Create playlists for full albums in iTunes (i.e. albums with all songs)

I realized this was a complicated enough question I ought to try to skin the cat myself. Here is one approach:

-- Creates a playlist for each full album you have in iTunes
-- Set the playlistPrefix and playlistSuffix as desired before running

-- Based on code by Brad Campbell
-- http://www.bradcampbell.com/2009/05/26/make-a-whole-album-playlist-in-itunes/

tell application "iTunes"
    set playlistPrefix to "FA: "
    set playlistSuffix to ""
    -- The "FA: " prefix will help cluster full albums in iTunes' playlists,
    -- and is narrow enough to not get in your way when viewing on an iPhone

    set albumBuckets to {} as list
    set allSongs to (every track of library playlist 1 whose enabled is true and podcast is false and kind contains "audio") as list

    -- Find all partial albums in iTunes
    repeat with currentTrack in allSongs
        set albumName to album of currentTrack as text
        set artistName to artist of currentTrack as text

        -- First check for missing values, then perform integer comparison
        -- Zero is on the left to force interger type coercion, just in case
        if album of currentTrack is not missing value and 0 is less than length of albumName then
            if artist of currentTrack is not missing value and 0 is less than length of artistName then
                if track number of currentTrack is not missing value and 0 is less than track number of currentTrack then
                    if track count of currentTrack is not missing value and 0 is less than track count of currentTrack then
                        if albumBuckets does not contain album of currentTrack then
                            copy album of currentTrack to the end of albumBuckets
                        end if
                    end if
                end if
            end if
        end if

    end repeat

    repeat with currentAlbum in albumBuckets
        set albumSongs to (every track of library playlist 1 whose album is currentAlbum)
        set firstTrack to first item of albumSongs

        -- Filter album list to act only on full albums
        if (count of albumSongs) is equal to track count of first item of albumSongs and 1 is less than (count of albumSongs) then
            -- This is a full album, construct the playlist

            -- Sort tracks by track number
            set albumSongsSorted to {} as list
            repeat with i from 1 to (count of albumSongs)
                repeat with trk in albumSongs
                    if track number of trk is i then
                        set nextSong to trk
                        copy nextSong to the end of albumSongsSorted
                    end if
                end repeat
            end repeat

            -- Don't show artist name for compilations
            if firstTrack is not compilation then
                set playlistNameArtist to artist of firstTrack & " - "
            else
                set playlistNameArtist to ""
            end if

            set albumPlaylistName to playlistPrefix & playlistNameArtist & currentAlbum & playlistSuffix

            -- Create playlist
            if user playlist albumPlaylistName exists then
                try
                    delete tracks of user playlist albumPlaylistName
                end try
            else
                make new user playlist with properties {name:albumPlaylistName}
            end if

            try
                repeat with trk in albumSongsSorted
                    duplicate trk to user playlist albumPlaylistName
                end repeat
            end try
        end if
    end repeat

    display dialog "Playlists created! Check iTunes for playlists beginning with '" & playlistPrefix & "'"
end tell

To try this out, just copy and paste the code block into AppleScript Editor and push Run. Do be aware there's no easy "undo" button - you'll have to just hold down the delete key if you want to ditch all the created playlists.

There's probably a faster algorithm (i.e. one that makes only a single pass through iTunes' library) but I couldn't figure how to work with two dimensional variables in AppleScript, which seems like a prerequisite.

A bonus side effect of this script is that it may surface ancient albums in your library you have moved on from and can safely delete :)


My iPhone 4S won't text my friend's Android, my phone thinks she still has an iphone with iOS5

This is a known issue with iMessage. In your case, what has happened is that the SIM was registered on Apple's servers as capable of accepting iMessages. When your friend swapped phones, they likely kept the same SIM card. So now their old iPhone (bound to Apple's servers by its UUID) and the SIM card (bound by its own ID) are both registered with Apple to receive iMessages.

This article talks of possible fixes, and the possibility that Apple has something cooking (after all they should provide some capacity to remove the devices, perhaps from your Apple ID account). You can also head over to this article for additional reading and perhaps more solutions.

I wish I had a simple solution for you, but it may require calling Apple and discussing the matter with them. I would say you should also ask them to cover the cost of a new SIM should your friend require one.


Where in Mac OS are Shockwave plugins stored?

https://www.lifewire.com/how-to-view-and-remove-safari-plug-ins-2260895

Safari-->Help-->Installed Plugins


I started typing in finder the wrong letter now I can't navigate to a file. How to start from beginning?

As nohillside said, you can just wait a couple seconds for the buffer to reset, but you can also hit escape to clear it.


It turns out this problem was caused by the text being actually encoded as Baltic (Windows) instead of UTF-8.


Mac CRM software with iCloud Contacts integration

I don't know much about the software, but it seems like Contacts Journal may do what you're looking for, with two caveats:

new contacts entered in Contacts.app are not automatically imported into Contacts Journal, but it will automatically prompt you to do so, and thereafter keep the contacts sync'd
contacts added directly in Contacts Journal will not automatically appear in Contacts.app, and I don't see an indication of how to accomplish this.

There is a lite version that you can try for free, and also a FAQ.

I have no affiliation with the product.


Reviving unmountable & unformattable usb drive

It seems like the partition may have been deleted.
Try the -f option.
sudo gpt create -f /dev/disk2

By default, one cannot create a GPT when the device contains a
MBR, however this can be overridden with the -f option.  If the
-f option is specified, an existing MBR is destroyed and any par-
titions described by the MBR are lost. - [GTP Man Page] https://www.manpagez.com/man/8/gpt/

This post may help you: How to fix broken GPT, GUID and unmountable, no type volumes?


Why does iOS need to refresh when I come back to a page?

This is caused by low amount of available RAM on iOS devices (iPad Air 2 might be better with this) . You may try to lower RAM usage somehow (for example cleaning Cookies/Data in Safari, killing apps running in background, closing unused Safari Tabs etc.).


Loud squealing noise in headphone/speaker followed by computer freezing

Notice: Although it seems unlikely it is possible there is a fault with the machine that could escalate, so if you haven't already please make sure to take a backup of your important documents.

There are a few things you could try:

Perform a PRAM reset by following Apple's instructions: http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1379
Perform an SMC reset by following Apple's instructions: http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1543

Test for a period

Run Apple Hardware Test by following Apple's instructions, running the full/extended test: https://support.apple.com/en-gb/HT201257

Review the results for any obvious hardware faults

Take a backup and reinstall macOS, I can provide instructions here if you get that far, but let's see the results of the hardware fault and screenshots, you can add them to your original post as an edit.


Safari - AppleScript does not move to the next section of a bookdown online book

I can click manually on the right arrow and move to the next section, but I can't manage to have the script to do that.
How can I have AppleScript "turn the page" and move to the next section?

If you are trying to programmatically click the right-arrow, as shown in the image below, then the following example AppleScript code can do that:
tell application "Safari" to ¬
    tell document 1 to ¬
        do JavaScript ¬
            "document.getElementsByClassName('fa fa-angle-right')[0].click();"

Notes:
This requires Allow JavaScript from Apple Events to be check on the hidden Develop menu.
To unhide the hidden Develop menu:

Safari > Preferences… > Advanced > [√] Show Develop menu in menu bar

Update to address:

Also, I welcome suggestions to improve the script! I wonder if it would be easy to avoid repeating "tab" 15 times.

Here is how I'd use the JavaScript from above and coded to avoid using the key code and or keystroke System Events  commands, especially tabbing around the UI.
Example AppleScript code:
tell application "System Events"

    tell application process "Safari"

        set frontmost to true

        set i to 0
        repeat until (its frontmost = true)
            delay 0.1
            set i to i + 1
            if i ≥ 20 then return
        end repeat

        click menu item "Print…" of ¬
            menu 1 of ¬
            menu bar item "File" of ¬
            menu bar 1

        tell its front window

            set i to 0
            repeat until (exists menu button "PDF" of sheet 1)
                delay 0.1
                set i to i + 1
                if i ≥ 20 then return
            end repeat

            click menu button "PDF" of sheet 1

            set i to 0
            repeat until (exists menu item "Save as PDF" of ¬
                menu 1 of menu button "PDF" of sheet 1)
                delay 0.1
                set i to i + 1
                if i ≥ 20 then return
            end repeat

            click menu item "Save as PDF" of ¬
                menu 1 of ¬
                menu button "PDF" of ¬
                sheet 1

            set i to 0
            repeat until (exists button "Save" of sheet 1 of sheet 1)
                delay 0.1
                set i to i + 1
                if i ≥ 20 then return
            end repeat

            click button "Save" of sheet 1 of sheet 1

            set i to 0
            repeat while (exists sheet 1)
                delay 0.1
                set i to i + 1
                if i ≥ 100 then return
            end repeat

        end tell
    end tell
end tell

tell application "Safari" to ¬
    tell document 1 to ¬
        do JavaScript ¬
            "document.getElementsByClassName('fa fa-angle-right')[0].click();"

Notes:
Since this type of AppleScript script is using UI Scripting, I have included an error handling in the form of a repeat loop to wait up to two seconds for the target UI element to become available to be acted upon for most of the targets, however the last repeat loop waits longer because it has to wait until the Save as PDF to complete. A simple delay command with an appropriate value could be used instead, but with the include delay of a tenth of a second in the repeat loops it shouldn't have to wait any longer than need be. In other words, I'd only use simple delay command if I want to slow the script down from going through the various events of the UI. It's doubtful that it would need to be adjusted, but obviously do so as/if necessary.
If the timeout is reached, the script aborts at that point without any error message. The single-line if i ≥ 20 then return statements can be turned into a full if block and include an error message via the display dialog, display alert, or display notification command as wanted.


Create a partition on SD card for ext4 filesystem

OS X cannot see ext partitions. You would be better to do this on Linux.

You can install support e.g OS X Fuse as outlined in http://osxdaily.com/2014/03/20/mount-ext-linux-file-system-mac/

You will also need FUSE-Ext2 as https://github.com/osxfuse/osxfuse/wiki/Ext

I am not sure if this will allow you to create ext4 partitions, but you can certainly mount them.


Problematic performance of Adobe CS5.5 suite on OSX (Snow Leopard)

By now we found the problem. Our Filewave deployment system kept overwriting the .pref files. We removed them from the deployment and the issue was fixed. So far for saving time deploying through Filewave :)


Do OS X Lion's Versions and Resume features store the cached data for encrypted .sparsebundle images in a secure way?

I've done some testing, and can offer a (hopefully) authoritative answer.

