Time Machine backup from external hard drive stuck in trash

Time Machine performs versioning backups at specific time intervals and keeps making backups until it runs out of space on the drive, then it starts to prune away older backups to make room for the new ones.

The only way that I know of to control the amount of space that any one Time Machine Backup uses is to set up a partition on the drive in Disk Utility and then have Time Machine back up to that partition.

You will not be able to delete some of the time machine backup as it is stored like a database, and it is an all or nothing delete.

  Response to Trash Question

If you have 1.2MM files, Secure delete will take a very long time to do this.

If you do not mind that the data will not be overwritten and only the file associations will be removed you can do this to clear out the Trash.

First of all BE INCREDIBLY CAREFUL WHEN USING RECURSIVE DELETE FROM TERMINAL

With that warning out of the way, here is how you can do it.

First open Terminal (in /Applications/Utilities).

EDIT step two is for the trash bin in your user directory. Yours is likely on the root of the drive itself. As I don't know what that path will be I can't give you that step. Just replace that path for the one after cd. The file is likely hidden, so if you do not know how to show hidden files I will add the Terminal commands at the bottom of the post.

FROM user3439894  use sudo rm -fR /Volumes/<volume_name>/.Trashes/$UID/*

This will be what the path to your external drive's trash looks like. You will have to figure out the exact path on your drive. You can also skip the drag and drop steps doing it the way user3439894 suggests.

Type cd ~/.Trash and press Return.
Then type sudo rm -Rf followed by a Space (don’t leave out the space). You will need the recursive for to handle subdirectories, etc.
Don’t press Return yet.
Next, click the Trash icon in your Dock to open a window displaying the contents of the Trash.
Select everything in that window and drag it into the Terminal window; this action adds the paths of all those files and folders to the rm(remove) command.
Now, press Return
Enter your administrator password when prompted

In a moment or two (depending on how much was in your Trash), the Trash icon should return to its empty state.

-- The answer I provided is based on the technique that I obtained from Joe Kissell's article on MacWorld and have used during the times I have not been able to empty my trash bin.

How To Display Hidden Files In Mac OSX

terminal

defaults write com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles true return

killall Finder return

How To Hide Hidden Files in Mac OSX

terminal

defaults write com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles false return

killall Finder return


Extend main APFS partition fails with "target disk is too small for this operation"

The free space resides after disk0s3. The command you issued can not reclaim the free space back into disk0s2, because there little or no free space between disk0s2 and disk0s3. To reclaim approximately 25 GB of free space back to disk0s2, you would need to execute the following procedure.

Remove the files from disk0s3.
Delete disk disk0s3. You can use the command given below.

sudo diskutil  eraseVolume free none disk0s3

Add the approximately 125 GB of free space to disk0s2. You can use the command given below.

 sudo diskutil apfs resizeContainer disk0s2 0

Basically, it come down to this. If the files on disk0s3 are important, then you are going to need an external drive to temporarily store them. Once all the space has been returned to disk0s2, you can either create a new disk0s3 or create another APFS volume on disk0s2. Finally, restore the files from the external drive.


There is APC UPS Daemon can do exactly what you want:

  Apcupsd can be used for power mangement and controlling most of APC's UPS models on Unix and Windows machines. Apcupsd works with most of APC's Smart-UPS models as well as most simple signalling models such a Back-UPS, and BackUPS-Office. During a power failure, apcupsd will inform the users about the power failure and that a shutdown may occur. If power is not restored, a system shutdown will follow when the battery is exhausted, a timeout (seconds) expires, or runtime expires based on internal APC calculations determined by power consumption rates. Apcupsd is licensed under the GPL version 2.


How to get Boot Camp Audio Drivers for Windows 10 on High Sierra?

Often the audio drivers fail to work when Windows is installed using either the wrong Boot Camp Support Software (Windows Support Software) or Windows is installed using the wrong boot method (BIOS vs EFI).

The best way to get the correct Boot Camp Support Software is to either use the Boot Camp Assistant to download the software or use the Boot Camp Assistant to install Windows.

Usually, Windows 10 installs for an EFI boot on Macs that Apple documents to officially support Windows 10. Otherwise, Windows 10 should be installed to use the BIOS boot method.

If you need help determining which boot method Windows is using, post a comment including the model/year of your Mac.


All Yahoo Calendar Entries appear on iPhone a day earlier at 11pm-11pm

It may be a time zone discrepancy.
Check that your Yahoo calendar timezone matches the timezone on your phone. For Hong Kong it should be UTC+08:00 on all devices. iOS devices may be updating your timezone automatically based on location.

To check the timezone on your device go to Settings > General > Date & Time.


Automating Quicktime Image Sequence creation in Mountain Lion

Automator with some AppleScript will do this nicely. The frames need to be named consistently — blah1.jpg blah2.jpg blah3.jpg … blah50.jpg etc. Each sequence you want to be a movie should be in its own folder.

Open Automator and create a new workflow.
Add the Get Specified Finder Items action and add each folder containing the sequences to the action.
Add the Run AppleScript action, with the following code:

on run {input, parameters}
    repeat with theFolder in input
        tell application "Finder" to set theSequence to first item of folder theFolder as alias
        tell application "QuickTime Player 7"
            activate
            open image sequence theSequence frames per second 30

            set nameSequence to (theSequence as string) & ".mov"

            tell document 1
                with timeout of 500 seconds
                    save self contained in nameSequence
                end timeout

            end tell
        end tell
    end repeat
end run

Run it, and you'll get a .mov in each folder. Let me know if you have any questions.

The AppleScript code is adapted from this post at the Macworld Hints forum.


Boot Camp installs in wrong language. How can I fix this?

Turns out the Apple installer installs whatever language Windows' language format is set to. I am in Zurich, I set it to German Switzerland.

I had called Apple support, they didn't know that. Their theory was that because I had bought Lion in a German-language app store, it would download German Boot Camp updates.

But this is the solution.


How to read/write from/to a NTFS formatted External HDD on MacOS high Sierra?

same problem I have faced, I use WD Elements external hard drive on my MacBook Pro which is currently on 10.13.4 I have successfully installed FUSE but it did not work for me.
If you use Seagate/WD Drive then you can download their version of Paragon Software which is available for free but works with their brand's drives only.

For WD Drives

For Seagate Drives


How can I make unlocking my Mac with my Apple Watch more secure?

I think that you should approach situation in more generalized way.
I don't think that requirement to interact with watch will improve your security. Why? If your roommate have access to your computer and to you while you are sleeping there is nothing that stops him/her interacting with your watch.
Possible solutions as I see it (in no particular order): change roommate, take off watch while sleeping, disable unlocking with watch.
But keep in mind that if you have fingerprint access on your notebook and it's enabled it should be relatively easy to press your finger on sensor without waking you up. So you may consider turning it off as well.
If your computer is off then in order to unlock with watch or with fingerprint to work you should first log in with password. So if you go to sleep with computer off neither of these options work without password.


Buying an app on two iDevices using the same account

This question is an exact duplicate of this question.


What is quickest, least number of taps possible on Apple Watch to “check-in” with somebody?

Take a look at the Do Button by ifttt

https://ifttt.com/products/do/button

You can create a button/recipe that sends an e-mail or sms to your significant other saying 'I'm Alive' or something.

Then all you ever have to do it just tap the button and the program will do the rest :) So at most it should be 2 taps,

Open App
Click button to start recipe

I do not have an Apple Watch but it might be possible to do it in 1 if it allows you to add a shortcut in glances or something.


This didn't work for me,
Finder did not respond, clicking on Apps gave this error

Could not obtain valid temporary directory for sandboxed app ...

I also had to open a terminal and run:

cd /var/folder
sudo rm -rf *

Searched for and opened Activity Monitor, stopped the com.apple.IconServicesAgent service and rebooted.

My icons came back in launchpad and dock.


How can I use an iTunes smart playlist to find and delete audio files?

Select all songs hold  ⌥ and press ⌫. Confirm and they are gone.


How to transfer all contacts from Gmail group to iCloud group on iPhone?

You have two options here - you can either keep the contacts in Google Contacts and add your Google account to the other phone so they sync, or you can transfer the contacts to iCloud. If you're only using Apple devices, my recommendation would be to transfer them to iCloud, because it's simpler to manage and works well with Apple devices. If you own Windows or Android devices, keeping them in Google Contacts will allow you to access them on those devices as well.
Keep contacts in Google Account
To add your Google Account to the other phone:

Open your iPhone or iPad's Settings app.
Tap Accounts & Passwords and then Add Account and then Google.
Enter your email and password.
Tap Next.
Switch "Contacts" on.
At the top, tap Save.
To start syncing, open your iPhone or iPad's Contacts app.

(from Google Support)
Transfer contacts to iCloud

Go to Google Contacts.
Check the box next to any contact and in the top left, click Selection Actions and then All.
In the top left, click More actions and then Export.
Select vCard (for iOS Contacts).
To save your file, click Export.

(from Google Support)

In Contacts on iCloud.com, click the Show Actions Menu pop-up button in the sidebar, then choose Import vCard.
Select a vCard to import.

(from Apple Support)


Can keynote pause on the first slide, wait for a trigger, then loop to conclusion?

You can do this inside of Keynote. Right-click on the Animate tab at the top of the right sidebar. You don't need any transition effect so to simplify things I'll use none. Now click on Select All from the Edit menu item. you can see all your slides are selected by looking at the snapshots on the left. Now go back to the right sidebar and where it says Start Transition, pull the menu down and select automatically, and set the delay for the time you want each slide to appear. Now unselect all the slides and click to select 1st one only. Now go back to the right sidebar and for this one slide change the Transition to Automatically with a delay of 600 secs. That's the maximum delay so slide show will start automatically after 10 minutes.
Now you have your animation set up you can click the play button at the top of the Keynote window. This will bring up the 1st slide but it will do nothing until you click. Then it will start displaying all the slides for the number of seconds you entered.  if you need a longer or shorter time for a specific slide, click on that slide in the left sidebar and then in the right sidebar change the Delay Time to a new value.  Now try playing it again.
After you have all the delays set you can also go to Keynote Live at the top of the Keynote window and click that button. This will allow you to issue invitations and then saves the presentation so all you have to do is click on the Green Play button at the top and the presentation will begin.
The 10-minute max delay time was the only way I could get the presentation to stay on slide one for any length of time.  Maybe experimenting with the setting you can find a better way.


