Partitions: Create Bootable USB to load Windows 10 install

Your question lack sufficient information to properly answer. I will assume the machine where you wish to install Windows is a PC and not a Mac.

Certain Windows 10 ISO files can contain at least one file to large to be saved on a FAT32 formatted volume. However, when the same release of Windows 10 is saved to a USB flash drive by the Windows media creation tool, smaller files are substituted for the ones to large to fit on a FAT32 formatted volume.

One solution you be to install VirtualBox on you Mac. This is a free product. You can then use your Windows 10 ISO file to install Windows as a virtual machine. Once booted to Windows, you can download the free media create tool from Microsoft. This tool can be used to create a bootable Windows 10 installation USB flash drive.

  Note: After installing VirtualBox, you will need to install the VirtualBox Extension Pack in order to access a physical flash drive from the virtual machine.


Applescript Validating USB Stick - Matching serial and mount point

Of course I do not know the total scope of what you're trying to accomplish however because as you presently have it coded, the script could be running from other then the target USB Drive. So I've written it a bit differently, however it does get the mount point based on the serial number if the target USB Drive is mounted. You can then branch accordingly to the conditions, i.e. whether the script is running from the target USB Drive or not and if the target USB Drive is mounted or not, etc. After getting the mount point in the code, I've included another block of code to test against if the target USB Drive is mounted and where the script was run from. This obviously is just one example of testing and you'll have to do as you need. The bottom line here is, how I coded getting the mount point of the target USB Drive based on the serial number and this I guess it what you're really looking for.

Here's my take on the code and it's output when run from both the Desktop and the target USB Drive:

Note: Before use, change the actual serial number below to the appropriate value.

AppleScript Code:

--    # Get the volume this script is located on.

tell application "Finder"
    try
        set theVolumeThisScriptIsLocatedOn to text 1 thru -2 of POSIX path of (disk of (path to me) as alias)
        log "The volume this script is located on is: " & quoted form of theVolumeThisScriptIsLocatedOn
    on error
        set theVolumeThisScriptIsLocatedOn to POSIX path of (disk of (path to me) as alias)
        log "The volume this script is located on is: " & quoted form of theVolumeThisScriptIsLocatedOn
    end try
end tell

--    # Set the Serial Number of the target USB Drive.

set usbSerialNumber to "200434112111BA425FA4"

--    # See if the USB Drive matching 'usbSerialNumber' is mounted and if so, get its mount point.
--    # The variable 'usbMountPoint' will contain either its mount point, e.g., '/Volumes/...', or '' as in nothing.

set usbMountPoint to (do shell script "system_profiler SPUSBDataType | awk '/" & usbSerialNumber & "/' RS= | awk -F': ' '/Mount Point: /{print $2}'") as text
log "The mount point is: " & quoted form of usbMountPoint
if usbMountPoint is equal to "" then
    log "The target USB Drive is not mounted!"
else
    log "The target USB Drive is mounted!"
end if

--    # See if the script is running from the target USB Drive or elsewhere.

if usbMountPoint is not equal to "" and theVolumeThisScriptIsLocatedOn is equal to usbMountPoint then
    log "This script is running from the target USB Drive!"
else
    log "This script is not running from the target USB Drive!"
end if

Replies when run from the target USB Drive:

tell current application
    path to current application
        --> alias "16GB-USB:USB Test.scpt"
end tell
tell application "Finder"
    get disk of alias "16GB-USB:USB Test.scpt"
        --> alias "16GB-USB:"
    (*The volume this script is located on is: '/Volumes/16GB-USB'*)
end tell
tell current application
    do shell script "system_profiler SPUSBDataType | awk '/200434112111BA425FA4/' RS= | awk -F': ' '/Mount Point: /{print $2}'"
        --> "/Volumes/16GB-USB"
    (*The mount point is: '/Volumes/16GB-USB'*)
    (*The target USB Drive is mounted!*)
    (*This script is running from the target USB Drive!*)
end tell

Replies when run from the Desktop with the target USB Drive connected:

tell current application
    path to current application
        --> alias "Macintosh HD:Users:me:Desktop:USB Test.scpt"
end tell
tell application "Finder"
    get disk of alias "Macintosh HD:Users:me:Desktop:USB Test.scpt"
        --> alias "Macintosh HD:"
end tell
tell current application
    path to current application
        --> alias "Macintosh HD:Users:me:Desktop:USB Test.scpt"
end tell
tell application "Finder"
    get disk of alias "Macintosh HD:Users:me:Desktop:USB Test.scpt"
        --> alias "Macintosh HD:"
    (*The volume this script is located on is: '/'*)
end tell
tell current application
    do shell script "system_profiler SPUSBDataType | awk '/200434112111BA425FA4/' RS= | awk -F': ' '/Mount Point: /{print $2}'"
        --> "/Volumes/16GB-USB"
    (*The mount point is: '/Volumes/16GB-USB'*)
    (*The target USB Drive is mounted!*)
    (*This script is not running from the target USB Drive!*)
end tell

Replies when run from the Desktop without the target USB Drive connected:

tell application "Finder"
    get disk of alias "Macintosh HD:Users:me:Desktop:USB Test.scpt"
        --> alias "Macintosh HD:"
end tell
tell current application
    path to current application
        --> alias "Macintosh HD:Users:me:Desktop:USB Test.scpt"
end tell
tell application "Finder"
    get disk of alias "Macintosh HD:Users:me:Desktop:USB Test.scpt"
        --> alias "Macintosh HD:"
    (*The volume this script is located on is: '/'*)
end tell
tell current application
    do shell script "system_profiler SPUSBDataType | awk '/200434112111BA425FA4/' RS= | awk -F': ' '/Mount Point: /{print $2}'"
        --> ""
    (*The mount point is: ''*)
    (*The target USB Drive is not mounted!*)
    (*This script is not running from the target USB Drive!*)
end tell

Understanding what the set usbMountPoint to (do shell script "...") as text command line is doing to set the value of the usbMountPoint variable.

system_profiler SPUSBDataType | outputs all information related to the USB hardware and then gets piped to the first occurrence of awk in the command line.
awk '/" & usbSerialNumber & "/' RS= | looks for the serial number and outputs everything from the first blank line before the serial number and the first blank line after the serial number and its output then gets piped to the second occurrence of awk in the command line. This ensures the only line containing '/Mount Point:' in the output is associated with the serial number (if the target USB Drive is mounted).
awk -F': ' '/Mount Point: /{print $2}' finds the line containing 'Mount Point: ' then uses ': ' as the field separator and prints the second field which will either be the POSIX pathname of the mount point of the target USB Drive, or '' as in nothing (because it wasn't mounted).


You are mixing a lot of completely or partly different/unrelated things here.

To properly and quickly name resolve your hard disk/SSD, you also have to add its name to the hosts file:

127.0.0.1    localhost santas-macbook-pro-2.local tt-this_is_a_VM_volume_and_therefore_slower_than_a_real_disk

Now you can check the response time by pinging it:

ping tt-this_is_a_VM_disk_and_therefore_slower_than_a_real_disk
PING tt-this_is_a_VM_disk_and_therefore_slower_than_a_real_disk (127.0.0.1): 56 data bytes
64 bytes from 127.0.0.1: icmp_seq=0 ttl=64 time=0.054 ms
64 bytes from 127.0.0.1: icmp_seq=1 ttl=64 time=0.089 ms
64 bytes from 127.0.0.1: icmp_seq=2 ttl=64 time=0.071 ms

--- tt-this_is_a_VM_disk_and_therefore_slower_than_a_real_disk ping statistics ---
3 packets transmitted, 3 packets received, 0.0% packet loss
round-trip min/avg/max/stddev = 0.054/0.071/0.089/0.014 ms

The average round-trip time is ~0.071 ms. So the time needed to resolve it is less than ~0.071/2 ms. With a real HDD/SSD you can expect even faster responses.

Please use the short tt (the name of your volume) instead of my long tt-this_.... name to get an even quicker response.

To check your DNS cache open Console.app (enter mDNSResponder in the Search field) and Terminal.app.

Check the time and enter in Terminal: sudo killall -INFO mDNSResponder

Roughly the first half of the output in Console with the time stamp noted previously is the DNS cache. The cache part starts with ------------ Cache ------------- and ends with a summary like Cache currently contains 391 entities; 33 referenced by active questions.

To kill the cache use sudo dscacheutil -flushcache; sudo killall -HUP mDNSResponder

Re-check the cache by entering  sudo killall -INFO mDNSResponder again.
discoveryutil was introduced in OS X 10.10.0 and replaced by its predecessor mDNSResponder in OS X 10.10.4.
To modify your local hostname and computer name use scutil:

sudo scutil --set LocalHostName trial
sudo scutil --set ComputerName Trial

If you still get a Bonjour name (e.g. Santa's MacBook Pro.local) your hostname is probably set incorrectly. Either change the hostname by entering:

sudo scutil --set HostName trial

or remove it completely (recommended) by modifying the file preferences.list:

sudo  nano /Library/Preferences/SystemConfiguration/preferences.plist

and remove your current malformed HostName near the bottom of the file:

    <key>HostName</key>
    <string>Santa's MacBook Pro.local</string>

☛

    <key>HostName</key>
    <string></string>

You may also have to remove the preferences backup file preferences.plist.old. Reboot afterwards.
Name resolution is roughly done in this order:

  files (e.g. /etc/hosts) > mDNS > DNS)  \
   ↕                         (↓ )   (↓)   | rather remote hostnames
DNS cache (memory) (←-----------------)  /
   ↑                                       \
memory                                      | rather local hostnames (including hosts file)
   ↑                                        |
 file (preferences.plist)                  /

inetTester is a tool to quickly check the elapsed time spent from the Java layer to access the localhost domain name. This is not the time to get (resolve) the local hostname. The hostname is stored somewhere in memory and a system call takes nanoseconds to get it.
The name of your main volume (previously Santa's MacBook, now tt) is in no way related with the DNS cache or a slow local hostname resolution.

Regarding item 1 in the list. I wear Dark Vader's helmet party hat and got nasty temporarily.


How to get an iMessage conversation to go back from green to blue?

Settings

Before doing anything:

Quit the Messages app (Double press your home button and swipe up on the Messages app).
Go to Settings > Messages and Turn OFF and then back ON your iMessage option.
Now open back Message and try to send a message to your friend 's iPhone, but make sure to use the button at the Top-Left corner to find your friend and start the conversation, don't just open your recent chat with him/her.

This should have reset your iMessage settings, so you should be able to send iMessages to your friend now.

