Can I delete photos from iPhoto and delete originals that aren't in the iPhoto folder?

iPhoto has an internal file storage system where it saves all the photos for the events, albums etc.

You notice this, when you select an event and click "Show in folder". Then you see the whole folder with all the pictures in it.

You should treat events or albums as your folders. You can give them custom names and everything.

What I have done is:

Import all photos to iPhoto
Delete original files
Just work with iPhoto (when I want to see the photos in a folder structure, I can choose "Show in folder".

Note: I have heard that you can have an external file storage for your photos with Apperture. This is iPhoto with more functionality for 200 USD, in case you do a lot of work with iPhoto this might be interesting.


How to make Smart folder like physical folder with the combined contents of two folders

You could use launchd.

launchd lets you manage daemons and agents according to certain conditions.

What are daemons and agents?

From man launchd:

  A "daemon" is, by definition, a system-wide service of which there is
  one instance for all clients. An
       "agent" is a service that runs on a per-user basis. Daemons should not attempt to display UI or interact directly with a user's
       login session. Any and all work that involves interacting with a user should be done through agents.

From http://developer.apple.com/library/mac/#technotes/tn2083/_index.html:

  Daemons and agents, collectively known as background programs, are
  programs that operate without any graphical user interface. As a
  developer, you can use background programs to perform actions without
  user interaction, and also to manage a shared state between multiple
  other programs.

  The difference between an agent and a daemon is that an agent can
  display GUI if it wants to, while a daemon can't. The difference
  between an agent and a regular application is that an agent typically
  displays no GUI (or a very limited GUI).

The daemon/agent is described in an XML file with extension plist. One of the conditions that can be monitored is changes in a folder. This will come in handy.

OK, let's get our hands dirty:

Let's say these are the 2 folders where you and your friend keep your files:

/tmp/folderstuart
/tmp/folderstuartsfriend

and this is the common folder for the application:

/tmp/folder

We want to monitor the two paths above and synchronize their contents with /tmp/folder.

This is the plist that does what we need:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN" "http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd">
<plist version="1.0">
<dict>
    <key>Label</key>
    <string>notesfoldersync</string>
    <key>ProgramArguments</key>
    <array>
        <string>/usr/bin/rsync</string>
        <string>-aE</string>
        <string>--delete</string>
        <string>--exclude='.*'</string>
        <string>/tmp/folderstuart/</string>
        <string>/tmp/folderstuartsfriend/</string>
        <string>/tmp/folder</string>
    </array>
    <key>WatchPaths</key>
    <array>
        <string>/tmp/folderstuart</string>
        <string>/tmp/folderstuartsfriend</string>
    </array>
    <key>ThrottleInterval</key>
        <integer>10</integer>
</dict>
</plist>

The plist monitors the two folders with key WatchPaths (see http://developer.apple.com/library/mac/#documentation/MacOSX/Conceptual/BPSystemStartup/Chapters/CreatingLaunchdJobs.html#//apple_ref/doc/uid/10000172i-SW7-SW8).

I suggest the program rsync for synchronizing folders. Option --delete ensures that files deleted in the monitored folders are also deleted in /tmp/folder. Other options are -aE to copy standard and extended HFS+ attributes, and --exclude='.*' to skip .localized, .DS_Store and other hidden files.

I added ThrottleInterval in case you want to set the minimum interval a job can be spawned. Default value is 10 s, that is, jobs will not be spawned more than once every 10 seconds.

Save the plist (see man launchd for a list of possible paths) as:

 /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/notesfoldersync.plist

Create:

/tmp/folderstuart
/tmp/folderstuartsfriend
/tmp/folder

and load (that is, enable) the plist:

sudo launchctl load /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/notesfoldersync.plist

Now create a file in /tmp/folderstuart:

touch /tmp/folderstuart/file.txt

and watch the magic happen: file.txt will be created within seconds in /tmp/folder. Delete it and it will disappear from /tmp/folder. It will also synchronize files created or deleted in /tmp/folderstuartsfriend.

Notice that this solution doesn't handle name collisions! If you can't ensure that files will be named differently substitute rsync with a script that rsyncs and does file name checking to avoid data loss.

If copying files is not an option, substitute rsync with a script that creates hardlinks (if both files are in the same filesystem I'd recommend hardlinks instead of symlinks). Before changing the plist unload it:

sudo launchctl unload /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/notesfoldersync.plist

When you're done, load it again.


Better way of using the iPhone with a Bluetooth speaker

I figured out my own answer, so hopefully this helps whomever runs into this problem.

Bring up Siri by holding down the Home button.  It will come up and on the bottom left you'll see Audio source indicator, pictured below (and highlighted in yellow).

As you can see, it has a grey background.  Tap on it and you'll get a menu of audio sources (typically your phone and the Bluetooth device).  Select your phone.  The icon will get a white background indicate that you successfully changed the audio source.

Now switch back to your Text Messaging application and the tap the microphone button on the keyboard and it will now use the phone microphone instead of the one on the Bluetooth device.


Excel 2011 crashes when I work on a large Excel file

According to this Excel Specifications, it is not the file size, and it is only limited by available memory.

I would suggest you run the Error check in Excel, to find out the errors in you spread sheet that might be causing the lock up.


How to delete MacPorts user after using the Migration Assistant

$  dscl . list /Users | grep -v '^_'
daemon
Guest
macports <--------------------------------------------- remove?
mixelpix
nobody
root

$  /usr/bin/dscl . -search /Users name macports
macports        dsAttrTypeNative:name = (
    macports <----------------------------------------- confirm...
)

$  sudo /usr/bin/dscl . -delete "/Users/macports" <---- DELETE
Password:

$  dscl . list /Users | grep -v '^_' <----------------- GONE!
daemon
Guest
mixelpix
nobody
root

Also useful: sudo ls /var/db/dslocal/nodes/Default/users

Similarly, to delete the group "macports" use:

sudo /usr/bin/dscl . -delete "/Groups/macports"


How can I rebind Caps lock to delete/backspace?

You may want to try Seil (formerly PCKeyboardHack).
I use it to bind Caps Lock to Right-Ctrl (not plain Ctrl), so that I can bind Caps Lock to Meta in Emacs (while Ctrl remains Ctrl, and other keys are kept to the usual behavior).


Are all Snow Leopard apps resume-enabled when run in Lion?

Yes, safari restores tabs/windows, Preview.app does the same with last viewed documents, Xcode 4.1 does that too.

I think all Apple apps support resume. Not sure what should be done for 3rd party applications to support this.


iTunes: Can I show all of my podcasts in one view, so that I can sort by date?

Make a Smart Folder with "Media Kind is Podcast".
Add a column (CTRL+click on column headers) for "Release Date".
Sort.


