Can a non-retina MacBook's screen be replaced with a Retina screen?

Not easily. The Retina MacBook Pro introduced a new display assembly which makes retro-fitting very difficult.

  Rather than sandwich an LCD panel between a back case and a piece of glass in front, Apple used the aluminium case itself as the frame for the LCD panel and used the LCD as the front glass

Source: http://www.ifixit.com/Teardown/MacBook+Pro+Retina+Display+Teardown/9493

The cost of doing so would probably be more than the rMBP itself.


You can always add more spaces by clicking the + button in the upper right when you swipe up:


Can a single Apple ID/ iTunes account switch between multiple country AppStores to buy free Apps unique to each country?

Changing a country of your single Apple ID is a pain. You can do it ones without consequences but the second time you do it you'll be asked to provide credit card details of a "new" country of your residence. The easiest way to use App Store of different countries is to have 2 different Apple ID registered for certain country.


I had a problem that presented very similarly to yours: excellent ping over wifi, except that every 6 seconds or so it would spike up to 100-200 ms. This was true regardless of the wifi network I was on, or the router hardware. I had no issue when connected via ethernet.

My problem ended up being related to a program which was regularly scanning for wifi networks. I found I could reliably cause my ping to increase in that same way by clicking on the wifi notification icon, which causes the OS to scan for new networks.

I looked in my wifi log (/var/log/wifi.log) and found entries like the following:

Tue Sep 12 11:38:59.570 <airportd[75]> WARNING: Google Chrome (412) is not entitled for com.apple.wifi.scan, temporarily allowing request with background priority —— all entitlement requirements will be strictly enforced in a future release
Tue Sep 12 11:39:04.984 <airportd[75]> WARNING: jtmc (109) is not entitled for com.apple.wifi.scan, temporarily allowing request with background priority —— all entitlement requirements will be strictly enforced in a future release

The application 'jtmc' (a diagnostic app for the Jive phone system) turned out to be the culprit. After closing it and removing it from my login items, pings went back to consistent 1-2ms to the router.


How to export only the selected part of my Numbers file to PDF?

Unfortunately Numbers does not have a Set Print Area option in the way that MS Excel does.

It's not clear from your question how your elements are organised, but below are three options that may be useful.

Printing only a single sheet/tab

If what you want is on a single sheet, then you can:

Go to File > Print
In the Print Setup window make sure you only have This Sheet selected instead of All Sheets
Now print to PDF

Using Preview to create your PDF from a selected area

Another option is to use Preview to do this for you:

In Numbers, select the area you want on your PDF (Hint: You can use the command key to select multiple elements in different parts of the sheet)
Now copy the selected area with commandC
Open the Preview app
Go to File > New From Clipboard
Once the file appears, print it to PDF

Export to Excel first

If you happen to have access to Excel, then you could:

Export your Numbers spreadsheet to Excel
Open it in Excel
In Excel select the elements you want to print (Hint: You can use the command key to select multiple elements in different parts of the sheet)
Go to File > Print Area > Set Print Area
Now print to PDF


What does loving a playlist (not a song/album) do?

Source

The For You section of Apple Music, in the Music app on your iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch, in iTunes on your Mac or PC, or in the Apple Music app on your Android phone, is where you'll find suggestions from our experts who know and love music. Our recommendations are influenced by:

The music that you listen to from the Apple Music catalog.
What you tell us you love or dislike.
The genre and artist choices that you made when you first joined Apple Music.

Tell us what you love or dislike

When you listen to songs and albums, you can let us know if you love or dislike something. We use this information to give you better suggestions.

On your iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch: While listening to a song, tap the player at the bottom of the screen to open the Now Playing screen. Tap , then choose Love or Dislike.

Update your choices

When you first join Apple Music on your iOS device or computer or your Android phone, we ask you to choose genres and artists that you like. At any time, you can change these initial choices.

On your iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch

Open the Music app and tap For You.
In the upper-right corner, tap Apple Music profile icon  or your photo.
Scroll to the bottom of the page and tap View Account, then tap Choose Artists For You.
If you want to reset your choices completely, tap Reset. If you want to change or add to the choices you made previously, follow the instructions to like, love, and remove genres and artists based on how important they are to you. You can also search for specific artists and genres.
When you're done making changes, tap Done.

On your Mac or PC

Open iTunes.
If you’re not signed in, sign in with your Apple ID.
From the menu bar at the top of your computer screen or at the top of the iTunes window, choose Account > Choose Artists For You.
If you want to reset your choices completely, click Reset. If you want to change or add to the choices you made previously, follow the instructions to like, love, and remove genres and artists based on how important they are to you. You can also search for specific artists and genres.
When you're done making changes, click Done.


How to tune the iTunes and App Store to remember the password for a very long time?

Enabling automatic downloads can help, but it's highly unlikely that this is simply a preference on the client. I would presume (but haven't reverse engineered) that the server is signaling the purchases that require a password either by signing a certificate with a short expiration time or upon each "purchase."


WiFi icon not showing on the menu bar and Internet not working (wifi or ethernet)?

Is it possible you inadvertently disabled wi-fi and ethernet in system preferences > network?  If they are not listed in the left hand column of that window you can add them back by clicking the plus sign to 'create a new service' and then setup wi-fi and ethernet.  It's nothing more than picking them from the list of services and then clicking 'Apply'


How to make [return] behave as a [return] within Messages, Skype…

Create a file (on a standard install, the directory KeyBindings doesn't exist):

mkdir ~/Library/KeyBindings

containing the following 2 remappings:

$ cat >~/Library/KeyBindings/DefaultKeyBinding.dict <<end_of_file
/* my keybindings */
{
        "\U000d" = ("insertLineBreak:") ;
        "@\U000d" = ("insertNewline:") ;
}
end_of_file

@ means cmd in this dictionary,
\U000d means Unicode of the standard return (== 0x0d).

Restart Messages and from now on,

return will put a real return,
cmd+return will send the message.

Drawback

This solution is applied to any application using ~/Library/KeyBindings/DefaultKeyBinding.dict.

Advantage

This solution is applied to any application which does a non natural use
of the return in a text area.
Most notably I now have a Skype with which I don't send any more prematurely truncated messages.


What is the best way to sync iCloud with other syncing services?

Syncing iCloud Calendar and Google Calendar

You can sync your iCloud calendar to Google Calendar using https://icaltogcal.com. However, there are some limitations, most importantly:

This is a one way sync, meaning that it goes from iCloud to Google Calendar, but not the other way around.
Google Calendar only updates these 'subscribed' calendars 'even few hours' so you can't have them always instantly up to date everywhere.

n.b. I wrote a bit more about this here but this covers the highlights.

I am not aware of any services which allow you to do true two-way sync between iCloud and Google Calendar.

But before you do that, unless there is a specific reason that you have to use iCloud for calendars, you could very easily: export your iCloud calendars to .ics files {and then stop using iCloud… in fact, I would delete them from iCloud once you have the ics files backed up so you don't forget and start to put stuff in the wrong place}, import the .ics files to Google Calendar, and then access Google Calendar from your Macs, iOS devices, and Windows 7.

That seems like a much easier and better option than trying to sync calendars between iCloud and Google Calendar, which, quite frankly, isn't likely to happen.

Syncing iCloud Contacts and Google Contacts

It is possible to sync iCloud and Google Contacts. There are apps to do this available for the iPhone and Mac. However, to do this automatically requires that you have a Mac which is always on and connected to the Internet and to iCloud. (Perhaps your iMac would work?)

Once you have that, you can install Contacts Sync for Google Gmail (US$4) which will let you sync your contacts, and will keep them in sync for you.

Note that this is two-way sync between iCloud and Google Contacts, meaning that you can make changes anywhere and have them reflected in both services.

Disclaimer: while I do own this app, I haven't used it myself recently, so I can't vouch for it personally, but it seems to be well-supported and well-regarded. Make backups of your iCloud and Google Contacts before you use it, and I would recommend frequent checks to make sure that you are not getting a lot of duplicates, etc.

If you are going to do this, I recommend:

1) Download all of your Google Contacts to your iMac from Google.com

2) Download all of your iCloud Contacts to iMac from iCloud.com

3) Make backups of those contact files from iCloud and Google (email them to someone, put them on Dropbox, copy them to a USB drive, whatever… just make sure you have more than one copy).

4) Once you are sure that you have good backups of the contact files from Google and iCloud, delete all of your contacts from iCloud and from Google. Then sync all of your devices so that all of your devices have ZERO contacts on them.

5) Turn off iCloud syncing of contacts on your iMac (after it’s empty).

6) Merge your Google Contacts and your iCloud Contacts on your iMac.

7) Make a backup of your contacts (post-merge, pre-de-duplicating)

8) Run Contacts Cleaner ($5) which will alert you to duplicates and also to problems that you might face when syncing to Google*. I suggest running this weekly at first, and then at least monthly once you get it running and are confident with it.

(* = for example: Google Contacts only has one "name" field, and iCloud has a "First Name" and a "Last Name" field. Normally that works OK until you run into contacts with three (or more) names. In my experience, that almost never works well, even when iCloud is just syncing to iCloud, so I tend to put a "~" between two of the names. For example, if I had a contact "Jo Beth Williams" I would list her as "Jo~Beth Williams." You can use whatever punctuation that you like, but I like ~ because it’s unusual enough that if someone asks about it I can say "Sorry, I have to do that because computers are dumb, otherwise I end up with your name in my contacts as something like Jo Beth Beth Williams." I assume people with such names are used to this happening for most of their lives.)

9) Keep running Contacts Cleaner until it doesn't find any more problems.

10) Back a backup of your contacts (post-merge, post-de-duplicating).

11) Run Contacts Sync for Google Gmail and make sure it is syncing OK.

12) Once Google sync is running OK, turn iCloud syncing back on

But before you do that,, unless there is a specific reason that you have to use iCloud for contacts, there's an easier way: just use Google Contacts and don't use iCloud contacts. You can set this up on your Mac and iOS devices very easily now, as Google themselves describes here. If you decide to do that, I would recommend steps 1-10 as described above, but then:

11) Select all of your contacts (in the Contacts.app on Mac OS X) and export them to a vCard.

12) Upload those contacts to Google Contacts.

