Blocking internet access for a specific application on Mac OS X

You can use the Lulu open-source macOS firewall that aims to block unknown outgoing connections, unless explicitly approved by the user. Whilst it has a GUI, the set of blocked applications can be controlled via the command line by modifying the config file /Library/Objective-See/LuLu/rules.plist as explained in the Lulu webpage (near the bottom).


Devanagari font in macOS Terminal not rendering properly

I think that Apple's Terminal has never supported correct Devanagari display, but have read that Gnome Terminal does.  You could try that.
Is there anyway to use GNOME terminal on macOS?
For vim also try searching/asking in its stackexchange site.
If you find something that works, by all means come back here and let us know.


Absinthe 2.0.4 has support for PowerPC. It works on iOS 5.0 - 5.1.1.


Extend Wi-Fi on a non-Apple network by Ethernet with an Airport Express

The short answer is yes.

Apple has an excellent support document -   Wi-Fi base stations: Extending the range of your wireless network by adding additional Wi-Fi base stations.

Basically, what you're looking to do is connect via the Ethernet ports one or more AirPort (Express, Extreme, or Capsule) to an existing router or gateway.  See the image below.

Once you've configured your AirPorts WiFi settings to match your existing WiFi network you will be able to stream to any of the AirPort devices you have setup.  The Airport Setup Guide has further details on this.

  If you connect AirPort Express to your stereo or powered speakers, you
  can use AirPlay to play music from iTunes on any computer or from an
  iOS device on your network.


http://osxdaily.com/2012/09/06/8-tricks-mac-os-x-full-screen-slideshow/
Select a picture or group of images from the desktop, then use the following:

Option+Spacebar to launch image(s) into the full-screen slideshow mode
Spacebar to pause/play the image slideshow
Left Arrow to go back, Right Arrow to go forward
Gesture with two-fingers left to go forward, two-finger gesture right to go back
Option to view smaller images at actual size
Click “Index Sheet” to view thumbnails of all images in the slideshow
Click “Add to iPhoto” to import the image into iPhoto
Hold Control key and use a two-fingered back or forward swipe in to zoom into the photo
Escape to exit


Missing /usr/local/sbin directory in the /etc/paths file

The /usr/local/sbin directory does not exist on a default macOS installation, but you can easily add it yourself.

To add that directory to the system-wide PATH environment variable (for all users), as there is always the risk of a macOS update overwriting /etc/paths, it might be better to add a file named usr_local_sbin (or anything else) to /etc/paths.d with that single line:

/usr/local/sbin

This will put the /usr/local/sbin path in a position close to the end of PATH, which usually (assuming unique command names) is not a problem. If you want to have it early in PATH for whatever reason, either add to  /etc/paths nevertheless or edit the PATH order in the user-specific ~/.profile.


Is there any way to make games smoother on Macbook Pro 13'?

Turn down all detail in the game (turn it up incrementally later).

Close all running apps, except for the game(s). This includes your email client, web browser, etc. Check your "Login Items" under System Preferences. Ensure you don't have any background tasks that are consuming CPU cycles and/or system memory.

If you have minimal system memory (RAM), it would be a good idea to upgrade since RAM is so affordable now. You can never have enough RAM. I would recommend at least 8GB.

Activity Monitor will also show the CPU load on your system when it's sitting idle. It will show apps that might be running unbeknownst to you.


Dock shortcut for an interactive bash script

Alright, I think I found the answer:

tell application "Terminal"
    do script "sudo /usr/local/bin/openconnect --user={user} {host}"
    activate
end tell


How to uninstall Windows (bootcamp) bootloader after erasing all disks and restore macOS?

You could not have erased all the disks from recovery, otherwise there would be no Window Recovery to boot to. If you used the Disk Utility to erase all disks visible in the Disk Utility, then the result could be the same as the problem you describe in your question.

In other words, you did not know the Disk Utility does not show all the disks.

The EFI partition does not appear in the Disk Utility. This partition contains the Windows boot files. If you were to erase Big Sur, then the Mac would look for bootable files and would choose Windows if no other choice was available. This boot would not succeed, if you erased the Windows partition. Reseting NVRAM would not matter. Upon startup, the firmware is going to look for an OS to boot, which apparently in your case is the Windows boot files in the EFI partition.
You should be able to boot to macOS Recover over the internet. Occasionally, this can fail do to problems at Apple's end. Using another Mac to make a USB bootable installer is another alternative. Regardless, once booted to an installer, you should be able to use the Disk Utility to erase the internal drive. However, the question "How to change USB scheme when making bootable Catalina installer?" demonstrates that the Disk Utility can fail to work properly when Big Sur has been installed. An alternative would be to enter the diskutil command give below in a Terminal window. When this command is executed from macOS Recovery, internal drive of your Mac should be erased.

The command given below assumes the internal drive is disk0.

disktuil erasedisk apfs "Macintosh HD" gpt disk0


Change iPad keyboard by modifying system files

Jailbreak your iPad using http://evasi0n.com and you will have total access to the filesystem.


Internet stops working frequently on OS X Lion

This is currently a known issue that lots of Lion users are reporting. The average seems to be 2 wifi dropouts per hour.

The current work around is (as you discovered) to toggle AirPort on/off.

This particular issue seems to be getting alot of attention so I'd expect a fix soon.

Apple support forum topic about this issue


root user can't create a file in /usr/lib

/usr/lib is protected by SIP. Even if this wouldn't be the case, it's not the best idea to put your own stuff there as any system upgrade can wipe it.

The better place to store such stuff (or link to it) is /usr/local/lib. You may need to pass appropriate flags to the linker then (or you point it directly to the Cellar folder).


Stop Ctrl+v doing page down in mail and safari apps (Mojave)

Create or edit the file: ~/Library/KeyBindings/DefaultKeyBinding.Dict
(may need to create the folders as well) to contain the text:

{"^v" = noop:;}

You will then need to close and re-open the programs that you were have problems with.


Press and hold the two bottom buttons (4+5) for 15 seconds. The lock symbol will "unlock" after 15 seconds and you should be able to use the OSD menu again.


How do I set up IPv6 on my Airport Extreme?

In the "Configure IPv6" menu, select "Automatic".
In the "IPv6 Mode" menu, choose "Native".

That should be all that's needed. The device should be able to autodetect the rest of its settings.

If that doesn't work, then you may need to check the settings with your ISP.

Source / more info: http://support.apple.com/kb/PH5098


Sounds like a bug to me. Not even iOS is completely immune to them, even after a long public beta period. So, not a lot that you can do other than wait for iOS 9.0.1 and hope that it will fix that issue with the dictionary.


The fans in my MacBook Pro (2007) run at full speed for no reason?

Trouble with fan speeds can almost always be solved by resetting the System Management Controller, or SMC.

  After performing normal troubleshooting, these symptoms may indicate that an SMC reset could be necessary.

  Fans

  The computer's fans run at high speed although the computer is not experiencing heavy usage and is properly ventilated.

Source: http://support.apple.com/kb/HT3964

The procedure for laptops with removable batteries is as follows:

  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 5 seconds.
  Release the power button.
  Reconnect the battery and MagSafe power adapter.
  Press the power button to turn on the computer.

Source: http://support.apple.com/kb/HT3964


MacBook Pro shows machine name as Mac-mini in public key

My guess is that your old keypair got copied over to the new machine (possibly when you restored from a Time Machine backup or even just manually copied over your user directory).

Either way, that string at the end is just an identifying string; it won't affect your ability to use the key from your new machine as long as you are using the matching private key to connect to servers on which that old public key is installed. That said, if the username on your local machine doesn't match the username on the remote host, you'll have to specify the remote host username when trying to connect via SSH.

If you really want to, you can generate a new keypair and upload the new public key to servers you need to access; that new public key will have your MacBook Pro username and MBP identifier appended to it.


Can I copy a bootable El Capitan installer USB stick to a hard drive partition and install from there?

No, you can't just copy the files from one to another drive and assume that the new drive will install El Capitan. There is a special command to create such an install drive, called createinstallmedia which runs in Terminal

Download the OS X installer from the Mac App Store. Quit the installer if it opens automatically after downloading. The installer will be in your Applications folder.
Mount your USB flash drive or other volume. You could also use a secondary internal partition.
Open the Terminal app, which is in the Utilities folder of your Applications folder.
Use the createinstallmedia command in Terminal to create the bootable installer.

If you're creating from an existing El Capitan machine, please use the following command.

sudo /Applications/Install\ OS\ X\ El\ Capitan.app/Contents/Resources/createinstallmedia --volume /Volumes/MyVolume --applicationpath /Applications/Install\ OS\ X\ El\ Capitan.app

I haven't personally tried doing this with an external hard drive instead of a thumb drive. But I don't see any reason for it not to work.

For more details and how to configure the above command (it depends on the OS you're installing to the USB drive from), please refer to https://support.apple.com/en-gb/HT201372


Fast external startup-disk for Macbook Air: SSD1 or Thunderbolt?

My personal recommendation would be not to move the OS to external drive as you would have to carry it around just to make the computer run.

I recommend:

Move all the files that you only need slow access to but are GB-eating to iCloud or similar network location. (For example: iTunes Library, Photos, Movies…)
Get a Thunderbolt drive for applications that need speed. Thunderbolt drives are often faster then the internal SSD, the drawback is they would occupy your Thunderbolt port.

Use the About this Mac and take a look what I am talking about.

Also see http://www.cnet.com/topics/storage/best-hard-drives-and-storage/thunderbolt-drives/


Change / correct desktop to display mapping

It looks which desktop is map to which screen depends on the port the screen is connected to. The (retro) Mac Book pro that I have has two display ports. I must be consistently inverting in which port I input the cables from one location to the other.


When I open Terminal, I get an "I have no name!" prompt

Something in memory got corrupted, and the mapping between your userID (502) and your username (ipd) was lost.  I've seen it happen (usually when I've manually killed hung system processes), although I'm not sure exactly what causes it.  launchd maybe?

Because that mapping is lost, whoami can't convert your ID into a username so returns the ID, and your prompt defaults to the "I have no name!" message because you effectively don't have a name.

Logging out and back in might fixit, but restarting is the best way (as you discovered).

Basically, it's a symptom of another problem, and not a problem in and of itself.


Is there a way to force update of the notes app or calendar app on macOS 10.12.5 Sierra?

