X, and sync over iCloud to keep everything synchronized.

Is not free though, but for me is my main to-do organiser app for a long time, so for me, worth it's money.


Disabling brief low-res PDF rendering on page transitions in Preview.app

This seems to be a limitation in the underlying MacOS-wide pdf rendering library. I vaguely remember that this problem was introduced by Apple with some PDFkit rewrite (was it in 10.12?).  Before it was working just fine.  You can report this to Apple (and probably nothing will happen) here.

Exactly the same behaviour can also be observed with skim and it curiously also does not have such an option. As skim is open source you might suggest this improvement here.  Maybe the developers will tell you exactly which limitation it is.

Finally, as I'm also annoyed by this and I did not want to install any Adobe products I found that Firefox can render pdfs just fine. If you open your pdf in Firefox and go to presentation mode with ⌥⌘p. This gives me the desired result.  A functional presentation view with no rendering blur on page transition.


How can I airplay to my Apple TV without having to turn it on with the remote first?

The short answer is, that you are doing the right thing, the Apple TV should just wake up when it gets an AirPlay stream coming at it.

My Apple TV (720p) one is having similar issues, you have to wake it up to stream to it, and it has other issues.. I would suggest a factory restore which is what I am going to do.

It will loose all your preferences, but should fix the issue. Worst case you could also look at reinstalling the firmware using a Micro USB cable and iTunes on your PC or Mac.

Instructions on Apple.com for both methods


Maximum current that could be drawn out of iPhone 4 headphone Jack?

In your example of the Square Reader, it can be deceptive. I too wondered how there was power running to the headphone jack as Apple requires/uses the dock connector to charge, sync, etc. All the add-on devices use the dock and other than headphones I don't know of companies using the headphone jack. Why had no one used it before Square. Read on...

The Square reader actually takes the magnetic information from the swiped card and turns it into audio tones. These tones are then interpreted by the Square App and allow it to process the swipe like a regular credit/debit card transaction.

In my opinion, a very elegant programming solution.


how to move contacts en mass from one iCloud account to another

From Mac Contacts..

File menu > Export > Contacts Archive

then

File Menu > Import

Or from iCloud…

Prefs 'cog'
Select All
Export vCard - which will save a 'batch' vCard to your default DL location [then, irritatingly, immediately try to import it to your Mac Contacts list, so hit Cancel]

Swap iCloud accounts, then import vCard


I just upgraded to High Sierra and version 2.1.3 which is the latest, and you get get it from the App store, download it or build it yourself from Github.  Works very well, I had to add it to the startup items.  Other than that, still works.


The terminal underpinnings in OS X are the same as those used in Linux. What you are specifically looking for is commonly referred to as "Shell Scripting".

The default shell when you open Terminal.app (located in /Applications/Utilties) is the bash shell.

OS X has had a built-in shell handler accessible via Finder and other applications via the .command extension, though frustratingly not via the .sh extension. However, setting the script up to run via the Finder is even more complicated still.

Create a simple shell script, like your example I've made a Hello World application:

#!/bin/bash
echo "Hello World"

Save this file as HelloWorld.command.
Give this file permission to be executed. chmod u+x HelloWorld.command should do that.
Open the directory where you saved this file in Finder. Then double click on the HelloWorld.command file.

This will open up a terminal and execute the script, the output on my computer is the following:

  $ /Users/jason/Applications/HelloWorld.command ; exit;
  Hello World
  logout

  [Process completed]

The alternative way of executing this file is while still in the Terminal yourself, simply issue ./HelloWorld.command assuming you're in the same directory as the file.

Doing so will result in much simpler output:

  jason-mac Applications $ ./HelloWorld.command
  Hello World
  jason-mac Applications $

You've just created and executed a shell script in OS X!


iPhone SE powers on whenever moved, defective?

The iOS 10 update brought the new Raise to wake function to the iPhone 6S, 7, and SE. It's completely normal but can be annoying at times. You can disable it from Settings -> Display & Brightness -> Raise to Wake.

Learn more about Raise to Wake and disabling it.


Apple ID won't show correctly in Keychain Access

Apple stores a hash or key so that people’s accounts won’t be compromised.

You’ll need to find another place it’s stored to look up that password.


Macbook Pro Early 2011 SSD very slow when in main hardrive bay but very good via USB

The problem seems to be only with that particular SSD and Mac OS X, because it works with other SSDs. My feeling is that garbage collection or TRIM are to be blame in this case. TRIM is disabled by Apple for third party drives and ADATA SSD I had didn't have any inbuilt garbage collection.

Bought a Samsung EVO now, it has inbuilt garbage collection and doesn't necessarily need TRIM. If you have an SSD which can't do garbage collection, there are options to enable TRIM on Mac OS X, look for them and enable TRIM.


How do I download all iCloud Drive files to external hard drive?

You should turn off Optimise iCloud storage in System Preferences-> iCloud -> iCloud Drive options, before you try to copy files as per the other answer. Since you have a lot of storage(paid version), trying to copy partially downloaded files can be a mess.