13) Delete them from your iMac's Contacts app.

14) Follow Google's instructions for setting this up on your Mac (essentially: go to Contacts.app » Preferences » Accounts and add your Google Account). Then do the same thing for your iOS devices.

The Moral of the Story is this...

If you insist on using iCloud and Google, you're entering a world of pain. Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but soon.

iCloud isn't likely to work on Android or Windows [desktop or mobile] any time soon. Google's contacts and calendar work on Android, Windows, iOS, and Mac today. So rather than try to patch together some solution to sync two different systems together, you'd be much better off to just use one everywhere, and the one that you can use everywhere today is Google.

If you're not convinced by me, perhaps Lex Friedman's recent Macworld article will convince you: Can't trust this: Inconsistencies shake faith in Apple


Configure MacBook Air at Apple Premium Resellers in Singapore

"Difference between Apple Premium Resellers and Apple Authorised Reseller": The premium resellers are supposed to have better service and more knowledgable staff.

Unless the Premium resellers stock the CTO (configure to order) models then you will need to order it online.

The majority of Apple Retail Stores will not carry that model but some Resellers do.  So I would check with the particular store.

As the other commenter stated you cannot physically put more ram into a MacBook Air once it is already put together.  The ram is soldered onto the Logic Board.


How to export files from hard drive in Snow Leopard CD?

Keep in mind that you are booted to a different volume/system when you boot to the installer DVD.

With that in mind you can use ls /Volumes to get a list of volume names.

Presumably you will see Macintosh HD (or different name if you renamed the internal volume) listed, if so you can use cd /Volumes/Macintosh\ HD to switch to the internal drive. If your internal drive is named differently then keep in mind that spaces should be replaced with \ (a backslash followed by a space) in Terminal. Once you're in the correct volume your earlier commands should work as expected.

That same ls /Volumes command should show the path of your external hard drive as well.  You could copy the files using something along the lines of cp /Volumes/Macintosh\ HD/file1.jpg /Volumes/Backup\ Drive/Folder1.

If you are attempting to copy everything from the hard drive you can use the following command to force a copy of everything, skipping over corrupted data that would otherwise cause the process to hang or stop...

cp -Rfv /original/data /destination/drive

or, following my previous example

cp -Rfv /Volumes/Macintosh\ HD/ /Volumes/Backup\ Drive/


Code Highlighting is not working on Chrome, Big Sur

This issue had also been stressing me out for months and with every Chrome or macOS update I was hoping it would get fixed… Today I stumbled upon this comment which finally helped me solve the problem!
Turns out I just had to reinstall Source Code Pro (in my case by running brew reinstall font-source-code-pro).


I had this same problem - books added on my Macbook Pro stopped showing up on my iPad. I solved it by deselecting iBooks in iCloud on my Mac (System Preferences/iCloud/ ... click on Options tab beside iCloud Drive ... scroll down the list and deselect iBooks.app. If iBooks is open, a message should pop up that you can share books over the cloud, and it gives you the option to do that. Select that option. By deselecting and re-selecting in this way the books I was trying to share over the cloud immediately appeared on my iPad.


How to get back iMovie version compatible with macOS 10.14?

Do you still remember the exact version of iMovie running on your Mac? Try to google the download link if so. This page includes links to some old versions of iMovie. Maybe you could try iMovie 10.1.10 or 10.1.12 on your macOS 10.14.


macOS Catalina firmware corruption issue still "open"?

I can't speak with any expertise, but I can speak from experience, as two of my machines fell victim to this.
I don't know if I would call it a "corruption" issue, though it isn't too far from reality (Technically, the firmware isn't corrupt, it just doesn't boot the system. Since you were able to run diagnostics after the Mac was "bricked" I'm convinced that this was true in your case as well. Big difference, I know, the end result is the machine doesn't post, but it did make troubleshooting a lot harder for me.)
So as you said, the Catalina update involves changes to the firmware. Specifically, it updates it. Many macOS updates have included firmware upgrades as part of the process however, so why are there issues in the Catalina update?
I don't know. I can only guess. I don't think there is a way to start multiple processors in EFI, and if a big application fails, more often than not the processor resets. And it's meant to start up again, make another attempt.
But sometimes it just fails to do this. In my case, perhaps it was because I had added drivers, applications etc. to my EFI, and the MultiUpdater(?) choked on the significantly altered region of the firmware that outlines descriptors of regions and their offsets.
Since you're working on a portable, power failure seems less likely, but it's still possible, when you're making changes to the SMC, EFI, and depending on each individual circumstance, even a microcode update (sort of like firmware for the CPU, bad analogy but whatever :P)
What usually ends up happening, from my experience, and from the anecdotes I've heard, is that for one reason or another, the BootROM flash doesn't happen, and usually the update application with a bunch of drivers is left on the ROM. For me, it went into a sort of half booted state, where the bootrom has started, doesn't flash the update and is just doing nothing, and also there is nothing you can do to change its startup behavior.
For T2 Macs, there is a supported solution, you can put them into DFU mode and restore the T2 firmware (which now envelops the smc).
For non T2/T1 Macs, the solution is simpler in one sense but infinitely more convoluted in another. Basically you open up the machine, and physically access the SPI bootrom SOIC8 nor memory chip to program it using known good firmware edited to include your serial number.
That's what I did to my non-T2 iMac, which I had modified to use without an internal display installed. Getting the materials/resources gathered up takes some effort and a lot of time, but the actual flash, is done in a flash :)
Depending on where you live, there may be non-apple authorized repair shops providing this service for a lot less than what a replacement logic board costs.
I don't think I can help with the firmware, I'm pretty sure my mbp is 10,something, but you can find SPI ROM dumps, all cleaned (like an SMC reset, but more like SMC wipe and reprogram from official Intel releases) and ready for a serial number if you google around. You might end up paying around 5 bucks for it.


Logic Pro X is available on the Mac App Store for $200/£150.
There is no upgrade pricing for having purchased Logic Pro 9—everyone pays full price.


How to set up an iMac not to look for USB Flash drive info during boot up?

Interesting question, but I assume there is no way you can disable the "probing" of attached USB devices on startup. After all, the system has to find out about the characteristics of attached devices, be it sound in/outputs, keyboards, mice or mass storage devices.


How can I export my iPhone notes to text files, preserving the modification date?

In OS X, they're automatically synced to Mail.app. There is a section on the left side of the screen that says "Notes." If you like, I can post screenshots later (not at my MacBook right now).

Here's a way to sync them with a Google account. This is pretty cool, and probably the best way to sync between multiple computers/ devices. Check it out. If you don't have a Google account, might be worth it now lol.

Hope this helps!


How to stream iTunes content to Apple TV 2G without a Mac or PC?

You can play media that originates on an iOS device using AirPlay to send it to the Apple TV. AirPlay is built in to iOS.

If you have a PC or Mac, you could turn on iTunes Match and send the entire library to the cloud. At that point, you could ditch the PC/Mac and let Apple TV play from the cloud. iTunes Match requires a yearly subscription fee.

Neither of these features requires you to have a Mac or a PC, but neither helps much if all your media is on NAS.


Return only one line per file with grep in Terminal

It's not working as expected because Macs use a BSD version of grep while the answers you're seeing are for GNU grep as found on Linux. They're very similar but not identical, and they handle -m differently. BSD grep treats -m as covering the full output, while GNU's version is per-file.

One way to get the result you describe is like this:

find . -type f -exec grep -H -m1 library '{}' \;

This uses find to get the path to every file in . (recursively, so it gets all sub-directories) an then runs grep -m1 on each of them. The -type f tells find to only get regular files, not directories and other things. The -H tells grep to print the names of matching files, not just the matching text.

Another way would be to install GNU grep, using Homebrew.


Is there a way of seeing what `brew cask zap` does before it does it?

There doesn't appear to be a way of doing a dry run of a brew cask zap command.
You could look at the recipe and work out from that what the command will do. According to the man page the command will...

Implicitly performs all actions associated with uninstall, even if the Cask does not appear to be currently installed.
Removes all staged versions of the Cask distribution found under /opt/homebrew-cask/Caskroom/
If  the  Cask definition contains a zap stanza, performs additional zap actions as defined there, such as removing local preference files. zap actions are variable, depending on the level of detail defined by the Cask author.
zap may remove resources which are shared between applications.

So running brew cask cat <something> and examining the uninstall stanza (and the zap stanza if it is present) should give you a general idea of the files that zap will remove.
Longer term you could request a "dry run" feature.


How can I change Finder's "Name" column width in "List" view in El Capitan?

Actually, the solution in your linked question still works as of 10.11.6 - I think your issue is you are confusing Column View & List View... based on your stating '"Name" column', which column view doesn't have.

For List View, just drag the column header divider.
To make it default,  Cmd ⌘   J  & Click 'Use as Defaults'.

I am uncertain as to whether that will override any existing ._DS_Store setting for other windows - you may need to clear them if you want to start afresh with your new defaults.


Notes has Google Notes. But Google has no such service. Where are they stored?

The notes created in OS X can be found in GMail under the label "Notes". If you create a folder with [name] in OS X Notes app, the notes will be synced to Google Inbox unbundled label "Notes/name".


Make light-grey text darker on Mac (white background)

Assuming I understand the question, the first thing I'd do is change your accessibility display settings. More specifically:

Go to Apple > System Preferences
Click on the Accessibility preference pane
Within the left-hand pane click the Display icon (it's usually the 4th one down)
Now to the right you'll see a number of checkboxes and sliders relating to accessibility display settings
Have a play with these to see if they improve the readability of light-grey text


If you're just looking for headers that you can click on to sort your items by name, date, size, etc then you're probably wanting to use the List view instead. This allows you to sort items by clicking on the headers (e.g. clicking on the Name header will choose between an ascending or descending sort).

If you're wanting to manually sort items regardless of the view you're using, you can use the Arrange button in the Finder's Toolbar. This looks like:

By clicking on this you can arrange your items by any of the following options:

Perhaps an option that will interest you is the fact you can customise your Finder's Toolbar. To do this, within Finder go to View > Customise Toolbar...

From here you can add/remove buttons, opt for the default set, and choose whether you want to see icons only, text only, or icons and text in the Toolbar.