How to get to compare one column between two sheets to tell info in one sheet that is not in the other in Numbers

I think one way you can do this is through a formula using if(), iferror(), and vlookup() functions and also, if you wish, the Filter feature in Numbers.

Assuming you have the names of this year's clients in a table called "Clients 2020" and those of last year in "Clients 2019", you can identify the names of those that are yet to come this year with the formula shown in the picture below:

Here is a text version of the same formula if you wish to copy & paste it from here:

= IF(IFERROR(VLOOKUP(B2,Clients 2020::B$2:B$21,1,0),0)=0,B2,0)

This formula lookups the name of the client in the cell on its left within the specified cells in the table called "Clients 2020". If the name is there, it returns "0". If not, it returns the name of the client. You may have to modify the formula a bit depending on the name of the table which has this year's clients and the exact cell addresses.

If you also wish to show only the yet-to-come (2019 only) clients as a list, you can then use Numbers' Filter feature. You can access this feature through the Organize option on the right in Numbers' toolbar at the top as shown in the picture below:

The filter shown in the picture above "filters" out any rows in the table "Clients 2019" whose "2019 only" column is equal to 0.

If you would like to copy part or all of the filtered table elsewhere for further processing for any reason, select all the names (and, for example, the No column or any additional column you may have if you like) and press Command ⌘+C. Then select a cell in a new table (in a new sheet or file in Numbers if you also like) and then press Shift ⇧+Command ⌘+V (keyboard shortcut for "Paste Formula Results" menu option). These commands, when applied to a filtered table, will only copy & paste the cells you selected from the filtered table.

Hope these help!


Yes, you can remove it, but you'd need to Reboot for it to take effect.

I don't recommend renaming it - the vast majority of applications handle the space just fine.

If you have a handful of problematic programs, then just create a soft link to your desired location:

sudo ln -s /Volumes/Macintosh\ HD/Ruby\ Stuff /Ruby


Pretty simple triage - the “system” either now contains an iOS update cached or a lot of user data, but you can convince yourself:

Backup the device
Erase all content and settings

Measure the space. If you feel it’s still taking a lot of space, put the device in recovery mode and restore it.

Once you’re OK with the space usage of the bare system, erase one more time and restore from your backup of choice or just sign in and set it up new if you want to start fresh.


How to make installation disk/pendrive of Mountain Lion in Windows 7?

Use transmac to open the .dmg install file and open the "shared support" folder contained inside. Find the file labeled "installESD.img" and burn it to your pen drive in the format "MAC OS Extended (Journaled)"

Voila, bootable pen drive.


Where does Photos store iCloud photos shared with me?

I found the local storage location for iCloud shared images.

cd "/Users/simon/Library/Containers/com.apple.cloudphotosd/Data/Library/Application Support/com.apple.cloudphotosd/services/com.apple.photo.icloud.sharedstreams/assets"

Replace simon with your username.

Of course, the ridiculous obscurity of this path means they'll probably change it again, but this is what it is as of OS X 10.12.5 and Photos Version 2.0 (3150.4.120).


Empty Directories in ~/Library/Mobile Documents

~/Library/Mobile Documents is basically a mapped network location(to iCloud) and allows you to interact with the documents created by certain apps(default location) most likely they are left over from poor un-installers not cleaning up after themselves or left intact on purpose incase you decide to re-install at some point.

I would contend that it is safe to delete if you don't plan on using those applications, and also assuming if they are generated by an application that when they are needed they will regenerate themselves as needed. Make a copy of them and put them on your desktop and delete them to see what happens. If it breaks copy them back.

On a side note, are you doing this just to keep things clean? Are you in this directory through finder enough that these folders slow your navigation down? I appreciate wanting to keep things clean, however their existence probably won't slow down any indexing by spotlight, use any bandwidth by iCloud or take up a significant amount of HDD space.


Xcode 7.2.1 Supporting Files folder missing

The Supporting Files group is not created for Swift-based projects.

For Objective-C-based projects, the folder usually contains main.m and maybe Info.plist (with related strings files).

You can always create your own group named Supporting Files and put whatever you want into it.

(Note: the Supporting Files entry never was an actual Folder, just a Group in Xcode)


If my monitor has no MacOS driver available, do I have any other options for adjusting overscan? | macbook 2017

On the 2509m there is a button that says "Auto" and immediately underneath it says "OK".  When you press this button the display will throw up a text boxy that says "Auto-Adjustment in Progress" and that should correct your overscan issue.  I just discovered that by accident. :)


If you do an OTA update on the device, you'll 'break' many things and the device probably won't boot.
If you do an update through iTunes, it may boot, but the jailbreak will be broken and the filesystem may be a bit messed-up.

Basically, don't update your device.

Instead, you need to wipe and restore your device.

Make a backup of your device in iTunes (I don't trust iCloud backup with jailbroken devices).
Restore your device using iTunes.
Restore your backup to the device using iTunes.

The backup will contain many preference files for various Cydia tweaks, but they're fine to leave since the actual tweaks won't be there (it's not jailbroken any more).

You should end up with a non-jailbroken device with all your content excluding content for tweaks.


Sometimes cloud sync can get behind. I would log in to Numbers / iCloud online and determine if you have duplicates and clean them out from the web interface on a computer browser.

https://www.icloud.com/#numbers

At that point, you can wait for Numbers / iCloud to clear on iOS or go in using iCloud Drive app and clean out the duplicates. You may have to do this on iOS if you don't have easy access to a Mac or computer browser.


How to bypass the activation screen iPhone 5s (a1530) without sim?

There is no way to activate it without a SIM card, but one shouldn't be that hard to get ahold of. Even borrowing one from a friend's phone for one minute or just buying a deactivated "dummy" SIM card on eBay will work fine.


How to remove my Mac from the speaker choices?

First off, it's not a "speaker list," it's list of devices that can take or make phone calls.  If you paired a Bluetooth headset it would show up there as will your car's Bluetooth connection (if you have one and it's paired).  This is probably what's causing your confusion when trying to disable it.
So, to do so, you have to turn off WiFi calling on your "other" devices
Settings → Phone → Calls on Other Devices.  There will be a section called Allow Calls On.  Toggle off the device you don't want to allow access, in this case "Jeffs Mac."  Once you do that, it will no longer show up as a device to send the call to.
Below are screen grabs from my iPhone that's configured to use my Mac as an audio device for phone calls.  Upon disabling it in Calls on Other Devices it's removed as an audio option on the call screen.


To let Finder always open a folder with default window width and height

This is extreme, but works: (see also Remove .DS_Store files from Mac OS X)

sudo find ~ -name ".DS_Store" -depth -exec rm {} \;

Restart and observe that newly opened finder windows are of uniform size. This deletes all ".DS_Store"'s. It then seems that they store relevant data regarding window size.

I did this partly out of curiosity, or maybe I have compulsive personality. I don't recommend normal users to mess up with your computer like this, though.


How can I set up Gmail on my iPhone 4S with Exchange?

http://support.google.com/mobile/bin/answer.py?hl=en&topic=14252&answer=138740

The only thing to notice is the m.google.com server address.


I recharge via my online banking, if one of your banks can also offer this, then this would be ideal.


How to stop my iPhone iMessages syncing to my sons iPod as we share my Apple ID

Be sure that you check iMessages> Preferences > Accounts

If there are any Apple ID's other than yours, be sure to get rid of them.


Certificate error when using Chrome for iOS with company CA

There is no way to add Certificate Authorities to Chrome.app on iOS. The only way to manage them is in Settings > General > Profiles.

It seems like this is an issue with Chrome.app that's not resolved yet. See Chrome for iOS ignores trusted root CA certificate. You may get additional help by posting to the Google Chrome Forum (linked before).


How to enable English mode as default for OS X login

Open sys pref and then Keyboard.

Make sure to DISABLE (uncheck) the Automatic switch to Document Input source.

Set the order of languages to English at the top.

If done correctly, it will say "Primary" in the Language and Regions:


How to hunt down which tab or webpage (on Google Chrome) used a lot of memory?

Chrome has a task manager that will be handy in case you have too many tabs to simply close them manually and note when memory reclaims.

https://support.google.com/chrome/answer/1385029

  On your computer, open Chrome.
  At the top right, click the vertical "dot dot dot" icon.
  Select More Tools and then Task Manager.
  Click “Memory” to sort tasks by memory usage. - Tip: Look for any items labeled "Background page."
  Select the task you want to close.
  Click End Process. - Note: Any unsaved work in your task will be lost.

I would also run vm_stat 1 and watch the OS memory allocations and freeing so you can watch the effects as you close tabs and see tasks free in the app.


How to save a shared video to my Camera Roll on iOS?

Apple doesn't have a solution on iOS to accomplish this. I've not found any third party app from the App Store that will read the shared stream videos or receive a paste event (you can copy the video from Photos app on iOS, but pasting it anywhere seems to not work for me on iOS 8.x)

I use iPhoto on OS X to view the shared video and then import them into my library. From there, I can get the videos onto iOS. Not exactly your preferred solution, but it works well enough for me.


Enable iTunes track notifications in the Dock

In the terminal type

defaults write com.apple.dock itunes-notifications -bool true

Reference (with a lot of other great terminal commands):: nerdlogger.com


Open an application periodically in Mac OSX

There are numerous approaches you can take.

launchd or Third Party Launcher

You can use tools like macOS's built-in launchd or third party tools like Power Manager (which I wrote, so feel free to ask me questions about its use):

Power Manager includes a task covering How to Schedule an Application to Launch on Mac OS X.

Prefer launchd over cron

You probably want to avoid cron because it does not operate in the current user's graphical session. cron is good for command line tools and scripts, but less well suited to graphical Mac applications.

AppleScript and Calendar

A simple AppleScript application combined with a calendar event's Open File as an alarm may be enough. The AppleScript snippet below will open a specified application and bring it to the front:

tell application "My Electron Application" to activate

These related questions go into specifics:

How can I schedule sending the day’s iCal events via email?
Schedule open automator application every days works only one time


Read files from old windows-formatted external USB hard drive

You need to copy those documents to a windows machine. After that you need to format a USB stick MS-DOS (FAT32). Formatting USB drive as MS-DOS (FAT32) will alow you to use the USB on Windows and OS ! Will not alow you to write files bigger then 4 GB i think or 2.


