iTerm2 output broken since upgrade to El Capitan

I found the setting that was causing the problem. I don't know why but its the "Treat ambiguous width-characters as double-width". See screenshot:  Disabling the setting makes the terminal work normal.

I'm using DejaVu Monospace for Powerline which might contain those ambiguous width character and I guess that the output of doge also contains those chars. So anyone using those should disable the setting.


Open a new Finder window in List mode with full name shown

XtraFinder
Has lots of features, including visualization of Finder and auto-adjusting column width.


Can I mount an external NTFS drive as writable when running the install DVD?

I figured it out:

I opened a terminal window and executed mount_ntfs similar to this:

mount_ntfs -s -o rw /dev/diskXsY /Volumes/SomeMountDirectory

where:

-o rw is the crucial part and means use the readwrite option;
-s means mount case sensitive;
/dev/diskXsY represents the actual partition to mount (in my case /dev/disk8s5);
/Volumes/SomeMountDirectory represents the mount point.


How to be sure my Mac is fully disconnected?

This software should accomplish what you're looking for: "Ethernet Status"
There might be free alternatives, this is the first one I came across.


It looks like you can safely move an existing vmware virtual machine - http://www.splashofstyle.com/archives/2009/01/31/moving-a-wmware-fusion-virtual-machine/


How to turn on red light (digital audio) inside of the 3.5mm headphone socket on macbook pros?

Plug in a clear audio jack and you’ll have your red laser engaged and the sound muted. It’s controlled by firmware which is software, just harder to patch and mess with.


Go to https://www.icloud.com/#settings which should show all registered devices & their names. Using the device name, model & even Serial Number or IMEI info, you can decide which to delete.


iTunes: Prevent store from loading on start?

iTunes loads the most recent view on startup. Selecting anything other than iTunes Store or Ping in the left sidebar before closing iTunes means that the store will not load on startup. The store will then first load when you select iTunes Store or Ping.


Updating to Snow Leopard through a USB optical drive

Yes, this should work perfectly well. Almost all USB optical drives use standard drivers, so just about any one should work just fine with your MacBook Pro.


Move focus to another display with keyboard

Nevermind, I found an app which does it - Amethyst. I've been looking for something like that for ages


I visited the link provided, and I was unable to recreate this issue. The speed of the animations seems perfectly fine on iPhone 4S. If you have had this problem on numerous devices, I kindly suggested reporting it to Apple as a potential bug. More than likely, if it hasn't already been reported, an engineer will get back to you with a request and instructions on how to submit more information regarding the matter to them.

To submit a bug report to apple, visit http://bugreport.apple.com.

I would also like to suggest downloading Google Chrome for iOS or Opera Browser for iOS and visiting the same website(s). See if the animations are just as slow there. This will give you a bit more detail to submit to Apple with your bug report. If the issue is only in Mobile Safari, that will help them track the problem down much faster. If it exists in all browsers on the device, they will know that they need to look a bit deeper into iOS itself. Either way, I'm afraid I can't offer a quick fix for the issue as it seems to be a rather rare occurrence.

Good luck and happy LOLing!


OS X Server & Time Machine for Active Directory Users

Ok - I feel foolish.  I found the answer within minutes of posting the question.  Here is the answer:

https://discussions.apple.com/message/24844922#24844922

I had to enable 'File Sharing' on OS X Server as well, add an explicit folder (or drive) where the backups would go and add explicit permissions to that folder. You can allow 'everyone' to access it, but in my case, I have an AD Security group that contains all Mac users in the org.


Does taking keys off of a MacBook keyboard void warranty

Assuming you signed the AppleCare plan on the US, this is what the legal document states:

  4. What is not Covered?

  (ii) Damage caused by (…) (b) accident, abuse, misuse, liquid contact, fire, earthquake or other external cause, (c) operating the Covered Equipment outside the permitted or intended uses described by the manufacturer, or (d) service (including upgrades and expansions) performed by anyone who is not a representative of Apple or an Apple Authorized Service Provider (“AASP”);

I'm not a lawyer, but abuse and misuse may be applied to removing keys.
You may get away with it if you present it as an "upgrade", and you are an Apple Authorized Service Provider :)


Why do Automator workflows fail to replace selected text with their actions’ output in Safari 14 (on macOS 11)?

I am not sure what exactly are you trying to accomplish, but I have an AppleScript code to replace characters and maybe it can be a good way for you to start. This solution works no matter the program because it uses GUI scripting, you just need to select the text and invoke the Service.
As you can see the code is changing all : for /; you can use it to adapt for your needs.
on run {}
    tell application "System Events"
        key code 8 using {command down} -- Cmd+C Copy text to clipboard
        delay 0.1
        set the new_path to (the clipboard as string)
        set save_location to my replace_chars(new_path, ":", "/")
        delay 0.1
        set the clipboard to save_location
        key code 9 using {command down} -- Cmd+V Paste clipboard back
    end tell
end run

on replace_chars(this_text, search_string, replacement_string)
    set AppleScript's text item delimiters to the search_string
    set the item_list to every text item of this_text
    set AppleScript's text item delimiters to the replacement_string
    set this_text to the item_list as string
    set AppleScript's text item delimiters to ""
    return this_text
end replace_chars


How to replace all Finder files with a placeholder file for each

Basically you want to find a bunch of files which are empty (have size 0 bytes) and then change their content to "This file is empty".

cd to/wherever/the/files/are
find . -type f -size 0 -print | while IFS= read -r line; do
    echo "This file is empty" > "$line"
done

If instead you want to remove them, run

cd to/wherever/the/files/are
find . -type f -size 0 -delete


Using a MacBook Pro Retina Display with USB3 external drives

The answer to your question depends on your setup, how you've configured Photoshop, and the actual external drive.

Typically one would have Photoshop configured to use the internal drive for its scratch disk location, so in that sense you won't overly slow your work down.

However, it's highly likely that you'll notice read/write speeds to be slower when saving and opening files from the external drive, although how much will depend on the actual drive and what you have installed as an internal drive.

For example, if your internal drive is an SSD the difference will be quite noticeable, especially with larger files. However, if your internal drive is only a 5400rpm drive you probably won't notice any difference. And of course it'll be somewhere in between for 7200rpm drives or fusion/hybrid drives.

Regardless of what you do, make sure you have a backup regime in place. So if you use the external for your Photoshop work, then invest in another drive for Time Machine (or other) backups!

Some tips:

the more RAM you have, the better. Make sure your Photoshop preferences allow as much memory as possible.
make sure you have a reasonable amount of free space on your internal drive, not only for scratch disk purposes, but also for virtual memory usage.
you can work with a few files off your external USB as a test before moving everything across
once again, make sure you have a backup regime in place!


Is there a way to test whether an iPhone (5s) is failing to work on certain frequencies?

The Genius bar may be able to help you by running diagnostics, but you can also try that yourself with this project that MITMs the diagnostics connection and dumps all data into an archive, you can try poking around in in and see if you can find anything relevant in it.

Another solution would require control of the mobile network but then you can definitely see why the phone isn't connecting to the desired networks (if the SIM allows it and the phone still doesn't connect then it's a phone failure).


Why does Launchpad not remember my icon settings?

There is an Apple Discussion here that describes the same problem, and refers to this OSX Dialy link on how to correctly refresh LaunchPad, and fix a corrupted LaunchPad.

The short version of the answer is:

  Basically I used terminal to kill the dock with the command "killall Dock"

  Then I had to delete the dock database file located in "Home Folder/Library/Application Support/Dock" you get to your Library folder by holding down the option key while clicking "Go" in Finder.

  Then kill the dock again with the terminal command "killall Dock".

  Finally After putting all my apps back where I wanted them they are now saving.


Is there a way for Pages to display an auto-updating date in ordinal format?

You can set the date to update every time the document is opened by double-clicking on it, and selecting “Automatically update on open”. As for making the date ordinal, I don’t think it’s possible or would require heavy plist modifications or may depend on your localisation settings.


How to modify a Launch Daemon permanently under OS X El Capitan?

I haven't had to deal with this "for real" yet, but I think the best solution is to:

Copy the .plist file into /Library/LaunchDaemons.
Rename it (e.g. by adding "local." to the beginning of the filename), and edit its Label value to match. If you don't change this, launchd is likely to get confused between this and the original.
Make whatever other edits you need
Make sure the ownership is set to root:wheel, and permissions to 644.
Deactivate the original item with e.g. sudo launchctl unload -w /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/org.postfix.master.plist (the -w makes this permanent).
Load your customized replacement with e.g. sudo launchctl load /Library/LaunchDaemons/local.org.postfix.master.plist (or just reboot).

BTW, if you do just disable SIP and modify the existing file, it won't necessarily be reverted by an OS update. But it might, and you'd have to check after every update (including security updates, etc), which is a pain.


iPod touch (iOS4) doesn't sync AddressBook after moving to iCloud

Apparently, after moving to iCloud, iTunes won't sync Address Book with an iOS4 device, as there is some sort of issue with folder paths.

This is the only thing I could find addressing your problem.


How to add wiktionary as a source to the default dictionary.app?

You can use DictUnifier to convert any StarDict format dictionary into a mac format dictionary.  You can then download wiktionary in StarDict format here:

http://www.dictinfo.com/

Extract the 7z file with Keka or similar.  You will get three files, a .ifo, a .dictz, and a .idx.

Drag the resulting .ifo file onto the DictUnifier drop location and it will convert and import it into your Dictionary.  You can then go into preferences and check the new dictionary and drag it into the right position for how you want results.

Now you have offline wiktionary access in every language that is available at that dictinfo site (Gobs of them!!).


Why does OS X delete files directly without moving them into the trash?

The OS X finder maintains a few hidden directories to handle Mac specific filesystem functions like:

Spotlight = /Volumes/X/.Spotlight-V100
file version history = /Volumes/X/.DocumentRevisions-V100
trash = /Volumes/X/.Trashes
Time Machine (and other) filesystem changes = /Volumes/X/.fseventsd

These are suppressed on many network and "foreign" filesystems by design and/or if the filesystem is read-only. You can use the command line tool (or the get information menu command in Disk Utility) to inspect the format of your volume:

diskutil list /Volumes/X/

Hopefully this is the cause - if your volume is of type Apple_HFS or similar and you don't see the hidden directories, you might need to dig deeper and repair that filesystem or look at some other cause. The simple reason would be that the hidden directories are suppressed by design in your case.


It’s possible that your Windows-specific keyboard isn’t sending the correct keycode for the Option (Alt) key. To rule out hardware damage, have you confirmed that the Alt key works when booted into Windows or plugged into a different computer?
A workaround is to open the Mac Mini, disconnect the hard drive, and attach a USB flash drive containing a macOS installer (How to create a bootable installer for macOS). You’d still need a way to install onto the hard drive, which means buying an external USB enclosure for the internal drive... I think it’s just easier to try an Apple keyboard.