Restart

If the process above didn't solve the issue, you may want to:

Restart your iPhone, long press the Sleep/Wake button until you see the Apple logo again, then release, OR you can long press until you see a slider which can be used to turn OFF the iPhone, once done that, press again the Sleep/Wake button to turn the iPhone back ON.
Try to send a message to your friend

I'm sure you already know the difference between iMessage and normal SMS/MMS, although that, I'll leave you a link to the Apple Support page about the difference, have a great day!


Hide files/icons on the desktop but not in finder

In the terminal, do this:

defaults write com.apple.finder CreateDesktop -bool false && killall Finder

After this, there'll be nothing on your Desktop (but still in ~/Desktop, i.e. your Desktop Folder). It'll look like this:

Beautiful, isn't it? If you want to change it back:

defaults write com.apple.finder CreateDesktop -bool true && killall Finder


2015 Macbook Pro running Catalina keeps restarting while in use

You start by not opening so much tabs, or you can try a different plugin like RabbitMQ because the plug-in Could be the case.


This is the device trying to connect to the Apple updating server, but due to a network reason at your end, you are being prompted for your password, either for your network, proxy, or other reason. This is not asking for your Apple ID but rather whatever network connection authentication details you usually use to connect to your network.


You must go to settings -> icons settings -> set files icons.


Configure WLAN as metered or tethered in macOS

It appears that you cannot without a third party extension.

In this question: How does iOS and OS X detect when a Wi-Fi network is a personal hotspot?

There is an answer that describes how OS X detects whether the connection is a personal hotspot and it seems that there is some meta data that's embedded within the signal that identifies it as a hotspot or not.  (There's even some code that checks for if it's a carplay device, too)

  Apple controls the Hardware, the Drivers and the Operating System, I
  guess they can easily add extra metadata when broadcasting the WiFi
  signal so your Mac knows to whether adding the chain icon or not.


Opt out from getting public beta versions of OS X

I was on the public beta also! I was able to go to the public release just by updating from the App Store. It kept all my information!


Which App saves and restores window size/position on relaunch of an app?

Ask the developer of iTap mobile RDP to add that as a feature.  Normally it is up to the application to keep track of its own windows.


Can one influence Mac OS X's / Darwin's filesystem caching behaviour?

It's hard to tell without access to your system or steps to reproduce your error, but in my experience, the OS is performing like any other UNIX when the swap device and root filesystem fills. The simplest way to avoid the dialog is ensure you have enough free space to make another swap file (they top out at 2 GB I believe on Mountain Lion).

Most people like to have 25% (or more) free space since the OS optimizes hot files and defragments on the fly and these self-disable when free space becomes low to avoid churning the IO when there isn't space to write or many free places on the drive to choose for faster file access.

One notable difference between OS X and other UNIX is that the Apple OS does late page allocation to swap, so you don't see large swap files when they are not needed. For this, you can either disable swap entirely or ensure your drive has sufficient free space to handle whatever amount of swap you see in practice.

I've not heard of anyone messing with the paging algorithm itself, but Apple has open sourced that part of the OS, so anyone who cares can make code level changes and run with it.

http://www.opensource.apple.com/release/mac-os-x-1082/

I would start with buying the next largest side storage drive and monitor your space usage to ensure you don't get less than 10 GB empty as a starter rule of thumb. If you're doing serious work, you might invest more in drive space to ensure you don't run out.


Modify "open with" list for file type (not for duplicate removal)

I will suggest an alternative way than modifying the system's "open with" list.

I use LaunchBar as my main tool to interact with apps, files and more. I have configured LaunchBar so that when I select a document (or some text) and double tap the command key, LauchBar will allow me to specify the Application to open the file.

I believe that Alfred and Quicksilver have similar abilities.


I have experienced the same problem on the same hardware, my solution (which has ben working OK for 3 days now) was to replace the DNS server settings with Primary, Secondary & Tertiary number strings determined by running an app called namebench.


As you already seem to have Homebrew installed, a simple

brew install python

should do. It will put python3 into /usr/local/bin so it shouldn't lead to any conflicts with the default installation.

PS: This is just for installing Python 3 though, not sure it solves your OpenSSL error.


Is there a command line utility to perform common Wi-Fi operations?

I just released a command line utility, mac-wifi, hosted at https://github.com/keithrbennett/macwifi, which meets these needs (at least for me, at this time, feel free to offer suggestions). It is a Ruby script, and can be installed in either of these ways:

gem install mac-wifi
curl https://raw.githubusercontent.com/keithrbennett/macwifi/master/bin/mac-wifi -o mac-wifi && chmod +x mac-wifi

For interactive use (it has a shell to keep it open to more simply type multiple commands) you will need to install the pry gem:

gem install pry

Here is its help output:

mac-wifi version 1.1.0 -- Available commands are:

ci                      - connected to Internet (not just wifi on)?
co[nnect] network-name  - turns wifi on, connects to network-name
cy[cle]                 - turns wifi off, then on, preserving network selection
d[isconnect]            - disconnects from current network, does not turn off wifi
h[elp]                  - prints this help
i[nfo]                  - prints wifi-related information
lsp[referred]           - lists preferred (not necessarily available) networks
lsa[vailable]           - lists available networks
n[etwork_name]          - name (SSID) of currently connected network
on                      - turns wifi on
of[f]                   - turns wifi off
pa[ssword] network-name - shows password for preferred network-name
q[uit]                  - exits this program (interactive shell mode only)
r[m] network-name       - removes network-name from the preferred networks list
s[hell]                 - opens an interactive pry shell (command line only)
t[ill]                  - returns when the desired Internet connection state is true. Options:
                          'on'/:on or 'off'/:off
                          wait interval, in seconds (optional, defaults to 0.5 seconds)
w[ifion]                - is the wifi on?
x[it]                   - exits this program (interactive shell mode only)

When in interactive shell mode:
    * use quotes for string parameters such as method names.
    * for pry commands, use prefix `%`.


Hard Drives shows up in Finder, but not Desktop

You probably have accidentally unchecked "Hard disks" from the Finder Preference pane (accessible with ⌘ +  , ). Just check the box,

and you should be good to go!


iPhone 5 and updates from my Hotmail.com account

Nevermind,  I found my answer at How to Geek  howtogeek.com


Hold Cmd-Q to Quit as a system-wide action?

You can do this by installing and running Hammerspoon, then including the following Lua code in the Hammerspoon configuration file (.hammerspoon/init.lua):

-- config: number of seconds to hold Command-Q to quit application
cmdQDelay = 2

cmdQTimer = nil
cmdQAlert = nil

function cmdQCleanup()
  hs.alert.closeSpecific(cmdQAlert)
  cmdQTimer = nil
  cmdQAlert = nil
end

function stopCmdQ()
  if cmdQTimer then
    cmdQTimer:stop()
    cmdQCleanup()
    hs.alert("quit canceled",0.5)
  end
end

function startCmdQ()
  local app = hs.application.frontmostApplication()
  cmdQTimer = hs.timer.doAfter(cmdQDelay, function() app:kill(); cmdQCleanup() end)
  cmdQAlert = hs.alert("hold to quit " .. app:name(), true)
end

cmdQ = hs.hotkey.bind({"cmd"},"q",startCmdQ,stopCmdQ)

Change the value of cmdQDelay to fit your preference.

A brief explanation:

The final line tells Hammerspoon to intercept any presses of Command-Q. It will run the lua function named startCmdQ when the key is pressed, and stopCmdQ when it is released.

startCmdQ takes a note of the foreground app, then starts a timer. If the timer times out, the function given as argument to the timer is called. It kills the app (really, asks it to quit) and cleans up after the action.

stopCmdQ stops the timer if it is still running, so the application is not quit after all. It too cleans up afterwards.

The action is accompanied by alerts to let you know what is going on.

Edit: Once this is installed and active, you can turn it off by running cmdQ:disable() in the hammerspoon console. Turn it back on with cmdQ:enable(). And if you want to excempt some apps from the delay treatment, you can add a test for those apps in the startCmdQ function, opting to run app:kill() immediately instead of starting the timer.

Edit the second: A word of caution. This will let you quit the Finder. Don't panic, though. The easiest way to relaunch Finder is to click on its icon in the Dock. Or you can use Spotlight: Open it via the magnifying glass icon in the menu bar or its keyboard shortcut and type “Finder.app”, then return. (You will only need to type a few letters, as Spotlight will fill in the rest for you). You can also relaunch Finder by running the command hs.application.open("Finder") in the hammerspoon console, or open -a Finder in a Terminal window, if you happen to have Terminal running.


I don't know for sure whether the fourth generation iPod actually has a built in FM Tuner. However, external FM Tuner adapters are quite prevalent.

Edit: Whoops, sorry about that, I did link the wrong item. Chops is correct, that was a transmitter. The link now points to the original item I had intended to link.


It seems like you might need to open the Photos app, and within Preferences choose "Use as System Photo Library"...

Source: https://discussions.apple.com/message/28138885#28138885

However if this doesn't work it would suggest something on your Mac isn't setup right and you should try backing up your data and reinstalling by following these instructions.


I figured out how to keep an entire application on any screen.

Right click the application in the dock
Mouse-ver Options
Select All Desktops from the Assign to sub-menu.

But what if I just want, say one spreadsheet in excel to follow me to any desktop, while it keeps the rest where they are?


Current iOS devices running iOS 5 (iPod Touch, iPhone, iPad) are capable of being standalone devices.  You do not need a computer to use them.

The term "iTunes" can refer to two things...

The iTunes application, which you seem to take issue with, and the iTunes store, where you buy apps, music, movies, etc..

You do not need iTunes (the application), but you will find it difficult to avoid using iTunes (the store).

iTunes (the application), makes it possible to use iTunes (the store) on your computer.  This can provide some convenience, but is not necessary.

As long as an iOS device can connect to the Internet, you can activate it without a computer or iTunes (the application).

iCloud provides several features.  None of them really replace iTunes (application or store).

iTunes in the Cloud: You can let Apple store the music you've purchased from iTunes (the store) on their servers and download them on demand (actually, they just store references to which songs you own, they already have all the files stored for iTunes (the store)).  If you sign up for iTunes Match, they'll also store references to your music that is in your iTunes (application) library but wasn't purchased from Apple.  They'll also upload and store your music that they do not have in the iTunes store (within limits).
Photo Stream: Syncs your photos across all of your devices.  Additional features apply to users of iPhoto or Aperture.
Documents in the Cloud: store your docs on Apple's servers, access & sync them between devices (requires apps that have been written to take advantage of this feature).
Backups: Back up your device's data to the cloud
Sync Apps & Books: Apps and Books purchased through iTunes (store) and the iBookstore (an extension of the iTunes store) can be synced to multiple devices.
Sync calendar, mail, and contact data.  Comes with an @me.com email account.
Find my Friends and Find my iPhone: lets you GPS-stalk your friends and family and track your phone if you lose it.  Find my Friends can be useful at big gatherings, and it can be toggled on and off at will in case you don't want your mom to know you're hanging out in the seedy part of town.

