Why can't I disable cellular usage for an individual app on iOS 7?

I had the same problem and the above fixes didn't help either. What ended up working was turning off the apps I wanted off, and then turning off cellular data altogether. Then moved back out of Cellular to the main Settings menu, then back to Cellular and my apps were still off. Then switched cellular data back on and the apps I wanted off stayed off. I also tried deleting and re-adding the offending apps and that worked too.


When I increase or decrease the volume a headphones symbol appears on my iPhone 6

Always a good place to start is to shutdown and reboot your iPhone. If that doesn't work then it's time to investigate further.

If a reboot has no effect, is it possible that your iPhone is connecting to some sort of Bluetooth device? It may not necessarily be a headset (I know you said you don't use one) - it could be a speaker, a receiver, headphones, etc.

The next time this happens, the first thing I would do is go to Bluetooth settings at Settings > Bluetooth and check to see if any devices are listed there? If you see anything you don't recognise or ever want connected, tap on the blue ⓘ symbol on the right of it and select Forget This Device.

Another troubleshooting step you can take is to disable Bluetooth altogether for a while to see what difference, if any, that makes. Once again, you can do this at: Settings > Bluetooth.

If none of this helps, you could check your headphone socket to make sure it's clear of any debris. You can also plug some headphones in and see how your iPhone behaves and then unplug them again.

Finally, you do have various Reset options available to you at Settings > General > Reset. You could start with the Reset Network Settings option (note this will reset Wi-Fi networks and passwords, mobile network settings, VPNs, etc.).

Otherwise you could do a full backup of your iPhone and then do a full reset of all content and settings (also available at Settings > General > Reset). This erases everything, so make sure you've done a full backup so you have something to restore from!


Transfer contacts from local phone storage to iCloud account

If you enable contacts in iCloud settings it should ask you to do so.
If it is enabled already, perhaps try to turn it off and on again?


Macbook swaps external displays when lid closed or opened

You need to set the display layout in each scenario. For example set the display arrangement when the macbook screen is opened and you should do it once again for when the laptop display is shut.
That should do the trick.


Is it bad or unhealthy to put my Mac to sleep?

Anecdotally, the drives of 5 to 15 years ago would run longer if you never spun them down. When I managed servers - the drives failed less rapidly than the inexpensive hard drives that were in workstations (which typically spun down). It's not clear if we would have seen similar failure rates if we placed the higher priced (and presumably better built for the long run) drives in the workstations.

I have seen no credible studies that show any drive from the last 5 years lasting longer by disabling sleep. It's hard to imagine a case where you wouldn't want to have a computer sleep even if it were going to decrease the useful life of an inexpensive storage drive due to other components failing over time and the waste of energy.

We don't yet have good data on SSD wearing out either as OEM parts ordered from Apple or aftermarket SSD, but it will be interesting to see how they wear out due to write failures and if sleep writing of large RAM images will add up to enough writes to shorten the life of an SSD that otherwise would be healthy in the absence of storing sleep images.


Is there a way to completely erase an iPod Nano 3rd generation without installing iTunes?

The iPod nano and classic iPods get loaded a custom firmware that could be downloaded from the internet and possibly loaded with a tool other than iTunes, but on a PC you could easily use whatever disk tool you want to erase the drive by reformatting it.

Since this would render the device unbootable, you will not want to sell it to a user that's not familiar with why it's not working, so the elegant solution would be to rent another computer with iTunes and restore it.

Apple's retail stores usually will even loan you a cable to restore your device from any of the display Macs. iTunes on a new computer would want to erase all the content anyhow - so going another step to wipe and restore the device will leave a clean slate and you might even be able to sync some demo content to the device depending on how iTunes is set up in the store you visit.


You can actually enter any information as your answers. Moreover, this is better option actually as it adds security against people who may know or guess your answers.
The only important thing is to remember this information or at least keep it safely. You'll need it in case of any problems with access to your iCloud account either to restore by yourself or through tech support.
Your options are:
1. Memorize your answers
2. Write them down (not safe!)
3. Use any password utility (like 1password, for instance) that help you keep all your info safe.
That's the easiest way to deal with the subject. Changing questions requires you to communicate with Apple with no guarantees of success.
Hope this helps.


How can I remap enter key on MacOS big sur?

Try Karabiner
https://karabiner-elements.pqrs.org/
Although it says it's compatible with M1 macs, I dont know if it's ARM native or runs through Rosetta2. Any app that runs through Rosetta 2 thrashes the SSD with lots of writes (at least 4x more than M! native apps) Too much writing to your SSD can lead to senility of the SSD. The only solution to this is to avoid running non native apps through Rosetta2 (which makes  memory resident apps like Google chrome a problem)


Cannot create new user in Single-user mode

It turned out that this error can be just ignored, because the user is properly created anyway.


Accessing my old FileVault2 encrypted drive from my new SSD

In short, yes. I've just done a similar install, with the old, FileVault 2-encrypted volume on an external drive. When your new OS attempts to mount the encrypted partition, it will request a password. Entering the FV key will allow it to decrypt and mount the drive - I believe you can elect to save the key to your Keychain to avoid having to re-enter the password the next time it mounts.


How do I turn a folder into a .jar file?

Jar files are almost zip files in most cases, but I would use the jar cf command for best results.

http://docs.oracle.com/javase/tutorial/deployment/jar/build.html

You could just use OS X compression and then rename the zip file as .jar - but then you might not have a correct manifest file. It's hard to tell without the exact files in hand.


2008 Mac Pro Won't Shut Down (Black Screen - Gray Loading Wheel)

Have you tried booting it in verbose mode? i.e. when the startup sound is playing, hold down Command-V so that it scrolls a text-mode view during startup and shutdown. During shutdown, it'll probably get stuck on what you're looking for and then you may have a better idea of what is causing troubles...


I would install a clean os to the internal drive or an external drive. Since you have so many pairing requests, you should be able to rule out software issues quickly and for free or very low cost.

Then you would seek hardware repair or service.


Considering you have Pairs of equal memory (2x1G, 2x2G and 4x4G) the best option is to install them all (that's a lot of RAM!).

Early 2008's Mac Pros use the full memory bandwidth when modules are installed in Pairs (like you have). But their location in the risers (where you install the modules) is important. Therefore, you should follow what the manual says.

Since you're going to fill all the 8 slots, you can go ahead an install them in pairs one next to the other. You have 2 risers, so here's how you should put them:

TOP RISER

SLOT 1: 1x4GB

SLOT 2: 1x4GB

SLOT 3: 1x4GB

SLOT 4: 1x4GB

BOTTOM RISER

SLOT 1: 1x2GB

SLOT 2: 1x2GB

SLOT 3: 1x1GB

SLOT 4: 1x1GB

The graphic explanation for this can be read in the Early 2008 Mac Pro Memory Manual, located at manuals.info.apple.com.


How can I use a command to delete all files in Downloads whose dates added are greater than 1 year?

It's a relatively simple command to delete files within a directory greater than one year.  For instance, the following command executed in Terminal

find ~/Downloads/ -type f -mtime +365 -exec rm {} \;

will delete all files in the ~/Downloads directory older than one year.

find is the command that searches for "stuff"
-type f tells find what to look for, in this case files
-mtime +365 tells find that the modified time should be greater than 365 days
-exec rm {} passes (executes) each "found" item to the command rm

What I like to do is test it out by excluding the -exec rm {} \; portion and make sure I am getting the correct results.  Once I am certain, I just add it in to complete the remove.

One Caveat!!  These files are not added to your "Trash."  The command  bypasses the Trash and are immediately deleted, so use with caution.

A Safer Way...

(Thanks to user lucasoldaini in the comments below)

If you want to move your files to the "Trash", simply replace the -exec rm {} \; portion to -exec mv {} ~/.Trash \;

They will remain in your Trash until the next time you empty it.

You can get more information on each command by viewing their man pages:

man find
man exec


Aside from the usual way, going into Mission Control and closing each individual Space, I don't believe so.  You can speed this up and hold the option key down and this will keep the (x) to close the Desktops shown so you don't have to hover over the selected Desktop and wait for it to show itself.

The only way that I would think you might be able close them all at once without performing the above process is probably with an Automator script or AppleScript.


New iOS9 Spotlight search not finding contacts

I tried two fixes, and this one seemed to work after playing around with it for a while:

Fix #1 (didn't seem to work, but may have helped)

Turn off all the Spotlight switches in Preferences > General > Spotlight.
Do a hard reset by pressing and holding the Home button (big circle below the screen) and the Sleep/Wake button (on top of the iPhone) simultaneously.
Hold both buttons until the screen goes black, and then release when you see the Apple logo.
After restart, turn on the Contacts switch in Preferences > General > Spotlight.
It may take a few minutes, or half an hour for Contacts to show in Spotlight search.
Turn on other Spotlight switches after Contacts begin to show in Spotlight searches.

Fix #2

Open the Contacts app, tap your own contact... Then Groups will display in top left. Tap Groups in the top-left corner, then Hide All Contacts or show all contacts. One of them may default. Tapping just toggles back and forth between the 2 options. The IOS 9 update may have defaulted your option to Hide All which may be the only issue.
Tap Show All Contacts.

This didn't immediately work for me, but then I tried only showing iCloud contacts, and not Facebook contacts, and then it started to work.  However - I noticed some contacts starting to appear after a search, which is when I tried this in the last sentence.  It may very well have been the first fix that solved this, and it was just a matter of waiting for it to work.

Try both, and also showing different contacts groups, then quitting the contacts app, then hiding and showing again.


Select the entry, right click, go to the "Move to List" menu entry, select the destination list you want.  (Or drag and drop.)

When I first tried this the difficult part was selecting the item rather than editing it...I needed to be sure to click white space off to the right of the title.


Why can't some images in the pdf be viewed on iBook of iPad or iPod Touch?

I'm going to attempt to answer this as best I can without detailed examples...

The screenshots and illustrations (which were most likely placed as EPS or Illustrator files) could be in some format or be corrupted in some way that the iBook PDF engine simply chooses to ignore the image (and is unarguably better than simply crashing).