Outlook 2016 - show sent messages in conversation list on the left

I have the same problem in Outlook 2011 for Mac; I think this configuration is not possible.

As shown in the following links from the MS documentation, it looks like the option exists for the Windows version, but it is not available in the Mac OS X version. As you alluded to, (your own) sent messages appear in in "reading pane" but do not render in the message list.

One workaround is to automatically BCC yourself on everything. Enable this by Outlook menu -> Preferences... -> Email section -> Composing -> Format and account section -> enable "When sending messages, automatically BCC myself." This will have the effect of putting a copy of messages you send into your Inbox, so they will render in the conversation view/pane. I'm not sure if this will result in duplicate messages rendering in the "reading pane" for conversations. I'm personally not willing to do this, but it should/does work.

Until or unless...

I'm missing something, or
I learn some fancy keyboard shortcut or other UI trick, or
Give up my convictions and BCC myself on everything (which does render properly),

this interface (and its inconsistency) is unusable. Back to Apple Mail for me.


Abnt2 keyboard does not work on macbook pro 13 Early 2015

I just got a new keyboard and it works.
So the problem was my multilaser keyboard that apparently has some issues with apple :/


Whole drive gets wiped when attempting to re-format as NTFS for Windows

At the point where you received the error message, you should have seen a partition labeled BOOTCAMP. You need to select this partition and click on the Format button. The label BOOTCAMP will disappear. Next, you select the partition that was labeled BOOTCAMP and proceed with the installation of Windows.

The Boot Camp Assistant cannot NTFS format a partition. So, instead the partition is formatted FAT32 with the label BOOTCAMP. You have to click on the Format button to reformat the partition as NTFS. This will erase the BOOTCAMP label. Later, when the Windows Support Software from Apple executes, the NTFS-formatted partition will be renamed back to BOOTCAMP.


List contents and extract individual files from password protected archive file

Software recommendations are really off-topic for SE, as they go out of date rapidly, but, until such time as the question is put on hold...

Better Zip - $20 - can extract or add individual items, or
Zipster - £10 - makes archives look & act like folders, work in progress so not all formats yet but looks like it will be good


Clone APFS Time Machine volume to 2nd hard drive (Big Sur)

I'm running 11.2.2 with a Time Machine partition on an external SSD. When I try to use the Time Machine partition as a source in Carbon Copy Cloner (v5.125), this is what I get:
"Copying to or from a Time Machine backup volume is not supported."
In the past, I've used Carbon Copy Cloner to successfully clone Time Machine backups (which is what I believe you want), but the combination of Big Sur and APFS have made that seemingly impossible, for now.


In Safari, there is a lag for the Open Location and New Tab shortcuts.

Launch "Console" and have it running side by side with Safari. See if entries about "IMKServer" appear when the delay happens:
If you see similar entries try following below: https://gist.github.com/wkrsz/3d5ff7f908a180b87498
Steps from the article:

Reboot into system restore mode (+R immediately after boot)
Navigate to Utilities > Terminal
Enter the command csrutil disable
Reboot
Open Terminal
defaults write -g ApplePressAndHoldEnabled -bool false && launchctl remove $(launchctl list | grep -oE 'com.apple.PressAndHold.+$')
sudo chmod 000 /System/Library/Input\ Methods/PressAndHold.app/Contents/MacOS/PressAndHold
Reboot
You can choose reboot back into restore mode and issue crsutil enable again to re-enable rootless mode.

It's originally from Github user squeeb: https://gist.github.com/squeeb/5a9dd082cae1b2d753a0 – I just forked the article to fix a typo in one command.


Keyboard and trackpad not working, SMC reset seems possible

There's a very simple way to see if this is a software or hardware problem.  Power on your machine and hold down Command-V.  This is the shortcut for verbose boot.  If the keyboard works at boot, but not at a login window, its software.  If you cannot perform startup commands properly, it is a hardware issue, as no software is loaded this early in the startup sequence.

If it ends up being hardware, possibly a poor cable connections has caused it since the machine was opened recently.


Order an non-standard keyboard layout on new MacBook

As far as I know the only way to do this is to contact an Apple retail store directly yourself and ask if they can do a special order for you.  No guarantees, but I have heard that it works for things like Arabic in the US.

http://www.apple.com/retail/


How did I end up with two iPad apps called Apple Store?

TL;DR: keep the one that looks like a bag, it now a universal app. The cart one was the iPad specific one.

Looks like the one of the left (with the shopping cart icon) is the old one. Launching it now directs me to the new one, but it didn't when I was trying to figure this out before. Here's what I get when launching the old one now.

EDIT-20140917: It appears that Apple may have had a separate iPad app that they have since deprecated and made their iPhone/iPod Touch app a universal app and that's why this app is now defunct.


How to insert a Word (or cvs) document or Video file to a Word document with AppleScript?

The closest I have gotten is by adding, not the file, but a link to the file, like so:

tell application "Microsoft Word"
    tell active document
        set ContTemp to content of text object
        set StartRange to (count of ContTemp) - 1
        set endrange to StartRange
        set theRange to create range start StartRange end endrange
        make new hyperlink object at end with properties {text to display:CommentText, hyperlink address:FilePath, text object:theRange}
    end tell
end tell


Hack to hide TeamViewer dock icon, issue with restarting app

I solved the problem by running the following command in Terminal after killing the previous TeamViewer instance:

sudo launchctl load /Library/LaunchDaemons/com.teamviewer.teamviewer_service.plist

Next, I launch TeamViewer as usual. It shows up in the menu bar, as expected.

For those unfamiliar or uncomfortable with Terminal, the following AppleScript could be used, assuming TeamViewer is installed in /Applications:

do shell script "launchctl load /Library/LaunchDaemons/com.teamviewer.teamviewer_service.plist" with administrator privileges
do shell script "open /Applications/TeamViewer.app"


Truth is you should have a local DNS Server that you share out using DHCP to all your clients.  This way you can manage local DNS records on your local network.  I will confess there might be a better way, but this is what came to mind off the top of my head


How to avoid getting 'Missing File' error in Photos app?

It depends whether the file was actually duplicated...
From Photos prefs

If you have that pref set, then the original becomes redundant once imported, as Photos now refers to its saved internal copy as the 'original'.
If unchecked, then the original remains where it was on your drive & if deleted can no longer be found by Photos [or indeed anything else, as it really no longer exists.]
If that option hasn't always been checked, then some files will still be externally referenced & need to be copied to the Library before they can be finally discarded from their original locations.
The way to achieve this will be to initially return all those files you discarded to the locations Photos expects them to be.
The you can use File Menu > Consolidate, which will copy all those external references into the Photos Library.
Once this is complete, then you can finally discard the external files safely.


