view all windows in Mavericks keyboard shortcut

I am pretty sure this feature is called "Application Windows". If you go to System Settings -> Mission Control, in the bottom section is a list of four items you can attach to keyboard shortcuts. This feature is called "Application windows" in that list.

Additionally, you can enable a Hot Corner for it: Click the Hot Corners button in the bottom left of the Mission Control settings; you should be able to specify a special action for moving your mouse into each corner of your screen. This feature is called "Application Windows" in the list of options.


I can't open Network without my MacBook Pro crashing

In the Apple discussion thread, gchard posted the same query.

Linc Davis had the answer:

How to return your Network settings to default and get rid of the infinite spinning wheel.


How to get OSX to pick the strongest wifi signal with identical SSIDs?

I know this thread is old, but I'd like to leave here what solved the problem for me. You need to check if you have the same security in both access points. For example, I had one access point secured with WPA/WPA2 and another with WPA2 only. After changing both to the same, everything was fine.

To check your access points' security, you can do this:

While holding the option (alt) key, click the WiFi icon in the menu
bar
Click "Open Wireless Diagnostics…"
Go to "Window" > "Scan" (or press CMD-4)
Check if the security is the same for both your access points

Solution source: http://forums.macrumors.com/threads/wifi-roaming-issues-two-aps-with-same-ssid.1208584/


How do I allow new system preferences in profile manager?

You need to install the 3rd party control panel onto the Mac running the server - then they appear to be allowed or not.


Siri can notice when someone is calling you. You can answer the call tapping twice your Airpods. Then, you can tap them twice again to close the call.
If tapping twice doesn't work, go on Settings > Siri and verify "Access when locked" is activated.


The following diskutil cs resizeStack command is vastly undocumented and as such potentially destructive.

Please backup your Mac OS X before proceeding.

First you have to backup your Recovery HD: Start Terminal.app and enter
defaults write com.apple.DiskUtility DUDebugMenuEnabled 1 press enter and quit Terminal.app
Start Disk Utility and enable 'Show every Partition' in the Debug menu
After a few seconds all partitions should be visible
Choose Recovery HD on the left side and mount the partition Recovery HD. If the Recovery HD is missing skip to step 7.

Verify the disk

Create a disk image of Recovery HD and save it read-only externally

Check the disk image for restore

Detach all external drives
Restart into Internet Recovery Mode by pressing altcmdR
or a bootable Mavericks or Yosemite Thumb Drive (full system or install).
start Terminal from the menubar/utilities
enter following command at the Terminal prompt:

  diskutil cs list

Copy the Logical Volume (LV) alphanumeric UUID of your CoreStorage volume. The LVUUID should be the fourth listed.
Run the following command:

  diskutil cs resizeStack LVUUID partsize

According to the number found above it would be:

  diskutil cs resizeStack xxxxxxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxxxxxxxxxx 100%

This will hopefully expand your CoreStorage volume to full 1 TB. Depending on your disk this will take several seconds (SSD) or minutes (HDD). After a successful resize check with diskutil list if the  Recovery HD still exists.
Quit Terminal.app and start Disk Utility and verify the expanded volume.
Reboot to Recovery HD and your main drive. Delete the disk image created in step 5 if everything works as expected.


I think the answer is "Stop pressing the Power Button".

I had read that tapping the power button in Mavericks would turn off the monitor. In fact this is wrong, it puts the machine to sleep.

It is a very light sleep because the machine will still respond to 'ssh' requests, and the moment one tries to ssh into the machine the httpd will magically wake up. But, if no one tries to ssh, the httpd daemon will stop responding a minute or so after one taps the power button.

I was sometimes tapping the power button to turn of the monitor. I have stopped doing that. So far so good.

More updates if this turns out to be the wrong answer.


There are many extensions not listed on Apple's page. However, if they're not on the main page, they're not on Apple's site at all. Your cmd-f solutions is the best option if you want to search just the extensions that Apple has listed.

If you want to broaden your search to more of the extensions available, turn to third-party sites: http://safariextensions.org/, http://safariextensions.tumblr.com/, and http://www.pimpmysafari.com/category/extensions are all good, more-comprehensive lists.


How can I install Aperture on a Mac Mini?

Several options:

Remote Disk (using another drive over the network)
MacBook Air SuperDrive
other USB external drives
Pay again and download over the App Store.

The cheapest, possibly fastest is the first option:

MacBook Air, Mac mini: How to use Remote Disc to share DVDs or CDs from a Mac or Windows-based computer

The license code is non-transferable from physical media to the App Store, but perhaps you could sell your old version to someone that didn't like the store restrictions to subsidize or cover the cost?


Over 19GB RAM used by Catalina even with all GUI applications closed

There's a few things to note on your question.

First, similar to Linux, memory usage under Mac OS X is a nuanced and very complicated topic. "Used" memory doesn't always mean a problem, in fact it doesn't necessarily correlate directly with physical RAM usage. "Memory" is an overloaded term which can refer to "real" memory, "virtual" memory (which is not the same as it was in older versions of Mac OS Classic) or physical RAM.

At a technical level, "App Memory" within Activity Monitor is the kernel's internal page count of non-purgable pages. Mapping this value to anything you can sum up from the other columns is... difficult to impossible

For some specific answers: in Activity Monitor, you may want to add the "Real Memory" and other memory columns. These are available under View > Columns. Also, make sure you have View > All Processes enabled, not just "My Processes"

You might find that either the process using memory was not listed because it was not yours, or you might find that the process is using a lot more virtual memory than real memory (they all will be) which may account for the "App Memory" which Activity monitor shows.

Focus on the "Memory Pressure" graph in Activity Monitor rather than the "App Memory" or even "Memory Used" values. A healthy system will have a lot of memory used but without much Swap used. A general rule of thumb is: as long as your system is not using swap, performance is not impacted. (This is a gross oversimplification; lack of cache will also hurt performance)

Due to the way memory on unix-like systems work, Mac OS X will use "free" memory for various caches, either disk cache, buffers, page cache, etc. When you launch an application, for example, the code for this application is "paged" into memory. Simply quitting the application may not free the pages; they are marked as available for use and as other areas of the system need memory, inactive pages will be either discarded or paged back to disk. On your system there is no memory pressure (because there's so much free RAM) so the kernel won't remove cached pages from RAM. This way if the closed applications are relaunched, the pages the need are already in RAM.

It sounds like you've moved from a system with 16 GB RAM to 64 GB RAM, and are used to being memory constrained on the smaller system. This makes sense, and as long as your new system is not under memory pressure 9as per the graph in Activity Monitor) you should be fine. If you're having a specific issue with the applications co-existing, launch them all and update the image you posted; unless memory usage increases to the point that swap and compressed memory are being utilized, it's unlikely due to memory constraints (from what I see above)


Why did the emoji and predictive input stop showing up on Touch Bar while typing in WhatsApp desktop Mac app on MacBook Pro?

I had the same problem, but it went away after I manually went to the App Store and installed the latest version of WhatsApp desktop


iOS Calendar: What is the meaning of Time Zone Override?

Floating events

These kind of events happen always at the same time of day. An event called "Wake up" set for 6 AM and with the time zone set to Floating will always occur at 6 AM.

If you are in LA, it will occur at 6 AM, if you are in Hong Kong, it will also occur at 6 AM.

The time zone in Settings > General > Date & Time is relevant for floating events.

Regular events (Time Zone set to GMT+1 with DST)

You are in London and create an event "Process emails" for 4 PM (time zone set to London, GMT+1).

Turn on time zone override and set it to New York. Your event will now show up at 8 AM (GMT-4).

To answer your specific scenarios

Time Zone Override: Off, Event time zone set to home

  An event at 6 AM will be displayed at 6 AM

Time Zone Override: On, Event time zone set to home

  An event at 6 AM will be displayed at 1 AM (London to NY)

Time Zone Override: Off, Event time zone set to floating

  An event at 6 AM will always be displayed at 6 AM, no matter where you are.

Time Zone Override: On, Event time zone set to floating

  An event at 6 AM will always be displayed at 6 AM, no matter where you are.


What substances I can use to clean the touch sensitive screens like iPhone, iPad?

I've found that the best substance is no substance. If you can grab some microfiber lens cloths online, you won't be disappointed. They absorb the finger oils well. I usually just breathe on my screen a little bit, then use circular swipes with a microfiber cloth.

If you are careful, any glass cleaner is fine. The reason this isn't recommended is due to the large percent of the market that would just blindly spray cleaner all over their device (causing a short), and the other percent of the market with non-glass screens. If you spray the cloth you are using, then wipe, it'll be fine.

Update 3/21:
My favorite method now is using Zeiss Pre-Moistened Lens Cloths Wipes. They're at Amazon and Sam's Club. I keep a box in the office and box at home.


Finder preview: See file size and date in column view

You can control what is shown in the Preview pane with "Show Preview Options" under the View menu.
However, these settings seem to apply per-filetype.

You may want to remove the Quick Actions bar, which gets in the way of the file info. (You can still access the Quick Actions on a right-click Contextual menu.)


That's about as much as needs to be done (and indeed can be done) other than removing and destroying your old drive for security purposes.

Having said that, without specialist forensic equipment the chances of recovering data from a drive that's had a single zero-fill erase is essentially zero, and is pretty much beyond the scope of consumer-level data recovery software. The excruciatingly-long 7 and 35-pass erase routines are overkill for for most people not featuring highly on the NSA's watch list. If platters were removed from the drive and read directly by specialist equipment then limited recovery is possible, but you'd have to be a really interesting person for anyone to go to such lengths.


Is my keyboard faulty or are my settings screwed?

No, your keyboard is almost certainly not faulty. In fact, if you hold down some keys, such as the full stop . or space keys you should see that they repeat just fine.

Assuming that’s the case, you have one of two options:

keep your Mac as it currently is and use the Keyboard Viewer with your mouse if/when you need to repeat other characters, or
totally change the default behaviour so that you don’t get the popup with special characters.

If you opt for the 2nd option, then you’ll need to do the following:

Run the following command in terminal:

defaults write -g ApplePressAndHoldEnabled -bool false

Restart your Mac

Now you’ll have your keys repeat the way you want.


Your script uses type to find the first instance of bash within PATH and then calls exactly that instance. So if /bin is before /usr/local/bin (or, more likely, /usr/local/bin isn't in PATH) the macOS version of bash is found and executed.
To check the version of the running shell use
echo $BASH_VERSION

instead.