PDFs are surprisingly complex documents that can be made in a number of different ways. Essentially, PDF documents are streamlined Postscript, which is a programming language unto itself. Support in PDF viewers for various features varies according to who the developed that particular viewer.

We (I) don't know what engine Apple uses to read PDFs (i.e., open source, licensed, homemade), but I would be willing to bet that if those PDFs were opened in Adobe Acrobat, that there would be no problems viewing the art (but please don't ask me how to open iBook-sourced books in Acrobat because I'm not suggesting you do that and I have no idea if for no other reason that I don't use iBooks).

Update: @Jadasc points to a definite possibility to the problem. If the art was, indeed, placed in the layouts as JPEG2000 files, then that's either bad prepress practice or the books you are looking at are ePub files. In either case, without direct access to the books to fix them, I'm not sure what can be done about it.


Can I publish a podcast at Apple for only one country

Well, I've searched several sources: it looks like Podcasts are always international.


If the notice were a pop up, then someone knows your Apple ID and password and entered them into another device.

If it's an email, you will want to check first that it's from Apple and perhaps log into http://appleid.apple.com to check that your account is secured, perhaps changing the password if you feel that is warranted. If you do this, make sure you also change the password to your email, as someone could use that to reset your Apple ID password.

Basically, Apple wants to make sure you know every time you set up a new device with your Apple ID since if you didn't allow it, someone else will then have access to your messages, your apps, etc...

Worst case, you can contact Apple Support if you can't resolve this as they might have better advice specific to your situation and be able to assist in locking / recovering control of your account. Also, if you use the same password here as you use on any other account - they could be compromised as well so you might want to change any account that uses your email and that password going forward.


Looking for a GTD tool with synchronisation capability

OmniFocus is able to sync between instances (OS X and iOS)

locally via Bonjour
via a shared directory
via any WebDAV server


New address book entries on iPhone does not sync to iCloud

In your Macintosh Address Book, go to Preferences/Accounts and make sure that iCloud is listed there and enabled.

After doing that go back into Address Book and Click on the red bookmark so you're looking at the front page. It should say "iCloud" at the top of the list of folder/groups you may have there. If it says "On My Mac" then see if you can choose "iCloud."

The design of switching between "on my mac" and "iCloud" is confusing for us "old" mobileme users and my guess is it will change in time.


Can I mirror my second and third monitors but not the first for a presentation?

I don't know how to do it exclusively in Keynote, but it is indeed possible to mirror two of three displays.

Open Display preferences, click the ? at the lower-right of the "Arrangement" tab of "Displays" system preference. To set up a combination of displays showing mirrored and extended desktop images, set up the three displays as an extended desktop, and then Option-drag a display icon onto another display icon to mirror the two displays.

Instructions with pictures.


YEah! I found the solution.

Turn Off “Dashboard as a Space”
head to System Preferences > Mission Control.
Uncheck the “Show Dashboard as a space” box and you’ll have the widgets back.

Then again you can go to terminal en type in:
defaults write com.apple.dashboard devmode YES
hit return/enter
then type in: killall Dock (mind the capital D in Dock)
That's it!


The main issue you mention of network strength and/or performance degrading should be something you could catch with periodic dumping of the RSSI status using the airport binary. I sym link it to /usr/bin for $PATH reasons and ease of access, but it's really buried in a System framework.

Air:~ me$ which airport
/usr/local/bin/airport
Air:~ me$ ls -l /usr/local/bin/airport
lrwxr-xr-x  1 root  wheel  89 Apr  4  2012 /usr/local/bin/airport -> /System/Library/PrivateFrameworks/Apple80211.framework/Versions/Current/Resources/airport

If you were a unix sysadmin type, you would set up SNMP log forwarding on th AirPort/Time Capsule to send all the logs to your Mac and configure syslogd to file those airport messages in a log of your choosing. The Airport Utility version 6 (and the iOS versions) lack the ability to set a SNMP remote log host, so download an older version and maintain a copy of it going forward in case you want this extra functionality.

The --getinfo option will let you graph your observed signal and noise levels and you might even automate --scan to see if you can correlate drops to other networks showing up on the same channel with a better signal (or even causing excess noise). Once you've been able to catch 10 failures, you can start going over the logs to see if you can detect any patterns. You'll also need to keep good notes about what you change (and when and why) in terms of reboots, drops, changes to channels, etc...

Depending on how bored you are, you could script these data collections to append xml or csv and use a spreadsheet to chart the values over time. If you were supremely bored or motivated, set up MRTG - but for most home networks, it is severe overkill to configure let alone maintain.


How do I make my Favorites icons fit their squares?

If these are png files you can open them in Preview and adjust the size. Try to keep the proportions the same when you do this. In Preview there is a menu item Tools. Click on the and you'll see Change Size as an option. Click on that and it'll bring up the panel shown below.

On this panel, you can make your image any size you want. I think the icons are square so you can set them as 64x64 for example.


Homebrew (unlike Macports) does not put programs ahead of system's

General convention is in fact to put /usr/local/bin ahead of /usr/bin.  This is doable via editing the /etc/path file or sudo launchctl config user path "/usr/local/bin:$PATH".  This will cause executables in /usr/bin to be shadowed by the ones in /usr/local/bin.  The Homebrew FAQ suggests this.

Homebrew recipes will deliberately not link any programs into /usr/local/bin that could potentially cause system-wide conflicts (homebrew executables are actually installed in /usr/local/Cellar and symlinked to /usr/local/bin).  When you install a potentially conflict-causing package, homebrew will warn you about it, and say something to the effect of "We didn't automatically link this package.  If you really want to, you can run `brew link ..." Homebrew is generally pretty good about being respectful of existing system packages.

As an empirical anecdote, I have always shadowed /usr/bin with /usr/local/bin and have never run into any issues.  YMMV, of course.


Terminal in full screen mode: how do I recover from "cat /dev/random"

If you have Terminal.app open anyway (doesn't matter whether it's in fullscreen mode or not):

Cmd-T to create new tab/shell
ps aux | fgrep /dev/random to find the running cat (you can grep for cat as well but there might be more than one matching line)
kill <PID from above> (or kill -9 <PID>)

Just be patient, the system may be really slow (even on a multicore system as I've just found out).


Jailbreak and iOS 'hardware encrypted' data

There are two partitions on all iOS devices. One is for the system, other is for the data. Jailbreaking only affects the System partition. So jailbreaking doesn’t affect your data.


How to copy TextEdit preferences to another computer?

You have to copy the preference file at ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.TextEdit.plist


I ran into this before and the issue for me was autossh expects a specified monitoring port (even though this is optional according to the usage stdout).

autossh -M 12345 -f -i id_rsa -D 8080 user@myserver.com

This similar command works for me against autossh 1.4c installed via homebrew on mountain lion.


LTE is a data network and voice calls still use 2G/3G. I expect that your problem is related to your call being handed off from one cell tower to another.
The iPhone 5 or an LTE phone in general is not going to solve that problem for you.


Macbook to iPhone tether, hotspot or wifi

When using you iPhone as a hotspot, it will use your data plan. In the screenshots you see my iPhone connected to WiFi, and when a device is connected to it's hotspot, my iPhone will be disconnected from the WiFi.

iPhone connected to WiFi:

iPhone not connected to WiFi, but network still available


Cannot change movement number or name of a classical piece in iTunes

Discovered that I can edit those fields in my library, but not in the import window.  And I can't get access to the file from the import window to change tags.  That is, “show in finder” is not on the context menu in that window.

Thus, I can make them correct in my library, but I can't send the corrections to Gracenote.

While fiddling with this I also discovered that if I select a track in the import window and change tags, the changes do not “stick” if the import of that track has already completed.  For example, select all of them and fix a typo in the album name: I end up with two albums, one with the wrong name and the first few tracks, and my correction on the other tracks.


How can I open a System 9 FileMaker document in OS X 10.9?

Which version of FIleMaker created the file that you wish to open?

Presumably, you are talking about a file created by FileMaker 5 or prior, which was the last version not to support OS X, which was introduced in FileMaker 5.5 (April 2001). MacOS 9 support was dropped in FileMaker 7 (March 2004). Source Wikipedia: FileMaker Version History.

Regardless, the current versions of FileMaker (v14 was released just this month) only offer backwards compatibility with files created with earlier recent versions of FileMaker (v13 and v12). v11 and earlier need to be converted to the latest file format in order for them to be opened with FileMaker Pro 14. Thanks to user3439894 for that information.

However, I guess that you are looking for a free database application that offers compatibility with FileMaker. I would have suggested OpenOffice or LibreOffice. However as user3439894 has commented below, you can not by default, open FileMaker files with these two applications, unfortunately.


IPad Air 2 (cellular) upgrade to 9.3.1 won't run (after "agreeing", takes me to home screen)

Installing via iTunes works (i.e., plug iPad into computer with iTunes running), so I ended up doing that.

For others that run into this problem: you may want to make sure you have enough disk space on your device. I had 32gb, so I know that wasn't my problem.

I suspect my problem had something to do with the 9.3 update arriving, and then Apple unsigning it because of its bugs; and maybe when 9.3.1 came out, my iPad was confused?  shrugs


fsck and Disk Utility won't repair Volume: invalid b-tree node size

Download Testdisk. You would have to run it from an external disk. It’s a command line tool. It will diagnose problems with your partition table or filesystem and repair them. It’s very verbose so you won’t need any readmes. First recover your OS X partition and then your EFI partition. Comment back if you need any help using Testdisk.


How to disable autohide dock autohide when the app closes

If you do not want to worry about creating a race condition and having to close UE4Editor before shutting down, as mentioned in the other answer, then there is a nice app called EventScripts, for $3.99 USD at the App Store, that you can use to trigger AppleScript scripts and or Shell scripts when certain events are triggered.