In my situation, setting server-side in ipsec.conf:

 leftsendcert=always

solved the problem.

From ipsec.conf documentation:

  left|rightsendcert = never | no | ifasked | always | yes

  Accepted values are never or no, always or yes, and ifasked, the
  latter meaning that  the peer must send a certificate request (CR)
  payload in order to get a certificate in return.

Moreover, I had to add to the Keychain the root certificate and trust it in order to validate the certificate sent by the server and I read that if you have intermediate certificates you have to trust them too.


Popup screen becomes full screen when application is full screen

I found that I was using jdk8u152 which caused the issue. After I rollback to jdk8u151, the problem doesn't exist anymore.


Mac stuck on "The wine configuration in /user/... is being updated"

Found this question on Super User:

https://superuser.com/questions/1318059/wineboot-hangs-and-does-not-complete

According to the answer it is a known bug with the Homebrew version:

https://github.com/Homebrew/homebrew-core/issues/26384

The workaround is to use the official version:

https://dl.winehq.org/wine-builds/macosx/download.html


Macbook pro 13 inch 2017 W/ touch bar - battery drain during sleep

If you open Activity Monitor there is an Energy tab that will display what is consuming the most energy. One of the columns is "Preventing Sleep", which will allow you to see if any apps are preventing your Mac from sleeping. It could be that it isn't sleeping when you think it is.

If you leave Activity Monitor open for a while it will gather data and you can look through and see what the biggest culprits are for energy usage. You could have a program that hangs and uses more power than it's supposed to.


My Macbook Pro WiFi is getting slower unless I reboot

I only address uninstalling Jack Audio.

You can uninstall Jack by looking here: http://www.jackosx.com/Documentation.pdf

Uninstalling Jack OS X
To uninstall Jack OS X, double click the “Uninstall JackOSX” file located in the Jack
folder, in your main Applications folder. A Terminal window will be displayed, and it will
prompt you for your Mac’s Administrator password. Type it, press Return, and all
components of Jack OS X will be removed from your system. Please note that when
typing your password into the Terminal window, it will not seem as though your
password is being acknowledged; this is not the case – just keep typing and press
Return, and it will work.
If you’d like to uninstall a previous version of Jack OS X, this is done automatically for
you when installing the new version.


Other physical remote options for a Mac (not an iPhone or iPad)

Eventually, I answered my own question.  For the sake of hopefully helping anyone else who may be wondering the same thing, here's my answer:

I asked: "Is there any other remote that would work with a Mac other than Apple's remote, in order to get more buttons to reassign?"  The answer is yes!  It's possible to use two Apple remotes, assigning different functions for each, and it's possible to use a universal remote with a Mac, assigning any functions you'd like to any buttons you'd like.

I found two options for doing this.

There's a usb receiver called Flirc that learns remote buttons for just about any remote and then assign actions or hotkeys.  And, there's an App called Remote Buddy which allows you to use more than one Apple remote and/or various other remotes.  I can't say how well it works since I opted for Flirc.

Basically, I have two Apple remotes - an old white one and a silver one.  I wanted to use the white one to control my Philips Hue lights via Applescripts I wrote, and I wanted the silver remote to control iTunes and system volume.  Using Flirc (and the free BetterTocuhTool app), this was astonishingly simple to set up.  Once I realized how flexible Flirc is, I also recorded functions for my universal remote.  I've only had Flirc for a few days, but I'm really thrilled with it.


Fresh macOS install: Console.app displays errors/faults. Is that to be expected?

Yes. These errors are expected and normal.
A fault where the code is trying to connect to iCloud when you have it disabled is perfectly expected, normal, routine. Even things that sound scary or ominous are actually internal code points and have no bearing with the functionality.
I would say, absolutely look at the console before you have a problem so  you won't worry so much when you have a specific problem with a specific application or function and then bring that observation with that specific log message to the table in a new question and see if the general advice bears out or if it's indeed something you could learn / fix.

Specifically, in a 10.X.0 initial release, you might expect to see far more of these messages as the new code is still being tested and proved in real life and once the system becomes stable, these debug and support errors are changed to be optional or lower priority. What the developer thinks might be a rare "error" might turn out to happen thousands of times in reality and not be so important to log and certainly not classify as "error"
Here are the counts of errors and faults on my 100% perfectly working, no issues MacBook:
$ log stats
size:               589,735,560 bytes
                    2,484,914,791 bytes (uncompressed)
start:              Sun Sep 10 23:27:15 2017
end:                Wed Oct 11 11:03:43 2017
statedump:          6,902

events:             [       total        log      trace   signpost ]
                    [  36,978,153 33,189,182     18,493    623,275 ]

activity:           [      create transition     action ]
                    [   3,139,162          0         83 ]

log messages:       [     default       info      debug      error      fault ]
                    [  33,127,303    437,500        303    245,043     20,801 ]

ttl:                [        1day      3days      7days     14days     30days ]
                    [     623,309 31,524,041    885,274    405,568    399,660 ]

Less than 1% errors and far, far less faults. The sandbox issues a lot of messages when it prevents apps from reading and writing outside their claimed space and that's a good thing IMO.
One very interesting beta tool is Woodpile from Howard Oakley - it seeks to analyze the volume and pattern of messages to help figure out when/if a problem started or ended and might be a very useful tool for people interested in watching their logs.

https://eclecticlightdotcom.files.wordpress.com/2017/11/woodpile10b5.zip
https://eclecticlight.co/downloads/


You can reinstall macOS by booting with commandR on boot up. Then press 'Reinstall macOS' and follow the instructions.
See this Apple support article for more information: https://support.apple.com/T204904


How to install apps in App Store with a new Apple ID that was already signed in in my new iPad?

That is normal. Your Apple ID is different from the ID you use to sign in to your iPad. It will always ask for your Apple ID password before a new purchase to make sure that someone else is not purchasing from your account.

If you forgot your Apple ID password, you can reset it at: https://iforgot.apple.com/

Your can change it so that it will not ask you again if you made a purchase within 15 minutes: go to Settings, then 'iTunes & App Store' and then select 'Require After 15 Minutes'.


What are the folders in OS X that I should know about?

I’m going to resume them by memory, so future edits will probably fix all the mess I might type now. :)

The file structure of OS X resembles a typical Unix/Linux operating system (which in fact is the root of it all), albeit with some “Apple” differences. Some of those differences have aliases to keep the “unix” heart happy, but some are simply modified to be used as such.