Is finder search supposed to work as "full text search" at all in OS X El Capitan?

Finder uses Spotlight to index and search for files and folders.  There are several resources that can help you with understanding the way Spotlight indexes files on your Mac.

Since you are looking for an exact phrase type of text search, use quotation marks.  (See below)

In Finder select the Help menu and type in Spotlight for further information.

Apple support: If searching your Mac doesn’t return expected results

From Apple's Support site regarding unexpected search results:

  OS X El Capitan: If searching your Mac doesn’t return expected results
  There are several things you can try if a search doesn’t return the
  items you expect.

  Check the text you entered in the search field
  Make sure the word or
  phrase is spelled correctly.

  To search for an exact phrase, enclose it in quotation marks.
  For example, enter “trip to Paris” to find items that contain that exact
  phrase. If you don’t use quotation marks, the search results include
  items that contain those words in any order.

  Check the location you’re searching
  If you began your search in Spotlight, the search results can include email, Calendar events,
  Spotlight Suggestions, information from other apps, and more. If you
  began your search in a Finder window, the search results include only
  files and folders on your internal disk.

  Check your Spotlight preferences
  You may have removed items from Spotlight search results. Choose Apple menu > System Preferences,
  click Spotlight, then click Search Results.

  You may have excluded certain folders or disks from searches. Choose
  Apple menu > System Preferences, click Spotlight, then click Privacy.

  You may have turned off Location Services for Spotlight Suggestions.
  For more information, see About Spotlight Suggestions.

  For more information about Spotlight preferences, see Spotlight
  preferences.


.bash_profile and .bashrc do not have to exist for $PATH to work, they're for bash configuration. According to the bash docs,

  When Bash is invoked as an interactive login shell, or as a non-interactive shell with the --login option, it first reads and executes commands from the file /etc/profile, if that file exists. After reading that file, it looks for ~/.bash_profile, ~/.bash_login, and ~/.profile, in that order, and reads and executes commands from the first one that exists and is readable.

To add a path to your $PATH variable for a single terminal session, do so as follows: export PATH=$PATH:pathToYourDirectory, for multiple directories export PATH=$PATH:pathToYourFirstDirectory:pathToYourSecondDirectory ...
To see what's in your $PATH: echo $PATH or cat /etc/paths
/etc/paths is the file that holds your system path variables

Run man path_helper for more information.


File Clearing

As user2277872 mentioned it's probably a good idea to get a disk analysis application to find out what's eating up your disk space. A few good applications to start with are DaisyDisk, OmniDiskSweeper and Disk Inventory X, each available here, here and here respectively.

If you find no big files cluttering up your space, here's another link covering some things that might be using up your disk space that you may have overlooked: http://www.howtogeek.com/184091/5-ways-to-free-up-disk-space-on-a-mac/

Partition Resizing

However, if your 43 available GBs are on your Windows partition, no amount of file deletion on the Mac partition is going to help. What you need to do is resize the partitions.

Disclaimer: it's always a good idea to make a backup. In theory, no data should get deleted but things can always go wrong. Grab an external HDD and image your system onto it, or at least copy your important files over.

Boot into Recovery (Cmd-R on startup) and open Disk Utility.
Select your parent drive for both your Mac and Windows partitions (assuming they're on the same physical disk).
Click the Partition button in the toolbar and resize accordingly. You may want to allocate about 80GB to Windows or more depending on how much you intend to use it.
Click Apply and reboot. You should be able to boot into your Windows partition now.


I think you are mixing up keys.

This is in El Capitan - earlier versions behaved differently - I forget when it changed

I have tried this on Firefox, Safari, Numbers and iTerm2

Cmd + green button makes the window full screen with no menubar
Alt + green button keeps the menu bar and makes the window fill the rest of the screen

these are documented in this Apple knowledgebase article

but

Alt + Shift+ green button seems to do different things.

Safari Nothing
Firefox same as 2
Numbers same as 2
iTerm Keeps the menubar makes the window full screen height but keep the same width as before.


Can just opening email infect Mac in any way?

Can it be dangerous? Absolutely it can, there might be an unpatched vulnerability in the Mail app. But no one can tell you if such a vulnerability actually exists, because if it was known then it would already have been patched.


How do I print a selected email to PDF using Automator?

You're on the right track, and @mankoff's answer is spot on. I'll elaborate in case you need more details.

For reference, you could read Apple's developer document on PDF workflows or, more simply, this great step-by-step guide to creating the sort of PDF workflow you want.

As a summary...

First open Automator and create a Print Plugin.

Then select an action to move your PDF to a folder of your choice.

Save the workflow with a meaningful name. It will automatically be placed in the correct folder (~/Library/PDF Services).
Now, when you are in Mail, you can select your workflow from the PDF menu of the Print dialog box. Your PDF will be generated and automatically filed in the folder you specified.


Apple Pay clashes with other cards in the phone case

It's called card clash & is a very real issue.

If you carry more than one NFC device in the same container, you don't know which one is going to pay. Most payment devices I've seen in London, UK[1] will detect 'more than one card' & refuse to proceed until you offer up a single card, but you don't know if that will be true for all payment devices. There is a definite possibility of paying twice in some circumstances.

For an iPhone with Apple Pay then nominally, unless you were actively triggering it with Touch or Face ID, simply offering up a wallet wouldn't trigger Apple Pay.
If you are intentionally triggering Apple Pay but have another NFC card in close proximity, then you really don't know which will actually pay.

The current advice is simply to never keep multiple NFC devices in the same container, or take out the single device/card to offer up to the machine. It's the only way to be certain.

[1]The entire public transportation system in London is powered by NFC cards. You can't get on a bus with any other method, no cash, no tickets. Trains & the tube you can pre-pay & get a magnetic strip paper ticket [pretty much a tourist-only structure], but the barriers are otherwise entirely contactless.
That means more than 30 million journeys per day have to be handled seamlessly - which is why the 'clash detectors' are pretty good on TfL.

Conversely, some small retail devices are known to take both payments on occasion - our local pub has had to remove their contactless system recently, until they can install a better system, for precisely that reason.


How to turn off Magnifying glass ( not the one in accessibility)

This cannot be disabled in iOS 12 or earlier. In iPadOS 13, the magnifying glass has been removed.


They don't have to be the same. Sign out of iCloud in Settings and set up the new Apple ID. Then, if that Apple ID's also been applied to the stores, go to one of them, sign out, and sign back in with your store Apple ID.

Source: My own experience - my iPod Touch works fine with my own Apple ID for iCloud and my family's Apple ID for the stores.


PDF reader that allows user to alternate between reading on PC and on Mac

Papers App does most of that. It is used for academic papers and can be synced via DropBox, including all notes and annotations. It does not keep track of your last read spot though.


Running uname -m Gives x86_64 On M1 Mac Mini

I can reproduce what you are seeing on our Macs on 11.2.3 and 11.3.1 - we get arm64 / arm / arm64 reliably back despite different shells and homebrew (or lack thereof) setups on each.
bmike@mini ~ % sw_vers
ProductName:    macOS
ProductVersion: 11.3.1
BuildVersion:   20E241
bmike@mini ~ % /usr/bin/arch
arm64
bmike@mini ~ % /usr/bin/uname -p
arm
bmike@mini ~ % /usr/bin/uname -a
Darwin mini 20.4.0 Darwin Kernel Version 20.4.0: Thu Apr 22 21:46:41 PDT 2021; root:xnu-7195.101.2~1/RELEASE_ARM64_T8101 arm64

Choosing rosetta to run terminal changes this for a stock Mac. Quit and start again terminal.app, and I then get i386 / i386 / x86_64 the same as you reported.

https://www.jamf.com/jamf-nation/discussions/37723/rosetta-2-extension-attribute

If you look below, you'll see it enabled which will launch a shell that reports what you are seeing as opposed to the results "out of the box" that I showed above.


Firefox keyboard conflict: Command key, Control key, and Contextual Menus

The contextual menu problem was resolved when I updated my version of Firefox from 17 (December 2012) to 23(!) in September 2013. The built-in update button within Firefox updated my app to 17.0.2esr (security updates) and offered no info about the later versions.

Only after searching other Firefox questions here did I notice someone mentioning version 20 and up. I do not know why Firefox 17 did not issue an alert or a chance to upgrade itself to a higher version, or if it did, why I had not noticed that as it climbed from version 17 to 23.

The noncontiguous selection problem (clicking while holding the command key) still remains, but I suspect it is a problem with PHP5.0, the language the Web app is programmed in, or a bug within the app's code.


IOS_jailbreaking

  Jailbreaking is a process that allows iPad, iPhone and iPod Touch users to install homebrew applications on their devices by unlocking the operating system and allowing the user root access. Once jailbroken, iPhone users are able to download many extensions and themes previously unavailable through the App Store via unofficial installers such as Cydia, Rock Your Phone and Icy Installer. A jailbroken iPad, iPhone or iPod Touch is still able to use the App Store and iTunes.

It is mostly done to escape the restrictive nature of the App Store. Once you have jailbroken an iPhone you are free to install a lot of software that apple would not normally allow. Such as modifying the lock screen to display useful information, or enabling multitasking on an iPhone 3G.


/bin/sh don't read .profile after update to mac os x 10.10

Check to see if something loaded a '.bash_profile', which would be read in preference to .profile.  If so, you can probably move it out of the way:

mv .bash_profile .saved_bash_profile


How to make brew installed software take effect over the manually installed one?

The easiest solution would be to simply delete the old version of the software.

If you want to keep both, you'll need to change your $PATH environment variable so that the location of the new version appears before the location of the old version. Do this by editing ~/.bash_profile.


Do I need DisplayLink software on my Mac?

DisplayLink is most commonly used to connect external displays via USB. It is proprietary software, not made or supported or automatically installed by Apple.

If you had it installed earlier, it was because you have installed it yourself at some point in time.

Ordinary monitors connected via HDMI, DisplayPort, mini-DisplayPort, DVI or similar on Macs work with multiple monitor support without any extra software.


How do I resolve a non-unique HD Identifier problem?

I finally remembered: the disk is mounted on /dev, but in this case, not on /Volumes. In macOS High Sierra, I:

excluded both disk and disk partitions from the /dev folder using sudo rm -rf /dev/disk2 && sudo rm -rf /dev/disk2s1,
disconnected and reconnected the disk,
deleted the disk folder mounted at /Volumes,
rebooted the system and it was recognized.