How to cancel a macOS upgrade? (point release 10.12.x)

try deleting the .dmg file installer, maybe here  ~/Library/Application Support/AppStore but I'm not sure of the position.. also you can make a search of .dmg and order by date


How can I reinstall Mac OS 9 on a G3 PowerBook's original hard drive?

I tried dding the the Mac OS 9.2 Universal Installer to the hard disk, but that didn't work.

@jaume put me on the right path, so I dd-ed the ISO to a USB stick, held down option at boot, and I'm able to install Mac OS 9 to the original hard disk. Success! Thank you!

The real thing I learned is that Mac OS 9 boot volumes need half a dozen special driver partitions. Older versions of Mac OS X, up to 10.12 or something, let you partition OS 9 drives correctly using the Disk Utility which had an "Install Mac OS 9 Drivers" option. I used hdiutil info to check that the ISO had these partitions.


What you could do is making a little batch file that would use RAR, a shareware command line utility for mac (I did not find any free rar command line utility, but RAR is available as a trial).

Installing rar command

To install RAR into your terminal, simply copy rar and unrar into your bin folder.

To get access to the bin directory, open Terminal.app and type

open /bin

The Windows version of RAR allows to "convert" zip archive into rar archive in tools, but the mac version doesn't seem to have this feature. The solution would be to unzip each of the files into separate folders and then to RAR content of those folders right away.

The Solution

#!/bin/bash
# shell script that will convert zip files into rar files
# Require RAR for Mac os x to be placed in bin folder

# Working directory, use ~ for home folder shortcut :)
WorkingDirectory=~/test

# Temp directory that will be used for zip files manipulation
# Will prevent loop from raring other folders ;)
TempDirectory="${WorkingDirectory}"/zipToRarTemp

# Target Directory is where you want the rar files to go after the process
TargetDirectory="${WorkingDirectory}"

# Let's create the directories
mkdir "${TempDirectory}"
mkdir "${TargetDirectory}"

# Will loop into WorkingDirectory and unzip each .zip files
for file in "${WorkingDirectory}"/*.zip
do
    # Get file name
    # See http://stackoverflow.com/questions/965053/extract-filename-and-extension-in-bash
    # 1st answer
    filename=$(basename "$file")
    extension="${filename##*.}"
    filename="${filename%.*}"

    # Temp folder in the loop
    tempFolderToRar="${TempDirectory}"/"${filename}"

    # Create folders to rar later
    mkdir "${tempFolderToRar}"

    # unzip -d folder/extract/to fileToExtract.zip
    unzip -d "${TempDirectory}"/"${filename}" "${file}"

    # rar all the files in tempFolderToRar into the target
    rar a "${TargetDirectory}"/"${filename}".rar "${tempFolderToRar}"
done

# Optionnaly, delete temp directory if different from target
if [ "${TempDirectory}" != "${TargetDirectory}" ]
    then
    rm -r "${TempDirectory}"
fi

Save this to a file with no extension, be sure to set the good paths in the first variables and it should work fine running it in terminal.app

Conclusion

Well, It worked for me.

Note: this script is not perfect. Maybe there's a better way, but it works ;) that was one of my first shell script, would probably be better with parameters, or go with python ;)

Hope it helps.


Open applications in the background in OS X, I don't want my focus taken from me. Respect my Focus!

To launch an app in Finder in the background (hidden) you can use a simple Automator service. Open Automator app, select a service that accepts files or folders in Finder and add a Run Shell Script action with following contents:

for f in "$@"
do
    open "$f" --hide
done

Save the service as Open in background. Open System Preferences./ Keyboard / Shortcuts / Services, find your new service and assign a keyboard shortcut you desire. I chose a handy ShiftCmdB. Close System Preferences and test the service and the shortcut.

Nice thing about this is that it works with apps as well as documents.


You won’t lose the music you have downloaded, but you also won’t be able to play the music (unlesss you have purchased them separately on the iTunes Store).


How do I find and kill an application which keeps restarting?

You fix this simply by deleting the .application bundle. Then fix the problem with Info.plist in Xcode and rebuild.


If I buy a Mac that comes with Lion, can I install it on my old Macs too?

No - macs ship with one license to Lion - for that mac.

If you buy an upgrade outright, that applies to all your macs.


Is it possible to install OS X Mavericks on 2016 MacBook Pro?

No. The oldest OS a Mac computer can support is the one the model originally shipped with (for you, 10.12 Sierra). You should be able to get the Mavericks background image from somewhere if that’s what you like about 10.10.


Applying an old EFI update on a new version of OSX

Simple answer is you can check for the most recent here and it looks like yours would be available here. You can even get this info from the ol' stalwart Mactracker.
Without the exact model identifier I'm just guessing, but assuming you have even the later version from that year (MacMini4,1), the most recent publicly available EFI updates Apple released (at least as of 10.10.4) do not include that hardware. I haven't re-verified it as of either 10.10.5 or ElCapGM, but you can rip apart their publicly posted EFI package and see the javascript-based installer logic for choosing what models the package can patch. I published a post about the topic, and although I haven't gotten confirmation from an authoritative source like Apple themselves, one could assume the most recent-looking model being MM51.88Z.0077.B12.1506081728 means you're out of luck with patches that fix the 'thunderstrike' vulnerabilities.

And regarding ElCap in particular, since it should have the same hardware support as Mavericks or Mountain Lion, you should be able to confirm it's ready to be upgraded with this command: ioreg -l -p IODeviceTree | grep -E 'firmware-abi.*EFI64'


Why does my Spotlight index get corrupted?

Just for reference, Spotlight index shouldn’t get corrupted, but when that’s the case see this question.

You have to remember that spotlight is a database and as such is prone to corruption; compared to relational databases for example, spotlight can only be deleted and rebuilt when that happens. There’s no “spotlight -repair” command (one can only wish).

All in all, it’s rare to see Spotlight failing in OS X 10.6, it has been very stable compared to the first Tiger version.

External applications, on the other hand, can make use of the APIs to store information in the metadata, and here’s where we lose control of what goes in there. If one external application is storing bad data, it could cause the whole index to go nuts.

Since you have a healthy working index now, try it for a few weeks and pay attention to any application or utility that claims to support Spotlight.

Good Luck!


Installing ChatJax bookmark on the iPad and iPhone

Using Safari:

Copy this in its entirety to your clipboard on your iOS device:

javascript:(function(){if(window.MathJax===undefined){var%20script%20=%20document.createElement("script");script.type%20=%20"text/javascript";script.src%20=%20"http://cdn.mathjax.org/mathjax/latest/MathJax.js?config=TeX-AMS_HTML%22;var%20config%20=%20%27MathJax.Hub.Config({%27%20+%20%27extensions:%20[%22tex2jax.js%22],%27%20+%20%27tex2jax:%20{%20inlineMath:%20[[%22$%22,%22$%22],[%22\\\\\\\\\\\\(%22,%22\\\\\\\\\\\\)%22]],%20displayMath:%20[[%22$$%22,%22$$%22],[%22\\\\[%22,%22\\\\]%22]],%20processEscapes:%20true%20},%27%20+%20%27jax:%20[%22input/TeX%22,%22output/HTML-CSS%22]%27%20+%20%27});%27%20+%20%27MathJax.Hub.Startup.onload();%27;if%20(window.opera)%20{script.innerHTML%20=%20config}%20else%20{script.text%20=%20config}%20document.getElementsByTagName(%22head%22)[0].appendChild(script);(doChatJax=function(){window.setTimeout(doChatJax,1000);MathJax.Hub.Queue([%22Typeset%22,MathJax.Hub]);})();}else{MathJax.Hub.Queue([%22Typeset%22,MathJax.Hub]);}})();

This is the content of the 'start ChatJax' bookmarklet
Tap the Share button on the toolbar.

Tap Add Bookmark.

Tap Save. Ignore whatever content is shown.

Tap Bookmarks in the toolbar.

Go back until you reach the root, then tap Favourites.

Tap Edit on the toolbar.

Tap the bookmark you've just created.

Enter a name, erase the contents of the Address field and paste in the bookmarklet.

Visit the page you want to activate ChatJax, tap Bookmarks, then the bookmarklet.


Does the Mountain Lion installer work on any Mac capable of running Mountain Lion or is it hardware specific?

Once you have downloaded it from the App Store, but before you run it, you can copy the Install Mountain Lion app into the Applications folder of any Mac you have an Admin account on (and have signed into the App store as you obviously) and run it from there.  If the Mac is not recent enough to install Mountain Lion the installer will tell you, otherwise it will happily install Mountain Lion for you.  That's how I updated all the Macs at my place.

Note that once run the installer will delete itself from the Applications folder.


How feasibile is it to run a newer version of OSX on a used Mac?

As long as it is a Core 2 Duo processor or better (read: 64-bit architecture), you can put Lion on it. The sole exception seems to be early 2006 model with an Intel Core Duo (32-bit); this one will only support Snow Leopard.

Reference: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MacBook


How do I command Automator to convert the multiple images from PNG to ICNS once at all? (Solved)

My question has already been solved. Here's the answer at this link:
https://stackoverflow.com/questions/13559343/how-do-i-command-automator-to-convert-the-multiple-images-from-png-to-icns-once


How to see notifications when running full screen?

For anyone still having this issue:

Press the | key (that's the pipe key, it typically shares a key with \) to exit Kodi's full-screen mode. Then, use macOS' full-screen button (the green one) to enter native full-screen. You should now see notifications in full-screen.


Connecting an external hard drive to my MacBook Air

You can connect external Hard Disk Drive to any of the USB ports using standard cable.

As soon as you connect it, HDD's icon shall appear on your desktop automatically.


For Wine under OS X I use Wine_1.7.36.dmg from "Wine.app Downloads" on kronenberg.org and XQuartz and both install and work nicely without the need to use MacPorts.


If you have multiple boots on your computer have you tried holding options when your computer is restarting? I use this to boot into different OSes.

Otherwise, you should be able to install MacOS by using internet recovery. I have replaced an SSD with no partitions on it and internet recovery helped install the OS fresh on the new disk. Here is an article that helps you get into internet recovery. TL;DR hold command-options-r while your computer is booting up.