Unfortunately, Apple does not offer any method of replacing or updating individual default applications. The only way to do this would be to perform a reinstall. Your issue is certainly unusual, but a reinstall will most likely take care of it. Note that a reinstall will not touch your personal data.


Well, you can't compile and run apps from the iPad itself, but there are many text editors in the App Store that support what is called syntax highlighting.  You could then take these files and compile and run them on your Mac or PC.

The reason you won't find apps allowing you to compile code in the App Store is because Apple forbids apps that run external code (code that wasn't bundled with the app).  I'm not quite sure how this Python app got through, but I wouldn't be surprised if it was pulled from the store at some point.

Some text editors that support C++ highlighting are Textastic Code Editor and CodeToGo, but you can find many by searching for "code editor" or "syntax highlighting" (without the quotes) in the App Store.  The interesting thing about CodeToGo is it will let you run your code on a remote server for free if you have an internet connection.  So, if running your code on the iPad is important, CodeToGo might be a good choice for you.


Can Ipad 4 bought in USA work with other mobile operators in Europe?

In general, yes. Apple has a very easy to read page listing all the LTE channels each iPad supports.

http://www.apple.com/ipad/LTE/

Since no iPad is locked to a carrier, you don't have to jailbreak or unlock them - just pop in the Sim card for whatever carrier you like and you'll be pretty much ready to go. You should also check the non-LTE radio frequencies for each model by looking over the technical specifications page.

http://www.apple.com/ipad/specs/

In the US, the Verizon & Sprint models also speak CDMA as well as operate on all the typical GSM data frequencies - so you might prefer a pure GSM model or one that can work on CDMA if needed, but this won't make much difference for many that want to use an iPad in Europe.


What adapter(s) do I need to connect a Retina MacBook Pro Thunderbolt output to a 2560x1440 NEC monitor?

Mini Display Port to Display Port.

http://www.colorwiki.com/wiki/NEC_PA241W_Review#VIDEO_CONNECTIONS

Thunderbolt is in effect Display Port plus more functionality.


How to focus parent terminal tab of shell script for input?

This is a little awkward since I can't run this code from within your script (nor within an applescript) but this osascript should allow you to specify a desired tab (tp) and switch to it from any other within the same window.
osascript -e '
tell application "Terminal" to set tp to item 1 of (tabs of window 1 whose selected is true)
tell application "System Events" to tell process "Terminal" to keystroke "t" using command down
delay 1
tell application "Terminal" to set selected of tp to true'

I think your issue was just a syntax one: e.g. selected tab versus tab whose selected is true.
Each line does the following:

Sets variable tp to the active tab
Creates a new tab using system events
(which becomes the active tab)
Delay 1
Makes tp the active tab

The variable tp will resemble this:
--> tab 3 of window id 360 of application "Terminal"

Note, there are some alternatives to setting tp to the active tab but they're more complex.


Is it possible to approve a Family Sharing purchase on a Mac?

Yes. This is possible. The instructions for all the necessary steps can be found here, provided you have OS X 10.10 Yosemite or higher. When someone in your family requests to make a purchase, you will get a notification on your Mac. (You can find past notifications in the Notification Center). You can approve the request directly from the notification, and it will ask you to authenticate with your Apple ID credentials.


Why does installing an app take so long?

DMG is a disk image file format.

Disk image files behave like a physical disk. In so doing, the operating system interprets them in the same way as if you had just inserted a CD-ROM, USB drive, etc into the computer.

Therefore, how long an application takes to install depends almost entirely on the application itself (e.g. It's size, whether it needs an installer, etc) and other factors such as the speed of your drive.

For more info on DMG files you may want to read my answer here.


Can I keep movies on my iPad and not on my hard disk?

For me, the solution for avoiding duplicate storage is to keep all media files (movies, music, pictures) on a "networked storage" device, and then pointing the software app to that location.

To use iTunes as an example:

iTunes, Preferences..., Advanced tab

Click the Change... button next to the iTunes Media folder location

Use the "pop-up" Finder dialog to navigate to the folder on your network drive where your media files are located. Eventually, you will click the OK button to dismiss the dialog, and set iTunes on its slow grind to hoover up the contents of the media folder you've just specified. However, before you do that, please read the notes below; esp. the second one.

A couple of notes to conclude:

Note 1: iTunes is a willful child in that it doesn't "respect" your choice of a designated media folder location. I find that after some time has passed, or I've returned from travel, or... after other apparently random, unspecified and unknown events have occurred, iTunes will revert to its "default" media folder location. I gave up trying to understand this behavior years ago, but it still does behave this way. The only solution I know of is to... change the media folder location again - ad nauseum.

Note 2: There are several "other options" available in the Advanced dialog. In my experience, some of these options are unclear, and have proven counter-productive to my objectives. Rather than rant on this subject, I'll just provide the following screenshot that shows how I've chosen these options. Please also note that YMMV - these options may be perfectly clear to you, and work just as you wish; I'm only saying they don't for me.


Can not add invitees to a calendar event after the event has been created

If you click on the list of invitees, there should be an "Add Invitees" field which appears below the list.


Mission Control has no spaces, background image doesn't change and Launchpad background is dark

Seems like I'm not the first one to hit into this issue, and it is related to Dock process working incorrectly. The easiest way to fix this is to type

killall Dock

into the Terminal, which will effectively relaunch Dock process (and hopefully fix the problem).

If this doesn't work, reportedly trashing Dock preferences and attempting several restarts may help.


Yes, you can disable horizontal scroll events. I know this because unwanted horizontal scrolling with the Magic Mouse used to drive me insane, especially with Adobe products.

MagicPrefs, a "free application […] to improve the functionality and configuration options of the Apple Magic Mouse", indeed let me disable horizontal scrolling. It's somewhere in the "Magic Mouse" settings tab. Hope this helps.


I want to play my guitar via iRig through my computer with my iPhone 4

If you absolutely postively must play it through your computer (see below for better options), you could try installing XBMC on your computer and using AirPlay off your iPhone to play through your computer speakers.

Better options: attach the speakers on your computer (if you have external speakers) to the headphone jack; get a 1/4 inch to 1/8 inch adapter and plug it into the microphone port on your computer, then pirate acquire Ableton Live; get a decent audio interface for your computer, you'll get way better sound out of it.


Why does "Open With" display so many instances of an app?

Rebuild LaunchServices to Fix Duplicate Entries in OS X’s ‘Open With’ Menu

  To fix this, we need to reset OS X’s LaunchServices database. As is the case with most actions in OS X, there are multiple ways to accomplish this task, but the fastest is to simply use a Terminal command.

From that article- Copy following in to your Terminal

/System/Library/Frameworks/CoreServices.framework/Frameworks/LaunchServices.framework/Support/lsregister -kill -r -domain local -domain system -domain user


Does restoring my iPhone 6 remove my iTunes balance or phone number?

The money in your iTunes account will remain as it is linked to your iTunes account (the Apple ID) rather than the specific device. Your phone number is obtained through the SIM card in the device, so this is not affected by restoring either.


Why I have 12 GB of "cancellable" space even if I am not optimizing space with iCloud?

This is a new feature in macOS Sierra called "purgeable space". Aside from files safely stored in iCloud (when the "Store in iCloud" option is enabled), purgeable space can also include cache and temporary files that are no longer required by the system.

It can also include other files that aren't entirely necessary, like iOS software updates, local Time Machine data, older email attachments, and others.


Does the use of SSD give one a dramatic performance boost?

I disagree with Randolph's Answer. If anything, the article says exactly the opposite of the "good performance for a while" part.

  What we found was the exact opposite: an OS that doesn't appear to be affected by SSD performance degradation

And I don't have Apple's SSD. I have an OWC on a Mac Pro and haven't had any performance degradation since I brought it, about six month ago. Before that, I had an Intel drive and also never had degradation problems under OSX. I changed the drive because my 1st drive was too small. That Intel-M drive is running on a laptop with Windows 7 Home Premium.

So far, it has been proven that OS X doesn't suffer from the lack of TRIM support; what we don't know if that's because the OS/FileSystem is doing something different or because there's TRIM support hidden and not reported.

In any case, getting a SSD is really a performance increase. I only use it for the OS and some minor things, the rest sits on a mirrored SATA RAID, but this is a Mac Pro, so things are different.

On small Macbooks, the usage of SSD is like day and night and I haven't seen performance degradation over the course of a Year.

Maybe there is one, but if that's the case, it's so slow that by the time is significant, you'll be either changing the drive or the whole computer.

I've been using SSD since late 2009.

I recommend you don't get one from Apple, as they tend to overcharge. Get one of the many SSD's alternatives like Corsairs, Intels or the OWC I have, which I heavily recommend.

But the SSD market is in a constant evolution, so read before you buy.


I just installed Garageband on my mac but I don't know if it charged my card

There is an easy way to check this. Go into iTunes and click the Store tab. Once it has loaded, scroll to the very bottom of the page, and under Manage you will see a link to your Account. Click there and sign into your Apple ID if prompted, then under Purchase History click See All. This will give you a list of all the apps you have downloaded from the App Store, iTunes store, and other Apple services. Find GarageBand in the list, and if the price is labeled as $0.00, you will not be charged for the app. But if it is labeled otherwise, you will be charged for the app.


I am having a near daily crash on my iPhone 4. Has occurred with every iOS 5.x release

Your first step for troubleshooting should be to restore the phone. I'm surprised that they didn't tell you that at the Apple store. It might help you to set it up as a new phone instead of as a back up when you get the option. You would have to reinstall all your apps and reset all of your settings but it's the cleanest start.


If you've password protected the network, the only worry you should have is battery life on the phone providing the hotspot.  You could also use a password with more entropy bits, but which is easier to remember. I would hazard a guess that not many folks are actively trying to crack random personal hotspots on the tube, walking around the park, grabbing an eel pie, or whatnot. I would suggest that if you remain concerned about it, just turn it off! You will certainly be saving some battery power and not zapping your gonads with wifi radiation, especially if you carry your phone in a pants pocket.


Get resolution of a Mac OS X application window

You can do that with Accessibility Inspector, Xscope or via applescript "get the bounds of the front window"


You could turn off quoting.
mail > preferences
see responding section.


iOS App Store shows wrong version number for my app

This is simply caching, Apple serving the same information to clients over time so as not to put additional strain on their database. I see this every time I update one of my apps.