But, it doesn't worked on Mojave.

Using the image on Internet Recovery, I renamed the disk label, which makes the disk being recognized by Mojave. But, as said, it only worked for the first time I connected the disk after renaming.

So, I repeated the renaming, copied my files and formatted it.
For avoiding futures annoyances, I decided to use NTFS instead of APFS, because the files on this disk could be used as read-only by me on macOS, and, if I need, exchange files using a Windows virtual machine.


Update OS X recovery USB stick with Mavericks

The Apple-provided system restore USB stick is read-only. There are a few un-official tools you can use to make it into a 'regular' USB stick if you search. More information here.


Does Mail on OS X mark mail as read on the server or just locally?

Mail in OS X El Capitan doesn't have this problem.

Mark as Read & Mark as Unread affect all of the devices linked to your IMAP account.


Unable to select and highlight on Preview in OSX Lion

PDFs are just a wrapper for various kinds of content.   Depending on how the PDF was created the text might be selectable.   A lot of them have the text stored as graphics and in that case you wont be able to select/copy/highlight it.   I suspect PDFs also allows the "protection" of content so that viewers cannot select and copy bits of text.

Where did you get the PDFs if you can track the source you can change how they are created.   If it was prom a scan it will normally be a picture.   Utilities like PDFPen etc.  allows OCS of Scans.  If you do that the text will become selectable/highlightable.


How can I completely reset iMessage in Yosemite?

I posted on the Apple Support Communities board for help. From the response I learned that removing ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.imagent.plist clears some Messages app state. When re-launching it, I'm presented with a fresh sign in flow.

In my case, the root issue still wasn't resolved.

In Console.app I found log messages like the following:

2/16/15 3:23:18.011 PM identityservicesd[4905]:
  [Warning] SQLITE_CORRUPT encountered error 11 while accessing
  /Users/mike/Library/IdentityServices/ids.db, exiting!

Searching for that turned up another post on Apple's Support Communities board which suggested removing ~/Library/IdentityServices. This solved the issue I was having, and I haven't yet noticed any unwanted side effects.


Can't restore from iCloud backup in iOS 10

If the backup is corrupt, you'll be out of luck.
If it's just that Apple's servers are swamped right now, after the iOS 10 launch, then you may have better luck tomorrow or the day after.

It seems time to trot out the old adage...

"Any data not stored in at least three distinct locations ought to be considered temporary."

Even though you got away with it 9 times out of 10, there's always a 10th time.
Somebody gets bricked with every update; make sure it's never going to be you.
Backups are those useless things that take up valuable storage space & are totally pointless...
...until the day you need them.

You really should also have had a local iTunes backup, encrypted to preserve passwords etc, & that backed up to Time machine.
Optional off-site copy too - Backblaze etc -  in case the building burns down.

The smartest way to do any update.

Launch iTunes, plug in device.
When asked if you want to update click Download Only.
Whilst that's busy, switch to the Apps view in iTunes - download all available updates.
When complete, switch to your device view & Sync.
Back Up Now [with encryption, which preserves your passwords]

You now have fully up to date retrievable restore point, should anything go wrong.

Once the iOS download is completed, then you can Update.


Based on the info you've provided during our comments history, and the fact I couldn't replicate this issue on five separate computers, including three 2016 MacBook Pros running macOS Sierra 10.12.3, the only solution I have is to try a full reinstallation / test / update process.

IMPORTANT - Ensure you have a full backup before proceeding with these steps!

Shutdown your MBP
Switch on your MBP
Immediately press and hold the CommandR keys until you see the Apple logo appear
When you see the Utilities window appear, select Disk Utility and click on Continue
Select your MBP drive from the sidebar on the left
Click on the Erase button
Click on the Format drop-down list and select Mac OS Extended (Journaled)
Enter a name for your disk
Click Erase
When completed, Quit Disk Utility
Select Reinstall macOS from the Utilities window (do not choose the Restore from Time Machine Backup option)
Follow the instructions to reinstall macOS
When installation is complete and you have rebooted, follow the prompts to setup your MBP. However, do not choose to copy files or migrate any data from your backups. Instead, set the MBP up as a totally new computer.
When complete, test to see if your issue still persists
Assuming your issue is now resolved, use the Mac App Store to update macOS, Safari, etc. However, do not copy any of your backed up files yet.
Now test to see if your issue is still gone
If all is good, then copy your backed up data to your MBP again. You can do this by using Migration Assistant (located within the Utilities folder within your Applications folder).

NOTE - If your issue still persists at Step 14 (when you first test for it again) then go through the entire process again. However, this time at Step 3 hold the CommandOptionR keys instead so that you start up from Internet Recovery. This will take longer to do, but eliminates the possibilty of some random problem with the local Recovery partition.


Is there a Google Calendar app for Mac desktop?

Google haven’t made a desktop calendar app. You can add your Google account to Internet Accounts in macOS which will allow you to access your Google calendar in Calendar.app without syncing it with your iCloud account. Alternatively you can use Fantastical which also supports Google Calendar.


OS X stopped auto mounting external drivers

Encrypted Core Storage and macOS 10.14.4

macOS 10.14.4 changed the behaviour of auto-mounting Core Storage/HFS+ formatted encrypted drives. These drives appear to no longer be automatically mounted.

Please let Apple know this change of behaviour in a minor macOS update is causing you problems. The more people who provide feedback, the better and the better the chance of it being assigned engineering time.

See Automatically Mount Encrypted Core Storage Volume (10.14.4+).


Cannot synch iMessages from old iPhone to new activated iPhone

iMessage history only syncs a limited window. If you need to get all of the messages, backup the old phone to iCloud or iTunes, wipe the new phone and then restore the backup.

Transferring text messages with upgrade from iPhone 4 to iPhone 5


Any device that is broadcasting radio signal (in this case the WiFi) can be seen by anyone in the vicinity of the signal range.

They do not see inside of it (your iTunes), just the name it is broadcasting.


This isn't built into OSX, but a guy wrote a cli tool called trash that is cross platform and is intended as a safe alternative to rm. As it seems it should, it moves the target to the trash rather than deleting it immediately.

There is more information and instructions on how to install at the trash github page


Best Torrent Client that supports auto unrar

Transmission is generally regarded as the best BT on the Mac, and can definitely do move on completion. That's found in the Transfers - Adding tab in Preferences.

It doesn't have auto unrar built in, but it can run a script on torrent completion.

There are several available scripts on the Transmission forums. Torrentexpander claims to work well on OS X and is written for Transmission.

As far as I can tell, the steps to using it are:

Unzipping it and putting the torrentexpander.sh file into a suitable folder.
In Transmission, open Preferences, and click on the Transfers tab.
In the Management sub-tab, tick Call script when download completes, and then point it to the torrent expander.sh file.

In theory, it should then Just Work. I've not tested it, but it's all free and worth a shot. Post back if you're successful!


You can only redirect incoming traffic. Any outgoing traffic to port 80 isn't affected by your rdr rule.

To redirect outgoing traffic to port 80 you have to re-route it first to lo0 then redirect it to the proxy port:

The order in the config file is necessarily rdr incomming packets, then filter packets (like pass), but chronologically the 2nd rule will hit first (on en0), which will then activate the first rule (on lo0).

# Step "2". redirect those same packets that were routed to lo0 below
rdr pass log on lo0 proto tcp from any to any port 80 -> 127.0.0.1 port 8080
# Step "1". Route new IPv4 TCP connections leaving en0 to lo0
pass out on en0 route-to lo0 proto tcp from en0 to any port 80 keep state

in pf.conf this would look like this:

...
scrub-anchor "com.apple/*"
nat-anchor "com.apple/*"
rdr-anchor "com.apple/*"
rdr pass log on lo0 proto tcp from any to any port 80 -> 127.0.0.1 port 8080
dummynet-anchor "com.apple/*"
anchor "com.apple/*"
load anchor "com.apple" from "/etc/pf.anchors/com.apple"
pass out on en0 route-to lo0 proto tcp from en0 to any port 80 keep state

In the above example I assume en0 is your only outbound en interface.

Unload your current pf.conf and stop pf: sudo pfctl -d. Then add the two additional lines above. After modifying pf.conf check the syntax of the file with sudo pfctl -vnf /etc/pf.conf which should result in the following output:

pfctl: Use of -f option, could result in flushing of rules
present in the main ruleset added by the system at startup.
See /etc/pf.conf for further details.

scrub-anchor "/*" all fragment reassemble
nat-anchor "/*" all
rdr-anchor "/*" all
rdr pass log on lo0 proto tcp from any to any port 80 -> 127.0.0.1 port 8080
anchor "/*" all
pass out on en0 route-to lo0 proto tcp from en0 to any port 80 flags S/SA keep state
dummynet-anchor "/*" all

and if successful load it with sudo pfctl -e -f /etc/pf.conf.

A proper system and proxy configuration (and well-behaving apps) don't require such pf rules!


only a few Hex symbols recognized in Mac OSx Pages?

Well, you need a font that actually contains all the glyphs.
Which most "generic" fonts (for writing text) probably won't.
The term to search for such fonts is SMuFL. This is standard initiated by Steinberg (and now developed by W3C) to bring music notation fonts to the Unicode era.
The open source "Bravura" font is available in OTF format for Mac at: https://github.com/steinbergmedia/bravura/tree/master/redist/otf
Btw. you don't need to enter the Unicode glyph codes into the Character Viewer search bar. The glyph name, e.g. "Segno", will do as well.
There are some more SMuFL fonts contained in the demo version of Steinbergs Dorico music notation software available at: https://www.steinberg.net/en/products/steinberg_trial_versions/dorico.html


Can I use tethering to let an iPad use an iPhone's 3G?

I don't believe you can do this with the stock phone, however if you decide to jailbreakyour iPhone, you could use an application like MyWi to share your iPhone's 3G connection over WiFi


I don't want to lose my data on my iPhone, can someone help?

Just open iTunes, sign into the store, and you can download purchases directly from the store from your new Mac. No need to plug the phone into the computer and no risk of erasing your phone.


The OS X install disks that used to ship with new Macs were specific to those machines, and can't be used on different models. You're going to have to use Lion Recovery to re-download and install Lion, or go to an Apple Store, they can reinstall it for you if your internet connection isn't sufficient.