Does macOS support Ethernet over USB without a 3rd-party driver?

Yes - the vast majority of ethernet adapters work - especially USB-C since they are generally very new, a little more pricey and use fairly standard types of control chips and usb chips.
The Belkin you listed is both plug and play when the OS is booted, it also works at netboot from the hardware / EFI / firmware so it's truly driverless on the new Mac.

https://www.apple.com/shop/product/HJKF2ZM/A/belkin-usb-c-to-gigabit-ethernet-adapter

I personally am liking the Belkin adapters and all the thunderbolt 3 dock stations from the likes of OWC / Belkin / Elgato as well. Tripp lite and some others are on the market - but I've not had great durability of Tripp in a work setting, so the cost savings there aren't panning out over time over the higher end products for us. Light home use might be perfectly fine with less pricey adapters so YMMV.
Also - a general guideline if Apple is selling the adapters in their stores - they are likely best of the best. If they are selling them online, chances are they are best of the best or at least very good fit and need no drivers either.


RVM:

From the rvm.io homepage, I used: \curl -sSL https://get.rvm.io | bash -s stable . This worked fine for me, no admin permissions needed.


I can't install OSX Lion from DVD, because I receive an error

You can do a clean installation from the recovery partition:

Restart or start up and hold ⌘R after the screen turns on
Erase the drive from Disk Utility (without it the next step would only do an upgrade install)
Choose Reinstall Mac OS X


Can you live link a youtube video in Keynote as opposed to embedding an offline copy?

No, keynote is cross platform (web, iOS and macos) and designed to not live-link to YouTube.

Use another app. One to try us LiveSlides.

Consider that you will still need internet connection to play the video because it is still linking to the website where the video is, if you do not download it, means that you might be in a situation where the presentation will not work.


Mac Photos app stuck on "Restoring from iCloud"

Since I ran into the same issue, I had to research this as well. From what I found, this seems to be normal. After a library repair, each photo is being verified against the iCloud library copy.

This Apple support document 1 states:

  If you repair a library that's automatically updated with iCloud Photos, the entire contents of the library re-updates with iCloud after the repair ...

Just like a normal iCloud library upload, this can take a very long time. For my 20.000 photos, it's currently at 72 hours without an indication of being finished any time soon it took about 80 hours. Then, the Photos app showed Updating (only the word Updating without any additional information) for a few hours before now switching to Uploading 19,800 items.

It's re-uploading every single photo in my library. Due to my low upload bandwidth, this is a very slow process and it uploaded about 1,000 photos in the previous 4 days.

So for me the messages that showed up in the status bar were, in order:

Restoring from iCloud (for about 4 days)
Updating (for a few hours)
Uploading x items (very slow, will possibly take many weeks to finish)

UPDATE Jan/10: I took the laptop to work because we have a very fast upstream connection there. Over the weekend, it uploaded all photos, downloaded the new ones and is now back to its old Updated Just Now status.


iPhone 5 charging sound keep repeating, why?

I brought iPhone back to Apple Service and the guy cleaned my iPhone at the plug with the needle that you can open the sim card tray. So he cleaned it, and that was lots of dirty coming out. And after all I have to claim connection is much more stable. So you should clean it first.


Macbook pro 16 inch 2019 noisy display in chrome after waking up from sleep

This bug has been reported to the Chromium team since 06/04/2020.
Impacted Apps
This seems to affect all Chromium-based applications include Google Chrome, Brave, Electron, and probably others.
Symptoms
In my case it happens sometimes after sleep.
Cause
Chrome is saying its an Apple issue. Apple saying its an AMD issue.

29/01/2020: We're continuing to press this issue with Apple. They recently report that the bug has been reproduced and that AMD is investigating it.

https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=1068170#c206
There also appears to be some drama between Apple and Google in terms of whose problem it is.
Workarounds
Kill Chromium GPU Helper process (activity monitor)
This method is advantageous as it doesn't require restarting your browser and potentially losing your tabs.

Open Activity Monitor
Search for (GPU)

All Chromium-based apps including Electron apps will have one or more GPU helper processes. E.g. Spotify Helper (GPU), Code Helper (GPU), Google Chrome Helper (GPU).

Force Kill the GPU process of the offending app. NOTE: You may have to do this multiple times.
You should see the page go white, and then the green bars should no longer be visible.

NOTE: This doesn't always work, see the Chromium bug thread below for more information.
Thanks to: https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=1068170#c188
Alternative: Use Terminal.app
An alternative to Activity Monitor is to use Terminal.app
killall "Google Chrome Helper (GPU)"

Disable Hardware Acceleration

Visit chrome://settings/system in the browser
Disable Use hardware acceleration when available.

Other alternatives

Restart the app
Restart your computer


Why is the usage and standby time always the same on my iPhone?

I have 2 possible solutions.

Downgrade your iOS version.
Use a separate battery tracking app. Just search "Battery tracker" on the app store. (As a plus, some come with widgets you can put on the Widget View)

If that doesn't work, then I suggest taking it to the Apple Store to get it checked out there.

**EDIT:**Here's a link I found, haven't tested it personally yet, but here Battery Doctor


go to ~Library/Safari/Databases/ and delete the database


Limit internet use when using mobile Internet

The easiest way would be to use an application such as Little Snitch; that way you can define rules easily based on whatever situation you happen to be in. It's also an excellent firewall replacement for the standard Mac OS X one, as well as multiple other uses.

If you like doing things yourself, or don't want to spend the money you could manually add entries into your hosts file located in /etc/hosts/ or create your own rules using pfctl or ipfw. I wouldn't recommend messing around with either of those unless you're confident using terminal, plus it's more work.


Why did all my menus go blank and views become illegible?

There are a couple clues here that indicate this is a software corruption of the graphics buffers and not a hardware issue.

The issue corrects immediately after a reboot
The issue doesn’t affect the entire screen
The issue affects layers of image and not the overall picture

Since the graphics architecture of macOS is that each layer of an image is allocated memory and then the software determines if a specific button or frame or windows is on screen and then if it’s visible on screen (whether minimized and visible as a thumbnail or if it’s not obscured by an element more front most than it) the corruption shown is either blanking or fuzzing the bits in one layer.

Hardware errors tend to get worse with time (often rapidly deteriorating) and the hardware doesn’t get cooler or somehow fix itself when the OS reloads. Yes the drivers are restarted and hardware might power down most of the units briefly as part of a restart, but in general it’s the same Mac after the restart as it was before.

Now, none of that helps immediately.

The next time you get this corruption, I would open system preferences and make a new account. Log out of your current account that has the glitches and see if the glitches happen when you log in to the new account. If so, you know the glitches are either hardware or corruption in the base system. That’s good since you can either reinstall the OS or get hardware repair.

If logging in to the new user is clean - no issues. Log out of the new user and back in to your old user - not restarting the OS yet.

If the log in to the old user is glitchy - you need to isolate the software causes (update the OS, update your apps, clean your settings) or just reboot more often. If the old user is not glitchy, you have the least actionable case - it’s some corruption that happens rarely or by chance and “fixing” it will be hard if it’s not a system bug that Apple eventually fixes.

Good luck, keep your backups current in case you get tired of this and choose to erase the OS entirely, reinstall a new OS and then move your data and apps back from the backup.


How do I roll back my iOS version? The 12.2 update has broken my WiFi

Basically, you can't.

Apple stop signing previous versions shortly after a new one comes out. iOS 12.1.4 is no longer signed since April 4.

Ref: MacRumors - Apple Stops Signing iOS 12.1.4 Following Release of iOS 12.2

I would look elsewhere for your solution, because had it been a widespread issue it would be well reported by now.


finding large videos in the OSX Photos app

Navigate to Pictures folder
Right click on Photos Librar and Show Package Contents
Open the originals folder (prior to macOS 10.15 / Catalina, the 'originals' folder was named 'Masters')
In search bar, type mov, then choose Type 'Movie'
Make sure 'Masters' is still the search target
Right click the column headings and tick 'Size'
Click Size column header to sort

Do not change anything in Finder. Just use it to identify the videos, then go back to Photos to make changes.


Software Update hangs...where can I see a log as to what its doing?

So it looks like the Console application is the only way to "view the logs", so to speak.  I launched it from the Finder under "Applications/Utilities".  It is rather sparse, but it does have information regarding the update.

I am having more success watching the progress of Software Update by executing it from the command line of a terminal.  This I launched as

sudo softwareupdate -i -a -v

I still don't expect it to complete, but am hopeful that I can get a better clue as to why it is failing.  Currently there are 4 packages called out in /Library/Updates, one of which is likely the source of my problems:

bobk-mbp:~ bobk$ find /Library/Updates/
/Library/Updates/
/Library/Updates//.DS_Store
/Library/Updates//index.plist
/Library/Updates//ProductMetadata.plist
/Library/Updates//zzzz041-3450
/Library/Updates//zzzz041-3450/041-3450.English.dist
/Library/Updates//zzzz041-3450/CoreFPDelta.pkg
/Library/Updates//zzzz041-3450/iTunesAccessDelta.pkg
/Library/Updates//zzzz041-3450/iTunesXPatch.pkg

Finally, it looks like you can actually tail the install log as

tail -F /var/logs/install.log

So I now know how to watch the thing, but why isn't it completing?


Windows 10 should be installed using a BIOS boot method. Two reasons for this. First, the EFI on iMac12,1 models may not be advanced enough to handle an UEFI boot of Windows. Second, the Windows Support Software contains the drivers for a BIOS booting Windows. You would be better off using your optical (DVD) drive and the Boot Camp Assistant to install Windows. If the Windows 10 installer is in the form of a ISO file, then you will need to burn this ISO file to a DVD. Note: you may need a blank double layer (DL) DVD.

If you which to continue with a flash drive install of Windows, then you will need to follow the accepted answer to the question: How to install Windows 10 into a 2011 iMac without using the Boot Camp Assistant, an optical (DVD) drive or third party tools?

Additional Notes

The  Windows installation media can be stored on a DVD, flash drive or an internal drive. When viewed from the Startup Manager you will see an icon labeled Windows and/or an icon labeled EFI BOOT. Should  should select Windows to BIOS boot the Widows installation media. Choosing EFI Boot obviously EFI boots the media.

