Terminal: open-command -a flag - Why isn't it necessary for some software?

You are doing two different things here.

The text one is open a file with the application that open associates with the file extension.

The Terminal one is you trying to open a named application.

What open does is first look, using the full path name, for the file that is named, as you only give a file name it is a relative path it looks for that file in the current directory. (Thus for Terminal.,app it says it can't find the file and then gives up). When it has found the file it then searches for the default application for the file's extension, then sees if the application is running, if not it starts the application. Finally open sends a message to the application to deal with the file.

Passing -a to open tells open to use the named application, it searches its database for previously opened apps and so does not need the full path to find Terminal.app


I can't boot Windows 7 USB from macOS Sierra using option key

Mac computers using macOS Sierra 10.12 support new installations of
  Windows 10 only. macOS Sierra does not support new installations of
  earlier versions of Windows.

See https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT205016 for more information.


Dictation bug: variations of 'catch' appear without being spoken anything

A few users over in the Apple support community discussion group have brought up this problem within the past week. It has everybody stumped over there too.
Other than your post here, and the three or four posters over there, I haven’t seen much noise being raised about this bug.
The way it is driving it’s victims crazy, I expect this bug will raise the noise level enough to get even apples attention.
 As for me, it’s making my iPhone nearly unusable. I can’t find any way to make it happen or to make it stop happening. I can barely believe that I have dictated this entire long post without the word catch being inserted somewhere.


What key code maps to external USB brightness up/down keys?

The 'System keys' don't seem to have a Key Code equivalent, they are actioned below the OS-level. Try Key Codes (freeware)


How to use a software installed by "cargo install" (Rust)

It is really best to stick with one package manager then your setup will work.
Homebrew if it build tickes would put that in a directory which is on your path.
You are using cargo now so you need another directory on your path. That is ~/.cargo/bin if Homebrew has installed the standard cargo.
I just had to go through this for Apple Silicon on Big Sur as there isn't a release build of rust yet. The cargo documents make this hard to find. Possibly becaus of another comment that cargo builds will not update when upstream changes are made as would happen with a package manager (e.g. HomeBrew) So I suspect cargo is not meant for your use just for those developing in rust.


Request for experience: when has having only 16GB on your iPhone inconvenienced you?

Video Capture, more photos, larger image sensor and better camera on the iPhone 4S means I'll spring for 32. Even with iCloud and all the music streaming options, I find I always want 4 GB of core music (and another 2.5 of podcasts) with me. Having room for more serious app and book (PDF) storage will be very nice.

The 14 GB iPhone 4 I've used since it launched was sufficient except for maybe a handful of times where I wanted more space. Especially when using iMovie to assemble slide shows and short video updates on a longer trip. Also, if an apple keynote or other hour long video comes out, I don't have the space to accommodate such videos.

Those are the few times when "the 16" wasn't enough for me. I now don't take several databases with me using bento and filemaker pro since I want more space for songs and camera footage.

I initially thought of a white 32 iPod Touch and the smallest black 4S - but having all the space and speed in one package makes it more of a computer to me. I can grab a bluetooth keyboard and get short work done if needed. I'm also quite eager for AirPlay and a 4S.


When inserting notes in Preview app, apostrophes become double-byte characters

That's the "smart quotes" feature converting the plain ASCII quote to a fancy (curved) Unicode quote (which is two bytes in UTF-8 encoding). You can turn this off with System Preferences -> Keyboard pane -> Text tab -> deselect "Use smart quotes and dashes". Note that this is a system-wide setting, so it'll affect most word processors as well as Preview.


You need to escape the single apostrophe with a single backslash and do not quote the show name if it has an apostrophe, just escape any spaces with a single backslash too, as in the examples below:

$ mdfind -onlyin ~/Desktop/"Shows I Watch" Bob\'s\ Burgers
/Users/name/Desktop/Shows I Watch/Bob's Burgers
$ mdfind -onlyin ~/Desktop/Shows\ I\ Watch Bob\'s\ Burgers
/Users/name/Desktop/Shows I Watch/Bob's Burgers
$

It should actually work with the show name in quotes as in the first example you have under "Here's a list of everything I've tried:", it worked on my system.

$ mdfind -onlyin ~/"Desktop/Shows I Watch" "Bob\'s Burgers"
/Users/name/Desktop/Shows I Watch/Bob's Burgers
$


My MacBook Pro isn't recognising my speakers

First, plug the speakers into something else to make sure they work as-is.

Next, check the headphone jack to see if there is a red light emanating from it. I have never personally experienced it, but I have seen reports of MacBooks being tricked into "thinking" that it should be in optical output mode and getting stuck that way. If so, sometimes removing and replacing the speaker cable a few times may help. See https://discussions.apple.com/message/22315967 for example.


The following example AppleScript code will set the locked property of selected items in Finder to true:
tell application "Finder"
    repeat with thisItem in (get selection)
        set locked of thisItem to true
    end repeat
end tell

 NOTE: The filesystem of the container has to support the locked property of the selected items.  As an example, an ExFAT volume does not support the locked property on folders but it does for files. Whereas on a HFS+ or APFS volume it supports it for both files and folders.


Try restoring ~/Library/Containers/com.apple.Notes (I would keep a copy of the existing folder in case this causes other problems). That's where my Notes seem to be stored. If that doesn't work, you can dig out the individual files representing your Notes within that folder.

The directory structure of the com.apple.Notes folder is very odd. It seems to have aliases to things like my Desktop and Movies folders in it, for reasons that I completely do not understand. In any case, I found my IMAP Notes in ~Library/Containers/com.apple.Notes/Data/Library/CoreData/ExternalRecords/E7804A95-977C-4A1C-98A1-8C1D77E02D49/IMAPNote/_records/0/

Hope this helps!


How long does the new Testflight Beta review process usually take?

Yesterday at 6 pm I uploaded my beta build for review and it's status was waiting for review. This morning the status had changes to "In review" but now, 13h later it's still "In review". I will update this post if my app build had been approved.

EDIT: A day later in the morning it was approved. The total proces from uploading to being reviewed took 1 and a half days.


Target disk Macbook Pro HD not showing on Host Macbook Pro

You mention "unlocking" the drive which would suggest your brother is using filevault (the drive is encrypted). If the drive/file system is indeed damaged, I find it unlikely you will be able to recover data.

If your brother happens to be using an "old design" MacBook Pro with a non-ssd harddrive, you can still pull the drive out quite easily and connect it externally to your macbook to have a look without the motherboard being a factor. You will not loose warranty by doing this, but do consult  ifixit (the best source of Apple repair guides online) to do this properly.


Why does my Mac mini (2018) have no startup sound?

Apple has removed the startup chime from all the Mac models starting from Late 2016.

About Mac startup tones

  Mac models from early 2016 and earlier make a chime sound when they start up. Mac models from late 2016 and newer don't have a startup chime, with the exception of MacBook Air (13-inch, 2017).


Open System Preferences -> App Store and disable "Automatically check for updates"

And other solution came to my mind; if you have programs that you never use and those are in App Store, then just delete those programs and install only if you need them.


Briefly, no.

Xcode is OS X only. You must have a Mac to download Xcode.


Yes. Your device will boot automatically when connected to a power source (like your computer usb or a charger).

You can simulate the power button using Assistive Touch. You can find assistive touch in:
Settings -> General -> Accessibility -> AssistiveTouch
It might be obvious Assistive Touch can only be accessed when your device is on (even from the lock screen).


iTerm2 - How to show alternate screen in iTerm2?

By searching the one page documentation of iTerm2 for each occurrence of the expression alternate screen, we can deduce that this feature is not yet implemented in iTerm2 3.2.0.

== EDIT ==

Here is a feature request on the Gitlab repository of iterm2.

== EDIT (2) ==

The feature has been implemented with commit 7b8d6a4b4. You can already test it in the nightly build in the Session > Terminal State menu.

According to George Nachman (the maintainer):

  There is no shortcut (I'm basically out of shortcuts) but you can always assign one in Prefs > Keys.

Thanks to him for this new feature!


The clue is that it begins to charge at 15% or so.. you have some bad cells in the battery, so they are not considered for charging, but are part of the 100% the battery should have.

Take it in to Apple and have them look at it!


How do I change the UI language in Snow Leapoard?

Open System Preferences, and then Language & Text. Drag the language you want on top and then log-off (or restart) your computer.


Outlook 2011 Keychain entry rewritten - prompting for password after 10.10.5 update - keychain issue?

The Exchange "autodiscover" settings changes the server URL to the WSDL resource.

So, mail.domain.com becomes: mail.domain.com/EWS/Exchange.asmx everytime you check for mail.

To fix this, you have to tell Outlook to stop asking for autodiscover settings
using AppleScript editor:

tell application "Microsoft Outlook"
set background autodiscover of exchange account "NameOfAccount" to false
end tell

credit: http://www.officeformachelp.com/2011/01/exchange-autodiscover-workaround-for-advanced-settings/


Is there is a way to send a local message from a Mac to an iOS device *without* the Internet?

If I understand you correctly you're asking how to push local notifications on your Mac to your iOS device (hence using Prowl as an example)? Well since Mavericks/iOS 7 if both your Mac and iOS device support Bluetooth Low Energy, you could use a service based on the Apple Notification  Center Service.
This feature is also covered in this 9to5mac article.


How can I integrate Homebrew with non-managed software in /usr/local?

I use 1.

I just compile my software using /usr/local as the prefix and I'm done. I had no problem so far. I don't know whether I'll experience problems, but I started ~1y ago and so far so good.

However…

If I'd have to start again today, I'd follow 2 (which I didn't know at the time). That way it's easy enough to know where everything is and what, exactly, the software has installed (since the hierarchy for /usr/local/Cellar/foo/1.0 is something like

bin/      etc/      include/  lib/      share/

)

3 doesn't seem worth.


How to make sublime text the default file viewer for all file types it supports

Select an .hpp document and get info on it (command-i). In the resulting window, you will see an "Open with" section. Select the appropriate app to open it with from the little menu and then press the "change all" button immediately below that menu. That will change all the .hpp files to default open with the app you chose.

To do this categorically (for multiple file types at once), I'm not so sure...

Good luck!


Using an Apple Keyboard Dock as a keyboard for a computer?

It’s not possible to connect it to a Mac. The Apple Store detail page for this product says that it’s only compatible with the iPad. Note that the full product name is “iPad Keyboard Dock”.