Other way can be to use https://privacy.apple.com. It lets you download selected information associated with your account. I don't know which would be faster. I suggest doing both.


What are these two "Dialup Device"s that suddenly appeared on my Macbook Pro?

Most probably they appeared if you have ever connected to some other devices (other mobile phones, for instance) which shared their internet connection with you OR for charging.

Another possible reason is that someone near you has a device with the ability to create a personal Wi-Fi hotspot. Your computer is able to detect this so will add it to your list of available providers.

You can safely delete them. No, this is not dangerous and doesn't look like an attempt for hacking.

Also, check this for security: Prevent my Mac from connecting to an unsecure Wi-Fi network?


Logging out and in resets modifier keys to defaults

Uninstalled Intellitype
Restarted in safe mode (hold shift)
Use Disk Utility to Repair Permissions
Restart

Seems to have fixed the problem.  Perhaps some config file wasn't writable?  Who knows ..


Change Safari Technology Preview's interface language

Unfortunately, Safari TP does not come with any translations for the user interface.

/Applications/Safari Technology Preview.app/Contents/Resources/*.lproj
Base.lproj en.lproj

/Applications/Safari.app/Contents/Resources/*.lproj
ar.lproj Base.lproj ca.lproj cs.lproj da.lproj de.lproj el.lproj en.lproj en_AU.lproj en_GB.lproj es.lproj es_419.lproj fi.lproj fr.lproj fr_CA.lproj he.lproj hi.lproj hr.lproj hu.lproj id.lproj it.lproj ja.lproj ko.lproj ms.lproj nl.lproj no.lproj pl.lproj pt.lproj pt_PT.lproj ro.lproj ru.lproj sk.lproj sv.lproj th.lproj tr.lproj uk.lproj vi.lproj zh_CN.lproj zh_HK.lproj zh_TW.lproj

It may be possible to copy translations from Safari to Safari TP, but I have not tested this.


Actually Mail 5 (i.e. on Lion) handles Gmail much better than on previous cats.

1) There's both Archive and Delete buttons. I think the Archive button isn't visible by default. Right-click (or control-click) the toolbar to "Customize Toolbar..." and you should see the Archive button. Drag it up to your toolbar.

2) @adam-rice is correct that there's no direct analog for Labels in Mail. They are remapped to folders. If you just pretend Folders are Labels this does work pretty well. Mail does download a copy of a message for each folder/label it resides in. On previous versions of Mail this would clog up some inboxes/folders with the multiple copies. Mail 5 now recognizes and hides duplicates, though; it seems specifically designed to handle Gmail labels. In Mail's beautiful threaded conversation view you'll just see the one copy of each message, though you will see a note that it has duplicates.

With Mail 5 you can get pretty close to what you can do in the web interface. You might need to remap some keyboard shortcuts. Let Gmail's server do a lot of the heavy lifting. Go to Gmail settings>> Labels tab and check or uncheck the "show in imap" box for some inboxes/labels you don't want to see in Mail. I turn off the "All Mail" inbox and basically archive my emails out of Mail.app and keep them on the server. I also uncheck the spam inbox. Check the "important" inbox to recreate the priority inbox back in Mail.


Not able to boot into Ubuntu after Yosemite Upgrade

If your Ubuntu partition is still there, you probably need to install a rEFIt (or an equivalent) so you can choose your Ubuntu partition.

http://refit.sourceforge.net


change the command+tab and command+` behavior in Mountain Lion

You can't do that in OS X, but you can buy and install witch for that function.


OSX Mail Server Forward to External Address

In my experience this applies to Mavericks (10.9) and Yosemite (10.10) the same way that Apple says to do it for Mountain Lion.

https://support.apple.com/en-ca/HT5032

In Server.app, go to Users and select a user.
Click the gear icon (or Control-click the user name) and choose "Edit Mail Options..."
From the "Mail should be:" pop-up menu, select "forwarded".
Enter the forwarding email address in the "to email address:" field.

Additionally or alternatively, there is also a configuration file at /etc/aliases, /etc/postfix/aliases, and/or /Library/Server/Mail/Config/postfix/aliases which can be edited (using sudo) and in the area "# Put your local aliases here." you could put the line:

user: myname@gmail.com

If you want a copy to stay in the local mailbox of user you could use:

user: user,myname@gmail.com

If you want copies to go to additional accounts, they are separated by commas.

some-name: user1,user2,user3

This can be used for email addresses that do not have accounts on the machine such as webmaster or postmaster.

After saving the file, one needs to run the command:

sudo newaliases

I have done this for Mavericks Server for local email addresses, recently tested it for Yosemite Server and found that it works for external address too.

Note that individual aliases can also be added for particular users in Server.app.

Also of possible use are the notes kept by "magnusviri" about managing postfix on OS X Server (3.1.2) on Mavericks 10.9.4 - there is disussion about the different locations of configuration files between /etc, /etc/postfix, and/or /Library/Server/Mail/Config/postfix/ Only one of these three locations will be being used by your setup, so editing the "wrong" files will have no effect on the system's behaviour.

http://www.magnusviri.com/OS_X_Server/os-x-server-postfix.html


Minimum required ping time for computer on LAN?