Here's an example AppleScript script that will hide/show the Dock when UE4Editor launches/quits:

on run eventArgs
    set theAppName to applicationName in eventArgs
    set theTrigger to trigger in eventArgs
    if theTrigger is "Application launched" and theAppName is "UE4Editor" then
        hideDock(true)
    else if theTrigger is "Application quit" and theAppName is "UE4Editor" then
        hideDock(false)
    end if
end run

on hideDock(b)
    tell application "System Events"
        set autohide of dock preferences to b
    end tell
end hideDock

In Script Editor, save the above AppleScript code as, e.g., UE4Editor - On Open and Close.scpt in ~/Library/Application Scripts/net.mousedown.EventScripts/, (after EventScripts is installed).

Now in EventScripts, add the same script twice, while setting the Event for one to Application launched and the other to Application quit.

Now, when UE4Editor launches, the Dock is hidden, and when UE4Editor quits the Dock is unhidden.

EventScripts has a long list of events it can trigger a script on. Check out the links below for more information:

EventScripts - Developers Website
EventScripts - Mac App Store Preview
EventScripts - Available Events and Parameters
EventScripts - Example Scripts

Note: I'm not affiliated with the developer of EventScripts, just a satisfied customer.


How to set up macOS High Sierra "wfsctl" WebDAV to use with an application that uses basic authentication?

Step 1. Host Address. Know the IP address or DNS Domain Name for the host machine. A static IP address or fully qualified DNS name will allow other guest machines to bookmark the host machine. If DHCP is used for the host machine, then the dynamic TCP/IP address will need to be known each time prior to connection. The IP address can be found in the System Preferences > Network panel.

Step 2. Create Share Point Directory.

# For example,
sudo mkdir /Library/WebServer/ExampleSharePoint
sudo chown $USER:staff /Library/WebServer/ExampleSharePoint
sudo wfsctl share Volume/HardDisk/Library/WebServer

Step 3. Configuration.  Edit /etc/wfs/wfs.plist. Set SynthesizeSharePointForUserHomeDir to determine whether to allow remote WebDAV clients to see their home directory as a share point. Default is true.  Use false to limit sharing to the expressly added share points.

<key>SynthesizeSharePointForUserHomeDir</key>
<false/>

Note: CreateHomeDirsForLocalUsers and ApplyUserInstanceSandbox appear to be undocumented at this time.

Step 4. Start wfsctl.

sudo wfsctl start
# Using identity with self-signed cert
sudo wfsctl diagnose # verify

Step 5. Setup Application Connection.

In the case of PasswordWallet, use the Network Sync Wizard to create a new sync.  Select WebDAV as the sync type.

If the server does not have a fully qualified DNS name, then the IP address can be used directly.

Step 6. Stopping wfsctl and httpd.

Based on How to unregister “httpd” after “wfsctl stop”? ...

sudo wfsctl stop             # stops WebDAV. restarts httpd
sudo apachectl graceful-stop # if desired, stops httpd
# verify
sudo wfsctl diagnose

Addendum

The WebDAV share can also be mounted directly from macOS Finder. Menu: Finder > Go > Connect to Server… ⌘K.

The default auto self-generated certificate can be either temporarily or permanently accepted.

Finder Share Point Folder View

Finder Share Point Info

Observation: Sometimes a file transfer via a macOS Finder WebDAV mount could fail and cause a loss of connection.  In these cases, so far, a second transfer attempt has succeeded OK.

At the time of this writing, the Password Wallet direct WebDAV synchronization connection has been solid and reliable for me.


Address Book won't restore contacts from .abbu

It was caused by iCloud.  Went offline, opened .abbu file, exported as vCards, went online, cards removed themselves.  Deleted iCloud account from Mac, added vCards, readded iCloud to Mac.   Fixed.


iPhone does not show up on iPhoto anymore

Hmm... Apparently, restarting the computer (with the applications not reopening) seemed to get iPhoto to work again.

I hope there are other ways of doing this.


Cannot install bootcamp because of disk error, but disk utility says it's fine?

You are probably asking the wrong question. If I were you, I would be asking about the 296.6 GB of free space which appears in your Logical Volume group. If you can get most of this free space added to you Logical Volume, the bootcamp install would probably work.

According to the accepted answer to How do I recover free space from my logical volume group?, you would probably be better off recreating the Fusion Drive, instead of attempting a repair.


It seems we are talking here about possibility of creating/transferring Smart Playlists from iTunes for Mac to iPhone.

There was such a possibility back in the days, it flawlessly worked with old iPod Nano in the old iTunes, according to the apple discussions. You could configure complicated filters based on given starts for the tracks, genres, years, etc. and to generate the Smart Playlists, which allowed to play the same music with the specific order on your devices.

I checked my settings (the latest iOS and OS Sierra) - and I still have the smart playlists, so Apple haven't removed the possibility of using them. Smart playlists are present in their documentation as well. So it means it should work out of the box.

You have to make sure, you turned on the music and playlists synchronization in your iTunes:

Select the Music tab in the left panel of iTunes.
Click Sync Music at the top of the iTunes screen in order to sync music to your iPhone.
Click the button next to Entire Music Library to sync all your iTunes music to your iPhone (Please, note, this only works if your phone's storage is bigger than your library. If it isn't, you'll get some of your music but not all of it.)
Click the button next to Selected playlists, artists, albums, and genres to specify which music is downloaded to your iPhone. Sync playlists by checking the boxes in the Playlist section or all music by specific artists by checking the boxes in the Artists section. Sync all music in a particular genre or from a given album by clicking the boxes in the Genres and Albums sections.


How to disable alert notifications in iOS when battery drops to 20% and then to 10%?

Unfortunately, there are no ways to disable those alerts unless your device is jailbroken. In that case (device is jailbroken), you can search Cydia for a tweak that disables those alerts.


Does Google Maps iOS have voice navigation

Yes, voice navigation is available in Google Maps for Australia.

To enable it:

Make sure you have the most-recent version of iOS.
Make sure Notifications for the app are turned on.
In the app, after you've started the navigation, tap on the 3 vertical dots on the bottom-right of the screen
In the panel that slides up make sure Mute is Off.

Doing all this will allow you to hear the turn-by-turn navigation prompts.   Here's a Google support site with additional information.


call apple, they tend to do it on a case by case basis for full phone replacements.

That being said if it is just the sleep button, in countries like canada you  can just walk into any apple store and they do it for you, maybe try walking into a store, i would be shocked if the recall was not available in canada and not london


Any reasons that prevent Apple Remote Desktop to wake sleeping Macs?

"Wake for network access" refers to the system receiving a special "Wake On Media" or "Wake On LAN" packet from the local ethernet network.

Simply trying to connect with a network application will not wake it up.  That's because while the computer is sleeping, it cannot process any network traffic.  WOM works at the hardware level of the ethernet card: the card stays powered on and when it sees an ethernet packet with its MAC address and a certain byte pattern, it wakes up the computer.

Because WOM is based on ethernet frames, it generally cannot not work by itself outside of your local LAN.  Some routers provide utilities which let you remotely instruct the router to generate a WOM packet, but not typically consumer grade routers.


Install iTunes Backup from different iPhone with iOS 10.2

First of all, iTunes backups don't contain firmware, so they can't upgrade or downgrade your device. They only contain data like messages, contacts and application documents.

You won't be able to install iOS 10.2, as it is no longer being "signed" by Apple. Only firmwares being signed by Apple can be installed on devices - as such, only iOS 10.2.1 can be installed. You can check which firmwares are currently being signed by Apple at https://api.ineal.me/tss/status.


Disable MacBook Pro 2018 Mojave Keyboard

If all you need is a quick disabler to, for instance, clean your keyboard without pressing random keys, then there's a lovely bit of freeware called KeyboardCleanTool for precisely that purpose.


I've experienced similar problems in the past and it tends to be fixed by force quitting the app, by double tapping the home button so the multi-tasking tray appears, holding down the app until the red 'x' appears and then tapping that before opening the app store again.


Name of the developer on App Store the same of Apple ID?

Log into the Member Center and select the Your Account tab.  In the Developer Account Summary section is the Name line.  That is what is shown on the App Store for the Company/Organization.

It is not user editable so if it is showing your father's name but you want it under a new company name, you will need to call Apple to ask to have it changed.


Does Sophos Antivirus work correctly on Lion with (legacy) FileVault enabled?

You need to increase the number of on-demand scanner threads, to prevent a deadlock when you log in if you have a number of things all trying to start at once.

Run the following, from Terminal:

sudo defaults write /Library/Preferences/com.sophos.sav WorkerThreads -int 20

(20 works for me, with the number of applications that I have set to launch at login time)


Built in keyboard that supports all Mongolian characters

No, Apple has never provided a Mongolian keyboard layout with OS X (either cyrillic or traditional script).  You will have to use one of layouts which can be downloaded and installed from the internet.  Another example is

http://mountainedge.netfirms.com/store/page3.html


"USB Needs more power." - Mac Pro with 7 Keyboards?

This kind of applies to all hardware, not just apple computers. I did a search for Anker USB Hub. None of the results showed a powered USB Hub. They all relied on the USB Bus for power.

The average USB port has about 500 mA available. (900 mA in USB3.0) USB Keyboard uses between 50 mA and 100 mA. The USB hub itself also needs power, more if it's got all those pretty LED's on it. This puts the load between 400 mA (idle?) and 800 mA (all in use?)

So, it seems like your using more power than a single USB port can provide. You may just need to upgrade to a hub that supplies it's own power to devices. Which would require a hub with an AC adaptor.


Stop dialog boxes popping up behind dock

Apparently this is a OS X 10.10 bug. Apparently they get 22 pixels higher each time.

There is a workaround.

If you hold Shift and drag to reduce width this will shrink the dialog box and let you resize.


Unix uses the TERM environment variable to look up various escape sequences in the termcap database to allow programs to do more than just output characters to the terminal (which in these days typically are emulated in CMD.EXE, Putty or similar).  Examples are "clear the screen", "move cursor to a specific spot on the screen".
Your terminal emulator is configured to tell Unix that it emulates "term-256color" but Unix does not have that terminal in its termcap database.
Reconfigure your terminal emulator to tell that it is one that it knows.  Typical examples are "vt100" and "xterm".  Which one exactly may require some experimentation after close reading of the documentation.