Here are some ways you can use the iPad Keyboard Dock, though:

Connect the dock to your computer with the USB cable included with
your iPad to sync iPad and charge its battery.
Connect the dock to an electrical outlet using the iPad 10W USB Power Adapter (included with
your iPad) to charge the iPad battery.
Use the dock to hold your iPad
at the perfect angle to compose email and notes using the keyboard or
to watch your favorite videos or photo slideshows.
Connect the dock
to a TV or video projector using a compatible cable such as the iPad
Dock Connector to VGA Adapter or the Apple Component or Composite AV
Cable.
Connect the dock to a stereo or speakers using an AV cable or
a stereo audio cable to play music from iPad.


zero pad numbers in `cal` (or `gcal`) output?

sed to the rescue:

pse@Mithos:~$ cal 09 2015 | sed -e 's/ \([[:digit:]]\) /0\1 /g' \
                                -e 's/ \([[:digit:]]\)$/0\1/g'
   September 2015
Su Mo Tu We Th Fr Sa
      01 02 03 04 05
06 07 08 09 10 11 12
13 14 15 16 17 18 19
20 21 22 23 24 25 26
27 28 29 30

Combining the two sed commands into one is left as an exercise to the reader.


Appifying with Platypus:

Download Platypus and create an app from the shell script.

Example:

The settings above create an app with a progress bar (including details) and it can be quitted - the rsync process has to be canceled (killed) manually though.

The app itself can be found with Spotlight.

Simple AppleScript solution:

In Mavericks (and probably later) you have to allow the AppleScript app to control the computer in "System Preferences -> Security & Privacy -> Privacy -> Accessibility"

Open ScriptEditor, enter the code snippet below and export it as an application with a unique name:

tell application "Terminal"
    delay 2
    set newWindow to do script "caffeinate -s rsync -hva --progress --stats --delete /path/to/folder /path/to/folder2"
    activate
end tell

If you need root permissions prepend sudo -> "sudo caffeinate -s ...."

You can refine the AppleScript app by checking if Terminal already has open windows and create a new one to run the shell script:

set myScript to "caffeinate -s rsync -hva --progress --stats --delete /path/to/folder /path/to/folder2"
tell application "System Events"
    if exists (window 1 of process "Terminal") then
        tell application "Terminal"
            set newWindow to do script myScript
            activate
        end tell
    else
        tell application "Terminal"
            delay 2
            set Window1 to do script myScript
            activate
        end tell
    end if
end tell

The AppleScript app can be found with Spotlight.

In Mountain Lion you have to enable "System Preferences -> Accessibility -> Enable access for assistive device" and change it a little bit to get the AppleScript app solutions running properly:

set myScript to "caffeinate -s rsync -hva --progress --stats --delete /path/to/folder /path/to/folder2"
tell application "System Events"
    if exists (window 1 of process "Terminal") then
        tell application "Terminal"
            reopen
            activate
            set newWindow to do script myScript
        end tell
    else
        tell application "Terminal"
            reopen
            activate
            do script myScript in window 1
        end tell
    end if
end tell

AppleScript with "external" shell script (backup.sh):

This is the final approach the OP is using. Taken from here. In Mavericks (and probably later) you have to allow the AppleScript app to control the computer in "System Preferences -> Security & Privacy -> Privacy -> Accessibility". One can load the full .sh (placed inside the app in Contents/Resources/backup.sh) with:

set bashFile to path to resource "backup.sh"
tell application "Terminal"
    delay 1
    activate
    set newWindow to do script "bash " & quoted form of (POSIX path of bashFile)
end tell

You can refine the AppleScript app by checking if Terminal already has open windows and create a new one to run the shell script:

set bashFile to path to resource "backup.sh"
tell application "System Events"
    if exists (window 1 of process "Terminal") then
        tell application "Terminal"
            delay 1
            set newWindow to do script "bash " & quoted form of (POSIX path of bashFile)
            activate
        end tell
    else
        tell application "Terminal"
            delay 2
            set Window1 to do script "bash " & quoted form of (POSIX path of bashFile)
            activate
        end tell
    end if
end tell


Right-click on the folder/album and select Delete.
Select the folder/album and press ⌘⌫


How do I use an "intersection" symbol in word?

If you're using Office 2011 on a recent OS X system, then its relatively easy to get a host of characters available.

Go to System Preferences > Keyboard > Keyboard tab and check Show Keyboard and Character Viewers in menu bar.

This will put a little icon, usually next to the Date/Time, in the menu bar.

From the new Menu Bar icon, choose Show Character Viewer and then select Math Symbols from the picker:

A host of symbols. Put the insertion point in your Word document, then double-click the symbol you need.


Weird mouse issue with OS X 10.7.4 on 21" iMac

I've occasionally had problems over the years with weird mouse issues, and bar once, they were all fixed by deleting the "com.apple.driver.AppleHIDMouse" file located in ~user\Library\Preferences. Upon reboot the file will be recreated, and you can bak it up first in case it changes something. Software updates can sometimes change/corrupt plist files, and deleting them to fix issues is fairly common.

Worth a try if you're struggling for a fix.


imported mp3 ebook file is not shown in Books

Right click the book in iTunes, and select Get Info (or select the track and Press Cmd-I)

iTunes will open the Info for the file.  Goto the Options tab and change the Media Kind of the file from Music to Audio Book.  It will then appear in the right place.


Stream movie on Apple TV 3 from iTunes on iMac G4

http://support.apple.com/kb/HT4437 says iTunes 10.2 or later is required.

If your iMac G4 can run OS X 10.5 (Leopard) you should be able to run iTunes 10.3.1 (http://support.apple.com/kb/DL1103) which qualifies.

If it can only run OS X 10.4 it appears that the latest version is iTunes 9.2.1 (https://discussions.apple.com/thread/4108495?start=0&tstart=0) which does not qualify.

Note that I have not verified the above.  Also, based on personal experience, you want as good a network connection between the source and the AppleTV as possible.  Either cabled or 11n wireless.

Good luck.


Burned magsafe dc in board ports: Replace, even if working?

Specifics will depend on your model, but in general it is quite difficult process for inexperienced person.

It consist of 20+ steps and without experience a lot can go wrong.

So the choice is yours, leave it as as and hope for the best or do it.

Here is an example of the process involved.

https://www.ifixit.com/Guide/MacBook+Unibody+Model+A1342+MagSafe+Board+Replacement/1676


If you have a device that supports iOS 6 and is vulnerable to limera1n (iPhone 4, iPhone 3GS, or iPod touch 4th generation), you can use redsn0w to jailbreak 6.1.2 tethered without installing Cydia (just uncheck the "install Cydia" box during the jailbreaking process).

redsn0w hasn't been updated to automatically support 6.1.2 though, so before clicking the "Jailbreak" button, you'll need to click "Extras", click "Select IPSW", and select a copy of the 6.0 IPSW for your device. You'll also have to do the "Select IPSW" process before booting tethered (in other words, when you want to boot your device, you'll have to click "Extras", "Select IPSW", select the 6.0 IPSW, and then go back and click "Just Boot").

It's probably less fuss to just jailbreak with evasi0n, open up Cydia, let it prepare the filesystem, install OpenSSH, and then look for the "Cydia Installer" package and uninstall it.


Don‘t loop over results from find, there are too many things which can and will go wrong. Use

find "$DIRINI" -type f -exec stat {} \;

or

find "$DIRINI" -type f -print0 | xargs -0 stat

instead.


It is so light, I just rarely need to leave it unsupervised. I'll hand it to the staff to set behind the counter if I need to leave to feed a meter or use the facilities on the rare occasion when I don't have a shoulder bag.

They are so light and thin, it's not a hassle carrying it.

If you must, audible alarms that plug into USB ports are available, but who wants to be the guy with the alarm going off unintentionally? Not recommended.

I would bet Kensington comes out with a leash that goes around the display hinge and tightens before college starts in the fall.


Mac OS X Lion Server and Macports - Can they work together?

The short and easy answer is no - you can't just flip a switch to point all the Lion tools and scripts to the same (or similar) programs at a different path.

The longer answer, is yes - you can of course replace binary files, and test to make sure all the scripts work and patch any issues that arise either out of changed functionality or in the event that the Apple tools depend on a specific version of your web or database server.

Everyone I know that wants to install different software on top of Lion just turns off the Lion versions and controls the deployment with other tools like explicit paths, controlling the $PATH variable and alternate control and reporting structures.


Sierra: Security Update 2017-001 Sierra broke my WiFi

I like to remove the network interfaces entirely if someone manually delete plist files or changes things in the library directly and then restart to give the system a chance to recreate the files if it can. Especially on Sierra and later since the preference files aren’t canonical in most cases and the settings persist in a database and get flushed back to disk periodically when the defaults system commits a change.

Remove WiFi interface from all locations (if you have network locations)
Restart
Add in the wirelesss network connection in system preferences

If that doesn’t work, next is two items. You may want to check the network with another device or two - the Mac update could be coincidence and not causal. If the network is working, then you’ll want to look at things other than the core os.

Firewall (little snitch), anti virus (eset or Kaspersky), vpn software and anything that adds extensions or network modifications.


How to convert an .iso file to .dmg in terminal?

OS X has hdiutil, a command line tool for making, manipulating and using disk images with an option to convert between different types of images.1

To do this use the command with verb convert and option -format.

Option -o is used to specify the path and name of the output file.

There are several formats available from which I post two for .DMG and one for .ISO:

  UDRW - UDIF read/write image
  UDRO - UDIF read-only image
  UDTO - DVD/CD-R master for export

Use the first one for a read/write-able .DMG. The resulting command is:

hdiutil convert /path/file.iso -format UDRW -o /path/file.dmg

The backward conversion would be done by

hdiutil convert /path/file.dmg -format UDTO -o /path/file.iso


No voice feedback when using Siri with American accent in iOS 9.0.2

Siri and "Speech" on iOS seem to be tangled since iOS 9. Here's how to fix it:

Go to Settings -> General -> Accessibility -> Speech -> Voices -> English -> and download both "Siri Female (Enhanced)" and "Alex".

Note: Make sure to stay in the settings app while the download is completing. If you leave the app or go to another page within settings, the download will cancel.

Let me know if that works ;).


Your MacBook Pro must have a corrupted Contacts database.

Signing out and back in to iCloud isn’t fixing anything because your MacBook Pro is reusing its local database, and thinking that everything is up to date. Updating a contact is what “rebuilds” its entry, allowing it to be displayed.

Try wiping your local cache to force your MacBook Pro to re-download all of your contacts from iCloud.