Short answer: the versions are stored on the same disk (or disk image) as the actual file, so versions shouldn't leak information outside of your encrypted image.  But there might be another leak, see below.

Long answer: Versions creates an invisible folder at the top of each volume, named ".DocumentRevisions-V100" with an internal structure like this:

.DocumentRevisions-V100
    .cs
        ChunkStorage    (this is presumably used to store chunks of large files that didn't entirely change between versions)
    AllUIDs             (this is only created on disks that have permissions ignored)
    ChunkTemp
    db-v1
        db.sqlite      (this is the primary index of document IDs, etc)
    PerUID             (this is only created on disks that have ownership respected)
        501            (documents created/owned by user #501)
        502            (etc...)
    staging            (???)

For info on the sqlite index and the background daemon that mediates access to it, read John Siracusa's excellent review at ars technica.

The document versions themselves are stored in subdirectories in either AllUIDs or PerUID/youruserid.  Under that, each versioned document gets its own subdirectory, numbered starting at 1.  Under that is a single folder named "com.apple.documentVersions", and under that, each revision is stored as a separate document (unless it's broken into chunks -- I haven't experimented with large documents) named with a UUID and type extension.  For example, if I (user #501) edit a rtf document on my boot volume and save several revisions, they might be stored as:

/.DocumentRevisions-V100/PerUID/501/1/com.apple.documentVersions/0787B7C3-DE11-4065-9FD9-61870212011D.rtf
/.DocumentRevisions-V100/PerUID/501/1/com.apple.documentVersions/D533CF36-0D49-4910-B0EB-C92395C05726.rtf

If I then opened another rtf file and saved a version of it, it might be named:

/.DocumentRevisions-V100/PerUID/501/2/com.apple.documentVersions/74A6EF6E-A22A-4196-B560-40ABDBF46DF4.rtf

If I saved it on my SecretDocs image (mounted with ownership ignored), versions would be stored like:

/Volumes/SecretDocs/.DocumentRevisions-V100/AllUIDs/1/com.apple.documentVersions/2ED4DAFD-9BCF-4158-BFDB-F9EEC631E44A.rtf

BTW, permissions on the version files seem to be cloned from the original files.  Permissions on the enclosing folders tend to allow execute only (i.e. you can't see the filenames, but if you know the file's name you can access it).  For example PerUID/501 is set to allow execute only for user 501, no access for anyone else. The db-v1 folder only allows root access.  Without investigating in detail, it seems to be pretty locked-down.

Now, about that other leak I threatened you with: Lion apps tend to save their state when you quit, so if you have a confidential document open when you quit, some of its information (like I think a screenshot) may get stored in ~/Library/Saved Application State/someappid.savedState.  As long as you close before saving I think you're safe here.


How to take screenshots in rapid succession

⇧⌘3 works as fast as I can press in Big Sur 11.4 Beta 1 and I don't remember having this issue on previous versions of Big Sur.
Try with a new user account to rule out interference from a running app.


Bottom of bookmark covered by dock after macbook is upgraded to Mojave

You might try moving the dock to either the left or right sides of the screen, rather than the bottom: System Preferences > Dock > Position on screen.

In the same Preference Pane, the size of the Dock can also be adjusted with the topmost "Size" slider.

(This is in macOS Mojave; might be different in other versions)


Using CSR8510 A10 based Bluetooth 4.0 (Low Energy) dongle with mid-2011 iMac

Oh snaps, I'm going to make you happy @ThomasW.

Okay so after you do the HCI bootmode thing? You also need to whack /Library/Preferences/com.apple.Bluetooth.plist and bounce your system.

If you have both internal Bluetooth and this adapter you may also need to use Apple's "Bluetooth Explorer" (via developer.apple.com no ADC subscription required, get the "Hardware Tools" bundle) and pick a different device.

Just got this working tonight via the change to bootmode and subsequent removal of the existing plist and my Magic Trackpad is totally happy, will test other devices later, it's been a long evening.


Does the MacBook Pro 15'' 8,2 Early 2011 accept both A1321 and A1382 batteries?

Regarding your statement that:

  But what about the early 2011 MacBook Pro 15" ? It seem that most vendors commercialize the A1382 battery for it, but some other commercialize the A1321.

I haven't come across this scenario, so can't comment on your source for this.

However, officially the A1382 battery is compatible with all of the 15.4" A1286 models of MacBook Pro from the Early 2011 models up until the Mid-2012 models.

And, officially, the A1321 battery is compatible with all of the 15.4" A1286 models of MacBook Pro from the Mid 2009 models up until the Early 2010 models. They are not officially compatible with the Early 2011 models.

Were you to use an A1321 battery in the Early 2011 models you would be doing so at your own risk.


How to make .command file execute at its location

You can always used the $0 variable to find the directory the command is in and go there first.

#!/bin/bash

# Change directory to be where the command is.
cd "$(cd "$(dirname "$0")" > /dev/null && pwd)"

# Print the working directory for example.
pwd


Trim filenames in automator w. shell or applescript

The reason your shell script isn't doing what you want is because Automator passes the full path of the files as arguments.

If the full path to one of the files is /Users/foo/Temp/file1.txt, then your script attempts to rename it to ers/foo/Temp/file1.txt, which isn't what you want.

Try this instead:

for f in "$@"; do
  FILENAME=$(basename "$f")
  DIRNAME=$(dirname "$f")
  mv "$f" "${DIRNAME}/${FILENAME:3}"
done

Better still (handles relative filenames correctly):

for f in "$@"; do
  FILENAME=$(basename "$f")
  DIRNAME=$(dirname "$f")
  if [ -z "$DIRNAME" ]; then
    DIRNAME="."
  fi
  mv "$f" "${DIRNAME}/${FILENAME:3}"
done


Dump dom of url from command line with safari?

I’m fairly confident Safari isn’t amenable to scraping, so use Chrome or Firefox for that on macOS if you need a browser to be scriptable.
However, swift and python are exceptionally good at this by calling code directly via NSURL or equivalent as well as using the NSURLSessiond daemon and working with the OS directly and not even needing Safari.

https://stackoverflow.com/questions/41517065/web-scraping-in-apple-swift-3
How to know what nsurlsessiond is downloading

Of course you have to learn some new language and API/SDK for this to pay off. The pay off can be huge if you have a command line tool that does all the heavy lifting far more efficiently than Chrome or Safari can.


Route all traffic to a particular domain/subdomain without VPN

You'll want to add a static route to addresses you want, specifying the first hop in the chain, which can be an IP address or network device.

Here is a related question that involves establishing the static route at boot time.

Setting a static route every boot with launchd / plist is failing


There are really two problems here:

Can you make a new admin account in single user mode and use the Mac?
Do you need to recover from the failed EFI update or will it work once you address #1.

It's not possible to do anything other than guess which is the real cause. I will try to give steps for either in case you want to work this out and come back and ask a more specific question once you've narrowed down which is the failure here.

In the prior - you can either boot from an external OS and try to fix the account and/or boot situation.

In the latter - booting from an external OS is ideal to attempt the EFI update again without further harming the normal user and OS. It also allows a backup if needed and you did not make one immediately prior to running the EFI updates.

It's rare for an EFI to get stuck when there isn't another hardware or drive corruption issue - but this is one of the reasons why many are in the habit of

always backing up before any update that requires a reboot
rebooting and running a clean backup with nothing running, then rebooting and running the EFI update as the first task of the OS.

Recovering from an EFI update failure often involves a trip to the repair center since EFI is the initial bootstrap mechanism of the hardware to run in the first place.


If Chrome uses the same engine as Safari on iOS - will the adblockers work there too?

Same rendering engine under the hood (webkit), but different wrappers.
Chrome uses UIWebView which does not include Content Blockers API.

Due to performance, content blockers only work on new apple devices (hardware), and not on UIWebView nor WKWebView.


Creating video DVD from MP4 (1,7 GB) takes ages on MacBook 13" 2,16 GHz / 3 GB RAM

I'm not a MacOS user, but this wouldn't be an abnormal amount of time on a Windows PC - it needs to fully recode the video and audio into the correct format.

There's no real way to speed it up, with the exceptions of upgrading the PC or downloading the video in a different format or Standard Definition.


Can I use a Thunderbolt cable to connect an iPad to a MacBook Air as second display?

No, the iPad doesn't have thunderbolt, nor the capacity to function as a screen for another device by any cable.

You could use your iPad as an external display over the network though (remember your Macbook can create a network if you don't have one), there are quite a few apps that do this,


Which part of the iPhone 8 Plus is this?

That looks like the gasket holding the touch chip in place on the original screen assembly, fastened on the metal shield that you transfer from the original assembly to the new one. It is there because the touch chip needs to be in a very specific position to fit down in the phone when closing it. It is however not necessary for operation.
As for the ear speaker and light sensor not working, those are either the result of incorrect placement of the sensor and speaker contact as part of that assembly, when you transfer it from the old to the new screen assembly, or you have damaged the assembly itself, which is very easy to do when you are inexperienced, as it is a delicate part.
The home button part is also delicate and it is somewhat easy to rip its flex cable close to the contact when lifting it off the old screen assembly, which could give the symptoms you describe. Otherwise, try to reseat the contact.


AppleCare does not cover damage.  However, AppleCare+ covers up to two incidents of damage:

  AppleCare+ for iPhone Every iPhone comes with one year of hardware
  repair coverage through its limited warranty and up to 90 days of
  complimentary support. AppleCare+ for iPhone extends your coverage to
  two years from the original purchase date of your iPhone(1) and adds
  up to two incidents of accidental damage coverage, each subject to a
  service fee plus applicable tax ($79 for iPhone SE or iPhone 6 or
  earlier models, $99 for iPhone 6s or iPhone 6s Plus).

So, if you don't have an AppleCare+ agreement, you will have to cover the damages out of pocket.


Having two pointers/mice on the same computer

You can connect multiple mice to share the same pointer.

Multiple pointers is a bit different, research and development is still ongoing in the Linux world that you may wish to peruse for information:

Video example of using multiple pointers:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b2iYNfl-2Es

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multi-Pointer_X

Here is, more of a demonstration site for OSX:

http://www.dualosx.com/dualosx_en.htm


Bootcamp windows installation not allowing Windows 10

it should be possible to install Windows 7 on your Mac using Boot Camp. Apple has a rather lengthy KB article on exactly how you should proceed.


Why does my iPhone shift the screen downwards?

This is a feature called reachability. It's built into iPhones so you can reach stuff with one hand.
You can disable it by going to Settings -> Accessibility -> Touch and toggle  Reachability.
Also, if you want to know how to use it, tap the home button twice (some call this gesture a wiggle) without clicking it or swipe down on the home bar.