In short here are the major “folders” in your file system:

/Applications : This one is self explanatory, all your Mac’s apps should go there (unless you have an app that you want to be visible for only one user…). Normal users can read, “admins” can also drop things in there.
/Developer : if you install Xcode and the developer libraries, this folder will magically bring the unicorns for developing awesome Cocoa apps, iOS apps and dashboard widgets among other things. Otherwise the folder doesn’t even exist.
/Library : Shared libraries, and files necessary for OS X to actually function. Preferences, settings, app stuff, browser plug-ins (or more specifically, how to get rid of Adobe’s Flash) ;) You usually don’t tamper around here, but it’s normal if you want to clear some Apps settings, fix something, remove or install browser plugins, extensions, etc. Sometimes you will venture into /Library. Handle with care and always backup before breaking stuff here. It would be hard to destroy an OS X install by tampering /Library, but it’s possible…
/Network : All network libraries, servers, devices, etc. You shouldn’t be here unless you know what you’re doing and want to bypass GUI utilities. In almost 7 years of OS X, I’ve never touched this directory.
/System : Everything that OS X needs to properly function is here. I’d say that you shouldn’t touch anything or problems will arise.
/Users : This is the equivalent to Unix and Linux's /home directory. And here you will have sub directories for each of your users: /Users/John, /Users/Doe, etc. Inside your home folder you will have a “similar” structure. See later for more /Users’ love.
/Volumes: Mounted stuff/devices and volumes, real or virtual (think of CDs, DMGs, samba shares, etc), get their own “directory” here. So if you mount a smb share called MyShare, you can ‘cd /Volumes/MyShare’ to access it from the Command Line. The Finder will happily hide this from you (unless you set it to show invisible files I think).
/bin : What else can be said about bin that you don’t know already from your Linux knowledge. Same thing. If you install ‘git’ for example, it will go to /usr/local/git… so you get the idea. Obviously all the essential common binaries are here too. Think the command ‘ls’… it’s there, in all its glory.
/etc : Oh the great “etcetera”… Just like any other Unix, local system configs and… etcetera. It’s “similar” to any other unix, with some Apples. But the purpose is the same and some of the files (rc.local for example) exist. Go ahead and take a look, but if you break it, you have to pay for it. (OS X uses ‘launchd’ to launch stuff, so google for that if you want to -for example- start a subversion daemon at startup, forget all you knew about runlevels). Otherwise, get insurance between tweaking too much in there, because it’s not covered by Apple Stack’s Exchange damaging policy ;)
/dev : honoring it’s “unix” background, the device files representing peripherals are here. Who touches this anyway…
/usr : I googled for a good description of this and came up with a clever one:

  "Second major hierarchy, includes
  subdirectories that contain
  information, configuration files, and
  other essentials used by the operating
  system”

/sbin : Also coming from the Unix nature of OS X, the system binaries, and administration utilities. These are not the droids you’re looking for, move along, move along.
/tmp : The one and only temp directory! Batteries not included. Note that this is not the “trash”. This is the real Unix temp. Unless you like being around waste, you shouldn’t have to wander around there. Cron jobs will keep it clean (tho it doesn’t hurt to restart your OS X every now and then).
/var : Var is for variable data. Logs, and stuff that will “vary” during the operating system operation. You rarely walk through these rapidly changing places, but sometimes you have to hunt for logs or errors. Bring and umbrella there, it changes very often…

Ok and what’s with this /Users thing?

The Users folder contains your ‘home’. You have easy to identify folders (i.e.: if you can’t identify what Music, Documents, Movies, Downloads, Desktop and Pictures are for, then the problem might lie elsewhere), but at the same time, there are notable “duplicates”. What? Yes. You have a Library and an Applications folder here too!

I believe you’re already guessing what is all this about. Yes, all application settings that are for the user only will go in here (to ~/Library). That means that, although OS X will first look at /Library, if you install a (for example) browser plug-in in your ~/Library (instead of /Library), it will be found, but only by you. My ~/Applications folder is barely empty, it contains some Steam (games) in there, apparently they go there and not /Applications. (I just checked, i didn’t know that, so go figure how often I use my home’s App folder).

update: Apparently this Application folder in your home directory doesn’t exist by default, but you can always create it and drop applications you want to keep for yourself. If you have no permissions to install stuff in /Applications, you can always use a private copy of an app in your ~/Applications folder.

Things not mentioned above that you might have

/opt : (tional). As its name implies, it’s sometimes used by daemons as a place to store suff (but it’s usually optional, so you can put those things elsewhere). I remember that when running Subversion daemons, I had that directory and the repos would go to /opt/svn/repositories, but that was just me… never trust me.
/private : The best way to understand why we have this strange directory here, is to simply go ahead and read it from an expert (or read it directly from the question in Apple SE.):

…and I quote:

  "AIUI it's a holdover from NextStep
  (which OS X is based on), and NextStep
  did it to support NetBooting. The idea
  was that you could boot from a
  network-hosted volume (probably
  read-only, and certainly shared with
  other computers), and early in the
  boot process mount a local (writable)
  volume on /private; as g mentioned,
  this allowed runtime-modification of
  /var and /tmp, as well as per-computer
  settings in /etc.

  This isn't needed anymore, as Apple's
  current NetBoot system uses a shadow
  disk image to store changes anywhere
  on the boot volume. But some
  programs/docs/etc now assume the files
  live under /private, so it'd be too
  much trouble to switch them back…”

So there it is, this is more or less the OS X’s file hierarchy. Don’t drink and drive around it, it’s more fragile than what it looks.


How to configure a proxy in a new network location using Terminal.app

Found this networksetup manual. To do this, you just need to write

networksetup -setwebproxy "Service name (e.g. Wi-Fi)" proxy.server.com port


MacPorts Software clean-up: /opt/local/var/macports/software

Yes all the files in that folder located with in ${prefix}/var/macports/software/ can be deleted. Those are the installer packages for programs that you installed using MacPorts. MacPorts will re-download those as necessary when running the install or presumably the upgrade command too for a given program ,etc.
The descripton of the purpose of the directory ... is noted in MacPorts Guide under Binary Archives.

3.4.1. Binary Archives
Binary archives can only be used on a target system running MacPorts. Binary archives allow MacPorts utilities to begin installation after the destroot phase and install and activate a port on the target system. Binary archives are created whenever a port is installed, and can also be downloaded from a server.
...
Binary archive files are placed in ${prefix}/var/macports/software/. The archive file type is set in the macports.conf file. The default format is .tbz2; other options are: tar, tbz, tbz2, tgz, tlz, txz, xar, zip, cpgz, cpio.


Any way to have iPhone microphone only active if sound level is above a certain threshold?

You're describing VOX (Voice Activated Transmit), which iOS does not have as a feature.

Unfortunately there's no way to get this ability for calls.


In the ~/.ssh/config, add these lines:

Host *
    UseKeychain yes
    # automatically add keys to keychain
    AddKeysToAgent yes

UseKeychain yes will use any saved ssh keys in the Mac Keychain.