It'll fix itself in several hours, perhaps a day at most.


Is there any App where I can show where I click on an non-jailbroken iPad?

If you're willing to shell out $20, I believe Reflector can do it and it has nice graphics additions for screen recordings (someone correct me if I'm wrong).


Is there a way to color parts of the man pages on the terminal?

Assuming you're fairly default and using bash:

http://www.tuxarena.com/2012/04/tutorial-colored-man-pages-how-it-works/

Short version:
Add the following to your .bashrc file:

export LESS_TERMCAP_mb=$(printf '\e[01;31m') # enter blinking mode – red
export LESS_TERMCAP_md=$(printf '\e[01;35m') # enter double-bright mode – bold, magenta
export LESS_TERMCAP_me=$(printf '\e[0m') # turn off all appearance modes (mb, md, so, us)
export LESS_TERMCAP_se=$(printf '\e[0m') # leave standout mode
export LESS_TERMCAP_so=$(printf '\e[01;33m') # enter standout mode – yellow
export LESS_TERMCAP_ue=$(printf '\e[0m') # leave underline mode
export LESS_TERMCAP_us=$(printf '\e[04;36m') # enter underline mode – cyan

If you use ZSH as part of oh-my-zsh there's a plugin for man-page coloring: colored-man


Update to macOS 10.12, but still keeping 10.11 in an external HD

Yes, this can work but not exactly in the way you've planned. Let me explain:

Yes, you can use TM to backup your computer, but you're not actually backing up a bootable copy of the OS.
Yes, you can update the OS on your internal drive to macOS Sierra.
Yes, you can restore the backup from TM to another external HD and use it as a second boot drive. But, before you can do this you will need to install El Capitan on that external hard drive and then boot your Mac from it and migrate your data etc from the TM backup to that drive.
No, there are no issues concerning software licenses in doing this.

Now, whether this is the best way for you to go about things is up to you. Another option, if you're internal drive has the capacity, is to have two partitions and have El Capitan on one and Sierra on the other.

Yet another option is to use something such as Carbon Copy Cloner or SuperDuper to make a bootable copy of your current system onto an external drive. Once you've tested it and are satisfied all is good, you can then upgrade the internal drive to macOS Sierra. This way you still get the two bootable drives.

If it was me I'd make sure I had a new external drive (in addition to the TM backup drive) and then install a fresh copy of El Capitan on that first. Once that's done, I'd boot up from that and migrate everything across from your TM backup. Then I'd do the upgrade to Sierra on your internal drive.

Once you've got everything working ok on both drives, you'll then want to think about how you manage some of your data. For example, you won't want to maintain two Photo Libraries, two iTunes libraries, etc. So you'll need to think about how you reorganise your files for use regardless of what system you've booted into, which ones will be duplicated or not, and also ensure you have a TM backup of all your data!


Will I be charged any fees to use iTunes Radio with my AT&T unlimited data plan?

No you won't be charged anything extra.  The dialog is only warning you about the high data usage.


How to resize Mac OS Extended (Journaled) partition after linux messed it up?

The real reason may be the fact, that the recovery partition is no longer there.

Have you tried the resize with diskutil command?  (man diskutil look for the resizeVolume command).  If nothing else, it might give you a different or better error message.

A repair on the volume might also help.

Also see this question.


What does an Apple "battery service" involve?

That battery, while not old from age, has seen some, and then some more.

The charge count shows it as half life, but the charge it can hold shows it as 1/3 of life left.

The Service Battery is only a suggestion so do not wary about that one. The Replace battery is the next you get, and then the Replace Now is the final stage.

Considering the Charge it can hold iI would suggest you replace it. But yu can try the SMC reset to see if that fixes it. One full discharge (let the computer run till it shuts down due to empty battery) could also help in calibrating the numbers it reports.

For comparison here is my MacBook Air 2012.

Charge Information:

Charge Remaining (mAh):   3967

Fully Charged:    No

Charging: No

Full Charge Capacity (mAh):   4801

Health Information:

Cycle Count:  619

Condition:    Service Battery

Battery Installed:    Yes

Amperage (mA):    -1132

Voltage (mV): 7933


drag folder shortcut to the left side of the dock

Folder shortcuts, & document shortcuts, are stuck at the right hand end of the dock. Apple doesn't offer any preference for that aspect of the Dock, & I would suspect any UI hack to do it of being dangerous.


Interesting.  I have a ST9500420AS, is it the same drive?  Mine is loud but I don't have any issues with it.

Does anything show up in the console during/after this occurs?  /Applications/Utilities/Console.app

Also, if you can make the problem re-produceable, you could try fseventerhttp://www.fernlightning.com/doku.php?id=software:fseventer:start, or even a simple command into the terminal (lsof > ~/Desktop/open_files.txt) to figure out what might be going on.

It almost sounds like it might, might be a hardware problem rather than software, but we may as well rule out the latter first.


What is an efficient way for developers / power users to use OSX window management and Spaces on a single screen?

I'm a Spaces user of long-time habit, even though I've always had 2 screens.

I find the best way to get around is to pin specific apps to specific Spaces [then remember where they live, which is the only difficult bit]
If no apps are yet assigned this way, then switch to the chosen Space before launching the app, then right click the app in the Dock & pin to "This Desktop". You can do this without needing to launch first, if it already appears in the Dock, otherwise launch then pin.

Mission Control, as you've discovered, is fine for finding where an app is if you forgot, but not great as a quick way of getting there.
I really tend to use it if I did forget which Space I put an app in, as you can click directly on any of the app's windows in the window 'overview' at the top of the screen & it will switch & bring it to the front…

But… in my ideal world of remembering where each app is, my method of choice is to use
 Ctrl ⌃   num  to switch directly to my required Space. This is set in System Prefs > Keyboard > Shortcuts > Mission Control [You can only see as many 'Switch' shortcuts as you have Spaces.]
It will remember which app you last had frontmost when you switch Spaces in this way.

Note - if you have an extended keyboard with a 10-key, by default the Ctrl/num shortcuts are set to the 'qwerty' numbers, not the 10-key numbers & you will have to change the shortcuts manually if you prefer the 10-key.

I specifically never use apps in Full-Screen, as they add themselves to a new, random, unnumbered Space & break that key-switching.

Pro Tips
If I ever need, for instance, to add an email attachment from Finder (Space 1) to an email (Space 4) then simply grabbing the header bar of the email & hitting  Ctrl ⌃   1  will move that single email to Space 1, where I can drop in the attachment from Finder.

If you ever need an app to 'follow' you around - sometimes I keep Activity Monitor tucked in a convenient corner - then assigning to All Desktops will make it always appear, whichever Space you're in.


macOS 10.14: switch Bluetooth on/off based on location

This is just one of the many things that you can do with Keyboard Maestro which is $36 but which enables you to do at least 1,000 different things with your Mac. You can have triggers for sleep/wake, or when you are on a certain Wi-Fi network, or at specific times of day, etc.

Those triggers can then run AppleScript events, or execute keyboard commands, or mouse commands, or shell scripts, or a large suite of actions built-in to Keyboard Maestro.

You can download it here for free and try it for ~30 days.

The developer is very responsive to emails, as well as hosting an active discussion forum where the developer is active, but so are many Keyboard Maestro users (including me).


Do battery strips prevent an iPhone's power from cutting out?

Battery strips are adhesive, stretchy "tape" strips. The purpose of them is to keep the battery in place, as well as slightly insulate the battery from the casing. The insulation means that sudden applications of heat or cold to the outside case (such as for example taking the phone out in intense sun light, or placing it on a very cold surface) doesn't immediately transfer the heat/cold to the battery via the aluminium casing.

If you're not exposing the phone to these changes in heat/cold when the cutout happens, it just sounds like you've received a non-Apple battery replacement of low quality.

Usually these cuts outs happen when the phone hardware uses more power than the battery can provide. As the power draw increases, the current (i.e. volts) are lowered slightly. With a bad battery, a normal power usage can lower the current so significantly that it is below the requirements of the CPU. This means that the system just shuts off immediately.

It is obviously not healthy for a phone.

I see it as very unlikely that new battery strips will solve your problem, unless you specifically see the problem when shaking the phone, or exposing it to heat/cold. Your problem could potentially be solved by replacing the battery - but then you'll also want battery strips installed ofcourse.


Spotlight Massive (out of control at 100GB+)

It turns out that a driver (DisplayLink in this case) was generating gigs and gigs of rotating logs, and this was being indexed which was generating many more gigs. Finding the offending driver was the hard part.

Remove driver (& ditch the port replicator), re-index, all is well.


Brother MFC-J6720DW "not connected" to MacBook Pro

OK, it's working again but I'm puzzled how I achieved it.

I turned off the Wi-Fi on my MacBook to confirm that the connexion to the printer was definitely only via the ethernet cable, and after I turned it on again I saw "MFC-J6720DW multifunction" as the name of the printer. I added that and then was able to unplug the ethernet cable and both print and scan over Wi-Fi as before. I don't know why that should have been effective because I had already done a system reset on the Mac without success in being able to use the printer over Wi-Fi.

Sorry to have wasted anyone's time!

in friendship

Rowland


How to force Disk Encryption password on boot for ALL users?

Ok, so here is half an answer.

With a first admin account (e.g. admin) you create another one (admin_tmp) and you log into.
In the terminal you remove the first account from being able to unlock the disk with fdesetup remove -user admin. Meanwhile its SecureToken switch to Off.
You logout and log into 'admin'. Then from the Users accounts Preferences you remove the admin_tmp from the system.
Then you have an admin account with no SecureToken which seems to be the only way to force a Disk Encryption Password prompt on boot. Next accounts will inherently have no SecureToken, hence no allowance to decrypt the disk with their own password.

That's not ideal as this may break some stuff (See my Note in the initial post)


Powering on while the lid is closed in clamshell mode

Launchers like Alfred.app allow you to assign keyboard shortcuts to run commands (it has built in ones for restart and shut down).

There is a default shortcut alt+cmd+eject for putting the computer to sleep.

Additionally, control+alt+eject will log you out, and;

shift+control+eject will sleep your displays (and keyboard lights if you have them).

As for booting the computer without using the power button, I'm not sure that's possible, as I don't think the laptop gives power to the keyboard while it's powered off.