Deactivate sound for iPhone calls on Mac OS Yosemite

There is the option in FaceTime preferences to choose a Ringtone.  Unfortunatly there is no option for "NONE".  As a workaround I found you can edit the file that sets this.  The file is com.apple.ToneLibrary.plist

The file is located in:

~/Library/Containers/com.apple.tonelibraryd/Data/Library/Preferences/com.apple.ToneLibrary.plist

If the file doesn't exist the below command will create it.  Running the below will not deactivate facetime calls only silence them.

sudo defaults write ~/Library/Containers/com.apple.tonelibraryd/Data/Library/Preferences/com.apple.ToneLibrary.plist ringtone "system:"

After you run this either logout and back in or run the below commands:

killall cfprefd
killall Finder

The part in the above command that is setting it to silent is the "system:", if you want to set it back to a sound ringtone you would do something like "system:crystal".  Where as crystal is the name of the ringtone.

Not sure if anything else is reliant upon this file so make a backup before hand if the file exist on your system.


Is there a way to randomize or shuffle clips in iMovie 10?

You cannot shuffle clips once added to the media library. However, you surely can shuffle the sequence in which you are adding the clips to media library.

To shuffle pics when I try to create a slideshow, I do this:

Assuming all your pics are in my_pics folder

Open Terminal, then:

cd my_photos

mkdir -p random

for filename in *
do
   cp "$filename" ./random/"$(( $RANDOM % 1000 ))_$filename"
done

This will randomize the list of photos in your mu_pics/random folder, which you can then drag into your iMovie.

Shameless plug... if you like this answer, please do check out my photography website : http://makuchaku.in


messed up .bash_profile while configuring PostgreSQL

The newlines before the 'source' statements are missing, the 'source' statements should be on a new line.

Also, there are quite a number of duplicate and conflicting lines in your config (the psql aliases).


Any way to 'migrate' a Time Machine external for use with CCC?

No, there is no way. Time Machine uses Symbolic links to previous backups when it hasn't changed. You could use some form of ls -H combination with xargs to copy the latest backup some what safely, however, some times those symlinks are broken.

Furthermore, CCC won't accept that, because it also need to record which files it has copied, so in future it knows which are changed etc. You would be better off using a removing TM completely, format the disk, or create a partition for CCC. Though no point in keeping two backups on one external HDD, as both will be lost if it's destroyed.

CCC is very fast, it's not as slow as TM, so it shouldn't take long, as long as HDD has USB 3.0 (true, if inside of plug USB is blue). I was in the same place as you, where I didn't want to give up my previous back ups of TM. So ended using both, Time Machine to store all data, and CCC to create a bootable external copy of my disk. CCC only backs up the essentials, while TM does everything. When my PC's SDD is no longer functioning, I can boot up from CCC, and use TM to retrieve required data on the bootable.


To use the following method, you will need to install wget.

Make a file with the extension .sh in the same directory as your file containing the links and add this text to it:

mkdir ~/Desktop/download

while read line; do wget -E -H --directory-prefix=/Users/username/Desktop/download -k -p $line; done < file.txt

cd ~/Desktop/download

Make sure to edit the script and change username to your username

This reads file.txt for the URLs and runs the wget command multiple times with all the links one-by-one and saves them to a folder named download on your desktop.

Run it in terminal with ./script.sh or whatever you named it. If it shows Permission Denied, then run chmod a+x script.sh


What's the purpose of the eject button on the MacBook Air?

There's also quite a few keyboard shortcuts that use the eject key.

Control ⌃+Eject ⏏ brings up a screen that has Restart/Sleep/Cancel/Shut Down options
Command ⌘+Control ⌃+Eject ⏏ instantly restarts
(etc.)


Jump to the Terminal's right directory from Finder's specific directory

cdto - Finder Toolbar button to open a Terminal window

cdff - Switch Terminal dir to frontmost window of certain apps


Running Windows and macOS simultaneously on two screens

Parallels for Mac or VMware Fusion. Both would allow you to run Windows on top of macOS.


Podcasts connect "Can't parse your feed"

Ok so after a lot of trial and error I found what was causing the trouble.
My feed had this line at the very begining:
standalone="yes"

Inside the <?xml ?> declaration.
Removing that from the feed fixed it for both Apple Podcasts and Spotify.


Unable to use SSH/Microsoft Remote Desktop after Yosemite update

I ran into a similar problem after updating to Yosemite 10.10.1

Could you please check the output of tcpdump in another Terminal window, while you are connecting to your remote ssh server?

I have the suspicion you're hitting the same redirect-error I am seeing on my box recently :-/

How to get the information:

Open Terminal
type "sudo tcpdump -vv" --> hit return
Open another Terminal
Try to connect to your server via ssh
Look at the output of tcpdump and find the remote address of your server

If you do NOT see your server address, but rather some strange redirect (mine goes to gl02.opentracker.net):

Welcome to an unsolved, nasty problem-bug.


Apple Configurator 2: Where are the Blueprints?

My understanding (which could be wrong) is that blueprints are for people that don't automate things. You pick from a palette of options and build up "automation" from within the app.

If you want to shell script, you would just install the cfgutil Automation tools and have your script written to perform the steps you want. Basically, the blueprint steps aren't exposed to the command line tool in the current design of the app. If you want to use both, you'll have to set up your scripts and blueprints redundantly which is more work, more chance for error and more maintenance. Whether you make that time back depends on how many devices you have to manage and how efficient you are at setting things up.

http://krypted.com/iphone/apple-configurator-2/


External drive Mojave installs unaccessible from Mavericks

The simplest way to boot back to Mojave would be to reboot the Mac and immediately hold down the option key. This will invoke the Startup Manager. Select the Mojave startup disk. Next, click on the arrow below the icon to boot Mojave. If you wish to make Mojave the default, then hold down the control key before clicking on the arrow.

Apple a recently added new instructions for using the Startup Manager. These instructions can be found on the Apple website: How to select a different startup disk.

While it is technically possible to select Mojave directly from Mavericks, this would involve installing a third party boot manager such as rEFInd. Unless you intend to change operating systems often, such an installation would probably not be worth the trouble to pursue.


Macbook Pro (mid 2010) shutting down upon boot up

Could be the keyboard, where the power button is not working right (my sister had a MacBook Air that did this). Massage and blow compressed air into the power button and see if that helps.


How do I set a specific system setting using a script or a profile? System Preferences/Networks/WiFi/Require authorisation to turn wifi on/off

See Toggle Ability to turn wifi off which shows how to do so from the command line using a script:

#!/bin/sh

# Get "Wi-Fi" or "Airport" based on your OS
wservice=`/usr/sbin/networksetup -listallnetworkservices | grep -Ei '(Wi-Fi|AirPort)'`

# Get port (usually en1)
whwport=`/usr/sbin/networksetup -listallhardwareports | awk "/$wservice/,/Ethernet Address/" | awk 'NR==2' | cut -d " " -f 2`

# Set preferences
/usr/libexec/airportd "$whwport" prefs DisconnectOnLogout=Yes JoinMode=Automatic JoinModeFallback=DoNothing RememberRecentNetworks=No RequireAdminIBSS=Yes RequireAdminNetworkChange=No RequireAdminPowerToggle=Yes

This question had been answered  previously, see Enable Admin Authorization to Change wireless Networks, also on jamfnation. Seems to be a common question for school IT admins.

I found these answers being curious about what you found by using the key from the preferences.plist file (RequireAdminPowerToggle) and using Google search.


Macbook photo storage for digital art, strategies?

Actually, current 15" model MBPs are configurable with up to a 2TB SSD, and the 13" models up to a 1TB SSD.

As for your current setup, if your wife is often on the go then any online solution (be it iCloud or something else) may not really cut it. So, if it was me, I would just use an external USB drive.

This is portable enough to take on the road, and to keep connected when at home. Of course, you'd want to make sure that you configure your backup regime to include its data in your backups, but this is really the easiest way to increase capacity.

Another option is to rearrange your data generally so that you use your internal SSD mainly for your digital art, and use an external drive for any other large amounts of data (e.g. iTunes music library). Of course this is just a matter of prioritising what's more important to you.

Finally, you may want to check what's using up space on the SSD. You may find that something unexpected is taking up a lot of space (e.g. com.apple.bird, etc). While you can try to determine this manually, an easier way to check this is to use software such as DaisyDisk.

IMPORTANT: I assume since you have a NAS setup at home you've already got a backup regime in place. If not, organise one now!


Bartender is an app for rearranging menu bar items and creates a separate menu bar for more.
Bartender 2's menu bar is submenu-style.

Bartender 3 integrates the submenu into the position of the existing menu bar, with a toggle.


The error message tells you what's wrong - Safari can't find the web page - so we need to focus there.

Changing your DNS to Google's DNS servers won't do anything as Google's (DNS) servers are completely unaware of your private network.
MySQL/SQL connections don't impact HTTP(S) connections - it's two completely different protocols used over two totally different ports.  If you did manage to "break" your database connection, Drupal would generate an error message and the site would break.  However, Safari would still be able to find it.
Because Mozilla and Chrome can both reach the website, it's not necessarily a firewall issue.  This tells you that the service is up and running and accepting connections.  You mentioned that you have it set for "allowing all incoming except for a certain app."  You could be blocking Safari.
Under the Firewall Options, it doesn't handle "all" the incoming connections, but only the connections for built-in software.  If you're using an AMP stack outside of what Apple provides, it's not handling it.  Disable the firewall completely to see if this is the case.

Now, the error message "can't find the server" is a naming issue not a connection issue.  If it were, say, the firewall blocking, you would get a "connection refused" message.

ensure you're using the correct address.  Use the command line to be certain - `open -a Safari "apple.stackexchange.com"
flush your DNS cache - sudo killall -HUP mDNSResponder;
set your router as the primary DNS server (i.e 192.168.1.1 or whatever your router's IP is) as it will be be more familiar with your network
try http://localhost instead of the name - that will make sure it's going directly to your machine and not looking up anything.


Disabling one app's cellular data inadvertently disabling other apps?

I did some further investigation and experimentation, and from what I can tell, iOS is identifying the disabled app based on the app binary in some fashion. That is, the actual embedded executable file inside the app bundle, instead of the bundle id as one would intuitively expect.