It's also likely that the install DVD for your MacBook Pro is for Snow Leopard, any machine that shipped with Lion didn't come with install media, just a recovery partition.


I've used my Sony PlayStation Eye with several desktop apps. Why doesn't iChat see it?

See http://webcam-osx.sourceforge.net/
Good luck!
:-)


How to find delay when launching new Terminal (iTerm)

I had the same problem and I fixed updating the setting in:
Profile/General

The option Command:

Instead Login shell you can pick the option command and write your shell path. In my case zsh: /bin/zsh

You can reveal this doing:
which -a bash
or
which -a zsh in my case


You go into the Shazam app and you need to long press the Shazam logo until the "Auto-Shazam" words appear on the top of the circle. After that when you go back to your home page it will appear a red bar on top of your apps meaning that your Shazam will be listening to whatever song is going to be played.

EDIT: It works with headphones of course :)


Test it using a new account (create one) or (after making a backup) on a fresh install. If that doesn’t work, the camera is defective. The USB interface and power indicator can still work with a broken video module, so the green light does not always indicate a working camera.


Do I have to replace the LCD if the iPad screen is cracked?

If the LCD screen is not damaged (no dead pixels) then you probably only need to replace the actual glass front touch panel, or digitizer, and do not need to change the LCD.  This can pick up relatively cheaply ($90, or eBay). You just prise the front panel off, and leaving the LCD in place, replace it with a new one.

Google for this video "How to: Fix a broken front panel on your iPad 2 or iPad 3" on youtube. It give you a good idea of what is involved. Or check out Repair Ipad 2 Glass

To be honest, you are probably better sending it to a third party to get the digitizer replaced.

Good luck.


How restore my Mac with boot camp partition from time machine

I would try a two step restore to see if the problem is with the Mac Partition (likely) or the drive (hopefully not the case) or the backup (hopefully not the case).

Boot to recovery HD and erase the Mac partition (be careful of course to just delete the Mac data - not the entire drive with Windows side.)
Run OS installer and just install the OS.
When the setup assistant runs, then try to migrate data from the Time Machine drive. Keep it disconnected until after the OS install in step 2 finishes.

Also, you might look at the logs during installation (Command-L, Command-3) to watch for I/O errors on the drive to rule out hardware errors.


Meta key problems with emacs seem to be very common, especially on OSX where alt/option is used to input special characters by default.

If you are using AquamacsEmacs[Aquamacs Homepage] or CarbonEmacsPackage, you may be able to set the modifier keys within your .emacs or other preferences file.

Specifically to map shift to meta, I'd try this (Note: this is untested):

(setq mac-shift-modifier 'meta)

If that doesn't work, there may not be an easy way to remap shift in this fashion.  You may need to look into the define-key function in emacs lisp.

Otherwise, if you're using emacs via the terminal, from homebrew, or some port of xemacs with XQuartz, you might want to look into using xmodmap


Switching AirPods between Mac and iPhone only works by switching Bluetooth off

Unless you have an underlying issue with the hardware, it should be very simple. As long as you have previous paired with both your iPhone and Mac, then it should just be a case of selecting the AirPods as the sound output source from the respective devices.

What I do on Mac is have my sound settings on my menu bar and just tap, then select my AirPods. On iPhone, you just swipe up to show the media controls, tap the sound output and choose AirPods. Takes a second or two.

There are tons of sites that explain in more detail, but this is a nice site with screenshots: https://www.imore.com/airpods-audio-swap

If this doesn't work for you, update your question with details on what happens when you take these steps so we can help narrow your particular issue down. Good luck!


To modify Mail to use another language than the default system language open Terminal and enter
defaults write com.apple.mail AppleLanguages ‘(“preferred_language”, “default_language”)’.
In your example: defaults write com.apple.mail AppleLanguages ‘(“en”, “fi”)’ (assuming your default language is finnish)


How can I install the newest EFI firmware upgrade from El Capitan?

First check your current Firmware and SMC version About your Mac -> More -> System Report. Check the Boot ROM and the SMC version. It should look similar to this:

The latest Boot ROM version for your MacBookPro8,1 (Early 2011) is MBP81.0047.B2A and the latest SMC version 1.69f4 (SMC 1.7).

If you get the same versions the latest EFI updates are already installed.

The most secure method is to swap the internal hard disk with a spare 2.5" drive and install Mountain Lion or Mavericks.

Then download Mac EFI Security Update 2015-001 and install it.

After a reboot the firmware will be updated. Shut down your Mac after the successful update and swap the drives again.

Recheck the Boot ROM version and the SMC version.


Aliases store two pieces of information about the destination file - both the location and a file identifier. Symbolic links only store the other location. For that reason, if you move a file, Aliases are superior since they can often still point at the correct file when a change happens.

Dropbox or moving the files to another filesystem is where things get really messy - what works on one filesystem will often break in another.

As to your overall file organization and filtering / search problem, that's going to be much trickier thing to answer - you'll need something like 20 questions and back and forth discovery with one or more people. There will be no correct answer either since what would work for 4 years of curriculum might fold like a house of cards if you have 25 years of files. Similarly - designing something for 3 TB of digital media would be overkill for someone that worked in thin file formats like markdown text and simple file references to still images and short clips of animation.

Think about a couple things when you look at why your current workflow is failing you:

Can you use spotlight search effectively. For advanced skills, think spending 3 or 4 hours in 30 minute classes over a couple weeks with people that know search, smart folders, tagging, advanced search to find files by date range, EXIF data in images, by size or format. Maybe you have a fine folder structure and could beef up search so you don't need to move files - just put them where they live and find then quickly / used filtered views to locate things you'll need ad hoc during class or lesson prep.
Do you have a good backup strategy. If you do - just delete things you don't need so you don't need to be a search wizard. When you need something - restore it and go (or put it in the cloud so you can restore or browse the archives for an occasional "miss" on what you need in your working set of files. Box.com / Dropbox / iCloud / Google drive complicate this immensely as sync isn't really backup and backup certainly isn't sync. The more you optimize for [search/sync/backup/organization], the more the other aspects suffer in my experience.
Are you working around key applications that miss features. Many applications can handle files stored in other places and plain text is so small you could carry around plain text of the entire Project Gutenberg library of 56,000 ebooks in 900 MB. It downloads in about 45 seconds for me so your situation might need a different way to index and organize based on what your requirements for files and apps are truly. (TeX is notoriously messy in spewing files all over the place - and I did my thesis in LaTeX - I would be hard pressed to use that now for a body of work that needed to be synced / grow / link over years. Perhaps Apple Notes and other apps fill in for things that can't live in plan text / markdown / pdf.)

Please don't take any of these comments as criticism of your effort and plans. I would expect you've thought deeply about how you work and would have changed if it made sense, but it's going to be hard to have an answer here that's broadly applicable to everyone that reads your post other than outlining some of the relevant items to consider and weigh how those items affect anyones current or ideal or optimized workflow.


Can an iPhone 6s Plus battery be recharged after going real dead

Yes, iPhone batteries normally can be charged after going dead (especially after only a few days). It can often take several minutes before coming on.

Since your phone hasn't come on yet, it could indicate a hardware problem and you should take it to an authorized Apple store.


Restoring Lion/iCloud iCal from Time Machine

From what I can tell, Time Machine doesn't allow you to restore iCal calendars through the iCal app. And actually, you should be able to restore that calendars folder.

While the directory contents are complicated, iCal should translate them back to what you had before. The only other thing I would bring over just to be on the safe side is your iCal's list file, located in ~/Library/Preferences. It should be called com.apple.iCal.plist. I would recommend moving this from your Time Machine backup to the same directory on your Mac.

That should do it for you.


Can we pair one remote with Mac, and one remote with AppleTV in the same room?

Yes. Follow the instructions in this Apple Support article for Macs or this other article for Apple TV.

Essentially, the procedure is this:

  Pairing your remote with your Mac:

  Log in on your Mac as an Admin user.
  Get very close to your Mac (about 3 or 4 inches away).
  Point the remote at the infrared sensor on the front of your Mac.
  Press and hold the Menu and Next/Fast-forward buttons simultaneously on the remote for 5 seconds.
  Your Apple Remote is now paired with your computer. You should see a chain-link style lock appear in the center of your screen for a moment.

  To pair your Apple TV with a remote:

  Choose Settings > General > Remotes from the main Apple TV menu.
  Choose Pair Apple Remote.


Do you have any email accounts, other than your iCloud account? If so, go to "Mail, Contacts, and Calender" in the Settings app on your iOS device. Find or add your email account, tap  on it, and set the slider for notes to "On." Your notes should be restored!


How to change native Resolution on MBP 2015 running Mojave?

While you can't "change the native resolution", you can use the displaymode command line tool to change to the native resolution instead of scaled resolutions.

Download the displaymode binary from the "releases" section on github, and extract it if necessary.  Then from Terminal.app, cd to the directory the displaymode file is in and run:

./displaymode t 1920 1080

You can also run:

./displaymode d

to get a list of supported resolutions.


Is AppleTV the only device that can receive AirPlay VIDEO?

Didn't intend to answer my own question, but I found this March 2011 Bloomberg article:

  Apple Inc. (AAPL) is weighing an
  expansion of its AirPlay audio service
  to include streaming video from an
  iPhone or iPad to television sets,
  according to two people familiar with
  the project.

  Under the plan, Apple would license
  its AirPlay software to
  consumer-electronics makers that could
  use it in devices for streaming
  movies, TV shows and other video
  content, said the people, who asked to
  remain anonymous because the plans
  haven’t been made public. Apple now
  only licenses AirPlay for streaming
  audio. Devices that could be used for
  video may be available this year, one
  of the people said.

So apparently the answer is "not yet, but maybe in the future."


Checking if command process is actually running

You might try to install htop which shows processes that are running ( more user friendly version of top command)

And also I think brew is more versatile than macports for installing packages (or programs) .


What if someone knows my iPhone passcode (not simple passcode) & restriction passcode?

They can unlock your iPhone & remove the restrictions... assuming they have your iPhone as well as the passwords/codes.

Otherwise, nothing.


Keyboard shortcut to go to previous window

I found this free software that is capable of doing what I want: https://bahoom.com/hyperswitch


Help identify what uses the CPU when the Activity Monitor list of all processes does not help

Testing seems to show that the culprit is Intel's Turbo Boost technology, which disables processor cores on the fly without telling the OS.  Since they aren't running the CPU idle process, activity monitor doesn't account for them, and it appears that the machine is under 50% idle when the reality is that it's near 100% idle.