There a two partition tables stored on the internal drive. The first table is the legacy Master Boot Record (MBR) table. Any partition information stored in this table is only used by most BIOS booting operating systems. The second table is the GUID Partition Table (GPT). This table can be used by both BIOS and EFI (UEFI) booting operating systems. (Although, a BIOS booting operating system using the GPT rarely occurs.) When both partition tables are used to store partition information on the same drive the partitioning is referred to a hybrid.

The macOS (OS X) operating system EFI boots and uses the GPT. A BIOS booting Windows uses the MBR table, so the partitioning must be hybrid. An EFI booting Windows uses the GPT, so no partition information can be stored in the MBR table. Actually, in this case the MBR table contains a single partition spanning the entire drive (up to 2 TB) and the MBR table is then referred to protective.

Your Mac need to install a BIOS booting Windows. Therefore the internal drive needs to be hybrid partitioned. If you get a message that the internal drive is GPT partitioned, then you have to either employ the solution to How to convert a drive from the GPT format to the hybrid GPT/MBR format when using High Sierra (macOS 10.13.2) or use the h function from the recovery and transformation menu of the third party gdisk command.

Steps to use gdisk to create hybrid partitioning.

Download gdisk
Disable Systems Integrity Protection (SIP)
Enter the command given below.

sudo gdisk /dev/disk0

Enter the following into gdisk.

r
h
2 3 4
y
af
n
ab
n
07
y
w
y

Enable SIP.

Example output from using gdisk:

GPT fdisk (gdisk) version 1.0.4

Warning: Devices opened with shared lock will not have their
partition table automatically reloaded!
Partition table scan:
  MBR: protective
  BSD: not present
  APM: not present
  GPT: present

Found valid GPT with protective MBR; using GPT.

Command (? for help): r

Recovery/transformation command (? for help): h

WARNING! Hybrid MBRs are flaky and dangerous! If you decide not to use one,
just hit the Enter key at the below prompt and your MBR partition table will
be untouched.

Type from one to three GPT partition numbers, separated by spaces, to be
added to the hybrid MBR, in sequence: 2 3 4
Place EFI GPT (0xEE) partition first in MBR (good for GRUB)? (Y/N): y

Creating entry for GPT partition #2 (MBR partition #2)
Enter an MBR hex code (default AF): af
Set the bootable flag? (Y/N): n

Creating entry for GPT partition #3 (MBR partition #3)
Enter an MBR hex code (default AB): ab
Set the bootable flag? (Y/N): n

Creating entry for GPT partition #4 (MBR partition #4)
Enter an MBR hex code (default 07): 07
Set the bootable flag? (Y/N): y

Recovery/transformation command (? for help): w

Final checks complete. About to write GPT data. THIS WILL OVERWRITE EXISTING
PARTITIONS!!

Do you want to proceed? (Y/N): y
OK; writing new GUID partition table (GPT) to /dev/disk0.
Warning: Devices opened with shared lock will not have their
partition table automatically reloaded!
Warning: The kernel may continue to use old or deleted partitions.
You should reboot or remove the drive.
The operation has completed successfully.


Enter Mission Control
Hover over the selected space or hold ⌥
remove by clicking on the x


iTunes reporting phantom songs on iPhone 4

See if this works for you... but this will remove ALL OF YOUR MUSIC FROM YOUR PHONE. So, I hope you have it somewhere else before doing these steps.

Uncheck "Sync Music" in iTunes on the Music tab for your iPhone.
Check "Manually manage music and videos" in iTunes on the Summary tab for your iPhone.
Go to the Music on the left tree under your iPhone in iTunes.
Select all of the music (CMD-A) and delete all of the songs.
Go back to the Summary Tab and click Sync.
At this point, your iPhone will have no music on it and will report that correctly.

This worked for my iPhone that was stuck in some weird limbo with Match. I was able to turn back on Sync Music and do the albums I wanted. Now my iPhone's Usage count matches iTunes.


Is it possible to create formatted email on the iphone 4s?

iOS 5 brought some limited rich-text formatting options to Mail. When you're composing an email, select the text you want to format, and tap the right arrow. You'll see a button labelled "BIU", tap that and you get options to bold, italicize or underline the text. You can also control the indentation level.

(Image from Macworld)

As you can see, it's fairly limited, and to my knowledge there's no way to insert a signature with any images. You could keep the logo you want in your iPhone's Pictures and copy/paste it as necessary, but that's obviously very labour intensive.

Your could look into alternative mail apps. There aren't a lot to choose from, but something like MarkdownMail might work well for you. It's just meant for composing HTML formatted emails, you'd still use the built-in Mail app for checking, etc.


run applications from external hard drive

To open the app from an external disk, you have to refer to it explicitly using a Terminal command:

open /Volumes/<volume_name_of_external_disk>/<path_to_application>/Android\ Studio.app

Having never used Android Studio, I don't know if there is a space between 'Android' and 'Studio' in the app name. If there is, the back-slash character in the open command is required to delimit the space character.

Ex: open /Volumes/ExternalDisk/Applications/Android\ Studio.app


Here is a great link from Cult Of Mac about how to use Siri to generate a secure password.   https://www.cultofmac.com/227362/use-siri-to-generate-a-super-secure-random-password-ios-tips/


How to store iCloud Photo Library only in the cloud

If you don't want any of your iCloud pictures on your computer.

Go to System Preferences > iCloud and turn off iCloud Photo Library. If you click on the Options button in the category, you can turn off single parts of iCloud and keep others on.

Photo has it on > You deselect it obviously

From Quora: How do I eliminate photos from my mac without eliminating them from icloud

Also see Apple's support article on how to Get help with your iCloud Photo Library


How to keep lock screen always on when connected to external monitor and charging

You can use a utility called KeepingYouAwake. The app sits in the Menu bar and prevents your computer from sleeping (but lets the computer sleep normally when the lid is closed).

With the app running, your lock screen will not turn off. The app is simple to use with necessary configuration options available.


I don't know my SSH key passphrase cause Keychain managed it (pre-Sierra). What do I do now?

Nevermind, I just found this Leaving this open in case anybody panic as I did.

Steps:

Open Keychain
Search for "SSH"
Double click on the SSH file you want
Select Show password on the bottom-left corner
Unlock your keychain with the administrative password.


I think you can expect some slowdowns, especially in the time it takes to launch some apps. Here's an excerpt from an article that compared iOS 8 and 9 on the iPad mini:

The decrease in app responsiveness is a disappointment considering Apple's claims, but we have to consider that we are dealing with old hardware that just doesn't seem to handle Apple's new Metal API/compiler particularly well. At least flicking through home screens is reasonably smooth, even if using complicated apps isn't - scrolling through the Guardian app on the iPhone 4s or iPad mini is surprisingly juddery.
At least the iPhone 4s gained some battery life from the update to iOS 9 - the 40 minute (approximately 9 per cent) increase in our Web use test, as well as Low Power Mode, suggests that in everyday use you'll be less likely to feel battery anxiety. The iPad mini showed no signs of extra life after updating to iOS9. We should stress that both devices on test have been in constant use since their launches three and four years ago, so both devices have suffered battery fatigue. We're only interested in the comparative times, allowing for a few per cent margin of error due to climatic conditions affecting the battery chemistry in the devices.

Something further to consider is that not all new iOS 9 features are enable on the 1st gen iPad mini. Again, from the same article:

Apple's latest iOS brings plenty of new and useful features, but most are confined to newer hardware. For example, none of the new multitasking features are available for the iPad mini. You'll need at least an iPad mini 2 or iPad Air to invoke picture-in-picture and Slide Over, while only the iPad mini 4, iPad Air 2 or iPad Pro can handle side-by-side Split View.

So, you'll have to balance that against the increased security, new features that are enabled, and increased app compatibility that iOS 9 will bring to your iPad mini.
And, if you end up installing iOS 9 on your iPad mini and regretting it, downgrading back to iOS 8 is no longer an option. So, one other downside (if you can really call it that) to consider is that iOS 8 to iOS 9 on your iPad mini will be a one-way trip.


Upgrade to Yosemite: kextd close to 95% CPU

I had this same issue and I found this message repeatedly on the system logs:
com.apple.kextd[8095]: Kext net.semaja2.kext.insomnia not found for client path request.

Closing InsomniaX quickly solved the issue for me.
Will do some more research on how to properly fix this in order to have InsomniaX running.

EDIT: After uninstalling InsomniaX and upgrading to the latest build the issue has been resolved.


I believe this thread could be of benefit to you.
https://discussions.apple.com/thread/7610729

This sounds like an access/trust issue to the certificate.
You can try changing the trust setting on the certificate within Keychain>Doubble Click on certificate>Trust>Always Trust

If not, the CUPS logs could be beneficial to narrow down the issue


Battery discharge while Macbook was turned off in 1 week. Possible causes?

These terminal commands will show sleep/wake activity since the MacBook was last powered up.
pmset -g log | grep -e "Wake from" -e "DarkWake" -e "due to"
pmset -g log | egrep "\b(Sleep|Wake*|DarkWake|Start)\s{2,}"

They both extract  data from the power management log and produce very similar output.  Try one or other (or both). The output includes the battery charge level.
You may be surprised at the number of times the MacBook at least partially/briefly wakes whilst you thought it was firmly asleep.


It sounds like the MacBook connection problems only happen when you have blocked the kiddo's x-box, correct?
Does removing the X-Box block allow you to connect to web and email?
If so, the problem is likely happening because of DHCP.  DHCP means the router hands out IP addresses.  Usually, DHCP will hand out IP addresses in the order that devices connect to the router.

For Example:
1st - 192.168.0.1 -> MacBook
2nd - 192.168.0.2 -> X-Box  [BLOCKED]

Now lets say the kid reboots the router while you are away.  Now the X-Box connects to wifi first and gets the first IP address. When you get home you get the second [blocked] address
For Example:
1st - 192.168.0.1 -> X-Box
2nd - 192.168.0.2 [BLOCKED]-> MacBook

Setting up your MacBook with a manual address (DHCP with manual address ) might work... but only if you chose an unused IP address in the "proper IP address range" for your router.
If the above is similar to your situation ... The solution to this depends on the make and model of your router.
My router has an option for "DHCP with reserved addresses".  This will reserve and assign a specific IP address to a specific device.Example: 192.168.0.8 -[BLOCKED] [RESERVED for X-Box] .
The "reservations" are based on a device's "MAC Address". The "MAC address" is a unique "serial number" for the for a devices WiFi or ether (MAC address is nothing to due with MAC OS.)
Another option is to set the IPs manually but this would could be a pain... There may be other options depending on the make and model of your router.
Please let us know more about your router and router setup.


importing .vpl files (vpn tunnels) on mac

You can use the "FortiClientTools" application in Windows to import your .vpl configuration file. From there, you can export the configuration file to a newer type (4.3/5.0) that can be imported into newer versions of FortiClient. Exported config files that are encrypted will likely have a filename extension of .sconn; unencrypted config files should be appended with .conn.