Sign out of iCloud.
Delete ~/Library/Application Support/AddressBook.
Delete ~/Library/Caches/com.apple.AddressBookSourceSync.
Delete ~/Library/Saved Application State/com.apple.AddressBook.savedState.
Delete ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.AddressBook.plist.
Restart your MacBook Pro.
Sign back into iCloud.

Your contacts should all download fresh from iCloud.

(Note: Steps 2 & 3 are really the crucial ones, but the Contacts.app doesn’t have much in the way of preferences, so might as well be thorough.)


modifying the timestamps of multiple files

The typical way to do this on Unix-based system is to combine find and touch
find path/to/top/directory -type f -exec touch -t 0601120101 '{}' +

path/to/top/directory: top directory to start search in, its content and all subdirectories will be searched. You can add several if required
type -f: only find files. If you also want to touch directories, just remove it
exec ... +: run the command on the matching items (in our case all files), replacing {} with the names of the items.

PS: To just see the files found use find path/to/top/directory.


Export Notes from Entourage to Apple Mail

You can Export your notes in Entourage by going to File > Export... or selecting Shift + Command + S, and then check boxing only Notes. When this is exported to a location of your choice (e.g. Desktop), it saves as a .rge. This file type cannot be opened in Apple Mail. Show Package Contents reveals a Notes folder with your exported notes encrypted inside that can only be opened via Entourage. I more or less ran into a dead end trying to figure this out for you.  As far as I could figure out, this cannot be done any easier way than the following:

Open Entourage
Go to Notes
Go to Edit > Select All (or Command + A) to select all of your notes
Go to File > Print (or Command + P) to act like you will print all of your notes
Select PDF > Save As PDF... and select a location of your choice (e.g. Desktop)
Try and import these into Apple Mail, and if unsuccessful import the PDFs you just created into Evernote
Rejoice or sulk depending on the situation and/or your mood

Let me know if you have any futher questions, and I promise that you'll enjoy Evernote if forced to use it. It's the business!


iMac 2019: Can I mix the old modules with the new ones when upgrading RAM?

Yes, you can mix them. There are 4 slots, so you can keep the Apple RAM, even if it's in 2 slots.

According to the reliable EveryMac, your Mac can take up to 128Gb !!


Unable to eject disk images or drives in High Sierra

Often when a drive is plugged in Spotlight begins to index the entire drive.  While this is occurring Spotlight is "using" the drive and therefore can't be ejected.

Try adding a Spotlight exception:

System Preferences>Spotlight>Privacy
+
Select your drive
Choose


Sounds like corrosion in either the antenna or antenna connection.  If you are a DIY-type, you could open it up, check it, and perhaps fix it if it is the antenna connection.  Otherwise, time for a new Touch.


How to restores files lost from application during upgrade of app

Your data should be recoverable!

Download and install iExplorer on your PC or Mac.
Connect your iPhone to your computer.
Open iExplorer.
Your iPhone should appear on the sidebar on the left; double-click on "Apps".
Find Documents Mobile in the list that opens.  Double-click on it.
You should see a folder inside Documents Mobile called "Documents".  Drag and drop it to your Desktop and iExplorer should copy the documents in Mobile Documents to your computer.


Macbook Air 2013 won't boot up; Charging cable never turns green, always amber

Is there any way of diagnosing a fault with the I/O board? Any other suggestions to look into?

It’s possible that it’s your DC In Board as you stated, however the symptom you describe indicates it may be something worse; it may be your logic board.

Macbook charger isn't working
MacBook Pro early 2015 not turning on and not charging

The amber led means that the MacBook has sensed the charger (1 wire charging circuit) and is sending power, but the battery isn’t charging. We know this because it won’t turn on and the battery never completes a charge cycle (light never goes to green)

It’s cheap and easy to replace the DC in board, so that’s pretty much the diagnostic.  If that doesn’t solve the issue, it’s your logic board (possibly your SMC, any of the power rails, the battery charging circuitry, etc.)


Maybe you could follow the instructions here to set up "Smart card-only" mode. I had tried it myself and summarized some key points as follows:

Make sure that you have paired your Yubikey with macOS. You could run sc_auth list in Terminal to check;
After installing the profile, you'd better plug out your Yubikey and log out the current admin user.
Then plug in your Yubikey, just wait a second. The password input will change to PIN input. If Yubikey was plugged out, there'll be a note probably says"Smart card is needed".

Hope it helpful~ ^_^


If a Finder window is opened while another Finder window exists, cmd+w will exit to the other Finder window, not previous app I am working on

No. To follow your first example, the Finder is the active application at the time you hit ⌘+w to close the second Finder window. So you remain in the Finder and the first Finder window is brought to the front.

One thing you could do is switch back to Chrome first (e.g. with ⌘+tab), then click the second Finder window's close button (assuming it isn't obscured by the Chrome window). That'll close the Finder window in the background while keeping Chrome as the active application.


If you have a local network you can use Synergy to share Bluetooth mice and keyboards with up to 5 computers.

  Synergy lets you easily share your mouse and keyboard between multiple
  computers on your desk, and it's Free and Open Source. Just move your
  mouse off the edge of one computer's screen on to another. You can
  even share all of your clipboards. All you need is a network
  connection. Synergy is cross-platform (works on Windows, Mac OS X and
  Linux).

Here is a good implementation for Mac and Linux: http://code.google.com/p/quicksynergy/


I highly recommend the newly updated Net News Wire for iOS (and Mac if you choose the extra bonus ability to have one unified feed synced across both OS).

http://netnewswireapp.com
http://netnewswireapp.com/ios/

The original author is a long time renowned developer and the current owners are equally respected in the community for doing top notch work.


Is it possible to remove cell borders from Numbers?

It's not iOS but this is how they've done it on OSX:
Under the "Table" tab, uncheck "Grid Lines"

You might also set "Table Outline" to "None" and play with the 3 buttons to the right to add/remove grid lines from the headers.


In El Capitan, how can I prevent the Mac bluetooth mouse from from 'carrying' its scroll between different elements on a single page?

Actually, this is not a thing you can fix on the operating system as technically you still are using the same window/part of a window which is a web view (in whatever browser you are using).

This can only be really fixed by the webpage itself by not making some elements scrollable. For example it's possible to deactivate scroll-zoom in some map providers widgets.

I'm sorry to say that you may not be able to switch this off on an OS Level. Depending on the web browser you are using, there might be an extension that forces to turn scrolling off for some elements but that would most likely lead to partly unusable web pages if you ever need to scroll some of these elements.


Is there a way to keep your app icons sorted by name in LaunchPad?

This is a known bug and has been filed with Apple. All we can do is wait on a fix.

The database gets corrupted when a new entry is added and moved.

The only current workaround is to delete the database and start over, but bear in mind that once a new item is added and moved to a different position, the corruption will occur again.

The database is located in ~/Library/Application Support/Dock


Mention an outside payment system for subscription in an iOS app

What you suggest will get rejected very quickly. I read a quote from the guidelines somewhere (sorry, can't pin it down) that included a phrase about not being allowed to induce users to use another, external, payment system of any sort, which would apply to your various mentions. This is exactly what Spotify ran into recently, they removed the ability to subscribe from inside the app, and put in a page mentioning that there was a way to subscribe outside (with no direct "go here, do this"). They also (separately?), asked for an email address (to which they could eventually send subscription offers, though they made no mention of that). Apple shot it down, Spotify complained very publicly, Apple's lawyer responded publicly.


Album purchased in iTunes but not in library

Check for a download problem by attempting to resume download of purchased items as noted in iTunes: How to resume interrupted iTunes Store downloads

From the Home screen, tap the iTunes icon.

For iPhone/iPod touch, tap More > Downloads. For iPad, tap Downloads.

Enter your account name and password.

Click the "OK" button.

Click the Resume, Resume All, or   button to start the download.

Note that you may want to check and see if automatic downloads are enabled on your iPad as noted here iTunes Store: How to enable Automatic Downloads this may be causing the disconnect of purchasing and not seeing any immediate downloads happening.

Tap Settings > Store on your device.
Tap Sign In if you're not already signed in to the iTunes Store.
Enter your Apple ID and password.
Tap On/Off switch to enable or disable Automatic Downloads for each content type.

If that does not work go into the iTunes Store and check your purchase history as noted in iTunes Store & Mac App Store: Seeing your purchase history and order numbers Clicking the Buy button multiple times, may be resulting in multiple purchases, so be careful and check your account purchase history.

Open iTunes.

Click iTunes Store on the left side of the iTunes window.

If you're not signed in to the store, click Sign In and enter your Apple ID and password.

When the iTunes Store opens, click the button with your account name on it, enter your password, and then click View Account.

In the Account Information window, under Purchase History, click See All.


Why is Aperture showing thousands of Rejected, but there are only 3 there?

Apparently aperture doesn't show photos that have been hidden in iPhoto. You need to open the library in iPhoto and unhide them there, I think. Then you can reject them in aperture again, and they should show up as expected.


Excel Mac - Some txt files can't be opened/imported ("Grayed out")

I think I've got an answer.

Googling around I've found references to "grayed out" problems and mentions of the file's creator attribute.

So a quick Google for "osx file creator mark" pointed me to SetFileand its sibling GetFileInfo.

Running a quick GetFileInfo on the files I get:

Mac:samples jjarava$ for i in 201507*.TXT; do getfileinfo "$i"; echo .; done
file: "/path/to/samples/20150728 - Source Fragment 3 (BAD).TXT"
type: "????"
creator: "????"
attributes: avbstclinmedz
created: 08/03/2015 13:58:18
modified: 08/03/2015 13:58:18
.
file: "/path/to/samples/20150728 - Source Framgent 1 (Good).TXT"
type: "TEXT"
creator: "\0\0\0\0"
attributes: avbstclinmedz
created: 08/03/2015 13:58:18
modified: 08/03/2015 13:58:18
.
file: "/path/to/samples/20150728 - Source Framgent 2 (Good).TXT"
type: "TEXT"
creator: "\0\0\0\0"
attributes: avbstclinmedz
created: 08/03/2015 13:58:18
modified: 08/03/2015 13:58:18
.
file: "/path/to/samples/20150728 - Source (BAD).TXT"
type: "????"
creator: "????"
attributes: avbstclinmedz
created: 08/03/2015 13:58:18
modified: 08/03/2015 13:58:18
.
file: "/path/to/samples/20150728 - Source Fragment 3 copy (BAD).TXT"
type: "????"
creator: "????"
attributes: avbstclinmedz
created: 08/03/2015 13:58:18
modified: 08/03/2015 13:58:18
.