AddKeysToAgent yes will automatically save ssh keys in the Mac Keychain after the first time you enter the passphrase. If you don't add this, you can use ssh-add -K to manually add keys to the keychain also.

Note: These options were added since macOS 10.12.2

https://developer.apple.com/library/archive/technotes/tn2449/_index.html


Securing Lion user account directories from admin access

Administrators don't have ready access to files in other users home directories. Browsing your files would require extraordinary (though admittedly not technically complex) measures and malicious intent.

I'm betting that most Apple store repair techs are a little too busy, and a little too fond of their jobs, to waste a lot of time unlocking and browsing through personal files. There's an old mail server admin adage about being able to read everyone's mail—and not caring. As a consultant I'm "inside" client computers all the time—seeing as little as I possibly can—and I have to tell you, most people's stuff is pretty boring.

I do protect truly confidential data, financial information, CC info, personal photos, inside secure containers such as encrypted disk images, Password Wallet, etc. (In my case this is all in addition to the Filevault 2 protected startup disk.) Having protected the good stuff, I don't lose a lot of sleep about bored repair techs, or interlopers who gain access to my computer, viewing the rest. Your own practice must suit your own position of comfort on the security<>usability continuum, but with a little thought you can get there using the tools the system provides.


How do I set the home page for Safari on the iPad2?

There is no concept of HomePage in Safari for iPad. Sorry

You can go to your favorite website, use the "arrow" icon and press the "On home screen" button, that will create an icon on your homescreen which will launch that webpage in safari when you press it.


My dock disappeared in Lion and won't come back unless I turn off autohide. How do I get it back?

Try setting the dock (with auto-hide) to the left or right side of the screen.  If either of those work, it would seem that you may have a screen resolution setting that's keeping the dock off-screen.

Perhaps try changing your resolution, or bouncing it from one to another.

If none of that helps, you can try deleting the dock preferences (returning it to its default state) and restarting the dock.app

Navigate to (or just spotlight to): ~/Library/Preferences
Delete (or just move them to your desktop) com.apple.dock.plist and com.apple.dock.db
Open up the terminal and enter the command: killall Dock (if you don't like terminal and killing, you could log out and in again as well)

This will force the dock to make new preference files.


Mac Book Pro 3,1 uneven startup behavior - sometimes start between 5min to 30min after pushing power button

Once you've gotten your backup - get into Disk Utility and try to repair the disk / consider an erase install. It will likely fail (unless the delay was caused by a very unlikely file system corruption or startup conflict).

Dropping a clean install - only the OS will let you know right away if the Hard Drive (HDD) can take new data or if other hardware issues are causing the half hour delay. Something fairly destructive is needed to cause a mac to take that long to successfully boot. Take it to a hardware tech if you have any doubts how to troubleshoot this, but odds are it's storage related.


Great couple of software to install to get a fully functional PiP feature in OSX from a Chrome browser :

install Helium or HeliumLift
install Chrome extension :
Open in Helium (works for Helium & HeliumLift)

Ah... and one last thing : this is free... ;)


How do I know if I have purchased an iphone app already?

On iOS

Load up the App Store. Go to the Updates section, then click on the Purchased listing at the top.

On iTunes

Go to the iTunes Store home screen. At the top right you'll see a list of "Quick Links." Click on the Purchased listing.

Note: Additionally, all listings in iOS will be shown as "install" rather than feature the price, indicating that you have already purchased the app. In iTunes, that is also true, where the price will be replaced by "download."


Speculation: The view button is missing because disk utility defaults changed and now everything is viewable by default.

As for the greyed out partition button, notice that the external drive tab has two levels, a parent and a child. The 'partition' button becomes un-greyed-out again if you click on the parent instead of the child. This seems to be working fine now.


After importing pictures into Aperture how can I find them in Finder?

If you right-click on the package used as Aperture Library, and select "Show Package Contents," Finder will show you the directories contained in the package; inside "Masters" you will find the pictures.
In my case, they are contained in a subdirectory of "Masters."


Connecting iPhone to Windows 10 Computer for USB hotspot

I suggest connecting to your iPhone hotspot over Wi-Fi. The USB connection works like a charm on Macs, but the interaction with non-Apple products can be flaky.

The support document from Apple explains this in detail, see https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204023.

Keep your iPhone displaying the Personal Hotspot page while you try to connect your Windows device over Wi-Fi.

Once you have that working, if you try USB again, be sure you have iTunes running and that you click "Trust" when prompted by your phone and your PC regarding the connection.

Normally there's no performance advantage from using USB vs. Wi-Fi.

Also, be sure your plan allows you to use your phone as a Hot Spot. I have friends with T-Mobile and AT&T plans for whom this silently fails unless they pay an extra $30/month to their wireless provider.


iphone x and lens for camera - should I be worried about scratches

Most surface scratches on any camera lens don’t matter a huge amount due to how light focuses. That being said, you’ll want to not scuff too badly or crack the housing. Apple has had a long time to get the hardness right on the glass and cameras, so I would expect you’d have a low chance of issues - especially if you have a case.

Drops to the body (to the ground from a table / case or not) and internal failure are much more likely to compromise image quality than a physical failure of the lens.

Also note - even without a case, the physica of the metal band surrounding the camera make it very hard to hit the part of the glass where the sensor / light enter. Nothing is going to stop an ice pick or diamond ring that targets “ground zero” on the cover, but most unintentional drops and scrapes should be away from the light path by design.


Best way to delete "SetupAssistantPlugins" on Yosemite?

These aren't third-party plugins, but actually first-party plugins (created by Apple) for third-party services. It is not recommended to delete these, as with anything in the /System directory, however you can if you wish, using Finder or Terminal (authentication will be required).


I'm pretty sure I understand what you are trying to accomplish, but saying "I want to forward a computer to port 22" does not make any sense. You are trying to forward incoming packets addressed for port 22 from your router to your Mac, is what you mean to say (I am assuming). In any event, port forwarding is done in your router's settings, not your Mac's.

You can look up port forwarding steps for your router at http://setuprouter.com/.


How do I configure proxy for my terminal with v2ray?

Taking a quick stab from the documentation:
It does not appear that v2ray will pick up from the environment the http_proxy env var, it needs to be configured via a JSON (or protobuf) file. There's an example client config file here.
You'd save that file somewhere, then run it in your terminal like this:
v2ray --config=/etc/v2ray/config.json (or wherever your config file lives).


It is possible to see search history.

If Safari for iCloud is enabled all enabled devices will be able to see your search history when going into the tabs screen to see what tanks are open. NOTE: This is only recent history. I doubt that 4 years back you will be able to view it.

If you want to turn off search history go to Settings -> [your name] -> iCloud and turn Safari off.


I would like to upgrade my iMac 2017 4K Retina 21.5 inches

You have three questions here, so I'll try to answer in order asked.