It should take less than a millisecond to ping a host on the same physical network.  In reality, networks get busy and hosts get slow - it might take 5 milliseconds.

Like UDP, there is no guarantee that you'll receive a reply at all.


What is the difference between the WPA2 Personal, WPA and WPA2 WiFi security passcodes?

Both 'WPA' and 'WPA2' use AES to encrypt the information transiting the WiFi network, but

WPA uses something called TKIP to manage the keys used to encrypt the data. TKIP is vulnerable to attack (it's not secure) and should not be used.

WPA2 uses AES-CCMP for key management.

"WPA/WPA2 Personal", also called mixed-mode, allows negotiation of key management modes and reduces the security of the network to the lowest common denominator.

BOTTOM LINE: If you're concerned about security/privacy of information on your networks (wired and wireless) , DON'T use WPA or WPA/WPA2. Use WPA2 only. And, if you don't already know, WEP is basically the same as having no security at all.

Another poster points out that the 'Enterprise' modes send authentication requests to a server before allowing a client on the network. The two big advantages are:

central management: I don't have to set keys on every access point, and I can disable accounts of individual users. There's also traceability: I know which WiFi device belongs to which user.
much longer keys (like 2048 bit, versus 128 for 'personal'). This further decreases the likelihood that an attacker can figure out the key in the time it's in use.

The 'personal' pre-shared key ("PSK") is derived from the passphrase you type into your client, so even if PSK allowed long keys, you'd have to type a passphrase that most people would object to.


Help writing AppleScript with Mail rule to keep most recent

I don't use Mail.app and haven't much experience implementing Mail actions, so am not in the position to test your script.  However, reading through it, there are places in it of potential concern that I would wish to look to first when debugging.
How large is your "News" mailbox ?
There are two features in your script that threaten it to hang or timeout:
1. set EveryMessage to every message of TargetInbox
If that mailbox has thousands or even hundreds of emails in it, retrieving every message as a list of individually referenced message objects (which is what this statement is doing) could take some time.  It's almost always way more efficient and less intensive on processor and memory usage to store a reference to the every message object (collection):
set EveryMessage to a reference to every message of the TargetInbox

It has another beneficial feature that I'll address later.
2. Potentially demanding nested repeat loops
Nested loops are a necessary evil sometimes, but the query about the mailbox size is, again, a source of anxiety for me, especially since its called upon in at the heart of the nest where the bulk of the operations are done.  This means that, for each new message that triggers the script, every single message in the mailbox has to be checked and compared to the trigger message.
These are two branches of one issue, really, because if your mailbox only has 5 messages in it, none of this is particularly bothersome.  Otherwise, you're first getting AppleScript to retrieve every message in the mailbox and store them in a variable; then cycling through this potentially heavy load and comparing each item to another.
If you had no choice but to use a repeat loop whilst knowing that it would have to iterate through a lot of list items (once you exceed about 500 of anything, AppleScript can begin to buckle) it can help, once again, to pass AppleScript a reference to the list of items instead of the actual list.  Passing any reference through a script object (which is what a reference to essentially does), is much, much faster than making AppleScript access an object by other means.  Here's an excellent explanation and demonstration of these principles.
Simple changes and error corrections
After addressing the heavy issue above, which could turn out to be of little relevance to your particular case, here are one or two de facto elements that are easily changed to either improve the efficiency of the script, or prevent it throwing an error:
1. Placement of variable declarations
set eachSender to the sender of eachMessage

This line is currently declared inside the inner repeat loop, which also happens to be the the meatier of the two, in general hypothetical terms.  However, what this is doing is setting the value of the variable eachSender to the same value for as many messages you have in your mailbox.  That's a lot of wasted operations for AppleScript (a total of the number of these_messages multplied by the number of EveryMessage).
Instead, move it to here:
repeat with eachMessage in these_messages
    set eachSender to the sender of eachMessage  # ...now it's here
    repeat with this_message in EveryMessage
        # It was here...
        .
        .
        .
    end repeat
end repeat

Now AppleScript only has to set the variable once for eachMessage in these_message.  That's an efficiency improvement of polynomial time down to linear time!
2. set messageDate to date received of EveryMessage
Initially, I thought you were trying to access the EveryMessage object as a reference to the collection I spoke of earlier, and simply didn't realise you couldn't do that in the way you declared EveryMessage.
But, I now realise it was most likely just your hands typing faster than your thoughts, and introducing an irksome typo.  EveryMessage here ought to bethis_message, i.e.:
set messageDate to date received of this_message