If you need to import those config files into the newest version (5.2) of FortiClient, you can change the filename extension from .sconn or .conn to the newer format (.sconf; .conf). Once the extension has been changed, you can import that config file under the FortiClient menu -> Preferences -> General -> Restore.


Not in the menubar but you can show the name of the wallpaper on the desktop if that helps:

defaults write com.apple.dock desktop-picture-show-debug-text -bool TRUE;killall Dock

Source: http://osxdaily.com/2011/11/20/show-the-location-path-of-current-wallpaper-in-mac-os-x/


This is how syncing works. If you delete the playlist from your phone, it gets removed from iTunes the next time they are synced.


Why does correctly logging in take less time than an incorrect try?

It is not the actual password check that takes the time. An equality check (which is not what is done here) takes <1 millisecond on a modern computer, so it's not something you can experience.

The delay is actually introduced by purpose by Apple programmers, so that an incorrect attempts results in this slight delay. It is an intentional delay which is purposefully inserted.

The reason for having the delay could be to alert the user that the password entered is incorrect, and to "pause for second" and try again with more precision. This way the user cannot quickly type lots of differents things, but will have to wait a bit between each attempt.


How can I know which Wi-Fi protocol my MacBook is using?

Try to Option+click on the wifi icon on the menu bar. You'll see a lot more information about your current wifi connection.

It looks something lijke this:


Make a photo album based on my Google Photos album

This is the quickest way that I know of to save photos from an album in Google Photos to an album in Photos app on iPhone. It involves a bit of grunt work, but I'll try to make the overall procedure quick and easy to follow.

Listing the steps one-by-one, so buckle up:

As the first step, it is advisable to turn off Auto-Lock if enabled. This will prevent your iPhone from going into sleep mode automatically after a set time, thereby unintentionally suspending the Google Photos app.

To turn off Auto-Lock, go to Settings app → Display & Brightness → Auto-Lock and select Never.

Launch Google Photos app on your iPhone and tap to select the Albums tab in the bottom Tab bar. Locate the desired album under the Albums section. I am using an album named IKEA HYD for demonstration purpose.

Tap on the album to reveal its contents. Now tap on the options button (three dots) shown towards the top right corner to reveal the context menu.

Tap on the Select item to switch to selection mode.

Once you are into selection mode, select the desired photos.

Selecting a large number of images could be quite cumbersome. But fret not, as you can greatly speed up the process by employing a neat trick built into iOS.

Once you are into selection mode, tap down to select an image. Now without lifting your finger, simply drag your finger in the direction of unselected images (i.e. towards the bottom of the grid of images). As your finger moves, the grid of images will automatically start scrolling, selecting the images encountered on the way. The further away you move your finger from the starting point, faster the selection will be. Motion picture linked below demonstrates the same.

Now, you have the desired images selected. Tap on the share button to reveal the share sheet.

In the presented share sheet, tap on the Save "count" images button. This will start saving the selected images in the Photos app.

Note that it is important to keep the app running until all the images are saved in the device photo library (Photos app). Do not suspend the app by tapping on the Home button (or equivalent on iPhone X/XS/XR), thereby potentially stopping the image save process. We also turned off Auto-Lock in step #1 to ensure that the iPhone doesn't go into sleep mode unintentionally while Google Photos app is saving the images in the device photo library.

Wait till the save progress is complete.

Once all the images are successfully saved in the photo library, a confirmation message is shown by the Google Photos app towards the bottom of the screen.

Now, head over to the iOS Photos app, tap on the Camera Roll button and select all the saved images. To select images, you'll first need to tap on the Select button shown towards the top right to switch into selection mode. You can use the same trick as discussed in step #6 to speed up the selection process as shown below:

Once all the desired images are selected, tap on the share button shown towards the bottom left.

In the presented share sheet, tap on Add to Album button.

Tap on New Album... button to create a new album.

Provide the desired name for the album and tap on Save.

Voila! your album is now ready on your iPhone. Tap on the album to view its contents as you normally would.

Note: This album is created by manually saving the images from the Google Photos cloud storage using the Google Photos app. The content of the album will not automatically sync to and fro between album in the Photos app on iPhone and the album in Google Photos cloud library.

Also, don't forget to re-enable Auto-Lock (if you use it).


How do install the OS on a secondary drive in a new Mac Pro?

For a general user adding a new drive to a running system with data, you would boot into the Recovery HD (which is just a lightly hidden bootable OS on an additional partition) during boot  by holding command+R when you hear the startup chime.

You can then use Disk Utility to partition the new drive. At that point, you could clone the system from the HDD to SSD or run the OS installer and have a clean OS on the SSD so you can choose what user accouts, user data and apps you migrate over.

In your case, there is nothing you really need on the main HDD. I would delay erasing the HDD until you get the OS running on the SSD and see that the three iLife apps are still available for redemption.

Once you redeem those Apps - they will be tied to your Apple ID whereas the OS reinstalls are tied to the CPU serial number.


Auto start an application using a script

Technically, you don't need to check to see if the app is running.  If it is, it will switch to it.

A very simple bash script will do this for you

#!/bin/bash

declare -a Apps=( "Safari" "Firefox" "Mail" )

for i in "${Apps[@]}"
do
  open -a  "$i"
done

It's contains a simple array and will loop through each one and open the app if not running.  You can edit the array as needed with the names of each app in quotes separated by a space.

Save the file with a name you can remember like openapps.  Be sure to set the the "execute bit" chmod +x openapps and copy it to your Desktop or somewhere in your path (If it's on your Desktop, you can double click it to run).


Is this something that comes preinstalled in a MacBook?

No. It is a 3rd party app.

  Is it okay to completely remove it?

Yes, it is okay to remove it if you don't use it. It must have been installed by the previous owner.

If this MacBook is a shared computer and it's possible that some other user may be using the app, it's safe to leave it.

Further relevant discussions on Web:

SyphonInject what is it
Is Syphon Inject a "safe" program that's used in OBS?


It's on a folder called Utilities inside Applications.


Is there an iPod touch voice control app that can play music offline?

If you're willing to sacrifice Siri for the ability to control your music with your voice, you could turn off Siri in Settings>General>Siri, which'll make your iPod respond to a held-down Home button with the classic Voice Control interface instead. A Google search is telling me that that one works offline!

For more information about non-Siri Voice Control, check out Apple's support page. Here's what it says about music playback:

  You can play all songs in an album, playlist, or by an artist. The device won't recognize commands to play a particular song.
  If you can't get the device to recognize the album or artist name, try telling it to play a playlist.
  If an artist has "The" in the name, say it.


Speed Up New Finder Window Generation by Changing All My Files
All My Files is a smart folder that uses Spotlight to access any and all files owned by the current user. This can be great, but it can also slow down the generation of a new Finder window on some Macs. Changing the new Finder window to a static folder can help that speed:

Pull down the Finder menu and choose “Preferences”
Set the “New finder windows show” to “Desktop” or “Documents” or your
user home folder

Close Finder preferences as usual


I faced the same problem here, and after investigating, I realized the problem was due to the number of processes my mac was running.

In my case, a cronjob was triggering multiple httpd threads (more than a hundred).

You can:

open activity monitor and kill those processes;
check your crontab -e and look for suspicious jobs


it looks like Show All Data from the device is showing frequent short distance movements instead of the aggregated time and distance that Cyclemeter reports.

The Health app must be doing some kind of interpolation as well as merging or ignoring duplicates from the many data sets and points to generate the graph on the Dashboard.

also, checkout this answer.


Can Mac Messages connect to more than one apple id?

You can set up two iCloud accounts on a mac.
In System Preferences you can go to Internet Accounts, there you can see al your accounts, and you can easily add another iCloud account.

You can then select what you would like to use with the new iCloud account, keep in mind though that only one of the iCloud accounts can be used for photo stream at a time.
This answer on the apple support community site also explains it.


What is the "Personal Photo Letter" intended for?

As its name implies, the Personal Photo Letter, is a personal letter, that is, a letter written to a specific person, that also includes your photo along with your name.

It is like any traditional personal letter, only it has your photo in it.

There’s no real “intended for” situation where you must use that letter. Only when having your picture in it makes sense. I don’t know or I’m not aware of cases where using this type of letter is considered a requirement.

Sometimes when writing a resume you might want to include a presentation letter. Putting your picture there allows the reader to associate your face with the resume or CV. Other than that, I wouldn’t include a picture of me in a personal letter.


Lost ability to choose 3440x1440 resolution after Yosemite upgrade

A bit of a late answer, but this issue is now fixed in Yosemite 10.10.2 - full 3440x1400 (on a macbook air you have to close the lid of your laptop, but it works without hacks!)


How do I disable the Mac App Store notification badge for successful updates?

I believe it’s a bug (not sure what would make it an “obscure bug”) and you should submit feedback to Apple at https://www.apple.com/feedback/macos.html
The reson I believe it to be a bug is because if you immediately open the App store, the erroneous badge immediately disappears meaning that upon launch of the app, it correctly indicates that there are none.  In fact, it appears that the badge is “reset” as it checks for updates with the update server.  I have personally seen mine go from 4 updates, then upon opening the App store, the badge disappear and then a few seconds later change to 1 update.
It’s entirely possible that the badge doesn’t update until the next automatic update check.
I don’t believe this to be intended behavior and obviously a nuisance, but it’s nothing that affects functionality.  You can easily fix the badge by opening and closing the App Store app.  I submitted feedback regarding this and I encourage you to do so as well.


How to you get the "Share with Google Drive" contextual menu option in Finder?

You need to enable the Finder extension Google Drive.