If I create two different builds, and brand them into several brands each, then disabling one of the branded apps disables cellular connectivity for all brands in that group (i.e. that share the same underlying binary), but do not affect those brands built with a different binary. Furthermore, renaming the embedded binary file has no effect, so it's clearly basing it on the contents of the executable (perhaps a checksum or internal identifier).

As far as I can tell this is just a bug in the implementation of this feature on iOS, and I can't think of any way around this that doesn't involve completely changing how we are branding our apps. I've submitted a bug report to Apple.


Seeing details on software updates for Mavericks

Clicking anywhere on the alert (other than the buttons) will open the Mac App Store's "Updates" tab, listing the updates available and their descriptions. If the alert is not open anymore, you can find it in Notification Center under "App Store". When you find it, click on it to see the list of updates.


Do I need to take special steps to fully restore an iPhone after jailbreaking it?

This is the first I hear about this so-called "counter". I don't believe in such and I'm pretty sure when you restore an iPhone using DFU modus, the iPhone is completely wiped clean.

As a matter of facts, I've jailbroken all my iPhones so far and passed by the Apple Genius bar several times. Once I even forgot to restore the device when asking a Genius for help. And he just smiled at me and said "jailbreak, right? What's your favorite app?" :)

So, no. I don't think there is such a counter and you're safe with a DFU Full restore.


I'm going to go out on a limb and say there is no hidden setting to do this.

I tried making a new user account and switching the primary language to Arabic - so that the text and mail panes are laid out right-to-left instead of left-to-right and the swipe gesture is still:

swipe to right marks as unread/read
swipe to left is trash

My thinking is that if there was an allowance for differing behavior, Apple would have implemented that change in the swipe for languages with right-to-left text flow direction.

I could be wrong and hope someone posts a better answer if I am actually wrong in my guess. My thinking is you'd want to file a bug report to ask for the change if you don't think Apple will re-evaluate this design choice on their own accord.


Clicking will reset to the "residence" mode provided that you leave enough time after the previous clicks that it isn't treated as a quadruple click.  At least, that's the way it works for me in Chrome on my MacBook Pro.


Kali not showing in Kali-OSX dual boot on Macbook Pro

Thanks to this blog post, I was able to solve this issue using rEFInd.

Basically, rEFInd is a tool that allows you to select what operating system you want to boot with.

You can download rEFInd here: link
Full rEFInd documentation here: link


App for macOS to add words to personal vocabulary list?

You can create an Automator Quick Action that takes the selected word as input and saves it to a predefined document. The Quick Action can then be configured with a keyboard shortcut of your choosing.
Setting it up

Launch Automator (located in /Applications).

Create a new document of type "Quick Action":

Search for "shell" and drag the "Run Shell Script" action to the right panel:

Configure it to receive selected text from the current application and add this script, modifying ~/Documents/Vocabulary.txt to your needs (see below for a fancier script):
if [ "$@" != "" ]; then
    echo "$@" >> ~/Documents/Vocabulary.txt
fi

Save the Quick Action with a meaningful name like Save to Vocabulary List:

Open System Preferences>Keyboard>Shortcuts, select Services from the list on the left panel, enable the Quick Action and set a "complex" keyboard shortcut, for example ControlShiftCommandV, to reduce the change of a conflict with an existing one:

Open an app, select some text, press ControlShiftCommandV and the text will be added to the file configured in the Quick Action (~/Documents/Vocabulary.txt).

Going fancy
You can easily extend the script's functionality (basic scripting knowledge required). For example, to add a timestamp and a link to the Dictionary app, use this script instead (note that the vocabulary list is now saved to the HTML file ~/Documents/Vocabulary.html):
if [ "$@" != "" ]; then
    timestamp="$(date +%Y-%m-%d' '%H:%M:%S)"
    dictlink="dict://$(echo $@ | sed 's/ /%20/')"
    ahref="$@"

    echo "$timestamp - $ahref
" >> ~/Documents/Vocabulary.html
fi

When opened in Safari, the vocabulary file looks like this:

and you can click the word to look it up in the Dictionary app.


I'm not aware of any available data on this. I'm sure Apple has detailed information on returns and repairs, but there's no way they would ever release it (and I'd imagine it's guarded fairly heavily even within the company). You might be able to get some numbers from independent Mac repair shops, but without any information on how many Airs are out there and how many are going elsewhere for repair, it wouldn't be all that valuable statistically.

The best potential source I can think of is some of the market research companies, like Gartner. I don't know if any of their surveys would be specific enough to get data for failures for individual models (or whether their sample sizes are large enough to make any inferences significant). If they do have such data, it would almost certainly be in their for-pay reports (the free ones typically only include the general sales figures, nothing with the specificity you're looking for).


Keyboard shortcut for launching Apps in Dock

Just downloaded a 99 cent app from the mac app store called "Snap" that fixes this. Now I hit command-1 and the first app in my dock launches. Awesome!


Emptying the trash after deleting Time Machine Backups

Of course the problem only shows when I want to empty my trash and my related Time Machine volume is mounted. When I want to delete my trash, I temporarily unmount the TM Volume. And from now on I will not try to make extra room on my other TM back-up volumes by deleting folders from my Time Machine back-up. I will either let Time Machine automatically delete what is needed when the volume is full, or manually delete data using a method built into the Time Machine software.


If you're on an admin account, you should be able to click the lock, supply password, then click the + sign & add yourself as read/write.
If it won't let you do that, then try on the next folder up the hierarchy, setting permissions to at least add yourself as read & write, then click the 'gearbox' icon & 'apply to all enclosed items'.


Does personal hotspot always use cellular data?

Personal Hotspot mode detaches the device from any network and is intended to make all data flow to and from the cellular account. If you pulled the SIM card your plan just might work as a stunt to connect two laptops in the absence of another router, but it certainly won't extend an existing wireless network in the manner you describe.


My MacBook boots into recovery no matter what I select as a startup disk

I found that the EFI Partition was faulty and that I still can boot into my Debian 10 Live Medium so the solution was to reinstall macOS or to fix the EFI partition
In my case, I simply need to reinstall macOS/OS X Snow Leopard and then repatch the El Capitan installer and install and then, I'm done (Yes, I can just repair the EFI partition but I've erased my disk without doing it in purpose).
In the case of others, just reinstalling (without erasing anything) will fix the issue.
I hope that everyone is doing well and that my answer helped.
Vitali64


If you've already turned off Updates in iTunes & App Store and deleted the update in Manage Storage, then your final option is to totally block the update domains

https://appldnld.apple.com
https://mesu.apple.com/

in your hotspot.  This will block all software updates to any device connected to the hotspot.  [1]

However, a variety of reliable sources (NY Times, USA Today, WSJ, Associated Press) would recommend updating to iOS 12.  Many of them cite speeding up older devices as the primary reason.


how to clean the memory termed as 'others' in iphone 4s

Not quite sure what you mean. Most of the items labeled as ‘Others' are documents or info created by your Apps and can’t be deleted,  but you could try installing the (free) Battery Doctor app and running the memory boost and junk purge programs.

If this fails, back up (ESSENTIAL) and Settings>General>Reset>Erase all content and settings, then either reinstall your backup, or start as a new device and add apps one by one, starting with the most important. If you follow the latter course, make sure you screen grab and email or note down your network settings before resetting !


Most Android phones format exFAT SDcards incorrectly, the BlackBerry Priv being the only one I know that does it correctly. All other Android devices create a partition of type 12 (sometimes referred as hexadecimal "c") instead of 7. The android device actually ignores the partition type, so if you set it to 7 then the sdcard will work fine everywhere.
There are many options:

You can format the sd card on your MAC, then use it on any other
device. Don't forget to copy your data somewhere else first, since
reformatting will erase the contents of the sd card.
Use the program fdisk on PC or Linux system. Use the command "mount" on the
linux system to see the name of the device corresponding to your sd
card (it looks like /dev/sdc1 ) then call fdisk on that device,
omitting the last digit (ex: fdisk /dev/sdc). Then use option "t" to
change the partition type to 7
I think there is a similar program on Windows.


You can always make a silent ring tone as your default ring tone.  Be sure to assign ring tones to your contacts that you want to hear from.


Are app-related trademarks allowed as keyword for an app in the App Store?

You shouldn't use trademarked words as keywords for your app:

  When choosing a keyword, don’t use competing app names, company or product names, or trademarked names. Avoid inappropriate or objectionable terms or irrelevant words such as celebrity names; all keyword submissions are reviewed by Apple.

Source: iTunes Connect Developer Guide: First Steps: Identifying Your App in iTunes Connect: Set Up Searching and Browsing: Keywords: Get the Best Results; emphasis mine.


Apple Airpods - Android - When using for calls, does sound come through both Airpods, or just one?

AirPods work like standard bluetooth headphones on non-Apple devices. You'll hear sound through both AirPods on calls.

I'd encourage you to visit your local Apple Store and do an in-store demo using your phone to see if they're right for you. Alternatively you can have them shipped to you and return them within 2 weeks if you aren't satisfied.

Set up instructions


What make SSD?

Samsungs may need a firmware update & performance restoration to prevent slowdown [scary, done in DOS, using very inadequate instructions from Samsung, I've not yet braved it]...

...or you could try TRIM Enabler which may go part way towards speeding it up again.


Memory used on Ipod Classic that will not delete

You can repair it with Disk Utility. First you have to open the iPod in iTunes and click "Enable disk use" and Sync. Then close iTunes and open Disk Utility, select the iPod and repair the disk. After repair, you can restore and disable the disk use.


How can I transfer my contacts from iPhone to MacBook?

The iCloud method: In my iPhone when I got to Settings -> My Name -> iCloud -> Contacts. The "Contacts" is already on, and I don't know what to do next.

You need two devices to sync. So on Mac too, in System Preferences > iCloud, turn on Contacts sync.

Check Contacts.app > Preferences to see that account is enabled.

I don't know about iTunes method.

  so that I can manage duplicate contacts.

That is not easy on Mac either. What I do is:

On Mac, export all contacts in a vcf file.
Upload it on https://contacts.google.com and then let it find the duplicates.
Sort out the duplicates locally and verify it again.
Select all contacts on the Google web interface & delete them.