This leads me quite nicely onto my final point, which I hinted at earlier, regarding the other benefit of declaring a variable to an object collection as a reference.
Had you done this:
set EveryMessage to a reference to every message of the TargetInbox

then this:
set messageDate to date received of EveryMessage

would be a perfectly valid piece of AppleScript, which allows you to access the property of every single item in a list IFF done so through a reference to that list before any sort of dereferencing has taken place.  Once it's dereferenced, list is evaluated into individual object references, and it will no longer give you the means to enumerate through its properties in that manner.
What you get if done correctly is list containing the values of the date received property of every message of the TargetInbox, all through a single line of AppleScript.
Currently, as this wasn't how you implemented it, the declaration for set messageDate will definitely throw an error.
This explains why none of the deletions are occurring, because your script will never successfully reach that part.  However, the error would occur immediately, so my feeling is the script isn't even reaching that line either, not even once.  Therefore, the problem must originate from a point in the script before it ever successfully enters the inner repeat loop.  And you already know my hunch about that.
Now for a potential solution
I'm sorry that I can't actually test my script to verify that this will definitely work first time without any tweaks, so tell me how you get on with this:
    using terms from application "Mail"
        on perform mail action with messages these_messages
            tell application "Mail"
                set everyMessage to a reference to messages in mailbox "News" of account "iCloud"
                repeat with eachMessage in these_messages
                    delete (everyMessage where ¬
                        the date received is not the (current date) ¬
                        and its sender is the sender of eachMessage)
                end repeat
            end tell
        end perform mail action with messages
    end using terms from

As you can see, I've done away completely with the inner most repeat loop thanks to the use of the a reference to operator.  As I declared everyMessage in that manner, I am (hopefully) able to enumerate the properties of all the items the list contains in one go, which should be approximately infinity times faster than having to check the property for each item individually.


Bootcamp (and laptop) freeze during partition on High Sierra

Never mind, figured it out.

Asked the same question on Apple Communities, got an answer saying

  Hi,
  Bootcamp is not compatible (yet) with the new APFS shipped with High Sierra.

Which (probably) means that I'll have to wait for a new software update.


Time Machine sparsebundle mounting problems

It's not Time Machine, or anything

It's Spotlight. How?

Spotlight

Spotlight indexes everything. Even on an external disk. My backup .sparsebundle was > 2 TB. My computer can't handle this. Spotlight would index everything before it showed in finder.

Debugging

First, to see what was using the disk. Run:

sudo lsof | grep /Volumes/<Volume Name>

I got something like:

diskimage 519           vihan    4r      mds

and about 4 of those. That meant Spotlight was going haywire.

Disabling

Disabling spotlight is simple. RUN THIS BEFORE TOUCHING THE .SPARSEBUNDLE

sudo launchctl unload -w /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.metadata.mds.plist

That should disable Spotlight. Now you can double click the .sparsebundle and continue as from this answer


Regarding pdf, comverting to another format normally makes things worse rather than better.  For reading pdf, best use an app specifically designed for that, like goodreader or adobe reader, instead of an ebook reader like stanza or ibooks.


How do I disable ALL password prompts in Yosemite?

Logging in as the root user will negate most administrative password prompts, but this is highly dangerous for your system's security.

A better idea, though not by much is to change your login password to nothing, so when you are prompted for a password, you simply press Enter, and the procedure begins.


windows partition deleted by boot camp assistant but space is not restored

As commented by David Anderson in comment the solution to this problem was this command

sudo diskutil apfs resizeContainer disk0s2 0

No idea how it worked or what it does but i got my storage space back.


How to screen record using AppleScript on Catalina?

Without seeing your AppleScript code, all I can say is that for me, as an example, on macOS High Sierra doing a screen recording requires different coding then on macOS Catalina, as the latter no longer actually uses QuickTime Player to do the actual screen recording.

This may also hold true for macOS Mojave, however, the following example AppleScript code was only tested under macOS Catalina:

--  # Setup to do a screen recording.

tell application "QuickTime Player" to new screen recording

--  # Start the screen recording.

tell application "System Events" to tell process "Screen Shot"
    repeat until exists button "Record" of its front window
        delay 0.1
    end repeat
    click button "Record" of its front window
end tell

--  # Set the time in seconds you want the recording to be.

delay 2

--  # Stop the recording.

tell application "System Events" to ¬
    click menu bar item 1 ¬
        of menu bar 1 ¬
        of application process "screencaptureui"

At this point, by default, when the screen recording is stopped, it is saved to the Desktop as e.g. Screen Recording 2019-11-01 at 3.38.00 PM.mov on my system and opened in QuickTime Player.

Additional coding can be included to do whatever else one would like to do with the screen recording (within the limits of the target app and AppleScript).

That all said, since macOS Catalina is actually using a different application to do the actual screen recording and not QuickTime Player, one could skip the use of QuickTime Player and create the screen recording using the following example AppleScript code, which uses the system default keyboard shortcut ⇧⌘5:

--  # Setup to do a screen recording.

tell application "System Events" to keystroke "%" using {shift down, command down}

--  # Start the screen recording.

tell application "System Events" to tell process "Screen Shot"
    repeat until exists its front window
        delay 0.1
    end repeat
    if not (exists button "Record" of its front window) then
        click checkbox "Record Entire Screen" of its front window
    end if
    click button "Record" of its front window
end tell

--  # Set the time in seconds you want the recording to be.

delay 2

--  # Stop the recording.

tell application "System Events" to ¬
    click menu bar item 1 ¬
        of menu bar 1 ¬
        of application process "screencaptureui"

Note the use of % instead of 5 in keystroke "%" as the shift key is pressed and I'm on a US English keyboard.
The usual caveats, regarding System Preferences > Security & Privacy > Privacy, apply.