All the "working" files are of type: "TEXT", and all the "not working" ones seem not to have a "type" defined...

Actually, running the following to change the file type:

Mac:samples jjarava$ setfile -t TEXT "20150728 - Source Fragment 3 copy (BAD).TXT"
Mac:samples jjarava$ getfileinfo "20150728 - Source Fragment 3 copy (BAD).TXT"
file: "/path/to/samples/20150728 - Source Fragment 3 copy (BAD).TXT"
type: "TEXT"
creator: "????"
attributes: avbstclinmedz
created: 08/03/2015 13:58:18
modified: 08/03/2015 13:58:18

And that file can now be selected in the "Open" dialog in Excel!!

The question is where does the "type" field come from, and why it's set in some files and not in others, but at least there's some "logic" to the issue!!


Disable bluetooth keyboard for second mac

On the second Mac, under System Preferences > Bluetooth > "Paired Devices" > right click (or control + click) the device (keyboard) > Remove. You must be connected to bluetooth to remove the device.

Under "Advanced" uncheck "Open Bluetooth Setup Assistant at Startup if No Keyboard is Connected"

Subsequently, you can disable Bluetooth altogether in the same pane > "Turn Bluetooth Off."


Being the fanboy that I am, I completely admit that I am absolutely in love with Prompt (by Panic). It's already come a long way since it's initial release, and here's a few wonderful features;

It's not cluttered. They provided an app that offers what you need out of an SSH client and added a few bonuses that make it so much more worthwhile.
Command, and parameter, auto-completion. (Oh my god this is amazing.)
Public/Private key authentication support. Well documented, and also quite improved in recent versions with regard to how to load the actual key.
Leveraging the amount of free space in the meta key bar, you can assign 4 "favorite special character keys", so pick the ones you use most often so you rarely have to hit the 123 keyboard key, or worse, the #+= key. I currently have /\.- chosen.

Prompt is $8 (universal app!) on the iTunes App Store.


Is there a fix for the Bluetooth issues in OS X 10.10?

If you boot into safe mode, does the erratic behavior persist? (i.e. use the Mac in that mode for hours if possible as opposed to using it to rebuild some system caches and then reboot back into normal boot state)
If you make a new user account, does the erratic behavior persist?
Can you reproduce the keyboard issues in recovery HD and/or single user mode?

Those are the first things I'd test to see if a workaround is possible. Also, get a sudo sysdiagnose every time the OS is laggy - those logs will help if you need to open a bug report with Apple. I've not heard of (nor experienced first hand) problems, but it's also soon in the release cycle.


Why these "Earlier" shown in Finder's column title for one of my NFS mounts?

It is because they're listed grouped by dates, and all your files are "old" (i.e. not modified recently).

Click the arrange icon (the one with the six squares divided by two lines) and select "None" to get rid of the header.


How to get Ctrl+return key binding for emacs in iTerm2 working?

I just did a quick test of emacs in iTerm2 and Terminal. Both see CTRL-RET as simply RET.

I did this with CTRL-h k to see what the key is bound to.


I can only recommend to you to download the free Mac app Cheatsheet. It will show you a table with all relevant shortcut keys in any program when holding down the command key for 2 seconds.


Now that I have iCloud, what benefit does Time Machine provide?

iCloud is sync service.  Time Machine is a backup tool.

They're both important and not interchangeable.

You use iCloud to sync content across all your devices.  This way, you can access the most current version of a file, document, or photo, from any device where you're signed-in with the same Apple ID.

Time Machine is designed to create and store backups, including versions.  This is only accessible from a device that locate and mount the TM backup.  Nothing stays in sync across your devices.

If your local hard drive fails, you can use your Time Machine backup to restore your files and retain your version.  iCloud will only allow you to sync the most-recent version of your files back to your drive, without version history.

I recommend using both of these but use, and understand, them appropriately.


Is there an easy way on a Mac to split an audio file at defined intervals?

Use ffmpeg.  It's available via Homebrew and MacPorts, but I just prefer to use the prebuilt binaries

Just off the top of my head, you could do something simple like:

$ ffmpeg -i source_audio_file.mp3 -ss 0 -t 120 segment_1.mp3
$ ffmpeg -i source_audio_file.mp3 -ss 120 -t 240 segment_2.mp3
$ ffmpeg -i source_audio_file.mp3 -ss 240 -t 360 segment_3.mp3
.
.
.

To put this into a script wouldn't be too hard


Change title given to Reading List article

As far as I know, there’s no way to do it directly through the GUI, but there is a file you can edit quite easily. The file ~/Library/Safari/Bookmarks.plist contains all of the Safari bookmarks, including those saved to the Reading List. (For whatever reason, this file gets borked in TextMate, among others, but TextWrangler seems to cope just fine).

Anything beginning <key>ReadingList</key> is an item saved to the Reading List. There are two entries that control the title and the description. The first will be of the form:

<key>PreviewText</key>
<string>No preview available</key>

This occurs about six or seven lines in. Change this, and the description changes. The second entry is of the form:

<key>title</key>
<string>http://arxiv.org/pdf/1111.1763/arxiv.org</string>

and you can imagine what that does.

This procedure worked for me in Safari 5.1.1 in 10.7.2; I presume it should similarly work for you.

Two caveats: I have no idea what this might do to an iCloud-synced reading list. If the edit doesn’t get marked with the appropriate edit date, there could be some weird sync conflict brouhaha and Safari might explode. Also, I quit Safari while I messed around in Bookmarks.plist. No idea what might happen if you leave it open; probably nothing. But y’know. You can’t be too careful.

This is an example full entry for a Reading List item in Bookmarks.plist.

<dict>
    <key>ReadingList</key>
    <dict>
        <key>DateAdded</key>
        <date>2012-11-29T23:30:55Z</date>
        <key>DateLastFetched</key>
        <date>2012-11-29T23:30:55Z</date>
        <key>PreviewText</key>
        <string> **This is the short description** </string>
    </dict>
    <key>Sync</key>
    <dict>
        <key>Key</key>
        <string>”C=1234567890"</string>
        <key>ServerID</key>
        <string>https://example@example.com+ABCDEFG12345</string>
    </dict>
    <key>URIDictionary</key>
    <dict>
        <key>title</key>
        <string> **A web page that I’ve saved** </string>
    </dict>
    <key>URLString</key>
    <string>http://www.example.com/readinglist</string>
    <key>WebBookmarkType</key>
    <string>WebBookmarkTypeLeaf</string>
    <key>WebBookmarkUUID</key>
    <string> 1234567890 </string>
</dict>


Why not just change your users' behavior on the shutdown process to make this a lot simpler (with minimal effort on scripting/programming the shutdown hook)?

Tell the users not to use the standard shutdown process (from the menu or through the keyboard shortcut) and instead use your backup AppleScript that's transformed into an app called something like SafeShutdown.app
Within the SafeShutdown app script, do the backup and then end it with a

tell application "Finder"
    shut down
end tell

or with this (will prompt for password)

do shell script "sudo shutdown -h now" with administrator privileges

or with a

tell application "System Events"
    shut down
end tell


Copy iCloud Photos library to a clean install

I ended up following ankii's suggestion and just chancing it by turning iCloud Photos back on and letting it upload 100,000+ photos.

On the plus side, it did sync successfully without duplicating any photos.

On the minus side, I started it on 09/08 and it just now finished on 09/17. So that's 9 solid days of "uploading". It was on a mostly idle iMac with broadband and it didn't seem to be taxing either the CPU or the network, so I'm not sure why it went so very very slowly.

My total data usage for the time is less than half the size of the library, so it does appear to have saved some data. No way to tell how long it would have taken to download the library from scratch.

I still feel like there should be a better way, but I can report that copying the library to the new system and turning on iCloud Photos does work.


Restoring Boot Camp boot from Windows 10 using High Sierra?

SIP can be turned off on your Mac. SIP has nothing to do with encryption. You have to boot the Mac in Recovery mode in order to enter the csrutil disable command. Recovery mode can be booted from the internal recovery partition, from the internet or from a USB flash drive. You can also use third party tools, such as rEFInd, to disable SIP.

rEFIt is the predecessor to rEFInd boot manager. rEFIt is now obsolete with respect to the current macOS operating systems. rEFInd should only be installed to either a EFI, FAT or jhfs+ partition. rEFInd should not be installed in the macOS partition.

The most likely reason the Windows 10 recovery solution did not work would be the partitioning of the internal drive. Normally, your Mac should be using GPT partitioning with a full protected MBR. If the partitioning was changed from full protect to hybrid, then the mountvol S: /s command would return the error message The parameter is incorrect. Here, I made the assumption you installed Windows 10 using the Boot Camp Assistant. If you first installed Widows 7/8/8.1 then upgraded to Windows 10, then this answer may need to be altered.

The easiest way to check and update the partitioning is to use the gdisk command. You will need to download and install gdisk. Also to use gdisk from macOS, you will need to disable SIP. You can also use gdisk while booted in Recovery mode.

If you are out of free space in the Windows partition and you can access your files from macOS, then you might what to consider first backing up your files, deleting windows, and then reinstalling Windows into a larger partition. I say this because there is no practical way to increase the size of the Windows partition without using some third party tool. Before attempting this, you would want to backup your files anyway. So, you might as well remove Windows, increase the partition size and reinstall.


Will Photo Stream go away when iCloud Photos leaves beta?

This is speculation until Apple makes an official announcement.

Given that the iCloud Photos page doesn't mention Photo Stream once, and refers to "shared albums" instead of shared Photo Streams, I would guess that Photo Stream will be retired, yes.


Why do aliases with words not expand in big sur?

$ alias --man
NAME
  alias - define or display aliases

SYNOPSIS
  alias [ options ] [name[=value]...]

DESCRIPTION
  alias creates or redefines alias definitions or writes the existing alias definitions to standard output. An alias
  definitions provides a string value that will replace a command name when the command is read. Alias names can
  contain any printable character which is not special to the shell. If an alias value ends in a space or tab, then the
  word following the command name the alias replaces is also checked to see whether it is an alias.