You could setup something like scheduled startup/shutdown, to automatically boot at the set time. Find this in the Energy Saver preference pane.

Update: Newer laptops don't have an eject button, but instead the button in the top right corner of the keyboard is the power button. The above shortcuts will work with the power button i.e. shift+control+power for turning off the displays.


iOS Enterprise App not from AppStore – any warranty issues?

You can't void the warranty by using non-App Store apps.  The warranty covers the hardware of the device, not the OS.

Thousands, or hundreds-of-thousands, of corporate and school users develop and use apps that are not vetted through the Apple App store.  In fact, Apple encourages this type of activity.  Their own site for enterprise development states:

  The Apple Developer Enterprise Program allows you to develop proprietary, in-house iOS, and watchOS apps that you can distribute to your users in your organization and outside the store.

What you're told by the Apple retail employee is completely wrong.


To start a countdown timer, simply say: "Hey Siri, set a timer for [hours][minutes][seconds]"
Example: Hey Siri, set a timer for three hours, 12 minutes and 52 seconds.
The upper limit on timers is 24 hours, and you can have only one timer running on iPhone (HomePod allows multiple named count down timers now).

You can ask Siri how much time is left on the timer by asking Hey Siri, how much time is left on the timer?
You can stop the timer by saying Hey Siri, stop the timer.

There's no native way for Siri to start a stopwatch / count up timer, unfortunately, except through the UI.


How do I find my screenshot directory (I already changed it)

If you've changed the location, then
defaults read com.apple.screencapture location
will show you.

If you haven't changed it, i.e. it's still set to the default Desktop & has never been redirected, it will error with
The domain/default pair of (/Users/[user]/Library/Preferences/com.apple.screencapture, location) does not exist


One way would be to open Activity Monitor, and check the process ID (PID) of running programs that are immediately before and after the X11 process.


Absolutely prefer shutdown -h to pulling the power cord out of the wall. shutdown provides an opportunity for macOS to cleanly exit important underlying processes and flush file caches to storage.

Avoid shutdown

Having implemented a gentle shutdown programmatically, experience taught us that you should try to avoid shutdown -h when you have logged in users and running graphical Mac applications:

  shutdown is a blunt tool that will in most cases shut down your Mac. It works at a layer below the Mac's user interface and is roughly the equivalent of force quitting everything.

  With shutdown, Mac applications that would have quit nicely are not given the chance. In most cases using shutdown should be fine but care needs to be taken about denying applications of the opportunity to quit nicely.

– Shutting Down Your Mac Safely, dssw.co.uk

Prefer kAEShutDown

If you are able, follow Apple's advice in Technical Q&A QA1134 - Programmatically causing restart, shutdown and/or logout. This advice can be summed up as: issue an kAEShutDown AppleEvent to the system.

Be aware that using only kAEShutDown has its limitations, these are discussed in How to Shut Down Your Mac Using AppleScript.

By AppleScript or Command Line

You can use an AppleScript snippet to issue the kAEShutDown using:

tell application "Finder"
    shut down
end tell

Or using the command line tool osascript:

osascript -e 'tell application "Finder" to shut down'

Counter to the macOS Approach

In terms of non-graphical processes, shutdown is reasonable. For anything graphical or at the user level, you should avoid it. Issuing shutdown is not appropriate for regular use on macOS; as an emergency measure it is fine but not as a pre-considered solution.

Users would quickly learn to avoid an application that simply issued shutdown instead of issuing the request through the AppleEvent.


Export from Photo into Folders labeled by date shot

If I understand your problem correctly, have you tried importing the images from your phone using Image Capture rather than Photo?  You can then put them into whatever folder you like.


Buyer information provided by Apple to Vendor for AppStore purchases

Apple provide no uniquely identifying customer information for App store app purchases to developers.  iOS Developers only get a count of the number purchases per day/week/month for each country in which the app is enabled for sale.


There is no reason why it wouldn't work. In fact I use even cheaper (but shorter) cables myself and they work fine. For reference, I paid €0.75 a piece for a couple of 0.75m HDMI cables with a local online cable shop, and they work fine for 1080p video.

I'd advise to not succumb to the "gold or silver plated" marketing nonsense or the overpriced "premium" HDMI cables, as even the cheap cables transport your binary 1s and 0s just fine.


Athome Camera can do this, however it is mainly marketed as a home monitoring application (camera surveillance).


How to have my iPhone 11 iOS remind me of upcoming appointments?

Calendar appointments can have alerts.

You can set an alert to be reminded of an event beforehand.

Tap the event, then tap Edit near the top right.

In the event details, tap Alert.

Choose when you want to be reminded.
For example, “At time of event,” “5 minutes before,” or another choice.

https://support.apple.com/guide/iphone/iph3d110f84/ios

Reminders can have due dates. You'll be reminded at the time you choose.

Tap the date and time button  to set a due date for the reminder. Choose from Today, Tomorrow or This Weekend, or tap Date & Time to set your own day and time.

https://support.apple.com/kb/HT205890


How can I configure my iPad so that it doesn't stop uploads after getting auto-locked?

Unfortunately there's no setting like that to configure.
You can ensure that your iPad is not set to Low Power Mode (check in Settings > Battery).
Besides that, the rest is up to the app developer.


Prevent internal drive from mounting automatically

1) Make sure the disk you want to prevent mounting at boot is mounted.

2) Launch Terminal.

3) Run the following command to print out information about the disk:

 diskutil info /Volumes/<volume that shouldn't be mounted>

4) Locate the line that starts with: Volume UUID:. Select the UUID (Universal Unique Identifier) that follows on the rest of the line. It will be something that looks like FF9DBDC4-F77F-3F72-A6C2-26676F39B7CE. Your value will be different

5) Copy the UUID to the clipboard.

6) Navigate to /etc by typing the following and pressing enter:

 cd /etc

7) Edit (or create) an fstab file by typing the following and pressing enter:

 sudo vifs

8) Enter the following line, substituting the UUID you copied in step 5). (Note: vifs uses the value of the EDITOR environment variable to pick the text editor to use. This article assumes you are using the default value of vim. In vim, starts in command mode. To add a new line, move to the end of the document, and press the o key to append a new line and enter edit mode. Then type the following and press the return key.):

UUID=FF9DBDC4-F77F-3F72-A6C2-26676F39B7CE none hfs rw,noauto

9) Type escape to return to command mode and then type ZZ to save and exit vifs (or some other method to save and exit if you are using something other than vim.

10) Type the following and press enter to reset the auto mounter:

 sudo automount -vc

11) Quit Terminal

Now, the next time you restart, or unplug the drive in the case of an external drive, that volume will not be mounted. All you have to do is launch Disk Utility, select the grey, disabled volume, and click the Mount button.

Source


How do I disable the Control+Shift+Down Arrow Hotkey?

To reassign the key globally, go to System Preferences » Mission Control and under Application Windows, where it currently says ^↓, assign another key (I used F10, à la exposé).


About This Mac > Storage shows 10GB Backups, but Time Machine is Disabled

The "backups" no longer show up. Afaik I did not do anything.


Switching spaces using the keyboard shortcuts is dependent on your focus, rather than the app that's in the foreground. macOS determines your focus by looking at your mouse's position.

If it used the foreground app to determine your focus, and you had a space with no apps open in it, you would never be able to use a keyboard shortcut to change the space on that monitor.


How do I use time machine to restore my entire computer, rather than a file?

To recover your entire system:

1) Connect your Time Machine backup disk to your computer.

If you’re restoring your system because of a problem with your startup disk, make sure the disk has been repaired or replaced.

2) Insert your Mac OS X Install disk, and double-click the Install Mac OS X icon.

3) In the Installer, choose Utilities > Restore System from Backup.

4) In the Restore Your System dialog, click Continue.

5) Select your Time Machine backup volume.

6) Select the Time Machine backup you want to restore.

7) Follow the onscreen instructions.


Lost Appleid and Password, work phone iphone 5, owner transferred but we need to keep all the data on it

Not only does the data, but all the apps & the device itself still belong to the original Apple ID.
Apple's policy isn't that anything belongs to the human holding the device, it belongs to the owner of the ID.

Without that ID/password & no way to obtain it or contact the previous owner, yet with access to the phone itself & presumably its passcode, the only option will be to transfer what data you can off it, then throw the phone away.

There are methods to gain full access to the device itself if you can prove ownership - see How can I bypass Activation Lock? - but none of these will gain you access to the existing data, merely allow you to re-purpose the phone under new credentials.

EaseUS web site has How to Transfer Contacts from iPhone to Android in 4 Easy Ways. They are, of course, trying to persuade you in the end to consider their own software, though they show a method to transfer contact data to Google, which will then give you access to the contacts as .vcf files.

I'm not certain that you can really get right through any of those methods without at some point needing the Apple ID & password.
If you hit that at any point, then your method will be reduced to typing it out by hand into another computer.

For WhatsApp, I don't know of any method that doesn't involve paid [& often quite dodgily-marketed] software, which I've never tried [& am never likely to.] You'd have to do some further research... & caveat emptor, read reviews on sites not connected to any of the software makers.


You could install brew and use it to install a more recent version with the command brew install screen. That will currently install version 4.3.1, which (as of writing) is almost the latest release (a new release of screen came out less than a week ago and isn't in brew yet). You will then be able to run it from /usr/local/bin/screen. You can create an alias to simplify that.

You could remove the installed version, but it could be silently replaced by Apple at some point when you install an update. And it's always a good idea to avoid making changes in the /usr/bin directory unless absolutely necessary.

You could install directly from the source, but that version might not include OS X specific patches. The brew Formula for screen does include at least one specific OS X patch.


Does automator work when screensaver is active

I wonder if the automator execute my command during active screensaver?

Yes, the automator action will execute as long as you Mac is not asleep.


Upgrade from Snow Leopard to Mountain Lion in non personal & large scaled development environment

Tipps what to consider when doing an upgrade:

Before you start

Take your time for a good backup! - You can regard data which is only
located on one harddrive as non existend.
Start with one system first and try out everything before doing the
major upgrade.