I hope this is helpful.


"This update is restricted" error when upgrading my system to High Sierra

This message is not part of macOS, but rather is part of a 3rd party MDM (Mobile Device Management) solution that your administrator has installed on your computer. You should contact your administrator.


Cannot change Finder's "New Finder windows open" preference; it's grayed out

I assume your user are assigned administrator rights on the machine?
Have you tried booting up in Safe Mode? Do the problem persist inside there?

To boot in safe mode:

Shut down you mac completely.
Press the power button.
After you hear the startup tone, hold Shift key.
Release Shift once you see the gray Apple icon and progress bar.

Also, try to create a new user. Check if the problem appears on your new user as well.

Edit:

Found this to be a solution:

Move (dont delete in case something goes wrong) theese four files to your desktop from <~/Library/Preferences> and make a full reboot. Not necessary to do safe mode for this operation. Just Cut and paste the files directly.

com.apple.desktop.plist
com.apple.desktopservices.plist
com.apple.finder.plist
com.apple.preference.desktopscreeneffect.plist
com.apple.sidebarlists.plist

The files should appear after a reboot, and hopefully fix your problem.


Reopen Swift 2.0 migration tool in Xcode 7

To begin migration to swift 2.0 latest syntax, open your Xcode project with xcode7, Click Edit > Convert. See this link:
https://developer.apple.com/swift/blog/


Time Machine backup is too large (but shouldn't be)

I know what is the problem... I only have one backup on time machine and it won't delete it because it's the only one. So I can either clean up some space on the drive (I have other things there) or just delete the backup and let it run again.

How to delete a backup - from here:

The easiest way is to:

Enter time machine (on the Mac whose backup you want to delete)
Go to the point in time you want to delete
Select the icon that looks like a cog in the finder and choose 'Delete Backup'
This ensures the backup catalog remains accurate and the integrity of your data stays intact.


Using iMac Bluetooth keyboard and mouse with MBP

So it's not possible to have the same mouse work on both your iMac and your MacBookPro simultaneously, but you can boot your iMac in target display mode. It becomes a monitor for your MBP therefore allowing you to use your mouse on both connected screens.

Additionally, it sounds like you are having trouble connecting your mouse to your MBP. Make sure your iMac is off, or your mouse is disconnected from the iMac, before trying to connect your mouse to your MBP.


Short answer; no. If you want to know what the app does share its linked under the privacy portion of the app's page:
https://apps.apple.com/us/app/whatsapp-messenger/id310633997
From what I can see there, your Apple ID isn't even shared with the app's devs.


Our iPad is locked and we're not sure of the Apple ID / iCloud password

If the iPad is a recent gift, Apple offers free support to guide you in reclaiming access to her iCloud account. You can't unlock or restore the iPad with iTunes as the device is truly locked until her password is remembered or reset.

https://getsupport.apple.com to see if you get free support
https://AppleID.apple.com to self service reset the password
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT5818 how activation lock works and what to do in your case to recover use of the device

If you don't know how the account was set up, realize that too many wrong guesses will lock that account and make her go through more questions / answers and possibly have to review purchase history with Apple before getting someone to assist in resetting things.


How to put computers online in Apple Remote Desktop

You have to enable remote desktop sharing on the target computers.

Apple has an excellent kickstart resource to enable this setting remotely.  See this Apple Support document and also if your network supports it, you can send a wake command if the network is active while the machine is sleeping. That last item won’t start a powered down machine or reach across routers, only machines oN the same subnet can be woken.


In Mail.app, how can I set a recipient's default email address?

You can if you have the contact in a group in Address Book. Select the group, then go to Edit > Edit Distribution List... You can select the contact's default email address (the default one is marked in bold). As far as I know, this only sets the default address when emailing that group, though. I don't know of a way to set a default address for a "normal" contact. (After trying to figure out a way off and on for several years, I'm inclined to say it isn't possible, but hopefully someone will prove me wrong.)


What would be the repercussions about lying about age in apple developer program?

If you just want to create apps, you can download Xcode and do that for free. You can even deploy the apps to your own devices.

If you want to sell apps on the App Store, it takes more than just signing-up for the Dev Program; you have to sign contracts and bank agreements. You could be susceptible to charges of fraud and/or misrepresentation.


No, there's no way to disable that one place for all apps.
Contrary to what you might think, it is not the case of one macOS helper tool. Instead it is each of these apps that comes with its own helper tool - different from the helper tools of other apps.
Some apps will function even when you remove their helper tool - some will not. But it will have to be done individually.


Brew should install the wine in /usr/local/Cellar. Have you ran brew update && brew upgrade wine? I always use the GUI (Wineskin) which can be installed via brew cask. However, I also have the CLI and it works fine.


The command lines are now marked with square brackets as in the screen snippet below.


Is there anything special about the “Utilities” folder?

Nothing is really 'special' about that folder. It's just a folder in /Applications like any other folder (albeit with a custom icon). The permissions on the folder should be the same as /Applications itself — if they're not, they've probably been changed. You should be able to fix the permissions with a permissions repair from Disk Utility.


Not loud enough for what application? I'd start by trying the iPod using different headphones because volume levels can vary greatly and, using earbuds with better isolation allow for lower listening levels. 20 years down the road your ears will thank you (by not ringing in an annoying way.)

If you can't find an acceptable pair of buds consider a portable headphone amplifier like the FiiO E5. It's available for $20 or so, and won't void your warranty.

I just realized that you specified a Euro iPod so I will also link to software that claims to remove the euro volume cap. I can't verify or guarantee it's function, I don't have ready access to Windows computer or a Euro-market iPod for testing. Do your own research and apply this patch at your own risk.


The same thing kept happening to me in an earlier version of 10.8, but it stopped after I reinstalled OS X from the recovery partition.

The UI doesn't make it very clear, but the Reinstall Mac OS X option just does an upgrade install or repairs the current installation. I have done it twice so far and it fixed multiple issues both times. Just upgrading to 10.9 might also have the same effect.


Follow the steps listed on this page - http://support.apple.com/kb/TS4476

If that doesn't fix your problem, try checking your Date & Time settings (Settings > Date & Time). Make sure "Set date and time automatically:" is ticked, and that your time zone is correct.


Apple really designed the iPad as a 1-to-1 device (one device to one person) so I don't think there is an EASY way.

I know they have deployment products out there that might make it so you can remove and restore profiles, but it's not on the fly and I think it's very clunky.

I also did a quick Google and noticed this software that is out in beta and is exactly what you want, but it looks quite experimental and your iPad needs to be jailbroken to install it: http://nowsci.com/userprofiles/


iPhoto not recognizing memory card, but mounts in Finder

Connect the memory card and launch the program Image Capture (found in the Utilities folder in both /Applications/ or in Launchpad, if you're running Lion. In the lower left corner of the screen, there should be a menu that says Connecting this camera opens...; from the menu, select iPhoto from the list.

This should make iPhoto launch when you connect this memory card.


MKV files wrongly considered as "Other" in Storage stats

Unfortunately there isn't a way to force the system to recognize *.mkv files as videos from the 'About This Mac' window. Macs do not natively support this file type (you'll notice that neither Quicktime nor iTunes will play them) and lack the specific decoding algorithm for the *.mkv format by default (also known as a 'codec'), so the system actually doesn't know what to do with them. Technically the *.mkv format is actually considered an open standard container format (not a video format), which means that it's not limited to any specific coding format (it can hold pretty much anything). Macs group 'container' files that aren't natively supported media types as 'Other'.

I know what you're thinking, and YES, it IS weird that it can figure it out in Finder though. I have no facts on why, only a guess. It might be because we've installed a 3rd party media player capable of handling and decoding the file. So basically the 3rd party player knows what an *.mkv file is, the system knows that the 3rd party player is in fact a video player, but unfortunately it doesn't come back around to close the information loop. It would be nice if that 3rd party player could pass that info on to the system though, wouldn't it?


How to remap F4 to Dashboard or Notifications on a MacBook Pro in Yosemite?

Do you have any exclamation points in triangles indicating the key is also mapped to a different function? From what you’ve described as your settings, it should be working…


You see the prompt if the App Store is set to a country which is different from your iTunes account. Your option is to either sign in (with an existing or create a new ) iTunes account belonging to that country. There is another option which is to change your current iTunes account's country to that country, but you'll LOSE any credit balance.


How to script a logout while screen is locked?

Can you get system events to do Shift-Option-Command-q ??
something like... (I don't know the exact syntax)

'tell application "System Events" to keystroke q with command down option down shift down'


Finder does not show content of some folders

Can't say I've ever seen that sort of behaviour before, I'm not really sure what might have caused it, but I've got two things to test.

First off, it's possible that the folders got hidden for some reason. Try running

chflags -R nohidden ~/Pictures/Photo\ Booth\ Archive/*

If that doesn't work, see if you can access the folders directly in the Finder by focusing the Finder, pressing ⌘ cmd + ⇧ shift + G and entering the full path of one of the folders into the "Go to the folder:" dialog. If Finder can get there, then there's likely some setting hiding them from view; if not, then there's some reason Finder can't properly access the actual directories on disk.


Is it possible to virtualize PowerPC... FOR a PowerPC? (absolutely not Intel-related)

Hypothetically, it may be possible, but the tools may not exist. The best tool I could find though was QEMU and Mac on Linux. It says it can virtualize, but I have not tested it or used it. Qemu also says its for embedded PPC - which would be like the Xbox 360, and not an older Macintosh - so therefore still not allow PPC virtualization.

I see two problems that make this a bit harder:

It depends on the chip you are trying to virtualize - the chip needs to have some virtualization instruction sets to allow this. Some of the G5s had this, but since I don't know what machine you have, its hard to verify. Thats what allows Intels to virtualize all types of OS now. This is pretty much what you are talking about 'its already there', but its not always there in all cases - the processor needs to know how to virtualize itself.
Power of the machines today - even when the first Intel Macs came out, some were just as powerful or even more powerful than the G5's of the time. Now that years have gone by, many of the tools (like MoL) look like they haven't been updated in a while, probably due to community involvement. Thats probably because too, if you really needed to run a much older machine, you could emulate the older machine faster than the older machine could virtualize itself.