Find text to trigger a particular emoji in Predictive Keyboard

In English, the word you want is any of:

crazy
lol
laughing
lolz
lols
lulz
rotfl
rotflmao
excited
silly
loco

On macOS the list of words for the suggestion/predictive feature is in FindReplace.strings within /System/Library/PrivateFrameworks/CoreEmoji.framework, but the majority of the keywords work on iOS too.

There are different sets of words for each language, as you would expect.

Also see: How to bring up a precise Emoji in the iOS QuickType menu


Assuming there is only one drive called Elements, running
diskutil list 'Elements' | sed -nE '/ Elements /s/.* (disk[0-9]+s[0-9]+)$/\1/p'

will return the device identifier.
Within a script you could use
disk=$(diskutil list 'Elements' | sed -nE '/ Elements /s/.* (disk[0-9]+s[0-9]+)$/\1/p'
)
if [[ -n "$disk" ]]; then
    mkdir -p /Volumes/Elements
    mount_exfat "/dev/$disk" /Volumes/Elements
fi


Simultaneously holding down the control-command-F keys maximizes the window.
Re-typing the same keys reverse the process and puts the window back to its original size.


Zulip desktop app has "no available windows"

Zulip was in "minimized" mode. To show any windows, I needed to click on the tray icon in the upper-right and select one of the menu options.

In the Zulip "Settings" menu, the "Always start minimized" option was enabled; I have now disabled it.


Error 53 makes my sister's iPhone 6 brick

Because the iPhone was serviced by a third-party, the phone is bricked. Apple will issue an out of warranty replacement, but it will be quite expensive. (It is an out of warranty replacement because the technician voided the warranty when he replaced internal components.)

Apple is not just doing this for fun. It keeps your biometric data secure. If someone at the mall, for example, replies your Touch ID sensor with another one, he can gain access to the iPhone and your information is not secure. While it may be frustrating, there is a good reason it happens.


How to Set my Mac's $PATH back the way it was before

By default the paths are saved in the file /etc/paths. You can edit it e.g. with sudo vim /etc/paths. Each line should contain one directory used for $PATH.

Then there is the directory /etc/paths.d/ that can contain text files with paths in it.

Furthermore the path can be modified in the files ~/.bashrc and ~/.bash_profile.

However, the $PATH you are stating is the default one and usually desired. Restricting it to only /usr/local/bin would make a lot of default applications - like vim, ls, or even sudo that reside in /usr/bin/ or /bin/ - inaccessible without typing their whole paths every time.


Apples use of Lightning connector in MFi Program

There is no clause in the MFi Program's Term's and Conditions that specifically deny or allow a said accessory concept. Only demarcation Apple does is whether an accessory type is or is not part of the MFi Program.

For e.g. accessories that connect to the Lightening port are a part of MFi Program. On the other hand, accessories that only use standard Bluetooth profile or Bluetooth Low Energy, non-electronic cases etc. are not part of MFi Program.

I recommend you go through the MFi FAQ's before proceeding.

The FAQ's specifically answers some questions which may be relevant in your case. Quoting them below:

  Can you review my product concept and advise if I need to join the MFi Program?

  If you intend to develop an electronic accessory which will connect to iPhone, iPad or iPod using proprietary technology, your company must join the MFi Program. Apple is unable to provide feedback regarding a product concept prior to joining the MFi Program.

  Is there a program fee for participation in the MFi Program?

  There is no program fee at this time. However, all program applicants must purchase and complete a company identity verification through a secure, third party Web-site.


How do i find the email address used as an icloud ID for an icloud locked phone?

Take it back to the dealer. See if they have the contact details. If not, get your money back, they should have checked before even buying it from the previous owner.

The entire email address is never exposed, so you won't be able to access it.

Even if not stolen, if the original owner doesn't remove it from their iCloud account, there's no way to bypass the Activation Lock.


Trying to downgrade to High Sierra but Time Machine restore upgrades back to Mojave

You can only do a file restore, individual files/folders rather than a full disk restore.

Once Time Machine has been used on a newer OS, it will not allow you to go back.

Related - Revert to El Capitan
& also covered briefly in How can I download an older version of OS X/macOS?


Can I import photos from a locked iPhone to Mac?

It will do it without unlocking, unless you've restarted the phone or entered so many incorrect passwords that the phone has locked out any further attempts.

If you've restarted it or tried too many times, then you're in about the same position as the FBI in the US right now - in short, no, you can't get it to do anything until it's unlocked.

You could try putting another identical phone side by side with it & tapping in the same place on both phones simultaneously, to see if it will accurately recognise the taps; but if that doesn't work [& be careful you don't accidentally lock out the other phone] then the only real solution is to get the screen fixed, or check your iCloud storage - see if they're all already saved online.


Will non-USB 3 Lightning to Camera Adapter work for new iPhone Migration?

Apple's support documents only list the "Lightning to USB 3 Camera Adapter" as compatible with this process. If you want to be guaranteed that it works - use that adapter.

You can test your old adapter without fear of breaking. If the "Lightning to USB Camera Adapter" works for you, it will be capped at USB 2 speeds, as it doesn't support higher speeds.


Keyboard navigation of Mac OS X Finder window's search options toolbar

The Spotlight search box is the one in the top-right of the menu bar (commandspace). The Find search box is the one I think you're talking about, within a Finder window.

To get focus back to the search field, hit controltab or commandf.

Another option is found in System Prefs > Keyboard > Shortcuts. There's a radio button near the bottom labeled "Full Keyboard Access". "All Controls" will let you tab through the other search fields without modifier keys.

That said, in my testing, there're some flaws. Some of the fields aren't selectable, and if you try to select one of those and then hit commandf, you can no longer tab through the other fields anymore—you have to open a new Finder window and start over.


cpio's file on disk is not older; skipping — how to suppress this warning?

One workaround of course is to filter the output of cpio using grep; however, this is a chunk of extra typing. What I really want is the Leopard behavior.

cd master-directory
(
    find . | cpio -pdmv /first/shadow/destination
    find . | cpio -pdmv /second/shadow/destination
) 2>&1 | grep -v -e'skipping' -e'^[:space:]*$'


Why does installing a package create a directory on my desktop?

This is normal.  These programs have been downloaded as virtual disk or .dmg files.

For example Mendeley Desktop is a program supplied as Mendeley-Desktop-1.19.4-OSX-Universal.dmg file.  When you open the downloaded file by default you will see it appear on your desktop and as a removable drive in Finder.

Once you have dragged the application to Applications you can eject the virtual disk in Finder and then delete the downloaded .dmg file.

Note some programs - MS Office for example - are supplied as packages (files ending in .pkg) rather than .dmg files.  When you run this type the program is installed without mounting a virtual drive and macOS will automatically prompt you to delete the installer file once done.


MacBook Pro 2011: unable to get into terminal via Recovery Mode

I'm trying to find a way to avoid getting into graphics mode.  I remember in the olden days displays had a command line mode and graphics mode.

(1) I'd try single use mode.
This page will tell you how to get into single user mode.
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1492

Basically, you hold down the command + s key then power on your machine. [ The command key has a little apple symbol on the lower left. It is between the alt/option key and the space bar. ]

(2) You could try safe mode.  This avoids using the graphics hardware.
Try a safe boot.
    Shutdown your machine.  Hold down the shift key.  Poweron.  The boot up will take longer than normal because the filesystem on the startup drive is being checked and repaired as needed.   All about safe mode including what features and apps safe boot leaves out.  Safe boot uses a software driver instead of using your machines video hardware.
      http://support.apple.com/kb/ht1455


Software not available from update server when installing Windows 8.1 on Mavericks

You can try manually updating the software. Here's a link that you can use. Be sure to follow the instructions.


Run 'real VNC Viewer' in full screen mode

VNC viewer has it's own 'full screen' mode.

To access it, move your mouse to the top of the window (where the arrow is pointing) and click the full screen icon.

The only issue with this is you cannot view multiple desktops (using the trackpad gestures) without closing full screen mode.

To toggle full screen mode quickly you can press F8 (fn+play/pause) then when the menu pops up press F


How to isolate cause of iMac System Crash

The resolution to my problem was to replace the internal power supply.  Apple performed the repair for $67 in parts and $79 in labor.  The iMac has been rock solid since the repair was completed.


How can I download the entirety of my Google Drive to my iPhone?

Based on a few Google Searches, there is no in-app or third party app on the App store which allows you to do this. There is only one on Android. I suggest filling out a request on the Google Product Forms to see if the feature will be available in the near future.


You can enable full keyboard access to easily navigate the on-screen controls using the Tab and arrow key.

Go to System Preferences → Keyboard → Shortcuts and check the checkbox shown towards the bottom that reads, Use keyboard navigation to move focus between controls.

Now with the above set up, you can simply open System Preferences using Spotlight (which itself can be launched using the keyboard shortcut Command + Space), then use the keyboard shortcut Command + F to move focus to the System Preferences search field. Now type Mouse and trackpad and select the result that reads Mouse and trackpad easier to use.

This would take you to the desired preference pane. Now you can easily use the Tab key to navigate to the required checkbox and toggle the setting.

P.S.: With full keyboard access, on-screen controls can be navigated using the Tab and/or arrow keys. A control can be activated or toggled using the Space or the Enter key, and dialogue boxes dismissed using the the Esc key.


How to use Thunderbolt Display with Laptop

There are two ways of connecting to the TB Display: either using the built-in 'male' cable, or the TB port on the back. Both are "miniDisplayPort" connectors, and can function as 'dumb' video connectors if you can get some connection from your laptop (USB-C, HDMI, etc) to a miniDisplayPort connector (either male or female).

If you are connecting via a non-Thunderbolt connection, then you won't get all the Thunderbolt goodness of the speakers, extra ports, webcam, etc.


iPhone 4S does not get detected in Windows

Verify that the iPod service is running by doing the following:

First, close iTunes and disconnect your iPhone from your computer. Then:

Go to Start
Go to Run
Type "services.msc" and hit enter.
Find the iPod Service
Right click on it and click Start or Restart Service
Reconnect your iPhone to your machine.

If this does not resolve the issue, try going through the steps in this knowledgebase article.


The answer to the subject of your question "Is it possible to change a Finder List View column width in AppleScript?" is YES. The answer to your question about using AppleScript to set the width of the name column to be big enough to display the names without truncating is also yes. I am not sure how to handle the tabs in the Finder window but it sounds as if you have a script that addresses the tabs already.

One big surprise (to me) was that I had to close and re-open the Finder window in order to see the change.