Installation

Consider it takes way more time than it does at home! The
MountainLion Download took >5 hours because of a symmetrical internet
connection. Installation time was ~1 hour (MacMini 2009 - 4Gigs Ram
1067). + xCode Downloadtime ~1hour
Before you install the new xCode make sure all your projects and your old xCode Dev Folder are
backupped.
When the installation routine asks you to delete your old xCode do so
(I didn't do it and now I have to manually assign each project to the
new xCode. I've to delete the old version manually too and it's a bit
more complicated if you have to do the research which files you are
allowed to delete and which not)
Then you have to download the different xCode
libraries. There goes at least 1 additional hour.

Time of the downloading- and installation process so far: ~8 hours. (Keep in mind we've a slow internet connection)

Projects

Copy your projects and don't run your conversion and tests on the
original.
When you open the project you'll probably receive lots of warnings.
Don't Panic!
When clicking on the "Validate Project Settings" warning xCode will suggest to convert your
project for you. I've done this for 3 iOs applications (Build Target:
4.3) now and it worked every single time. Let it create a snapshot for you. Just in case.
If your app has already been code signed you'll probably receive the
"Target Integrity" warning. In every single case it worked for me to
edit the path for the "entitlement.plist". (Just click the warning
and edit the path at "Code Signing Entitlements")

It may happen that you've to change the deployment-target. To do so
go to the Project Navigator (cmd + 1), click on your
project's name and then Summary. There you can edit your
Deployment Target.
If you get warnings on deprecated methods you should search
stackoverflow.com for your particular case. If it has to do with
NSURLConnection look here.

To be continued...


Installing 20+ operating systems on Mac without any virtualization

Depending on your Mac Pro the following OSs should run (or not). I didn't include every Mac Pro ever sold, but I tried to list major development steps ( e.g different EFI-architectures 32bit->64 bit):

                     MacPro1,1   MacPro3,1  MacPro5,1* MacPro6,1
 1. FreeDOS            +/-         uc         uc         uc
 2. Windows 95          -           -          -          -
 3. Windows XP         ++          ++         ++          -
 4. Windows 7          ++          ++         ++          -
 5. Windows 8           -         (++)        ++         ++
 6. Windows 10          -         (++)       (++)        ++
 7. Slackware           +           +          +          +
 8. Debian              +           +          +          +
 9. Ubuntu              +           +          +          +
10. Arch                +           +          +          +
11. Gentoo              +           +          +          +
12. Fedora              +           +          +          +
13. Xinu                -           -          -          -
14. Minix              uc          uc         uc         uc
15. FreeBSD           +/-          uc         uc         uc
16. NetBSD            +/-         +/-        +/-         uc
17. OpenSolaris         +         +/-        +/-         uc
18. OS X v10.0          -           -          -          -
19. OS X v10.1          -           -          -          -
20. OS X v10.2          -           -          -          -
21. OS X v10.3          -           -          -          -
22. OS X v10.4         ++           -          -          -
23. OS X v10.5         ++          ++          -          -
24. OS X v10.6         ++          ++         ++          -
25. OS X v10.7         ++          ++         ++          -
26. OS X v10.8          -          ++         ++          -
27. OS X v10.9          -          ++         ++         ++
28. OS X v10.10         -          ++         ++         ++
29. OS X v10.11         -          ++         ++         ++

-: doesn't run  ++: officially supported (++): runs probably +: runs maybe one/two drivers missing
+/-: some drivers missing  uc: unclear  *Newer MacPro5,1s probably can't run 10.6

I've compiled this list from various sources and it's probably not complete. I've embezzled the minor version numbers of the OS X versions (e.g MacPro1,1 needs at least 10.4.7). Some entries are well funded (like the Microsoft and Apple OSs), others are derived from my own experience or internet sources. A + or +/- doesn't necessarily mean that it is an easy job to get the system installed/booted. I welcome edits by more knowledgeable people though.

Addendum:

I've found two computer lookalikes which probably run all of those systems, the second one misses a video card though - and both are obviously no Mac Pros:

;-)


assigning keys on bluetooth apple keyboard

Using KeyRemap4MacBook, you could save a file like this as ~/Library/Application Support/KeyRemap4MacBook/private.xml:

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<root>
  <item>
    <name>custom</name>
    <identifier>custom</identifier>
    <autogen></autogen>
    <autogen>__KeyToKey__ KeyCode::OPTION_R, KeyCode::FORWARD_DELETE</autogen>
  </item>
</root>

Then open the KeyRemap4MacBook application, press the ReloadXML button, and enable the setting.

This only remaps Apple Wireless Keyboards:

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<root>
  <devicevendordef>
    <vendorname>APPLE</vendorname>
    <vendorid>0x05AC</vendorid>
  </devicevendordef>
  <deviceproductdef>
    <productname>WIRELESSKEYBOARD</productname>
    <productid>0x0255</productid>
  </deviceproductdef>
  <item>
    <name>custom</name>
    <identifier>custom</identifier>
    <device_only>DeviceVendor::APPLE, DeviceProduct::WIRELESSKEYBOARD</device_only>
    <autogen>__KeyToKey__ KeyCode::OPTION_R, KeyCode::FORWARD_DELETE</autogen>
  </item>
</root>


How to install and override Vim in Mountain Lion for +ruby +python support?

Best setup I've seen yet is YADR:

https://github.com/skwp/dotfiles

Uses zsh, ruby, vim, etc all nicely configured, and very customizable.


If setting a system language in iOS doesn't take effect for apps already installed. What else can be done?

All apps provided by Apple should automatically change language to whatever the OS is set to.  If they do not, you should try Restart or Force Restart.

These is no further os change you can make, so if Applications you loaded don’t respect the system language, the solution is removing them or contacting their authors for a bug fix or app specific support.


Your first solution should be fine. Windows may grumble about having to reactivate, though, since it sees hardware changing. There another question over at Superuser that discusses software to clone Windows drives. Just make sure that you format the new SSD with a GUID partition table before you do the cloning, though (you can do the partition table formatting in Disk Utility, or have Boot Camp Assistant do the formatting for you).

You can also temporarily swap out the old SSD with the optical drive, which is often what I end up doing.


Applescript to automatically add .noindex extension to a file?

The following AppleScript will append the extension .noindex to any single file. To use this particular script, paste it into a new AppleScript document and save it as an Application. It will have a Application like icon with an arrow. This means the script is a droplet. To rename any single file, simply drop the file on top of this application's icon, and the file will have been renamed in under a second.

on open theFileToRename
    tell theFileToRename
        tell application "Finder"
            set theName to the name of file theFileToRename as string
            set extension to ".noindex"
            set the name of file theFileToRename to (theName & extension)
        end tell
    end tell
end open

If you don't want to use the functionality of Droplets, the following script will prompt you to select a file:

set extension to ".noindex"
set theFileToRename to (choose file with prompt "Select a file to append the \"" & extension & "\" extension to." without multiple selections allowed)
tell application "Finder"
    set theName to the name of file theFileToRename as string
    set extension to ".noindex"
    set the name of file theFileToRename to (theName & extension)
end tell

I hope this is useful to you.


On new iPad, "notify me" button does not function in Find My Friends

This has to do with your friends and not your device. I haven't nailed down exactly why some of my friends allow me to set geo-fenced alerts and others do not.

I don't see a setting to disable it other than the Show Geofence Alerts From: which implies that I can restrict those I see - not those I share with.

Sorry I can't offer a perfect fix, but this is something on the account / friend's side of things and not a switch you can control on your device.


Unable to change author name in an ebook on iPad

After hours of frustration, I finally found a solution to my problem by doing the following:

Open Finder.
Click Go in the Finders menu and select Go to Folder.
Type ~/Library/Caches in the window currently displayed and click Go.
Locate the iBooks file and move it to trash.
Airdrop the same ePub file to iPad.

Following these steps I was able to see the accurate and updated author name on my iPad.


Terminal command that gives the type of computer you're on

This command should work for you:

sysctl hw.model

This will return the Model Identifier for your machine. The below is an example for a mid-2012 Retina MacBook Pro:

Machine123:~ username$ sysctl hw.model
hw.model: MacBookPro10,1

Below are some references on Apple's site that describe Model Identifiers - there doesn't seem to be a single reference:

MacBook Pro Model Identifiers

MacBook Model Identifiers

MacBook Air Model Identifiers

iMac Model Identifers

Mac Pro Model Identifiers

Mac Mini Model Identifiers


How do i delete an untitled folder in Albums iPhone 5 PHOTOS app

Delete photos and video synced from iTunes when you can’t access the originals.

You can delete photos you synced from iTunes by syncing them with a new folder.

These steps will remove all of the previously synced photos from the device.

To delete photos that have been synced from a computer that's no longer accessible:

Create a folder on the computer that you now sync with, and add a single photo to that folder.
In the Photos tab in iTunes, click the box next to "Sync Photos From."
In the pop-up menu next to "Sync Photos From," choose the folder you created in step 1.
Apply the change.
Uncheck "Sync Photos From."
Apply the change again.

Your synced photos will now be removed from the device.


Can Windows Vista be installed on Mac OS X 10.6.6?

Yes, according to Apple's Snow Leopard Specs.

  Boot Camp:
  requires Windows XP with
  Service Pack 2 or Windows Vista (sold
  separately).

Also, you can install Windows 7 if you update Boot Camp. Info here.


When using an second monitor, is it possible to move the cursor off both sides of the screen?

Yeah, sure. Use Wraparound (I haven't tried it, but it should do what you're asking). Download it here: http://www.macupdate.com/app/mac/19599/wraparound.


How to periodically show alert message *in foreground*?

Try using open instead of launching the program directly. open more closely matches double-clicking to launch the AppleScript application.

open your application

To do this, replace the Program key value pair in your launchd job ticket with a ProgramArguments array to provide the path to your AppleScript application:

<key>ProgramArguments</key>
<array>
    <string>/usr/bin/open</string>
    <string>/Users/bernhard/programming/periodic.app</string>
</array>

By default, the open command attempts to bring the launched application to foreground.


Can an iPad screen be displayed on a Windows PC for accessing iMessage?

iMessage which was subsequently rebranded as Messages is a messaging service available for Apple devices.

It is not available for other desktop and mobile operating systems. It is not possible to use iMessage on Windows by installing any app or Web based client.

  I was considering getting an iPad Pro 2017 and plug it up to the PC, then display the image as a window on my Windows 10 PC. Is there a way of doing this?

It is possible via 3rd party tools to display the screen frame (output) of an iPad on a Windows PC, however, it’s not possible to operate iOS (software running on iPad) via this way.