Why is search in Activity Monitor disabled?

The search doesn't function when Activity Monitor's view is set to "All Processes, Hierarchically". Open the view menu and change it to anything else, and it'll activate again.


How can I unlock my screen when my input is in a different language?

Go to System Preferences > Accounts > Login Options and tick "Show input menu in login window" you'll then be able to change it in the screen saver password window as well

In OS X 10.7 Lion, "Accounts" is called "Users & Groups".  The setting "Show input menu in login window" really ought to be active by default when plural language input sources are enabled, though.


how do you backup iphone when some of the apps have the old style appleid?

Have you tried HT201272 app store download ID incorrect (does not match settings ID)? (In short: Logout on your iPhone then re-sync via cable with iTunes)


How to combine files in subdirectories in macOS

An easy way to do it would be use the Terminal, and write command as follows:
mkdir 2013

This create a folder named 2013 after the year.
mv *-2013/* 2013

This moves all the files from the folders those names end with "-2013" into the folder named 2013.
If you have a large number of years to do this for, consider using a simple bash script with a for loop - something like this:
for year in {2000..2020}
do
  mkdir $year
  mv *-$year/* $year
done


Flickering Pink background on all windows. Yosemite 10.10.1

Sounds like a GPU/driver mismatch, back buffer issue, or potential imminent failure.

Or it could be that GPU just isn't up to the task, running out of memory & refilling the buffers constantly.

Try System Prefs > Accessibility > Display & Reduce Transparency.


How to disable moving a window by its edge adjacent to scroll bar?

I try scrolling with scroll bar because there is a scroll bar. Sometimes it's better than scrolling with mouse. (smooth scrolling)

To change, go to System Preferences: General settings -> Show scroll bars -> Always


How does Facetime compare to normal video calling?

Entirely new? No - not really, but the quality is quite acceptable (I'd say it's better than most Skype video calls I've had) and it's extremely painless to use. It's also at the present time far more limited in audience (only iPhone 4's, iPad 2's and Macs) than normal video calling.

You can think of it as video calling built right into the OS with software that doesn't require hoops (no log in required) to jump through to use it.


Can you not select the book and use Command ⌘ + Delete ⌫?
You'll be presented with a choice to delete the book from the library, or move it to the trash:

You'll probably want to move it to the trash, unless it's a PDF that you don't have somewhere else. Also, make sure that you are going to the books tab on your computer, not managing the books on your device.
Here:

Not here:


Easily check time in Yosemite full screen mode

You can move focus to menu bar with for example: ⌃ CTRL+F2 or ⌘ CMD+⇧ SHIFT+/.

Alternatively You can show Dashboard with clock as a widget (but set the Dashboard not as a separate space).


Looks like a known problem with the SSD. OCZ has a firmware on their forum that will fix the issue. See the post "Changing SATA speed on your "3" series SSD." in this thread.

  This portion of the instructions only applies to OCZ "3" series SSD's - Vertex3, Agility3, and Solid3 - all sizes.
  Some SATAII motherboards, when used with one of the above drives will
  downgrade the drive to SATA1 speeds. We find this mostly on Nvidia
  chipset motherboards for PC and Nvidia chipset based Mac's. To resolve
  this, we have a tool that will set the link speed to be locked at
  SATAII and improve performance. This can be reversed when you update
  your motherboard/system so you can have the full SATAIII speed again.

Installing the firmware involves burning a Linux LiveCD so I hope you have a computer with the optical drive still in.


OS X 10.6 : Automating new system provisioning with scripts

There is a better way to do this. The IT department at my company maintains a disk image with all of the settings in place they need to administer the Macs when they are received-including software in place registered with site licenses. They open the Macs and simply replace what's on the hard drive with the disk image.

Scripting is a logical path, but scripting System Preferences is a real bear because you have to go with GUI Scripting which is rife with problems, the least of which trying to decipher UIElementInspector to get what you need.


Reset device list on Apple Developer Portal

From the Account Management - Apple Developer support page:

  Resetting Your Device List Annually

  If you are the Account Holder, you can reset your list of development devices each year using Certificates, Identifiers & Profiles. You can register up to 100 of each device type for testing and Ad Hoc distribution per membership year. At the start of your new membership year, Account Holders, Admins, and App Managers will be presented with the option to remove listed devices and restore the available device count to 100 when first signing in to Certificates, Identifiers & Profiles.

  Although you may remove a device from your account during the year, it will continue to count against your device limit. When resetting your list, make sure to remove all devices you no longer use for development before adding any new devices.

Now, to answer your question:

  I am just not sure what this reset button will do. Delete all the devices or delete selected devices?

You can either remove all or selected devices.

Once every year, at the time of renewal of your Apple development program membership, you are given an option to remove registered device UDIDs and add new ones.

After you click on the Reset button, you'd be presented with the list of all the devices currently added in the Developer Portal. You can choose what devices to carry over in the next membership year and what devices to drop. You can claim the slots occupied by the devices that you no longer wish to use in future.

During the membership year, removing devices doesn't automatically free up the slot occupied by them (you get a limit of 100 development devices per year).

So if you have reached the limit and want to replace some of the devices with newer/different ones, this is your once in a year chance to do so.

  I cannot risk clicking on the button without knowing what it does since it's a company account. Can anyone please help me with this?

Clicking the reset button won't immediately reset the list of devices. So you need not worry about it. You'd be resented with on-screen-instructions to help with further action.

It would be advisable here to select and remove only those devices which are no longer being used for app development and/or testing. This would free up an equal number of slots for adding new/other devices during the year.

Note: Removing a device does not prevent you from re-adding it into the Developer portal.


How to revert launchctl PATH to defaults?

What ended up working to restore to default "factory presets" for me was to run:

sudo launchctl config user path /usr/bin:/bin:/usr/sbin:/sbin

This is not unlike the advice seen here (Set PATH variable so that it is detected in all applications, even outside terminal. (El Captain)). But some lingering questions remain:

Does this procedure restore what was already in the key-value pair of user path, or does it enact a new setting that would otherwise be empty?
Where, i.e., in what file or database, is this key-value stored?


Sold my MacBook Pro Lion, how to reset OS installation?

It's much easier to just reboot to the Recovery HD (restart and hold down command and R).

Then use Disk Utility to erase the hard drive. Everything will be gone and if you want to be paranoid, you can zero the entire drive one or more times. Once that erase is done, you can re-install Lion from Apple's image over the network. You could also use the DVD at that point, but the erase is quite easy and best done using the Recovery HD on the Mac's drive.

I don't think you'll need to sign in to get Lion, but if you do, then you can just put Snow Leopard on the Mac. That would be the best thing to do licensing wise, since the App Store terms require you to erase software before selling your Mac.


Set permissions for sharing only user through terminal

I solved the probelm by setting the permissions in the following way:

sudo chmod -R +a "user:USER_NAME allow list,search,readattr,readextattr,readsecurity,file_inherit,directory_inherit" PATH_TO_DIRECTORY/

This does the trick of changing the folder permissions so it propagates the users permissions automatically when new files are added. In this example

allow list,search,readattr,readextattr,readsecurity

are copied from the permissions of the sharing only user, and I have added

file_inherit,directory_inherit

in order to allow the files and directories within the original directory to automatically inherit the permissions.


My MBP will only charge with a T shaped magsafe now

Technically speaking, you should be using the L-shaped adapter.

As to why it's working with the "incorrect" adapter and not the correct one is because the pins on the MagSafe connector are probably pushed "in" or just contaminated.  Additionally, the pins on the T connector stick out just a bit further than the L connector.

You may have some luck cleaning out the MagSafe connector, but in my experience, you have to replace it.

You have a few options:

use the adapter that's currently working
attempt to clean the MagSafe connector
replace the DC in board

Replacing the DC-in board is not "difficult" inasmuch as being tedious and detailed.   It involves removing the logic board because the connector is under it; iFixit has excellent step-by-step guide.

If this is not your cup of tea, I would simply continue using the adapter that works.


Mouse over a word and tap the trackpad with three fingers, or enable the Dictionary service in System Preferences to assign a keyboard shortcut (by default, it's ⌃⌘D).


How to set a text as a footer with Pages?

The feature you are looking for are the footnotes/endnotes

  A document can contain footnotes, which appear at the bottom of the
  page, or endnotes, which appear at the end of the document or a
  section. You can’t have both footnotes and endnotes in the same
  document, but you can convert all notes in the document from one type
  to another.

  By default, footnotes and endnotes are numbered continuously
  throughout the document with Arabic numerals, but you can change this
  formatting.

  You can also restyle the text used within the note. For example, you
  can italicize or underline a book title within the note.

  Use the Footnotes pane of the Format inspector to format footnotes and
  endnotes.

  Insert a footnote, endnote, or section endnote
  The first time you
  insert a note, it’s a footnote by default. If you want document or
  section endnotes rather than footnotes, you must first add a footnote
  and then convert it to an endnote.

  Click in the text where you want to insert the symbol for a footnote
  or endnote.
  Click Insert in the toolbar, then choose Footnote.

  The symbol is inserted in the text and the insertion point moves to
  the footnote text field at the bottom of the page.

  Enter the footnote text.


iPhone - prevent automatic hotspot tethering when connecting to computer

The problem isn't on your iPhone, it's on your Windows computer using the USB tether rather than Wi-Fi. You need to set the network interface priority on your Wi-Fi to be higher than the USB device, or the USB device to be lower, so that it will only use the tether if it isn't connected to Wi-Fi.

Make sure to connect the iPhone first. Directions for Windows 7 are here (these will likely work on newer versions as well):

How to change the network connection priority in Windows 7

Alternately, you could disable the connection on your Windows computer but you'll still have to manually turn it on each time so I think the above fix will provide the result you want.


Transparency of LC-AAC at 500kb/s bitrate (stereo file)

There's a lot of talk about 'lossless audio'. There's also a lot of opinion surrounding it, much of which doesn't come from sound engineers but from people who are chasing the wrong part of the rainbow ;)

To really simplify,

Lossless audio is that which can be uncompressed to produce exactly the same data that was originally encoded.
You need this if you are going to be further processing the audio.
Lossy audio can be uncompressed to sound almost exactly as it was originally encoded.
You need this if you just want to listen to the audio.