Here is a script that operates on the frontmost Finder window. The width of the "Name" column is set to be 7.5 * (number of characters in the longest name in the window). It is not the perfect width but it works for me as long as I'm using 12-point text in the Finder. We are setting the width of the column to a certain number of pixels, and each character takes a different number of pixels since the Finder is not using a fixed-width font, so we can't be exactly right when setting the width. But 7.5 * the number of characters in the longest name seems to work pretty well. You can adjust it of course.

tell application "Finder"
    activate
    set the_window to window 1
    set current view of the_window to list view
    set the_options to list view options of the_window
    set the_name_column to first column of the_options whose name is name column
    set the_items to name of every item of the_window
    -- get the longest name (count of characters)
    set longest_name to 0
    repeat with I from 1 to count of the_items
        --check for invisible files, which we don't need to consider
        if character 1 of item I of the_items is not "." then
            if (count of characters of item I of the_items) > longest_name then
                set longest_name to count of characters of item I of the_items
            end if
        end if
    end repeat
    -- this only works if the text size is 12. The multiplier 7.5 could be changed
    -- if the text size is something else.
    set desired_width to longest_name * 7.5
    set width of the_name_column to desired_width
    -- we have to close and reopen the window in order to see any changes.
    -- there might be a "refresh window" command but I don't know it.
    set the_target to target of the_window
    close the_target
    open the_target
end tell


Is there an OS X equivalent to the web debugging proxy Fiddler?

Stuff that's Free:

Burp Suite
WiireShark
ParosProxy
NetTool
LiveHTTPHeaders
Safari WebInspector Network Tab
FireBug

Stuff that Costs:

$1.99 -  HTTPClient
$15.00 - HTTP Scoop
$50.00 - CharlesProxy


Outlook 2011 won't open, fails with exit code 255

Hold down the option key (aka alt) when you start outlook.  it will prompt you to restore your main identity.


iOS 12 replacement for default Music-app which can "remember playback position"

fine out after pay away ads does not support .m4a half iTunes Library are in this format thought it was a bug in app but after read app info... :( but fine other bug if to many files on app it crashes on startup!!

FLAC Player+

Good Old Music Interface:
Song,Playlists,Artist,Album,Composer,Genre

Got a Setting Start Playing turn from From Beginning to Where Left Off
that works! :)

No support for default iTunes Library sync.

Now copy all file through https or iCloud-Drive but vs start think switch to other different Phone it much easier.


Why doesn't FileVault work on a RAID volume?

The previous answer I gave here was wrong (as is bmike's answer).

The previous answer I gave was that if you have this as a problem, a workaround is to create an encrypted disk image that covers the entire AppleRaid set. This works, in theory, but is so horribly slow (like more than 10x as slow as the raw disk access) that it is basically unusable, which led me to look at the diskutil command line utility in more detail. And what do you know --- you CAN do what is wanted, it just takes some work. You have to do it through the command line, and even there you can't do it with the simplest commands, but it can be done and it is 100% legitimate Apple supported, not some weird hack.

So, let's assume you have your Apple Raid volume, which you have created somehow, either through Disk Utility or through the command line.

Note: This process will format your RAID and encrypt it. Backup any data you want to keep (at least twice) before proceeding.

The first thing we need is to know the low-level OS identifier for the Apple Raid volume of interest, so type:

diskutil list

which will give you a list of the various hard drives, partitions and logical hard drives (eg Apple RAID volumes) on your system. Look at the list and figure out, based on name, size, whatever, which is the Apple RAID volume we wish to encrypt. Make sure you get the RIGHT identifier, otherwise you'll destroy some other volume. It's wise, when doing this, to disconnect (manually --- pull out the cables!) all hard drives not relevant to the problem, including, most obviously, your backup drives!

So the list tells us the device of interest is, say, disk7

Next we want to create a Core Storage LVG (Logical Volume Group) wrapper around the device. I'm not going to claim I understand Core Storage terminology, and why they use a different word for everything compared to Apple RAID, but far as I can tell, the LVG is essentially Core Storage's version of a logical hard drive. So type:

diskutil cs createLVG BackupImacLVG disk7

BackupImacLVG is the name we are giving to the logical hard drive we're creating.
This command will take a few seconds, then spit out a long string which is is the "name" (the UUID) of the LVG we have created. We use it in the next step.

We're not done. We now need to create the equivalent of a partition (which Core Storage calls a Logical Volume) on this logical hard drive.
Here is the next command:

diskutil cs createLV 8C5AED3-0CCF-4155-8E3D-DF7D9E68EE7B JHFS+ BackupImac 100% -stdinpassphrase

In the command above:
    8C5AED3-0CCF-4155-8E3D-DF7D9E68EE7B
is the LVG UUID we were just told (make sure you use your own), and
    JHFS+
is the file system we want to create in the partition.
    BackupImac
will be the name of the volume created in this partition.
    100%
says how much space we want to give to this partition. (There are a few different ways to specify sizes, but most people will probably use 100%).
    -stdinpassphrase
says that we want to use encryption.

The command line will then put up a prompt of:

Passphrase for new volume:

You enter the password, and you're done. (Note none of the helpful Apple FileVault UI here! No offering to save your password for you with Apple, no second request for the password to make sure you typed it correctly!)

The end result of all this is exactly what you would hope for and expect. An encrypted volume with all the performance of the previous AppleRAID volume. (And if you look at the diskutil man page, you will see that they explicitly list Apple RAID volumes as supported targets for diskutil cs createLVG, so this isn't some strange edge case that isn't officially supported.)

Disk Utility.app doesn't update its UI (it's really bad in this respect --- has been an ongoing problem in OSX) so quit it and restart it. You'll now see, along with your RAID slices, a new "hard drive" called BackupImacLVG (or whatever you called it) along with a partition called BackupImac (or whatever you called it), with a format of "Encrypted Logical Partition".

One thing to be aware of. The disk is mounted during the creation process without asking for a password (you gave the password in the command line).

Right after you are done, you may want to unmount the volume, power down the hard drives of the AppleRAID volume, power them on again, and see what happens. If you have done everything correctly, once all the slices of the Apple RAID have spun up and been detected by the OS, a window should appear on the screen asking you for the password so that the disk can be mounted.


How do I batch convert a lot of .doc file to .html?

Open terminal and navigate (cd) to the directory containing the .doc files and run the following:

for i in *.doc; do
textutil -convert html $i;
done

I am using zsh so not sure if that would execute right in default bash shell. However, you can always invoke zsh for this purpose by just typing zsh at the prompt and hitting enter. The textutil command line has many options and capabilities. Just type textutil to see the options or look up the manual pages.

Or:

textutil -convert html *.doc

That also does the trick in default shell settings from within the directory containing the .doc files.


There is a way now: https://appapp.io/us/has_iap=false/search

(Full disclosure - I made it)


How would Find my iPod work on a locked iPod Touch?

I'm afraid you're completely right. Apple does even make a statement on its website about it:

However, there are some alternatives.
But since there is no way to come up with a work around on this problem, 3rd party software, like Undercover allows you to store the latest locations of an iDevice. Where Find my iPod touch will only show you the current location (it doesn't show a history of locations I think), Undercover will save its latest location, as they say on their FAQ page:

  What happens if Undercover is launched when a phone is not connected
  to the net? Will it still transmit its location?

  If Undercover is launched on an offline device (no 3G or Wi-Fi), its
  location is saved. As soon as the device goes online and Undercover is
  launched again, saved locations will be transmitted.


Apache not working with user Sites folder on macOS 10.13 High Sierra

This worked for me when I ran into the same problem.

Please check "/private/etc/apache2/extra/httpd-userdir.conf" file.

change

#Include /private/etc/apache2/users/*.conf

to

Include /private/etc/apache2/users/*.conf

and restart apache.

From: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/39631351/apache-localhost-403-forbidden-with-macos-sierra


Stuck on login for one user after migration assistant

We can try to approach this a few different ways. Let's start with the easiest and see if we can collect a sysdiagnose during the login process:

Log in to one of your working accounts.
Run the following Terminal command to enable kernel symbolication: sudo nvram boot-args="keepsyms=1". Make sure to copy-paste this so that you're entering straight quotes rather than curly/“smart” quotes. (If you get a permission error, you will first need to disable System Integrity Protection. You can re-enable it after you're done with this investigation.)
Reboot your machine normally.
Attempt to log in to your problematic user account.
As soon as you attempt to log in, press and hold the ShiftControlOptionCommand keys together, and while holding these keys press and release the period . key.
This is intended to silently initiate a sysdiagnose. Wait for at least 10 minutes to give it ample time to complete, then do a forced shutdown (press and hold the [POWER] button for 10 seconds).
Wait 10 more seconds with the machine off.
Press the [POWER] button. Immediately afterwards, press and hold CommandS in order to boot your machine into Single User Mode. We are doing this because otherwise the sysdiagnose report will get deleted when /tmp is cleaned during multiuser boot.
You can release the CommandS keys when you're at a command prompt and there is no more scrolling text.
From here, you need to move the sysdiagnose report to a location where it will not be deleted: mv /private/var/tmp/sysdiagnose* /Users/YOUR_USERNAME/Desktop. Here you need to replace YOUR_USERNAME with the short username of one of your functioning users.
exit
Log in with the functioning user whose name you used in Step 10.
Locate the sysdiagnose archive on your Desktop. Double-click to decompress it.
Upload the spindump.txt file in the decompressed report directory using PasteBin or an equivalent service and add the link to your question.