Note: The example AppleScript code is just that and does not contain any additionally error handling as may be appropriate. The onus is upon the user to add any error handling as may be appropriate, needed or wanted. Have a look at the try statement and error statement in the AppleScript Language Guide. See also, Working with Errors.


This is totally normal. The variation in the clutch and hinge strength is quite low. The variation in hand placement, position, size, strength, number of digits and bones in people’s hands vary widely.
The kids are designed more for staying open at an angle for years than always opening with the weight of the bottom.
Starting from the MacBook Air and especially the MacBook 12 the weight of the processor is almost never enough to lift only the lid with one finger. Gravity usually needs an assist until many years of wear and openings have happened. Same with the Pro, but those have a higher base to lid weight ratio and you can sometimes get some of them to open without jiggling.


MacBook Pro stuck on white screen after dual-boot adjustments

After reading the comments I would try to use Internet Recovery (Command + Option + R) and see if that works.


Can I delete my audio collection after syncing it with iTunes Match?

I ended up signing up for iTunes Match over the weekend and I figured I'd share my experience to anyone who had the same questions I did...

After going through and organizing my collection I came up with about 250 artists and just over 10k songs in total. I signed up for iTunes Match and it did a fantastic job of collecting the metadata, matching available songs, and uploading remaining songs. There were a few small issues with some ineligible songs and duplicates, but nothing major. I'd say it took about 24 hours total to get everything synced up, but I'm sure experiences vary widely here.

Then after double-checking everything I just went ahead and deleted all my files in iTunes. I would click a given set of songs and then tap the delete key. When prompted, I would select NOT to delete from iCloud, but to move the local files to the trash.

After I was finished I had a clean local hard drive and all my music was available for streaming from the cloud... which is precisely what I wanted. When I enabled iTunes Match on my other computer (which had a blank iTunes Music section), it took all of five seconds to sync up perfectly with my collection in the cloud.

So I'm now able to stream music from iTunes on my Macbook Pro and iMac. Those who are looking to stream to iOS might be out of luck, because from what I've seen you have to download the songs from iCloud to your device (although the songs will play as they are downloading... and I suppose there is nothing to stop you from deleting the files afterward).

But this ended up being a perfect solution for me since I primarily use Rdio now anyway. I just wanted to delete the 100GB worth of local mp3 files that were cluttering my local hard drive and iTunes Match helped me to do that and still keep my collection out there in the cloud.

There still isn't a perfect solution in the music technology world just yet, but I can't say enough good things about services like Rdio and iTunes Match. They've worked great for me.


Alias to ssh and cd into a specific directory

It doesn't work because the cd is executed on your local machine
when the ssh does terminate.

Here is the way to do it:

alias appl="ssh 9@lon.orb.com 'cd /opt/tomcat/instances ; exec ${SHELL} -i'"


How to setup macbook disable battery and only turn on when plugged power adapter

First of all, your MacBook Air should not run slower, even with a dead battery, if it's connected to AC power.

Secondly, you really should replace the battery, but if you don't want to physically remove the battery, the nearest option to what you want to achieve is to adjust your Energy Saver settings.

More specifically:

Go to System Preferences
Choose Energy Saver
Ensure you have the Battery tab selected
Now adjust your settings under the Battery tab to suit your needs (perhaps ensure they match as far as possible the settings under the Power Adapter tab).

You may also want to uncheck the option to show the battery status in the menu bar (as that will only be a constant reminder that annoys you under the present circumstances).

NOTES:

My steps above are fairly generic as you didn't specify your OS, however they should get you to where you need.
If you're certain your computer is running 'slowly' then it's quite possible you have something else going on.
Finally, you may want to reset your SMC for good measure. See steps below.

Resetting the SMC on MacBook Airs

Shut down your computer
Keep the MagSafe adapter (power cable) plugged in.
Press at the same time shiftoptioncontrol (on the left side of the keyboard) and the power button
Let go
Turn your computer back on with the power button.


macOS installations shows less space than I have

I found a solution:
I just created a new APFS parition and reserved as much space as possible. Then the space which was shown as purgeable was deleted automatically. After that i removed the partition again and had all the free space.


Restoring User Folders to Different Volume

Okay so I went ahead with the update anyway and it turns out that Migration Assistant is clever enough to recognise relocated user accounts.

In my particular case it recognised them, but provided no option to restore their contents (just the account itself), possibly because my users volume hadn't been recreated at this point.

However, after restoration was complete, and I'd recreated my users volume, all I needed to do was pop into Time Machine and restore the user folders from there, with the added advantage of the system still being usable throughout via my admin account.