Screen backlight does not turn on during bootup, but turns on when accessing recovery partition

I had the same problem. The dimmed screen happened during the reboot after turning on file vault. I was able to solve the problem by going into a darkroom. This allowed me to see the cursor and to log in to an account. Once I logged in the back light came on and everything was fine.

I had first tried to solve the problem by zapping the pram. This had no effect.


There's a folder shortcut on my dock, next to the trash. Why is there and how do I remove it?

Simply click on it to hold it then drag it off of the dock and release the click. It should disappear in an animated puff of smoke.


Safari displays wrong color according to Digital Color Meter

What's happening is that Digital Color Meter (and all color droppers) is reading the color value AFTER it has been adjusted for your display's ICC Color Profile. See how it shows "Color LCD" in the bottom right box? Despite the generic sounding name, that is the ICC Color Profile specifically for Macbooks.

Here's a data flow diagram:

#FFDD44 (original)
   ↓
#FEDC53 (adjusted for Color LCD display profile)

The term "Display native values" is misleading because it sounds like it's going to display the original values, but it doesn't. Apparently, color droppers cannot get the original values. So there are 2 solutions:

1. Quick and dirty solution

Change Digital Color Meter to "Display in sRGB" mode. What that does is re-convert the adjusted value to sRGB (assuming that's what the color space of the original image is). The problem with this is due to the double conversion and rounding errors, sometimes you will not get the exact original value back! (In this case, it was the same, but if you try more colors, you'll find some that are slightly off).

#FFDD44 (original)
   ↓
#FEDC53 (adjusted for Color LCD display profile)
   ↓
#FFDD44 (convert back to sRGB)

2. Exact solution

If you want to guarantee the exact original values, you should set Digital Color Meter to "Display native values", then change your System Preferences > Displays > Color > sRGB. Verify that Digital Color Meter now shows "sRGB..." in the lower right box. Since that matches the color space of the original source, no adjustment will be made, so "Display native values" will always be the exact original values. (You should remember to change it back to "Color LCD" afterwards. Or if you don't care, leave it in "sRGB".)

#FFDD44 (original)

(no adjustment since display profile sRGB matches the original color space)

See this answer for more details.


For applications that do not store Quick Look information within the file, where does Lion (or a Server) store that information?

Graham - quick look generate the data on the fly. The inspectors know to use the previews when present, but will do the heavy lifting when needed.

The virtual memory system of course caches these files so it feels faster after the first render until it swaps out or gets disposed if the pages are not marked for a swap to disk.


Can I charge my 2016 MacBook Pro with Thunderbolt to USB-C

Thunderbolt 1 and 2 do not support power delivery.  You won't be able to charge your device from the Thunderbolt cable on your display or drives.

Thunderbolt 3 implemented the USB-C power delivery specification.

  By virtue of being an Alternate Mode of USB Type-C, Thunderbolt 3
  ports implement USB Power Delivery, allowing the ports to source or
  sink up to 100 watts of power...


How do I install GCC and make on a mac without administrator access or using Xcode?

If you don't have administrator access to your machine, you are still be able to install pre-compiled binary software inside your home directories. Create a folder in your home directory called usr and a directory inside that one called bin, if you want to match the standard directory structure of where make and gcc usually reside.

you can find a gnu make binary for os x here

about make

you can find a download link for a gcc binary for os x here

about gcc

Using these tools successfullly without sudo (admin or root) access is altogether another thing... and you didn't ask about that, and I can't answer that, anyway. It seems like it would be easier to gain admin access through various methods available on the web than to try to build software without admin access. But this, of course, is not part of your question. Best of luck!

(and FYI, I'm pretty sure Brew requires xcode, and if you can get xcode installed, brewnistas enthusiam for Brew notwithstanding, MacPorts is far far more resiliant and mature than Brew)


Apple doesn't cancel these - you can put in a throwaway or secondary email / change the information and stop using the accounts, though.

How can I delete an apple account?
How do I delete unwanted Apple ID's?
When will Apple delete Apple ID?


Font Book finds duplicate fonts installed by Microsoft Office

If you want to save space and remove the extra fonts, I'd recommend selecting everything, then right-clicking and selecting "Resolve Duplicates." I'm fairly sure Font Book favors fonts without any detectable bugs and with more characters, but in any case it will automatically disable any duplicate fonts.


Moving the cursor using the touchpad inserts "C"

After three months, I finally found reason. The Eudic I installed has function called Zoned word translation. When I open this function, the program will automatically copy text when I use mouse to select it. That will be fine in OS X. But in some application like parallel, it will show this problem.

Solution: cancel this function in the Eudic program setting.


How to fix messed-up MacBook disk partition table?

Yes. Boot into the mac's recovery, and reinstall (or repair) the drive.


How can I change banner notification time on a MacBook with OS X 10.10.5?

You cannot easily customize the time anymore on current os since the preference has been removed since MacOS 10.10 Yosemite.

If you want your notifications to stay on the screen until you dismiss them, you can do the following:

Go to
System Preferences > Notifications

Select the notifications you want not to be dismissed automatically. Change the "alert style" to "Alerts" instead of "Banners".


Try to do SMC Reset as this will help for

General performance and functionality problems: abnormally sluggish behavior despite no CPU or disk usage, external ports not working, airport & Bluetooth aren’t showing up, external devices are not being found, etc

Apple says you shouldn’t reset the SMC without first trying other troubleshooting tasks, such as force-quitting problematic apps and restarting your Mac. However, Apple doesn’t mention any negative consequences of resetting the SMC, nor any way to determine for sure if the SMC is glitchy without resetting it and noticing that the problem went away. I’ve reset my Macs’ SMCs many times with no apparent ill effects, and on the occasion that did, in fact, turn out to be the solution to a problem.

How to do SMC Reset

Shut down and unplug your Mac. On the built-in keyboard, press and hold the Shift, Option, and Control keys on the left side and press the power button and hold all of these down for 10 seconds, then release the keys. Connect the power adapter and then turn the Mac on normally.


Early 2011 MacBook Pro does not standby correctly

This Support Page at Apple does not specify your MBP as fulfilling the hardware requirements for using Standby mode:

•   MacBook (2015 and later)
•   MacBook Pro (2012 and later)
•   MacBook Air (2010 and later)
•   SSD and Fusion drive versions of Mac mini (2012 and later)
•   SSD and Fusion drive versions of iMac (2012 and later)
•   Mac Pro (Late 2013)


Essentially the guide you're following will later instruct you to use a Python script mdm_vendor_sign.py that automates a lot of the otherwise manual steps, you would have to take to create an MDM vendor certificate signing request.

One limitation of that script is that it does not support interactively requesting the passphrase for the private key. Therefore the private key must not have a passphrase in order to be used with this tool.

Ordinarily you would recommend that you create a private key protected by a pass phrase, and then temporarily strip out the password to use the script, and then delete the stripped key again - in order to safe guard the private key.

However, you seem to have created a private key without entering a passphrase at all. Therefore you just need to skip this specific step in the guide - there's simply to passphrase to skip.

I would still recommend that you do actually use a passphrase with your private key, as this is the step protecting you from exposure if the key file is leaked to a third party.


Limit iPad data when tethered to iPhone (iOS equivalent of "Trip Mode" or "Little Snitch")

A simple Web search revealed this app which claims to monitor data usage on your iOS device.

My Data Manager VPN Security

Some of the features as listed in the app description are:

Monitor your data usage on mobile, WiFi, and roaming
Find out which apps are eating up your mobile data
Get alerts before you reach your data limit to avoid overage fees

The app is available free of cost from the App Store.

Note: No affiliation whatsoever with the developer of the app. Based on the app description and ratings, it appears like a useful app.


Hide the dock in Mission Control and Launchpad?

You could make it very small by pulling on the divider that is located to the right, usually just before the trash (a line) and it will turn in to double arrow when you click on it.


Is there a way of getting a notification when you are using data?

There's no way in iOS that would send a notification if you start using mobile data rather than Wi-Fi.
However, you can either disable mobile-data entirely; disable Wi-Fi assist, which is a feature baked into iOS that lets the phone switch automatically to mobile data if the Wi-Fi signal is weak; or disable mobile data on a per app basis.
If you are concerned about a data hungry app such as video streaming or social networking apps, you can selectively disable mobile data for them by going to Settings app → Mobile Data and turn off the switch shown corresponding to the desired apps.


Assuming that you’re using parental controls on your child’s iPad, you can disable access to video content with the ratings of your choice. See here for Apple’s instructions on how to do so.
The current instructions (which may change, so following the link is preferable) are:

To restrict explicit content and content ratings:

Go to Settings and tap Screen Time.

Tap Content & Privacy Restrictions, then tap Content  Restrictions.

Choose the settings you want for each feature or setting under Allowed Store Content.


Mac software for developing a product video

You want ScreenFlow. The website isn't all that well designed, but ScreenFlow itself is a very nice and nice-looking Mac app.

Depending on how fancy you want to get with transitions and effects, you might find it useful to export clips from ScreenFlow and composite them in something else. But there are plenty of product demo videos for popular Mac apps that  were done completely in ScreenFlow (examples elude me; help, commenters?).


Are you sure google isn't simply kicking you out after a month or so, because you have to refresh your two factor auth login?

SMTP uses password authentication, and two factor auth sets up your account so that a password alone is not enough to access your account.

I think this is unlikely to be a problem with mail.app, and deleting/re-creating the account is a red herring. The real issue is happening on google's server and something else is solving it. Deleting the account in Mail.app and creating a new one with the same username/password has no impact at all on what data it sends to google's server, so it's impossible for that to solve the problem you're having.

Perhaps if you log into google in safari, go through the two factor auth process, Mail.app will suddenly start working again? I'm not sure how google's two factor auth uses, I think if you have used two factor auth from that IP address recently, it will accept password-only authentication.

Failing that, you might have better luck on a google specific support forum, or just waiting for it to be fixed (you can't be the only person experiencing this issue).


FileVault blocking macOS Sierra upgrading process from OS X El Capitain

It may be paused... Look in diskutil cs list output for "Conversion Progress" near the bottom.