If you want your vscode alias to work, you need to do something like:
alias vscode='"visual studio code"'

So that the shell doesn't perform word-splitting on the string.
Example:
$ alias vscode='visual studio code'
$ vscode
ksh: visual: not found               <= shell word-splitting
$ alias vscode='"visual studio code"'
$ vscode
ksh: visual studio code: not found   <= shell not word-splitting
$

But what you really should do is follow VS Code's installation instructions for macOS, add /Applications/Visual Studio Code.app/Contents/Resources/app/bin to your path, and run code to start it.
$ path
/opt/local/bin
/opt/local/sbin
/usr/local/bin
/usr/bin
/bin
/usr/sbin
/sbin
/Applications/VMware Fusion.app/Contents/Public
/Applications/Visual Studio Code.app/Contents/Resources/app/bin
/Users/mwilson/bin
/Users/mwilson/.local/bin
/Users/mwilson/Library/Python/3.9/bin
$ whence code
'/Applications/Visual Studio Code.app/Contents/Resources/app/bin/code'
$


How can I delete local mail on mac and stop terminal saying "You have mail."

Remove /var/mail/$USER. The other option would remove the actual mails you see in Mail.App, this is for sure not what you want.
If you keep getting mails in Terminal, run less /var/mail/$USER to see which processes are sending them.


Free app to detect & delete duplicate files from my Mac

Beware : once you change the content of a torrent, you're not able to seed it anymore.

Open a finder window, search for all files named .dat then just press cmd+a (select all) then cmd+backspace (delete) then cmd+backspace+maj (empty the bin)

You can also use gemini to find duplicates then delete them with Finder, or if you're familiar with bash :

find -not -empty -type f -printf "%s\n" |
    sort -rn |
    uniq -d |
    xargs -I{} -n1 find -type f -size {}c -print0 |
        xargs -0 md5sum |
        sort |
        uniq -w32 --all-repeated=separate


For me, it was calendar notifications. I noted the change when I upgraded to Mojave, that I got a notification sound whenever I opened the lid.  I had the calendar notification set to NONE - so there was no visual alert, but I had left "Play Sound" checked. It appears that if you have any notifications for the day, calendar alerts you on opening the lid. I toggled on the visual alert to confirm and, yep -- it was calendar alerts. Turned off sound and all was well.

System Preferences > Notifications:


Experience with booting on a Tempo SSD PCIe card?

I successfully installed a bootable High Sierra system on a Samsung EVO 860 (1 TB) mounted on that Tempo SSD PCIe card I asked about. I kept the RAID 5 alongside for the big important data.


Why does only half my monitor light up sometimes

There are three possible causes in a situation like this:

An issue with the MacBook Pro
An issue with the monitor
A faulty cable

Trying to identify the problem involves a process of elimination and some patience.

1. MacBook Pro

As a starting point I would reset both the SMC and NVRAM of your MacBook Pro.

RESET SMC

Shut down your computer
Keep the 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.

RESET NVRAM

Shut down your computer.
Press the power button and then press the commandoptionpr keys. You have to make sure you press these keys before the gray screen appears.
Hold those keys down until your Mac reboots again and you here the startup chime.
Let go of the keys and let your Mac reboot normally.

Note: When you log back in you may need to readjust some of your system preferences (e.g. speaker volume, screen resolution, startup disk selection, time zone information, etc).

There may be other things to try (e.g. changing screen resolution, changing mode, etc) but I'd reset the SMC and NVRAM first and try using the monitor as usual to see if that resolves the issue.

2. Monitor

You don't specify your exact model of Samsung monitor, but regardless of model you will be able to reset the monitor. The instructions for doing so will be in your manual.

Most recent Samsung monitors can be reset by holding down the Source button for about 20 seconds, while older models will have specific instructions. If you don't have your manual, accessing the monitor's Menu and browsing the options should provide a reset option. In some cases you may need to do multiple resets (e.g. Geometry reset, Colour reset, etc).

You can also try changing some of the monitor's other settings to determine what difference this makes.

3. Cable

Testing for a faulty cable is straightforward as it simply involves trying another cable. However, unless you happen to have access to a spare cable, I would try the above steps for your MacBook Pro and monitor first.


SSD in external usb 3.0 case not recognized

USB 2.0 doesn't provide enough power for the SSD in an enclosure unless you have a case that has a plug where you may add more power (and that's going to be hard to find because USB 3.0 2.5" enclosures normally do not require such extra power and, therefore, will not have the 5v power port).

Or try a powered USB hub between the case and the Mac. That may work.


Is there a way to quickly teleport a window from one display to another?

BetterTouchTool

BetterTouchTool allows you to set a trigger to move a window to a second monitor, such as the one below:

Trigger: Doubleclick Window Titlebar; Predifined Action: Move Window to Next Monitor

Alternatively, a mouse button, keyboard shortcut, Apple Remote, Magic Mouse or trackpad gesture could be set up as the trigger.

Slate

Slate is an extremely customisable tool that allows you to set window layouts/positions through keyboard shortcuts. Combining this with a BTT gesture, you can create a gesture-driven window movement tool for free!

  Slate is a window management application similar to Divvy and SizeUp (except better and free!). Originally written to replace them due to some limitations in how each work, it attempts to overcome them by simply being extremely configurable. As a result, it may be a bit daunting to get configured, but once it is done, the benefit is huge.


How do you specify the type of file you're looking for in an 'open file' dialog with a pattern?

You have Spotlight available from every file-picker dialog.

You can search by name or extension/file type, either in the currently open directory or the entire machine.

Sidebar hidden to save unnecessary extraneous detail

If you know the name rather than the filetype of the document you are looking for, then, same as in any Finder folder, you can start to type the name & the selection will jump to the first match for that string.

eg typing t,e,s will find the first match on test.txt, but you can't use this to find a file type .xml etc as it only searches from the beginning of the name.


Why does my MacBook's monitor go to maximum brightness when waking up from sleep?

Try to reset the System Management Controller.

Resetting the SMC on Mac portables with a battery you can remove

Shut down the computer.
Disconnect the MagSafe power adapter from the computer, if it's connected.
Remove the battery.
Press and hold the power button for 5 seconds.
Release the power button.
Reconnect the battery and MagSafe power adapter.
Press the power button to turn on the computer.


How can one filter MULTIPLE processes in Activity Monitor?

This doesn't seem to be possible with Activity Monitor. Unfortunately top doesn't accept several pids to monitor either, so you have to revert to a half-manual (and rather unelegant) solution using Terminal:

while :; do
    clear
    top -l 1 -pid PID-TO-MONITOR | tail -1
    top -l 1 -pid ANOTHER-PID-TO-MONITOR | tail -1
    sleep 5
done

Given some basic bash skills you can wrap this into a shell script if needed often.

Or open several terminal windows and run top on specific processes in each of them. Might be kind of heavy on your CPU though...


Show the login screen (without logging out):

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

Switch current user (replace 501 with the correct UID):

/System/Library/CoreServices/Menu\ Extras/User.menu/Contents/Resources/CGSession -switchToUserID 501

(found at http://www.chipwreck.de/blog/2008/01/26/fast-user-switching-via-commandline/.)


How do I unlock my iTunes account when my old e-mail is unavailable?

Some social engineering solutions :

Your iTunes account was presumably associated with your credit card, yes?  You could attempt to prove you identity to Apple via that credit card connection.  You could warn them that you plan on contesting credit card charges if they cannot restore the account.
If Apple won't help, then collect your old credit card bills with iTunes charges, and speak with your credit card company about contesting those charges.  You're beyond the 60 day period, but maybe not the 1 year "claims and defenses" period.  I doubt you'll get your money back, but you have a legitimate dispute with Apple, so stick them the dispute resolution merchant fees, which might cost as much as $30 per song.  Do not lie to your credit card company, simply push the dispute process as far as possible, the further it goes the more money they charge Apple.
You could theoretically sue Apple in small claims court.  Imho, this sounds like way way too much hassle for a few hundred bucks.  But maybe you could get your account back by contacting Apple's legal department in writing.

Two technical solutions :

You say you still have the files themselves, yes?  There are a variety of tools for removing iTunes DRM.  A priori, I'd imagine most/all require authorization since that's the easiest way, but perhaps some clever one does not.  Try any that look promising.
Do you have an iPod?  If so, try Graeme Hutchison suggestion.  If it only give you encrypted music, then theoretically the iPod knows the authorization keys, meaning you've a slim chance someone discovered a trick for using the iPod's authorization to decrypt your music.  Google isn't finding anything for me though.

As an aside, you should never buy DRM protected content in the first palce because : (a) Eventually you'll lose access one way or another, often by the company discontinuing the service. (b) Your supporting the DRM technologies which create these problems.  Any books, movies, or music distributed with DRM are also available without DRM if you look.


Double-click headphone button to change track function

It works as expected in Spotify v1.0.65.320 for all interested.


How do you keep your macbook pro cleaned and polished?

Several years ago I purchased the iKlear Complete Cleaning Kit which comes with:

1 - 2 oz. iKlear Spray Bottle
1 - 6 oz. iKlear Spray Bottle
1 - Large "Chamois" Cloth
1 - Travel Size "Chamois" Cloth
1 - Medium DMT Antimicrobial Cloth
1 - Travel Size DMT Antimicrobial Cloth
12 - iKlear Travel Singles

You can buy it on Amazon for just under $19 [prime eligible].

They claimed at the time that it was the exclusive product used at the Apple Genius Bar. I'm not sure if that's still true, but I've definitely seen it in use at Apple Stores. I've been very happy with it, and it has lasted a long, long time. ("How long?" you ask. Well, let me put it this way, I bought it for my PowerBook.)

The nice thing about it is that you can use it to clean the glass and the body of the Mac too.

(Non-Disclaimer: I'm not connected to the company in any way other than a paying customer.)


Keyboard layout not usable in all programs

Things you could try:

Move the keyboard layout to /Library/Keyboard Layouts/. Keyboard layouts in the user library can't be selected in password dialogs or the login window.
Change the ID from Keyboard > Set Keyboard ID... in Ukelele.
Save the keyboard layout as a bundle instead of an XML file.

To apply changes to a keylayout file, you can for example run sudo touch /Library/Keyboard\ Layouts/ and log out and back in.


Small case for mac book air that will hold charger and mouse?

The Booq bags generally have tolerances that are too tight. My iPad with the Apple case didn't fit in their messenger bag that was made for it.

Since you didn't set a price I would suggest the City Slicker case from sfbags.com. I would have bought this bag, but I already had a case for my MBA. I have the version of this case made for the PS Vita and it is an excellent case. There is plenty of room for earbuds, charger, games and extra memory cards. I'm sure there would be enough room in the MBA version of the case for a charger and cables, and by the pictures probably even the DVD drive if you tote that around.