For most of the people that I have seen in your situation, the easiest route is to just get another machine in most cases (and thats what I have done before, years ago). You can even get pretty powerful G5's for pretty much nothing today. I had a friend about 2 years ago just give a dual proc G5.


Will my Macbook Air be able to handle dual 4k displays?

Short answer - No.

Longer answer, from Everymac…

  *Although Apple only reports that this model can support a single external display up to 2560x1600, Intel reports that this model can simultaneously support two external displays up to 2560x1600 "daisy chained" via Thunderbolt 2.

The current top spec Macbook Pro, on the other hand, can support 2 external monitors at 4k, but only at 24Hz - same source

  *This model supports a simultaneous maximum resolution up to 3840x2160 on two external displays via Thunderbolt 2. Alternately, it can support a single display up to 3840x2160 via Thunderbolt 2 and a single 1080p display at up to 60 Hz, 3840x2160 at 30 Hz, or 4096x2160 at 24 Hz via HDMI.


Where on the logic board is the flash memory that comprises the OS on the iPhone 3GS?

All of your data is stored on the flash memory, which is one of the chips soldered on to the logic board. It's not really possible to swap the memory to a different board (perhaps if you had advanced electronics skills, but I wouldn't like the chances of success).

If there's a problem with your logic board, you can replace it with a new one, as detailed in that iFixit link. Assuming everything goes to plan, and you have no other issues with the phone, it will effectively be a new iPhone. If you have a backup of your old one, you should be able to restore your data during the set up process.


OK well I tried the following:

Turning off and on the contacts toggle switch on both the mac and the iPhone simultaneously. No effect.
Turning off iCloud on both the mac and the iPhone simultaneously. And then on. No effect.
Signing out of iCloud on both the mac and the iPhone simultaneously and then logging back in. This was a painful process but seemed to have solved the issue.


To add on to the existing answers and offer a different solution, you can securely erase the drive instead of just one user account.

If you want to sell your machine but also include installed software, there is a better way to set this up that will ensure none of your personal data is on the machine, as well as provide a better box opening experience for your buyer.

I would suggest doing a secure erase of your hard disk first.
Then, reinstall your OS.
Configure a dummy user account named "test" or "admin" or something generic
Install the software you want to include
Restart your machine in Single User mode
Very carefully, do the following:

  mount -uw / (This mounts the root volume so you can make changes to it.

  rm /var/db/.AppleSetupDone  (This removes the flag that tells Setup
  Assistant that it's done)

  rm /var/db/dslocal/nodes/Default/users/"shortname".plist (Replace "shortname" with the user account name you set up before. This removes the user plist)

  rm -rf /Users/shortname  (Replace "shortname" with the user account name you set up before. This removes the User directory)

  rm -rf /Library/Preferences  (This resets preferences)

  shutdown -r now  (This restarts the computer)

Verify that your machine starts up to the Setup Assistant and you're done. That way, your buyer can start up the machine to the Setup Assistant and still retain the software you want to provide them with.

Good luck.


Help me un-clutter the first page of apps on Launchpad

To summarize...

As in iOS, you can organize your Launchpad icons as you please using drag-and-drop. You can reorder apps, move them from one page to another, and even put them in iOS-like folders. Note that Launchpad folders are entirely independent from the /Applications hierarchy: creating a folder in Launchpad won't create a folder in /Applications, for example.

Your problem seems to be related to the fact that you've got so many apps. Again like iOS, there seems to be a maximum on the number of pages of apps Launchpad can handle. If you really need all 400+ apps on your Launchpad, there's not much you can do other than reorganize everything into folders to free up some slots. But I doubt you need instant access to everything Adobe has ever installed on your computer, so you have a few more options to clean out your Launchpad:

Delete apps entirely. There's probably a few apps on your computer that are just sitting there, never to be used; you can free up space on your Launchpad and on your hard drive by getting rid of them.

Apps from the App Store can be uninstalled directly from Launchpad by holding option/alt and clicking on the black X over the app's icon.
Any app can be deleted by dragging it from the Finder to the Trash.
Alternately, you can use something like AppZapper to delete an app along with any hidden auxiliary files.

Move apps out of Launchpad's sight. Launchpad looks for apps in /Applications, /Developer, and ~/Applications. If you like those folders to be as pristine as your Launchpad, you can move your extraneous applications to a different folder. Launchpad will lose track of them as of the next reboot.
Just remove the Launchpad icons. Finally, Andreas Ganske has developed a preference pane which modifies the Launchpad database to show or hide whatever applications you want.

If you just want a clean Launchpad, option three is probably your best and easiest answer. Options one and two are there if you like to keep your /Applications folder clean, too: useless apps might as well be deleted, and your CS4 uninstallers could probably be moved somewhere a little more out of the way until you need them.

Finally, you hint at having problems with having Launchpad duplicates. As I mentioned in an answer to this question, this may be a problem of actually having more than one copy of the same app installed.

Hope this helps clear up some of your upgrade troubles!


Once I set up AppleTV to to play My Photo stream photos, can it update the photo stream automatically (or even manually)?

For some strange reason as I was going to ask this question the Apple TV photo stream updated itself and it now says "Today 4:57 PM" with 374 photos

I don't really have an explanation other than I went to the settings and click in it & back maybe once or twice.


The effective power bug made my iMessage not work

Here's a few things to do for a fix:

If you receive one of these messages, there are a few possible fixes that have worked for us and for other people who have encountered the bug. If the Messages app was opened to the conversation with the person who sent the offending message, the Messages app can be reopened to this conversation. Sending a reply message fixes the problem.

If Messages was opened to the conversation list view, the app will crash when you attempt to open it. You can fix this by having someone send you a message or by sending a message to yourself. There are several options for sending a message to yourself, including sending yourself a message via Siri or through the Share sheet in any app.

To send yourself a message in Siri, tell Siri to "Send a message to myself." Siri will open up a dialogue where you can give her a quick message like "Fix" that'll be sent to your iPhone to clear away the malicious message.

Alternatively, you can open an app like Notes, craft a quick note, and use the Share option (the little document with an arrow) to message it to yourself. Sending yourself something though the share sheet of an app opens a new messages window where you can enter your own contact information.

Source: Macrumors


How to maximize `Preview` by keyboard shortcut?

To make Preview open PDFs in the "Two Pages" mode, go to Preferences --> PDF, then select the desired mode in the "Show as" menu.

There is no shortcut to go to "Almost Fullscreen Mode" by default, but you can create one:

Go to System Preferences --> Keyboard --> Shortcuts;
Click "App Shortcuts";
Click the "+" button to add a new shortcut;
You'll be asked for the menu title you want to link to a shortcut. For the command you want, it is "Zoom";
You will also be able to specify whether you want the shortcut to be available in all application or a specific application only.

EDIT: Here's an AppleScript solution to set the first window of Preview (the frontmost opened document of Preview) to the size of the screen (works only with one display connected):

tell application "Preview"
    tell application "Finder" to set screen_resolution to bounds of window of desktop
    set bounds of window 1 to screen_resolution
end tell


App store using incorrect e-mail address as username - iPhone 6

You will have to delete the apps and redownload them if you cannot login in the update prompt.


Homebrew

The missing package manager for OS X.

It is an amazing package manager, very light and easy to use. KIS Principle, that makes me think of archlinux. Its community is big and very active.
(see also macports which brew doesn't replace completely, I prefer installing packages with brew, but some complex ones are only on macports)
See also brew tap command which provides some missing formulas that can be useful like when you need latest php version > brew tap josegonzalez/php.
(Homebrew has a policy of not replacing system components, but hey, sometimes you have to)


How to change the default domain suffix for iPad Pro on screen keyboard?

It's defined by the keyboard locale you select. It can't be changed independently of this. The .com TLD is used on the US keyboard. To change to a US keyboard, go to Settings → Keyboards → Keyboards → Add New Keyboard → English, then use the globe button to switch keyboards.


Outlook 2011, where are located messages placed in "On my computer"?

You should check out your personal folder (user) and navigate to:

Documents
Microsoft User Data
Office 2011 Identies
Main Identity

Please note that Outlook 2011 does not use a .PST file format


Is there an iPod app to easily switch wifi on and off?

Through the App Store? No. Apple's guidelines don't allow apps to turn on or off Wifi.

Jailbroken? Yes. There are program such as SBSettings that will do just what you want to do.


Try installing the XQuartz package on MacOS Forge. I personally have had problems with Macports XQuartz and Yosemite, however the standard installer works perfectly for me. Or maybe try using the xorg-server package from Macports.


What are the main difficulties people face migrating from Linux to Mac OS?

I did a switch from Linux just a week ago. I am using Linux for 15+ years. Lately, my Desktop distro of choice was Ubuntu.

Mac OS X is a BSD based system, so minor issues you will have to get used to is stuff like using ipfw instead of iptables.

As you will pretty soon realise Ubuntu (and other distros) simply mimic lots of Mac solutions when it comes to usability. You will find yourself being very familiar with a lot of GUI elements.

There is virtually no difference from a developer point of view. You can just install rvm and develop your Ruby apps as you used too. Main difference is, that now you can use the famous TextEdit! :D

As for the drawbacks:

Mac has worse package management and you might miss some fancy features of apt-get / dpkg (or yum / rpm). It's not groundbreaking however, and Homebrew will be sufficient in the end anyway.

There are various minor things like key shortcuts, window management which takes couple of hours to get used to. I for one can't get what's the idea behind how the window maximization works.

In the end, I must say that I don't miss a thing so far. I got everything I loved about Linux + beautiful system which can run StarCraft and Photoshop. :-)


Can I change my music location for itunes to external hard drive on my mac book pro?

Apple has a support document for this, there isn't very much to add to it...


Wiped drive, now can’t reinstall El Capitan from Recovery because the "item is temporarily unavailable"

I ran into this issue myself.  NoahL's comment is spot on: try Internet Recovery (Command+Option+R).

I was trying to reinstall macOS on a laptop.  The on-disk recovery kept giving me this error message after I gave it my AppleID in the reinstall wizard:

This item is temporarily unavailable.
Try again later.

I retried two weeks later, and still got the same error.
I found this thread and tried out Internet Recovery and I was able to reinstall macOS.

Note: I had to erase the disk with Disk Utility before Internet Recovery would let me reinstall macOS, because the version on disk was newer than the version that will be installed.