I'm not going to dig into any math in this, just skim lightly over the basics.

The difference in the two has become a matter of public perception, rather than hard fact & analytical data.
Very few people on an A/B test can tell the difference, so they use tools which they don't understand to give them data that makes no real sense…
[bear with me, I'm not being insulting, but some of the interweb wisdom on this is way off the mark].

You will often see pictures of spectrograms like this

Telling you the one on the right is obviously lossy because it has a lower frequency cut-off. Well, yes, it does imply that, but it doesn't actually prove it, it is a false premise based on a misunderstanding. What it does prove is that it used a lower sampling frequency, causing a lower Nyquist limit & therefore a lower high frequency shelving limit in the resulting audio.
If you re-compressed the file on the right into a lossless format it would not magically regain the lost data & yet the file itself would now be completely lossless - but only insomuch as no further data would be lost. I think this is probably what the 'checker' apps are trying to test, but in quite a misleading way.

Good lossy compression doesn't look 'truncated' like that on a spectrogram. It doesn't look any different to a lossless file - because the differences are far, far too small to show up on such a blunt tool as a spectrogram.
The whole point of lossy encoding is that it quite cleverly throws away the bits you can't hear anyway. That's its trick. The higher the bitrate, the less it has to throw out, which is why there is a noticeable difference between a 256kbps [or 320kbps] & a 128kbps file, if your speakers & ears are good enough. If you're going to be listening on earbuds from your phone, or in your car, then 9/10 people can't tell the difference between 128kbps & anything higher - the background noise will effectively bury the difference.

You can use a tool that will run the math on an uncompressed lossy file, but how it can decide if any data is missing from the end result without an original to compare to is completely beyond me. Maybe it looks at only the high frequencies, maybe the actual cut off…

I'm going to pick on one of these received wisdom audio checker sites & pick some holes in it… the poor guy probably doesn't deserve being singled out, but he covers the same tired, misinformed ground that many of them do…

From: Audio Checker – Check the True Quality of Your Audio Files

In reference to the above spectrograph…

  kHz, a measurement of frequency that greatly affects sound quality, will be displayed on the left. In theory, bitrates work with frequency and higher bitrates preserve higher frequencies, which result in better sound quality.

✔correct, though things get less confusing if you use the term 'sampling frequency' rather than bit-rate. Bit-rate is really a transmission 'speed' not an accurate gauge of the actual sampling frequency. Only lossy compression formats really have anything to do with bitrates. Completely lossless, uncompress PCM such as WAV of AIF have only a sampling frequency [& bit-depth].
See Presonus: Digital Audio Basics: Sample Rate and Bit Depth  for some further info.

  Lossless FLAC files don’t lose any of their higher frequencies as the left chart shows, yet lossy audio files don’t have higher frequencies

❌ false premise. Lossy files can have just as much high frequency information as lossless - it's based on sampling frequency & Nyquist, as explained above.

  detects upscaling, upsampling and transcoding.

✔ Ahh… so that's how it does it. It checks to see if someone has cheated by taking a low-grade file & changed the transcoding parameters to make it seem better. All those methods will produce data areas with either 'gaps' or doubled data, which certainly prove the file has been messed with at some point, probably in an attempt to deceive.

❌ What it completely & utterly fails to do is test that a file can be uncompressed to give exactly the same data as when it left the 'factory'. It has nothing to compare to.

OK, let's move away from there & back to your results…

  CDDA with probability of 94%.

Well, that's fine if you consider CDDA [16-bit 44.1kHz PCM] to be the pinnacle of audio storage. It hasn't been in probably a decade or so. [Also bear in mind your checker came to that conclusion with absolutely no reference to the original file at all, it's just a guess].

Back in the days everybody had CD players, from the mid-80s onwards, then CDDA was the pinnacle of consumer audio storage - once we'd got over the argument about vinyl, which I'm going to ignore entirely for this exercise.

Since Apple moved to DRM-free AAC in the mid 2000's & introduced iTunes Plus, record companies started to upload their original audio masters to iTunes at 24-bit rather than 16-bit. This coincides with computers getting fast enough that recording studios could start to use higher frequencies in the original recordings - these days going up as far as 24 or even 32-bit 192kHz before downsampling to deliver to the consumer. In a pure numbers game, that's more numbers & it's 'real' because it hasn't been through any process since it left the recording studio/mastering suite. That's the most accurate source available to anyone outside the studio.

By the time this has been encoded to AAC at 256 or even 320kbps, the result is actually better than CDDA…
…& that's where the argument for lossless finally falls down.

Unless the record companies release lossless data at those sample/bit rates, [which did happen with the recent Beatles remasters, only available on USB stick] the 'best' source to the consumer is the AAC.. which was already lossy, but pretty much invisibly lossy.


The simplest method (assuming you have or can borrow/rent one) is plug in an external monitor. That may not be possible or practical but it has to be said...

The problem here is knowing if the Mac is on or off. You can check in a darkened room to see if you see ANY light change (keyboard, display) when hitting the power button. Also in a quiet room listen for fans or drives spinning up (assuming you have spinning drives and not an SSD) And often turning on a Mac will make some noise when it is powered on.

If you can get to the battery and take it our or disconnect it readily that would confirm it is indeed off.

You can usually shut down any computer (Mac or PC) by holding down the power button for 15 seconds or so. Once you do that hitting the power button will power it up.

Forgoing all of that you could just plug your Time Machine drive into the Mac and watch for the drive activity light. More than a 30 seconds or so of drive activity might be a good indicator that macOS was accessing the drive. Let it run overnight and then plug it onto another computer and check the date stamps on the sparsebundle and/or its contents to see if it was modified overnight.

There are likely other ways that I haven't thought of but those should get you started, unless you've already tried all of that...


Convert image and save to same folder in Automator

Use the following actions:

Duplicate Finder Items
Change Type of Images
Rename Finder Items: Replace Text (" copy" with "")

With this sequence, the 'change type' occurs with the copy while ignoring the original. You end up with both files in the original folder.

NB To test as a workflow prior to rendering as a service, insert Get Specified Finder Items at the beginning and specify your test image(s).


I have just encountered this issue. The way that worked for me is to reboot into single user mode and create a new administrator as described here http://www.hackmac.org/tutorials/how-to-create-a-new-administrator-account/ then use the new administrator to reset the original accounts password. Then I was able to log into the original account.

Before this method, I have tried

resetting pram and smc
running disk check from recovery mode
unsuccessfully trying to modify the encrypted apfs to decrypt it (it seems like encrypted is default)
resetting password of my original accounts from recovery mode
changing the password to the login keychain in terminal in recovery mode in case my password on the keychain wasn't updated along with the reset password in recovery mode

I am running Mac OS High Sierra


Finally, I tried Windows 10 own recovery tool. This one worked and could recover fix the issues.


Have you ruled out JavaScript in the web browser that tries several resolutions? I’m thinking making hosts entries won’t cut the mustard and most people will need something more strong like a custom DNS server to help escalate this game of whack-a-mole

https://pi-hole.net/

Pi Hole is my current favorite DNS sinkhole these days and simplifies our efforts above greatly if you don’t mind setting up a robot army to shield your network.


Rootless custom scheduling of Time Machine backups

You can use any of the existing solutions from the existing question Custom Scheduling of Time Machine backups by disabling System Integrity Protection first using csrutil disable in Terminal from the Recovery HD. Once the changes have been made, you can re-enable SIP by running the same command but using ‘enable’ in the place of ‘disable’, also from Terminal in the Recovery HD.


Mounting Ext3 filesystem with OS X 10.7.4

I have successfully used Paragon's ExtFS driver in OS X Mavericks (and Mountain Lion previously) with full read/write access. This has worked for me with ext3 and ext4 file systems.

My only concern would be if you are mounting your Linux root (or any other system root) and you are therefore able to touch sensitive files (/etc/ comes to mind) that may stop working (Linux does not boot, etc) if the wrong permissions get applied. The solution to this is to mount read-only but I cannot say that Paragon's software really has that as a built-in option. The default mode (as is with OS X in general, except for the built-in NTFS driver) is read/write.

Also, do not expect performance in any case. I tried to use my external drive with iTunes and the performance was intolerable.


How to transfer music from friends iPhone to my laptop

You could use another app (such as iMazing 2, AnyTrans, TunesGo... you can find a nice comparative here) to get files from your friend´s phone into your computer. And then, you just have to add them manually to iTunes.


Setting Up A Guest User Account In OS X?

Setting up a guest account on Mountain Lion:

  Choose Apple menu > System Preferences, and then click Users & Groups.
  Click the lock icon to unlock it, and then type an administrator name and password.
  Select Guest User in the list of accounts.
  To let a guest user log in to the computer, select “Allow guests to log in to this computer.”

  However, guest users can’t log in remotely.
  If you let guests log in, you can also set up parental controls for guests by selecting “Enable parental controls” and clicking Open Parental Controls.

  For more information about the limits you can set, see this help topic:

  Set up parental controls
  To let guests use your shared folders and their contents from another computer on your network, select “Allow guests to connect to shared folders.”


The curl command in the do shell script command is malformed.  The -o option expects a filename or a fully qualified pathname filename not just a path like what the variable theFilePath contains.  See the man page for curl, in a Terminal type man curl and press enter and then scroll down to -o, --output <file> where it states: Write output to <file> instead of stdout.