For anyone in a similar situation, here are the basic steps that I followed:

Reinstall OS X as normal, at the restoring content stage select to restore from Time Machine, and restore as much as little as you like. Relocated user accounts at this point show up as 19kb with a note that they were relocated; select them to restore the accounts. You'll need at least one account on the system volume to login, so if you don't have any to restore then I recommend creating an administrator account; this has the added benefit that you can downgrade your other users to standard for security.
Disable Time Machine in System Preferences to prevent a premature backup.
Once you're happy the basic OS is set-up (updates applied etc.) you can now recreate the user-accounts volume. Make sure that Time Machine is disabled throughout.
Now locate your computer's old backup folder; do this by opening your backup volume in the Finder and opening Backups.backupdb, and it'll be one of the folders inside (usually just one for a single-machine backup drive).
If Time Machine didn't ask to inherit your backup drive, you'll want to make sure you inherit it manually (or it might see all files as new). To do this, open Terminal and enter sudo tmutil inheritbackup now take your machine's old backup folder and drag it onto the Terminal window to add its path. Your command should look like: sudo tmutil inheritbackup /Volumes/Backup/Backups.backupdb/Haravikk\'s\ Mac, you'll be asked for your password to run the command (must be run by an administrator).
Next you'll want to make sure you've associated the new volumes with their backed up counterparts (since newly created volumes will have a new unique ID). To do this open your machine's backup folder, and inside it open up the folder named "Latest", here you should see an entry for each volume that Time Machine was backing up. In Terminal, enter the following command: sudo tmutil associatedisk and drag the appropriate folder onto the Terminal window, then drag the corresponding volume on as well, your command will look like: sudo tmutil associatedisk /Volumes/Backup/Backups.backupdb/Haravikk\'s\ Mac/Latest/Users /Volumes/Users, hit enter to run the command.
Now when you open up your Users volume in the Finder, you can use Enter Time Machine from the Time Machine menu and use it to go back to see your old user folders, simply select each one you want and click Restore. You can do this several time if (like me) some user accounts are bigger than others.

Once you've restored all the user accounts, you should be safe to re-enable Time Machine backups, and the accounts should now work just as they did before (though some passwords may need to be re-entered).


Can an eMac boot from a USB optical drive connected via a FireWire adapter?

I believe you’ll have better luck with USB drives that are not optical. FireWire optical drives that supported booting in this era were expensive, so see if you can score a drive that you know used to boot. Even three at scrap prices are often salvageable with DIY skills.
I’m almost certain we booted these Macs from USB drives in the shop back in the day. It wasn’t “supported” but it worked most of the time.


Apple has never included popup accent menus for i and u on the Polish input sources as far as I know.  To add them you would have to customize that system.


How do I get into an app from Notification Center on iOS 10?

Every notification can be 3D touched (or long-pressed) -- not just those with other actions. After popping open the notification, tap on the application name and icon in the notification header to open the app.


How can I tell if my Time Machine backup is encrypted?

I thought I'll add to the subject since I was looking for this info recently.

It actually shows just above the progress bar if the backup is encrypted during the backup process.

I'm pretty sure this was there since Maverick.


Apple's MBP power cable supplies a maximum of 60W of power in order to both use the machine and recharge the battery at the same time.

If you're not using the MBP, then it's possible that 11W is enough to charge the battery, albeit very slowly, as you indicate.

It's unlikely that you would be able to use the machine with 0% battery on 11W, and even if you could, then the battery would barely recharge at all.

So, this might well work for the sort of emergency that required you to leave your MBP closed and plugged in for several hours until you could use it a bit.

Also: you will only draw the full power over USB C connector. USB 3.0 A connectors can only draw 0.9 A.


The add appointment icon is disabled in Calendar

If your iPhone is syncing with iCloud properly your add button will disappear until the system finishes syncing.  If the sync is frozen, you can toggle iCloud Calendars off in Settings>iCloud, restart the iPhone, and then turn Calendars on again to restart the OTA sync.  If there still is no add button sync iPhone with iTunes to restore the calendar app.  On rare occasions you might have to restore the iPhone firmware.


Backed up videos won't play on the iPad they were backed up from

You have iCloud Photo Library'a memory saving feature activated, and either is your Internet extremely slow or you're experiencing a bug, to fix the bug restart your device.

To deactivate the memory saving feature in photos:
Settings->Photos & camera -> Save and Store originals (or some synonym for it)
This requires you have enough free space on your device for all your pictures

Information from Apple's support page: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204264


How can I find the files being used by System? (where is my disk space going?)

My problem is related to the question What is the correct way to eject a APFS dmg from the command line?

What was going on is I was mounting APFS DMGs via hdiutil attach and only ejecting one of the disks. The disk left behind was taking up hard drive space. After I fully ejected the volume, my hard drive space came back.

The way I was able to spot this easily was by using Apple's Disk Utility application and saw a bunch of grayed out Disk Images.


Late 2006 iMac without OS: How do I boot to reinstall?

If you Tiger DVD is not bootable it might as well be PowerPC one.

If your iMac is Late 2006 it will support Mac OS X 10.7 as latest.
You can buy it from Apple for 20$. System requirements for OS X 10.7 is at least 2GB RAM though. So you might check first if you have enough. These are guides on how to get to the memory.