Is the iMac still under warranty if internally upgraded (RAM & hard drive)?

It depends on where you live because you may or may not be covered by laws that protect you.  In the US, we have the Magnuson-Moss Warranty Act which allows you to open/service your product without fear of invalidating the warranty.  Specific to your situation,
They cannot "tie in" genuine Apple Parts (i.e. hard drives or memory) to keep the warranty in tact:

(c) Prohibition on conditions for written or implied warranty; waiver by Commission; No warrantor of a consumer product may condition his
written or implied warranty of such product on the consumer’s using,
in connection with such product, any article or service (other than
article or service provided without charge under the terms of the
warranty) which is identified by brand, trade, or corporate name;

However, you need to check your local laws governing repairs to see if you're covered.  Generally speaking however, it's very difficult to impossible to tell if you've opened an iMac (there's no tamper seal).  So technically, they wouldn't know.

Is it possible to do it myself or I need a professional technician?

It depends on your technical skill.  You have to remove the LCD which means literally cutting the adhesive that bonds the LCD to the frame of the iMac.  If this is not something you're comfortable doing, take it in for service.

Could you evaluate the cost of internal upgrade compared to external solution with SSD drive (without RAM)?

It's a moot point.  Plugging in an external SSD is easier and will be cheaper if you need to hire a tech to install the drive internally, but the internal drive will always be faster are more reliable.  Bottom line is the external drive doesn't require special skills to install, so you won't have to pay for it.


Apple Script runs fine, need kill switch

Crossing the user session barrier is non-trivial. Typically a local host only network connection is used, such as TCP/IP or a Mach port. These are complex to set up with AppleScript.
Below are a couple of reasonable alternatives.
File Based Flag
You could use the existence (or lack of) a file to determine how the script behaves:

On launch, script creates an accessible file at a known path:
/Users/Shared/delete-to-stop-power-script.txt

Periodically, or via kqueue, the script can check the file still exists;

On exit, the script should remove the file.

Using files makes dealing with permissions easier. Use chmod 0666 to allow anyone to delete the file.
The access permissions of the file can be used to ensure only specific groups of users can delete the file.
notifyutil
Use the lesser known notifyutil utility:

notifyutil is a command-line utility for interacting with the notify(3)
notification system and the notifyd(8) server.  It may be used to post
notifications, detect and report notifications, and to examine and set
the state values associated with notification keys.

notifyd allows processes to exchange integer values across processes and user sessions. The format is deliberately simple and constrained to enforce security.
See the linked manual page and Brett Terpstra's Quick Tip: system-wide notifications with notifyutil for samples.
Non-polling
If you need a non-polling alternative, Power Manager can trigger scripts on battery levels, offers a power source scripting API, and non-administrator users can be granted rights to cancel or stop events.
I am a software engineer involved with Power Manager, so feel free to ask me technical questions about how it works.


Can I make the same app for iPad which is already lives on AppStore for iPhone?

The answer depends on what you mean by "making the same app for iPad".

If you mean that you're going to take the app (its source code) and make it compatible with both the iPhone and the iPad at the same time - and then publish that on the App Store for both platforms - then yes, you can do that. When you change your Info.plist to indicate that you support both iPhone and iPad as targets and submit your app update, the App Store will automatically list the app for both types of devices.

If you mean that you're going to create a separate app (new project) that will support the iPad only, and you want to publish that under the same name as the iPhone-only app - then no, you cannot do that. You would need to publish that under a different name.


As the gpt command reveals you have two recovery partitions (and a lot of unallocated disk space after partition 4):

partition 3 with a wrong size (1269544 blocks) and a correct partition type (426F6F74-0000-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC)
partition 4 with the correct size (1269536 blocks) and a wrong partition type & visibility

The second Recovery HD (slightly visible below the Macintosh HD in your screenshot) is blocking the expansion of the volume Macintosh HD. The easiest procedure to solve your problem is to boot to Internet Recovery Mode and completely reformat the internal drive and reinstall OS X:

According to this Apple support document your MacBook Pro (Mid 2010)* can be upgraded to use Internet Recovery after applying a firmware upgrade. Since the firmware upgrade was published in 2012 I assume that it was applied already.

So to answer the first part of your first question: After booting to Internet Recovery Mode you may install Mac OS X Lion. In Internet Recovery Mode usually the Mac OS X the Mac originally was shipped with will be installed. For Snow Leopard Macs like your MBP Mid 2010 Mac OS X Lion will be installed.

To initiate the Internet Recovery Mode restart your Mac and press alt cmd R.
The prerequisites for an Internet Recovery are listed here: Recovery/Internet Recovery.
In a few words you need the latest firmware update installed, either ethernet or WLAN (WPA/WPA2) and a router with DHCP activated for a successful internet recovery.
On a 50 Mbps-line it takes about 4 min (presenting a small animated globe) to boot into the Recovery Netboot image which is loaded from an Apple server.

After booting successfully open Disk Utility and repartition your disk to 1 JHFS+ partition with a GUID partition table. Quit Disk Utility and start 'Reinstall OS X'. Depending on your internet connection the reinstall will take some time.

The second part of question 1 as well as the questions 2 and 3 are obsolete after following the above instructions and successfully reinstalling Mac OS X Lion.

*: A MacBook Pro (Late 2010) never was produced/sold, so I assume it's a MacBook Pro (Mid 2010)


Is there a way to get gnome-terminal on Lion?

The easiest way to install Gnome Terminal would be to use MacPorts. Once MacPorts is installed, run sudo port install gnome-terminal.

HomeBrew is a newer alternative to MacPorts that is growing in popularity, but Gnome Terminal isn't available in the base repository yet.


The .DS_Store changes when you alter the directory's view options: align, sort order, view mode... You don't need version control on it. To ignore the changes add .DS_Store in the .gitignore or the global one in ~/.config/git/ignore.


Is password to make purchase from App store on iPad and iPhone encrypted?

According to Apple, "The iTunes Store and Mac App Store uses Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) encryption on all functions that require personal information."

So passwords are sent encrypted, not in cleartext. If the NSA is packet sniffing at your local Starbucks, chances are they know how to get your password (but if they're looking for your App store password, you've got bigger problems), but it should be reasonably safe.


Installing stuff: brew vs. official installer - which one should be used?

There's a similar question here on Ask Different - What are pros and cons for MacPorts, Fink and Homebrew? - that does a comparison of the different package managers.  It's an excellent read and I encourage you to review it.

Should I use Homebrew or the official installer? Why?