How does PopCorn Time iOS installer work?

In Xcode 7 (beta), Apple has released free iOS provisioning profiles for all: https://developer.apple.com/library/prerelease/ios/documentation/DeveloperTools/Conceptual/WhatsNewXcode/Articles/xcode_7_0.html

Which means you can now install arbitrary iOS applications through a computer onto an iOS device without having to purchase a license from Apple, without having it to be approved by Apple, and without needing specific provisioning profiles installed on the device.

I'm guessing they're just using this to their advantage.


Found it. It's not a gesture but an Accessibility feature. Navigate to the screenshot shown below (System Preferences > Accessibility > Mouse & Trackpad > Trackpad Options...) and you can enable dragging from there.

Switch it to three finger drag and your lost functionality will be restored.


It seems to be related to this bug report.

Does the application run if you open it via terminal? e.g

open /Applications/MATLAB_R2013a.app

if so you may just need to clear dock/icon caches:

killall -HUP Dock


Change directory last opened date every time you `cd` in Terminal

Open .bash_profile - or create it if it doesn't exist.

Add the line:

tcd () { touch "$1" && cd "$1"; }

and save the file.

Source your modified .bash_profile with source ~/.bash_profile or close all Terminal windows currently open.

Use tcd folder_name to cd to it and modify the access date.

You can refine this by adding a condition that the argument has to be a folder.


Screenshot area to clipboard (Control + Command + Shift + 4) doesn't work

Things to check...

The receiving app can accept the format, .png by default.
The buffer hasn't been replaced with other content, text etc.
If  Cmd ⌘   Ctrl ⌃   Shift ⇧   3  would work to capture the entire screen to clipboard.
That the key commands are on & set to defaults in System Prefs > Keyboard > Shortcuts > Screen Shots & also that resetting to defaults doesn't generate an orange warning triangle that another shortcut is using the same key command.


How to remotely install software on Mac by scripts?

What you ask is basically the trade of being a Mac administrator and there are three major ways to get this done and one where you let everyone do the work:

Train your end users to install things
Use Apple's legacy tools to manage installs (ARD and AppleScript)
Use ssh and tools like homebrew https://brew.sh and shell scripts to install software and entire applications.
Use a modern MDM - the popular open source choice is Munki and the popular vendor supported choice is JAMFpro (which is the new name for the Casper Suite/JSS for the upcoming version 10 release)

You probably have asked this question since you have ruled out options 1 and 2 - but they are realistic and scalable options for organizations in the 10 to 100 client range. Past 100, you're probably going to want some sort of Apple push / MDM / automation framework and using one that's already in service is better than making your own for almost all cases.

Also, be sure to evaluate your end user "self-service" options. Munki has the managed software installer and I'm using JAMF's name for their end user portal for app installs, scripts and management. Even once you have a push framework set up to script things, letting users fix things themselves is the winning move if you want to scale up your support without hiring help desk staff to do everything for your clients.


iPhone 5s - What is the dot between rear camera and the LED flash?

It's a microphone, useful for video recording using the rear camera and for digitally eliminating background noise when you're on a phone or FaceTime call. Source - Apple support.

Apple doesn't have an explicitly stated opinion on whether or not the rear microphone absolutely can't be covered, but in that support article,

  Remove screen protectors, films, or cases that cover the microphone, iSight mic, or iPhone receiver.

is the third recommended step for people experiencing microphone issues.


FaceTime window jumps to unwanted position at start of call

Similar problem with FT audio. It goes to the upper right too and ends up covering my apps. Easy to move yes, but then it's not on top anymore and I have to dig around for it to end the call.

I poached this AppleScript and tied it to an Alfred Workflow

tell application "System Events" to tell process "FaceTime"
tell application "FaceTime" to activate
tell front window to set position to {950, 696}
end tell

You could make your own trigger with normal script. Not great, but a quick workaround.


iOS: it's not possible to share one photo to WhatsApp

Why there is no way to share a photo to whatsapp or evernote?

There is a way to share a picture to Evernote with an Extension which has to be turned on first. WhatsAppDevs haven't implementet that yet.

  This is only possible if you give the app access to ALL of your photos. You just want to share one.

Privacy is so constructed in iOS you can get Access to Photos or don't. All or nothing. It's much easier for Users and Developers.

  I just want to share one.

The Trick here for WhatsApp is, you can tap long on you Photo and you see a Copy mark. Copy the picture in your clipboard and the past it into your WhatsApp Chat, so you have only shared one Image


Can I receive money as a gift on iTunes from a different country?

Apple Store Gift Cards can only be redeemed in the country of purchase.

To make iTunes purchases, you must use the store for the country you are physically located in. (You might be able to use a different Country store front, however it is a TOS violation you you can eventually have problems with your account);
To make iTunes purchases, you must have an iTunes account for that country store.
To make an account for that country store,
- you must have an iTunes Gift Card specific to that country and and a mailing address in that country.
- Or you must have a credit card issued from a bank in that country and a billing address in that country.

http://store.apple.com/ie/help/gifting

I hope that it helps a litlle.


Windows 7 on 2011 MBP's internal HDD, OS X on FW800 one

There is no reason why you can't do this up to and including Mac OS X 10.6.8 version of Boot Camp.

Do test command line booting control if you care about those things - but currently there is no restriction other than the Boot Camp volume must be on the internal drive. Mac OS X boots fine from other locations.


iPad application failed to install from iTunes on Windows

Firstly, check to make sure that there is not a download in progress that has not been interrupted/paused.

Secondly, the file may be corrupt, my suggestion would be to remove the .ipa file from windows, and allow iTunes to re-download it.

right click the app within iTunes and click "Show in Windows Explorer"
find the .ipa file for your application and delete it.
re-download the app from your Purchased Apps page in iTunes.


Get out of OS upgrade installer on restart?

I wrote a blog post on some options, and you should be able to boot to your Recovery HD and re-install some OS X onto an external drive. You could also try to re-instal the OS on top of the current drive as that's not designed to delete anything important and might just work to painlessly repair things.

http://apple.blogoverflow.com/2015/09/back-up-then-step-up-to-el-capitan/
http://apple.com/osx/recovery

Without knowing how proficient you are with more advanced install options, installing even on to a 16 GB USB flash drive would get you to a place to re-run the correct installer and try again with the upgrade. From the second link:

  If you use the Recovery System stored on your startup drive to reinstall OS X, it installs the most recent version of OS X previously installed on this computer


You can schedule your Mac to wake up at a specific time every day, such as 11:57 p.m. by using the Schedule... function in the Energy Saver panel in System Preferences.


Two different Apple IDs with two different @icloud.com mails

No - if you really have two different AppleID each with different @icloud/@me/@mac addressed - they cannot be merged or swapped one for the other. If you just want to use the @icloud.com to log in to one AppleID that's also known by a different email address - you can do that easily by changing the username on each device.

See Apple ID - Want to make my xxx@icloud.com primary Apple ID?

If you have two AppleID - the best you can to towards merging them might be to make a family plan and share purchases and migrate mail/contact/calendar data off the account you wish to avoid.

See Renaming iCloud mail address for that.


How to solve a catch 22 situation trying to upgrade an old 2009 mac mini to El Capitan with an AppleID created in 2019?

here's how I fixed that situation.

I downloaded Apple Music on my Android phone.
I start the procedure to subscribe to the service with my existing AppleID.
As it happened in my old Mac Mini, Apple Music on Android opened a popup saying my AppleID had not yet been verified.
On Android, however, in contrast with the Mac Mini, the verification link worked.
I had to retype the details of my credit card that I had already provided when I created the AppleID for the first time.
The verification process completed successfully, Apple debited my credit card for the second time, cancelling the payment after a while.
After that, I accessed the Apple Store from the old Mini Mac with the AppleID I had just verified on Android and...
It worked flawlessly. I downloaded OS X El Capitan and completed the upgrade successfully.

I write this procedure in case someone else will get stuck in the same, even highly unlikely, situation.


Yes. Each Mac get's it's own sparse bundle disk image.


Why are Safari and Chrome not throwing warnings after removing the root certificates

Every site I check that I have manually set as untrusted shows a warning. Perhaps things are changing on the servers so rapidly, different people doing the same actions are seeing different results.

Let's set aside the concept of blacklisting in general and certificate revocation like (CRL) or online verification like OCSP and just pick apart the mechanism of SSL certificates in the browser. I will set aside Chrome/Firefox/other browsers and just focus on Safari and the Mac Keychain as that's trouble enough for this post.
The short answer is the site you list doesn't depend on the one certificate that was used in a way that has caused the press to run all the blacklist stories.
It was used to sign certificates that matched anything ending in google.com and they were spotted in use on sites that were certainly not google. This is a technological equivalent to someone constructing tunnels into a bank vault. Not plans to tunnel - but a working actual tunnel around a barrier everyone expected to be solid.

Now onto how to know why Safari didn't flag the site you listed as "bad".
I haven't deleted any certificates from the mac I'm on and just fired up the Keychain Assistant to use the Certificate Assistant (under the Keychain Access menu -> Certification Assistant -> Open...
In the small CA window, select continue, then View and Evaluate, then View and evaluate certificates, then continue.

As you can now see, https://as.digid.nl/ is serving up four certificates in the chain of trust:

cert name - type - SHA1 fingerprint - status
as.digid.nl - SSL - 2D F7 4E 54 00 90 80 08 01 0A 2F 3E 5A EE BE 36 5F EC 82 F3 - invalid due to host name mismatch (harmless error - the tool evaluates that cert for your mac and my mac isn't as.digid.nl)
DigiNotar PKIoverheid CA Overheid en Bedrijven - intermediate - 40 AA 38 73 1B D1 89 F9 CD B5 B9 DC 35 E2 13 6F 38 77 7A F4 - valid
Staat der Nederlanden Overheid CA - intermediate - 29 FC 35 D4 CD 2F 71 7C B7 32 7F 82 2A 56 0C C4 D2 E4 43 7C - valid
Staat der Nederlanden Root CA - root - 10 1D FA 3F D5 0B CB BB 9B B5 60 0C 19 55 A4 1A F4 73 3A 04 - valid

In your question you stated you deleted the root key - if so, your safari is either cacheing the old values or when you looked, that site had a SSL certificate different than the one I saw making this answer. You'll have to reproduce the steps I just took to see which was the case.
In my case,
I only had to mark the Staat der Nederlanden Root CA root certificate as untrusted to get Safari to balk and show this message when you load the site.