UPDATE 1:
Looking at your spindump, there are several processes that are using significant CPU:
% grep "CPU Time:         " spindump.txt  | sort -d | tail -n 5
CPU Time:         0.330s (661.7M cycles, 244.5M instructions, 2.71c/i)
CPU Time:         0.792s (1615.4M cycles, 642.4M instructions, 2.51c/i)
CPU Time:         2.675s (5.9G cycles, 7.4G instructions, 0.80c/i)
CPU Time:         4.263s (9.6G cycles, 9.0G instructions, 1.07c/i)
CPU Time:         6.450s (12.6G cycles, 15.3G instructions, 0.82c/i)

The 6.45s one belongs to spindump, which is to be expected. The more interesting processes are
% grep -B 12 4.263s spindump.txt | grep Process:
Process:          ReportCrash [369]
% grep -B 12 2.675s spindump.txt | grep Process:
Process:          MRT [83]
% grep -B 12 0.792s spindump.txt | grep Process:
Process:          WindowServer [144]
% grep -B 12 0.330s spindump.txt | grep Process:
Process:          kernel_task [0]

First, it's surprising to see ReportCrash running. This suggests that there has been a recent process that's crashed and is now being analyzed and prepared for reporting to Apple. Although there are several possible explanations for why this is occurring right now, one theory is that either a login item or a launch agent is (repeatedly) crashing upon your attempted login. You can check this by examining (either from a working account or from Single User Mode) the /Library/Logs/DiagnosticReports directory and sorting by timestamp (ls -lt in Terminal / command line). Check for crash logs around the time of your attempted login.
Next, MRT is using a lot of time. MRT is the Malware Removal Tool. Examining its stackshot, its main thread doesn't seem to be blocked and appears to just be doing a lot of normal I/O and analysis. I'm guessing it's doing its ordinary job of scanning your filesystem for malware. Nothing to indicate that it's involved in the failure chain.
Finally, coming to WindowServer and kernel_task, either of which can easily stall a login if they misbehave, I again don't see anything in either stackshot to indicate abnormal behavior.
So we have ruled out CPU starvation as a failure mode here. Now let's see if there's a blocked process within the critical login path. I notice prominently the absence of Finder from the list of running processes, so there is very clearly something preventing it from launching.
% grep -c "Process:          Finder" spindump.txt
0

Let's see if there are any processes that are trying to fork() and might be getting stalled:
% grep "Parent:           " spindump.txt | grep -v "launchd \[1\]" | sort -d
Parent:           UserAccountUpdater [363]
Parent:           UserAccountUpdater [363]
Parent:           UserAccountUpdater [363]
Parent:           kernel_task [0]
Parent:           loginwindow [147]
Parent:           sysdiagnose [404]
Parent:           systemstats [84]

That's interesting. UserAccountUpdater is running, suggesting that your user account is being upgraded. Given that you mentioned using Migration Assistant to bring your Mojave account into Big Sur, it makes sense that the upgrade has started and has not had a chance to complete. So is anything blocked on this?
% grep UserAccountUpdater spindump.txt | grep block
             *1000  ??? (kernel + 6600128) [0xffffff800085b5c0] (blocked by wait4 on UserAccountUpdater [363])

The answer is yes. This frame comes from a thread in loginwindow, which will also absolutely hang up the login process if something isn't right. There are three children of UserAccountHelper:
% grep -C 6 "Parent:           UserAccountUpdater" spindump.txt | grep "Process:          "
Process:          mbcachecleanup [396]
Process:          migrationhelper [389]
Process:          ReminderMigrationTool [390]

mbcachecleanup and migrationhelper both have healthy traces. ReminderMigrationTool, however, is blocked on an XPC transaction:
Thread 0xcf2    DispatchQueue "com.apple.main-thread"(1)    1000 samples (1-1000)    priority 31 (base 31)
1000  start + 1 (libdyld.dylib + 87585) [0x7fff20555621]
1000  ??? (ReminderMigrationTool + 15952) [0x101fa0e50]
  1000  -[CalInProcessReminderMigrator attemptMigrationWithHomeDirectory:] + 278 (ReminderMigration + 20449) [0x7fff732c0fe1]
    1000  -[CalTruthFilesReminderMigrator attemptMigrationWithHomeDirectory:] + 196 (ReminderMigration + 28484) [0x7fff732c2f44]
      1000  -[CalTruthFilesReminderMigrator _attemptMigrateRemindersDataWithCalendarDirectory:] + 175 (ReminderMigration + 28783) [0x7fff732c306f]
        1000  -[CalTruthFilesReminderMigrator _performMigrationInCalendarDirectory:withContext:] + 941 (ReminderMigration + 30684) [0x7fff732c37dc]
          1000  -[CalReminderMigrationContext ensureAccountsExist:] + 48 (ReminderMigration + 21943) [0x7fff732c15b7]
            1000  -[CalDefaultReminderKitDatabaseMigrationContext ensureAccountsExist:error:] + 142 (ReminderMigration + 9833) [0x7fff732be669]
              1000  -[REMDatabaseMigrationContext ensureAccountsExist:error:] + 64 (ReminderKit + 442631) [0x7fff3d851107]
                1000  -[REMDatabaseMigrationContext ensureAccountsExistWithMigrationAccountInfos:error:] + 219 (ReminderKit + 440075) [0x7fff3d85070b]
                  1000  -[REMDatabaseMigrationContext _cleanLocalDatabases:] + 100 (ReminderKit + 444147) [0x7fff3d8516f3]
                    1000  -[REMStore fetchAccountsIncludingInactive:error:] + 75 (ReminderKit + 107141) [0x7fff3d7ff285]
                      1000  -[REMAccountsDataView fetchAllAccountsForAccountManagementWithError:] + 114 (ReminderKit + 633685) [0x7fff3d87fb55]
                        1000  -[REMStore resultFromPerformingInvocation:error:] + 839 (ReminderKit + 119019) [0x7fff3d8020eb]
                          1000  -[REMStore _xpcSyncStorePerformerWithReason:errorHandler:] + 164 (ReminderKit + 124938) [0x7fff3d80380a]
                            1000  -[REMXPCDaemonController syncStorePerformerWithReason:errorHandler:] + 145 (ReminderKit + 466128) [0x7fff3d856cd0]
                              1000  -[REMXPCDaemonController _syncPerformerWithResolver:reason:errorHandler:] + 109 (ReminderKit + 467124) [0x7fff3d8570b4]
                                1000  -[REMXPCDaemonController _resolveAndCachePerformerWithResolver:reason:errorHandler:] + 482 (ReminderKit + 469269) [0x7fff3d857915]
                                  1000  -[REMXPCDaemonController _resolvePerformerWithResolver:reason:errorHandler:] + 544 (ReminderKit + 473070) [0x7fff3d8587ee]
                                    1000  -[REMXPCDaemonControllerPerformerResolver_store resolveWithDaemon:reason:completion:] + 209 (ReminderKit + 475082) [0x7fff3d858fca]
                                      1000  _NSXPCDistantObjectSimpleMessageSend4 + 42 (Foundation + 821239) [0x7fff214267f7]
                                        1000  -[NSXPCConnection _sendSelector:withProxy:arg1:arg2:arg3:arg4:] + 155 (Foundation + 821458) [0x7fff214268d2]
                                          1000  -[NSXPCConnection _sendInvocation:orArguments:count:methodSignature:selector:withProxy:] + 3090 (Foundation + 118889) [0x7fff2137b069]
                                            1000  __NSXPCCONNECTION_IS_WAITING_FOR_A_SYNCHRONOUS_REPLY__ + 9 (Foundation + 126953) [0x7fff2137cfe9]
                                              1000  xpc_connection_send_message_with_reply_sync + 238 (libxpc.dylib + 45484) [0x7fff2027c1ac]
                                                1000  dispatch_mach_send_with_result_and_wait_for_reply + 50 (libdispatch.dylib + 105326) [0x7fff203a5b6e]
                                                  1000  _dispatch_mach_send_and_wait_for_reply + 518 (libdispatch.dylib + 104310) [0x7fff203a5776]
                                                    1000  mach_msg_trap + 10 (libsystem_kernel.dylib + 3710) [0x7fff20505e7e]
                                                     *1000  ipc_mqueue_receive_continue + 0 (kernel + 573344) [0xffffff800029bfa0] (blocked by turnstile waiting for launchd [1] after 3 hops)

Are there others?
% grep -c "1000  __NSXPCCONNECTION_IS_WAITING_FOR_A_SYNCHRONOUS_REPLY__" spindump.txt
6

Yes: There are six frames that are similarly blocked. One was accounted for above. Another is in UserAccountHelper, blocking access to the font registry. Very interestingly, fontworker and fontd are both also blocked this way. fontd's instance is in the com.apple.xtype.ScannerQueue dispatch queue. This immediately leads me to suspect that the font manager is hanging while scanning your local font library. Perhaps there is a corrupted font and/or font collection installed in your user ~/Library/Fonts and/or ~/Library/FontCollections. You should rename these directories and try logging in again.
Two more frames are in WiFiAgent and otherbsd. I also saw blocked frames in securityd and secinitd which may be relevant, but let's investigate what we've discussed so far.
To summarize:

Rename your user's Fonts and FontCollections directories (probably easiest to boot into Single User Mode and do this from the command line, e.g., cd /Users/YOUR_USERNAME/Library && mv Fonts FontsDISABLED && mv FontCollections FontCollectionsDISABLED).
Check if there's anything in that user's ~/Library/LaunchAgents.
Check in /Library/Logs/DiagnosticReports for crash reports around the time of failure.


No, there is no such interface available for the default ATV2 shell, however you could install XBMC (jailbreaking required) and use XBMC API to control it.

If you really want to control the default interface (now called AppleTV.app), you have two possible routes (both beyond the scope of this site and question):

Reverse engineer the protocol used in the remote app.
Reverse engineer the AppleTV.app and use some way (mobilesubstrate) to inject hooks for functions or whole network interface.


macOS Big Sur System Preferences Notifications Customize

Right now there isn't an option to customize the system alerts notifications display so you can't do that .


Usually when that page is stuck, you simply need to power off the watch.

Press and hold the large button (not the crown) and slide to power off. It's slow, so give it a minute or two to shut everything down and then power up the watch.


Has anyone figured out how to identify the unique page of each separate Safari Web Content process with Safari 7/Mavericks?

This is not an ideal solution but a quite good working workaround.

Open Safari then go to Preferences.
Activate the Debug option (Show develop menu in menu bar)

EDIT: Instead of activating the develop menu, you have to open a terminal and activate the debug menu with defaults write com.apple.Safari IncludeInternalDebugMenu -bool true

Thanks @Collin C.

You will find the option Show Web Process IDs in Page Titles under Debug > Miscellaneous Flags

If you open the Activity Monitor now, you can see the Web Process IDs to the corresponding websites.

I hope this is helping you.


Run a Windows Virtual Machine on Mac OS X 10.8 with a real Hard Drive partition

Both the paid virtualization apps, VMWare Fusion and Parallels Desktop for Mac, allow you to boot the Windows partition from within OS X. You could also do this manually with the free Virtualbox solution, but it's a bit tedious and I'm not sure if it works reliably.

For instructions on VMWare Fusion and Parallels, see the below, respectively:
Launching your Boot Camp partition in VMware Fusion
Can I run my Boot Camp partition with Parallels?


When adding a partition, should I expect to lose data or not?

Data should not be lost.
Just as Solar Mike said, do a backup if you can.

It creates a second partition, but the second will be empty, without any file system, so it will be erased to format it into the file system you choose.


What worked for me is to create a directory ~/.terminfo/72 and put the files there.


OS X Photos removes 5 photos when converting to iCloud Photos

After contacting AppleCare, it seemed I had a database error. The problem was forwarded to the iCloud engineers and has now been fixed.


in macOS mojave apps freezes and beachball appears for some seconds when doing tasks like loading a conversation in Messages

This is easy to isolate.