Accessing a Mac mini over remote connection should work fine, as it’s available on both iOS and macOS. As long as you are able to run and access macOS, you should be able to access iMessage service all right.

If the only thing you are looking for is to look for an easy way to exchange iMessage (from the comfort of using physical keyboard) using it on a Mac is your best bet. There’s no point in trying to connect and access an iPad via a desktop computer.


Macbook pro - does time machine restore to original state or just add removed files?

If you believe your Mac has a virus or any kind of malware you should clean your Mac using a piece of software designed to remove malware. Time Machine isn't intended to be used to remove malware. There is nothing to stop a piece of malware from infecting your Time Machine backups.


Did iMessage beta on Lion finally stop working recently?

Yes, Apple did disable Messages beta for Lion users.  French blogger from Consomac found the following in the French strings of the beta:

source http://consomac.fr/news-1339-messages-pas-sur-lion.html

Although this is not the exact error that you are receiving, inevitably it will ask you to move to Mountain Lion now that it has been released.  I encourage the upgrade, and if this problem recurs after you upgrade, try moving ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.imservice.iMessage.plist to the desktop and restarting your computer.  You can If this does not work, move it back and edit your question accordingly.


How do I get iTunes to play all music from a specific year?

Use a Smart Playlist. These are playlists that are dynamic and can be built off filters on track metadata.

To create a new Smart Playlist select File > New > Smart Playlist... (or Opt-Cmd-N) and then set the following options to build a Smart Playlist that always contains all the tracks that are from 1969 in your library:

If you wanted to limit it to a specific genre from 1696 press the + button to add another filter criteria and pick a genre like so:

You can filter in all kinds of ways -- Smart Playlists are incredibly powerful.


Yes, this is completely normal behavior. Here is an example of how to break down the messages in the console app.

This is my what appears when I open my console app.

Look how many messages came in within a second at 14:03:04! That's a lot of data to process! But you don't have to process this data.

Let's say you're looking for an error message, click on the box in the top left labelled Errors and Faults. This is what mine looks like.

Less than an error per second. Much easier to process. But my guess is that even this is not what you were looking for. Check out the sidebar here:

These are the various files and folders that contain various logs for both built-in and third party apps. If you click on one of these files or navigate through the folders to the log file you are looking for you can view the log file in app. My guess is the what you are looking for is the system.log which records information for built-in system functions.

This is an example of what an open system.log file looks like.


There isn't a csrutil command in macOS 10.7.

System Integrity Protection (SIP) was introduced in macOS 10.11, and the csrutil command is for modifying SIP.

More at OSXDaily about SIP in macOS 10.11 and later.


PDFs missing from iBooks on iPad after restore

Look in the iTunes -> iTunes Music -> Books.   They should be there!


How to select multiple app icons in Launchpad to move them?

Multiple selection is not implemented in LaunchPad. A work around: Drag individual icons into a folder (to make the first folder drag an icon over another and drop). Then move the folder to the new location and unpack it.


Why don't Windows 7 bootable sticks start on MacBook?

The USB stick cannot boot on Mac without Bootcamp. The Windows expects a BIOS, but Mac has EFI. That's why you cannot boot from that USB stick.


AES-IS support and processor architecture in 2010 iMacs

The 27" iMac from Mid-2010 (i5, 2.8Ghz) had an i5-760 inside.

The model is, in fact, a Lynnfield processor with quad cores.


How to do transfer data via iTunes from iPhone 4S to 6S

You will need iTunes 12, which can only be run on newer versions of OS X. From the Mac App Store, download the free upgrade of OS X 10.11 El Capitan. Then, update iTunes. From there, you can just plug in your 4s, back it up, and then plug in the 6s and restore from that backup. Make sure you choose Encrypt iPhone Backup so you won't have to sign in to every app again after the restore.


Is there a way to automatically maximize a window when dragging it to an external monitor?

I use the app BetterSnapTool, which allows you to maximize windows by dragging them to the middle of the top of the screen, among other features.


MacBook Pro screen freaks out, goes psychedelic — I'm at a loss — suggestions?

Chances are, it's hardware.

Download and burn a copy of Ultimate Boot CD  Insert the disk and boot your Mac by holding down the "C" key.  It's a Linux OS and will boot up in text mode (not graphics intensive)

There are a number of video related tests you can run.  Since it is outside of OS X,  you are removing the OS from the equation.

Chances are, you are going to run across something hardware wise.

If you don't get errors reported back, it may be a connector or the display itself.  If you have an external monitor, hook that up and see if the problem manifests there.  If it dosen't, then you know it is something between the logic board and display.

If you do see errors, then you know for a fact it's your chip.

Don't dispair.  I have used a service that will replace graphic chips on Apple logic boards and they have been quite reliable.  I can give you the name privately, if you like.  The cost was (give or take) about $100 including shipping.

I have personally used the above techniques and vendor with zero failures thus far.

I hope this helps.


Is there a list of punctuation commands for iPad dictation?

Siri dictation is never going to be 100% accurate and the easiest way to get the result you want may be to edit the text by hand after you've dictated the body of the message.

Jim Rhoades provides a useful list of Siri dictation commands.


iTunes says an update is available but iPhone doesn't (iOS 10.1.1)

Answer from this MacRumors article: http://www.macrumors.com/2016/11/09/apple-releases-new-version-of-ios-10-1-1/

  Apple today seeded a minor version change to iOS 10.1.1, the current
  version of the iOS 10 operating system. The update is minor enough
  that it did not warrant a full 10.x.x number change, but it does
  include an updated build number.

  iOS 10.1.1 being released today has a build number of 14B150, while
  the initial iOS 10.1.1 release, which came on October 31, had a build
  number of 14B100.

  The new build of iOS 10.1.1 is only available as a download from
  Apple's servers and cannot be obtained over-the-air at this time for
  those who have already installed the first version of iOS 10.1.1. The
  new version of iOS 10.1.1 will likely be provided to those who have
  yet to install iOS 10.1.1, as it otherwise requires an iTunes
  connection to obtain.

In other words, you can safely update via iTunes to benefit from this minor update.


Mac disk free space automatically decreases

I found my problem to be from Mail application. When it was open, the disk free space was reduced every minute.

I just removed my Gmail account from the Mail application and about 40GB was recovered back to my free space! Also the automatic decrease of free space is stopped now.


Visible Hidden Folder Disappears After Renaming it to [Dot Underscore]

All files and directories starting with . are Finder hidden files. System reserved dot directories are . for current directory and .. for parent directory. This is carried on from OS X Unix heritage.

For your file, there is a chance that you have an extra space after the _ or some unprintable character. Try mv ._ then hit TAB to find out if it will perform a completion on the name. If it does then continue typing the new name you desire. Note that you might need to hit TAB twice or more until you get that particular file name displayed in case you had other files that start with ._ in that directory.

Note that files and directories starting with . can be viewed in Finder upon desire and that you can search for on ASK DIFFERENT. They are called hidden files.


OSX Yosemite suggesting updates, I don't want to upgrade, but need to upgrade iTunes

Always check out Apple Support

https://support.apple.com/kb/dl1977?locale=en_US

There is a link to a 10.10.5 compatible version of iTunes 12.8.2. You must click this link for the 10.10.5 compatible version.

https://secure-appldnld.apple.com/itunes12/041-37721-20190206-950874F8-AAA0-4373-96E9-A995A9B354C7/iTunes12.8.1.dmg

The 'Read before you install iTunes' document that is within the DMG states that 10.10.5 is supported on this version of iTunes.


Disable Mail.app "special" text replacements (i.e., ... –> …) that are not present in global settings

I'm able to get the behavior you want by disabling Edit > Substitutions > Smart Dashes per app.  It appears ellipses are grouped with dashes.

If you want to use N and M dashes, they can be typed with ⌥- and ⌥⌘- , respectively.


Shortcut to save screenshot both to desktop and clipboard

One way to do this would be to write an Automator script to copy the image to the clipboard (for instance "if new image found in folder"). A example of that can be seen here


kernel_task writes huge amounts of data to disk (> 1TB) - how to diagnose?

I had the same issue on my 2010 MacBook Pro.
The fix for me was to clean out the dust from inside my laptop. I removed the fan (just requires unscrewing it with a special screwdriver, like the type for installing a hard drive) and there was a giant amount of dust blocking the airflow.
Kernel_text helps regulate the computer temperature. It was trying, but the fan couldn't do its job. After this fix, I went from 500 GB of kernel_text disk usage within a few hours of computer use, to less than 2 GB.
Interestingly, this also seemed to fix the issue of disnoted and sharedfilelistd processes using too much CPU.
However, my computer didn't have massive disk usage from the CrashPlanService process, so you might have a different issue.


I need to identify a name of an iPhone authentication function

Yes, the function is included in iOS 11 and is called "Automatic Setup".

It is designed to get you up and running quickly when you replace your phone with a new one. Essentially you power up the new, blank device - then place your old phone near the new one. A popup will ask you if you want to use Automatic Setup.

Then the animation you refer to will be shown on the new device, which you then scan with the camera on the old device.

After entering your old pass code the data from your old phone will be transferred to the new phone.


Navigating forward/backward in Microsoft Word?

Use Shift + F5 to return to the last edit location in the document


Time Machine doesn't normally do that. Open Console (under Applications/Utilities), select All Messages in the log list, and type "backupd" into the filter bar. If you scroll back up to the time of one of these full backups, there may be a log message explaining why it backed up so much.


MacBook Pro not booting beyond mounting Recovery HD

It looks like your hard drive has been corrupted somehow.  Use Internet Recovery (Command+Option+R while booting) to recover/restore your machine.

You do back ups, right?

More than likely, your drive has failed.  Based on what I was able to make out in the (blurry) picture, the error BSD root: disk0s2, major 1, minor 2 is very similar to this post:

OSX system and installation disk won't boot

I have personally experienced (just last week, actually) a similar situation and it too was a HDD failure.

You can also try running this command from the command line to get the SMART Status of your drive:

diskutil info disk0 | grep SMART

If you get anything other than Verified, your drive is failing; it's time to replace.


System Crashed and Cannot Install Sierra again

I've never had any success using the Disk Utility restore feature in data rescue scenarios. I'd install the OS on the external drive and try to pull your data from the built-in drive.

Once you're running off the external drive, more options become available.