Since all the press is specific about only the DigiNotar Root CA as being bad, I am going to undo my change to not trust the Staat der Nederlanden Root CA.
I am going to mark the DigiNotar Root CA as never to be trusted and wait and see what Apple does. If you are interested in this sort of thing, do monitor the Apple Security page.


Mac OSX - Transfer Connect to Server Favorites to new computer?

Last Server

The last server you connected to is stored in ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.finder.plist:

FXConnectToLastURL = "afp://example.com/";

Favourites

Your favourite servers are stored in ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.sidebarlists.plist:

favoriteservers = {
  Controller = "CustomListItems";
  CustomListItems = (
    {  Name = "afp://example.com/";
       URL = "afp://example.com/";
    },
  );
};

Copying this file from your old computer to you new one will transfer your list of favourite servers.
Recent Servers

Your recent servers are stored in ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.recentitems.plist

Hosts = {
  Controller = "CustomListItems";
  CustomListItems = (
    {  Name = "Example";
       URL = "afp://example.com/";
    },
  );


How to tell VLC 2.3.0 to scan a local folder on an iPad

iOS does not expose its filesystem to apps, outside their own sandbox. As far as an app is concerned, the only files on the iPad (or iPhone, or iPod Touch) are its own files, in its own sandbox.

You can upload the files to VLC by either using 'open with' (from Dropbox or from other apps that expose the ability to open files in other apps), or by going to iTunes and copying the videos to the VLC app. This puts the files in VLC's own sandbox.


Why do downloads (storedownloadd) from the Mac App Store consume so much CPU?

Ran into the same issue today when updating XCode: storedownloadd pegs a CPU core for 20 minutes.

I tried breaking into  storedownloadd with a debugger and saw some really long stack traces and a lot of time spent inside Security::CodeSigning.

I suspect that it is recursively verifying the digital signatures of a lot of tiny files one-by-one. I have no idea why it would do that instead of verifying the whole package as it is being downloaded. I also see a lot of string manipulation inside Security_CodeSigning::RequirementLexer::RequirementLexer.

Whatever storedownloadd does, it is too damn slow!


There are a lot of posts about this in regards to Yosemite/El Capitan. I personally have a machine w/ OS 10.11.6 and it constantly dl's at 5-10 Mb/sec. I turned off iCloud, tried every reasonable suggestion. I ended up getting little snitch and just denying the culprit, which is the iCloud drive process of nsurlsessiond "isync-edge.icloud-content.com". Even though I have all processes in the OS disabled, this process is being blocked almost every second (I've had my machine on for an hour with thousands of blocked attempts). Granted, this is my old machine I do not use for my primary workflow, so I can afford to do this. If you can update to Sierra, you may not have theses issues, I don't, and I am using the same apple ID on Sierra as I was on the machine that was eating all my bandwidth until manually blocking.


How to adjust a script that works in the Terminal but fails in Automator?

This is because Automator doesn't use your interactive shell's path. You need to specify the location of ffmpeg.

In Terminal, run:

which ffmpeg

Replace the ‘ffmpeg’ in your Automator shell script with the output of this command.


Terminal and iTerm not working after upgrading to macOS Sierra

Open System Preferences > Users & Groups.
Unlock the padlock at the bottom of the preference pane
Hold down the option key and click your account then click the Advanced Options... menu
Change your shell to /bin/bash
Click the OK button and close the preference pane.
Logout then log back in


Batch command to change each file's creation date to match the information in the file name

open Terminal
type cd (including the trailing space) and drag the folder containing the files to be renamed into the Terminal window (the folder is probably Desktop/PRIMARYVIDEOS, so the command should look like cd /Users/Andrew/Desktop/PRIMARYVIDEOS)
press Enter
type (or copy/paste)

for f in *; do t=$(echo $f | sed -E 's/[-. mov]//g'); echo touch -t $t "$f"; done

press Enter
if (and only if) this results in a list of touch commands which look ok, type (or copy/paste)

for f in *; do t=$(echo $f | sed -E 's/[-. mov]//g'); touch -t $t "$f"; done

press Enter


How can I create 'gch.app' such that "open -a gch page.html" works like "open -a Google\ Chrome page.html"?

The application name is defined by the application itself, there is no easy way to use a different one for open. So in this case using an alias is probably the best option

alias gch='open -a Google\ Chrome'

Alternatively you could define Chrome as the default application for html files and just use open some_file.html.


How do I change the login screen background in macOS Mojave 10.14.2?

You can also refer this post from SilverWolf: How do I change the login screen background in macOS Mojave?

Take a look at the /Library/Caches directory.

You will find the file "com.apple.desktop.admin.png." I have edited my picture so the thumbnail is different. You can do the following:

Back up this file as com.apple.desktop.admin.png.bak.
Copy/Paste or Drag/Drop your own png as the same original name com.apple.desktop.admin.png
Also ensure that the permissions are identical to the original file.
(I believe) a restart is needed. Try it logging out first and checking.

The "Mohave.heic" file is located in the /Library/Desktop Pictures directory. Changing that file will edit the default background for each user but not edit the login background image.


How do I type the Escape key on an iPad keyboard?

Give Ctrl and [ a try that should send the same as Esc (ASCII 27).


Apple iPhone 5 doesn't charge attached to a laptop

This can have 2 reasons
1. You're using an aftermarket cable with too much electrical loss.
2. Your laptop USB port(s) don't deliver enough power.

Both situations sometimes are paired with the iPhone making non stop charge-beeps like you connect and disconnect the charging cable - but I read that this is not the case with you.

I found out that this situation comes up less frequently, once the iPhone battery is above 70 or so percent.


Dell P2715Q Needs "Detect Displays" after MBPR 15" goes to sleep

The fix for this for me was to go into the Others menu of the Dell's menu and disable DCC/CI. It now works perfectly.


Deleted photos from MacBook but storage space not reclaimed

Did you empty Trash (Recycle Bin for Mac) (After moving your files to the external HDD?

If you have Time Machine setup on your primary HDD (where your OS X is setup), setup it up on another HDD (External HDD).


Issue in disabling SIP (rootless) in El Capitan

If all functions listed are showing as being disabled, SIP is actually completely disabled; it’s just confusingly worded.

My friend had the same problem so I did some research online and found out that it is a bug. There is a bug report on this message; it is bug ID 22361698 and is cross-posted to Open Radar here:

https://openradar.appspot.com/radar?id=4932475130216448

In the above link it says to:

Boot to Recovery HD
Open Terminal
Run the following command:
/usr/bin/csrutil disable

You should then receive the following output:

System Integrity Protection status: disabled.


Filezilla Explicit FTP over TLS not working with Airport Extreme

Looks like Airport Extreme acts as an ftp proxy, see https://discussions.apple.com/thread/2047569
And to make use of this proxy for FTPS connections it has either to do SSL man-in-the-middle (which causes certificate check to fail) or to reject the SSL upgrade (e.g. AUTH TLS command). Another way would be to do only the login with TLS and switch then back to plain text (CCC command), then the proxy could maybe listen to PORT commands.

Further discussions see https://discussions.apple.com/message/21689470


Import user name and password automatically with AppleScript or Unix Shell

I have installed Egnyte Drive to test your script.

I have found out that you don't need to activate the application at all. Instead "SecurityAgent" is the only process that needs to be addressed:

tell application "System Events" to tell process "SecurityAgent"
    set value of text field 1 of window 1 to "user"
    if exists (text field 2 of window 1) then
        set value of text field 2 of window 1 to "password"
    end if
    click button "OK" of window 1
end tell

Let me know if this works for you as well. I tested it with macOS Sierra 10.12.2 beta.


Can I set a slideshow background on iOS?

Short answer, no. iOS built-in feature set doesn't support a background slideshow.

App Store apps can't automatically change the wallpaper on a device, so you won't find a third-party app to do this for you.


Time capsule wired backup transfer slow with fast "bursts"

Time Machine runs as a low priority process by default, and this will cause it to be throttled whenever a higher priority process runs (and possibly to optimize energy usage on battery), hence the performance bursts.

You can disable throttling for Time Machine with:

sudo sysctl debug.lowpri_throttle_enabled=0

Keep in mind this might increase power usage on battery.

This setting will be lost on reboot. To make it permanent, create a launch daemon:

sudo nano /Library/LaunchDaemons/nothrottle.plist

Enter this text in the file:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN" "http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd">
<plist version="1.0">
<dict>
<key>Label</key>
<string>nothrottle</string>
<key>ProgramArguments</key>
<array>
<string>/usr/sbin/sysctl</string>
<string>debug.lowpri_throttle_enabled=0</string>
</array>
<key>RunAtLoad</key>
<true/>
</dict>
</plist>

Save it and exit nano (Press ctrl+X, then Y when asked to save changes)

Then enable the launch daemon:

sudo chown root /Library/LaunchDaemons/nothrottle.plist

sudo launchctl load /Library/LaunchDaemons/nothrottle.plist

Backups should now be performed at maximum performance.

In case you want to re-enable throttling, run:

sudo sysctl debug.lowpri_throttle_enabled=1

If you had enabled the launch daemon, run:

sudo launchctl unload /Library/LaunchDaemons/nothrottle.plist

Source


SSD firmware upgrade requires iso on a pendrive: how to make that bootable?

First find USB key disk number from diskutil list.  This method will destroy everything on the disk you copy to so take care. Mine was /dev/disk3 and looked like this:

/dev/disk3 (external, physical):
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      GUID_partition_scheme                        *32.0 GB    disk3
   1:                        EFI EFI                     209.7 MB   disk3s1
   2:       Microsoft Basic Data FAT32                   31.8 GB    disk3s2

Make sure no volumes are mounted, then use dd to copy the unmounted ISO file to your device (do not append a partition number, so do not use something like /dev/disk3s2).

This worked for me with the NVMe SSD-970 EVO Firmware ISO 2B2QEXE7 from here.

[hali@macOS] ~ $sudo dd bs=4m if=/Users/hali/Downloads/Samsung_SSD_970_EVO_2B2QEXE7.iso of=/dev/disk3
Password:
4+1 records in
4+1 records out
17825792 bytes transferred in 8.546376 secs (2085772 bytes/sec)
[hali@macOS] ~ $sync
[hali@macOS] ~ $

diskutil list now looks like this:

/dev/disk3 (external, physical):
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:                            Samsung                *32.0 GB    disk3

and in Disk Utility like this:

Reboot holding ⌥ and pick the yellow boot option on USB key called "Windows".  It should load the firmware utility fine (it did for me on 2015 MBP).

Afterwards, as mentioned in Arch Wiki the ISO signature needs deleting.