So your do shell script command should look like:

do shell script "curl " & quoted form of theFileURL & " -o " & quoted form of POSIX path of (theFilePath & "/" & theFile)

If you include the / (slash) at the end of the value you set for the theFilePath variable e.g. set theFilePath to "/Volumes/home/Downloads/" you can eliminate & "/" from the do shell script command, which would then look like:

do shell script "curl " & quoted form of theFileURL & " -o " & quoted form of POSIX path of (theFilePath & theFile)

Additionally, since you have already set theFilePath you can use that in your tell application "Finder" statement, e.g:

tell application "Finder" to open theFilePath as POSIX file

If you want Finder to trigger the opening of the file, and depending on how you set theFilePath (with or without a /) use one of the following appropriately:

tell application "Finder" to open (theFilePath & "/" & theFile) as POSIX file
tell application "Finder" to open (theFilePath & theFile) as POSIX file

The AppleScript code shown below contains both forms of the theFilePath variable and the do shell script command along with two version of the tell application "Finder" statement with one set commented out with the leading -- (double-dash).

set theFileURL to the clipboard
set {TID, AppleScript's text item delimiters} to {AppleScript's text item delimiters, "/"}
set theFile to text item -1 of theFileURL
set AppleScript's text item delimiters to TID

-- set theFilePath to "/Volumes/home/Downloads"
set theFilePath to "/Volumes/home/Downloads/"

try
    -- do shell script "curl " & quoted form of theFileURL & " -o " & quoted form of POSIX path of (theFilePath & "/" & theFile)

    do shell script "curl " & quoted form of theFileURL & " -o " & quoted form of POSIX path of (theFilePath & theFile)

    display dialog "The download is finished!" buttons {"OK"} default button 1 with icon note giving up after 5
on error theError
    display dialog "Error downloading the file:" & return & theFile & return & return & theError buttons {"OK"} default button 1 with icon 0 giving up after 5
end try

tell application "Finder" to open theFilePath as POSIX file
-- tell application "Finder" to open (theFilePath & "/" & theFile) as POSIX file
-- tell application "Finder" to open (theFilePath & theFile) as POSIX file


iPad Air & iPhone 5 w IOS8 suddenly won't text (iMessage BAD) send is gray or Red?

You said you had to change your Apple ID email associated with your account. I just want to make sure you signed out of the old one and signed in with the new email address under "Settings > Messages > Send & Receive" on both devices. After you do this, uncheck Settings > Messages > iMessage, wait 15 minutes and check it again.


Keyboard shortcut to move Window to next Desktop?

The only application I've found that supports that on 10.8 is SizeUp. It doesn't create new spaces though.

Spacey stopped working in 10.7


How to configure an Airport Express router to block a machine after many failed wifi connection attempts?

I don't believe you can do that, but you can use the "timed access" feature to block all MAC addresses other than the ones you own.

http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=508984


FileVault decryption process stuck + iCloud login fail + regular shutdown impossible. What is the problem?

I think you have received some bad advice from the repair shop, unfortunately.

It is correct that the 13" MacBook Pro 2012 model have issues with the internal hard drive cable. It hasn't got anything to do with overheating though. It is also incorrect that FileVault have anything at all to do with the cable problem.

The cable problems comes from the fact that the original cable was designed slightly too thin, while the inside of the casing is not completely smooth. Over time the friction between the two can cause the cable to fail.

You can replace the cable with another cable of the same type, which you indicate the repair shop did. The problem will just occur again.

The permanent way to fix it is to replace the cable with a new type of cable that is slightly thicker. This is what Apple does if you take the computer to them. Another way to fix it is simply to add a piece of smooth tape to the case where the cable runs, so that friction is reduced.

You can find detailed instructions on how to apply the tape here:

https://beetstech.com/blog/prevent-a1278-mid-2012-hard-drive-cable-failure

You currently have issues with the file system on disk. This could be caused by problems with that cable - but it could also be the disk itself failing.

I would recommend fixing the cable issue as described above, and then restoring the known good backup you have. Make sure to do disk checks to make sure the disk is OK - if you get disk errors again, it's reasonable to assume the disk is broken and needs replacement.


Can you permanently disable rootless on OS X?

The following should be possible.

Download and install rEFInd to your EFI partition.
Use the Mac Startup Manager to make rEFInd the default system to
boot to.
Configure rEFInd know of OS X and to not search for any other
operating systems. (This decreases boot time.)
Configure rEFInd to operate silently and to boot OS X.
Configure rEFInd to disable all or part of SIP before booting OS X.

Normally when you start the Mac, OS X should startup (after first silently booting rEFInd). SIP will be in whatever state you configured rEFInd to set it to.

If you reset NVRAM, then you may have to hold down the option key and instruct the Startup Manager to make rEFInd the default to boot to. I say may because I am not sure if resetting the NVRAM changes the default operating system to boot to.


IOS 6 opens RSS feeds in Podcast app - how do I prevent this?

Unfortunately, as far as I know (and that is usually enough ;), you can not change the default app that opens the RSS feed.
Personally I use the Downcast podcast app, to add the rss feeds from Safari to my Downcast app is as follows:

Go to the specific website and find you URL
Press and hold the rss-link you are interested in
Choose Copy
Now go to your RSS app and paste the URL


i believe they stopped offering instagram app for ios 6 and below. what phone/ios version are you on? if youre able to upgrade the software, do that. ive heard a lot of people having issues with instagram, so theres obviously something wrong. you should try downloading the app in itunes on your computer, and then check the app to be synced with your phone when you plug it in.


Why is Xcode 7.3 showing a slash through the app icon when attempting to install on Mac OS X 10.10.5 (Yosemite)

It turns out that Xcode 7.3 requires Mac OS X 10.11 (El Capitan) or higher to run see screenshot below from the Mac App Store but the same idea for either install method.

Oh well. Been nice knowing you Yosemite!

As one can see from this question I posted a little while back I’m fairly cautious with my core OS upgrades so I jumped to Mac OS X 10.10 when El Capitan was released just to not be too far behind the curve. Now, I guess I need to finally make the jump to El Capitan!


External monitor resolution setting is lost after MacBook "wakes up" from sleep

I recommend you reset your NVRAM. This chip stores information on screen resolution and can often become corrupted. You can reset it by starting your Mac while holding down cmd + opt + P + R . You should hear the Mac chime, restart and chime a second time. Then you can release the keys you are holding. More info here.


Normally you would use the MacOS Character Viewer (Edit > Emoji & Symbols) to input these, rather than copy/pasting from some external source.  The non-expanded, popover, version of the Character Viewer can be operated from the keyboard alone, via the search box, down arrow, and enter key.

If you want enter codes directly from the keyboard, you should be able to type each 5 digit code point using the 8 character utf-16 hex equivalent via the Unicode Hex Input Source, as described in this earlier answer.


How can I automaticaly download images from a SD/CF card on a Macbook Pro?

Applications > Image Capture

This is the Mac's generic photo importer - it's the actual engine behind Photos.

Launch, insert card, select the card in the list; then bottom left there is a drop menu so you can tell it what automatic action to perform.
This is where I'm uncertain as I'm a Nikon user, not Canon.

Drop menu artificially moved across so you can see the section underneath

From here you can set whether or not to auto-launch any capable app, or use Image Capture itself. I just import to the same folder each time then move after I've done initial edits, but from here you could tell it to auto-launch your Canon software & it could then take over the import & file structure..

One caveat - if you reformat the SD card, it will be recognised as a new device each time you do. The Mac treats each card as a separate entity & always knows which card it is, even if you have several with the same name [which also means you need to set up the same workflow for each card, the first time]. Reformatting breaks that association.


Data recovery from 2012 MacBook Air SSD using 2011 MacBook Air

Added as an answer after comments...

Initially a guess, that the disk was formatted APFS, which would be unreadable by El Capitan.

Upgrading to High Sierra would enable the disk to be read & written as normal.

As regards permissions; you could either add yourself to the user list, as an ACL, or you could just Get Info on the drive itself & check the 'Ignore ownership on this volume' box.


Utility for Visualizing Network Traffic via SNMP

Unfortunately I'm not aware of any serious competition to Cacti, but have you considered using a Cacti virtual appliance? There are several pre-configured VMs available with everything pre-installed and ready to go.
Cacti 0.8.7g
rPath Cacti Appliance
You might also want to take a look here:
A Half-Dozen or So Essential Open Source Network Administraton Tools
and in particular at:
Graph Network Performance with NRG - Part 1
He also has a page on how to install Cacti on OS X.
Now I can't say that this meets your desire for something as simple as a typical OS X application install but it certainly meets the free requirement.
I can't say I've played with any of these tools on OS X bar Mac Ports which I consider an essential on any OS X system.

Another really simplistic app (OS X widget actually) is iEyeNet, it definitely meets the free and simple criteria but isn't anywhere as configurable as Cacti. I tried it with my Airport Extreme and it "just worked".

Another option is documented here, it uses a combination of MRTG/Lingon/Geektool to generate and display the network graphs. Reasonably easy to setup...


Terminal stop launching in Double Commander after Catalina 10.15.1 upgrade

Had the same issue. Solution that worked for me:

In DC go to Configuration -> Options -> Terminal
In section "Command for just running terminal:" was Command /Applications/Utilities/Terminal.app
Rewrite it to the /System/Applications/Utilities/Terminal.app
Save changes and now when you press Fn + F9 terminal will open in current directory just like before


Data use for email to multiple recipients

No. The large email will be uploaded to the server only once, regardless of how many recipients it has. The server will then take care of sending this large email to all its recipients.


QuickLook process has a file open multiple times

Try running qlmanage -r. This should reload QuickLook and make it so it's no longer focused on those files. You can also try using something like Trash It! if after restarting and relaunching/killing Finder and QuickLook does nothing.


How do I get photos from my iphone to the iPad in my husbands name via icloud

Create a shared photostream, share with your husband's account, and add whatever pics you want to that stream.

Go into photos app, tap photostream tab at bottom, then use the plus at top to add a new stream. He will get an invite when you create it that enables him to link to that photo stream on the iPad.

To add pics, simply press and hold one of your photos until the options pop up and add it to your photostream.


Easy way to install additional spell-check dictionaries for OS X?

Mac OS X is compatible with the aff/dic open format dictionaries.

All you need to do is to get one dictionary, and place it inside ~/Library/Spelling (you may have to create the directory).

Get the Romanian dictionary from OpenOffice (or search for another language)
Extract the file using The Unarchiver or rename the extension to .zip and extract it
Move the files with the .aff and .dic extensions (ro_RO.aff and ro_RO.dic for Romanian) to your ~/Library/Spelling folder.
Go to System Preferences > Keyboard > Text > Spelling  and choose the language of your choice
...boom! you have system-wide spell checking :)


Retain print spool until printer available?