At the moment it doesn't appear as though this can be easily disabled or controlled under OS X: How can I disable CPU throttling and CPU disabling?

Turbo boost is built into many Core i7 and i5 processors, and some of the latest Core i3 processors.  You will have to check your processor version against intel's list of Turbo Boost capable processors to find out if yours has it.  If you don't have sandy bridge, you probably don't have turbo boost.


How can I automatically trigger a bash script before my Mac goes to sleep?

Limited Time

There is no built-in way to run a script before sleep on macOS. You must use a third party tool to trigger your bash script.

The time available for your script, after the pending sleep notification but before the sleep, is deliberately limited by macOS. See Fleeting Sleep Trigger for an overview of the problem.


What does the "Stationery Pad" option do?

Basically, it tells an app opening the file to open a copy.

You do this on files that you want to use like templates. Since the app is given a copy, you'll never accidentally change the original.
Basically, it automatically copies the file into its original location (as 'name copy') and lets you work on the copy.


How to run iOS app on device without attaching device to Mac?

My team uses Test Flight for managing and deploying beta iOS applications. It's easy for both the developer and the tester to use, as it does all the provisioning and distribution for you. It also happens to be free to use.


Since I cannot comment your question for lack of rep, I'd suggest you try iChm 1.4.3 or 1.5.0. Latter was recently released, so if video doesn't work (a feature I didn't know about in CHM, by the way), I'd suggest you open an issue in the tracker.


The iPhone (apart from the obvious phone/messaging features), will give you an ultra-portable computing device to carry around with you when you are not near your iMac or don't want to open the Macbook Pro.

This will give you the ability to check your emails, browse websites, listen to music, watch podcasts and even record and edit videos.  You will also be able to read books and take part in the eco-system of hundreds of thousands of 3rd party applications that available on the Apple App Store.

Best of all, because all your devices are from Apple, you benefit from not only knowing how most of these items work and are configured, but the huge benefit of interoperability.  You most probably have your music in iTunes already, so you're music can be synced with your new iPhone.  Your web bookmarks are probably already in Safari, so can be synced with Safari on the iPhone.


What are the consequences of upgrading to OS X 10.7 Lion if I have a separate Boot Drive and Home folder drive in my MacBook Pro?

You probably should do what BMike has said as a precaution, but what you could also do is create alias folders in the Empty Users Home folder on the SSD. The alias folders would be empty, but would link to the actual folder on the larger hard drive. To create the alias, drag the actual folder to the users folder on the SSD whilst pressing command and alt together, you will see the green plus sign on the folder turn to a little curved arrow, whilst you're dragging.

Anything you put into the alias folders will go in the corresponding folder on the larger HD! This should also prevent any issues with the Lion upgrade, however in saying that, you shouldn't have a problem anyway as all the OS files are on the SSD!

Hope this helps!


Permanently route an host to VPN in OS X

You can put extra configuration in /etc/ppp/ip-up file, which is described in man pppd, and which is a standard shell script file that will be fired when the pppd establishes a connection.

I don't use the VPN anymore and unfortunately it seems I don't have a copy of my ip-up file anymore, but the way I used to do it is something similar to below (you'll need to verify this with the aforementioned man page).

Once pppd establishes the connection, it will call /etc/ppp/ip-up with the following arguments:

ip-up interface-name tty-device speed local-IP-address remote-IP-address ipparam

Your ip-up script could therefore look something like:

#!/bin/bash

IFNAME="${1}"
LOCALIP="${4}"
REMOTEIP="${5}"

if [[ "${REMOTEIP}" == "192.0.2.1" ]]; then
  /sbin/route add -host lab_computer.foo -interface "${IFNAME}"
fi

Please note the following:

I'm assuming that the IP address of the VPN gateway you connect to
is always the same and never changes, and in the example above I'm
assuming it's 192.0.2.1 (RFC5737 address range specified to use
as Documentation Examples - PLEASE CHANGE IT). The comparison here
is used to only add the route when you're connected via the VPN to
your office, and not any other VPN or PPP connection.
It's also better to use an IP address instead of the hostname for
the computer you want to add a static route to. Instead of using
lab_computer.foo I would use an IP address in the route command.
I'm using the -interface ${IFNAME} as opposed to hard-coding
ppp0, which should make this work even if you have two VPN
connections established at the same time (or a VPN and another form
of PPP, e.g. a 3G modem)


Mojave screen shots take a long time to save directly to desktop

What worked for me on macOS Mojave to have screenshots saved to my Desktop instantaneously, was to uncheck Show Floating Thumbnail from the Options menu when pressing ⇧⌘5.

This change carried over to the other screenshot keyboard shortcuts too.

Note that I still allow Spotlight to index my Desktop too.


How suppress "Open in app" banner in Safari on iPhone?

It is currently not possible for end users to hide the app banner if the website chooses to show it. If the website does not provide the ability to hide the banner then you cannot hide it after the fact.

If your device is jailbroken, you can install NoAppBanners from https://repo.auxiliumdev.com/.


Your computers should be accessible as computer-name.local, e.g. Kens-Computer.local or something like that, so depending on what you're trying to do, you might be able to just use that name rather than the IP.

So you can just type vnc://Kens-Computer.local in the 'Connect to' window. You can see the computer's network name if you go to the Sharing preference pane in System Preferences. It's at the top of the page, with a message like "Computers on your local network can access your computer at: Kens-Computer.local"

Make sure you include the ".local" suffix to get the Bonjour IP, otherwise your DNS look-up might auto-append some other hostname suffix (depending on your network/DHCP configuration) or simply fail to find the right host.

If you really want to get the IP though, here's a couple of options:

Bonjour / dns-sd

You can use Bonjour directly via commands like the DNS Service Discovery tool (dns-sd). Try the following in the Terminal application:

% dns-sd -q computer-name
DATE: ---Tue 09 Oct 2012---
18:13:39.209  ...STARTING...
Timestamp     A/R Flags if Name                             T   C Rdata
18:13:39.210  Add     2  4 Computer-Name.local.             1   1 10.1.1.141

The dns-sd tool can do quite a bit, e.g. if you want to list all local VNC services (at least the ones advertised via Bonjour). VNC services are advertised as "_rfb" in mDNS/Bonjour:

% dns-sd -B _rfb local

Ping

Or you can just ping it, which will show the IP in the output (and is just using Bonjour/mDNS to find the IP).

% ping computer-name.local
PING computer-name.local (10.1.1.141): 56 data bytes
64 bytes from 10.1.1.141: icmp_seq=0 ttl=64 time=0.066 ms


Set custom scaling on Retina MacBook Pro (13inch)

I have a 15" MacBook Pro with Retina Display and by itself, the highest resolution I can set in System Preferences > Hardware > Display > Display > (o) Scaled, is 1920x1200. To get an even higher resolution, e.g 2880x1800 I use a third-party utility named Display Menu. It's available in the App Store for free.


My mum spilt water on her laptop and now the shift key does not work

The best thing you can do now is to send it in for a checkup.


How do I start rows with 0 (not 1) or not count header rows in Numbers?

So, this is easy to solve in Excel...  I don't have access to Numbers at the moment, but I'll give you the solution I'm aware of and you can confirm whether it works in Numbers like it does Excel.

You can create a column with the following formula:

=Row() - 1

This will always give you one less than the "default" row number, which is what you are looking for.   It also won't be affected by sorting.

A complete reference of functions that are available in Numbers can be found HERE, including the ROW function.


Where are the states of opened/closed folders saved in OS X?

I presume you are referring to listing a folder using the disclosure triangle in list view:

The state of shown/hidden folders in list view of a specific folder is stored in Finder cache, as well as the folder's hidden .DS_Store.

.
├── .DS_Store
├── 1
│   └── hello.txt
...

You can reset a folder's folder disclosure triangle by running the following command inside the folder that you wish to reset:

rm .DS_Store && killall -HUP Finder


Cannot log out from iCloud to turn off Find My iPhone because the account is locked

It looks like your account has been locked for security reasons, most likely because of incorrect password attempts and changes.

According to this Apple support article, you can either unlock your account at iforgot.apple.com or wait one day to get a few more attempts.

If neither of these options work for you, you can also contact Apple support and they will help you out.

Keep in mind that you will likely have to prove your identity if you contact Apple or try to unlock your account yourself, so be ready for that.


MacBook Pro Retina & Dell U2711 with miniDP to DP still no res higher than 1080p

Added as requested: the solution was to hard rest the monitor by pulling the power and them power cycling the laptop. All is perfect now:)


Is there a way to sync music between a PowerPC Mac and an iOS 7 device?

There are many apps that can move data on and off an iDevice, albeit not in the same "sync" model that iTunes uses. Try the trial of iExplorer, for example.


Flickering Static when Connecting Macbook Pro to LED TV

I cannot comment your question, but maybe you can narrow the problem down by using gfxCardStatus to force the macbook to use either internal or discrete video card. I'm thinking it may be a problem with either.

Also, can you get rid of the flickering by forcing the plugs a bit in any direction with your fingers?


Enabling System Preferences > Display’s „Retina scaling options“ on an external HiRes/HiDPI but Non-4K display (Dell U2515H)?

Option+click Scaled

You can toggle between Apple’s easy-to-understand “Larger Text”–“More Space” icons mode and the other mode listing specific resolutions. To toggle, hold down the Option key while clicking Scaled radio button.

System Information app

Use the System Information app to see more about your monitor in use.

Choose Apple menu > About this Mac > System Report (button). Click Graphics/Display in the list.

Here is what I see with Retina scaling enabled for my 3840 X 2160 (4K) monitor (Samsung U28E510) on my MacBook Pro Retina Late 2013 with NVIDIA graphics card, in El Capitan.

Retina

Scaled options are Retina-style by default, more commonly known as HiDPI.

The SwitchResX app is not needed to get Retina effects on your external 4K monitor. That app has other benefits, but certainly is not necessary to get Retina/HiDPI as you get that be default from Apple.

Note the checkbox Show low resolution modes in the second screen shot above. Checking that box and choosing a resolution listed with the notation (low resolution) means you are disabling the Retina feature and scaling up the image crudely (wasting pixels).