The main difference between using Homebrew and using the installer package is the build time dependencies.  Homebrew (and MacPorts) does an excellent job of managing all of this.  However, with the package, there's no build requirements and the software is ready to go.
Uninstalling is hardly an issue anymore.  Homebrew will manage the uninstall process and handle the run time dependencies trimming them if needed.  However, with free apps like AppCleaner, thoroughly removing an app is not an issue.
So, bottom line is it comes down to your workflow.  If you simply need a utility download the package.  If you utilize more than one and there are shared libraries that you want the ability to manage, go with Homebrew.

How can I switch my system from the usage of the /usr/local/bin Node installation to the /usr/local/Cellar one?

You change your path.
Depending on your shell (~/.bash_profile for Bash and ~/.zprofile for Zsh) you merely add the directory of new utility (see ZSH: .zprofile, .zshrc, .zlogin - What goes where? for more info).  To ensure that it gets selected before the other (native) application, you put it first in the path variable.  For example, the default path is (set by path_helper)
/usr/local/bin:/usr/bin:/bin:/usr/sbin:/sbin

In your profile, simply add the line to where your binaries are.  Using your example, to add your path:
PATH=/usr/local/Cellar:$PATH

Your new path will have your Cellar directory prepended to the existing one. Because it's prepended (comes before) your existing path, it will look in that directory first.  See the Homebrew Documentation for full details. I personally use a combination of MacPorts and "official" installers so I use a different directory structure.  YMMV.


How to selectively restore save game data from old iphone backup?

I found the answer with iMazing https://imazing.com .

What I did was copy the entire iTunes backup folder from my USB drive to the iTunes backup folder in my machine.
Then I ran the iMazing App and went to the iOS App (app has to be installed) in the connected phone.
Then I right clicked the iOS App and select extract.
At this point, I selected extract from current backup (which would be the historical backup containing the app data I want to restore) and saved the extract file to my desktop.
Once done, I select "manage apps > restore" from the bottom of the screen and select the file I just extracted.
Phone restarted after restore and it was all restored perfectly!

If you get stuck, they are very responsive on twitter, which is where I got help to do this.


How can I make ctrl+cmd+V keyboard shortcut work again in Terminal

Apparently Clipy uses the same keyboard shortcut for a command. The shortcut can be changed though.
D'oh!


Restore iOS 10 backup to an old iPhone 4s

You can't restore a backup of a newer iOS version to an older iOS version.

However, you can examine the contents of the backup using iBackupBot and then manually restore what you can using iBackupBot's restore mechanism. This won't restore incompatible databases such as your messages, but you can usually restore app data.


I bought "ECC" ram for my MacPro1,1 but system reports only shows FB-DIMM

It's not showing as ECC because it's not ECC.

  According to Wikipedia, most Registered ("Buffered") RAM is also ECC,
  it isn't always the case.

That's not exactly correct.  Registered memory has ECC functionality, but not all ECC is registered.  Kingston goes on to explain the difference in the FAQ:  What is the difference between registered, unbuffered, ECC and fully buffered memory?

Secondly, the memory you specified, the Kingston F51272F51 is not listed anywhere as being ECC.  It is listed as being Fully Buffered, however.

Finally, looking at the "supported systems" for this memory on Kingston's website, Apple is nowhere to be found.  So, while is technically works, it's not "correct."

Unfortunately, what you purchased on eBay was not accurately described.  The actual memory that you need from Kingston is KTD-WS667


What is the difference between Personal VPN vs VPN Configuration profiles?

In short, no. Both are instances of VPN configurations profiles.

By default, the “VPN Configurations” pane should be the only one that exists if you are installing a VPN configuration profile under the natively supported protocols (PPTP, L2TP/IPSEC).

The “Personal VPN” option appears only after installing certain software, such as Unlimited Free VPN by Betternet, which requires that you deploy the configuration profile in the form of a “preference pane profile” rather than deploying it either from the web, say, or through manual configuration. Additionally, the authentication involves a certificate exchange:

Details:

Apparently, it’s an implementation of the Network Extended Framework API:

  The Network Extension framework (NetworkExtension.framework) provides support for configuring and controlling Virtual Private Network (VPN) tunnels. Use this framework to create VPN configurations. You can then start VPN tunnels manually or supply on-demand rules to start the VPN tunnel in response to specific events.

I’m not a developer, but having read the documentation and browsed around a few Stack Overflow discussions on it, it’s basically a plug-in that allows the user to manage an otherwise unsupported VPN protocol (IKEv2), and to do so within the native iOS VPN preference pane.

  Do the two different types have different types of encryption?

At face value, no. If we are comparing the protocols, yes. The encryption depends on the protocol you are using and the VPN provider. With the exception of PPTP, the de-facto standard is 256-bit AES for transfer. IKEv2 supports and implements this.

  Different types of connections?

In this sense, yes.

Sidenote: I use a third party application that supports OpenVPN to connect to my VPN provider (iPhone 6, running iOS 8.3) - as advised by them. The configuration profile appears as expected, under the default "VPN Configurations" pane.

My personal opinion would be to avoid all free VPN services unless you are rolling out your own. I use Private Internet Access, both on OS X and iOS, and highly recommend it.


Can someone describe how to encrypt a message using someone else's PGP public key on an iPad or iPhone?

iPGMail is not just for email and will do what you want.

Its web page, https://ipgmail.com, includes this sentence:

The app supports key generation, public and private key import and
export, and both encryption and decryption of files or email messages.


Keyboard Maestro interfering with control-tab action in browsers - how to disable?

Open Maestro Switcher

All Macros -> Activate Window Swicher

And you can change or remove  it from there. (click at "-" at the bottom)


Using SD Card as external storage for Macbook Pro retina

SD cards are categorized in different classes according to their speed. Generally, SD cards perform even slower than a normal HDD drive which is why I do not recommend using them as a major storage option.

You should invest in the most expensive type of SD to have an acceptable I/O performance. E.g. an Ultra High Speed SD card (UHS) such as this one.

For $179 you get 128GB storage which is even more expensive than some SSDs models at that capacity. But the I/O throughput is much lower. The minimum guarantee is only 60MB/s for this particular model. SSDs in the same prize category offer up to 550MB/s of transfer speeds.

In sum, you're better off using an external SSD an connect it via USB 3.0 or Thunderbolt for best I/O throughput.


MacBook Air Display Color Temperature Changes After Logging In

This is normal.

When macOS is booting it will access your settings and see if you have specified the color temperature. Or enabled Night Shift.

If you have enabled FileVault this change will happen after you are logged in.

I think you need to put Color Temperature on Less Warm instead of in the center. And/Or turn off the Night Shift option.


How do I force OS X to treat a file as a Folder?

I created a folder with two .jpg files in it, and renamed the folder "Today.Playground". As you say, it got associated with Xcode. (Nifty icon!)