Conversion Progress:   Paused

If it says "Paused" like above then on 10.11 you can use fsck_cs to fix it. Use the Physical Volume disk id from your diskutil output (disk0s2 in this example):

fsck_cs -y disk0s2


They key to your particular concern about the system is that an intruder would require local access to your Mac in the first instance in order to use the terminal to redirect syslog messages elsewhere (or perform any other nefarious activities that may allow genuine remote network access at a later date).  The log redirection is a secondary "intrusion" that may allow someone to see the contents of your log files (which can contain some sensitive information, but I would never expect to see passwords in there).  It isn't giving access to your system, but to your log files etc.

The link you provide is a litany of random sounding events, which all span in reality from 1 person gaining local access to your machine.  This is the key here.  Set a screensaver, and require a password to unlock it.  Use Filevault to encrypt your boot drive to prevent booting from another disc or partition and gaining access to your data.  Don't use auto-login for any user account.  Set a strong password that is not used elsewhere.  Do this, and almost everything you mention or that is mentioned in the link is not possible to achieve.  To be clear, that machine was not "hacked", it sounds far more likely that social engineering or simply using the computer while the owner was not present due to lax security was at fault.

Rest easy, do the above and just concentrate on physical access for now.

If you are still concerned about remote intrusion then Apple's Mac OS X Security Configuration Guides provide additional suggestions for hardening your Macintosh against intrusion, however you should proceed with caution, as security often compromises usability, and some of the measures may be too extreme for your purposes and prone to causing you more problems than they solve, not to mention the fact that they can often be reverted through OS software updates without you being aware...


Can't buy anything through the app store on mac?

you have to check with your "payment method" provider, e.g. credit card issuing company...


After restarting into non-jailbroken mode, there is an option in the Chimera app to jailbreak with tweaks disabled. (this is Chimera's equivalent of safe mode)


Can ping Mac from machines on network but can't connect to any of its ports

I ended up just backing up my boot drive to a disk image and reinstalling the OS (not restoring the backup, but occasionally mounting it to pull what I need off of it). Problem seems to be resolved now.


How to disable notifications for a single calendar, in iOS6

Yes, in iOS 8:

  To do this, simply go into the Calendar app, tap the “Calendars” button in the bottom center to bring up your list of Calendars, and then tap the red “i” to the left of the calendar you’d like to change. Scrolling all the way to the bottom will reveal an “Event Alerts” option — simply toggle this OFF to prevent alarms in that calendar from showing up on the current device.


Mac Sierra - Not able to start in safe mode

Press Power on

After your hear the boot chime...

HOLD Shift key till it is in the Safe mode.

If it is not working lets try other start up modes like Verbose

Turn on your Mac, then immediately press and hold Command-V.

or Single user mode Turn on your Mac, then immediately press and hold Command-R

Still nothing ! Reset your SMC and NVRAM.

Rare situation, your EFI portion on the SSD is Brocken. To fix it Back up your data and reinstall OSX.


How can I add an Old English dictionary to Dictionary?

Adding dictionaries is possible.  Finding the one you want may not be.  See

http://clasquin-johnson.co.za/michel/mac-os-x-dictionaries/index.html

For info on creating dictionaries for dictionary.app, see

How can I create a dictionary for Mac OS X?

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


Not possible to create a sparsebundle image on a SMB mounted Volume

To use sparsebundles and Time Machine backups, a NAS must support AFP and one must mount the share using the AFP protocol. AFP supports metadata transport that is not carried via SMB shares. CIF/SMB should be used with Windows-based systems. AFP should be used with Apple systems whenever possible.

While you might be able to create a sparsebundle and use it under SMB, I can see no reason for doing so. When you're using OS X, you're best served by using AFP.


Where to find OpenSSL devel package - can't seem to find it in Brew

Just install openssl via Homebrew. It contains all you need.

EDIT: I tried building UnrealIRCd with openssl installed and it built successfully.

EDIT2: On a number of package managers, a software package is divided into runtime (used by other softwares to run) and development (used to build the other softwares) packages.
For instance, openssl is a runtime and openssl-devel is a development package on those package managers.
However, packages on Homebrew aren't separated in this manner but just contain both.
This is why just installing openssl is fine on Homebrew.


How is it possible to remotely access photos on iPhone?

Dropbox, Google+ and other similar apps offer the ability to automatically upload new photos to your cloud storage. Do you have anything like that installed?


How do I use/transfer my kids iTune balance onto my family plan

There is not a transfer function since the value was spent when it was associated with an AppleID.

Can I redeem all my iTunes gift cards at once?

If you queue up your purchases, remove the accounts with a credit from the family and then spend down the balance to zero, then join back in the family. As long as the purchases share with the family, it won’t matter that a non-primary purchaser purchased it. The main thing, is each account can spend down their balance if you let them purchase.

Going forward, only redeem credits from the master account that carries the payment terms of you want to prevent or restrict purchases from other accounts in general.


Is there anything like the clipboard manager Ditto for Mac?

If you just want clipboard history, check out Jumpcut. Manages your clipboard history just fine. To install:
brew install jumpcut

It’s also a common feature in applications like Alfred (as noted by Lauri Ranta), LaunchBar and Keyboard Maestro.


2016 MacBook Pro won't get past the Login Screen

On a hunch

repair your disk

Boot in Single user Mode "CMD S"

As the Mac boots in this mode, the screen reports each step of the process. Wait until the scrolling white text stops. The last line should end in root#.

Right after the root# prompt, enter the following:

/sbin/fsck -fy

Press the Return key.

You’ll see the prompts in the picture above as each part of the hard drive’s directory is checked. (Checking extents overflow file, Checking catalog file, Checking multi-linked files, etc.) It will take a few minutes. At the end, if your drive was OK, the screen will say “The volume (name of your hard drive) appears to be OK”. If any repair was made, you’ll see the prompt, “FILE SYSTEM WAS MODIFIED”. Then, you’ll see the root# prompt again.

Right after the root# prompt, enter the following:

reboot

Press the Return key. Your Mac should restart normally.


I've not found a way to get Preview to search for characters like # or +, but Skim, an alternative PDF viewer (homepage here), is a good replacement/addition to Preview and is able to search more specifically.

I've tested it and found it was able to find C++ (without needing any quotes/special options) without bringing up all C results.

It was also able to search specifically for accented characters (like é or ö) — though requires such characters to be accented in the search to find them (i.e. you can't search for blah and expect it to match bläh, nor vice versa). In Preview, either search will return matches for both accented and unaccented characters.


iOS 4.2 on iPod Touch 2d Gen : is it worth it?

I'd say yes. I just upgraded a pair of 2nd gen iPod Touches to iOS 4.2 and it's been really solid so far - it hasn't slowed down the device or impacted the battery as far as I can tell. If you have an Airport Express or new Apple TV the AirPlay feature is very nice - this Thanksgiving I really enjoyed being able to stream music to a pair of speakers directly from the iPod in my pocket. (this will affect your battery as the device has to keep WiFi active to stream)


How to make the last network user username remain in the login field?

Ok! I have learned something. I will leave this here in hope it helps others who experience the same issue.

When setting up the AD binding there was an option about "create mobile account at login" which I left off. I assumed it was like a Windows roaming user.

However, it seems if you don't turn this on, OS X won't create a home directory for the user, or a local account for them.

When you turn it on, and login again, it does. Having the home directory/local account means you can turn the icon login option back on (so they don't need to enter the username), it means you can make them an admin of the machine, it means they can login when offline, and various other things.

So, turning this on has essentially solved a number of puzzling and frustrating things.


iOS Face ID validation invoked when browsing in Safari

Face ID should only ask for verification in Safari when using Autofill to fill in a username/password.
I attempted to duplicate your issue myself with both Safari and Google Chrome, but received no such prompt for verification.
Do you have an account on this website?
If so, perhaps there is a login box somewhere on the website's home page that Autofill is attempting to fill.
If not, it may be a bug with the website, Safari, or your OS.
If it is a website bug, requesting the desktop version of the website and seeing if you are still promoted for Face ID could be a good test of that.
If all else fails and it annoys you too much, contact Apple.


nslookup & dig fail; ping, traceroute, and scutil -r work

I'm still not sure what was causing the problem, but after suffering from another seemingly unrelated issue, I did a complete re-install of 10.8.  I had originally upgraded from 10.6 -- though the utilities had seemed to work fine for a while after the initial upgrade, my suspicion is that I did something to some unknown-to-me configuration while attempting to diagnose/resolve the other issue (something that apparently disabled some aspects of DNS access).

After the re-install, all DNS-related utilities are now working fine.


How do I re-add a card that I swiped away from Google Now?

The solution is quite simple: You have to wait.

For me, I had swiped away the Weather card at 10 PM, and the next day I got up at 6 AM, I was greeted by the weather forecast for that day.

No refreshing or changing of settings worked, unfortunately.


How to tell if the iphone 5 is connected to the 2.4 or 5 ghz network?

See the answers to this similar question.

Since you are using an AirPort Extreme, you can set up a separate SSID for the 5GhZ-network and connect to that one manually on your phone, and from there be able to see which network you're on. To do this, follow the below step:

  Airport Utility 6.0: Airport Extreme > Edit > Wireless > Wireless Options > Tick the box next to "5GHz network name".
  Airport Utility 5.6 and earlier: Manual Setup > Wireless > Wireless Network Options > Tick the box.
  Source

P.S. Having a different SSID does not make it a separate network, it just makes the two bands differentiable.


Control stays with previous app after four-finger swipe?

This is unexpected behaviour. There is no setting for this. Does this also happen when you switch to a different virtual desktop with the keyboard shortcut ctrl + left/right arrow key?

I would usually tell people to trash the plist that holds any related settings but it seems that com.apple.desktop.plist doesn't exist anymore in Sierra.

Installing sierra over the current install could mend your issue. Best to have the latest installer for sierra in that case and not an older version than you already have installed. This will, by the way, not delete you stuff. It will install the OS over whatever is already there. You can only loose stuff if you go erase the disk first before installing.
Talking about re-installing, can you not install a later version of OSX? Maybe High sierra?


Clear photo cache when iCloud Photos optimization is enabled

Apple doesn't list a required/minimum free space, so you'd need to work with Apple support to get that sorted. As for the cache, you've already done all you can.

iOS has several low storage warnings it sends to each and every app to clean up cached files and with < 500 MB of free space, I'd wager you've exercised those limits continuously and it's surprising to me if this is the only thing that is broken on your device right now.