Keep general phone installation size (incl. IOS) to a minimum

Obviously, the files will auto-delete after installation. iOS has a really good file management system. There are not "tricks/guides/apps" to keep the install sizes to a minimum. This is not Android to clean up and delete unnecessary files, It's done automatically.


From a quick internet search, I found this article that lists two apps:

AppLocker is free to block one app, with a $10 purchase to unlock full functionality. Take this with a grain of salt, though - the average review is one star
AppCrypt is a one-time $30 payment (25% off with their coupon code). It looks like you can download it for free from their website, but likely has limited functionality


Is Bluetooth battery information readable in Windows on Boot Camp?

There is an application for Windows called "Bluetooth Battery Monitor." It is in beta right now, but I use it for my Ghostek SoDrop 2.0 headphones, and it works well.

You can download the beta at: https://www.bluetoothgoodies.com/

I don't think that BootCamp per se would make a difference as to whether the Windows program would work or not, or any program at all, for that matter.


Can I pause the Mountain Lion download and resume it later?

I was just searching for that, and No, you can't, it has to be downloaded in one time only. If you paused; it'll restart from the beginning.

This is the source from Apple Discussions:
https://discussions.apple.com/thread/4139031


How remove weather from today view in os X notification center?

You can't remove weather from Today without removing Today. The Weather widget is a separate interactive Weather widget, not part of Today. If you don't want weather to show within Today, you need to remove the Today widget.


How to limit any devices to appear on any Bonjour/Airplay capable devices close by?

There are a number of ways to do this, depending on your network setup.

You could as @tron_jones suggested use isolated networks or VLANs. Another way would be to setup the router so that each class room is on a different subnet i.e.

10.0.1.0/24 for class room 1
10.0.2.0/24 for class room 2
10.0.3.0/24 for class room 3

mDNS / Bonjour does not broadcast outside of the subnet by default.

Either of these options should work, but require a non-trivial amount of alteration to your LAN, essentially there is no solution within the product itself.


Can the macbook air trackpad play nice with the iOS simulator?

Unfortunatly the simulator was not built to understand multi-touch gestures which is strange considering the rest of the OS has. I think you will just need to wait until Apple updates the simulator.


How to manually restore a iTunes and iPhoto Library?

Your iPhoto library (by default) is located in ~/Pictures as a package (.photolibrary).
Your iTunes library (by default) is located in ~/Music as a folder.

Copying the entire library will copy all the data (unless you are using referenced media). Your app settings are located in ~/Library/Preferences.


Have you installed the HooToo shuttle firmware update for MacBooks? If not, you can download this directly from here.

I would download/install the firmware update first to see if that resolves your problem. This eliminates the possibility that it's a firmware issue with the HooToo hub (otherwise you could spend hours troubleshooting other causes for absolutely no benefit).

If you still have problems after installing the update, please comment below to let me know.


It might be possible to recover the text of your notes. I cannot gaurantee this will work for you, but I've tried this in High Sierra and it worked for me. There might be an easier way, I'm not sure.

Using Finder or Terminal check in the following directory (Note - this may well be a different directory from the one you tried first)

~/Library/Group Containers/group.com.apple.notes

for the following file

NoteStore.sqlite

(In Finder, select  Go->Go to Folder, enter ~/Library/  , then navigate to the dir shown above)

If this file exists, copy it to your Desktop. (Otherwise, sorry, game over, although someone else might know otherwise)

You will now need mac_apt (macOS Artifact Parsing Tool) to analyse this file.

Download a compiled bundle of mac_apt for macOS from

https://github.com/ydkhatri/mac_apt/releases

I had to use the 10.13 bundle on High Sierra.

Using terminal, then cd into the mac_apt directory you have downloaded.

cd ~/Downloads/<name of mac_apt directory>

You should see the following two files:-

mac_apt_singleplugin.app
mac_apt.app

Now you need to run mac_apt_singleplugin.app to analyse your Notes sql notes db

In terminal, run the following in the mac_apt download directory

./mac_apt_singleplugin.app/Contents/MacOS/mac_apt_singleplugin -i ~/Desktop/NoteStore.sqlite -o ~/Desktop/NotesOutput NOTES

This should create ~/Desktop/NotesOutput

Inside this directory will be a log .txt file, and if you are lucky, a Notes.csv file. The csv file can be opened in any spreadsheet e.g. Numbers, and you can search through its fields to find the text of your notes if they were in the original file. You can copy / paste these into text files. Alternatively it might well be possible to run a script to pull out particular csv fields into individual text files - someone here may be able to help you with that particular problem.


How to Find/Filter for 24-bit audio files in Finder or iTunes or another software (if needed)? (audio bit depth / sample size)

I've been fiddling with this all day - so far all I can say is 'I agree, Finder search does not find files by bit rate or depth'. MediaInfo will tell you - but that would be really tedious.

I did notice too, that the 'Bits per Sample' flag in Finder's column view always just shows a double dash '--'
It's fine for AIF & WAV, but not FLAC, ALAC, MP3 etc

I did think I had a late revelation…

EasyFind (freeware) can nearly do it. It generates false positives on some flac files I tested it against, but it did find all the 24-bit files… it just 'found' some 16-bit too for no reason I can discern.
Test 2, on 16 & 24-bit ALAC files - fails, doesn't even find all the 24s… back to the drawing board.

I thought I'd just post this 'non-answer' as a 'this isn't being ignored' & see if anyone else can get any further.


Opendirectoryd too many corpses being created

This solution worked for my MacBook Pro: https://mrsystems.co.uk/blogs/news/too-many-corpses-being-created

Steps from the article:

  boot and hold cmd-R to start up from macOS Recovery
  If Filevault is on, mount the disk with Disk Utility and password
  Run these two in Terminal
  cd /Volumes/Macintosh\ HD/var/db/caches/opendirectory
  mv ./mbr_cache ./mbr_cache-old
  Restart


How to render a specific character as transparent in terminal

It doesn't look like iTerm supports this -- here are their proprietary escape sequences:

https://www.iterm2.com/documentation-escape-codes.html

It seems like a great feature to add, if you're a programmer looking to contribute to iTerm2! Their github repo is here:

https://github.com/gnachman/iTerm2


Go to Setting>Messages>Message History> Keep Messages> Choose 30 days.  It will delete the ones taking up your storage.  You can switch it back to Forever if you don't want your new messages deleted in 30 days.


Is it possible to use Time Machine on a shared USB Hardrive?

It should be possible, but it will not be able to use your existing MBP backup (you will need to start it from scratch). Just plug the disk into the iMac, make sure it is being shared, and then select it in Time Machine setup on the MacBook Pro and let it do the initial backup.

The reason you can't use the existing backup is that when you use a disk for Time Machine it uses that disk directly, since it is attached to the machine and the machine knows no other machine is modifying it. When you use it over a network it creates a disk image and puts the time machine data in the disk image (in essence, it is a poor man's version of thin provisioning. Migrating between these two configurations is possible, but non-trivial.


VMware Fusion 3.x and later adds a new menu bar item that allows you to access Windows programs and documents quickly on your Mac. This menu bar item is available immediately after you install Fusion, and can be accessed even when Fusion is not running.

To modify the behavior of this feature:

Go to Virtual Machine > Settings.
Click Application Menu (Applications in Fusion 3).
From the 'Show applications menu' in menu bar drop-down, choose Always, Never, or Only when Fusion is running.


Replacing Touch ID/Home button on an iPhone 7

can the Touch ID (or Home button) be returned to life if I bring it to the Apple Service Center?

Yes, you can take your iPhone to any Apple authorised service centre to get the Touch ID/Home button replaced.

  Touch ID on an iPhone 7 cannot be fixed once and for all because theres some kind of one-to-one binding between the device and the Touch ID.

Touch ID is bound to the secure enclave built into iPhone (a security chip). Thus, if the Home button with integrated Touch ID (iPhone 5s and later) in an iPhone is replaced by an un-authorized/3rd party service provider, the Touch ID doesn't function. This is by design and is meant for keeping the security of data on your iPhone intact.

  I'm thinking that if the clickable Touch ID in iPhone 6s can be used as a replacement for the Home button in iPhone 7. Will it work?

No, you cannot use an iPhone 6s Touch ID/Home button with an iPhone 7. They are vastly different both in technology and working mechanism. (Home button in an iPhone 7 doesn't mechanically press, but instead give feedback via heptics.)


Can I convert .ifo files with Final Cut?

VLC is able to open .ifo files, it also can save files in other formats:

Open VLC
Select File->Convert/Stream (or press Shift-Cmd-S)
Drag&drop your .ifo file into the window
Select conversion profile suitable for YouTube
Select target file and click on Go!


Can't read/write via `dd`: got /dev/disk2: Permission denied (to Physical device)

I realize that exactly the same setup is working on other MacBooks and even with another admin user on this laptop. So no matter, what kind o issue it is: I think it's something related to my personal setup and setting, not to the system in general. So I will close this question for now.
If someone get the same problem: try to do the same steps as I  described above or in the end: change the machine or user on your one if there is a chance to do this.

make sure that diskX is unmounted via diskutil unmountDisk and diskutil unmount
Change USB ports
if it's SD card: blow with air into the slot (many people said because of the physical lock sensor of sd card.
make sure, that you work via sudo. (just in case, you can check it via which sudo command)


iPhone cannot update nor activate—method to reset?

Sticking to your last question with the assumption that your question is still relevant - maybe also for others looking also for the same issue, try to set the device in DFU mode. Apple provides a step by step guide here.

Also try to install the latest iOS via iTunes afterwards.


How might text be selected while typing the login password on my Mac?

I know the behaviour you describe. In my case, I wake up my Mac by pressing a key and I just wait for a few secs before entering the password. The key I pressed to wake up my Mac and if I press any others in that first couple of seconds (I am often impatient to get my computer to wake up!) will get selected as you describe.

I think this is intentional behaviour by Apple, that any character typed before the password field is displayed and working is not treated as part of the password to be entered & so are deleted. The behaviour though is not a good user experience. I think a better experience should be that the characters typed before the text field is ready should not be added to the text field when it is ready, thus making it clear that characters entered before the text field is ready are ignored. The adding them & then selecting & deleting behaviour is just odd.

My answer I suppose is this. After waking your computer, just wait a couple of secs before entering your password. I've just learnt to do that without thinking about it because it works. But your right & if you have the enthusiasm report it as a bug to Apple.