Then you will need USB pen drive and Lion Disk Maker to make it bootable out of bought file.

The mac will accept 2 or 3GB of DDR2-667 SODIMM RAM total(depending on exact model).


How can I change a file's creator code on vanilla Snow Leooard?

I ran the following script on a variety of files on my system running 10.7.4. I ran it on files in my home directory, I ran it on files on a mounted FAT16 volume.

I was unable to get it to fail silently. If the file selected was locked or read only, the script failed with the error "Finder got an error: The operation can’t be completed because you don’t have the necessary permission."

Otherwise, in all the cases I tried, the script worked: regardless of the type and creator reported at the beginning, the type and creator reported at the end was TEXT and iDAT. Similarly, when I ran the script again on the same file, it initially reported type and creator of TEXT and iDAT, respectively.

So my advice would be to upgrade to Lion; if the script fails in 10.6, it seems to be a bug that has been fixed in 10.7.

set theFile to choose file
tell application "Finder"
    set myAlert to get file type of theFile
    display alert myAlert
    set myAlert to get creator type of theFile
    display alert myAlert
    set file type of theFile to "TEXT"
    set creator type of theFile to "iDAT"
    set myAlert to get file type of theFile
    display alert myAlert
    set myAlert to get creator type of theFile
    display alert myAlert
end tell


MacBook not out-putting sound to Bluetooth devices

Your question doesn't specify what you've tried to resolve this. Have you tried resetting things (or unpairing) and pairing again?

On the MacBook go to System Preferences > Bluetooth and right-click on the Logitech device and select Remove
On the Logitech device, follow the instructions on how to reset it
Now go through the process of pairing them again


Unfortunately, you cannot. Due to the requirement of a 64-bit processor, a 64-bit OS, and the general evolution of requirements, much of Apple's software (and really, new software in general) simply reaches a point where you can't run newer versions without upgrading the OS, and occasionally your hardware, as a whole.


Software Glitch iPad 2 Caused Activation Lock

I would try contacting Apple about resetting the password on your Apple ID. Did you set up any security questions? Do you have a recovery email? Your best bet is to give them a call or live chat and tell them that you do not know the password to your account and do not have the 2WA code.

See what they say, you might be lucky enough to get it one-time reset with the right answers to their questions :)


This is currently not possible.

If your device is jailbroken, you can install Software Update Killer or any number of badge-removing tweaks.


How to tell a Mac to show 4k resolution or higher resolution even when it is not connected to such display?

It depends on which 4K you're referring to; if you're talking about the "actual" 4K (4096 × 2160), then: no (though you can come close).

However, if you're talking about the UHD 4K definition (See the link to Wikipedia above), which is 3840 × 2160, you can do it using 3. party utilities such as QuickRes (paid), SwitchResX (paid), or Retina Display Mode (free).

I've used QuickRes for a couple of years and definitely find it worth the $5. It's also the app I used to test.

Keep in mind: this only applies to the 15", the 13" can "only" display up to 3360 × 2100.


Adobe Reader unable to locate PDFs sent to iPhone

If you're transferring your pdf files through itunes, you need to open your device in iTunes, then select Adobe reader from the apps file sharing section and drag/drop the files you want to open with adobe.


What I found out is that the "Custom" privilege means that permissions have been configured in a way that are more complex than is provided and can be shown in the basic user settings of the Get Info window (namely: Read, Write, No Access).

If I query the volume in Terminal with ls -leda /Volumes/Some\ HD/ I get something like this.  Option e is to print the ACL associated with the file (or directory), if present, in long (-l) output.

drwx------+ 18 Alex  staff  680  1 Oct 18:19 /Volumes/Some\ HD/
 0: group:com.apple.sharepoint.group.6 allow search
 1: group:com.apple.sharepoint.group.5 allow search
 2: D93ABBA3-3566-4A08-878E-B2E7C575B4A6 allow list,add_file,search,add_subdirectory,delete_child,readattr,writeattr,readextattr,writeextattr,readsecurity

I just still don't know where the com.apple.sharepoint.group users are coming from and D93ABBA3-3566-4A08-878E-B2E7C575B4A6 looks a bit cryptic if that's me.


Stolen MacBook running Windows via Boot Camp

You didn’t provide enough detail to adequately address the actual problem (I.e MacBook model, version of Win10, was it unlocked/unencrypted, etc ),  so we must look at this from the worst case scenario:

Once a device is physically in the possession of nefarious parties, you must assume the entire system is compromised.
Guessing what the risk is at this point is an exercise in wishful thinking.

This is where you advise your friend to start securing accounts (change passwords, add two factor authentication, etc.)


Does AirDrop resize pictures - AirDrop photo resolution

When it was originally launched for iOS (iOS 7), AirDrop occasionally down-sampled photos and videos for no apparent reason. However, since a later release (possibly iOS 8), I have never seen AirDropped media in a size/quality other than the original.

When sharing photos and videos, “Preparing” indicates that the Photos app is downloading the full-resolution version from iCloud Photo Library. You will see this step regardless of the channel through which you’re sharing (including email and iMessage).