  Warning: This will irrevocably destroy all data on /dev/sdx. To restore the USB drive as an empty, usable storage device after using the Arch ISO image, the ISO 9660 filesystem signature needs to be removed by running wipefs --all /dev/sdx as root, before repartitioning and reformatting the USB drive.

As wipefs doesn't exist in macOS, this can be achieved by using gdisk to write a new gpt partition table.  Simply reformatting in Disk Utility didn't work to recover use of the USB resulting in lots of "Operation not permitted" errors.


Automator - Conversion from image files to Files/Folders failed

Try to ignore input for Get Specified Finder Items action.

To do so, select Options, and check Ignore this action's input:


Default as "no alert" when create event from email

In your calendar application, under Calendar -> Preferences -> Alerts you should be able to set the default alerts for Events. Changing this should apply to events created from within mail too.


Finding a drive adapter to re-use the old hard drive from a Macbook Pro early 2015 13"

It is quite possible that there may not be an adaptor. I don't believe Apple used these for very long, so...
I would think returning it and getting one of the OWC drive adapters for that specific drive would do the trick. Like this
eshop.macsales.com/item/OWC/MAU3ENPRPCI
And to destroy an old SSD? Take a hammer to the individual chips on the drive's circuit board, that should do it. Try and recover data from plastic and silicon shards...


How can I Transfer Dashboard Information from one computer to another?

All of the preferences/info from Apple supplied Dashboard widgets resides in ~/Library/Preferences. Do a search for anything beginning with widget-com.apple.widget - those are all your widgets.

For stickies specifically, copy widget-com.apple.widget.stickies.plist to the ~/Library/Preferences folder in your new machine, and you'll be all set.


It may be because scrotwm has been renamed to spectrwm and I'm guessing the old CVS repository has been removed.

As per the above link, you can clone the new git repository using either of the following:

    $ git clone git://opensource.conformal.com/spectrwm.git
    $ git clone https://opensource.conformal.com/git/spectrwm.git


Can I safely delete .download files to reclaim space?

The fact that it still has the .download extension means it was never completely downloaded, so yes, it's safe to delete.


Has anyone successfully got 2560 x 1600 resolution with the new macbook pros (late 2016) *over dual link dvi*?

After a lot of trial and error (I've tried pretty much every adapter on the market) I have my MacbookPro (15inch) late 2016 working with my Dell 3007WFP monitor. Running at the full 2560x1600 resolution.

Adapters used:

Official Apple Dual DVI adapter.
USB 3.1 Type C to Mini DisplayPort/Mini DP (Female) Adapter Cable Support 4K UHD
External powered USB hub.

Setup

The USB of the dual dvi adapter goes into the USB hub.
USB-C plugs into the MacbookPro, the female mini display port plugs  into the dual dvi adapter.


Time Machine fails backup to a time capsule's attached hard disk

Time Machine tries to track a UID for the volume and not a name, but it could be confused.

Have you tried setting the backup destination to none and rebooting with no drives connected and no network connection.

At that point /Volumes should be clean and you would be safe to delete any non-local drives at that point. My guess is it's perhaps a second route to the network - do you have a wired connection and WiFi to the AirPort/Time Capsule?

diskutil list will also get you more information about drives than mount in case you want to post more details and can't get Time Machine happy with these steps.


I tried everything I could think of, but I eventually completely reset the phone and did not restore my old configuration.  I started from new with my iPhone and now it is working fine.


How do I find out what apps are in iTunes and not on my iPhone, and vice versa?

For apps that are in your library [associated to an account] but not on your phone, go to iOS App Store > Updates > Purchased, then tap the "Not on this Phone" tab.

For app that are on your phone, but not in your library. Connect your phone to you computer, load iTunes, select the phone from the connected devices list and go to the apps section. Each app that is installed on your phone will be missing the Install/update button next to it.


How to determine whether the thermal paste needs re-application?

Notwithstanding what Buscar says -

If you suspect the paste, change it.
For the sake of a fiver you'd then be certain.

I actually change the paste on all the graphics cards in the building every year, as part of a full strip & clean; though I only do the CPU coolers if I don't trust the existing application.
On non-Macs, cheap PCs, often the original paste is cheap & inefficient & simply changing it for good stuff can make a world of difference.


Where are texts from an email address stored?

All messages sent via the iOS Messages app are stored within the app. However, messages sent to and from email addresses are stored in their own message thread. I'll try and explain this with an example below:

EXAMPLE

Let's say you have a contact whose name is Jane Doe. You have a mobile number and an email address for her. Usually you send messages to her mobile number and you have a long history of messages going back five years, all of which you can view via the Messages app. However, one day you accidentally send her a message to her email address instead. This message is not stored with all the other messages, it is stored under a second thread for Jane Doe, containing only the history of messages sent to or received from Jane's email address.

Using the example above, since both the email address and mobile number are stored in Jane Doe's contact details, you can go to the Messages app and in the search field at the very top, type in "Jane Doe". This will filter your message threads and you should see both of them listed separately. From these you can see all messages sent and received.

If, on the other hand, you had sent a message directly to an email address that isn't stored in your contacts, then the message thread is stored under the email address rather than a person's name. So, if Jane Doe's email address is jane.doe@email.com and you didn't have this in her contact details, then the message thread would be listed under jane.doe@email.com rather than Jane Doe.


Apple covers this in their FAQ: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204146

Refer to the about file formats section:

  Songs encoded in ALAC, WAV, or AIFF formats will be transcoded to a separate temporary AAC 256 Kbps file locally, before they're uploaded to iCloud. The original files won't be changed.
  Songs encoded as MP3 or AAC that have been matched to the iTunes Store will be made available for download as 256 kbps as AAC from iCloud.
  Matched songs in your local library won't automatically be transcoded to 256 kbps AAC. To get a higher quality transcoding, download the matched songs from iCloud.

So - your local songs won't change unless you delete them. The cloud will have at max, 256 AAC versions of the matched or uploaded songs. If you were to download the songs (after deleting your copy), you'd lose out in terms of bitrate for those songs greater than 256 (and win on saving storage space). Similarly, any songs less than 256 would win in terms of quality if matched and lose in terms of space needed.

Apple limits you to 25,000 songs that were not purchased from the store. Since they only upload a max of 256 AAC - that limits their storage commitment but there's no set size restriction other than max of 200 MB per track or 2 hours per track.


Changing my DNS settings to Google's DNS servers 8.8.8.8 and 8.8.4.4 seems to help a little but might not be the comprehensive solution I was looking for.

Procedure

Bottom toolbar > System Preferences > Network > Advanced... > DNS > + > 8.8.8.8 > + > 8.8.4.4

Or, via command line:

networksetup -setdnsservers Wi-Fi 8.8.8.8 8.8.4.4

The procedure is detailed here.


No Sites Folder in Mountain Lion after Upgrade

Have you tried just recreating the folder and naming it the same thing? I don't believe the folder is created when you install developer tools. It should be there due to Safari.


Can Numbers use 8 hour long days when converting from days to hours?

Changing the formula to =D1/24*8 does the trick.


Get rid of trending searches in Apple Music (iOS)

Apple doesn't let you change things like that.

It's common now to engage users when they're searching for something (think Twitter, Instagram, Facebook) and it's really not that invasive compared to the other platforms.

While they aren't competing for ad dollars, more engagement means you're more likely to resubscribe as you get deeper into the product.


Mouse tracking speed stuck on slowest setting since 10.12.4 update

I ran into this problem this morning. After trying several things which themselves did not work I finally found the solution:

Uninstall SmoothMouse

The app is no longer supported by the developers and they recommend removing it.

  To Uninstall SmoothMouse

  System menu (the Apple logo) -> System Preferences
  Find SmoothMouse in the bottom section and open it
  Open the About tab in the SmoothMouse settings and click Uninstall.

You might need to restart afterwards but that fixed it for me.


How to prevent iCloud from downloading (storing) certain files in an Xcode project in iCloud?

Such an option to force iCloud to keep some files would be nice. In the meantime, you can check OneDrive. It fits this purpose. You can decide if some files/ folders have to be kept offline.

A way is to use aliases. Then again, you'd have to check if Xcode can work with that.

Whichever files/ folders are required offline, move them to a non-iCloud-synced place.
Make their aliases and keep them in place of the original files/folders.
If you need to sync those files somewhere else too, make another copy in iCloud.

If aliases don't work, check out symlinks.


Read geotagging data from iphone photos exif data

If you are looking for an EXIF viewer on your Mac (which may show the location on a map or the actual GPS coordinates), I would suggest Image Exif Editor. If you look at the screenshots for this app, it clearly shows the GPS coordinates. If you are looking for something similar for your iPhone or iPad, I would recommend doing a search in the App Store using the search criteria "EXIF."


What's the services/running processes manager in Mac OS X?

For most of the "services" (called Daemons or Agents) you can check:

In terminal: sudo launchctl list

For example only MySQL you can filter the output of the command above, like sudo launchctl list | grep -i mysql. Note -i is to make the filter case insensitive.

These can be controlled with a GUI named Lingon.

There are some other "services", that will install themselves in:

/Library/StartupItems

For those, there is a command like
ps -ef |grep /Library/StartupItems to view whether it is loaded and running. But there isn't a generic mechanism to stop, start or restart.

In which category your MySQL installation falls is impossible to say, as your question is lacking details on what exactly you have installed, what its source is, how it was installed, etc..


Are the downloads for OS X updates different depending on the language?

To the best of my knowledge, the updates are not language-dependant. Certainly the documentation for the downloads support that:

  Supported Languages
  Deutsch, English, Français, 日本語, Español, Italiano, Nederlands, Dansk, Norsk Bokmål, Polski, Português, Português Brasileiro, Pусский, Suomi, Svensk, 简体中文, 繁體中文, 한국어, Albanian, Arabic, British English, Bulgarian, Croatian, Czech, Estonian, Greek, Hebrew, Hungarian, Icelandic, Indonesian, Latvian, Lithuanian, Macedonia, Malay Malaysia, Montenegro, Romanian, Slovak, Slovenian, Thai, Turkish, Ukrainian, Vietnamese

(from the 10.7.3 combo page).


What is the correct way to install python on OS X?

OS X Mavericks actually ships with Python in /usr/bin/python:

|ruby-2.1.1| mymachine in ~
○ → /usr/bin/python --version
Python 2.7.5

You don't need to install Python at all to get started developing with Python on OS X. That version is sufficiently high enough to be useful for Python 2.x development work and not totally suck (i.e. it's not Python 2.4).

My personal preference to is to use Homebrew for installing command line tools. You get a nice, neat, compartmentalized installation that's fairly straightforward to wipe away if it bothers you. So, I would use Homebrew to install a newer version of Python if I wanted it.