Screen not working on water damaged iPhone and can't disable Find My iPhone to restore

You can just put your device into DFU mode, which bypasses the Find My iPhone requirement. To put the device in DFU mode:

Connect the device to a computer running the most recent version of iTunes (can be downloaded at https://www.apple.com/itunes/download/)
Hold down the Home button and the Sleep/Wake button for 10 seconds
Once 10 seconds has elapsed then release the Sleep/Wake button
Keep holding the Home button until the device appears in iTunes

If you need more help getting your device into DFU mode look at http://www.iclarified.com/1034/how-to-put-an-iphone-into-dfu

From here you will be able to restore your device using iTunes.


Did you use the Alias command from the finder when you created the links, or did you use ln -s in the terminal? Unix symbolic links are not quite the same as an Alias although they serve similar purposes. From the name of the service you installed, it's probably a good assumption they were using Unix symbolic links.

In that case, you'll probably want to use the find command in the terminal, e.g.: find /Users/yourhome/Library/ -type l

Assuming that this was the service you installed, it looks like they're calling symlink from the standard C libraries, which in turn is going to use Unix symlinks, and not Mac OS aliases.


Change File Open Dialog to have Date Updated/Modified instead of Date Added

Just the same as in the Finder - right click anywhere on the header bar [Name, Size, Kind etc] & you can add or remove data types as you wish

You can then drag the columns into your preferred order & sort by clicking any header.


Booting to Recovery Mode won't work anymore

On Dosdudes's website, they make a note that if you use APFS, you will not have a bootable Recovery partition:

Select the disk or partition you want to install on, and erase it, ensuring to use either Mac OS Extended (Journaled), or APFS as the filesystem type. If formatting an entire drive, ensure GUID is selected.
-- Please note that if you use APFS, you will not have a bootable Recovery partition.

Emphasis mine
Granted, the install document is from the "High Sierra" page, but APFS implementation between High Sierra and Catalina isn't so different that Recovery will work in one and not the other.
As for your graphics card, I highly suggest flashing (IMO, this should have been done prior to installing your Catalina patch so you could diagnose issue if/when they arose).  See this answer for some links on how to do this procedure.
If you need a Recovery Partition, try Internet Recovery or boot from a USB installer.


Pomodoro application which shows time in menubar

Pomodoro looks like it might do what you need.

Can be minified to menubar and shows remaining time there (✔)
Has a tasklist (possible ✔) Its called a log in the app and the webpage says for each timer you can "add a meaningful description, press Ok and pomodoro starts")

The latest release is available on the MAS for $5. However, the developers site also says you can either download an older version for free, or build the latest source yourself:

  Buy the latest approved release from the Mac App Store℠, go to the
  Downloads section to get old 0.31 binaries, or access the source at
  the git repository to compile on your own the latest and greatest
  version.

  Pomodoro is open source: you can donate a small amount of money if you
  really liked it and don't want to buy it from Mac App Store℠.


Desktop image is not showing in Mountain Lion with dual monitor

Restarting the Dock seems to work for me, however I don't know what is causing this grey desktop background.

To restart the Dock, type this into Terminal and press enter:

killall Dock


Why does my iPad keep asking for my iCloud password?

Best way to solve this issue is going to your Settings

Go to iCloud
Log out
Log back in

Your issue should be solved now. If not, you might have installed apps via another Apple Id which is prompting you to enter its password.


PC shutoff during Migration Assistant transfer to Mac

You will very likely need to delete the user on the Mac side and start the migration again. Depending on your setup, this might be a bad choice of steps, but most people run Migration Assistant as part of the first boot process, so I made the assumption that you also did that. Your next step might be to decide if you want to get help from Apple (they support all new Macs for free through AppleCare and the retail stores) or if you want to provide us with more details and see if we can guide you to how to reset things and start the migration over.


How to assign iPhone "Shortcut" to record video?

You cannot change the action of a double-press of the side button.
You can configure back tap accessibility feature:

Create a shortcut to Take Video with the Camera app.
Configure back tap (Settings → Accessibility → Touch) to run the shortcut you created.


Here is a detailed manual how to use handbrake to add subtitles.


Count contents of one column if an adjacent cell matches a query in Numbers

Use SUMIF instead of COUNTIF. SUMIF let's you search for a value in one range and accumulate values in another range if a match is found. COUNTIF counts the occurrences of a match, which is why you're getting lower than expected results.

Let's say I have two columns: Type and Count. Here's our sample data:

If I want to SUMIF all the Count values when Type is value A I'd use:

=SUMIF(A2:A7, "A", B2:B7)

Doing this for values A, B and C yields the correct results on our simple data set so we can convince ourselves this is what we actually want:

So, in your case, you'd want to do something like:

=SUMIF(<range where you keep gun type>, "Pistol", <range where you keep shots fired>)

And that would give you the total shots fired any time you recorded the gun type as Pistol.

Note, it's not necessary for the columns to be adjacent, which is nice. But they should have a similar range or odd things can happen.


You do not have the necessary read, write and append privileges on the selected network backup disk

On my iMacs running macOS High Sierra (version 10.13.6) I had to explicitly add filesystem permissions for Time Machine to function correctly over the network. This resolved the You do not have the necessary read, write, and append privileges on the selected network backup disk error message.

I'm using username_A on both the source and destination iMacs.

On the source iMac, I used username_A when configuring Time Machine to run over the network to the shared network drive.

On the destination iMac (the one sharing out the Time Machine backup disk over my home network), I had to add username_A to the list of allowed users in System Preferences → Sharing → File Sharing. I also had to pull up the Get Info window for the shared disk and add username_A to the Sharing & Permissions list at the bottom of the window. Once I had added username_A in both places on the destination iMac, I was able to get Time Machine running over the network.


All iPhone 4s pics not showing on Windows 7 PC

Have you enabled iCloud Photo Library? If you have, go to Settings > Apple ID > iCloud > Photos to see whether you tick on "Optimise iPhone Storage". If you've ticked on this item, then that will explain your situation. If you enable this feature, it's normal for you to see just a few photos showing on the picture folder, because the rest of your photos is optimised to thumbnail and won't be shown on computer.
In this case, you should check your iCloud. All photos in your iPhone 4s will be stored there.


Upgrade to Yosemite with two hard drives in iMac

The answer is: OS X did not upgrade my disks to Fusion Drive (or CoreStorage).

[miha:~]diskutil cs list
No CoreStorage logical volume groups found

Probably because of the unconvetional layout. Or perhaps some other unknown reason.


How do I prevent Calendar from draining my iPhone battery?

One of your Calendar\Mail\Contacts accounts is in an endless loop. Maybe a corrupted event or something of that sort.

What iOS are you using? I remember something of that sort in iOS 8, no idea if this was fixed yet.

First I would suggest removing one account at a time and check after a day of usage if Calendar is still going crazy. If it does, move on to the next account. Once you figured out which account is the problematic one, add it again and configure it as new. This should fix it.


How come YouTube videos play without Flash support in OS?

YouTube videos are offered in multiple formats, not only Flash. If viewing on an iOS device, then you get H.264 format.


Mojave Photos - Space Bar to Preview fix not working

As of Mojave 10.14.4 - Photos has changed back to the normal use of the space bar to preview an image. So if your have not upgraded yet, do that :)


Cannot partition internal drive to install bootcamp because of APFS/High Sierra

If your disk has been converted/formatted to use APFS, and you use Time Machine partitioning will typically fail because Time Machine made local APFS snapshots.

You can see the snapshots created with the command (use Terminal to enter it):

tmutil listlocalsnapshots /

If you see some, run the following command:

tmutil thinlocalsnapshots / 9999999999999

This last command will delete all the local snapshots.

Now run the Bootcamp assistant again, this time partitioning the disk should succeed.


Is there any Keychain extension for Chrome?

Actually there's no official way to do what you want and I recommend you to avoid third parts extensions available somewhere on the internet that could endanger your passwords and personal datas. You can use your Google Account Keychain but you will be able to use the passwords stored on it only on chrome browsers signed and synchronized with your Google Account.


How can I fix the gpg-agent: Bad CPU type problem?

Most probably you have gpg-agent installed in a 32-bit version. macOS 10.15 only supports 64-bit programs, so it tells you the CPU type in the executable is not supported.
The fix is to reinstall gpg-agent in the 64-bit version.
You can check the type of executable by running the following in the Terminal:
file /usr/local/bin/gpg-agent

Most probably it will say:
/usr/local/bin/gpg-agent: Mach-O executable i386

Here "i386" means that it is compiled for a 32-bit CPU architecture.
After replacing gpg-agent with the 64-bit version, you should see an output like:
/usr/local/bin/gpg-agent: Mach-O 64-bit executable x86_64


How to disable 'Exit Full Screen' with escape on Yosemite

Now, you could go ahead and brute-force disable the Escape key in
  Safari. But that'd defeat the purpose of still allowing Escape to work
  as a shortcut in the aforementioned places, which I'd rather avoid.

http://patricklenz.co/blog/2014/9/1/dont-escape-full-screen-mode-in-safari

Btw I think that your question is a duplicate : Disable Escape key in Safari for getting out of full screen mode


You are not alone (https://duckduckgo.com/?q=ios11+drains+battery), and usually this happens with all major iOS upgrades. Besides following the usual steps to reduce battery usage the probably only course of action is to wait for iOS updates.


Camtwist works for such things
(haven't yet personally tested it in mavericks)


It depends on how you installed wget in the first place.

If you installed directly from source, run sudo rm /usr/local/bin/wget
If you installed via Homebrew, run brew uninstall wget (or just use brew upgrade wget to install the most recent version)


iPhone 5s GSM - unknown error 2006 on restoring the iPhone, stuck in recovery mode

Solved by pushing it out of Recovery mode cycle by using ReiBoot (https://www.tenorshare.com/products/reiboot.html). I am sure there are some other apps that can do this too. It's very simple to do, I just installed it, run it, plug the iPhone in computer via USB. It detects the iPhone, offers a "push out of recovery mode" button of sort. Click the button and voila!


Is it possible to install a custom screensaver?

You can use Xcode to create your own screensaver

but showing a video or GIF probably needs some custom programming.


Why is there a time lag when I put my iPhone on loudspeaker?

The main technical problem with most speaker phones is that they are not full duplex.

This means, that unlike a normal phone conversation, both parties cannot speak at the same time. To avoid feedback, the system mutes the microphone most of the time and instead tries to detect when you are about to speak.