Mac Book Pro Retina Failed to Connect External Monitor via HDMI port with Intel Iris

Are you using any kind of adapters to connect the monitor or is it straight HDMI to HDMI connection? I had troubles with non-apple adapters – the simply dind't worked for me...

You can make 2 things to diagnose the issue I can think of:

boot into linux (make a usb from ubuntu with unetbootin)and check if it works in linux – if it does it's a software issue (i guess), meaning some kind of hack is necessary
check your system.log by opening the Console.app or by tailing it in terminal with tail -f /var/log/system.log, also take a look if sudo dmesg got anything useful to say.

When you got the console or terminal open – just connect/disconnect the monitor and check if you get any kind of log activity from it, that should at least give you some idea if the hardware reacts on the display when Intel HDxxxx is used for graphics.

I would first check the syslog and then check the setup in Ubuntu 15.10, grab the latest Ubuntu iso file from here: http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/daily-live/current/wily-desktop-amd64.iso


Is there a `watch` command native to Darwin/OS X?

There is no native alternative. You must acquire watch from using Homebrew (brew install watch) or MacPorts (port install watch) if you require an actual executable.

You can however, emulate the function of watch. That can be accomplished in a standard bash while loop (from Stack Overflow by Daniel Pittman):

  You can emulate the basic functionality with the shell loop:

while :; do clear; your_command; sleep 2; done

  That will loop forever, clear the screen, run your command, and wait two seconds - the basic watch your_command implementation.

  You can take this a step further and create a watch.sh script that can
  accept your_command and sleep_duration as parameters:

#!/bin/bash
# usage: watch.sh <your_command> <sleep_duration>

while :;
  do
  clear
  date
  $1
  sleep
  $2
done

That, and other options, are available on Stack Overflow.


Why is the Recovery volume's version of Disk Utility more powerful than that on the main volume?

Disk Utility is the same between the regular OS and maOS Recovery, but the environment it's running in is different, and that affects what it can do. The biggest constraint is that Disk Utility can't do much to things (e.g. volumes) that're in use. My guess is that some program had a file open on the volume, so it couldn't eject the volume, and therefore couldn't repair or erase it. In my experience, the background process that scans and indexes documents for Spotlight searches tends to be a culprit here.

In Recovery mode, almost nothing is running (including no Spotlight indexer!), so Disk Utility is much less likely to run into this sort of conflict.

BTW, there are some things that Disk Utility can do when running from the regular OS but not in Recovery. One I've run into is resizing the startup volume (if it's MacOS Extended format -- not sure about APFS). The reason for this is that the Recovery HD partition is right after the startup volume, so it needs to be moved if the startup volume is resized. But you can't move it if you're running from it!


No version model of Macbook in 'About This Mac' section

It's not normal, but it might be nothing. The next reinstall of the OS or an update might populate that field for you.

As far as I can tell, some time during installation the OS checks with Apple and downloads a localized string to represent the hardware. Since you're not US - perhaps there was an outage or an error localizing the string.

Unless there's other cause for concern - you could try reinstalling the OS - choose US location and language to see if that's related. Try looking up the serial number using the answer of the last link (The Stack Overflow question).

http://support-sp.apple.com/sp/product?cc=G940&lang=en_US

In your case, that's reported as a MacBook Air (13-inch, Early 2015) and you could change the language code to get a localized version.

Some other reading on serial numbers and the OS:

What causes a Mac to lose its serial number?
How can I find the serial number on a mac programmatically from the terminal?
https://stackoverflow.com/questions/8058151/how-does-system-profiler-retrieve-the-full-mac-hardware-identifier


Safari on MBPr late 2015 (OS X 10.11.6) makes a "Pop" sound randomly. How to stop this?

OK, the problem was one of the programs making a notification, while the display banner for that program is turned off in my notification settings, resulting in only this pop sound alert (without displaying anything). That caused confusion.

The solution was to disable these notifications whatsoever. If you have similar problem – check your notification settings and look for programs with banners turned off, but with the sound enabled.


Different Node versions in OS X El Capitan

Yes. When node updates a package, it doesn't remove the old version. You can also install old versions of a package using brew versions, but you will probably need to install the boneyard tap in order to be able to do this. See here and here.

Based on this answer:
Use ls $(brew --cellar) to determine what you have installed, and brew ls -v to see installed packages and versions. You can then call the installed binaries directly (or make your own aliases to them).


Playing non-iTune music files on iPhone SE

Apple has never required anyone to join Apple Music. Some people have reported a bug that causes this screen to get stuck (https://discussions.apple.com/thread/7313495?tstart=0), but this appears to refer to an outdated version of iOS. If you are really stuck, you can always close and reopen the Music app, or reboot the phone.


Followed @lax solution: clicked the iTunes Apps tab (not in the "iPhone" tab!) there I could select and delete the apps.


Why can't I connect to the internet on my iPhone 4?

No - you only need a correctly provisioned data plan and working iPhone software. There isn't much that you can mis-configure unless you jailbreak or start mucking with custom iPhone carrier settings profiles.

iPhone data can break or be misconfigured on the carrier end - even if SMS and voice calls work, there can still be a problem with the data service so you may need to get help from your carrier that is providing your data access. It could also be a software issue and Apple is the best place to get that sorted.

Your question is basically how do I systematically troubleshoot iPhone data and/or teach myself how to operate my new phone. (no offense, but it's hard to determine from a one sentence question what your level of comfort is with iPhone data terms and how it may break.)

You might want to get some help from Apple or the carrier since the internet works as long as you are in working Wifi or your data plan is active on the iPhone. Troubleshooting an issue by back and forth on a discussion board is very hard so it's best to get real-time assistance when you are sitting in front of your computer to update the software if needed.

http://www.apple.com/support/iphone/ has some great getting started tips if you want to work through it yourself.

Specifically http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1976 documents the concepts and has an express lane link to get support directly from Apple to narrow down the cause - if 3G is showing in the menu bar it's not some obvious error or switch but something obscure or a carrier issue.


The Excel function

=CELL("filename",A1)

will give you the complete path to a file that has been saved. You can copy the result of the function and use Paste Values to retain only the text.

If the file has not yet been saved, the function returns a blank.


OS X status bar wifi icon - meaning of bars?

RSSI or Received signal strength indication is what is used for the display of the bars.

The higher the number ( closer to 0 ) the better your signal strength.

For Apple devices they used a scale of -100 to 0. But you'll never see 0, or even close. Most people will see a number between about -50 and -80, with around -50 being excellent.

-50 will show all the bars and -90 will show gray bars. Not sure if it will go to -100 since you don't have a signal then ;)

So if you're asking for a scale I think its around 10 to 12.5 RSSI per bar.

While you have a good signal strength, your throughput speed ( Tx Rate ) isn't that fast.

  One method to calculate signal quality is to compute the Signal-to-Noise Ratio (SNR). SNR is the signal level (in dBm) minus the noise level (in dBm). Both of these values are typically represented as negative numbers. For example, a signal level of -53dBm and a noise value of -90dBm would yield an SNR of 37dB (i.e., SNR = Signal - Noise = -53 -(-90) = 37)

  The calculated SNR value, as measured from a wireless client, would decrease as the range to the base station increases due to applicable free space loss. Also an increase in RF intereference from microwave ovens, cordless phones, walls, ceilings, etc, which would increase the noise level, would also decrease the overall SNR value.

  SNR Guideline

  40+dB = Excellent signal

  25dB to 40dB = Very good signal

  15dB to 25dB = Low signal

  10dB to 15dB = Very low signal

  5dB to 10dB = Little or no signal

In your case -65 - -90 = 25 or -70 - -85 = 15

So you have a 15db to 25db signal OR as diagnostics calls it SNR which isn't that good but isn't really bad either.


top -stats command,vprvt -l1 | sed '1,/^COMMAND *VPRVT/d'

-stats = shown columns, -l1 = exit after one sample. It cuts off long command names and uses human-readable sizes though.


Missing Angle Bracket Key when using G613

You should be able to set a device-spesific key change using Karabiner. If you can't easily set that, you can make a (custom) rule by finding a custom rule on karabiner's website, and then modifying it.


Boot Camp / macOS Mojave / 3 TB Fusion drive

Bootcamp isn't dependent on the type of drive that you use.

What matters is it's hardware compatability with the Windows version you want to run.


How to open current folder in ForkLift from command line?

Use following command:

open -a ForkLift .


OS X (Mavericks) file sharing: Can only see contents of shared folder, not open files

Stupid approach to enable access to same folder for two admin users on same computer. Instead, I changed file/folder permissions using chmod, allowing group access (the two admin users belong to the same group).


Irrelevant outdated update stuck in App Store

The app store searches all available drives to update software. You would want to use spotlight to find and delete all copies of that software or set up a privacy to tell spotlight not to index the location where you store an old copy of an app.

Open Spotlight preferences and add an exclusion for the folder containing the app.

Another remote possibility is if spotlight itself is confused / in error - you might need to exclude the entire drive to wipe the bad search results and then remove the exclusion and let spotlight re-build the entire search index for your drive(s).


Since Lion testers are under a non-disclosure agreement (NDA) it may be difficult to get a definitive answer on this here.  From my reading of what has been released so far, and reading between the lines to Apples intent on bringing iOS (and in particular the iPad) functionality/experience to the Desktop, I would say that the Applications written for Lion will use that feature, and it will not be able to be turned off.

I say this because I think that the autosave and version system will be deep in the guts of the OS and once an application is written to use this feature, it won't be an option.

That's not to say that people won't find a way around it.


/System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.servermgrd.plist Is Missing - Causing postgres to not start properly

"Invalid or missing service identifier"  seems to mean that your plist file has not got or has  misspelled a section like

<key>Label</key>
<string>com.foo.bar</string>

Note "Label" must start with upper case L.


Trackpad firmware doesn't update and now stopped working (Lion & MacBook 13" Unibody)

Ended up taking it to an apple technician and they fixed it...


How does Bluetooth improve location accuracy?

iOS 7 introduced support for Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) iBeacons. These are small Bluetooth devices that can be placed to indicate a very specific location and the system respond in some way when they are detected. Enter a shop and an app for the shop showing you the latest offers might be one way for this to be leveraged. This would be different from usual geolocation APIs which become inaccurate when you are inside large structures (offices, malls etc.) as they cannot get a GPS fix, and WiFi coverage tends to be meshed with repeater stations


Trusting a certificate gives the owner of that certificate the ability to limit security warnings when performing some tasks. These tasks include installing new software, and intercepting & proxying secure connections.