To install Python with Homebrew first install Homebrew:

ruby -e "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Homebrew/install/master/install)"

And then install Python 2.7.8 with:

brew install python

As you can see, this is the 2.7.8 version of Python:

|ruby-2.1.1| mymachine in ~
○ → brew info python
python: stable 2.7.8 (bottled), HEAD
http://www.python.org
/usr/local/Cellar/python/2.7.6_1 (4976 files, 81M) *
  Poured from bottle
From: https://github.com/Homebrew/homebrew/blob/master/Library/Formula/python.rb

If you'd also like Python 3.4.1 you can use:

brew install python3

Which you can see gives you:

|ruby-2.1.1| mymachine in ~
○ → brew info python3
python3: stable 3.4.1 (bottled), HEAD
https://www.python.org/
Not installed
From: https://github.com/Homebrew/homebrew/blob/master/Library/Formula/python3.rb

Homebrew will install any dependencies you need to run Python in either case.


Using search bar in safari to search a specific site

You can use the same syntax in Safari's address bar as you would directly in Google etc
site:
Example
iTunes playlist site: apple.stackexchange.com
Result


I do not think it is a power problem.

Check in GarageBand if your device is showing up.

If not:
I would start with getting the latest software for your MIDI device


How much RAM is recommended to be assigned to a virtual machine in VirtualBox?

My best practice is to think about how to get the best use of your RAM and not make configuration decisions that lock down memory and instead monitor for problems on each OS and then make small adjustments.

On the Mac - open Activity monitor and watch the memory pressure. I would try to keep things in Green. If you are in the orange, that's ok, but you might want to try changing the reservations (less RAM to ubuntu guest or quit apps on either OS that take most active memory). In the red, you will be swapping and slowing down the response times.

So - you have 16 GB of RAM and one OS X running the hardware with Ubuntu running in Virtual Box. Virtual box makes a file or files to act as the storage for Ubuntu but OS X is handling all the actual reads/writes.

Second - both Ubuntu and OS X use virtual memory so that you could allocate 1 GB of Ram to the guest OS and it will use a swap file to make more memory as needed.

To initially monitor things, I would open terminal on both the host and guest and run something like vm_stat 5 - pay attention initially to only two numbers - the free and the swap out. Also pay attention to the memory pressure on OS X.

Over time, you can shift to logging things more slowly with vm_stat 60 / vmstat 60 or even time stamp the usage.

Since free memory is a waste on both OS X and Ubuntu - you will want to allocate all the RAM to OS X so it can cache all the file input and output for both OS X and virtual box. Allocating too much memory on ubuntu will make the OS X starved for RAM to cache the guest OS. Add memory to the guest OS when the applications you run there start to swap out to disk.

Here are some links to get started on tuning and learning:

slow speed of Ubuntu 12.04 in VirtualBox
Isn't Inactive memory a waste of resources?
What scale or measure does Mavericks' and Yosemite's "memory pressure" adhere to?


I had this issue recently, and I realized I had incorrectly reset the NVRAM. I simply went through the reset again, and all was well. It's fairly easy to do. You just need 6 fingers on each hand.. Here's the Apple site explaining how to perform the reset. Here are the salient points (but I urge you to read the article).

On Mac notebooks with non-removable battery:

Mac notebook computers that have a battery you should not remove include: MacBook Pro (Early 2009) and later, all models of MacBook Air, MacBook (Late 2009), and MacBook (Retina, 12-inch, Early 2015).

To reset the SMC:

Shut down the computer.

Plug in the MagSafe or USB-C power adapter to a power source and to your computer.

On the built-in keyboard, press the (left side) Shift-Control-Option keys and the power button at the same time. (note, not the Command key!).

Release all the keys and the power button at the same time.

Press the power button to turn on the computer.

On MagSafe power adapters, the LED might change states or temporarily turn off when you reset the SMC.

On Mac notebooks with removable battery

Older MacBook and MacBook Pro computers have removable batteries. Learn about removing the battery on MacBook and MacBook Pro.

To reset the SMC:

Shut down the computer.

Disconnect the MagSafe power adapter from the computer if it's connected.

Remove the battery.

Press and hold the power button for five seconds.

Release the power button.

Reconnect the battery and MagSafe power adapter.

Press the power button to turn on the computer.

Hope this helps.

It's worth a try before heading the dealership..


Can I backup iTunes 9 before upgrading to iTunes 10?

Don't see why not.  If you're paranoid, you may also want to backup the iTunes prefs (~/Library/com.apple.itunes*), and/or any config files you find in your iTunes music folder (~/Music/iTunes/ in my case).


Any tool to tell me the exact color value at a point on a png image?

Using ImageMagick:

$ convert image.png -crop '1x1+100+200' txt:-

Outputs, e.g.

# ImageMagick pixel enumeration: 1,1,255,rgb
0,0: (236,236,236)  #ECECEC  rgb(236,236,236)

Or, if the file is PNG-24 file, it outputs e.g.

# ImageMagick pixel enumeration: 1,1,255,rgba
0,0: (  0,  0,  0,243)  #000000F3  rgba(0,0,0,0.952941)

At -crop option I've first defined the area to be cropped, which in this case is 1x1 pixels. Then I've defined the location of the crop relative to the North West corner, i.e. upper left.†

Lastly I've converted the output to textual with txt:-. ImageMagick then outputs all the colors of the image to STDOUT (in this case there is only one color, as the image size is 1 pixel), meaning you could process it with normal shell techniques. So e.g. by piping the output to tail -n 1 you would get only the pixel info line.

If you need the pixel's color in any other colorspace, you should look at the aptly named -colorspace option.

†) Actually the location is relative to the specified -gravity value, but it defaults to "NorthWest".


In applescript how do i get two different things to repeat at the same time

You could take advantage of the fact that 44 is evenly divisible by 5.5 and use an inner and outer loop:

repeat
    keystroke "i"
    repeat 8 times
        keystroke "o"
        delay 5.5
    end repeat
end repeat

Note that for the keystroke command to work, you need to be in a tell block for the System Events application.


What open source video editing software packages are available for the Mac?

I found two:
Jahshaka
It is an open source free, video editing software, effects, and compositing suite.

When I used it several months back, it was very unintuitive and I couldn't figure out how to use it. However, there are tutorials for Jahshaka now.
Kdenlive
Kdenlive is an open source, multi track video editor released under the GNU Public Licence.

(The screenshot is of Kdenlive running on Windows, but it is available for the Mac through Macports)


Can't rate apps/music/etc in iTunes or App Store

Apple blocked your account. You can still download apps but cannot post reviews or rate them


Can I use iTunes Wi-Fi Sync to sync podcast positions?

If you plug your device into power, a sync should occur no matter what. Between that and manually triggering a sync (whether from the device or iTunes), I've had no problems with podcast location syncing.


Constant Bluetooth Connection Request Prompts Between Two Macs

Continuity and iCloud are the obvious paring agents, so I would disable handoff first on both devices and see if that quells things.

If so, you might need to engage Apple Support to see if there’s a precise way to rejigger that, but for most people you would need to sign out of iCloud on one or both Macs to then sign in again and see if the pairing identity crypto can heal itself.


My AppleTV is in standby and still connects to Apple servers. Why and how to switch off?

Why? It's checking for the above-mentioned data.
Standby does not mean 'off' on any device these days. Your smart TV & cable TV box will be doing just the same sort of thing - Updating TV schedules, checking for messages from various services, checking for OS updates, etc etc.
Note: the entirety of 17.x.x.x belongs to Apple. You can really just allow the entire subnet.


Moving desktop folder back to where it should be!

Having a bit of trouble following your description of the situation. It'd be helpful if you used actual path names instead of "The one in my user folder" type descriptions.

You have a backup right? Ok then...

The sidebar link is just a shortcut, so it doesn't really mean anything by itself.  Fix that last. Just delete it and then re-add it.

Run a disk check and permission repair if you haven't already.

If ~/Desktop doesn't exist and you're sure it was some how renamed .tsclient, use terminal to move/rename it back. I think its more likely that your ftp client uses that as a temp location and that the files there are only partially downloaded though.

If ~/Desktop does exist then just move the folder contents back where they belong not the folder itself. Then delete and re-add to the sidebar


Create globally available volume control for iTunes

The best resource for anything like this is Doug's AppleScripts, in this case possibly the collection by Wally - Wally's Scripts v1.0

There is also a simple tutorial on how to make your own - Setting iTunes EQ and Volume with AppleScript

The only extra thing you need is to make these using Automator, as a Service, then use System Prefs > Shortcuts > Services to assign them global hotkeys [making sure to avoid other used key commands]


Google Chrome closing tabs instead of quiting application

That is the way most apps behave on Mac OS X.

The red x button in the corner of the screen closes the window, while choosing Quit from the menu or clicking Command+Q will close the app.

There is no way to "fix this" because that is the way the app is meant to behave.


bluetoothd 100%cpu cant turn off bluetooth

Do you have Android File Transfer installed by any chance? I had a very similar problem about a year ago with my Macbook Pro 2015 after upgrading to High Sierra. Even when it isn't visibly running there is still a background agent running that interferes with bluetooth, try removing it and killing any related processes in activity monitor to see if that solves the issue.
Hopefully removing Android File Transfer will fix the issue for you, but it only worked for me after I reinstalled the version of macOS my mac came with through internet recovery and then upgrading up to High Sierra again. Reinstalling High Sierra alone never fixed the problem. This is only speculation but my best explanation as to why this fixed the issue is that some firmware upgrade that was supposed to happen between OS upgrades failed, and in upgrading from the older macOS to newer macOS provided the option for that upgrade to happen properly.


How do I remote backup while waking up my computer from sleep?

You could use cron, or use the energy saver > schedules to wake your power G5 up.

This post might help you as well superuser.com this other post might also help you, ont the apple website.


Want to post an iphone 4 video on youtube, but it needs to be rotated

Quicktime allows you some basic editing options such as Edit > Rotate
iMovie allows more options such as cropping, rotate, trim, etc.

When you view your video in Quicktime is it in landscape format? If not, it's possible the phone was vertical (portrait) when the recording started. The camera should oriented either landscape or portrait before pressing record.


Why Mac Terminal remembers two consecutive commands when they are same?

You need to add the HISTCONTROL environment variable to your .bash_profile.  In your .bash_profile add the following line:

export HISTCONTROL=ignoreboth:erasedups

Close and restart your bash session and the dupes should be gone.  Alternatively, you could just execute that same line and it will take effect for that session (use it to test it out).