When both parties are on speaker phones, this system works quite badly since the normal conversation queues of "mmmm, uh-huh, go on..." can cause it to cut the real conversation off at times.

To fix this, don’t use speaker and use headset or Bluetooth for your mic.


What would happen if I put an iPad sim card in my iPhone

I called EE and the guy said I would be unable to make calls or send text messages.

I will try this out and see how I go.


I have experienced similar problems with my MacBook Pro when I drop my earphones near the left side of my keyboard. I believe the MacBook uses magnets to detect the screen lid is closed, so when the magnetic field of the earphones get near the Macbook case it thinks the screen was closed and locks the system.

I have ever since placed my earphones somewhere else, far from the MacBook case and never had this problem again.

Check if you don't have any strong magnetic fields near your computer, even if a bit far from it.


How do I restore the icons of the Dock's Applications folder?

Well, I restarted and did a first aid on the volume, and now it's working. I don't know what did it, the restart or the first aid, but it's working now.


PhotoCal and PhotoHistory both allow you to browse photos by date. PhotoCal will also scan your Photostream.


It won't affect the unlock.  A legitimate (ie sanctioned by the carrier and not hardware/software) unlock happens at the carrier level and jailbreaking doesn't affect that.


Have you looked into LangLangC's suggestion in this post: GPU problem - Boot Hangs on Grey Screen. Apparently, this fix works for NVDIA as well as Radeon chips. If you have another Mac, you can use target mode to access the failed MacBook; this post has some advice on that: Single-User-Recovery-Mode on High Sierra 10.13.6.
Also, this post might help you: https://www.justinsilver.com/technology/os-x-el-capitan-10-11-1-hanging-on-boot-fixed/#os_x_fix.
Good luck!


Built-in Webcam working only in 1 app and not in others (15'' MBP, non-retina, mid 2012)

Just as a follow-up

After a few days (and a reboot, I believe but I'm not sure), the camera started working again for all that didn't, and "stayed" working for the ones that it didn't...

I'm a bit miffed by it, and if I can reproduce again will re-post here.


Batch removing part of filenames using Automator

All you are doing is returning a list of the last part of the names (if there is more than one delimiter character, the second part) to the next action.

Text item delimiters aren't really needed if you are just using the first occurrence of a character, so you can do something like:

on run {input, parameters}
    set output to {}
    repeat with anItem in input
        set {theFolder, oldName, extension} to getNamePieces from anItem
        try
            set here to offset of "_" in oldName
            set newName to text 1 thru (here - 1) of oldName
            tell application "Finder" to set name of anItem to (newName & extension)
            set end of output to (theFolder & newName & extension) as alias
        on error errmess -- don't rename if error (delimiter not found, duplicate file, etc)
            log errmess
            set end of output to anItem as alias
        end try
    end repeat
    return output -- for next action
end run

to getNamePieces from someItem
    tell application "System Events" to tell disk item (someItem as text)
        set |container| to path of container
        set {|name|, extension} to {name, name extension}
    end tell
    if extension is not "" then
        set |name| to text 1 thru -((count extension) + 2) of |name| -- just the name part
        set extension to "." & extension
    end if
    return {container, |name|, extension}
end getNamePieces


Chrome continues running even when Mac should be is asleep

sure you dont have sleep turned off in power options might be on for battery use but not battery


I Can SSH host computer but computer does not appear in Finder's Shared Computers List?

Bonjour is the protocol that is used to "discover" other computers and will list them in Finder.  Bonjour only works on the local network.

  I want to connect via Apple's ScreenSharing.app , to my home mac from
  a separate network.

If it's on a separate network, you won't see them in Finder even though you can still reach them (ssh, scp, ftp, http, etc.).


You can't know for sure, at least not based on the information you shared in the question:

It's a https connection so it should be secure
Nevertheless you could connect through a network which tricked/forced you to accept a new certificate and then performed a man-in-the-middle attack
Somebody could have tampered with the script on Github, resulting in an attack within the script you've downloaded


How to disable or change an application's shortcut?

shift-command-5 is a macOS keyboard shortcut, not any particular application like Skitch.
Change or disable it in System Preferences → Keyboard → Shortcuts → Screenshots.


Screen goes black for a few seconds intermittently with Mac Mini 2018

I don't have the exact same problem, but the HDMI port does seem to behave a little oddly; the signal doesn't appear to be 100% perfect - during boot, wakeup, or after display mode changes, some of my displays will briefly show a distorted image. Either the colours are off, the image is shifted, the image is briefly simply noise, etc. but it seems to settle down OK after a few seconds on the displays I have and so far has not recurred once the image has "settled in".
I do have one screen (Acer XR341CK, 3440x1440 75Hz) which is detected but shows no image at all when connected via HDMI 2.0 and native resolution is selected (lower refresh rate or resolution works). (It is not detected at all by the 2018 Mac Mini when connected via a USB-C to DisplayPort cable, suggesting the GPU in this Mac somehow doesn't like this display. Update: At some point during the 10.14.x OS update cycle, the display started working without any troubles when connected via a USB-C to DisplayPort adapter.) The same display works as expected on other Macs and indeed when connected to an eGPU on this Mac Mini.
I believe the reason for this is that the Mac Mini 2018 uses an active HDMI 2.0 converter chip to produce an HDMI 2.0 signal from the GPU's native DisplayPort 1.2 output signal. Without this, the GPU would only be able to output HDMI 1.4 natively, which maxes out at 2560x1600 @ 60Hz or 4K @ 30Hz. Intel's GPUs are woefully out of date in this regard. (HDMI 2.0 supports 4K @ 60Hz)
The USB-C to HDMI cable is a fine solution if the above mode restrictions are OK for your display; otherwise, if your display has a DisplayPort input, I recommend trying a USB-C to DisplayPort cable. Apart from that Acer display, this is working fine on all other displays I've tried too, including those that have shown the brief image corruption I mentioned via HDMI.


You can make a daily crontab to run brew upgrade

Something like :

PATH=/usr/local/bin:/usr/bin:/bin
@ daily    brew upgrade

Find a nice tuto of how to use brew and cron here


How does one Copy, Paste and Tab using AppleScript?

Its hard to know exactly what you are trying to accomplish but some improvements were introduced into the code below, with comments added in the code.  Several points:

Note that depending on how fast/slow your system is responding you may need small delays after every keystroke or action.  You'll have to figure the minimum time empirically.
Any time you "activate" or launch Safari, Excel or any application within the script there will be a delay until the app is up and running.  To deal with this,  you will need these apps running prior to running the script, or you need to introduce long enough delays into your script, or better yet you need to add code that pauses the script until the app is launched.
When you open Safari and Excel you are not specifying any specific window, file or URL  to target for the subsequent keystrokes. So as written the script will default to the front window/tab of each app. I guess that's OK if what you are targeting is the front window. If no open window exists then the script will fail.  So for example, to get around this I added code to open a new excel file.
As currently constructed, the script copies from the front window in Safari, then eventually comes back to the very same window to execute the tab - paste - tab x 8. One has to assume that was the intention?
As currently constructed the default is to paste to cell A1 of Excel.  Then you tell Excel to move to once cell to the left, but there is no cell to the left of A1.
Much of the code is written for GUI scripting.  Where possible its better to use Applescript commands to accomplish the desired activity.  I'll just leave it like that for now.  You probably have enough on your mind learning the basics right now.

tell application "Safari" to activate

tell application "System Events"
    tell process "Safari"
    keystroke "c" using command down
    delay 0.3
    end tell
end tell

tell application "Microsoft Excel" to activate
    delay 5 -- time required to launched Excel if not already open

tell application "System Events"
    tell process "Microsoft Excel"
    keystroke "n" using command down -- open new excel page
    delay 0.5 -- wait for new excel page to open
    keystroke "v" using command down
    delay 0.2 -- wait for key stroke entry
    key code 123
    delay 0.2 -- wait for key stroke entry
    keystroke "c" using command down
    delay 0.2 -- wait for key stroke entry
end tell

end tell

tell application "Safari" to activate

tell application "System Events"
    tell process "Safari"
    keystroke tab
    delay 0.2 -- wait for key stroke entry
    keystroke "v" using command down
    delay 0.2 -- wait for key stroke entry

    repeat 8 times
        keystroke tab
        delay 0.2 -- wait for key stroke entry
    end repeat

end tell

end tell


Slow OSX booting with black screen before apple logo

It can happen, if you doesn't have selected a specific start-volume.

From the Apple menu choose System Preferences.
Click the Startup Disk icon in System Preferences, or choose View > Startup Disk.
Select your startup disk from the list of available volumes.

After that, restart your mac and the blackscreen shouldn't appear before a start.


If we are talking about fire risk, it is negligible for official Apple chargers. Non-zero, but pretty close to zero. Low-cost knockoffs have a significantly higher fire and shock risk due to cheap parts and sketchy wiring; UL produced an article showing a 99% failure rate of counterfeit chargers.

If we are talking about electrical pull, it is also negligible. Less than 0.1 watts pulled when a phone is not plugged in. You could have more than 150 chargers plugged in and you'd still pull less than a 10-watt light bulb. A single charger costs less than 25 cents and produces 1.5 lbs of carbon emissions (I assumed a liberal 1kWh to calculate this) for a whole year of being plugged in without a phone attached.

It is still a waste of energy and a non-zero percent fire risk, but it's up to you whether those minuscule risks, costs, and pollution amounts are even worth the energy and time expended unplugging it when not in use.


Files in Desktop cannot be edited in macOS Catalina

Go to your home folder and highlight the desktop folder, then press Cmd-I. Untick the "lock" box if it is ticked.


Yes, the i7 will extend battery life when doing processor intensive tasks compared to the i5, but eat up more battery when doing low exertion tasks. The more memory you have, the more battery life will be reduced as well — this is why Apple has kept the RAM relatively low in its mobile devices other than laptops. I do not believe that the size of the SSD should have a negative impact on battery life. The larger drives are faster and so should overall reduce battery usage, however, if the drive is crammed full this will reduce battery life simply because there is more information which needs to be available to be accessed.


Why is the "Encrypted" format not available in the list when erasing a USB flash chip in Disk Utility?

You can't do it from Disk Utility but you can do it from Finder by right-clicking on the partition and choosing Encrypt.

Open Disk Utility and click on the drive (not the partition)
Click Erase button
Choose Name
Choose Format: OS X Extended (Journaled)
Choose Scheme: GUID Partition Map
Click Erase button
When complete, open Finder
Right-click on the new drive partition
Select Encrypt
Enter passwords
Finish