Whether you should follow the request to trust the certificate depends on who owns the computer.

See Should I let my child's school have access to my kid's personal laptop? for a related question over on the Information Security site.

School Device

If the computer is supplied by the school and the school want you to install their trusted certificate, then you should do so.

Personal Device

If this computer is yours, I would not trust their certificate. Adding an always trusted certificate is significant step and should rarely be needed on a personal device.

Minimum Trust

Note the sub-options in step 5:

You can choose to trust the certificate only for certain functions. If the certificate is intended to allow locally developed and signed software to run, then only Code Signing should be required. Maybe X.509 Basic Policy also.

I would avoid trusting Secure Sockets Layers (SSL) until it is proven essential. This trust would allow the school to intercept previously secure Internet connections.

You could incrementally trust/distrust parts the certificate until you found the minimum set of trust required.


Exclude mails from specific Inbox in "Inbox" view

Update - Mail has a filter option to the right of the 'sort by' at the top of the email column where you can choose which mailboxes, or to only show unread, etc.


iPhone backlight blinks on then goes out. What are my options?

You should take your phone in. They will fix it if they can and it's cheaper for them than giving you a new.

If you try to fix it yourself they can put the blame on you, so don't touch the hardware.


Locate long file paths on external drive with terminal

The following command will print out all files that have more than 130 characters

find -E . -type f -regex '.*[^/]{130}'

The Terminal (bash) command to list the disks attached to the system is diskutil.  The command diskutil list will output all disks - just select the identifier that matches your external device.

For example:

/dev/disk3 (external, physical):
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      GUID_partition_scheme                        *500.1 GB   disk3
   1:                        EFI EFI                     209.7 MB   disk3s1
   2:                  Apple_HFS FreeAgent Go            499.8 GB   disk3s2
/dev/disk4 (external, physical):
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      GUID_partition_scheme                        *1.0 TB     disk4
   1:                        EFI EFI                     209.7 MB   disk4s1
   2:                  Apple_HFS My Passport for Mac     999.8 GB   disk4s2

disk0, disk1, and disk2 are in a CoreStorage volume.  disk3 and disk4 are my external drivers

To access the drive (assuming it's mounted), look in the /Volumes directory for the appropriate mount point.

Assuming you wanted to search "My Passport for Mac" you would enter the command:

find -E /Volumes/My\ Passport\ for\ Mac/ -type f -regex '.*[^/]{130}'


How to determine where the localhost:8080 source and server are located

Try:

sudo  lsof -n -i :8080 -s TCP:LISTEN

The first two columns will be the name and PID of the process(es) listening on port 8080.

Use the PID to find it in Activity Monitor, Get Info, and notice which files it has open. It'll have a bunch of libraries open, but high on the list will be the executable file.

Alternatively, from the name, see what service it corresponds to with

sudo launchctl list | grep theprocessname

For example, if the name were httpd, the above command would tell you the service name is org.apache.httpd. If you don't get any hits (because it's not running as a daemon), try it without sudo.

Ask launchctl for more info about that service. Continuing to use Apache as the example:

sudo launchctl list org.apache.httpd

would tell you

{
    "LimitLoadToSessionType" = "System";
    "Label" = "org.apache.httpd";
    "TimeOut" = 30;
    "OnDemand" = false;
    "LastExitStatus" = 0;
    "PID" = 39660;
    "Program" = "/usr/sbin/httpd";
    "ProgramArguments" = (
        "/usr/sbin/httpd";
        "-D";
        "FOREGROUND";
    );
};

Notice the "Program" line, which gives you the path to the executable. Most of that information comes from /System/Library/LaunchAgents/org.apache.httpd.plist, which is the file that tells Launch Services when to run the program and how.

Your web server, listening on port 8080, is not from Apple, so it won't be in /System/Library. Look in /Library/LaunchDaemons, or maybe even in ~/Library/LaunchAgents (if it runs only when you're logged in). (Listening on port 8080 does not require root privilege, so it could conceivably be running as you, although that has interesting security implications.)

Another place to look is in System Preferences→Users & Groups→Login Items. Since we don't know how you set it up to run automatically, it might be that you didn't do it by putting a file in any of the ...Library/Launch* directories.


Your "Shutdown Cause" has three separate values:  0, 3, and 5.

"5" is a clean shutdown
"3" is a dirty shutdown meaning the power button was held for 3 seconds or more
"0" means power loss

(contrary to what you'd think the values "should be", I know...)

There's an answer here on Ask Different that addresses the shutdown causes:  Are OS X shutdown cause and sleep cause numbers listed/explained anywhere?

A power failure on a "desktop" Mac (iMac, Mac mini, Mac Pro) is easily explained.  However, since you have a laptop (MacBook Pro), it's very concerning because if your electric current is cut, your battery will kick in and if that battery gets too low, it will save a hibernation image.

The 0 is as if you had no battery and pulled the plug - the system just cut out.  I would take it in and have a look at it.  This is definitely not normal behavior.


How to fix persistent crashes in Google backup and sync?

I solved this problem by turning off the option "Show file sync status icons and right click menu", in Google Backup and Sync -> Preferences -> Settings.


Why can't I download anymore apps on my iPad?

As noted in another answer, you'll need to remove some data if you want to install new apps. What you remove really depends on what's taking up lots of space — it might be apps (games in particular tend to be large), videos or music.

You can get a good overview of what's taking up space on your device by going to Settings → General → Usage. You should see a breakdown of how much storage each app is taking up. You can also remove apps from this screen, or if tap on the Music or Videos apps, you have the option of removing some media files more granularly.


My Time Capsule insists on being the DHCP server, but I already have one

Time Capsule can only handle PPPoE if it is also acting as the DHCP Server. You will need to get a different device, or allow the Time Capsule to be the actual DHCP Server, turning off that function on your provided modem: http://support.apple.com/kb/PH5104


This is a bug in the macOS 10.12 Sierra GM (Golden Master).

Apple has released a few more builds since its keynote on September 7. The first build was 16A320.

To update to the current build there are two options:

Wait until macOS Sierra's release date (tomorrow, September 20)
Download the latest macOS Sierra installer from the developer center.

What is your current macOS Sierra build number?


How to know if a mac is under DEP (Device Enrollment Program)?

Have you seen Apple's DEP FAQ? It says

  Which devices can be enrolled in DEP?

  Any Apple Mac or iOS devices purchased on or after March 1, 2011 can
  be enrolled in DEP. Mac or iOS devices purchased from participating
  Apple Authorized resellers or carriers must be added to your DEP
  instance to be included. All iOS devices must use iOS 7 or later, and
  all Mac computers must have OS X Mavericks v10.9 or later. Once
  configured, automatic enrollment in MDM occurs at the time of device
  activation if a profile has been assigned. If a device has already
  been deployed (activated), you can trigger automatic MDM enrollment by
  erasing and restoring the device.

what are the consequences of allowing DEP, and is it reversible?

  DEP supervises and enrolls the device into your Meraki MDM. Any
  configuration profiles are going to come from Meraki, not DEP. If
  there are configuration profiles that you want to remove, make the
  change in Meraki... either remove the device from the "Clients in
  scope" list under the profile, or remove the profile completely from >Meraki (if you don't want it on any device).

  DEP allows for the changing of the following: App Lock (Single App Mode)

  Global HTTP Proxy

  Activation Lock Bypass

  Autonomous Single App Mode

  Web Content Filter

  Set background & lock screen

  Silent App Push

  Always-On VPN

  Allow managed app installation exclusively

  Additionally, you can block/disallow:

  iBookstore

  iMessages

  Game center

  AirDrop

  AirPlay

  Host pairing

  Cloud Sync

  Spotlight internet results

  Handoff

  Erase

  Restrictions UI

  Installation of configuration profiles by UI

  News

  Keyboard shortcuts

  Passcode modifications

  Device name changes

  Wallpaper changes

  Automatic app downloads

  Changes to enterprise app trust

  Apple Music

  Mail Drop

how to contact the person who has DEP and ask them to remove it from the program?

  The line under "add to enrollment" will tell you who is running the
  DEP. You may see details by clicking add, and it will bring up
  preferences. Under this, you may read (in plaintext) who is trying to
  enroll you, and you may find out who it is.

When buying a new mac, how to know if it's on DEP? (the most important question)

  Reset it. See if it bypasses Setup.

Someone on IRC said that if i was unable to authorize my machine from itunes then the machine is on DEP.. is this correct?

  Yes. It would bypass this under MDM or under a DEP.

The same person on IRC says that there could be a previous owner, and this owner can format my computer and see all of my files even if i have my own icloud on it, is this correct?

  This is true.

  The Device Enrollment Program enables IT to easily leverage the
  advanced capabilities of supervision without the need to physically
  tether a device to a master computer running Apple Configurator –
  supervision can be turned on with the click of a button OTA. IT also
  benefits from the avoided risks associated with unmanaged devices.
  With the Device Enrollment Program, IT can leverage un-removable MDM
  profiles and even require devices to re-enroll after being wiped or
  reset.

Best of Luck!


Can I get the Canon EOS Utility to stop bugging me when I plug in my iPhone?

After plugging in your iPhone, open "Image Capture.app" in the Applications folder. In the bottom left of the window is an option to choose what to do when this "camera" is plugged in. Change this to Do Nothing or open iPhoto as you would prefer.


Do any Amazon S3 clients allow automation for setting expiration headers?

I'm not 100% sure if it meets your needs, but Cyberduck allows you to set the Cache-Control header. See this link for more information (see the section on Cache Control Setting).


If you open /System/Applications/Utilities/Screenshot.app, you will be given the option to choose where your screenshot goes.    You can select for the screenshot to automatically open in Preview.

Now anytime you use your keyboard shortcuts to take a screenshot,  the default action would be to open the screenshot in Preview.