(I don't know why Internet Recovery doesn't just offer the latest macOS...)


Is there any way to translate words in Safari on iOS and Mac?

For OS X you can add 3rd party dictionaries.  See

http://m10lmac.blogspot.com/2013/01/adding-dictionaries-to-dictionaryapp.html

Unfortunately it's not possible for iOS yet as far as I know.


Boot camp assistant can only change disk1

Bootcamp doesn't have the ability to install Windows on external storage. The Windows installer itself can't install Windows to external storage either, so this feature can't be inplemented to Bootcamp.


Something like find .. -name "*.pdf" -exec ln -s {} basename


Mavericks does have read support for NTFS partitions enabled by default. However I doubt the problem is with the NTFS filesystem itself.

More likely the problem is with the partition table on the drive. If you are confident in the use of command line tools you can use TestDisk to attempt to locate and restore the missing NTFS partition. There is a detailed guide here on how to restore missing partitions.

PLEASE NOTE: Before attempting this though I would backup all the data on that drive (using the Mac to backup the HFS+ partition and the Windows laptop you mention to backup the NTFS partition), as a misstep could result in losing both partitions.


How to disable trackpad tap completely? Force only actual clicks

With the latest software update 10.12.6, the option to disable "tap to touch" works now.  It's in the trackpad options.  Before the update this did not work.
Funny story - after the updating the OS (months ago?) it was still forcing the tapping.  When I went into the trackpad options the box was unchecked, which didn't make sense.  For fun I clicked and unclicked the box, and now it's fixed.  Yay.


Icon for CD drive disappears and reappears every few seconds

Sounds like the CD drive is malfunctioning. This could be caused by many different problems, from partially detached cables inside the laptop to just a dirty CD slot and/or laser lens. One simple weird trick is to take a can of compressed air and give the CD slot a blow-out when not loaded with a disc.

There are CD laser lens cleaning discs, including this version with a 3.5" floppy disc cleaner included!


How to prevent Terminal.app from displaying a tab bar when there is only one tab open

Click "View" / "Hide Tab Bar" and the tab bar will go away and come back only when there is more than one tab open.


What's the chance of you trying another keyboard first? I would only recommend a method of fixing once you had isolated the cause.


I uninstalled xcode 4.6 and the App Store still wants to update it

Do you have a backup, or external drive connected, that may have something of the Xcode install on it?

I know on my machine, if I have my backup drive connected the MAS thinks anything on that drive is currently installed.


This happens to me as well. Only 3rd party buttons go blank.

Go to Preferences > Extensions
Turn Extensions OFF
Turn Extensions ON

The icons should come back.


Trying to set an external Bootcamp drive as the Startup Disk

There are a few things you can try to resolve the exact issue in your question.

Reset NVRAM

Older Macs had what's called Parameter RAM (PRAM), newer Macs use Non-Volatile Random-Access Memory (NVRAM). It may be worth you resetting this. Here’s how to:

Shut down your machine. Yes, a full shut down, not just logging out.
Press the power button and then press the commandoptionpr keys. You have to make sure you press these keys before the gray screen appears or it won’t work.
Hold those keys down until your Mac reboots again and you here the startup chime.
Let go of the keys and let your Mac reboot normally.

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

Once you boot in, go to System Preferences > Startup Disk and check to see if you can now select your Windows Bootcamp volume as your startup disk. If you still can't, try the step below.

Use the SDM to change your default Startup Disk

Another way you can select your default startup disk is to use the Startup Disk Manager. Follow these steps:

Shut down your Mac
Switch it on again and immediately press and hold the option key
Release the key when your bootable volumes start appearing
Press and hold the control key while you select your Windows Bootcamp volume

Once you've done this, your Windows Bootcamp volume should be the default startup disk. If you still can't, try the step below.

Use the Windows Boot Camp Control Panel

You can also try using the Windows Boot Camp Control Panel instead. Use these steps:

Boot into Windows
View the Control Panel
Select the Boot Camp Control Panel
Select the Startup Disk tab
Select the Windows volume as your default startup disk

Once you've done this, your Windows Bootcamp volume should be the default startup disk. If you still can't, see other options below.

Other options

Another couple of options are:

Trying rEFInd
Using Terminal to set your Startup Disk (if you're comfortable doing so)


Whenever I want a new Quicklook plugin, I look through three places:

quicklookplugins.com
qlplugins.com
And a specially crafted google search.

Neither of the third party quick look plugin sites list any results for 'ogg' or 'vorbis', and the link to bravobug.com in a MacWorld forum post no longer works either because the domain has been squatted, or the blog software has just become completely overrun by spam, which is also why I didn't actually link directly to blog post.

Xiph (the company responsible for OGG and so much more) created the XiphQT components forever ago, but they haven't been updated in years, and there's no updates to suggest QLPlugins or anything else of the sort.

It seems like this does not exist. Unfortunately.


How do I run two AppleScripts simultantiously

You can use path to resource to get the pathname of the .scpt file that's in an App's Resource folder, and then run the .scpt file using osascript e.g.:

set scptPath to POSIX path of (path to resource "Secondary.scpt")

do shell script "osascript" & space & scptPath


Any Pitfalls in Replacing gcc and g++ With GNU Versions?

There are some possible issues with replacing the binaries:

1) They might be re-replaced when you update macOS

2) The binary built by gcc might work differently than one built with clang

3) The interface for the compiler (i.e. command line options as well as other input/output files) might be different, having slightly different syntax, etc.

In general, if you replace the binaries and start building your own software running gcc on the command line - that will work without problem.

The problem is that other programs on your computer might assume that you have clang there. So installers, Xcode, etc. might suffer odd issues. Most probably this is not the case, as Xcode won't run the gcc binary, but for third party projects or older projects - it's hard to know.

Basically: Normally it is not worth the risk to replace the system provided compiler binaries. Just add new binaries for your own compilers at the side (i.e. install them with homebrew or whatever). Then you choose to use those compilers, and everything else will behave like it did before.

Regarding the question you had in an earlier edit of your question questing why Apple "did this": It is infact a common occurence on Unixoid systems to have old names for compilers actually be a front for new compilers. This is usually done to achieve compatibility with old programs. I.e. you had a project that hardcoded "gcc" instead of "cc" as the compiler name, and instead of breaking everyone's build scripts when you replace gcc with clang, you simply add a gcc binary that really runs clang. In most cases that will work producing the outputs that people expected, in some rare cases - it doesn't work, and you would have to install the older (or different) compiler yourself.


Is it possible to search mail for strings?

Yes, yes it can.

You can do any search that gmail supports:

from:myemail@mydomain.com "searchtime" produced the following search results (which are correct):

Examples of what you can do:

subject:(Search Term)

To exclude a term you can do:

-Windows

And pretty much anything normal Gmail supports.


Can I update from iOS 5 to iOS 6 on iPhone 4?

There is no Apple supported way to update an iOS devices OS except to the latest current OS release that runs on that device (or a beta OS, if it is strictly a test device and you are a registered developer).  Apple no longer signs (which includes vouching for the security of) any earlier OS releases (except for old devices, such as an iPhone 3GS).


How can I forward email as nice readable attachment?

Use Mail -> Message -> Forward as Attachment to send the selected mail messages on as an attachment.


How to uninstall GlobalProtect VPN client?

One way is to run the uninstall script bundled inside the app:

sudo /Applications/GlobalProtect.app/Contents/Resources/uninstall_gp.sh


I've built a small demo Keynote file (v5.1, on Mac OS 10.6.8, hope you can open it) -- this does what you're trying to achieve. At start only group 1 is fully opaque, then after each click, group 2 and 3 gain full opacity while the other groups are 50% transparent.
I've solved the 0.1s flicker by putting a copy of the groups underneath group 2 and 3 and setting it to 0% transparency at the beginning.
It could use some tweaking, I'll admit that, but that was just a quick 2am demo.


2017 Macbook pro 13 inch 3 monitors help

The 13" 2017 MacBook Pro only supports up to two external monitors:

  Video Support

  Simultaneously supports full native resolution on the built-in display
  at millions of colors and:

  One display with 5120-by-2880 resolution at 60Hz at over a billion colors
  Up to two displays with 4096-by-2304 resolution at 60Hz at millions of colors
  Up to two displays with 3840-by-2160 resolution at 60Hz at over a billion colors

If you want to get a third display going, you will need a USB to DVI/HDMI/VGA adapter.


What is a neat way to delete a stale amavisd pid_file on first boot after panic or power failure?

Create a launchd item that runs on boot (system startup before amavisd is started) executing the command to test that /private/var/run/amavisd.pid exists and then delete it:

if test -f /private/var/run/amavisd.pid; then rm /private/var/run/amavisd.pid

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC -//Apple Computer//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd >
<plist version="1.0">
<dict>
    <key>Label</key>
    <string>amavisd_delete_pid</string>
    <key>ProgramArguments</key>
    <array>
        <string>if</string>
        <string>test</string>
        <string>-f</string>
        <string>/private/var/run/amavisd.pid;</string>
        <string>then</string>
        <string>rm</string>
        <string>/private/var/run/amavisd.pid</string>
    </array>
    <key>RunAtLoad</key>
    <true/>
    <key>Nice</key>
    <integer>10</integer>
    <key>KeepAlive</key>
    <false/>
    <key>AbandonProcessGroup</key>
    <true/>
</dict>
</plist>


Secure Notes are encrypted with Triple DES, and are kept in the device keychain.


how to delete characters placed next to cursor on MacBook Pro

For forward delete, hold down fn (the function key) and press delete.


Import back video into iPhone after adjusting time & location in Photos app on macOs

I can't give you a simple answer, but perhaps I can point you in the right direction.

What you are doing when you change the time/date on your photos is changing its metadata. Metadata is text contained within the file that is read by programs such as the Mac OS Finder when you use Get Info, photo programs, etc... Some programs allow you to edit the metadata, such the Image-->Adjust Date and Time... menu item within the Mac OS Photo app.

More generally, media file metadata can be changed using programs called metadata editors. For example, exiftool is a command-line metadata editor that is available on Windows, Mac, etc... TagScanner is a WYSIWYG metadata editor on Windows.

Both of the above are quite powerful, but also have a learning curve to use them. I'm guessing you'll want a simple editor for Mac OS, but I can't recommend one since I've been happily using the above for my needs. I briefly looked into the availability of metadata editors for the iPhone and found a couple (e.g., Photo Investigator, MetaPho) that claim to do what you want, but cannot be tested for free (they cost $3-$4).