From the manual page for bash(in Terminal):

  HISTCONTROL
  A colon-separated list of values controlling how commands are saved on the history list. If the list of values includes ignorespace, lines which begin with a space character are not saved in the history list. A value of ignoredups causes lines matching the previous history entry to not be saved. A value of ignoreboth is shorthand for ignorespace and ignoredups. A value of erasedups causes all previous lines matching the current line to be removed from the history list before that line is saved. Any value not in the above list is ignored. If HISTCONTROL is unset, or does not include a valid value, all lines read by the shell parser are saved on the history list, subject to the value of HISTIGNORE. The second and subsequent lines of a multi-line compound command are not tested, and are added to the history regardless of the value of HISTCONTROL.


How to move mouse with 2 fingers on trackpad?

There are a couple of apps that I know of that does this kind of thing:

BetterTouchTool
MagicPrefs

Screenshots from BTT (left) and MP (right)

Disclaimer:  These are not tools I use personally (no need) so I cannot vouch for them. However, BTT has a trial and MP is free.  So, your risk is minimal if you want to test either of these out.


I found 15GB large file in ~/Library/Safari called ContentBlockerStatistics.db-wal. What is that and what to do with it?

TL;DR

~/Library/Safari/ContentBlockerStatistics.db-wal is the log file for ~/Library/Safari/ContentBlockerStatistics.db
It can't be read directly and gets emptied once you quit Safari.
~/Library/Safari/ContentBlockerStatistics.db can be read with sq3lite
If ~/Library/Safari/ContentBlockerStatistics.db grows too big it can safely be removed while Safari is not running

Using the standard tools of macOS
$ file ContentBlockerStatistics.db*
ContentBlockerStatistics.db:     SQLite 3.x database, user version 1, last written using SQLite version 3032003
ContentBlockerStatistics.db-shm: data
ContentBlockerStatistics.db-wal: SQLite Write-Ahead Log, version 3007000

So ContentBlockerStatistics.db is a database and the -wal file is the write-ahead log where all DB changes are written to while Safari is running. You can't browse the write-ahead log and the DB is locked while Safari is running. If you close Safari the write-ahead log content gets emptied.
$ file ContentBlockerStatistics.db*
ContentBlockerStatistics.db:     SQLite 3.x database, user version 1, last written using SQLite version 3032003
ContentBlockerStatistics.db-shm: data
ContentBlockerStatistics.db-wal: empty

To see what's inside ContentBlockerStatistics.db use sqlite3 (or any third-party MySql browser).
$ sqlite3 ContentBlockerStatistics.db
SQLite version 3.32.3 2020-06-18 14:16:19
Enter ".help" for usage hints.
sqlite> .schema
CREATE TABLE FirstPartyDomains (firstPartyDomainID INTEGER PRIMARY KEY AUTOINCREMENT,domain TEXT NOT NULL UNIQUE ON CONFLICT FAIL);
CREATE TABLE sqlite_sequence(name,seq);
CREATE TABLE ThirdPartyDomains (thirdPartyDomainID INTEGER PRIMARY KEY AUTOINCREMENT,domain TEXT NOT NULL UNIQUE ON CONFLICT FAIL);
CREATE TABLE BlockedResources (firstPartyDomainID INTEGER NOT NULL,thirdPartyDomainID INTEGER NOT NULL,lastSeen REAL NOT NULL,FOREIGN KEY (firstPartyDomainID) REFERENCES FirstPartyDomains(firstPartyDomainID) ON DELETE CASCADE,FOREIGN KEY (thirdPartyDomainID) REFERENCES ThirdPartyDomains(thirdPartyDomainID) ON DELETE CASCADE,PRIMARY KEY (firstPartyDomainID, thirdPartyDomainID));

FirstPartyDomains seems to contain the domains you visited
ThirdPartyDomains seems to contain any domains referenced from the first party domains


This article has a nice list showing the voice shortcuts of Apple Maps with Siri: http://www.imore.com/how-use-siri-get-directions-maps-iphone-and-ipad


After upgrading to High Sierra, Boot Camp partition is gone from Startup Manager

I do not yet have enough information to diagnose your problem. However, I can offer an solution to one possible scenario that fits what you have posted.

I assume you started with a previous version of Windows, say Windows 7. At some point you upgraded to Windows 10. If this is true, the you would have been using the legacy BIOS boot method, which requires a hybrid GPT/MBR partitioning scheme.

It is possible the macOS upgrade converted a Hybrid partition scheme back to a pure GPT scheme. In this case, you problem is a duplicate of How to convert a drive from the GPT format to the hybrid GPT/MBR format when using High Sierra (macOS 10.13.2).

Before implementing any solution, I would start by determining whether your Mac is trying to boot Windows using the legacy BIOS or the newer EFI boot method.

This can be done by executing the following steps.

Open "Startup Disk" under "System Preferences".
Unlock if necessary.
Select the icon labeled Windows. Do not restart the computer.
Quit "System Preferences"
Open a Terminal application window.
Enter the command given below.

bless  --info  --getBoot  --verbose  2>&1  |  grep  -i  legacy

If you are using a legacy BIOS boot method, then the output should appear similar to what is shown below.

Legacy mode suppported
Boot option is a legacy device
Searching for legacy type 'HD'
Legacy mode suppported
Legacy mode suppported
Matching legacy device 'disk0s4'
Legacy boot device detected

If you are using the newer EFI boot method, then the command will produce no output.
Repeat steps 1 through 4, except select icon with label indicating the volume you have currently booted from.

If you post the output from the the command shown in step 6, I can update my answer with a better explanation on how to proceed.

Also, the output, from the command given below, can help diagnose your problem.

diskutil  list


How to have full directory path always shown in mac terminal?

As I just removed oh my zsh I had to change terminal settings a little:

Terminal -> Preferences -> Startup tab, and change "Shell Opens With:" from "Default login shell" to Command and value /bin/bash.

Now string export PS1='\u@\H:\w$' works correct.


Within the UI (user interface) itself you can only view the history of the past 100 calls, irrespective of whether those calls were all made within the past day or past month etc. However, this is an inconvenient way to view your call history if it's something you want to analyse, especially if it's on a regular basis.

For something a lot more convenient, such as viewing your call history in a spreadsheet or text file, you can use 3rd party software such as iExplorer.

With iExplorer you can access, view and export this data, either directly from your iPhone or from an iTunes backup of your iPhone. This is important because:

the option of access this data from an iTunes backup means you can go over the call history of past iPhones you've owned (i.e. if you have Time Machine backups or you manually keep old iPhone backups)
being able to view your call history in a text or csv file is so much easier to analyse

If you're interested, you can read How to Export Your iPhone Call History.

NOTES:

I am not affiliated in any way with the iExplorer software.
Not all functions are available without a purchase, however you can view your call history without purchasing it (but you won't be able to export the data)


Got Stuck When Installing Octave in High Sierra

The installation appears to be waiting on installing gcc. Take the following measures one by one.

If the installation is still stuck at make, cancel it by pressing Control + c.
Enter brew cleanup --prune=0 to clear the local cache.
Enter brew update followed by brew upgrade to update the local cache of package repository.
Run brew config and check the output corresponding to CLT: key. It should shaw the version of installed Command Line Tools. If it says NA, install Command Line Tools by executing xcode-select --install.
Once Command Line Tools are done installing, confirm by observing the output of brew config.
Reattempt installation of Octave by running brew install octave.


If you don't want to use a third party tool, you will face a similar problem as the OP in this question (DefaultKeyBinding.dict: Syntax error near unexpected token) that only applications which use the Cocoa text system will support this.

Additionally it appears that the shift ⇧ key can't be properly used as modifier key if shift ⇧+some key doesn't have another representation than an unmodified some key - and shift ⇧+space doesn't have one.

You may either create a DefaultKeyBinding.dict or install Karabiner and configure a custom keycode.

DefaultKeyBinding.dict (only applications which use the Cocoa text system will support this)

Open Terminal and enter:

mkdir ~/Library/KeyBindings
touch ~/Library/KeyBindings/DefaultKeyBinding.dict

Use nano ~/Library/KeyBindings/DefaultKeyBinding.dict to add (using another shortcut like cmd ⌘ctrl ^space here):

{
    "@^ " = ("insertText:", "_");
}

to output an underscore.

Karabiner (all apps should support this)

Download, install and open Karabiner
Open in the menulet Karabiner -> Preferences
Open the tab Misc & Uninstall
Hit the button Open private.xml
Open the file private.xml with an appropriate editor
Enter the customized keycode

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<root>
    <item>
        <name>Shift Space to Underscore</name>
        <appendix>(Change Shift-space to _)</appendix>
        <identifier>remap.shiftspace2underscore</identifier>
        <autogen>__KeyToKey__ KeyCode::SPACE, MODIFIERFLAG_EITHER_LEFT_OR_RIGHT_SHIFT, KeyCode::MINUS, MODIFIERFLAG_EITHER_LEFT_OR_RIGHT_SHIFT,</autogen>
    </item>
</root>

Save the file
Open in the menulet Karabiner -> Preferences the tab Change Key
Hit the ReloadXML button
Enable the remapping. It should be listed at the beginning.


Mac equivalent to iOS Colour Filters (Tritanopia)

I've used the xSCope app to do this using their loupe tool (so it's not for full screen use) for several years and it's a workhorse of other design and measurement goodness. You might check out f.lux as well but that seems to be more bio-perception for decreasing blue hues on a circadian cycle that tracks sunrise and sunset.

http://xscopeapp.com
https://justgetflux.com

I don't think this full screen feature is embedded in macOS High Sierra (yet) and it's not explicitly enabled on older Mac OS versions in as usable a format as iOS 11 does. Perhaps later in the year or next year this would come natively.

In the mean time, you could use a third party app or try setting a custom color calibration / display profile for some light correction. I don't think either of the above is as powerful as iOS accessibility, though.


Determine com.apple.Finder AppleShowAllFiles status using command line?

Thank you for comment from @Yoric

I found the answer from stackoverflow @Carter Allen

#!/bin/bash
#toggle AppleShowAllFiles

current_value=$(defaults read com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles)
if [ "$current_value" = TRUE ]
then
  defaults write com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles FALSE
else
  defaults write com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles TRUE
fi

killall Finder


Wineskin: where does it download and install wine-mono and gecko?

I've kept digging and I've located them in ~/.cache/wine/, which contains wine-mono-4.7.1.msi and wine_gecko-2.47-x86.msi, both created when I created the first wrapper.


Partition corruption, still can see files in single user mode, would like to retrieve files

If you have some understanding of partition layouts, you could try using my disk editor iBored (http://apps.tempel.org/iBored/) to check the drive and its partition, search for the partitin start, then maybe copy just the partition data to a disk image file or to another disk's partition. All this can be done in iBored.