Make apps stop showing as mounted partitions

If you download an app, it comes packed as disc image in most cases (a file with .dmg extension). If you open this file, this drive image is mounted as new drive. You should move the application that is on that newly mounted drive to your application folder. The image file can be unmounted and deleted. Be sure not to copy the dmg file to your application directory (you can check file extensions by selecting the file and press command+i).


If you add a USB WiFi adapter can you network share it over WiFi?

Yes.  You can share any network device to any other network device using the Internet Sharing settings in System Preferences.


Spotlight can't open a folder inside ~/Documents/

There are two questions here:
Firstly, Spotlight always sending you to ~/ (and not the folder you asked for) is I believe a bug.
Update: I have a MacBook running macOS 11.3 beta1. On this the search behaves correctly and Finder opens in the expected folder.  So, it seems this bug is being fixed.
Secondly, my interpretation of permissions for ~/Documents is that Big Sur has taken control of the Documents folder and won't let you make changes.  Unix style permissions and ACLs are overruled by macOS.
There is other evidence for the special role of ~/Documents.  Finder now shows subfolders that are not really inside the Documents folder.  These are folders belonging to some apps using iCloud for document storage.
There seems to be no way of turning back the clock and restoring the behaviour of Catalina and older.  This is just an example of Apple gradually taking away the freedoms we have come to love in macOS.


Changes to Photos. Where did Camera Roll and Photo Stream albums go?

See...

iCloud, meet Photos: What's changing for your images in iOS 8
How to Find Your Photos in iOS 8 (And Where Is Camera Roll?)
iOS 8, thoroughly reviewed:Camera & Photos

extract...

  while Camera Roll is gone, its photos are not. They've simply moved over to a different location in the Photos app: Collections. Collections, which organizes all of your photos by date and location, is Apple's attempt at making photos more organized and searchable.

It appears that PhotoStream has gone & only the last 30 days will be stored by default.


Can a Mac Pro be upgraded from a 5150 CPU to a 5365?

Yes, you can but only with Intel Xeon E53xx,  X53xx or L53xx series processors that have a LGA 771 socket.

Although one word of warning,  the supported OS upgrade life time of the Mac Pro 1,1 and 2,1 looks like its coming to an end. Apple as we have seen in the news is prepping for Mountain Lion, and dropping support for all macs that lack a 64bit EFI. So it appears highly likely that Mac OS X 10.7 is the last OS you will be able to run on these Mac Pros, unfortunately. Be aware of that when prepping for your Mac Pro 1,1 and Mac Pro 2,1 upgrade plans, especially if keeping current is a priority of yours.

That said, now on to the upgrades:

The Mac Pro original Upgrade process

Here are processor upgrades that people have completed and confirmed in Geekbench as working, see their results below.

MacPros using L53xx Xeon processors.

MacPros using E53xx Xeon processors.

MacPros using X53xx Xeon processors.


How much space is left on my hard drive?

 Menu > About this Mac

Then the Storage tab

For cleanup, CCleaner exists for Mac; there's also CleanMyDrive & a whole raft of others. I wouldn't particularly recommend any of them, as they've all been known to throw out the wrong bit, just like on Windows.


How to add a New Action when viewing a Custom Perspective in OmniFocus 3?

It's not possible to add a new action while viewing a custom perspective, as it's not possible to know where to put the action. Perspectives can combine projects, tags, etc., so there's no simple destination for the new action.
To create a new action from anywhere including a custom perspective, use Quick Entry.


Ten years old nightmare to make facetime calls to South America

Usually telco supplied WiFi routers are not of high quality. They tend to be low cost varieties with lots of other features bundled in that are of higher priority to the telco.
The best way to proceed is to disable the WiFi functionality in the supplied router. If possible, also disable the routing and NAT functionality to get a bridged connection only.
Then purchase your own router and WiFi equipment of higher quality. This also allows you to place multiple WiFi acccess point different places in the building. For example you typical want to have an access point on each floor (if it's a 2-floor house for example).
You can buy higher quality equipment from lots of different manufacturers. A popular choice for WiFi access points would be Ubiquity. If you do not have experience with WiFi equipment, I would recommened getting a professional to install said equipment. Around here it is very common to get offers on WiFi equipment including installation - I don't know if the same goes in that specific location in South America.


Is there a way to see what kernel task is doing?

There are few places that information is available, but since kernel is a multitasking beast one has to look in multiple places:

The simple one is the Console log "type kernel in the filter box", but not all activity is reported there since Kernel issues millions of instructions in a Milli-second.
Also the Activity Monitor is a good source of information.
You could use the ps -A > process.txt to see all running processes.
You could use the sudo iosnoop to see all disk activity.
You could use kextstat > ~/Desktop/kexts.txt to see all loaded drivers.

In other words, it is too busy for you to follow and a continuous output file would not make senses.


Can I get any compensation for 2-week turnaround on 2015 MacBook Pro battery recall?

Not likely. Apple can't ship these devices by air due to safety reasons, and there are a lot of them.

If everyone who was inconvenienced by this got together and collectively sued Apple, and won, you might get enough to pay for a fast food meal. In 2024.


Launching a new instance of something instead opening existing one?

Windows of applications aren't normally called instances on OS X. You can open new instances with open -n, but there's no way to do that from the UI. Applications with multiple instances also have multiple Dock icons.

If you actually meant that, you could add an action for it in Alfred:

There's no standard way to open a new window with open or AppleScript though. You'd have to use different terminology for each application.

on alfred_script(q)
    tell application (q as text)
        activate
        if number of windows is 0 then
            reopen
        else
            if name is "TextEdit" then
                tell application "TextEdit" to make new document
            else if name is "Finder" then
                tell application "Finder" to make new Finder window
            else if name is "Safari" then
                tell application "Safari" to make new document at beginning with properties {URL:"about:blank"}
            end if
        end if
    end tell
end alfred_script


According to John Gruber, this is not possible, unfortunately:

  AirPlay is the killer feature for Apple TV. But perhaps we’d better keep that in the future tense for now: it’s going to be the killer feature for Apple TV. After installing today’s various software updates for iOS devices, the only apps I’ve seen where AirPlay works for video are the built-in iPod app (a.k.a. “Video” on the iPad and iPod Touch) and YouTube. In other apps, AirPlay is audio-only.


If there is nothing else on this particular hard drive that you wish to keep, you can pick the "Partition" section in Disk Utility and repartition the whole drive to your liking rather than simply delete the Time Machine partition. You may have more luck with this than with editing the existing partitions. However, given that it's telling you it can't unmount the disk, Disk Utility may not let you do this either. You can most likely get around this by booting from your Snow Leopard installation DVD and using Disk Utility to repartition the external drive (careful, not your internal drive!) from there. Using the recovery system on the Snow Leopard DVD will avoid anything (like Time Machine) keeping the disk "busy" when you want to partition it.


The simplest and quickest way to do this in other languages would just be to drop each of your columns from excel into a list (array) and then have the whole thing in a loop and it will create the email fill the information and then send the email then loop back to the beginning and start again with values from each of the arrays at [1] and so on from there through your list. Not the most professional or efficient way but for your purposes that would work. If you can implement that then go ahead. If not I'll script it when I get back to my desktop.

----edit----

I edited script first written on this post: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/15386794/applescript-for-sending-emails-from-a-list-in-excel

to achieve this script. I code in java mostly so this might not be perfect so maybe somebody can come along and tweak it.
OP should go through and enter his own values for the things written in all caps. Also the excel sheet needs to be in the form that the OP from the links excel sheet is in

set {firstName, eAddress} to getData()

repeat with i from 1 to count firstName
tell application "Mail"
    activate
    set mymail to make new outgoing message at the beginning of outgoing messages with properties {subject:"INSERT SUBJECT HERE"}
    tell mymail
        make new to recipient at beginning of to recipients with properties {address:item i of eAddress}
--The next line will start each email with Hi firstName and then carriage return to the text you fill in below

        set content to "Hi " & item i of firstName & "

INSERT BODY OF EMAIL HERE"
    end tell
    --show message window (otherwise it's hidden)
    set visible of mymail to true
    --bring Mail to front
    activate
    send mymail
end tell
end repeat

on getData()
set colA to {}
set colB to {}
tell application "Microsoft Excel"

    activate
    tell active sheet
        set lastRow to first row index of (get end (last cell of column 1) direction toward the top)

        repeat with i from 3 to lastRow
            set end of colA to (value of range ("A" & i))
            set end of colB to (value of range ("B" & i))
        end repeat
    end tell
end tell

return {colA, colB}
end getData


Calendar no longer syncs with Exchange after upgrading to iOS 8

If you have not already tried it, deleting the Exchange account from the iDevice (and all of the associated contacts, calendars and email if any was being synced), and then recreating the account can sometimes fix a variety of errors. Of course, making sure you know all of the server names and passwords and other needed information to set up the account would be wise before deleting the account.


Problem while updating to macOS High Sierra (Target is not convertible to AFPS)

The installer will still be in your Applications folder. Cancelling should also be fine as the installer automatically backs up your data.


I can not turn off VoiceOver on iPhone 4S

Turning Voiceover Off

Double-tap the Settings icon on your homepage.
Use three fingers to scroll down to the General menu, and double-click on it.
Use three fingers to scroll down to the Accessibility menu, and double-click on it.
Double-tap on the VoiceOver menu item.
Turn VoiceOver off

Alternatively, in iTunes you select summary and click Universal Access, then choose either Zoom or Neither rather than VoiceOver.


Does the two-fingered secondary click not work in Windows8.1/Bootcamp?

I had similar trackpad issues using Windows on my 2012 Macbook Air and fixed it using 3rd party software called Trackpad++. Give it a try.


How do I troubleshoot iTunes failing to add songs to my iCloud Music Library?

The icon you're getting (i.e. a single Cloud with a diagonal slash from top left to bottom right) means your song isn’t eligible to be uploaded to your iCloud library.

For example, this can happen if the song file is larger than 200 MB, or if it's encoded at 96 Kbps or less.

For more information you can refer to:

iTunes for Mac: Symbols used in iTunes
About iCloud Music Library icons and status

To quote Apple from the second link above:

  This icon appears next items that can't be added to iCloud Music Library. A song might be ineligible if it wasn't purchased from the iTunes Store or was purchased using a different Apple ID, or if the song file is larger than 200 MB, is longer than two hours, or was encoded at 96 Kbps or less.