Sign out of Messages and make sure no other app or system is causing the slowdowns. The more you get freezes, the quicker you can know that it’s just messages causing the slowdown as opposed to being impacted. YOu might open Activity Monitor and show all processes to see which are using a lot of CPU.

Then you can make a new user account. In that account - only sign in to messages - see if the slowdown is there (assuming you concluded it was the cause above).

If so - then you might check with Apple Support to be sure you don’t have an issue server side and possibly consider backing up and restoring your Mac to make sure it’s not part of the system that’s stuck or causing the slowdown.

Keep in mind, for physical hard disks - the first sign you get of imminent failure can be slow apps, so maybe make a good backup first and then test to isolate what’s slow.


I have reset my iPhone, now many contacts are lost, though I synced them through iCloud. Are they still in an old backup?

Not sure what happened but you should be able to restore your iPhone from within iTunes. Depending on when the backup was made that should have everything that was on your iPhone.

If you have no backups in iTunes that work you can check Time Machine for other backups:

/Library/Application Support/MobileSync/Backup/

Restore your more recent backup to your local HD and then Option-Click on the restore from backup button in iTunes and select the file you just recovered.

I am doing some of this from memory but that is the general idea.


Whats the equivalent of the unix tree command on OSX

You can install tree via Homebrew:

Follow the instructions for the basic installation
Run brew install tree to install the tool


How can I delete Safari cookies via Terminal on 10.7.2?

The missing part was to kill the cookied process:

killall cookied


Mavericks: how to disable responsive scroll

UPDATE (7.XI.2013 after call to Apple Care):

I needed also:

1) resetting PRAM (after turn-off, turn-on while holding CMD+ALT+P+R up to second gong),
how to on your mac: https://support.apple.com/kb/ht1379

2) resetting SMC (after turn-off, turn-on while holding SHIFT+CTRL+ALT(option) + POWER)
how to on your mac: https://support.apple.com/kb/HT3964

THE BELOW SETTING SHOULD BE: with inertia

It is probably NOT the permanent solution, but fast and comfortable hack in comparison to system reboot.

It worked for me. Sorry that screenshots are in Polish. Anyway, you should manage it thanks to images/icons.

First open Accessibility from System Preferences

Then in Touchpad/Mouse settings, click touchpad button

Then play with/without inertia.


Python script executable opened by text editor

Removing the file's extension should cause the file to open in your default terminal application. Alternately, you could select "All Applications" from the "Enable" menu in the "Open With" dialog to enable opening with "Terminal.app" regardless of the file's extension.


iPhone camera consolidating geotags for multiple photos

Check the GPS time on your photos. This is the time of the GPS fix used to tag your photos. I.e. the time at which iPhone determined your location. It is possible that your iPhone failed to get a GPS fix while you were photographing. In that case it can decide to use the last known location. You would find that all your photos share the same GPS time.

Many possible reasons: High buildings, narrow streets, etc. can sometimes impair GPS reception. The iPhone GPS could have had a software problem that was later resolved by restarting the phone. Your iPhone may have been on low power mode.

I recently hiked Kilimanjaro and had set my iPhone to low power mode while on the mountain. It seems this had the effect of iPhone powering up the GPS much less frequently. I have photos where the GPS fix predates the photo by several hours.

I also saw what I consider to be a bug: iPhone seems to have discarded more recent GPS fixes in favor of better (but older) fixes. I have a few situations where one photo has a rather recent GPS fix and photos taken hours later were tagged with a GPS fix from the previous day!


Bonjour can mess up machine names.

I would use ssh or ARD to set the host names to be different.

sudo systemsetup -setlocalsubnetname pear

(Or in ARD, you can specify that without the sudo but to run as root)

If you need more help, you'll need to ask a follow on question explaining how you have things set up. Is iCloud back to my mac the service for locating the remote IP address?

If so, you can browse things from terminal:

 dns-sd -B _ssh

Look for remote machines to be like

12:27:50.451  Add        2   0 12345789.members.btmm.icloud.com. _ssh._tcp.           mini-3

Changing the registration for each Mac so that it's names of fruit, for instance would make it easier to know if you are connecting to apples or oranges.


Are the LaunchPad icons bigger/magnified in Mac OS 10.7.2?

Yes, they are bigger.
No, the size is hardcoded in the actual application.


Is there an easy way in Mavericks to share a PDF file directly from Safari into iBooks?

Yes, there is a simpler way. Right-mouse click (or control-click) on the .pdf and Open With iBooks:


How to view facebook messages on Safari iOS / iPhone?

iOS13+

Tap on AA icon on the top left and tap Request Desktop Website. Now go to the messages section and read your messages

iOS 12

Tap and hold the refresh button untill the below options come. Select the Request Desktop Site and boom just tap on messages button and check your messages.


It is possible that it has something to do with uBlock. Have you tried disabling the extension temporarily? Try that and see if the problem persists, if it doesn't, then that is your answer. You might just need to whitelist the domain t.co.

If it doesn't solve the problem, then you might need to try something else. Is both your Mac and iOS device on the same WiFi network? There could be a firewall or something blocking the Mac from connecting to the domain, while the iOS device is on cellular data.


Why does the Internet stop working after upgrade to iOS 8

The 1st Gen iPad can only use up to iOS 5.1.1

so… either it's not a 1st gen or it's not running iOS 8


Creating audiobooks from individual tracks

This link suggests using the freeware program called "Chapter and Verse" to merge chapters into an audiobook. The latest version is available for download. Note that:

Chapter and Verse requires that Apple Quicktime
and Windows Media Player be installed to run.

and

Non-AAC files are automatically converted using iTunes.


Should I upgrade my mbp internal hard drive (160 gb) with a 64 gb SSD?

If you only use 40-50 gb on your disk, sure. The performance improvement will be very noticeable.


Using Apple Script to Manage Sound Output Selection

With a little experimentation on Arthur Hammer's script I discovered that the lines set deviceselected to "xyz" appear to be just visual feedback whilst in Script Editor & don't seem to be part of the actual functionality.

The actual switching appears to be just between 2 chosen lines in the Control Panel; so, if you just need to switch between any 2 outputs, then you can just use the row numbers.

In this example I've lifted them out to be variables, so you don't need to delve in the script to change the required lines…

As you have more than 2 outputs, the first time you switch it will not necessarily go from/to the correct device, but will after that.
For example, if you wanted to switch between outputs 3 & 4, yet 2 was currently selected, the first change would be from "not 3" as opposed to "is 3" [hope you understand that convoluted explanation]

(*
Applescript to toggle between two sound outputs by Line number, ¬
as they appear in the Sound Control Panel. Based on code by ¬
Arthur Hammer http://apple.stackexchange.com/a/209434/85275
*)

set outputA to 3 --change this to the actual 'line number' of your first desired output
set outputB to 4 --change this to the actual 'line number' of your second desired output
--the rest of the script will use these vales as a switch

tell application "System Preferences"
    activate
    set current pane to pane "com.apple.preference.sound"
end tell

tell application "System Events"
    tell application process "System Preferences"
        repeat until exists tab group 1 of window "Sound"
        end repeat
        tell tab group 1 of window "Sound"
            click radio button "Output"
            if (selected of row outputA of table 1 of scroll area 1) then
                set selected of row outputB of table 1 of scroll area 1 to true
            else
                set selected of row outputA of table 1 of scroll area 1 to true
            end if
        end tell
    end tell
end tell
--tell application "System Preferences" to quit
--remove the comment '--' tag above to make the control panel quit afterwards, leave for testing.

Maybe a little pictorial clarification - using the above script with outputA = 3 & outputB = 4, I can now switch between Digital Out & TonePort UX2.

One more note - the line numbers do not have to be consecutive, I could just as easily switch between Internal Speakers & TonePort by using lines 1 & 4.


Query iPhone information (battery cycle, health, storage capacity, IMEI ect.)

There is an app that basically does what you want. It is called coconut battery.
You can conveniently track multiple devices battery health, their device name, model and more. Just click on history → open history viewer.
All you have to do is to connect the device, trust it once and then anytime you reconnect it should save the info (if the app is running).
I only have the free version, but if I remember correctly, there are some features that require a purchase. Personally I have never needed these though.


If I update to Mavericks, will I be able to boot from USB?

It has nothing to do with the operating system. The update will not change your ability or inability to boot in any particular way.

The stage of the boot process you're talking about is handled by the firmware, not by the operating system.


If all folders to be removed are directly under the containing folder and all mp4 and avi files are directly under the kept folders:

for d in */;do ls "$d"|grep -Eq '.*\.(mp4|avi)$'||echo rm -r "$d";done

If the mp4 and avi files can be in subfolders of the kept folders:

for d in */;do [[ $(find "$d" -iname \*.mp4 -o -iname \*.avi) ]]||echo rm -r "$d";done

If the folders to be removed can be in subfolders of the containing folder:

find . -type d|while read d;do ls "$d"|grep -Eq '.*\.(mp4|avi)$'||echo rm -r "$d";done


Text insertion cursor very hard to see over black background

I use MouseCape. You can find premade "Capes" for your cursor online, or draw your own and save them as png images. It does take some tinkering around if you're a perfectionist, but I made a really beautiful one in InkScape and use it all the time now. Albeit it took me like half an hour to get the size right in MouseCape so...have patience. ;)

Here is the design I currently use:

This is a copy that I modified to work better on black backgrounds:

Here is an example of it on black:

Let me know if you'd like me to make you a custom one, like an all white version or white with a thin black outline.


how to keep low-res photos handy, while archiving high-res versions?

Depending on how your Aperture library is set up, I think it will do this automatically.

If you use a referenced library (see the Aperture manual for more information on managed vs referenced), Aperture won't store the hi-res masters in its own library - it will leave the file management up to you. It does, however, keep a low-res preview of the image in the library. So you could store your images on an external HDD, but still have access to the low-resolution previews when the HDD isn't available.

I haven't tried this myself, so I'm not sure how small the previews are, but I'm guessing they'd be good enough for the purpose you're describing.


Moving iBooks library to an external drive

You can copy, then symlink, the iBooks folder to an external drive.

The iBooks library is stored in the following location:

~/Library/Containers/com.apple.BKAgentService/Data/Documents/iBooks/Books

Quit iBooks, then move this1 folder to an external drive. Then, symlink this folder:

ln -s /path/to/iBooks-library ~/Library/Containers/com.apple.BKAgentService

1 In the example above, I moved the entire BKAgentService container, but you can just move the books themselves and leave the rest on the local disk — may improve performance.