One other thing: there are usually multiple types of date-timestamps for each file, so another thing you may need to discover is which is important for your needs. For example, using the Terminal command exiftool file.mp4 I see 9 timestamps for a recent movie I was sent via WhatsApp:

File Name                       : file.mp4
File Modification Date/Time     : 2019:09:11 10:24:45+02:00
File Access Date/Time           : 2019:09:11 10:24:44+02:00
File Inode Change Date/Time     : 2019:09:11 10:24:58+02:00
...
Create Date                     : 2019:08:18 13:04:29
Modify Date                     : 2019:08:18 13:04:30
...
Track Create Date               : 2019:08:18 13:04:29
Track Modify Date               : 2019:08:18 13:04:30
...
Media Create Date               : 2019:08:18 13:04:29
Media Modify Date               : 2019:08:18 13:04:30

(to focus on the timestamps, I've omitted most of the exiftool metadata listing)


What's the best way to update Homebrew when upgrading macOS?

Homebrew manages all updating/upgrading by itself. Run brew update && brew upgrade every once in a while (and you can do it after upgrading macOS). brew update will update the list of available formulae, and brew upgrade will upgrade any outdated packages.
If you like, everything can be scripted as well:

Run the macOS installer: startosinstall
Run all macOS updates for Xcode, etc..: softwareupdate -ai
Update homebrew itself and the package lists: brew update
Upgrade all software installed with homebrew: brew upgrade
Remove old versions of installed software: brew cleanup

You don't need to remove/uninstall anything before upgrading macOS. Just download the macOS installer from the App Store (or from System Preferences), and follow the instructions to install the new OS like normal.


Advisability of using a OneDrive folder mounted on external drive for Time Machine?

Theoretically it should work ok.

Note that you cannot specify a folder as the Time Machine backup destination. You'll need to create a sparse bundle by following these steps, from a MacRumors thread:

In Disk Utility, select File > New Image > Blank Image.

Enter your desired filename and set Where to your OneDrive folder on the external drive. You can choose the size here, too.

Ensure Format is set as OS X Extended (Journaled), and Image Format is "sparse bundle disk image".

Once it's created, unmount the bundle by clicking the Eject button next to it in the list on the left.

  In Finder, double click the sparse bundle image file to mount it, or use the mount command in Terminal.

  Now set Time Machine to use this sparse bundle:

sudo tmutil setdestination /Volumes/<path-to-sparse-bundle>

  When you start Time Machine, it will create a Backups directory within the sparse bundle for your backups.


Flashing folder icon appeared once after changing Macbook hard drive

This could have been a situation where the PRAM somehow lost the startup disk settings. If you reboot holding Command+Option+P+R and wait for the startup chime (or two) that will reset the PRAM and might fix the issue.

What you did was exactly right, however, as there might have been disk corruption or some other sort of disk problem. Unfortunately disk utility isn't as verbose as many would wish. Other disk utilities like Diskwarrior, TechTool Pro or Drive Genius might give you a more detailed report And even a freeware SMART utility might give you info on the health of the drive that Disk Utility won't report.

In other words you might be fine and this was a random occurrence (Murphy was a computer engineer...) or it could be the sign of an impending failure.

I would check it out further, and back up my data.


Can I run old versions of (now incompatible) apps on MacBook Air?

Apple currently recommends that developers make Universal Binaries for BOTH CPU types. Are you sure that apps only support the M1 CPU and don't work on Intel? Can you give us some examples?
They may be advertising that they will work natively on M1, but I would still expect all Mac App Store apps to support Intel CPUs.
EDIT: The app is an iOS app, which previously would only run on iPads or iPhones. The new M1 Macs can also run these apps. It's unlikely that there was ever an Intel version of this app (as there are no Intel i-devices).


Is there any Mac OS software really supporting Windows RemoteApp?

Not even the official Microsoft RDP Client for OS X supports this; in fact that product still cannot do Terminal Services Gateway connections that were introduced with Windows Server 2008

But the answer to your question is, yes there is at least one client that promotes full RemoteFX implemetation in their OS X client (and incidentally also TSG), and that's iTap Mobile RDP.  It is a commercial program however there is a trial version available from that page.  Update: it looks like iTap don't fully support RemoteApp

The only other client I can find is one by Thinomenon.  Their free client supports all versions of the RDP protocol up to 7 (RemoteApp requires 6.1 or greater)

Enjoy latest RDP features, including application publishing (RemoteApp or RAIL), even if your platform is not supported by Microsoft.

Product Features:
 - RDP 4.0, 5.0, 5.1, 5.2, 6.0, 6.1 and 7 -compatible,
 - Copy and Paste via clipboard,
 - Encryption for communication security,
 - Local audio.


what does the pie symbol mean in macOS finder?

The pie symbol indicates that the element is being uploaded or downloaded to/from a server. Those elements may not be available locally.

The grayed part of the pie represents the percentage of data already transmitted so in your case as this part is very narrow it means that for each file the update has just started.


How to access/edit iPhone Contacts on computer?

For synchronization of your Lotus contacts and mail with your iPhone, you can try My Notes app: https://itunes.apple.com/app/my-notes-mobile-client-for/id726998714?mt=8


No package 'libffi' found in Homebrew Virtual Environment

Figured it out.

brew install libffi

locate libffi.pc

(in this case i also had to run the command to build the locate database, for which the code was included in the prompt from locate)

returned /usr/local/Cellar/libffi/3.0.13/lib/pkgconfig/libffi.pc

Then within the virtualenv ran export PKG_CONFIG_PATH=/usr/local/Cellar/libffi/3.0.13/lib/pkgconfig/ (the path to libffi.pc).

Confirmed with echo $PKG_CONFIG_PATH, which showed the path.

And pip "Successfully installed" the modules!

In case it's useful, this is how I got the virtualenvwrapper environment working:

I have added the following contents to the ~/.bash_profile as well as ~/.bashrc files:

export VIRTUALENVWRAPPER_PYTHON=/usr/local/bin/python
export VIRTUALENVWRAPPER_VIRTUALENV=/usr/local/bin/virtualenv
export WORKON_HOME=$HOME/.virtualenvs
source /usr/local/bin/virtualenvwrapper.sh
export PATH=/usr/local/bin:$PATH

As per this tutorial.


Automator: "Ask for Text" pass to "Rename Finder Items" possible?

Heres a script to rename the file to the correct format. But you must move files out of the folder after being processed or it will prompt to change the file name again, as you will see with this script.  Please edit your question to include where you would like to move it (or even a folder select).  I will also add the tag part after.

Use the "Run AppleScript" action for this:

on run {someFiles, parameters}
    set theMonth to (do shell script "date   +%m")
    set theYear to (do shell script "date  +%Y")
    tell application "Finder"
        repeat with theFile in someFiles
            display dialog "Enter Static Text for " & the name of theFile default answer ""
            set theStatic to the text returned of the result
            set theEXT to (name extension of theFile)
            tell application "System Events" to set the name of file (POSIX path of theFile) to theStatic & "_" & theYear & "-" & theMonth & "." & theEXT
        end repeat
    end tell
    return input
end run


SD Card missing after sleeping during write?

The answer was to simply reboot.  After rebooting, the drive auto-mounted, and all data appeared intact.


How do I fix a broken OS X update that shows as both Available and Installed?

I'd go for the standard toolkit first...

In Disk Utility, "Verify Disk Permissions" and if necessary "Fix Disk Permissions".  Also "Verify Disk" and if necessary "Repair Disk".
Reset Home folder permissions & ACLs using OnyX  - Maintenance tab/permissions, tick the box at the top then Execute.
Update to 10.10.5 [or re-apply if already updated] using the 10.10.5 combo update, not the delta from App Store


Can the component AV cable and the HDMI cable mirror third party apps on TV?

Number 1 is exactly true, unless the developer chose to output the gameplay through the cable. A few games do this, but most do not.

Number 2 is exactly true.

On your last question, I'm not 100% certain and haven't tried it (I don't have the component cables). Video mirroring from the iPad 2 works with the VGA adapter, so it would likely work with the component cables, but I can't guarantee it.

Edit: Looking at the specs on Apple's site under TV & Video, it seems pretty clear that component out work with the apps that do video out, but not for mirroring.


Not really.

On OS X, I wasn't able to find any possibility of doing this. I'm eager to be proven wrong on that point, of course.

On iOS, you can kinda do it - by abusing Do Not Disturb. Following these steps will, of course, make it so that your device won't show you notifications. At all.

Really want to do this? Ok, let's get started:

Find your Do Not Disturb preferences.

iOS 5/6: Settings > Notifications > Do Not Disturb
iOS 7: Settings > Do Not Disturb

Manually turn on Do Not Disturb

iOS 5/6: Root settings window, it's a switch.
iOS 7: In the Do Not Disturb window, there's a 'Manual' switch. Activate it.

Turn off Scheduling:

4. Select 'Allow calls from', and set it to 'All Contacts':

Optionally, disable the two-calls-in-three-minutes feature. I wouldn't though - it's kinda important for emergencies.

Now, your iOS device won't accept FaceTime calls from anyone not in your contacts - at the price of not being able to receive notifications, either.


Why does placing a Moto X on my Macbook turn off the screen?

I've had similar experiences when stacking two MacBooks just the right way. I think it's the magnets being triggered, and the computer thinking it's been closed.

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT203315


How to access virtual machine website in iMac?

It is too easy. Firstly you just need to set the virtual machine to use bridged networking, so it will get an IP address on your network. This IP address will be accessible from your host machine.

According to the Chapter 6 of VirtualBox's manual:

With bridged networking, VirtualBox uses a device driver on your host system that filters data from your physical network adapter. This driver is therefore called a "net filter" driver. This allows VirtualBox to intercept data from the physical network and inject data into it, effectively creating a new network interface in software. When a guest is using such a new software interface, it looks to the host system as though the guest were physically connected to the interface using a network cable: the host can send data to the guest through that interface and receive data from it. This means that you can set up routing or bridging between the guest and the rest of your network.

You can also use the NAT networking mode, but you have to work a lot to set the port tinkering.


Gift free month of Apple Music notification

In this case: all I had to do was wait a little bit.  I was able to gift the trial to someone through text message, and it worked perfectly, giving the person four months of Apple Music.


How to sync non-system photo library to iPhone

In Photos go to Preferences and you'll see an option to "Use as System Photo Library". It will then see whatever library you chose in iTunes.


Which path to upgrade from Mac OS X 10.6 (10A432)?