Why can't I move the mini iTunes player between Spaces?

I'm not experiencing that issue here (OS X 10.6.8/iTunes 10.5.3). But one thing you can try is to drag the window to the edge of your screen toward the space to which you wish to switch. After a brief pause, you will slide over to that space, hopefully bringing the iTunes mini window with you.


I'm assuming you are attributing the 5.93GB to voice memos? That would be about 75 hours of memos. (They use about 2MB per minute.)

"Other" in iTunes is a large catch-all that includes things like mail caches, Safari browsing data, iTunes streaming caches, and more. The best way to identify how much space is being used is on the device itself - Settings app > General > Usage.

As far as the Voice Memos not syncing, check on your hard drive under <your username>/Music/iTunes/iTunes Music/Voice Memos and make sure they aren't actually there (and just the playlist is missing). If they are not, uncheck the Sync Voice Memos setting, apply your changes, then reboot your phone (hold Home + Sleep until the Apple logo appears) and your Mac, then re-enable the setting.


How do I get rid of this:(-bash: cd: /Users/Dakota/Documents/School/Spring: No such file or directory) from my terminal?

First we'll look at what the command did. The echo part returned the value of the arguments to the standard output. In this case, it wrote cd plus the response of the command pwd which returns the current directory. The >> part of the command writes the output of the command before it (in this case, the result of echo) to a file. The file it wrote to was ~/.bash_profile, which is a file of commands to run when bash is invoked. In this case, when you start your terminal.

To fix it, you can simply remove the lines that the command added. To do so, you can use Nano, which comes with your computer. Run nano ~/.bash_profile in terminal, and then remove the lines that say cd /Users/Dakota/Documents/School/Spring. Save your changes by pressing ctrl + x, and then press enter. Now, when you open a terminal window, you shouldn't be seeing those lines of text :)


Downloading large files in background on iOS 12

As long as it is not implemented by the developer, there is no way to keep downloading in the background.

If you are interested you can read up on that in apples developer documentation here


Bluetooth keyboard not showing battery level and function key not working

What is the model and age of your laptop?

I had some trackpad issues a month or so ago with my own Macbook, and it turned out that the battery was in need of replacement, swelling and pressing the trackpad.  Also, have you tried clearing the NVRAM?  Press the built-in keyboard keys P R option command while rebooting to clear the NVRAM.  Also it might be worthwhile to clear the system caches … hold down the shift key while rebooting to do that.  Then try re-pairing the bluetooth device and see if it is any more successful.


how do i select alternate email address attached to AppleID show outbound FaceTime?

If I understand your situation correctly, you should be able to go to:

Settings > Facetime

...and go down to "Caller ID." This will give you the option of choosing which email address or phone number to display.

EDIT: On an iPhone with iOS 10, that is!


macOS Sierra 10.12.3 iCloud email is STILL in system preferences after signing out

Well after a few hours of continuously searching for what is causing the problem, I finally found it.

Solution: Turns out that I was still somehow connected (Not signed-in) to Game Center inside System Preferences>Internet account. After I deleted that, it finally forgot the Apple ID email.


How to access special keys using a ZAGGmate keyboard with iSSH on the iPad?

I've developed a terminal for iOS (it is not released, is intended as a base for other projects) and I have tried for hours to see any kind of event or modifier when meta keys are used on an external keyboard. The only way to get these events is to use private APIs and if you do that you can't get your app on the store. I have filed an issue (Apple rdar 10283552) and hopefully this will change in a future release.

So the problem is not your keyboard, it is iOS. I think you have found the best solution with key chords, unless you want to use one of the better apps like Prompt, which gives you "soft" meta keys on the screen - but the whole point is to keep your hands on the external keyboard, I know.

I don't know for sure if Prompt keeps those meta keys visible when a BT keyboard is connected - it can be done in code - if it did maybe soft metas would be better than nothing.


Here is a custom Russian PC layout you can download which has the ë where you expect it, even though you are using an ANSI keyboard instead of an ISO one.

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/46870715/k/RussianPC2.keylayout


How to turn off click-to-rename feature in Finder

I don't know how to turn this off, but one way to deal with this is by tweaking the speed (i.e., duration) for double click and making it slower (i.e., longer duration) than what you currently have so that a single click does not quickly result in a rename action. The faster the double click setting, the more the likelihood of the rename action being triggered quickly.

You would have to experiment a bit to find the optimal double click duration while trying to not make it too slow for your use. You can set the double click duration by going to System Preferences > Mouse and adjusting the Double-Click slider.

On 10.9 the Double-Click options for Mouse and a trackpad have moved to the System Preferences > Accessibility  > Mouse & Trackpad.


How to turn on voice dictation in Yosemite using a voice command?

Apple says:

Enable Dictation Commands

Before you can tell your Mac what you want it to do, you need to turn on Dictation Commands.

  When you enable advanced commands, you can also create your own
  commands by clicking the Add Command (+) button. This lets you link a
  spoken phrase to an app, a menu item, a keyboard shortcut, or an
  Automator workflow.


Swap first and last name fields in a contact record

Not really. You could change the sort order and display order of the contacts in Settings > Mail, Contacts, Calendars under the Contacts section to give the appearance that the contacts are in that right order, though.


Songs from iPhone won't transfer to iTunes on my PC

You can't transfer music from iPhone to iTunes. You can only transfer music iTunes to iPhone. This is to prevent music from being pirated easily.

If you purchased the music directly from iTunes, all you need to do is make certain that you have iTunes signed on to the same Apple ID and download your purchases directly. You won't be charged if you already purchased via your iPhone. In iTunes go to Store > Check for available downloads.


Setting GUI Visible Environment Variables with OS Catalina

Run launchctl setenv FOO BAR in Terminal.app, then quit (Cmd-Q) and restart Terminal.


How to find "file-release" in OS X El Capitan 10.11.6?

The file(s) /etc/*release contain OS specific informations like distribution name and version mainly in Linux distributions.

One of the purpose of the file(s) is to help software to detect the distribution type.

A file which contains similar informations doesn't really exist in OS X/macOS but can be mimicked with the following shell script:

#!/bin/sh

OS=`uname -s`
REV=`uname -r`
MACH=`uname -m`
if [ "${OS}" = "Darwin" ]; then
    OIFS="$IFS"
    IFS=$'\n'
    set `sw_vers` > /dev/null
    DIST=`echo $1 | tr "\n" ' ' | sed 's/ProductName:[ ]*//'`
    VERSION=`echo $2 | tr "\n" ' ' | sed 's/ProductVersion:[ ]*//'`
    BUILD=`echo $3 | tr "\n" ' ' | sed 's/BuildVersion:[ ]*//'`
    OSSTR="${OS} ${DIST} ${REV}(SORRY_NO_PSEUDONAME ${BUILD} ${MACH})"
    IFS="$OIFS"
fi
echo ${OSSTR}

Executing the script in my system will yield:

Darwin Mac OS X 13.4.0(SORRY_NO_PSEUDONAME 13F1911 x86_64)

In OS X/macOS the file is not needed because the requirements of a software package are determined by other means:

Info.plist in an installer app (e.g. Install macOS Sierra.app requires LSArchitecturePriority=x86_64 or LSMinimumSystemVersion=10.7)
preflight scripts in an installer packages which use sw_vers or similar commands to determine the OS version.


Compatibility of Mid 2011 MacBook Air 13" Parts

Serial No: C02GRGLVDJWT
Apple MacBook Air i5 1.7 13" (Mid-2011)
Part No: MC965LL/A
Model Identifier: MacBookAir4,2
Model No: A1369

Apple MacBook Air i7 2.0 13" (Mid-2012)
Part No: MD232LL/A
Model Identifier: MacBookAir5,2
Model No: A1466

Between these 2 machines, casing parts are NOT interchangeable


How to get Quartz Composer working on macOS High Sierra?

Download the latest (its still old) graphics tools here:
https://developer.apple.com/download/more/

The DMG for XCode 7.2 contains a version of Quartz Composer that runs on High Sierra.


Invisible folder after usage of trash-cli

As you have seen by running ls and rm (and viewing in Finder), the /Users/admin/anaconda folder and its contents are no longer present in the filesystem.

locate uses a database that is updated approximately once a week in OS X, so deleting a file/folder and immediately (or even later that day or week) using locate will not reflect its removal.

You can manually update the locate database by running this command:

sudo /usr/libexec/locate.updatedb

See the locate.updatedb(8) man page for further information.


What is really meant by "Invalid B-tree node size"? How to solve it without expensive 3rd party softwares?

It basically means the file can't be looked in the B-Tree. A more in-depth explanation can be found at https://www.easeus.com/mac-file-recovery/invalid-b-tree-node-size.html
Option 1 - Disk Utility
It's an inbuilt disk repair utility that repairs most commonly seen hard drive problems.

Choose Apple menu, click Restart.
Press and hold the Command and R keys until the Apple logo appears and then release the keys.
Click Disk Utility and click Continue.
In the sidebar, select the disk with invalid b-tree node size and you want to repair, click the First Aid button.
Click Run.

If Disk Utility can't repair your disk, run it again. Or else, move on the next solutions.
Option 2 - Fsck command
The fsck command is used to repair disk and file system problems on your Mac.

Start your Mac in single-user mode. Restart it, and then press and hold the Command+S keys while it boots.
Type the command /sbin/fsck -fy into the terminal and press Enter to start a file system check.
When the fsck command has your disk checked and repaired, type reboot and press Enter. Your Mac will reboot and return to the usual login screen.

Option 3 - Reformat
Take the Mac hard drive reformatting as the last step, because this formatting process will erase all data on the drive completely. Make sure you've backed up your hard drive with Time Machine.

Launch Disk Utility. Click the icon for your external hard drive in the sidebar on the left.
Click the Erase tab along the top of the window.
From the Volume Format menu, choose Mac OS Extended (Journaled).
Enter a name for the external hard drive in the Name field.
Click the Erase button.

Disclaimer This answer is originally from https://www.easeus.com/mac-file-recovery/invalid-b-tree-node-size.html and was helpful for me when i had the same issue.


You are nearing the expected cycle count for a battery. According to Apple, your model of MacBook Pro is expected to last for 1000 cycles. You could try swapping the MagSafe charger, but I suspect that the battery is ready to be replaced.

Apple Support - Determining battery cycle count