COUNTIF using two conditions from data inside and outside the dataset

It's probably easiest to add another column with:

AND(A1=1,B1=1)

and then use

COUNTIF(Table 1::C,"=TRUE")

You can hide the extra column if you want by selecting the column's drop-down arrow and clicking "Hide Column".

Minimal example: https://www.icloud.com/iw/#numbers/BAJy4qiGzoTh1VSmyA-BZ16VCStKBAKb9pSE/TEST (link will be removed in 1 week)

PARTIAL SOLUTIONS:

Example using Fudge Tables: https://www.icloud.com/iw/#numbers/BAI89SfR5AMJFjId3zyBzaZuxCGzy9uGo5eE/Fudge_Tables.numbers

Example using Subtables: https://www.icloud.com/iw/#numbers/BAJMsEi-8NDWoPbLaxeBsLTzYZ2Mqnmqo5eE/Subtables

Note that Subtables has a problem with zeroes (0000 translates to a number in the subtable). The best solution (as I did) is to put something like an "X" in every space that doesn't have a number in it in the main table.

Of course, be sure to check the data. The biggest problem with these methods is that they're very manual labor intensive and are very error prone. I blazed through them pretty quickly so I easily could have made a mistake. Just be careful. ;)


Can Apple update the firmware on a Made for iPod device using the iPhone?

The accessory has to meet very strict design requirements from Apple to connect on the 30Pin connector. And the approval requires to work with the latest version of iOS. Due to this, the earlier versions of iOS may give you some error messages in some conditions.

Not having seen your accessory, I would take a guess it would be due to the resistors that are connected to the USB D+/D- lines if it is only a charge only device (or) the authentication chip would be the latest version 2C


The format of your dates is not one of the date formats in the US version of Numbers, so the dates are interpreted as arbitrary text values. When you change dates to something universal like 2021-01-10 then the dates are recognized and the distance along the horizontal axis is proportional.

You may also have to select the date column and explicitly tell Numbers, in the Format>Cell sidebar what the date format is.
I tell my students this: You will also enjoy using the YYYY-MM-DD date-format because it sorts correctly as mere text, even as numbers, while all other formats do not.


Rogue Amoeba's Audio Hijack Pro can do this for you and much more.


How to transfer a PDF file to my picture album on my iPhone

No, it is not possible to transfer PDF files in picture album in iPhone to view in the Photos app.

You will either need to export the PDFs in an image format (PNG or JPG) to transfer in an album in Photos app, or you can sync and view them in iBooks app on your iPhone.


Locate database does not exist, even though it is already loaded

You can update the database used by locate manually by running

sudo /usr/libexec/locate.updatedb


iMovie only imports 4 seconds of a movie clip that is much longer than 4 seconds

If you try to drag and drop a video from photos, for whatever reasons, it only takes it in as an image, and the image is displayed for only 4 seconds by default. If you would like to import into iMovie as a video, do the following steps:

In photos, select your photo, click on 'File' at the top menu, and click on 'Export'. You can export the video or the unmodified original version of it. Confirm video resolution settings. Once you click on export, select a destination to export to.
Once the export is complete, drag and drop from finder into iMovie.


How to authorize a new computer to Play but not to Purchase in iTunes

You can authorise a computer to play/access iTunes-purchased content without logging in to the store.

In the iTunes menubar: Store > Authorize This Computer…

You will be asked to enter your Apple ID and password. These are the same credentials you use for the iTunes Store. The iTunes Store will still ask for an Apple ID and password when anyone tries to make a purchase.


You can use the pkgutil command to get info on the packages installed on your Mac; pkgutil --pkg-info com.apple.pkg.BaseSystem should list the installation time for the base system. But it'll be in the form of seconds since the unix epoch, so you need to use date -r to convert that into a human-readable format. Here's an example:

$ pkgutil --pkg-info com.apple.pkg.BaseSystem
package-id: com.apple.pkg.BaseSystem
version: 10.6.0.1.1.1249367152
volume: /
location: /
install-time: 1306707387
groups: com.apple.snowleopard-repair-permissions.pkg-group com.apple.FindSystemFiles.pkg-group
$ date -r 1306707387
Sun May 29 15:16:27 PDT 2011

EDIT: I misunderstood the question a bit -- I didn't realize the OS had been updated since 10.6. Unfortunately, the receipts system doesn't generally records for more than one version of a specific installer package (as defined by the package ID), so if you've installed more than one version of "com.apple.pkg.BaseSystem" it'll only have records from one of them. But you can find the oldest package you have records of, and there's a good chance it's a holdover from the initial system installation:

pkgutil --pkgs | while read pkgname; do
    installtime="$(pkgutil --pkg-info "$pkgname" | awk '/^install-time:/ { print $2 }')"
    echo "$installtime $pkgname"
done | sort -g | head

(Then use date -r to convert to the timestamp to a readable form, as before.)


To disable this (I'm assuming that's what you want):

Open System Preferences
Security & Privacy
Advanced
The option you're looking for is: 'Disable restarting to Safari when screen is locked'

Some have reported that disabling Find my Mac from System Preferences will also fix your issue, but the solution above is preferable.


Safari 6's show/reveal in Finder stopped working

It's caused by the Apple Events bug in 10.8. It also affects other applications and makes Archive Utility stop responding when extracting archives.

As a workaround, you can terminate the appleeventsd process from Activity Monitor or by running sudo killall -kill appleeventsd (without -kill the process is sent a TERM signal, which makes other processes stop responding).


Is it possible to temporarily skip media restore in WhatsApp?

The important thing is that you restore the backup on the iPhone 6. Once restored, it disables the backup of that iPhone 6 so that it does not replace the original copy of the iPhone X. Then when you have your iPhone X again, you will be able to restore the copy original.

On the other hand I recommend that you make a backup in iCloud of all the content and a backup in iTunes.


Pair a bluetooth mouse with the keyboard only

Found a solution.

CMD+SPACE to open spotlight search.
Enter "mouse" and select the "Mouse" system preferences panel (probably the first item that comes up).
CTRL+F7 (or CTRL+Fn+F7) to change the way the tabs move focus.
TAB until "Set up Bluetooth device" is in focus.
SPACE to press the button.
Turn the mouse off and back on to put it pairing mode.
The mouse should come up in the list of devices. TAB to focus it, then space to pair.

Normally, by the time you get to step 2, OS X will automatically attempt to locate your mouse. In this case, the computer was already paired with some other mouse (which I can't find) so it didn't do that.


Is it possible to trigger the built-in Trash sound effect via AppleScript?

How about this one:

do shell script "afplay '/System/Library/Components/CoreAudio.component/Contents/SharedSupport/SystemSounds/dock/drag to trash.aif'"

Update:

To address your comment, this is covered in Technical Note TN2065 - do shell script in AppleScript under Other Concerns where it says:

  "... how do I make do shell script not wait until the command completes?"

  Use do shell script \"command &> file_path &\". do shell script will return immediately with no result and your AppleScript script will be running in parallel with your shell script. The shell script’s output will go into file_path; if you don’t care about the output, use /dev/null.

Example:

do shell script "afplay '/System/Library/Components/CoreAudio.component/Contents/SharedSupport/SystemSounds/dock/drag to trash.aif' &> /dev/null &"


Apple has determined that a very small number of iPhone 6s devices may unexpectedly shut down. This is not a safety issue and only affects devices within a limited serial number range that were manufactured between September and October 2015.

If you have experienced this issue, please use the serial number checker to see if your iPhone 6s is eligible for a battery replacement, free of charge.


Can Mail show a folder's total message count next to the folder name?

Since hacks are welcome:

The idea is to use AppleScript to rename folders. For example:

@REPLY

will be renamed to something like

@REPLY (34)

where 34 is @REPLY's total message count.

A working implementation of such a script that renames mailboxes prefixed with @ is (tested on OS X 10.8.2 with Gmail and AIM accounts):

-- Check whether Mail is running
tell application "System Events"
    if not (exists (processes where name is "Mail")) then return
end tell

tell application "Mail"
    -- Loop over mail accounts
    repeat with myAccount in accounts
        -- Loop over mailboxes
        repeat with myMailbox in mailboxes of myAccount
            if name of myMailbox starts with "@" then
                set nameOfMyAccount to name of myAccount
                -- Help Mail.app's AppleScript suite cope with Gmail
                if nameOfMyAccount is "Gmail" then
                    set nameOfMyMailbox to "[Gmail]/" & name of myMailbox
                else
                    set nameOfMyMailbox to name of myMailbox
                end if
                set currentMessageCount to the (count of messages of mailbox nameOfMyMailbox of account nameOfMyAccount) as Unicode text
                set messageCountShownInMailboxName to (do shell script "echo '" & name of myMailbox & "' | /usr/bin/sed -E 's/.* \\(([0-9]+)\\)/\\1/'") as Unicode text
                if currentMessageCount is not equal to messageCountShownInMailboxName then
                    -- Strip message count: "@TODO (3)" -> "@TODO"
                    set strippedNameOfMyMailbox to do shell script "echo '" & name of myMailbox & "' | /usr/bin/sed -E 's/(.*) \\([0-9]+\\)/\\1/'"
                    -- Append current count: ""@TODO" -> "@TODO (4)"
                    set newMailboxName to strippedNameOfMyMailbox & " (" & currentMessageCount & ")"
                    -- Rename mailbox
                    set the name of mailbox nameOfMyMailbox of account nameOfMyAccount to newMailboxName
                end if
            end if
        end repeat
    end repeat
end tell

The effect of the script is shown in the following screenshots:

Another implementation that only renames mailboxes specified in a list would be (again, tested on OS X 10.8.2 with Gmail and AIM accounts)::

-- Append message count to these mailboxes
global mailboxesWithMessageCount
set mailboxesWithMessageCount to {"My To Do", "To Reply", "Very Important"}

-- Check whether Mail is running
tell application "System Events"
    if not (exists (processes where name is "Mail")) then return
end tell

tell application "Mail"
    -- Loop over mail accounts
    repeat with myAccount in accounts
        -- Mail.app's AppleScript suite gets confused with Gmail's [Gmail] folder
        if name of myAccount is "Gmail" then
            set mailboxPrefix to "[Gmail]/"
        else
            set mailboxPrefix to ""
        end if
        -- Loop over mailboxes
        repeat with myMailbox in mailboxes of myAccount
            -- Loop over mailboxes which should get the message count appended to their names
            repeat with mailboxWithMessageCount in mailboxesWithMessageCount
                if name of myMailbox starts with mailboxWithMessageCount then
                    set currentMessageCount to the (count of messages of mailbox (mailboxPrefix & name of myMailbox) of myAccount) as Unicode text
                    set messageCountShownInMailboxName to (do shell script "echo '" & name of myMailbox & "' | /usr/bin/sed -E 's/.* \\(([0-9]+)\\)/\\1/'") as Unicode text
                    if currentMessageCount is not equal to messageCountShownInMailboxName then
                        -- Strip message count: "@TODO (3)" -> "@TODO"
                        set strippedNameOfMyMailbox to do shell script "echo '" & name of myMailbox & "' | /usr/bin/sed -E 's/(.*) \\([0-9]+\\)/\\1/'"
                        -- Append current count: ""@TODO" -> "@TODO (4)"
                        set newMailboxName to strippedNameOfMyMailbox & " (" & currentMessageCount & ")"
                        -- Rename mailbox
                        set the name of mailbox (mailboxPrefix & name of myMailbox) of myAccount to newMailboxName
                    end if
                end if
            end repeat
        end repeat
    end repeat
end tell