You most probably have this model which can be upgraded to 10.11.

Apple has a support article describing the steps required to upgrade from 10.6.8 to 10.11. Basically you update up to 10.6.8 and then get the installer from the App Store.


myCloud: Is self-hosting iCloud possible?

Somewhat. Not exactly.

You can run an Exchange server which will give you push email, calendar and contacts. This can be configured on all your devices (even pre-iOS 5). This is pretty much what you get from the equivalent iCloud stuff.

But there isn't a way to access the Documents in the Cloud or iTunes in the Cloud features without iCloud. (Although you could use Dropbox to store stuff, it doesn't work with iTunes or iWork). This is primarily because Apple wrote the services from the ground up, they aren't using an existing service. So while there are APIs, there aren't standards.

Apple might conceivably open a EU data centre in the future.


Quick look .url saved webpages as rendered HTML

Quick Look doesn't make web requests, so it can't show the contents of the webpage without opening it. The question you linked was asking about .html files, with the actual source saved locally. .url files only include a URL, so without downloading the page it can't render anything. You can still use .html or .webarchive files and they will be rendered in Quick Look (with a .webarchive everything, including images and styles, will be included).


How to enter two phone numbers as recipients in Messages

After each recipient, press + to add another one.

  Tap into the “To” field and enter the first recipient, then tap the (+) plus button and add other recipients

Source

If you are manually typing numbers in, you can press return after each phone number to add another one.


How can I install hundreds of pkg files?

Use cycle for this. You can type next in your terminal command line:

for f in *.pkg; do installer -packages "$f"; done


Verbose Mode during startup not working on Apple Silicon

In the past, verbose mode showed on the screen information that was logged by the kernel processes to traditional files. Also in the past, the logging system was overhauled to write these logs to a database first so they can be queried and some but not all of the logs end up in files.
Now, you can’t see the messages on screen and have to either know which files contain portions of the logged messages or query the database directly after the system has started (or indirectly if the system never completes startup).

Where to see kernel startup messages after boot?

Addressing the “what changed” with Apple Silicon is Apple completed the transition to all machines running under a T2 with a Secure Enclave and other architectural changes to the startup process. Some of these were present in Intel, but legacy behavior remained while Intel was executing the kernel code.
The old non-volatile ram commands don’t “work” on Apple Silicon.

Is there an equivalent to resetting NVRAM on an M1 mac?

Your diagnosis is correct - the store still sets values, but the system doesn’t take any action or read them at boot as far as I can tell.


How do I prevent keyboard shortcuts being synced from my iPhone to my Mac?

You have answered your own question, the syncing is included with lots of other things and granular settings are not available.  The only way around it is to use just text expander on both iOS and OSX, or just the default text substitution tools, but not a mix.  Sorry!


Identify if a text was sent using an iPhone

Pretty sure it can't be done.

One option might be Family Sharing, which would give you access to 'find my device' on everybody's devices.


I would say restart you Mac if you have not done so in a while.
Try repairing the disk and repairing permissions in Disk Utility.
Next try deleting your Finder preferences. Your looking for a file called:

com.apple.finder.plist

Note you might want to back this file up before deleting, if you spent a lot of time configuring Finder view, etc and this turns out to not fix the issue.

This file will be located at /Users/YourUSERname/Library/Preferences/com.apple.finder.plist
Restart and see if it happens anymore.
Try installing Onyx and use it to reset Finder related settings.
Try removing FlexiGlass if you suspect that is causing issues.
Try logging in as another user and see if the issues comes up while logged in as another user.
If all else fails, back up your stuff and reinstall Lion.


Restoring from Yosemite Time Machine backup on Mavericks

It's unlikely that this will work - and any software that was updated will probably not understand its settings file (e.g. Mail, Messages and the like). Also, restoring everything would replace system files with Yosemite versions.

You could go into Time Machine and pull out documents and content you have created/updated while running Yosemite, and that should work OK. But restoring settings and the system is highly unlikely to end happily.

Definitely not recommended.


Configuring OS X 10.7 Lion Server to serve Rails Apps via Apache

I've done some experimentation in order to answer my own question...

Firstly, I've only gotten the virtual named host kludge working with Passenger, not the new Lion scheme, but hey, it's a start...

Firstly, follow the Apple temporary fix, as linked in the question.

Then, the following works for me to support two virtual named hosts, implemented using Passenger and Rails. I derived this by taking the Lion virtual host example, and merging in my Snow Leopard config.

Disclaimer this works, but needs improvement.  I've not got SSL working yet.

Add the following in a file named 0000_any_80_.conf

## Example Virtual Host Configuration

<VirtualHost *:80>
    ServerName bongle.example.com
    ServerAlias bungle.example.com
    ServerAdmin bongle@example.com
    RackEnv bongle_production
    RailsEnv bongle_production

    DocumentRoot "/Users/Nigel/Rails/bungle/public"
    CustomLog "/var/log/apache2/access_log" combinedvhost
    ErrorLog "/var/log/apache2/error_log"

    <IfModule mod_ssl.c>
        SSLEngine Off
        SSLCipherSuite "ALL:!aNULL:!ADH:!eNULL:!LOW:!EXP:RC4+RSA:+HIGH:+MEDIUM"
        SSLProtocol -ALL +SSLv3 +TLSv1
        SSLProxyEngine On
        SSLProxyProtocol -ALL +SSLv3 +TLSv1
    </IfModule>

    <Directory "/Users/Nigel/Rails/bungle/public">
        Options All +MultiViews -ExecCGI -Indexes
        AllowOverride None
        <IfModule mod_dav.c>
            DAV Off
        </IfModule>
    </Directory>

</VirtualHost>

<VirtualHost *:80>
    ServerName burble.anothersite.com
    ServerAlias www.anothersite.com
    ServerAdmin bongle@anothersite.com
    RackEnv burble_production
    RailsEnv burble_production

    DocumentRoot "/Users/Nigel/Rails/burble/public"
    CustomLog "/var/log/apache2/access_log" combinedvhost
    ErrorLog "/var/log/apache2/error_log"

    <IfModule mod_ssl.c>
        SSLEngine Off
        SSLCipherSuite "ALL:!aNULL:!ADH:!eNULL:!LOW:!EXP:RC4+RSA:+HIGH:+MEDIUM"
        SSLProtocol -ALL +SSLv3 +TLSv1
        SSLProxyEngine On
        SSLProxyProtocol -ALL +SSLv3 +TLSv1
    </IfModule>

    <Directory "/Users/Nigel/Rails/school/public">
        Options All +MultiViews -ExecCGI -Indexes
        AllowOverride None
        <IfModule mod_dav.c>
            DAV Off
        </IfModule>
    </Directory>

</VirtualHost>

Additional contributions to improve this are welcome.


Standard Installation Locations for git repositories (e.g. jQuery)

No standard but if a repo then it is only writeable by you so under $HOME

If it is on a server and no access except by http or git protocols then anywhere (and some setups might use var I would use /git)


Tabs don't open in the background any longer in Safari

You can follow these steps
1. Open preference in safari
2. Click on tabs.
3. Uncheck the option "when a when a new tab or window opens make it      active".

Hope this will works.


Is there a way Spotlight indexes my Skim bookmarks/notes ?

The solution I've found+tested:

In Skim:

  File - Export -> Skim notes.
  You now have one .skim file with your annotations only + their pages number.

Skim notes are indexed by Spotlight.

Source: here


No, your MacBook does not need any "special" RAM.
To see which kind of RAM is needed, visit this Apple Knowledge Base Article. It will show you how to replace your RAM and which one do you need.

Although it is not needed to use two identical sticks of RAM, it is recommended, if your sticks are supporting Dual Channel.


You need to contact Apple Support right away. Your iCloud account could be having functionality issues. They can put in a petition to the iCloud team so they can investigate your account.


How do I batch convert a bunch of pngs or other images into a single PDF on Mavericks?

You can use the convert command if you install ImageMagick. ImageMagick isn't always a simple install, but if you install Xcode and Homebrew it should be fairly painless.

convert *.png foobar.pdf

http://www.imagemagick.org/script/convert.php


Mac on local network has generic PC icon

Sounds like you may have enabled file sharing with SMB (Server Message Block, default for Windows, which is why the icon looks like a "generic PC") rather than AFP (Apple Filing Protocol) for the Mac mini. Check to make sure by going to System Preferences > Sharing. Choose File Sharing in the list on the left and click the Options button on the right.
SMB is useful for sharing files with Windows/Linux-based computers, but if you only have Macs, stick with AFP. Things like permsissions, hidden files, etc. work much better if you use the native filesharing protocol.


How to properly increase a `ulimit -n` limits?

The following should resolve most solutions (and are listed in order of their hierarchy):

echo 'kern.maxfiles=20480' | sudo tee -a /etc/sysctl.conf
echo -e 'limit maxfiles 8192 20480\nlimit maxproc 1000 2000' | sudo tee -a /etc/launchd.conf
echo 'ulimit -n 4096' | sudo tee -a /etc/profile

Notes:

You will need to restart for these changes to take effect.
AFAIK you can no longer set limits to 'unlimited' under OS X
launchctl maxfiles are bounded by sysctl maxfiles, and
therefore cannot exceed them
sysctl seems to inherit kern.maxfilesperproc from launchctl
maxfiles
ulimit seems to inherit it's 'open files' value from
launchctl by default
you can set a custom ulimit within /etc/profile, or
~/.profile ; while this isn't required I've provided an example
Be cautious when setting any of these values to a very high number when compared with their default - the features exist stability/security.  I've taken these example numbers that I believe to be reasonable, written on other websites.
When launchctl limits are lower than the sysctl ones, there have been reports that the relevent sysctl ones will be bumped up automatically to meet the requirements.


Can I retrieve an Xcode project I installed on my iPhone?

It should appear in the trash folder on your Mac. To access it click the trash icon in the dock.

You should be able to recover it there if you didn’t empty the trash.


App Store wouldn't recognize my Logic Pro X

Logic Pro X is only available on the Mac App Store and the Logic Pro X bundle will contain a MASReceipt that tells the Mac App Store who the app is registered to.

This means the Mac App Store won't claim knowledge of the app unless you are signed in with the Apple ID that you used to purchase it. As you say you didn't purchase it from the Mac App Store, it won't be assigned to your Apple ID and the Mac App Store won't update it for you as it sees it immediately as pirated software.

Aperture is available elsewhere on physical media. This means that there won't be a Mac App Store receipt assigned to the app and the app can be assigned to an Apple ID.