If your HDD is still mounted you can download El Capitan from the Apple App Store and create a USB installer thumb drive:

Download the OS X installer from the Mac App Store. Quit the installer if it opens automatically after downloading. The installer will be in your Applications folder.
Mount your USB flash drive or other volume. You could also use a secondary internal partition. Partition the thumb drive with Disk Utility: one partition, Mac OS X Extended Journaled and GUID partition table and rename it (e.g. MyVolume).
Open the Terminal app, which is in the Utilities folder of your Applications folder.
Use the createinstallmedia command in Terminal to create the bootable installer. Examples of this command are in the next section. For detailed usage instructions, make sure that the appropriate Install OS X app is in your Applications folder, then enter one of the following paths in Terminal:

#with MyVolume: the name of your USB thumb drive volume
sudo /Applications/Install\ OS\ X\ El\ Capitan.app/Contents/Resources/createinstallmedia --volume /Volumes/MyVolume --applicationpath /Applications/Install\ OS\ X\ El\ Capitan.app

Shutdown your Mac and replace the hard drive.
Boot your Mac - you may have to hold the alt/opt and choose the installer thumb drive as boot volume. Sometimes this doesn't work on the first attempt. Just reboot again!
Partition the SSD with Disk Utility which is included in the installer thumb drive(AFAIR in the menubar -> Utilities): one partition, Mac OS X Extended Journaled and GUID partition table and rename it (e.g. Macintosh HD). Quit Disk Utility and install El Capitan.

If you already attached the SSD you can use Internet Recovery Mode (hold cmdR or altcmdR while booting) to first partition the new internal drive and then restore the original system (10.7 Lion). Then - after configuring Lion - you can to upgrade to El Capitan. This is not recommended because it takes at least twice the time/download.


Why is double time speed different on iPod vs iPhone?

I can only offer a shot in the dark, and that is that the iPod has a weaker processor and when it tries to double the speed, the time it takes for the processor to do some calculations slows it down a little.


How can I use my SanDisk Connect Wireless Flash Drive with my 12" MacBook

Per the SanDisk Getting Started Guide, There are two steps to get your Mac connected:

Connect to the SanDisk WiFi Network.
Browse to http://www.sandisk.com/myconnect

Directly from the Getting Started Guide:

These instructions work with PC or Mac.


iPhone automatically deletes every single email on Yahoo server?

All the devices were using the same email account. But every device except the old Macbook accessed it with IMAP, the old Macbook used POP. (I realised this very late.) This caused that the old Macbook downloaded all the emails and deleted them from the server, and that's why the other devices couldn't see the emails.

SOLUTION: Created new IMAP account in Mail, then copying all the emails from the POP account to the IMAP account. The other devices were then automatically able to access all the emails.

(For someone not knowing anything about IMAP or POP, just google the difference between them.)


Replaced CPU with i7, now 1 LED blinking

Ok - so I took it all apart again. Reseated the i7 CPU and it all booted fine.

Runs like a champ! Awesome upgrade :-)


Low-resolution icons displayed in Dock and Launchpad

Cheekily adding this as an answer based on a comment above as the commenter didn't include it.

The cause appears to be a mystery, but if you remove the icon from the dock (just drag it away until you get the vanishing smoke animation), and re add the icon (run the app, right click on the dock icon and click Keep, or drag the icon back in from the finder) to get the full resolution icon for any app that is doing this.  It's a workaround that doesn't explain the issue, but should be good enough.


MacBook Pro Battery Life Problems - only 2 hours with light usage

I found the problem, so I thought I'd update here in case anyone else has this issue.

I'm running a 13", MBP with OS X 10.6.8.  This problem will not present itself for previous versions of OS X but will likely appear in later versions.

A few weeks ago I installed some Adobe CS3 software - particularly the Design Suite, although I had later versions of photoshop and dreamweaver already installed.  As part of the CS3 suite, I installed Adobe Version Cue CS3.  This software does NOT play nice with OS X.

At first, I tried manually removing it (easier for most uninstalls in my opinion).  This was a big mistake.  When I deleted the preference files, my CPU began running at over 100% for "CrashReport".  This didn't stop until I restored via Time Machine (thank God for Time Machine!)

Secondly, I disabled it, which did lower launchd and others by 5% or so, but did not ultimately result in my machine running cooler, or my battery lasting longer.

Note: my fans would come on full speed even while the computer was idling!

Finally, I ran the complete Adobe uninstaller for CS3 suite which cleaned up my problem completely.  Turns out Adobe CS3 is Unsupported for Snow Leopard although quietly.  You can barely find any mention of this on adobe.com and the software still seems to install quite fine.

Bottom line - if you have a Snow Leopard Macbook Pro - do NOT install Adobe CS3 software - in particular Version Cue.


How do I consolidate all my partitions into one partition usable for Bootcamp?

Boot to Internet Recovery Mode and open Disk Utility. Repartition each disk to one partition, GUID partition table and OS X Extended (Journaled).
Exit Disk Utility, open Terminal in the menubar > Utilities
Enter diskutil list to get the device identifiers of the SSD (24 GB) and the HDD (1 TB) (probably disk0 and disk1 with the main volumes disk0s2 and disk1s2)
Enter the following to rebuild your Fusion Drive

diskutil cs create Fusion disk0s2 disk1s2 #use the dev identifiers found previously
diskutil cs list #take a note of the Logical Volume Group UUID (lvgUUID)
diskutil coreStorage createVolume lvgUUID jhfs+ "Mac" 0g #use the lvgUUID found above here (something like 28394BA0-AC56....)

Exit Terminal and install OS X/macOS from the Utilities window
After several reboots configure OS X/macOS.
Upgrade to Sierra (or an older system) if necessary/possible.
Open Boot Camp Assistant and install Windows


How can I remove "zombie entries" from login items when the controls are dimmed?

It's far late, but I have discovered today, trying to remove a similar zombie item that you cannot remove items for ALL ITEMS when the padlock icon is closed. Open the padlock for any action that involves other users. That's all.


Go to www.dyndns.com and register.  Then install the dynamic updater on your Mac and follow the installation instructions.  This will then connect to www.dyndns.com and update your DNS information whenever your Mac is connected to the internet.  You could then use SSH or other means to log onto your Mac from an iPhone or other computer/Mac by connecting to the URL (e.g. - mymacbook.dyndns.com) you select upon registering on dyndns.com.

There are another couple of steps.  You need to get your broadband router to forward traffic coming in on specific ports to your Mac.  You should be able to find a how-to on www.portforward.com for your router model. You also need to setup a static IP for your Mac which is best done on your router.  Your routers documentation should tell you how to do this.


Cannot open Desktop Settings and Energy Saver settings

I think you have a corrupted System Preferences .plist file

You can remove the current .plist file in ~/library/preferences/com.apple.systempreferences.plist drag that .plist to the desktop (as a backup) and try System Preferences again. It will automatically create a new, working .plist file.


What does “-501 0D” mean when trying to run the Apple Hardware Test?

Brief follow-up note: it turns out this Mac did have hardware problems.

I took it to the Apple Store a few days after writing the original post, and their more thorough diagnostics discovered a problem with the disk (specifically, the hard drive portion of the Fusion Drive). I got the hard drive replaced under warranty, and after a year I haven‘t seen the symptoms again – I assume this was just an artefact of a failing disk.


How to get Cmd-Tab (Mapped to Alt-Tab) in a Parallels Windows VM to cycle just Windows Apps?

To disable the OS X system keyboard shortcuts while the focus is on your VM, just change the setting under Shortcuts labelled "Send OS X system shortcuts" to Always.  This will send all keystrokes only to the VM when it has the focus.


How to turn off notifications for a specific event in the calendar?

There are two places where you will need to disable this.

As @howdytom explained, set alert to None when editing your event. Calendar will ask you to save this change for all future events.

Calendar creates automatic alerts for your events. To change those, go to Calendar → Preferences → Alerts and disable automatic alerts by setting them to None. Once you do this, this will affect automatic alerts for ALL events, and you will need to set them on an event-by-event basis.


Major difficulty restoring Time Machine backups/accessing .sparsebundle on newer Mac Mini

Time Machine backups cannot be browsed in Finder. You must view them through Time Machine.
If you are using a computer that is different from the one where the backup was made, there are additional steps. The Time Machine - Troubleshooting page explains further.

Time Machine keeps the backups for each Mac separate, and normally only shows the ones for the Mac it's running on (selected in the Time Machine Preferences window), even if there are other backups of the same or a different Mac on the same or different disk/partition.
To see these "other" backups, you need the Browse Other Backup Disks or (Browse Other Time Machine Disks on Snow Leopard or Leopard) option.  It's available by Alt/Option-clicking the Time Machine icon in your Menubar, or by control-clicking (right-clicking) the Time Machine icon in your Dock.
You'll see a selection screen showing all the mounted disks/partitions that have Time Machine backups on them.  Select the one you want, click Use Selected Disk, and you'll be taken to the normal "Star Wars" display, where you should see all the backups on that disk/partition.
You may not be able to restore such items normally (to their original location);  if not, you'll need to restore them to an alternate location per Frequently Asked Question #16.


Esc button from touchbar has disappeared

After killing Touch Bar server application it will come back. Just paste the following to terminal and enter your password when asked:

sudo pkill TouchBarServer


Resolve lack of access in Keychain Access

You can log it out without the password. First press command+space and search activity monitor and press enter, then in the search bar in the corner search "loginwindow" without quotations and double click on the one that has the other users name by it. After that you should see a quit option. click it and it will give you 3 choices. Cancel, force quit, and quit. i recommend only force quitting if it isn't responding or if it doesn't work with regular quit. Also, this deletes any unsaved files and/or open tabs you have without saving them, so you might lose some data. About the Keychain password, i have the same question.


Does signing out of FaceTime disconnect your Apple ID from a specific device?

Yes - tapping the sign out button disconnects FaceTime. The messages app uses a different account unless you set them all up using iCloud preference or a setup assistant screen to log into all icloud services with one Apple ID.

As long as you signed out of the FaceTime portion of the settings app - more deliveries won't happen to that device.

as long as you didn't sign in to the iCloud settings or anywhere else - you should be safe with no data of yours on that device other than for the moments you allowed it.


Remote control from one iDevice to another iDevice

I found Tunes Remote which looks like it fits perfectly and it can be downloaded from the App Store. Does anybody know it?


After a while, I've noticed that all shortcuts work in Finder. Here are my steps, how I fixed the problem:

Try to launch finder, by killing rest of the apps via  "force quit apps" menu (Command+Alt+Esc)
Go to utilities folder (Shift+Command+U)
Use arrows to select Terminal
Open terminal (Command+Down Arrow)
Issue command sudo shutdhown -r now. I decided to use -r flag to reboot my mac, in case power button is dead and I won't be able to load it.

Now everything works fine. It was just a software bug.