The effect of the script is shown in the following screenshots:

Both scripts set the message count:

@REPLY -> @REPLY (34)

and, only if necessary, that is, when the message count has changed, update it:

@REPLY (34) -> @REPLY (29)

My original idea was to run one of the scripts above (or some variation thereof) every time a mail is received with a rule in Mail>Preferences>Rules:

but it can also be added to cron to run every 10 minutes like this (see crontab (5) man page for crontab syntax explanation):

Save the script to /path/to/updateMailMessageCount.scpt.
Open Terminal and type:

crontab -e

to open your crontab file.
Move with the arrow keys to the end of the file, in case there are any other entries, and press o (lowercase letter o), which adds an empty line and goes into insert mode.
Add this line (the 10 means "run every 10 minutes", change as necessary to match your needs):

*/10 * * * * osascript /path/to/updateMailMessageCount.scpt >/dev/null 2>&1

Press esc.
Save and close your crontab with :x!return (in case anything went wrong, type :q!, press return and start over).

(If you ever need to stop the cronjob, open your crontab file with crontab -e, position the cursor over the cronjob and type dd to delete it. Then save the file as explained above.)

You can use Launch Services, too (see this Apple developer document):

Create a script named ~/Library/LaunchAgents/updateMailMessageCount.plist with contents (600 is the interval in seconds, that is, 10 minutes):

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN" "http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd">
<plist version="1.0">
<dict>
    <key>Label</key>
    <string>updateMailMessageCount</string>
    <key>ProgramArguments</key>
    <array>
        <string>osascript</string>
        <string>/path/to/updateMailMessageCount.scpt</string>
    </array>
    <key>StartInterval</key>
    <integer>600</integer>
</dict>
</plist>

Load the job with:

launchctl load ~/Library/LaunchAgents/updateMailMessageCount.plist

(If you ever need to stop the job, do: launchctl unload ~/Library/LaunchAgents/updateMailMessageCount.plist.)

(My favorite as long time Linux sysadmin is cron, but note that, on OS X, cron has been deprecated in favor of launchd. Both methods worked on my Mac running OS X 10.8.2.)

If you wish to refresh the message count with a keyboard shortcut you can create a service (see http://www.macosxautomation.com/services/learn/index.html for more information):

Close Mail.
Open Automator in folder Applications and choose Service:

Select Utilities under Library and drag Run AppleScript to the empty pane on the right:

Configure the service to receive no input in Mail:

Replace the line (* Your script goes here *) with one of the scripts above.
Save with a descriptive name like Refresh Message Count. The service will be saved to ~/Library/Services/.

Now set up the keyboard shortcut:

Open System Preferences, select the Keyboard preference pane and then the Keyboard Shortcuts tab.
Select Services, scroll down to the service you previously added and set the keyboard shortcut to whatever you want with the following restriction: your shortcut shouldn't conflict with an existing shortcut in Mail. I've chosen controloption⌘R:

Open Mail. Note that there is a new service, accessible with controloption⌘R:

(For the curious: if you are wondering where service Reply and Move Sent Message to Current Folder above comes from, see How to save sent messages in same folder as message being replied to? -- warning: shameless plug.)

Now press controloption⌘R, wait a few seconds and watch how the message count of the folders specified in the script get updated.

Caveats:

Some folders can't be renamed, such as [Gmail]/All Mails or the Inbox folders.
Folders are not renamed in real time. That means that the number you see is an approximate value. If you implement the service, you will be able to refresh it with controloption⌘R, though.
It can be slow if you have many mailboxes, or if the mailbox has many mails
If you specify a set of mailboxes to rename, be careful that they do not match other folders, for example, "To Reply" will match both "To Reply" and "To Reply Later".

Advantages:

You will see the message count in any mail client, provided you use Mail.app on your Mac and one of these scripts.


Are the two SATA bus interfaces in the 2010 Mac mini equal in speed?

You can answer this question yourself by running Apple System Profiler/System Information and noting what it reports under the "Serial-ATA" column.

Here is what the report looks like on my MacBook Pro.


Two developer License under same Apple ID

No it is not possible with the same Apple ID.

You can simply just create a new Apple ID, then join the developer program (as Individual), then your company can invite you to the team as a Admin or Member. Pick Admin to have access to the tools and profiles just like user #1.

Every time you log in you will be asked if you want to be logged into your Individual account, or your company account you are apart of, just choose the company team.

Note: Your company account needs to be a entity type, 'Company / Organization'. This will not work for entity type 'Individual'.  As an 'Individual' count as 1, you can't have any other members.


How to view logs in Airport Utility v6, or install 5.6 in Mountain Lion?

If you do not want (or can't) get the app out of a backup you can extract it from the installer.

Download the Airport Utility 5.6 for Lion and move the file AirPortUtility56.pkg contained within the dmg to your ~/Downloads folder. Then in a Terminal window do :

$ cd ~/Downloads
$ pkgutil --expand ./AirPortUtility56.pkg ~/Downloads/AirPortUtility56
$ gunzip -c < ./AirPortUtility56/AirPortUtility56Lion.pkg/Payload | sudo tar -C / -xvf - "./Applications/Utilities/AirPort Utility 5.6.app"

The app works without issue on Mountain Lion in my limited testing so far.

If you wanted to mod the package to skip the check, if you want to easily install the package on multiple macs for instance, here's what you need :

A tool called "Flat Package Editor" to modify the file called Distribution in AirPortUtility56.pkg. To get that tool download the "Auxiliary tools for Xcode" from the Apple Dev site. It's hidden in PackageMaker.app/Contents/resources/Flat Package Editor.app. With it you can open the pkg directly :

Just drag out the Distribution file and remove these lines :

// Less than 10.8
if(-1 != system.compareVersions(my.target.systemVersion.ProductVersion, '10.8')) {
  my.result.type = 'Fatal';
  my.result.message = system.localizedString('ERR_OSHIGH');
  return (false);
}

Drag the new version back in, delete the old Distribution and save.


When you visit me.com you are redirected to icloud.com.  Given this info it should be the same the password as your appleid, if you have forgotten that then go to http://iforgot.apple.com to reset the password.


Play a sound when another application outputs to console

Try running a command like this in a Terminal window instead:

syslog -w|while read l;do [[ $l = *'message text'* ]]&&afplay /System/Library/Sounds/Blow.aiff;done

syslog -w is a shorter alternative to tail -f /var/log/system.log.


How can I connect a cassette player to my Macbook (Mid 2015) to record cassette tapes on my mac?

You can try this device, or something similar. It connects to the USB port on your Mac. The app Audacity will digitize the audio. I've used this device from Behringer for this exact purpose.


How do I retrieve songs hidden in the iCloud with iTunes 11.0.4?

1) Open iTunes

2) Go to Store

3) Go to Music Tab

4) On the Right Hand Side should be a link "Purchased" - click that.

5) Then "Recent Purchases"

6) Click on the little cloud icon to redownload what you want.

However you should be able to delete from your computer without affecting music on other computers so I am confused by your description of the problem.


How to resolve "Cannot connect to AppleID server" error on macOS?

So if you can log into your Apple ID from a browser an incorrect time zone settings might cause an error in connecting your Apple ID with the Store.
To correct your time and date settings, go to Settings > General > Date & Time and make sure that everything is set correctly.
Now: Open iTunes
Click on iTunes in the Menu Bar.
Select Preferences.

Go to the Advanced Tab.
Click the Reset Cache button.
Click OK.
Close and re-open iTunes.
Now, try to sign in to the iTunes store.


Hardware replacement to fix not-working MacBook keys

Most repairs in retail stores are for less than 5 days - and more than half the repairs are done in less than 24 hours.

There are some bad signs in the symptoms you mention. Sleep sensor failing is often liquid damage. Keyboard keys failing is also often liquid damage. Even if it's not liquid damage, the logic board or keyboard and some other parts would need to be exchanged and the keyboard is part of the unibody frame, so basically it's like taking a car in for a new frame. All the old seats, engine, power train, etc… get hand removed, inspected and re-assembled in the new chassis. It's not that bad, but it's a lot more time consuming than just putting in a fan or a battery or hard drive in. Those take 20 minutes tops.

So, as you mention - finish your work, keep good backups and then send it in knowing it's likely to be $150 to $320 to fix (in the USA presumably) and if there is liquid, you should probably sell it for parts, since the repair cost will jump to $800 or so.


You should be able to repair the MBR after reinstalling OS X.
I would attempt to do a backup of all of your drives first in any way you prefer, so that if something /does/ go wrong (shouldn't), you have a backup.
I believe you can also repair the MBR from the Windows recovery partition.


Apple Fitness+ can't be used with the standalone Apple TV app.
According to Apple:

Apple Fitness+ requires Apple Watch Series 3 or later with watchOS 7.2
or later and one of the following Apple devices: iPhone 6s or later with
iOS 14.3 or later, iPad with iPadOS 14.3 or later, or Apple TV with
tvOS 14.3 or later.

Just having the app on a TV will not work.  As you've seen, Fitness+ doesn't airplay well when run from an iPad or iPhone.  I hope this is just a bug that they'll fix later.


Since you have no idea what is installed on the Mini, I'd personally reformat and reinstall from scratch rather than using the existing install. Easy to do and lots of information on the process that will come up with a quick search.


iPhone 5S broken screen root access without iTunes authorization

Software

iExplorer claims to grant you root access to iDevices without requiring a jailbreak:

  With iExplorer, you can access more files and folders without modifying (jailbreaking) your device than ever before. Need to access photos on your iPhone or iPod? Can do. Want to access the files and folders of your device's apps? Done. How about browsing through your iTunes backups? Check. What about the media folders containing your iTunes purchases? We've got that too. What about files in apps that are synced to iCloud? Yes, even that.*

iBrowse is a simillar, free software by the same company, but it doesn't grant root access (which I'm not sure you need in order to access photos).