This means that the Mac App Store will assign your Aperture that was purchased outside of the Mac App Store to the currently logged in Apple ID. This is the same for the retail version of iWork which can be purchased elsewhere and the Mac App Store will 'accept' it (like iLife).

You can read more about this problem when it occurred on this blog post by The Verge:

The Mac App Store is upgrading illegal and trial software for free


Upgrading to OS X El Capitan while maintaining dual boot

In theory, it shouldn't matter, when you install OS X El Capitan, you can select the partition you want the operating system to install on, which surprisingly, you can even select a USB. If you are extremely concerned with interfering with another disk, then make a bootable USB. Follow the instructions from the Apple official website. https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201372 There are many Youtube videos on how to do that too.

After you finish making the bootable USB. Shut your computer down. Plug the USB into one of the USB ports, start your computer while holding down the option key, and it will bring you a list of bootable disks. Select the "Install El Capitan" (or a name that is similar to this) disk, which should also appear as a USB icon instead of a hard disk icon, and it will lead you to the installation. Make sure you select the Macintosh HD hard disk as the disk you want to install OS X El Capitan on, and it shouldn't interfere with your Linux system. At least it didn't interfere with my Windows system.


Change compile configuration of package installation in brew

brew install vim installs vim 7.4.052
vim --version reports version 7.3

From above observation it is clearly apparent that these are two different vims. By executing vim --version you are invoking vim supplied as part of OS X (you can check this by which vim, which is going to report /usr/bin/vim, while brew-built programs are usually located under /usr/local directory.

To edit vim formula you just execute brew edit vim, yet you do not need to do this just to get your desired farsi support. As you can see from Vim Feature Table, farsi support is included with any build compiled with --with-features=big or huge. As brew builds are compiled with --with-features=huge, they already contain farsi support.

  /usr/local/bin/vim --version
  VIM - Vi IMproved 7.4 (2013 Aug 10, compiled Jan  1 2014 14:31:50)
  MacOS X (unix) version
  Included patches: 1-52
  Compiled by Homebrew
  Huge version without GUI.  Features included (+) or not (-):
  ⋮
  +acl      +farsi      +mouse_netterm  +syntax
  ⋮

To use brew-built version of vim you might like to alias it with alias vim='/usr/local/bin/vim', or try any of other options.


Trouble to boot into OSX after install windows 10 on MacBook pro

Press thealt or option buttons while pressing the power button to select Mac OSX or Windows


After iOS 5.1.1 my ipod doesn't list artists/albums in the correct order

This is a well known issue. There is a very long discussion going on on the Apple Support pages. As far as I can see, there are two solutions which proved to fix this issue.

Switching the iPhone languages seems to work in some cases. Switch to Japanese and back to English (or your own language) and this should do the trick according to some users.
However, I would advise you to memorize the navigation very well, since it's very hard to find your way back in Japanese :)
Another thing which seems to fix this is to this "new feature". When navigating to Settings > Music, there should be an option to toggle Group by Album Artist. Toggle it off and after a resync, the problem should be fixed.
And while you're in the menu, make sure you've turned off Shuffle as well.

I can't confirm neither of these solutions since I cannot reproduce this error. So I hope it helps you out.


Wireless headphones on a MacBook running 10.4 — Does Bluetooth work?

The Bluetooth profile necessary for stereo audio, A2DP, is supported by OS X since version 10.5 (aka “Leopard”). As you use 10.4 (aka “Tiger”), the answer to the first part of your question is:

Bluetooth audio only works in 64 kbit/s mono quality via the headset profile in 10.4.

Probably not what you want for music listening, even if the headphones support it. As to the second part of your question:

You are stuck with wireless solutions working via the audio jack, USB or FireWire.

In the case of USB / FW solutions (if such wireless solutions exist), check these for 10.4 compatibility before you invest.


Resizing Images with Automator into multiple sizes

The easiest way would be to re-order your workflow a bit.

Instead of making the small size first, then the medium size, make the medium size first, then create the small size from the medium.

So your workflow would look like this:

Copy Finder Items to the folder you want
Add Text to append the _M
Scale Images to 50% (if that's the medium size you want)
Copy Finder Items to make the small file
Change the Add Text action to Replace Text, replace _M with _S
Scale Images to 50% (50% of the already scaled image will be 25% of the original)

This is what it should look like:

General Method Using Variables

The above method works well for your particular situation, given the sizes you wanted. But if you need oddball sizes, or are doing some other action where feeding the output of the first task into the second won't work, Automator's variables can be used.

You can use the Set Value of Variable action to store the original input in a variable, then recall it for later use with the Get Value of Variable action.

With this method, your workflow would be:

Set Value of Variable and specify a variable name
Copy Finder Items to the folder you want for the small images
Add Text to append the _S
Scale Images to 25%
Get Value of Variable with Ignore this action's input checked (click the Options button on the action if you don't see this)

Make sure the variable selected is the one set in step 1

Copy Finder Items to the folder for medium images
Add Text to append _M
Scale Images to 50%


Missing photos from iPhoto sync in iTunes to iPhone

I've resolved the problem, and it wasn't pretty.

It starts with iPhoto 8 ('09) on my iMac. This library had a bunch of "referenced" photos, ie, photos whos image files were outside of the iPhoto Library folder. In iPhoto 8 this was handled by creating an OS X alias file in the Originals folder within the iPhoto Library folder.

Then I wanted to move my library to my new MacBook Air running Lion and iPhoto 9 ('11). Forgetting that I had referenced files in my library I just copied the iPhoto Library folder from my iMac to my MacBook Air as the Apple support docs say (they don't mention anything about referenced files). Of course the referenced files were not copied to the MacBook, but everything appeared to be OK.

Start iPhoto 9 on my MacBook and it upgrades the library. It can't find the referenced images of course, but there's no warning or anything. iPhoto 9 has a totally different folder and database structure. All the information it needs about where to find an image is now in the Library.apdb SQlite database file in iPhoto Library/Database/apdb/. In that db there's a table called RKMaster which stores the info about each photo. RKMaster has a column called imagePath which is where the full path of the original image file is supposed to go. However, since my referenced images were not available during the iPhoto library upgrade it just set these all to Masters/<image file name>, and stored the alias information from the iPhoto 8 database in a BLOB column called fileAliasData. When I worked out the referenced files were missing I copied them over to my MacBook, and the iPhoto was miraculously able to find them again because of the information in the fileAliasData column in the database.

However, iTunes and other apps that link to the iPhoto library don't access the iPhoto Library database directly. They use a file called AlbumData.xml in the iPhoto Library folder. iPhoto 9 re-creates this file every time you close iPhoto. Unfortunately, what it uses to build the full image path for putting in the XML file is what's stored in the imagePath column in the database, which by now is basically garbage. iPhoto can see all the files OK, but nothing else can.

The only solution was to painstakingly fix the RKMaster records for all my referenced files so that they pointed to the correct place. I took the opportunity to copy the files to the iPhoto Library folder in the process so that now all my images are in the iPhoto Library folder. This implied setting fileIsReferenced = 0 and fileAliasData = null for those records aswell.

Now I finally have everything working again, but it was a very long and tedious process that can only be done with some knowledge of SQL databases. Apple should really warn people about this potential problem when advising on how to move your iPhoto Library.


OS X 10.11(.1) Randomly freezes while browsing

I kept having this too. After using Youtube for a while, Safari froze and was then on behaving very sluggishly even if restarted. Only reboot of the whole system restored Browser back to normal (until Youtube would freeze it again).

The problem seems to have disappeared along with the latest OS X 10.11.2, so I recommend you just update the OS X.


The ssh tool stores known remote computer IP address and remote ssh key identification in the ~/.ssh directory.

You can read up on this by consulting the manual page on your mac man ssh or on the internet.

You may need to read the entire article and do some follow up research if this is your first exposure with ssh - but the relevant section for the warning you pasted goes thusly:

ssh automatically maintains and checks a database containing identification for all hosts it has ever
     been used with.  Host keys are stored in ~/.ssh/known_hosts in the user's home directory.  Addition-
     ally, the file /etc/ssh_known_hosts is automatically checked for known hosts.  Any new hosts are auto-
     matically added to the user's file.  If a host's identification ever changes, ssh warns about this and
     disables password authentication to prevent server spoofing or man-in-the-middle attacks, which could
     otherwise be used to circumvent the encryption.

In essence - either the key changed, the host name changed or the IP address changed and ssh is warning you that one or more of these do not match. You can turn off the storing, the warning or clear the cache if you don't care to investigate more. This is a very useful tool for people that ssh into fixed servers and need to know when things like the above change.


What can I use for mixing/muxing/splitting/leveling audio inputs and outputs?

Audio Hijack is great for recording. For routing/combining inputs, look at Rogue Amoeba's Loopback. Unlike Soundflower, it is a paid app -- easier to use, supported, and handles multiple routings/combinations (which can be saved).


The bar chart that shows the occupied space the size of all images on your hard drive combined.

If you want to delete your "Photos Library" that's used by the Photos.app do this:

Open Finder
Press Cmd+Shift+G
Enter ~/Pictures
Find the "Photos Library" file, select and delete it
Empty your trash

Please let me know if this helps you.


Is it possible to automate tags / tagging of new files dropped into a specific folder?

I use Hazel tool to automatically define tags when files added to specific folders.

http://www.noodlesoft.com/hazel


How do I use terminal to change the desktop wallpaper folder and enable "change picture every minute" plus "random order"

Turns out https://stackoverflow.com/a/39208361/130638 is the magic.

Here is my completed script:

#!/usr/bin/env bash
source "$HOME/.scripts/sources/strict.bash"
# https://apple.stackexchange.com/a/326863/15131
# https://stackoverflow.com/a/39208361/130638

function wallpaper {
    path="/Users/balupton/Documents/Media/Media - Wallpapers/High Quality/Time/$1"
    osascript -e 'tell application "System Events" to tell current desktop to set pictures folder to "'"$path"'"'
}

if is-affirmative "${1:-}" "yes"; then
    echo 'enabling dark mode...'
    osascript -e 'tell application "System Events" to tell appearance preferences to set dark mode to true'
    wallpaper Night
elif is-affirmative "${1:-}" "no"; then
    echo 'disabling dark mode...'
    osascript -e 'tell application "System Events" to tell appearance preferences to set dark mode to false'
    wallpaper Day
else
    echo 'toggling dark mode...'
    osascript -e 'tell application "System Events" to tell appearance preferences to set dark mode to not dark mode'
    wallpaper Popping
fi