As all macs using cups for printing, you can manage it with a web interface. To enable it, you have to type:

cupsctl WebInterface=yes

Then you should be able to check print server configuration, printers and queues from:

http://127.0.0.1:631/

If you enter in this website, under Administration → Server, click on Advance and yo must see something like the following image:

As you can see, you will be able to modify the Retain Documents parameter, that is the amount of time a Document stay on the printer queue.


Access Exchange's public folders in Mail app on Lion?

Krumelur

Mail.app used to be able to see Public Folders on Exchange, but no longer has this ability.

Outlook 2011 and Entourage both support this feature.


Why isn't auto download working for the iphone Podcast app?

Go to Settings, then scroll down and tap on Podcasts app icon:

So I'm assuming you turned "Auto-Downloads" on...

Then tap "Episodes to Keep" and specify which episodes you want to keep. (Depending on your listening habits, I'd not keep this setting on "All" because it can quickly eat up your available memory. Mine is set on "Last 3 Episodes" which gives me plenty of time to listen to them.)

Then go back. To address your issue you may want to turn on "Use Cellular Data" which is Off by default. What might happen in your case is that your phone disconnects from WiFi when it's not on. (This is done to conserve battery.) But in this case this setting will prevent the Podcast app from auto-downloading. Keep in mind though, that turning this setting on can quickly use up your cellular plan's data limit. So check with your cellular provider if you have enough data quota to last your billing cycle without incurring additional charges.


Android Hotspot doesn't work on Macbook pro

Before I got a new iPhone, I experienced this with my Android sometimes. It may or may not work for you, but try a physical connection. I have found that this helped me.


Is there an iPhone app (as opposed to desktop software) that shows actual battery cycles - cycles number

No. For a very long time, the API for that information is private. Any apps on the App Store that manage to trick review or access private API generally get shut down by Apple review / oversight in days or weeks.

The official way to get that data is through Apple Support.

https://support.apple.com
https://www.apple.com/batteries/service-and-recycling/

Until and unless Apple decides to provide cycle count detail in the settings app for iOS or in a public API, you will likely need a trusted computer and / or jailbreak to get those details.

How do I check an iOS device's battery health?


WIFI constantly disconnects when watching online stream video on my mbp

Try this quick-n-dirty solution.

Reset the WiFi

From toolbar -> Go -> Go To Folder
Paste this Address /Library/Preferences/SystemConfiguration/
Locate and delete these files

com.apple.airport.preferences.plist
com.apple.network.identification.plist
com.apple.wifi.message-tracer.plist
NetworkInterfaces.plist
preferences.plist

Restart your Macbook

You can read further for WiFi issues and solutions here


Which process knows what applications are open?

The process which keeps track of all processes is launchd (PID 1) which is the first process launched when the OS starts. There is no standard way of killing it (technically speaking sending the TERM or KILL signal will not kill it), if you could it would immediately lead to a reboot.


If you are just backing up your phone via wifi to your Mac there isn't a native tool to view the contacts.  (There are some third party tools, but I don't think that is what you need).  If you are syncing your iPhone to your Mac then they should show up in the contacts app.

More likely is that your contacts are being synced to whatever account you are using (gmail, yahoo, iCloud, etc...) and you just need to configure that account on your Mac and then you will see the contacts that way.


Flickering external monitor w/ MBP retina 13"

All I can really suggest is that you purchase a Mini DisplayPort to VGA Adapter, along with a VGA cable (D-Sub cable), and use that with your MacBook Pro.

(the blue socket beneath the DVI socket is the VGA socket.)


What to do when Time Machine backup is taking forever?

Aborting a backup like that sometimes has unfortunate consequences. If this is your initial backup, consider erasing the backup drive and starting over before you go to sleep. That way, the drive can run overnight without you having to worry about leaving before it's finished.

Also make sure that the drive is correctly formatted as as HFS+ extended journaled, with a GUID partitioning scheme.


Installing Visual Studios using Bootcamp Assistant

BootCamp Assistant is only for installing the OS, or burning the drivers CD used to help you complete the installation of drivers for your particular hardware.

Once you have a working Windows 7 install, Bootcamp just provides the facility to boot between the two OS, Windows and OS X.

In this case, you have successfully completed the install of Windows 7, but you are having issues installing VS2010.

Whatever the install issues with VS2010 Express are they are unlikely to be related to the fact that Windows is running on a Mac, and more than likely to be install pre-requisites, such as service pack level, etc.

Without further information its unlikely that we would be able to determine what the issue is, or if it is in any way related to being run under Bootcamp.  Have a look to see what the install.log said.


How can I create a Link of my Harddisk on the Desktop

The normal solution is to go to finder preferences, and select the things (including hard disks) you want to show on your desktop. If your hard disk is external, I think you can create an alias (Right Click > Make Alias) and put it on your desktop, to represent it even when the actual disk isn't connected, not that it would allow you access to the files on this hard disk.


Can send text on iMessage to one person but not pictures?

I had this issue too. The person who is trying to receive the image needs to reset their phone. To reset just hold the home button and the lock button until you see the apple sign. This solve my issues and now we send images again both ways


Installing Ubuntu 16.04 server on Mac Mini 2006

Alright, I see you've added some requisites to your answer. Here goes.

Part 1: Install Ubuntu 16.04 Server.

Download this. (Ubuntu Server 16.04 32-bit)

This is done the same way any other Linux install is done. You will insert the CD/DVD, run through the setup to take the entire partition of the Mac Mini, and once you reach a desktop, you're ready for part 2. [Excellent Basic Tutorial, 2012, but relevant]

Part 2: Getting Time Machine Working within Linux Host (Source)

a. Choose a Data Folder

First you need to pick a directory on your server for your Time Machine data and if it doesn't already exist, create it

I'll be using /data/timemachine/ for these instructions, if you prefer another location remember to change it in any of the following.

sudo mkdir -p /data/timemachine

b. Setup a User Account

You'll also need Time Machine user account on your server which you can log in with on your Mac. Create one and assign it the previously-created data folder as its home directory and assign ownership of that directory to this user.

I've chosen to create a user timemachine, but you can pick anything you like.

sudo adduser --home /data/timemachine timemachine

sudo chown -R timemachine:timemachine /data/timemachine

You'll also need to set the password for this user.

sudo passwd timemachine

c. Configure Netatalk

Next, you'll configure Netatalk. Open the existing afp.conf configuration file for editing that is stored in/etc/netatalk/. You can do it in the command line with:

sudo nano /etc/netatalk/afp.conf

You can copy my sample configuration exerpt below, editing it to suit your setup. You simply add it to the end ofafp.conf when finished (and save).

[TimeMachine]
# is this machine a time machine?
time machine = yes
# directory for time machine data on server
path = /data/timemachine
# the max size of the data folder (in Kb)
vol size limit = 980000
# users with access to time machine
valid users = timemachine

d. Enable Netatalk & Avahi

Next, using the venerable systemd, you can enable the netatalk and avahi-daemon services:

sudo systemctl enable netatalk.service

sudo systemctl start netatalk.service
sudo systemctl enable avahi-daemon.service
sudo systemctl start avahi-daemon.service

Okay, now switch over to your Mac.

Mac OS Setup

By default Mac OS doesn't show "unsupported" or non-Apple Time Machine network drives, but you can easily change that with one Terminal command:

defaults write com.apple.systempreferences TMShowUnsupportedNetworkVolumes 1

If everything went well after all this, you should now be able to choose your server in the Time Machine preferences when selecting a disk.

(source: samuelhewitt.com)

You'll also get a login prompt when attempting to access it, just use the username and password for the Time Machine account you created on your server.

If everything has worked thus far, and you are able to perform backups then congrats! You now have a Linux-powered Time Machine.

Part 3: Getting the server to run headless on the Mini.

You will need a DVI to VGA adapter, as well as a VGA dummy to make the machine believe it is plugged into a monitor. The first time you do this, it will have a poor screen resolution. Please just remote into the box (Teamviewer, Logmein, etc) and change the resolution.

Part 4: Getting your files shared out of Linux Server (in this example below, it's Ubuntu, but instructions are relevant). Source

Installing Samba (cross platform ability to share files) in Ubuntu

Sambais a free software re-implementation of the SMB/CIFS networking protocol. Samba provides file and print services for various Windows clients and can integrate with a Windows Server domain, either as a Domain Controller (DC) or as a domain member. So in this article we are using in Per-to-Per network between Windows clients and Linux Ubuntu clients. If you don’t like reading then watch the video tutorials at the end of this post.

To install Samba file server in Ubuntu Linux, run the terminal by pressing Ctrl+Alt+Tkeys to open Linux terminal command line interface.

Now type the “sudo apt-get install Samba” in order to install Samba file server. Type the password to start the installation.

Installing App In Ubuntu Linux

Remember; your Ubuntu machine must be connected to internet. Because this apt-get install command will install software from Ubuntu online software repository.

2. Share File Between Ubuntu and Windows

Let’s do how to share a file in Ubuntu through file explorer? Open the File and create a folder in Home directory. I have created Netdata folder and required to be share it.

a. Right click the Netdata folder and click Local Network Share. Select Share this folder.

Share File Between Ubuntu and Windows

To allow modification to files and folder for users, select Allow others to create and delete files in this folder. Also select Guest access (for people without a user account) to access files from Windows without requiring user and password.

b. Click Add the Permissions automatically to apply the permission to shared folder.

Add the Permissions automatically

If you want to set a password for shared folder, you shout set a user for Samba file server with “sudo smbpasswd -a Shais” command then type the password twice.

Set a Password to Samba File Server

Now it ask you user and password when someone want to access the shared folders. The the file sharing from Ubuntu Linux has completed successfully. Let’s test it from Windows 10 client.