Open the contextual menu for any file, and click on Share and then More.

That will bring you to the Extensions window.

Click on Finder and in the "Select extensions for customizing Finder" select Google Drive.

Now you should see the "View in Google Drive" and "Share with Google Drive" options when you Control-click / secondary click on files inside your Google Drive.


How do I back up the entire system state online?

Dolly Drive comes to mind. My understanding is they offer exactly what you want, although you'll have to double check if they do it in a manner that suits you. They do offer a fee trial, but this is limited to 100GB - so it probably won't allow you to test it properly for your purposes.

Since you mentioned using a virtual private server, you could do this without the need of purchasing any extra software. You will, however, need access to a VPN you can use (usually at a monthly or yearly cost). This option also requires that you understand how to use SSH (to run commands, and to edit files). If this is something you're comfortable with, you can check out Configuring Time Machine to back up to your own server over the internet

Another possible option is to just use rsync to regularly copy your data to a cloud service. Rsync is a Unix tool to synchronise data between disks or servers, and it supports incremental updates. This option, of course, requires you to be willing/comfortable to use Terminal. As a starting point you can launch Terminal and enter the man rsync command for details.

I'm sure others here will have suggestions for you.

My personal view

You can choose to ignore this little blurb, otherwise read on. :)

My preference is not to use the cloud for this type of backup. The cloud is great for low volume data storage and file services (e.g. Dropbox, iCloud, Google Drive, MS OneDrive, etc), but for this type of backup it's not (at least not yet). And, in terms of the OS you can always restore macOS directly via Apple online.

My recommendation to users is to always alternate two TM backup drives and store one of them offsite. By way of example, I'll explain how I do this for one of my Macs (but I follow a similar process for all my machines!)

This iMac has a 500GB HDD
I have purchased two portable USB 2TB external hard drives
I have labelled these hard drives as iMac TM Backup HD 1 and iMac TM Backup HD 2
I set both of these external drives to be TM backup drives
As both drives are set up with TM they are alternated whenever both drives are available
Once the initial backups are done, I physically remove one of the external drives and take it 'offsite'
On the same day each week, I then swap them over
The net result is that both hard drives will have backups in the order of one week on, one week off (but between them I have a full set of backups).

Now, in terms of keeping one of them offsite, you have a number of options. Over the years I have used as my offsite location any of the following:

My workplace
A shed in the back yard
My car (but this may depend on your climate and where you 'garage' your car)
A family member's/friend's place (assuming you trust them!)

Basically, the idea is that your offsite drive is somewhere that protects your data in the event your house burns down or you get robbed. My strong suggestion would be in a locked drawer at your workplace (unless you work at home). Most people's workplaces are air-conditioned, secure, and convenient.

Regardless of the 'offsite' location you choose to keep your hard drive, there are some key factors to keep in mind:

Always keep the drive safe from large magnetic fields!
Ensure the location has a temperature range between 10 degrees celsius (50 degrees fahrenheit) and 43 degrees celsius (110 degrees fahrenheit). So, keeping it in a car would usually not be a good idea.


Boot Camp on Late 2010 Macbook Air using USB flash drive?

Bootcamp is a tool for installing Windows on the same drive with your OS X.

If you want to have Windows on a USB, then boot from your Windows installation cd and install Windows on the USB.

Then whenever you want to boot into Windows, plug your USB, hit alt/option and select Windows as your boot disc.

It may be better though, if you find a ready/made Windows USB Edition.

Either way, it will work :)

Edit:

After your first boot into Windows, do not forget to insert the Mac OS X Installation disc, in order to install the Windows/Bootcamp drivers!


Free firewall and network monitor Application like the LittleSnitch?

That would be the TCPblock.

Almost like Little snitch but no fancy UI.

TCPBlock is a lightweight and fast application firewall for Mac OS X 10.6 or later developed by delantis.com.
The Mac OS X firewall protects you from connections that come from outside of your computer. But what about the software from your computer that opens new connections to the internet? With TCPBlock you can prevent selected applications on your computer from opening connections to the network.


How can I get my Verizon apple Iphone to straightalk?

I use my iPhone from Verizon (not unlocked by Verizon) in Thailand, where they don't provide any kind of Straight talk.
So I just disabled in Settings all sort of use of my [integrated] US number, and added my Apple ID. Thou it is now used more like iPod Touch, but I am pretty accessible true iMessage, FaceTime, Viber, Facebook, etc... And all this only when I am in a Wi-Fi reachable area.

So IMO, to not use Verizon services with Verizon iPhone - this would be one option to do so...


Where are back up restore app data guidelines?

iOS Data Storage Guidelines

See Apple's iOS Data Storage Guidelines as a starting point. This documentation is written for developers of iOS applications:

  Overview

  iCloud includes Backup, which automatically backs up a user’s iOS device daily over Wi-Fi. Everything in your app’s home directory is backed up, with the exception of the application bundle itself, the caches directory, and temp directory. Purchased music, apps, books, the Camera Roll, device settings, home screen and app organization, messages, and ringtones are backed up as well. Because backups are done wirelessly and stored in iCloud for each user, it’s best to minimize the amount of data that’s stored for your app. Large files will lengthen the time it takes to perform a backup and consume more of a user’s available iCloud storage.

See also the Core Data in iCloud documentation.


Is there a way to filter or sort my iOS Apps by Account which was used to purchase them?

I've multiple accounts as well. I'd like to use free US apps as well that they don't provide on my countries App Store. Neat trick.

Anyway. Unfortunately there isn't a sort option existing in iTunes like the one you've asked since Apple won't care about our situation in general. Most users will only have a single account.

Also there isn't a third-party app for that.

So we're stuck with changing accounts all the time. But one advice that I can give you is that check some of those apps that you've downloaded with your US account in Austria store. Maybe those developers placed theirs apps in Austria store as well as of now. Deleting the old one and re-downloading it will keep your app library more organized.


How can I copy a Playlist from one iTunes library to another?

Under the File menu, In the Library expanding list, you will find "Export Playlist".

On the receiving machine you would use "Import Playlist" found in the same menu.

Seems like you have the right procedure (although I do not know for sure that drag and drop will work with the playlist...) but have you tried to export a .txt file - that's what I get when I export a playlist. If you have the option could you export it as txt, verify that the file contains a list of songs, then verify that it also contains a list of songs when you get it back from dropbox? You should at least be able to isolate where the list disappears.


Remove On-screen volume display from ipad

There's no way to disable the animation when using the physical buttons. If the icon shows up for far longer than the buttons are pressed, I would suspect your volume button might be stuck or there's hardware / sensor damage inside.

For a workaround, I have an iPad with a similar problem, and I use AssistiveTouch

Device > Volume Control (tap a few times) to dismiss the popup.


How to change path in Finder by entering the path manually?

Finder has a menu item found under Go ("Go to Folder…") where you can type a full path.

The command+shift+G keyboard shortcut makes it handy to summon. This short cut works in the file open and save dialog as well.


Are there apps that allow two iPhones to communicate directly without the need of any network?

HeyTell works well over 3G. I've used it for years. It's great!

Answer to comment:

Walkie Talkie for iPhone might do the trick. It uses Wi-Fi or Bluetooth. The Bluetooth range would only be around 30 feet though. You might be able to use this one over an ad hoc network, but you'd need a PC or Mac to set that up and even then, I don't know if this app uses its own servers to transmit the messages or if they are transmitted directly.

Bluetooth Walkie Talkie also might do the trick but again, its range is limited.

To answer your question in the comment below there is no way to have walkie talkie like functionality over 3G without having 3G signal from a carrier.


Migrating an old physical Windows PC to a virtual machine on the Mac

Perhaps it may be less hassle to build a clean, new XP image rather than import the Sony?

Have you tried using VMWare vCenter Converter? It's a free utility.

Check your Windows XP license string. If it's a OEM license string, don't attempt the following conversion.

From memory, these are the steps in using Converter:

Power on the Sony and connect to your network. Install Converter package on another Windows PC with the disk
capacity to hold your Sony disk image, launch Converter, allow it to install the Converter agent/service
software on the Sony. Begin conversion, you're storing the converted Sony disk image on the Converter
workstation.

From your Mac, map a drive to your Converter workstation, import the stored Sony disk image to either the Parallels or VMWare Mac client software.

When you start the disk image the first time on your Mac, you'll be required to supply the license string.

These aren't finely detailed steps, but you get the idea.


What/where is the multitasking screen on an iPhone

Yes, it is that list they're referring to. And they're right in saying that it is incorrect to assume that apps viewed there are actively running in the background.


How do I change focal distance in iPhone SE

Maybe I'm misunderstanding your question, but you can force the iPhone camera to focus on a particular item/person by tapping where it's located on the screen.

In your case you may also want to lock the focus and exposure. You can do this by tapping and holding on the screen for about two seconds. When you do this you'll see a number of contracting rectangles around your finger and you're then free to move the camera a little while keeping it locked on a particular scene without losing focus. You'll know it's worked as AE/AF LOCK will appear on screen.  To undo this, just tap anywhere on the screen.

You can also zoom in to what you're wanting to capture by pinching two fingers on the screen. This will reveal a line with a positive sign (+) at one end and a negative sign (-) at the other. You can then drag along this line to zoom in/out as required.

[UPDATE]

I'm no photography expert, but since you've clarified you're talking about focal distance, then the iPhone SE by default isn't going to really achieve what you're looking for on its own. After all, it's not a dedicated camera per se.

Instead you might want to consider purchasing one of the many add-on telephoto lenses for iPhone. Apple does offer the olloclip 4-IN-1 Lens which is compatible with iPhone SE models, so it may be worth checking out whether that would meet your needs.

If not, you may find others that meet your needs, such as from the highly regarded likes of Moment and Ztylus.

Another possible option would be to research 3rd party camera apps. Some of these are very highly rated and can achieve awesome enhancements over the default iOS camera app, although I can't personally recommend one in terms of focal distance.


Not able to install Netbeans IDE (PHP bundle) on OS X El Capitan

Make sure that you have downloaded and are using the correct installer. Like your note says, it evidently should not require a separate Java installation.

Otherwise, just install the JDK separately.


There are no native multi-seat solutions for current macOS that allows multiple, simultaneous users on the same Mac each with their own screen, keyboard and mouse.