You should be able to verify after the fact that your device now holds a larger-file version of your photo or video (eg. by opening Image Capture or checking your storage used). See this answer for further details.

There are notable exceptions:

Slo-mo videos are finalized and reencoded, which removes their ability to have their “slow” portion adjusted.
Edited photos and videos need to be reencoded (to include those edits), so the quality may be slightly different vs. what was originally shot. However the resolution will remain unchanged.
It is unclear what quality setting Photos for macOS uses when sharing via AirDrop. You can enforce a certain quality level by first exporting the photo to your desktop, and AirDropping that file, rather than AirDropping straight from Photos. You'll probably want to use High quality and Full Size for edited photos, and Unmodified Original for unedited photos. See this answer for more details.


I've just found the answer! It's kind of hidden away, but it is possible:

Select "Show Menu Bar"...

Then under View select "View Options..."

A new window with View Options appears!


What's probably happening is that pm2 isn't generating the correct script because your PATH variable contains spaces (most likely "VMWare Fusion" in your case).
Run echo $PATH, clean it up by escaping the space character using a backslash (\), then manually paste the resulting PATH variable in pm2's generated startup script.
So basically instead of running a generated pm2 script like this:
sudo env PATH=$PATH:/usr/local/bin /usr/local/lib/node_modules/pm2/bin/pm2 startup launchd -u <user> --hp <user_folder>

run something like this:
sudo env PATH=<your `echo $PATH` output with escaped spaces>:/usr/local/bin /usr/local/lib/node_modules/pm2/bin/pm2 startup launchd -u <user> --hp <user_folder>


Fresh Install OS vs Install Update On New User

A "Fresh install" usually means erasing the target volume of all files, and then installing an OS, thus removing any possible problems from third-party installed software, and incorrect or inappropriate settings in /Library or /User/Library .plist files.

Simply deleting all the files in one or more user accounts will not remove third-party applications, their /Library files, other installed processes, and things like printer drivers.

So, the latter will keep more data on your drive than a fresh install. Speed is unlikely to be affected, unless your drive was full.

I can't think of a reason why deleting user accounts would be a useful process.

By default, Apple's system installation process upgrades the existing OS, and retains all user files, settings, applications, etc in place. Some listed items, known to be incompatible, are removed by the installer to folders where they are not launched by the OS.

As Apple releases a new OS every year (or every 2 months if you count the point updates): 'slashing and burning' all your settings, files, and applications is entirely unnecessary. (I have updated in place every OS from 10.2 Jaguar to 10.15 Catalina, and cloned my disks across more than six Macs. I dare say there's some 'cruft' from my 2002 G3 iBook now sitting on my 2018 Mini!)

I would recommend only doing a clean install, or other similar process, if you get some problem occurring after upgrading. Alternatively, with a bit of detective work, you can usually find out the 1% of your files that are causing the problem, and then delete those, rather than the removing 100% and putting 99% back.


Lost second Game center account of my daughter

A game center account is simply an AppleID.

You can go to https://appleid.apple.com and recover her password for the AppleID you want to use in Game Center. It might also be a password problem, so checking that the account is in good standing will give you better error messages and options to recover by using the website instead of logging in through iOS.


Is there a multiple copy paste app for ios?

I find CopyClip 2 from FIPLAB Ltd very useful - it doesn't merge clips automatically, but it does continually record up to 100 copied pieces of text on an easy-access icon.


Is it possible to skip a file rename when it's not there in Automator?

I wrote a small JavaScript for Automation program that may be able to accomplish what you want to do. It checks for and deletes the existing file, then proceeds to download the desired file from the GIT repository:

// Get Finder application
finder = Application('Finder')
finder.includeStandardAdditions = true

// Create path to the location of the existing file
path = Path("path/to/destination")

// Check to see if the old file exists
if (finder.files.length > 0) {
    oldFile = finder.files[0]
    oldFile.delete()
}

// Use curl to download the new file
current = Application.currentApplication()
current.includeStandardAdditions = true
theURL = "http://url/to/git/plugin"
current.doShellScript("curl -L " + theURL + " -o " + path.toString())

Alternatively, you could take some portion of this code (such as the conditional that determines whether there is an existing file) and put it into an Automator "Run JavaScript" action in your existing script.


Bluetooth audio streaming from Android to Mac

After 6 years, I finally found a solution. Use sndcpy with ADB over TCP.
Ensure that you have USB Debugging on and Install via USB on.
If vlc is not found even though you installed VLC Media Player, then you can set an environment variable in your ~/.zshrc or ~/.bashrc by adding a new line:
export VLC="/Applications/VLC.app/Contents/MacOS/VLC"

If you encounter this exception:
java.lang.SecurityException: You need the android.permission.INSTALL_GRANT_RUNTIME_PERMISSIONS permission to use the PackageManager.INSTALL_GRANT_RUNTIME_PERMISSIONS flag

then open sndcpy bash script in a code editor and remove the -g flag from the two adb install commands.