The "Windows" Method

From an answer on Apple's support forums:

  I plugged the phone into my Windows Computer and when it recognizes the phone is plugged in, a dialogue box pops up that asks if you want to import pictures and videos. You click import and it will pull everything off the phone and place it in a folder with the date as the name and put it in your pictures or my pictures folder. From there you can access the photos & videos!!

I'm not sure this works either, update in the comments so I can modify my answer.

Old Guide

I also found a guide, written in 2008, and doesn't involve any 3rd party software: (Not sure it still works)

  Connect your iPhone/iPod touch and launch Applications >Image Capture.
  Go to Preferences >General.
  Under Camera, select Image Capture in the “When a camera is connected, open:” option, and then click OK. Now when you connect your
  iPhone/iPod touch, Image Capture will be launched and you can choose
  where you want to download your images.


What is "Two system dialogs displayed" message?

It is a feature of VoiceOver to alert you to the fact that system dialogs have been displayed (this text can be read by the computer voice for you).

You can find the dialogs by tabbing through the open windows (or if you can see sufficiently, they're probably already displayed on the screen).


You can disable the automatic setting of date/time in Settings->General->Date & Time. Of course this also means that you have to manually set the time if you actually move to a different time zone on purpose.


Mail app unable to verify account name or password

I created an outlook.com alias per the link below and it now works  See the link below:

http://www.macworld.co.uk/how-to/mac-software/set-up-hotmail-on-mac-os-x-3628423/

I also deleted my account and re-added to switch from pop3 to Imap.


Is it possible to disable or hide the digital zoom controls in the Camera app on iPhone?

Currently there is no officially supported method of disabling the digital zoom feature. One way around it that I use when I (rarely) need to focus on the lower screen portion, is to focus on the subject, then move the camera's view to the preferred state. The camera will preserve this focus state long enough for a picture.


You can do this with iFile.

This application will let you browse the local file system.
Locate your config file, then open it using the built-in Text Viewer
(it also has viewers/players for other file formats such as PDF or MP3).

Despite the name the Text Viewer will actually let you edit and save the file.


(a) iTunes named backups (on your hard drive) using the UDID (Unique Device Identifier) of successfully connected iOS devices. So it's erroneous to state that a backup of a 3 GS will overwrite a backup of another device since each device has a unique UDID.

(b) iTunes 10.5.1 doesn't provide option to not back up. However, you could uncheck the "Open iTunes when this iPhone is connected" which then allows you to connect your iPhone to iTunes without triggering a backup.


Secondary click in Lion with two fingers OR bottom-right corner click

Run the following six commands, by pasting them into Terminal.app. You can paste all six lines all at once. (the last two lines aren't required on older versions of OS X, but there's no harm including them) Remember to press the return key:

defaults write com.apple.driver.AppleBluetoothMultitouch.trackpad TrackpadCornerSecondaryClick -int 2

defaults write com.apple.driver.AppleBluetoothMultitouch.trackpad TrackpadRightClick -bool true

defaults -currentHost write NSGlobalDomain com.apple.trackpad.trackpadCornerClickBehavior -int 1

defaults -currentHost write NSGlobalDomain com.apple.trackpad.enableSecondaryClick -bool true

defaults write com.apple.AppleMultitouchTrackpad TrackpadCornerSecondaryClick -int 2

defaults write com.apple.AppleMultitouchTrackpad TrackpadRightClick -bool true

Important: now reboot your Mac.

When you log back in, you will be able to right-click both with a two-finger tap, and by clicking in the bottom right-hand corner.

Hope this helps.


In general, for remote connections, I would recommend setting up a VPN server on your office network, which would allow access to insecure services (such as VNC, known by Apple as Remote Desktop), without fear of those services getting hacked remotely. Regardless of how secure VNC is (which it isn't), in general it's a good idea to have as few points of entry as possible. A VPN provides this.


Make pixel size numbers in Preview show larger when editing photos?

It's not possible to customize the size of the said on-screen numbers shown by Preview.app.

As a workaround and a more generalized solution for other such cases, you can leverage the Screen Zoom feature available in macOS. Although it's an accessibility feature, it is generally employed by UI designers to create pixel perfect UI.

To enable and configure Screen zoom, go to System Preferences app → Accessibility → Zoom, and enable the checkmark for Use scroll gesture with modifier keys to zoom. Now assign a convenient key to be used as modifier key (I use Control).

Once configured, you can press and hold the modifier key and scroll to quickly zoom in and out of your screen.


Just activated old iPhone and App Store is trying to make me pay for an app I've already paid for

No, Apple does not allow app creators to charge users twice for an app already purchased(in this context).
Of course the developer could create a new app with a new name, but identical content, and in that way try to get people to buy it twice. However that is not the case here.

Are you sure that you actually bought that program with that specific AppleID - are you sure you didn't buy it with a different ID?
You could check your purchasing history for your AppleID on iTunes (App Store).

Another thing to try is simply to press Download on the program, even though it doesn't display the Cloud symbol. If it downloads without requesting payment, you're good to go.


How to stop applications opening on login?

From my own answer at Super User…
If it is not in the regular user Login list, then it is most likely in LaunchDaemons.
There are several locations for these, one is for Apple daemons only:
/System/Library/LaunchDaemons
The others are to include 3rd party processes, /Library/LaunchDaemons and ~/Library/LaunchDaemons.
You may also need to remove from /Library/LaunchAgents or ~/Library/LaunchAgents
Simply remove or zip the process you don't wish to auto-launch & it should be gone at next boot.


Malware caused "Search With Google" service to be named "Search With Trovi"

The service name "Search with ..." is dynamically created and depends on your favorite service engine selected in Safari > Preferences > Search > Search Engine. So choosing a different search engine (e.g DuckDuckGo) in Safari will also change the service name (i.e. "Search With DuckDuckGo").

To remove Trovi completely, download, install and run MalwareBytes Anti-Malware for Mac or an antivirus app like BitDefender. You may also have to remove Safari extensions related to Trovi. A list of known malicious extensions can be found here: Remove Trovi Search from Apple Mac OS X (Removal Guide)


Macbook Pro 16" USB-C to DisplayPort not working

You just need a simple Type C DisplayPort cable.
The confusion comes from how “USB-C” was implemented.  USB-C is just the physical port type.  The ports on your MacBook Pro are actually Thunderbolt 3 ports and they use a Type C connector.  Thunderbolt has several signals:  PCIe, USB 3.x, DisplayPort and Power.
So, that port is natively outputting DisplayPort and the adapter you purchased is an actual video adapter that connects to USB and outputs DisplayPort.  It’s not working because your Mac doesn’t have the drivers for that particular adapter.


How can I combine multiple screenshots in Skitch?

Nope, not possible within Skitch.

The quickest workaround I've found to achieve that is using Keynote as a canvas, so you can combine the image in no time :

open a new 'White' theme in Keynote
drag & drop the 2 images from Skitch to Keynote
align the images in Keynote, resize, do some edits if necessary
take a snapshot with Skitch


MacBook Pro not turning on after not being used

Reset your SMC. It controls the power management hardware on your system. It may not be allowing your battery to charge for a number of reasons.
If this still happens afterwards, please take a (preferably high frame rate) video of you powering on your machine, including both the keyboard and display, so that we can see at precisely which point in the boot it fails.
EDIT:
In our discussion in comments, we ruled out possible low-hanging fruit:

Ensuring the correct key chord for SMC reset (ShiftControlOption on the left-hand side of the keyboard for pre-T2 units, + Power)
Swapping the charger cable.
Swapping the charger.
Trying all four USB-C ports.
Verifying live AC power.

Because of how early in the boot flow the failure occurs, it is likely to be due to a hardware issue. There’s very little you can do to debug this without poking at the hardware, whether it’s you or an Apple support engineer doing it. You would need to start probing voltages along the power rails and looking at power sequencing on an oscilloscope. Maybe it’s something as simple as a bad battery confusing SMC, in which case you could try to replace the battery yourself, but don’t buy one unless you’ve confirmed with a multimeter that yours is bad.
Short answer: Talk to Apple for options.


Over VNC, configure the system to not use a second monitor while it's physically connected

Depending on what type of Apple machine you are connecting to, you can try these commands and see if they work for you. I know they are used with X11..This is the command to disable dual screens (Assuming it's a laptop).

xrandr --output VGA --off

And if you want to this is a command to enable the dual screens (but might aid you in troubleshooting getting the secondary one off). LVDS is the liquid display and VGA is the secondary monitor.

xrandr --output VGA --mode 1024x768
xrandr --output VGA --right-of LVDS


changed password but still can't access my account

https://appleid.apple.com/cgi-bin/WebObjects/MyAppleId.woa/

Try signing in there. If it works, your Apple ID (and therefore iTunes account) are all working fine and there's an issue with your install of iTunes. If not, you can reset the password from there and hopefully it'll help you get it working on your iTunes.


How to define the VPN PPTP port in OSX Lion?

Unfortunately, it is not possible to change OS X's built-in PPTP client's port. However, you can use a third-party client such as OpenVPN. OpenVPN has many more options and will allow you to specify the port with which to connect to the server.

Good luck and happy tunneling!


Can't update a certain application on iOS 9.3.2

Remove the corrupted iOS app from your iOS device ( be sure to backup data prior step 1)
Shutdown your iPhone/iPad
Restart iOS
Reinstall the app from the AppStore


Can I export a list of downloaded iPhone apps from iTunes?

You could do this with a few Terminal commands.

First, open the Terminal by going to Applications -> Utilities -> Terminal.  Then, paste in the following and press return.

cd ~/Music/iTunes/iTunes\ Media/Mobile\ Applications

Then, paste in this next command and press return.

ls > ~/my_apps.txt

Now, in your Home folder (/Users/yourusername/), there will be a text file called my_apps.txt containing a list of all of your apps.


Check for available app downloads on Apple TV

If you open up the App Store on your Apple TV, then go to the Purchased tab, there’s a section titled Not on This Apple TV that will list apps you’ve purchased (even for free) that are not installed. You can select it there and then download it for free. Alternatively you can search for it on the App Store and download it for free from there. Make sure you’re signed in with the same Apple ID you used to purchase it previously.


How to restart SMB client on macOS Catalina? (Finder not connecting to shares)

I had the same problem, solved it by launching Activity Monitor and stopping netbiosd process, it gets restarted and then the connections started working immediately.
It's possible that I also stopped NetAuthSysAgent process as well, so if it doesn't work for you with the netbiosd process only, try stopping NetAuthSysAgent as well.


iPhone battery symbol is red, doesn't acknowledge charging, but is apparently charged

Sometimes it happens when you put your iPhone for charging more time.

Please power-off and restart your iPhone. Mostly this solves problem.