You could also try using iBored to erase the initial partition blocks (and save those blocks to a file first, so you could later restore them), to see if Data Rescue is then able to read the disk without hanging.

Also, you describe that in Single User mode, you tried to mount the (damaged) root disk as writable - that's not possible, clearly (since the volume is damaged). But have you tried to mount an external disk in writable mode? If that works, you could easily copy your files over then.


Go to System Preferences > Energy Saver. Change the sleep settings for both on Battery and While charinging.

Alternatively you could use NoSleep to make sure your MBP never goes to sleep.


Short answer

Assuming there's no obvious explanation (e.g. sleep walking, getting up to go to the toilet, someone 'using' your phone, etc) then no, this isn't normal.

Long answer

Despite the "short answer" above, it's important to appreciate that in the absence of an activity tracking device (e.g. Apple Watch, Fitbit, etc)  being paired to your iPhone, then calculations are not as accurate at they could be.

At its most basic level*, a smart phone's activity measurement is performed by processing a range of calculations based on the data captured by tri-axial accelerometers. These accelerometers record acceleration in all three spatial dimensions (i.e. up/down, left/right, and forward/backward). This data is then fed into calculations to determine activities such as "steps".

Additionally, in the absence of any external fitness trackers you'll find that smartphones typically need to calculate steps in chunks and that there's a minimum number that can be reported (e.g. your iPhone isn't ever likely to tell you that you've just moved a single step, but it could say you've moved 6 steps). That's not to say it can't measure steps down to a solitary unit, just that part of the calculations involved mean that reporting figures like 6, 7, 12, 16, 137, 346, 1037, etc are possible, but not that you got up in the middle of the night and walked just two steps (because the minimum amount of data it needs to perform the calculations is such that it can't calculate just two steps on their own).

So, what all this means is that if the Health app is regularly reporting "fishy moves at night" of 10 or more steps, then either something is triggering this (sleep walking, getting up and forgetting about it, looking at the iPhone a number of times, someone else 'using' your phone, etc) or that there's some sort of 'fault' (e.g. faulty sensor(s), wrong time allocation, etc).

If the fishy timestamps are happening multiple times during the night, then it's less likely to be someone else using the phone and more likely to be you. If it's only happening once during the night and only occasionally, then it could be someone else using your phone, or just you doing something with it. However, in all scenarios it could be some sort of fault.

If it's of concern you could do some experiments to test for different scenarios, but otherwise it's probably not worth worrying about unless you're concerned with a high accuracy of step counts during these hours.

*You haven't specified your exact iPhone model, but in recent years the calculations performed have become more refined and take in data from other sources as well (e.g. gyroscope, location, compass).


The com.apple.medialibraryservice.xpc is a process used for a number of Apple-specific applications and services, including: indexing photos through iTunes (when syncing), and importing and exporting images in iPhoto.

Some users have reported that this happens when importing slo-mo videos into iPhoto from the iPhone 5s. This could be happening to you when syncing your iOS device--you can disable automatic syncing for iTunes as a temporary fix to see if helps your situation.


Cannot reformat or unmount external that was used for Time Machine

what @salocor meant was as below:

Select "Show All Device" from the view tab
Select the drive that you'd like to erase
Select Erase - MacOS Journaled with GUID Partition
Try and see if it works.


Change app name without uploading new binary?

In order to change your app's name, you have to create a new version. There is no other possibility.


Can I create a Mavericks installation in VMWare Fusion and migrate that to the native disk?

Make a Time Machine backup from within the VM and use this to restore the native machine once you've re-installed OS X there..

I do not know if all drivers are installed at all times (doesn't happen for Windows) so I would be a bit wary of using cloned disks to do this.  Much rather let Time Machine do what it is designed for.


Why does my cellular iPad not have the cellular capabilities?

My wife had an iPhone 4 for a long time and at one stage the iPhone fell in some water.  We did all the usual tricks, turn it off, put it in rice, etc.   After a few days the phone was fine and worked as normal except the wifi never worked again.

I would suspect something similar happened to this iPad.  The cellular module is probably damaged, for some reason or another, and doesn't work.  The seller most likely advertised it as Wifi Only so you couldn't complain back to them later.


Cut and delete a row in Apple Numbers in a single step

I have tried to duplicate your Cut/Delete Row with a single key combination but without creating an AppleScript I don't see a way.
However, as Delete Row is in the menu, one could make a custom keyboard shortcut to Delete the selected row after cutting the contents to the clipboard.

To create a shortcut specifically to delete a row in Numbers:

Open System Preferences either from LaunchPad, the Dock or using Spotlight to find it.
Select the Keyboard preferences
Select the Shortcuts tab
In the Left Pane select App Shortcuts
Beneath the Right Pane click the Plus icon to add a shortcut [+]
From the Application dropdown, select Numbers
In the Menu Tile Type the menu command exactly as it appears in Numbers: Delete Row
For the Keyboard Shortcut type the shortcut you wish to use taking care not to conflict with other shortcuts used in Numbers.  For example option ⌥+command ⌘+X

Once this has been added, select your row, type ⌘+X to Cut the contents to the clipboard, then option ⌥+command ⌘+X to delete the row.  It requires the addition of one extra key stroke but will become second nature with muscle memory.
The demo below shows this method.  The contents are then pasted back showing they were cut to the clipboard before deleting the row.


Quickly create screenshot, add border and cut & paste

You should look at the App Store first: there are a number of screenshot apps available, some of which may have the features exactly as you want. Type 'screenshot' in the search field, and start poking around.

If you want something free and native, then it's easy enough to script this. You won't be able to get a loupe that way; Apple doesn't provide that option (though you can get exact pixel dimensions from the drag cursor).

Step 1: Copy this script into the script editor and save it as "Screenshot Padding.scpt" (or whatever, as long as it has the 'scpt' extension). It must be saved in '~/Library/Scripts/Folder Action Scripts/'.

on adding folder items to this_folder after receiving these_files
    repeat with this_file in these_files
        tell application "Image Events"
            set this_image to open this_file
            tell this_image
                set image_dims to dimensions
                -- increase dimensions by ten pixels
                repeat with a_dim in image_dims
                    set contents of a_dim to a_dim + 10
                end repeat
                -- set border with revised dimensions and black background
                pad to dimensions image_dims
                close saving yes
            end tell
        end tell
    end repeat
end adding folder items to

Step 2: Create a folder somewhere convenient called (say) Screenshot Folder

Step 3: Open Folder Actions Setup: that's a core service hidden way down deep in the file system, but you can find it through Spotlight. Enable Folder Action if they are disabled, and use the '+' on the lower left to add Screenshot Folder to the folders list. The app will prompt you to choose a script, and you should select the script you saved above. The end result should look something like this:

Step 4: If you are on OS 10.4 or later, open the Screenshot app (/Applications/Utilities/Screenshot.app), click the 'Options' menu on the utility window that appears, and set the save location to Screenshot Folder. Now whenever you take a screenshot, it will deposit it in that folder and automatically give it a border.

If you are on an earlier system, then you will have to do something more. There are three choices:

Manually or programmatically drag screenshots onto the Screenshot Folder so they are processed
Attach the folder action to the desktop folder, and add code so that it only processes items with titles that contain the word 'screenshot'
Script the unix 'screenshot' utility, which has the option to save screenshots in locations of your choice.

I'll provide details on those if you need them, otherwise I'll assume your OS is up to date.


I bought my MacBook Air in Hong Kong and I live in Ireland. The condition for the Warranty and AppleCare was that I had to pay for postage to Hong Kong where they would handle it.


Actually you can use the find command as in unix e.g.: find . -name "*.log"

At least on all of my mac systems works this.

see 'man find':

-name pattern
         True if the last component of the pathname being examined matches
         pattern.  Special shell pattern matching characters (``['',
         ``]'', ``*'', and ``?'') may be used as part of pattern.  These
         characters may be matched explicitly by escaping them with a
         backslash (``\'').


I have tried that in Yosemite but not in Sierra, but you could try to disable the desktop autoswitching.

Open terminal and enter:

defaults write com.apple.dock workspaces-auto-swoosh -bool NO

the restart the dock with

killall Dock

To revert to the default setting type

defaults write com.apple.dock workspaces-auto-swoosh -bool YES
killall Dock


sudo kill -HUP $(pgrep powerd)

(I don't have an answer for 'why')


There is actually a quite easy fix to this:

Launch System Preferences.
Select "Mission Control."
Uncheck "Automatically rearrange spaces based on most recent use."


Installing Ubuntu 12.04 LTS on Mountain Lion

This can be achieved using Linux USB Creator For Mac.

Instructions:

First just select the linux distribution you want to use. You can either select from the list or browse for a Local ISO file to use.
After choosing Ubuntu you can browse for your USB device.
The program will then download the ISO, Format the disk, Copy the ISO and Install the Bootloader.
Your USB Drive is now ready to use. Simply boot up your mac while holding the “alt” key and select the drive.

A YouTube video is also included & can be viewed from the above link to complement.

Please note: This program hasn't been updated since the introduction of OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion.


Difference between GSM and Global iPhone 5

The CDMA model presumably has compatibility in more markets than the standard GSM model.  According tot he list below, unless you ordered your phone from a Chinese firm, if you have a CDMA model it also supports GSM.

GSM is a European standard and supports the EDGE network.  CDMA supports some networks branded as "3G", but YMMV.  Both are getting a bit long in the tooth as far as cutting-edge goes (IMO).

You can use this list to help identify if your model includes CDMA (Global) or GSM:
http://support.apple.com/kb/ht3939

Check the "Model" at the bottom on the back of the phone and cross-reference it with the model number on that list. Here are the relevant iPhone 5 data:

GSM models: A1428, A1533 and A1530
CDMA models: A1429 and A1453
CDMA China models: A1528, A1530 and A1518


This Homebrew README gives these steps (with links to more information):

  Contributing

  In short:

  Fork Homebrew.
  brew create http://example.com/foo-0.1.tar.gz
  git checkout -b foo
  git commit Library/Formula/foo.rb && git push
  Pull Request.

  In long:

  Formula Cookbook
  Acceptable Formulae

Homebrew formulas are written in Ruby (tested against Ruby 2.0.0). Knowledge of Ruby certainly helps, but you might be able to get a feel for how to do basic procedures like you outline above just by reading a few existing formulae.

Getting a formula accepted also requires a little knowledge of Git and GitHub pull requests, but is covered How to open a Homebrew pull request (and get it merged)