3. Access Shared folders from Windows 10

You can access the Linux shared folders from Windows 10 using Network section. To simply access the shared folders type the \IP address\Shared folders.

a. In Windows 10 type \192.168.0.104\NetData and press enter to open the shared files of Linux Ubuntu.

Access Network Shared Files

b. When prompt for network credential, type the user name and password. If you did not set a password for Samba files server, it will not ask the network credentials.

Network Credentials

c. It’s all the contents of shared folder. You can create and delete files or edit the files.

Network Shared Files

To access the shared files quickly, create a shortcut link to a shared folder in Windows 10.

Create A Shortcut Link

Right click on the desktop and click New then click Shortcut.

Create Shortcut Link

Type the network address of shared folder in Type the location of the item: and click Next.

Type a name for Shortcut Link – Share File between Ubuntu and Windows

Type a name for shortcut related to the shared folders contents and click Finish to create the shortcut.

Linux Shared Files

Here is the shortcut link to the NetData shared folder of Ubuntu Linux. Double click to open it from your desktop. You can create a network Map drive also.

And there you have it. You asked for it!  Sources included.


Run Activity Monitor (Applications/Utilities);  do you see the iTunes Helper service running?  Make sure you set the view to "All processes", not "My Processes".  If it's not running, that's your problem.  Re-install iTunes and away you go.


MacBook Air shuts down on fully charged, healthy battery

I have a MacBook Pro 2009 with the exact same problem. I followed many internet threads. None of the advices worked, even after replacing the battery with a new one. Finally I changed the power setting to "better battery life" in the system preferences and the problem went away.  Previously I had it on "higher performance"


How to get Safari back in iOS6 on iPod Touch?

Check the settings under General > Restrictions. If Safari is disabled there, it vanishes from the UI altogether.


How do I change the "primary group" for an existing user?

One way to change your group is through the MacOS System Preferences panel. Open it, and then open the Users & Groups panel. Unlock the lock icon in the bottom-left so that you can enter your password and make changes.

Once the panel is unlocked, you can right-click (or option-click) on the user you want to change and select Advanced Options from the popup-menu. The advanced options panel will let you specify your default group.

To change the primary group from the command line, first get the ID number of the group and then set the primary group id to that value:

Get a list of groups. You may want to pipe this through less.

# dscacheutil -q group

Change user "scott"'s primary id to 20:

# dscl . -create /Users/scott PrimaryGroupID 20

This solution is from Richard York's blog post on dscl
Original link dead Oct 15 - now archived


Can you stream photos from a PC to an iPad?

FileBrowser from the App Store lets you browse your shared network folders.


I’m not sure what steps you have taken to resolve the issue so I’ll go least invasive to most invasive.

-Restart your computer
-sign out of messages and sign back in
-if the issue persists set up a test user account and attempt to replicate the issue. Below is a link on how to do so.

https://support.apple.com/kb/PH25796?locale=en_US

-if the issue replicates in a test user than you have a system wide issue involving the messages app.Next steps would be to make sure your data is backed up and perform an in place install using the recovery partition (hold down command and r on start up and choose install high sierra).
Being that your CPU usage is high for this app, install may be the best step.


Allowing MDM users to not only enroll devices (/mydevices) but also assign them to certain groups?

So turns out there is no way to do this now. At least as far as I've been able to tell.


What's the practical difference between a 16GB and 32GB iPhone?

There's no difference besides the storage capacity.
As the iPhone does not have an option to extend the memory after purchase, you have to choose the right amount of storage right from the beginning.
You can always manage how much space you use by manually choosing which data to sync (music, photos, movies, apps).
Generally more available space gives you the freedom of not having to manage your sync settings too much.

16GB should be fine for most people, especially if they are willing to make compromises regarding sync settings.
32GB is good if your like to take lots of photos or have a large music library.
64GB is good if you record HD movies which increase in size very quickly the longer you record.


Possibly opened a malicious .dmg file on my Mac, not sure wether it installed itself?

Ordinarily you should still be safe after just mounting the DMG - as long as you haven't actual run anything from within the DMG by double-clicking an icon or similar.

So normally no, you wouldn't have installed the Skype file just by mounting the DMG.

By looking at your screenshots you seem to be running a modern version of macOS. Are you instead running Mountain Lion or older then you could have been automatically infected, as these versions did indeed have a problem with DMGs being able to auto-start programs.

BitDefender, like any other product, can only alert about so many types of malware. It is not a guarantee that it will alert against this specific type of malware/virus, if it is indeed malicious.

The reason I write "ordinarily" and "normally" above is that there's a very slight risk that the file has exploited a problem with the metadata parsing that macOS does of the DMG. I.e. macOS uses information from within the DMG to display images, potentially display license information, etc. It is possible for malware to exploit a security hole within the image decoding library for example to infect your computer just by double-clicking the DMG. However, this seems to be quite unlikely given the information you have presented.

If you want to be really sure what happened, I would suggest comparing the most recent backup from before you downloaded the DMG with the backup taken just after. If no system files have been altered during that time frame, you should be good.


The accepted answer to the question (How can I download an older version of OS X/macOS?) that @nohillside suggested contained the ultimate solution--essentially the computer's date needed to be within a year of the OS' release.

Wikipedia's article on OS X El Capitan indicated that:

  OS X El Capitan was released to end users on September 30, 2015, as a free upgrade through the Mac App Store.

Based on this knowledge, I changed the computer's system date to 2/1/2016 12:00:00 @ UTC using Terminal:

$ date -u 020100002016

Once the system's date was changed, the installation completed as desired.


3G data usage is listed in the General Application under Usage.

But you can also download AT&T's app or Vodafone's app to check it from their perspective as well.


What is the iPod touch's screen sensitive to?


I'm not 100% on this but I think you can use something like this software called iBrowse that will allow you to view files from your Mac or PC. Assuming the recording is not somewhere in the restricted portion of the file structure, you can get it from there. The file should be .AAC format.

Another way, again assuming you have access to where it was saved, is to use disk mode to browse the files. Apple has a nice support page on that so I won't elaborate: Disk Mode

Hope that helps!


Why are the insert options grayed out when I open a PDF?

The files I was opening were JPG, not PDF, and even though my intention was to create PDF files, apparently I'd need to first save one as a PDF and then open it to insert another page.


What happens when the Mac OS menu bar fills up with too many icons?

You can test it by changing your display resolution ;)

low resolution -> overlay

normal resolution


Parallels VM process has high CPU on Macbook Pro Retina when running Chrome in Parallels 8

I had a similar problem in Windows 7 guest OS under Parallels 8. This fixed it:

In Chrome, go to chrome://flags and set 'GPU compositing on all pages' to "Disabled". Restart Chrome

There is a bug report related to this with more details: http://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=172521


If AirPort Time Capsule is compromised, will it disclose contents of encrypted backups?

There are two ways of having backups encrypted.

First, Time Capsule allows for you to encrypt the disk. If you enable this, the disk can only be mounted by the device if you provide it with the password to do so. This encryption is local and thus doesn't address your concern. It does mean that if the disk somehow gets taken out of the TC, it can't be read.

Second, data stored on the Time Capsule as an encrypted volume. This is a setting in your computer and can be set on your Time Machine backups but also for any other volumes you store on the network drives (or anywhere else for that matter). This data can only be decrypted with the password. This data gets encrypted and decrypted on your computer, and although others might be able to see your backup volume, they won't be able to read it.


Getting home.dev to resolve to 127.0.0.1

You could try to connect to http://home.dev./ (note the single dot at the end of the URL; also, when typing the URL, make sure to type the http:// part into your browser address field too). The reason you're not getting luck is with the somewhat irritating web browser behaviour, which is to try to add some common words to the server address part of the URL if it doesn't look "normal" (i.e. you'll notice quite often the browser try to be smart and add www or .com to the beginning or the end of the server address in your URL).

The DNS settings window, screenshot of which you attached, is used to configure DNS servers rather than static host to IP mappings like you do in /etc/hosts. When you add 127.0.0.1 entry, all you're doing is telling the system to ignore the DNS settings and the search domain it acquired via DHCP and instead use 127.0.0.1 as the DNS server - i.e. the system will try to send DNS queries to 127.0.0.1 expecting a DNS service to run there and respond to those. The default entries are greyed out to indicate they were put there automatically for you by the DHCP client.

One way to see what the system resolver is trying to do, bypassing the nonsense of the browser trying to be too smart behaviour, is to open the Terminal.app and type ping home.dev in there and see if you get any responses, and which IP address they come back from. If that works, it means that the resolver is working fine and that the issue is with your browser.


Is Etrecheck safe to use and is this safe place to download?

Yes, Etrecheck is safe to use.

And yes, you should definitely download it from the official website.

Countless people (myself included) have used Etrecheck as a troubleshooting tool. In fact, if you browse Apple's support communities you'll see it often used there as a troubleshooting tool.


Changing the target DPI when saving slides as images in PowerPoint 2011

Unfortunately and inexplicably, Microsoft dropped this option ("Advanced resolution settings") in PowerPoint 2011.

A quick-and-dirty solution would be to simply increase the pixel dimensions in the export settings. You do this by entering e.g. the width (the height will be calculated automatically). Microsoft has limited the maximum possible export  dimensions to 2999×2249 pixels (for aspect ratio 1:1.3) which is comparable to the size of a photo from a 6- or 7-megapixel digital camera. This is sufficient to print the slide on a full A4 or Letter sheet at 300 ppi.

Alternatively, you can save slides as PDF instead of images (File > Save As…), and place those in your page layout application or word processor. At least some of the graphical elements in the design templates are vector graphics, which ensures that these elements won't pixelate later in printing at any resolution.

However, since MS Office uses the OS X PDF framework to create the PDF files (which is no good for commercial printing workflows), you may still want to create high-resolution images from the PDFs. This can be done simply by exporting the images in the Preview application (File > Export). The export dialog allows you to set the graphics format and resolution. Alternatively, you can also open the a PDF in Photoshop or GIMP, which creates a new bitmap image, for which you can set the dpi of your choice.

Important: To avoid later pixelation of your photos or other images placed in the PP presentation, make sure these image files have a high resolution suited for the targeted printing process in the first place.