You can create a multi-seat solution by running Windows or Linux on the Mac instead of macOS.

In theory you could also run for example a native Linux and virtualise several macOS instances to provide multi-seat usage of macOS on the Mac. In practice, you'll have licensing worries amongst other things.


Which format for external disk for performance?

None of the HFS flavors will offer any performance benefit that's measurable. For that reason, go with the default format disk utility gives you and look to optimize elsewhere.

I have seen encryption slow down some storage medium such as slow USB flash and I would expect journaling there to also be more of a slowdown than on storage with fast cache or more responsive write service times.

I suppose journaling could in some rare circumstances (bizarre edge cases) slow things down as you need to journal certain actions, take the action, and then journal that the action is complete. However, the journaling is for rare events like file creation, file deletion, etc... - some metadata operations are journaled, not all data writes like other filesystems allow which can cause a large performance impact.

Journaling does make it easy to roll the filesystem back to a known state if the system crashes or the drive gets disconnected without changes flushed, so you can save hundreds of seconds to several minutes at the next reboot / mount by journaling.

For best performance, keep the drive approximately 70% full at most as portions of the disk are much slower for random access and the OS uses the fast part of the drive first.

So, in order of fastest to slowest speed transfer:

Connection type: Thunderbolt2 > Thunderbolt > Fiber Channel > SAS > USB 3.0 > FW 800/400 > USB 2.0

Storage Medium: Specialized SLC/MLC Flash with high speed controllers > PCI Prosumer SSD > 15k HDD > Consumer SSD > 10k/7.5k HDD > Fast Small FLASH > 5k HDD > Consumer USB flash storage


Homebrew permissions & multiple users needing to brew update

Is this considered bad? I thought one of the advantages of using /usr/local/ for your installs was that you don't need sudo. But clearly we do.

Homebrew, by default, sets itself up for single-user access to /usr/local. So you need to open up the permissions on the directory tree for it to be administered by more than one person.

People don't need to run sudo here to administer homebrew. You just need to change some permissions. Since you already have:

  All users who would need to modify Homebrew are members of admin group.

You need to do two more things:

Make sure everything under /usr/local belongs to the group admin; and
Make sure anyone from the group admin can write to anything under /usr/local.

In this case the changes to make are:

chgrp -R admin /usr/local
chmod -R g+w /usr/local
chgrp -R admin /Library/Caches/Homebrew
chmod -R g+w /Library/Caches/Homebrew

And any user from the admin group should be able to manage the homebrew installation on the machine.  If you need to add a user to the admin group this can be accomplished like this:

 dseditgroup -o edit -a <username> -t user admin

(that user will need to login again to have the privileges granted).

For sanity on the machine, you may want to consider creating your own fork of Homebrew and have your local homebrew git repository point to the local fork. That lets you customize Homebrew for your environment and control the versions of packages that people are able to install with the brew command. With multiple people doing installs you could run in to version issues or dependency issues.


What bitness is Mountain Lion kernel, because `uname -p` returns `i386`?

Per: http://lists.apple.com/archives/Darwin-dev/2009/Aug/msg00211.html

You want uname -m rather than uname -p to determine the bitness of the kernel.

$ uname -m
x86_64


Getting old photos from Camera Roll to Photo Stream

I'm doing this by using Photos on a Mac. I connect the phone to the computer and Photos lets me import and then delete the originals.

Once that is done, the Photos app pushes them up to the iCloud Photo Library and the phone has free space to re-download the photos over time.

If you have a PC or don't want to use Photos, you can transfer the photos using iTunes and then use a web browser to upload the photos to iCloud.

Having a computer to do the upload is working much better than having an iOS device which goes to sleep and uses battery instead of wall power.

I've gotten 15k photos into the cloud so far with 10.10.3 and it's been solid for a day. Fingers crossed it stays that way.

Also, as Buscar웃 astutely pointed out - your iCloud Photo Library can grow to arbitrary size but the Photo Stream has limits - 10,000 photos per 24 hour upload period / 25k per month. These limits are only in effect if you don't store all your photos in the iCloud Photo Library using iOS 8.3 or later. Then, you are limited by your total storage space and bandwidth as far as I can tell so soon after release of the product.


External USB NTFS drive not recognized in macOS High Sierra

I fixed it by performing a chkdsk /f in Windows.


How much broadband data does Apple TV use in the menu screen?

If you consider a movie to be changing data 24 frames per second and compare the size of the menu art compared to the size of a movie screen you will quickly realize the menu items are negligible.

You will blow through a months worth of menu data in less than 4 minutes of a TV show through netflix or one short youtube video.

Do watch your data consumption - streaming music is moderate use - streaming video is heavy use.


Does OS X respect Windows Server 2012 AD DS Fine-Grained Password policies?

Based on my testing and research, the answer is "no".

According to Best Practices for Integrating OS X with Active Directory

"Are subject to the organization’s domain password policies".

It doesn't reference anything more specifically than the domain password policy, which is the only object that my test clients seem to recognize.


How to get past a forgotten iPhone passcode?

Connect the device to a Mac over USB and restore it using Finder. Since you have control of the AppleID that locks that device, you only need to get it connected to a network again. You can also see the last backup date online and know how much data might be lost in a restore.

Once the restore process is complete, you can restore the backup or just set up the phone as new. The apps, data, passcode will all be erased.


OS X 10.6.8 does not have a recovery partition. First backup all your user data before preceding. Try starting the computer in safe mode: Shut down the computer and wait 10 seconds; Press the power button and press the Shift key. This will perform a file consistency check and disable other functions on your computer. Open Disk Utility and check the S.M.A.R.T status. It seems as if your hard drive is failing.


Does Parallels 10 fix the Fn keys issue?

parallels can't 'fix' this issue, because the Fn+FKey combination is done in the keyboard itself, before being sent to the OS.

The Fn key itself does send a key code, but the combo doesn't.


Is there any way to turn off the "Finish Setting Up Your iPad" nag in iOS 11?

Click on the ‘Finish setting up iPad’ notification and then instead of entering a passcode choose ‘other options’ and select ‘Don’t use a passcode ‘


Setting to open new TextEdit document window in center?

It seems that TextEdit hardcodes the position for new document windows, and it's not possible to tweak this behaviour using defaults write to modify TextEdit's Preferences. See this old post from Apple Discussions:

  The current version of TextEdit does not maintain a preference in the com.apple.TextEdit.plist file concerning window placement for the document window. What appears to be missing in the TextEdit preferences file is an
   NSWindow Frame property for the document window itself.

To change the default position of new TextEdit documents there's really only one solution: write a custom AppleScript that can open a new document at your preferred location centered on the screen.

tell application "Finder"
    set screen_resolution to bounds of window of desktop
end tell

tell application "TextEdit"
    set screenWidth to (item 3 of screen_resolution) - (item 1 of screen_resolution)
    set screenHeight to (item 4 of screen_resolution) - (item 2 of screen_resolution)
    set screenCentreX to screenWidth / 2
    set screenCentreY to screenHeight / 2

    activate
    make new document

    set defaultBounds to bounds of front window
    set x1 to item 1 of defaultBounds
    set y1 to item 2 of defaultBounds
    set x2 to item 3 of defaultBounds
    set y2 to item 4 of defaultBounds
    set w to x2 - x1
    set h to y2 - y1

    set centreBounds to {screenCentreX - (w / 2), screenCentreY - (h / 2), screenCentreX + (w / 2), screenCentreY + (h / 2)}

    -- "set position" does not work, so we need to fall back on "set bounds"
    -- https://stackoverflow.com/q/12803847/190298
    set bounds of front window to centreBounds
end tell


Command + Space Spotlight shortcut stopped working

same thing happen to my 2 MacBooks, must have been an apple update.
in sys pref, it seems the shortcut is still the same.

I pressed the "restore default" button, and it worked again on both laptops


To see your entire history, select Show All History on the History menu, or press Cmd-Y.

To restore your tabs after each restart, open Preferences from the Safari menu, go to the General tab, and select Safari Opens With All Windows from Last Session.

The main advantages to using Safari over Chrome are its better system integration, which you may or may not care about. Examples of this are proper use of the Notification Centre, ability to AirPlay (some) videos from your browser to other AirPlay devices, iCloud password and bookmark syncing between devices, and Handoff when you want to open a page on your Mac, and continue reading it on your iOS device (or vice versa).

Historically, Chrome has also been a bit of CPU hog compared to Safari, which ultimately impacts your battery life. I haven't checked recently whether that's still the case.


Is there an option of liquid cooling/heatsink replacement for mid 2011 Mac Mini?

I will say no.

I haven't seen anything on the market yet. But since Mac mini is aluminum, you can just cool its casing. But that of course wouldn't be efficient.

The reason no one made one is the same reason no one made a water-cooling for laptop. The design of Mac desktops are more like laptops rather than a Tower PC. There's minimal space for anything else.


Time Machine fails to eject disk (sparesebundle) on Time Capsule, then cannot mount on different Mac

You may not like my advice, but walk away from network backups. Use direct attached storage and use two backup destinations if you can’t afford to have one take days to check the filesystem if they eject due to a cable failure, power failure or cat.
To have things run as you describe, you’d need dedicated new hardware, have to set up a directory service and/or managing permissions by user ID, manage SMB and possibly AFP sharing services, the source system has to do a ton of overhead to manage the storage bands. Time Capsule is not powerful enough for the task in my experience. It was fine 5 years ago (fine for light use, OK performance) but not anymore.
What’s easy is APFS filesystem on the Mac so your get snapshots and HFS+ filesystem on the storage destination.

And to answer your question, you can use tmutil stopbackup to ask for a quick abort, but since you skip any clean up, your next backup interval takes so much longer since the code has to do all the cleanup before it finishes the next interval. I would need to analyze the network capture, but temporary unavailable errors can be due to the server not responding in a timely manner since it’s busy managing files and network as opposed to serving the data to your Mac.


How to convert an exiting partition to RAID on OS X?

Enabling a RAID is destructive to the existing data using disk utility and native OS X tools.

You will need to have a temporary copy of the data to re-load it onto the new RAID volume.

I know several people that always set up their externals to be in a RAID so they can always mirror up existing drives after the fact to duplicate, snapshot or extend/stripe them after they have data on them.

Never been worth the hassle for me to set things up that way, but it works long term for many.