I would:

Delete one or two large apps that you know the data is safe/unimportant. Try to get 2 GB of free space if you can but 1 GB of free storage should be sufficient.
Power off the device and power it on to let system cache files re-generate
Open photos on the device and on iCloud and see if normal operations resume. I've had good luck with photo libraries coming back from all sorts of intentional abuse like you've unintentionally performed. It can take 24 hours or more (if you hit any upload limits) for the cleanup script(s) to trigger so you might wait 48 hours to see if the added space lets iOS complete the upload work that is queued.

Also, Apple does offer debugging profiles for iOS cloud sync if you call in for support and if their "cookbook" method doesn't yield results. If your case get escalated to engineering specific error messages contained in the debug logs can often assist you in further diagnosing why all the photos are not syncing.

You could also just push the photos to a computer or other iOS device using AirDrop or USB and upload them to the cloud from another device and then remove iCloud Photos temporarily from your iPhone to allow enough space to resume normal operations and then re-enable the library with the option to reduce file size.

Basically, the system is designed to stop working when there isn't enough space for temporary files to work. This is the same design as OS X and other unix in general.

These operating systems use free storage space to cache things and make your experience better by accelerating slow resources like network and CPU by saving work when it's done to reuse it later. When you deprive the system of that buffer, things slow and eventually stop.


In the new photos app, how can photos be deleted from device independent of import time?

Easiest way is to use Image Capture from OS X

You can use it to Import too, to any app that can import pictures, or to a folder location.

Select any pictures you wish to delete & hit the 'no entry' sign to trash from your device


How to use time machine to recover a deleted pdf in iBooks?

You should be able to restore the PDF from the backup using the command-line technique I posted in How can I restore iBooks stored in iCloud from a Time Machine backup?

Find the most appropriate backup:

$ tmutil listbackups
[...]
/Volumes/Time Machine Backups/Backups.backupdb/macbook/2017-12-11-123506
/Volumes/Time Machine Backups/Backups.backupdb/macbook/2017-12-12-212807
/Volumes/Time Machine Backups/Backups.backupdb/macbook/2017-12-13-224355

Check if your missing PDF is available:

$ ls '/Volumes/Time Machine Backups/Backups.backupdb/macbook/2017-12-12-212807/Macintosh HD/Users/USERNAME/Library/Mobile Documents/iCloud~com~apple~iBooks/Documents/file.pdf'
/Volumes/Time Machine Backups/Backups.backupdb/macbook/2017-12-12-212807/Macintosh HD/Users/USERNAME/Library/Mobile Documents/iCloud~com~apple~iBooks/Documents/file.pdf

This assumes you know the name of the file, but if not you can omit the file.pdf and you'll get the full listing for the directory.

Restore the file to your Desktop:

$ tmutil restore '/Volumes/Time Machine Backups/Backups.backupdb/macbook/2017-12-12-212807/Macintosh HD/Users/USERNAME/Library/Mobile Documents/iCloud~com~apple~iBooks/Documents/file.pdf' /Users/USERNAME/Desktop/
Total copied: 7.89 MB (8270868 bytes)
Items copied: 1

Then you can add the PDF to iBooks again as normal.


Is there a way to force a password check on a Macbook using Touch ID

You're looking for the command line tool bioutil.  Probably with the -u option.

Usage:
bioutil {-r | -w [-f { 0 | 1 }] [-u { 0 | 1 }] [-a { 0 | 1 }]} | [-c] | [-p] | [-d <uid>] [-s]

Options:
    -r, --read                      Read current Touch ID settings
    -w, --write                     Write new Touch ID settings
    -s, --system                    Flag to read/write systemwide Touch ID settings or perform systemwide operations
    -f, --function                  Enable (1) or disable (0) Touch ID functionality in general (system settings only)
    -u, --unlock $value             Enable (1) or disable (0) Touch ID for unlock
    -a, --applepay $value           Enable (1) or disable (0) Touch ID for ApplePay (user settings only)
    -c, --count                     Print number of enrolled fingerprints of the current user or of all users (-s, administrator only)
    -p, --purge                     Delete all enrolled fingerprints of the current user or of all users (-s, administrator only)
    -d, --delete $uid               Delete all enrolled fingerprints of the given user (administrator only)


Least annoying slideshow export format for iPhoto to iMovie

The H.264 codec that the QuickTime format uses is a part of MPEG-4.
To get the best results, tweak the options for MPEG4.

Go File → Export → Slideshow → Custom Export → Movie to MPEG-4 → Options….
Below is a screen cap of the options I recommend for you. You can adjust the resolution and bitrate depending on the quality you want (higher numbers = higher quality).


Functionality like iOS's keyboard shortcut functionality

There are good apps that allow you to set up text expansion with a nice GUI. This is the one I have used and liked:
Dash Expander
Mac App Store Link
Dash Expander handles text expansion very well. I have used it and it works well. The free version:

"...will nag and annoy you every now and then, in order to purchase."

I haven't found these to be that obtrusive. However, as of writing the full version is just $1.99. This also has the ability to set variables. For example, you can set up a boiler-plate thank you note, and just set variables in there that you quickly go through and change to personalize for the recipient.


How do I merge System partition with another HFS+ partition without data loss?

There is absolutely no way that you should even think about doing any of this without a complete backup on a separate disk. Verify the backup before beginning.

1) If you have a complete backup, the easiest way to do this would be to wipe everything, make the partitions you want, and then copy the information back from your backup. If your Recovery HD is deleted, there is no way to re-create it without reinstalling the OS. (At least none that I could find when I was searching recently.)

2) Assuming you have a backup OTHER than that Backup partition, if you want to attempt to merge these, I would try it in this order:

a. Delete the 'Backup' partition.

b. Merge 'Data' partition and former 'Backup' partition.

c. Merge System partition and other partition.

d. Re-create the 'Backup' partition and restore it from whatever backup you have.

I have done several live-system partition resizings with no problems. However, the one time that there was a problem, I had to reformat the entire drive and start over.


Is there a Mac screen capture tool that will export to animated gif?

LICEcap is free (GPL), works on MacOSX, and capture animated GIF directly.

http://www.cockos.com/licecap/

It's never too late ;-)


macOS did not apply new time zone settings

Okay, there was an awaiting macOS update that I forgot about. I've applied the update, restarted, and the time zone corrected itself.


Rogue Amoeba's AirFoil and AirFoil Speakers applications will allow you to do this.


Why is my Legacy FileVault image larger than the physical disk?

According to this Apple Support discussion this is normal and is due to the mounted volume size being a "potential" size (usually twice) of the actual hard disk size. If it puts your mind at rest, I see exactly the same thing on my Snow Leopard 10.6.8 system with FileVault enabled and that's been just fine.

In addition, in my answer to FileVault sparsefile uses double of actual allocated disk space it could simply be that as Filevault mounts (and links to) the encrypted disk image, the size reported in Get Info is a result of the structure being traversed twice.


Is it safe to delete the original admin user after creating a new one?

Yes it’s safe - you only need one admin account. You can delete all the others, just not the last one.
Choose to keep the data or delete the data, but the accounts can all go when you don’t need them.


Creating and modifying tags hangs Finder in OS X 10.9 Mavericks

This problem has been bugging me for months. I've kept a weather eye on the Google results, poked around trying to find my own solution, upgraded to Yosemite to see if the issue was resolved there, but nothing turned up. So, during the Thanksgiving break I decided to sit down and fix this once and for all.

Looooong story short, every time you add a new tag (and possibly when you add a tag to a file) it gets popped into the Finder sidebar for easy access. Handy. Thing is, if you get crazy and add a metric ton of tags, none of them are ever removed from the Finder sidebar. They roll off the edge where you can't see them, and are flagged as "visible if newer items are removed" but they are all retained in the sidebar items plist. This plist gets massive, and takes a long time to parse any time it must be modified.

To make things worse, when you have "documents and data" turned on under System Preferences → iCloud, the tag list is synced. This means the hang follows you to every machine where you are signed into iCloud, even on a fresh reload of OS X. Funfunfun.

Thankfully, there is an easy fix. I'll keep the explanation simple for Joe Internet who may be having this problem stumble across this post.

When the Finder is running properly (not beach-balled), right-click on the icon in the Dock and select Go to Folder. In the dialog that appears type ~/Library/Preferences/. That funny little squiggle at the front is just a nice little shortcut that tells the dialog to start in your home folder for the path, rather than the root of the internal drive.

You will be presented with a cornucopia of scary looking plists. The one we are after is titled com.apple.sidebarlists.plist. Copy that plist somewhere you can find it later (just in case something goes awry and you have to put it back). Now, delete the the original plist in the Library folder and reboot your machine. After the reboot Finder will have an empty tag sidebar and you can create, delete, and rearrange tags to your hearts content. No hangs. As long as you have iCloud "Documents and Data" enabled, this new clean sidebar will also be uploaded to iCloud and clear out the old gigantic one on all your machines.

It should be noted that this DOES NOT delete the tags from your files. That information is actually appended to an extended attribute (xattr) of the file itself, rather than being stored in a single plist or database somewhere. Thankfully, the tags on the files themselves aren't what's causing the hang issue, so we can leave them untouched.

Of course, what you will lose are the list of tags and custom folders you want in the Finder sidebar. Add the folders back the normal way (drag them into the sidebar) and you can select which tags you want by going to the Finder menu → Preferences → Tags and checking the boxes. I've got about a dozen and things are snappy.

One other unfortunate loss are the tags' assigned colors. That's strictly stored in the Finder's plist. The tags may appear to retain their color until you add them back to the sidebar, or try to apply a tag to an item, at which point the color vanishes.

After you've added a tag or two back to the sidebar the "all tags" item will reappear at the bottom of the list. Click on that and scroll through the list of tags to re-assign their colors. Make sure to re-apply color even to the tags that appear to have retained it, because when that tag is next added to a file or otherwise modified there's a good chance the color will disappear.

Something to note if you have a lot of colors applied: adding them all back may cause the hang issue to re-manifest. All those color assignments are stored in the plist, and too many may drag things down. I've only got a few color assignments so I haven't been able to verify this theory.

That's it! Congratulations! Tags are now usable on your machine(s) again. Just remember to go into Finder → Preferences → Tags every now and again and clear the checkbox or minus sign from the tags you don't want displayed in the sidebar and things should remain snappy.


How to delete Apple ID without password?

you sure have his email if you know his Apple ID.
You can delete it if Find My iPad is not enabled. Otherwise it will become locked if it is.

These what you do before buying second hand Apple device


Although the solutions suggesting GIT or O/S X Server will work one way to keep two Macs in Sync is something like Dropbox. I know a few people who keep their entire home folder there.

Obviously usage of that much disk space in Dropbox will required a paid subscription but for the syncing files issue that should work a treat.


How can I sync photos and videos from iPhoto to my windows server

You can move the iPhoto archive in your Photos folder in your Home folder to a location on the external drive, create an alias in Mac OS X from the new location, and drop that where the archive used to be in your Photos folder in your Home folder. iPhoto will automatically redirect to the external drive. I do this at home and it works great. As long as that external drive is backed up, you're all set.

Otherwise, you will have to use backup software (not Time Machine in this case) to ensure backups are made from the internal HD to the external hard drive on an automatic, ongoing basis.


You are presumably accessing the remote computer via the web portal?

The space bar is a common shortcut in most browsers to scroll the page (vertically down). I'm guessing that the browser is taking priority in this instance and not allowing the event to fall through to the remote OS. (?)


PF set condition for not equal to a list of ports for MacOS

You can make the inverse command logic.

First Block all, then open just the ones you want:

The result is the same you tried by negating all except those chosen to be opened. :)

set skip on lo
port_pass = "{ 80 66 53 22 }"
block all
pass out on en0 proto { tcp, udp } to any port $port_pass keep state


How does the new iPad's Retina Display affect its battery life?

Your question's wording is a bit unluckily.
There is no previous iPad with the same battery capacity. It does not really makes sense to talk of an impact of a new display to the battery-life. That's not a reasonable comparison because the battery has been updated as well.
The retina display of the iPad 3rd generation

The new iPad uses 2.5 times the backlight power of the iPad 2. This is due to the TFT transistors of the high-res LCD display blocking more light. (source)

This also contributes to the heat emission. The overall performance however is only little affected, because Apple compensated the increased power drain by adding a 70% bigger battery.

(pictures 1,2)


You can open Word documents with the built-in TextEdit app.

It will display and print them the same way (as far as I can tell) as QuickLook does.


It sounds like it might work but in taking about target display mode Apple only mentions an iMac as supported.

Target Display Mode

Though they do not specifically mention a MacBook as supported or not. It is unlikely that trying it would cause problems (or damage), but I am unsure.


With Apple Music Family Plan, can two devices with the same Apple ID stream at the same time?

Yes, my wife and I share an Apple ID for Music, since we use iTunes Match as well as Apple Music. It works fine.


OS X's "free" or "/proc/meminfo" equivalent

The closest analogs to free and cat /proc/meminfo might be vm_stat and ls -l /var/vm but you also have the BSD tools like heap and Darwin tool allmemory to dig deeper into processes and libraries to determine how the overall virtual memory load is allocated to specific processes.


How to get Apple Music on iPod Touch 1G?

There is no legal way of doing that. However, there is a number of various online and downloadable converters you can use to get a usable file from the original .m4p one.

To get the file, just go to /Music/iTunes Media/Apple Music/yourSong.m4p.

Then, open a converter and just let it work its magic.

WARNING: This way is illegal, violates Apple Music's TOS and is not at all nice. Do it on your own risk.


In Shortcuts on iPadOS and iOS, where is the Adjust Date action?

In the Shortcuts app, typing “Adjust” in the ‘Search for apps and actions’ box will reveal what you seek.


See which app drained my Macbook's battery

I commented this but realized it is really just a solution. Building off on what @Pratik commented, using the command found here, build a simple bash script to save the output every 2 minutes. You can run this script right before you put the computer to sleep to determine what is keeping your computer awake. If the computer goes to sleep, then this program will be paused, but if it is awake, it will continue to record the process keeping your computer awake. You can change the counter yourself if you find it to to be too much or too less.

Sample Bash Program:

mkdir -p sleep_logs
cd sleep_logs
clear

echo "Starting monitoring programs."

while true
do
    ###Save command output
    pmset -g assertions > $(date +%H.%M.%S_%Y.%m.%d).txt
    echo "Command Saved @ $(date +%H.%M.%S_%Y.%m.%d)"
    wait

    ###Change time here
    sleep 2m
done

echo "Terminated"


In general, Disk Utility forces you to erase a drive to turn on or off the RAID wrapper it places on the actual data.

If you set up a mirrored set (RAID 1) you still have access to the data and could just ignore the RAID wrapper since it allows you to add more drives as mirrors in the future, but doesn't force you to do so and you can keep using it as a single drive perpetually. I might turn off AutoMirror on that drive to ensure the OS never decides another drive is the master and proceeds to delete your data (an edge case, but I'd hate to experience this no matter how remote the chance).

The method Apple recommends to undo RAID is to back up the data elsewhere and delete the RAID wrapper and then copy the data back. My guess is if you erased the RAID wrapper and didn't otherwise do anything to the drive file recovery software could patch back together most if not all the files but I certainly wouldn't risk it for any data I wasn't prepared to walk away from.


What font is used for the file extensions in mac icons?

I suggest trying the Helvetica Neue and Avenir families, as Apple uses them elsewhere.


How to access continuity through applescript or command line

You can probably avoid all the hassle by just using one nice service - http://xip.io

Instead of browsing to http://localhost - look up your IP and browse to http://192.168.12.13.xip.io/

Of course, your actual IP address for the local host is needed unless your router was set up to assign your test Mac 192.168.12.13 - even though you aren't asking how to get your IP, that's the key to making this easy for safari to hand off the session from macOS to iOS.

  Does xip.io cost anything?

  Nope! xip.io is a free service from Basecamp, the
  creators of Pow. We were tired of jumping through hoops
  to test our apps on other devices and decided to solve
  the problem once and for all.


Avg load goes up after upgrading to Mavericks

Finally found the culprit. I'm using zsh and the plugin vi-mode from Oh-my-zsh interacts poorly with git tools. Disabling the plugin made my zsh usable again in terms of responsiveness and reducing CPU load.

There are conflicting reports whether Apple's git needs to be upgraded and you can follow that process at https://github.com/robbyrussell/oh-my-zsh/issues/2189

Still many thanks for all the people reply to the answer.


Is target disk mode a clean way to install (Mountain) Lion on a blank mac?

You should be fine installing that way. The OS X installer is pretty flexible, and is designed to be able to install on external drives (which is essentially what a Mac in Target Disk Mode is). With the exception of the system disks included with Macs prior to Lion, which were machine-specific, OS X installs work on any Mac the OS supports. You can even boot a Mac from a different system's drive without issue, as long as it's not a version prior to that Mac's release.


Import Safari data into Safari Technology Preview

Coping ~/Library/Safari to ~/Library/SafariTechnologyPreview works for me.
On the command line, run:
cp -R ~/Library/Safari ~/Library/SafariTechnologyPreview


You do not need an extension or plugin. What you should do is supply an appropriate XSL. The browser will use this to format the XML for display. See http://www.w3schools.com/xsl/default.asp for more information.


Prevent TextEdit from opening for unknown file types that are plain text

I think this answer here is what you're looking for:

How does Mountain Lion set the default text editor for the "open -t" terminal command?

To change default text editor to e.g. textmate, execute this command in terminal then restart:

    defaults write com.apple.LaunchServices LSHandlers -array-add
'{LSHandlerContentType=public.plain-text;LSHandlerRoleAll=com.macromates.textmate;}'


In the settings, set your default Contacts account to Gmail.

Launch Settings
Navigate to Mail, Contacts, Calendars
Scroll down to Contacts
Under default account, select the email address you use with Gmail.

Now whenever you create a contact on iOS, it will be added to Gmail. The only time a contact will not be added to Gmail is if you go into the Contacts application, select Groups on the top, and choose an account other than All Contacts or your Gmail account (e.g. iCloud).


Show Space/Desktop Number in Mac OS X Lion in Desktop Top Bar

This function was removed by design. Lots of people want this back, so perhaps an add on or secret setting can be discovered later, but for now, the answer is no.


That's not an iPad stand—it's just a cheap three wire display stand. It's the kind of stand that can display anything at all, which could include an iPad, I guess (although I'd want something a little more secure, personally). You should be able to get one at your local office supply store for $2-5.

Here they are on Amazon at two for $5.65.


Would it be security risk to not upgrade to Sierra?

El Capitan is still currently supported by Apple. In fact, the most recent security update for El Capitan was released on 15 May 2017. For further information, refer to About the security content of macOS Sierra 10.12.5, Security Update 2017-002 El Capitan, and Security Update 2017-002 Yosemite.

You may also be interested in the following resources:

Contact Apple About Security Issues
Apple security updates

At some point Apple will cease to provide security patches to 10.11 and you would be arguably far less secure in specific. In general, you need to look at what security means to you and weigh the time to upgrade with the risk and time to reinstall from a backup.


Can I use Clover on a real Mac Pro for device spoofing an unsupported AMD GPU?

I think you are going about this the wrong way. I think turning your Mac Pro into a hackintosh will create far more problems than it will solve. Updates will be difficult, and clover is a pain to work with. There is a reason hackintoshes are specifically NOT recommended for people who rely on their computers to do important things (such as work).

There is a way to get the GPU to work without going through this complicated mess.

First, do you need to see your boot screen on every boot? If so, this becomes more complicated. You'll probably want to jump on the Nvidia train and get a flashed card (the only ones I know of are sold by MacVidCards). The only other option would be to use the new card in tandem with the old one, and have a monitor for the boot screen plugged into the old card. If you don't care about the boot screen most of the time, keep your original card handy, because you will want to be able to access it every now and then (for recovery mode, etc).

Now assuming you don't need to see the boot screen, you do need the GPU to work. Because you have an AMD GPU, not Nvidia, the drivers are built-in to MacOS. This means that if right now you removed the old GPU you have and put the new GPU in, once you get through the boot sequence, you should see the screen fine.

Please let me know if any of this was confusing or did not work.