So I changed the name to "Today.layground". At first, Finder wouldn't show me what was in it. (That is, I was viewing it in column view, and column to the right showed a preview of a generic folder, instead of listing what was in it.) I clicked on another item and then clicked on the folder again, and Finder properly showed the two .jpg files still inside.

It appears to me that that's all you have to do: look away and then look again.


iMac loading bar gets stuck halfway then reboots

Have you recently changed anything in the hardware?

I had this happen once trying to swap drives between two Macbook Pros. They were different hardware versions (a couple of years apart), and the hard drive from the older Macbook did exactly this when trying to boot in the newer Macbook - the old version of the O/S didn't understand the newer hardware, and would get to a certain point, and then reboot.

After I put the drive back in the original (older) Macbook, I upgraded to the latest version of OS X, and was then able to put the drive into the newer Macbook without issue.

This doesn't sound like what you're doing (you didn't mentioned swapping any hardware), it does sound like you're having an issue with hardware that can't be properly started. So I'd be assuming hardware issue at this point, which hopefully someone can assist you in how to diagnose that.


The feature is still present and you might be able to set it up again as follows according to this Apple Support page:

  For example, if you have a trackpad and used the default settings,
  zoom in by holding down the Control (^) key while you drag two fingers
  up on the trackpad. Zoom out by holding down the Control key while you
  drag two fingers down on the trackpad.

Check System Preferences => Accessibility => Zoom (under Seeing) to make sure that you have Use scroll gesture with modifier keys to zoom enabled.


I'm guessing this might have to do with iTunes in the Cloud.

iTunes has the ability to show you everything that is stored locally, or show you everything you've ever purchased from the iTunes store.

From the VIEW menu click "Show Movies in the Cloud". This will make sure you're seeing everything you own.

Alternatively you might have your iTunes set to only show un-watched movies. Make sure that you're not in the "unwatched" view.

The new Apple TVs have no real internal storage so if you're seeing stuff on the Apple TV it either means it's on your machine or in the cloud.


Not normal. I had the same problem with an iMac a few years back and had to have the logic board replaced (under warranty thankfully).

You might have a SMC (System Management Controller) problem. This article explains how to reset it:
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT3964?viewlocale=en_US&locale=en_US

You might also look at a tool like iStat Menus:
http://bjango.com/mac/istatmenus/

What I found with iStat was that my CPU was running extra hot, hence the extra fan speed.

I did end up using an app called SMC Fan Control to mitigate the problem before getting the logic board replaced.


Okay I think I've figured it out. This was the recipe that worked:

Delete the Files

Reboot into recovery mode
Open the Terminal from the "Utilities" menu
csrutil disable as suggested by da4 (thanks!)
Reboot
mount -uw / i.e. mount the filesystem as writable
sudo rm -r "/System/Library/Desktop Pictures"/*

Restore System Integrity Protection

Reboot into recovery mode again
Open the Terminal from the "Utilities" menu
csrutil enable
Reboot


Once you send an iMessage, if it is completely sent, it will be held indefinitely by Apple (not sure how long indefinitely is) until it is received by the other party. There are occasions where you won't get a "received" notice - if, for example, they have receipts turned off, or if they went out of range after receiving the message (happens on the subway here in NYC, where there is cell service for 300 feet, then nothing until the next station). Even then, it will sometimes send a receipt when it reconnects, but it's not perfect.

With SMS, it seems to vary by carrier. I've had messages that I know were sent but never received, and there aren't receive receipts for SMS. So YMMV with SMS.

The only time you really know 100% for sure is when you get the received receipt from iMessage. I'm not sure if this helps with your worries.


How can I print in colour from mac book air when olivetti printer defaults is set to print mono

For this answer, I am assuming that you are using a relatively newer version of OS X on your Mac and at least Windows 7 for the HP Pros.

This is a driver issue.  The only thing that can override a default value is a user setting on a driver.  I went to the Olivetti MF 2400 support site and found these drivers:

If you notice, there are two MacOSX drivers that are "PS Mono;"  that's Post Script Monochrome.  I suspect you are using one of those drivers.  Try downloading and using the "PS" version of the driver (the second one being that it is for 10.6 which is the version of OS X that only supported the Intel CPU and not the PowerPC.

That said, this is a discontinued printer and finding drivers may become much more difficult as time progresses.  You may be able to extend its useful life by sharing this printer (via CUPS in Linux/Unix) and emulating something a bit more generic like an HP Color Jet.  It's not the cleanest solution, but if you just want basic color printing, it will probably get the job done.


Chrome Mac gesture conflict with horizontal scrolling

You can disable chromes gestures by going to System Preference > Mouse OR Trackpad > More Gestures > and uncheck Swipe between pages.

I still love gestures so I downloaded BetterTouchTools which allows me to make the gestures I want. I disabled all apples gestures then created my own. You can get very custom with gestures this way. Or if you prefer, leave some of apples gestures on and use BetterTouchTools for the more custom ones.

Oh, BetterTouchTools is free :)


Make Mac act as Bluetooth headset for PS4

It's possible to use your Mac as a speaker for other Apple devices (e.g. using software to turn your Mac into an Airplay receiver). However, there's no current way to turn it into a Bluetooth speaker for devices such as a PS4.

I suspect this would be possible in theory, however there probably just isn't the demand. The reason why software exists to turn your Mac into a receiver for other Apple devices is that there is a lot of demand for this, especially from iOS users, so various developers have answered the call over the years.


How can I operate "Find & Replace" using only the keyboard in Pages for OS X?

Use the Spacebar Space to click the selected button (not the Enter key Enter). That should do it for you.

(Note to editors: I want to have the word "Spacebar" in there in case someone searches for it.)


iPhone 4s no display constant charging sound

Can you try a different charging cable?
Try holding the home and power buttons together to do a hard reset and see if that reboots the iPhone.
Does iTunes recognize the device when it's connected to your computer?
Are you able to fully remove the SIM card from the device?


Wireless Time Machine Backup Without Time Capsule

You can still use a Time Capsule, just don't use it as a router. You can turn it's routing off by putting it in bridge mode (using the AirPort utility) and simply connecting a network cable between it and the existing router. You can turn wifi off as well if you don't want to use it, networking will happen via the existing wireless network.

As a somewhat cheaper yet officially supported alternative, an AirPort Express with an external USB drive works too. If the backups aren't too big, an older model works too, but since it's slower, big backups will take a while.

Alternatively, any NAS with "Time Machine Support" works out of the box as well, QNAP and Sinology make those for example.


Can i install the applications disc of my snow leopard on Mac OS X Lion?

Yes
I have verified that this works first hand.


If you don't get the crash on a fresh user account, you might want to force the system to rebuild the Spotlight index:

From the Apple menu, go to System Preferences
In System Preferences, select Spotlight, and chose the Privacy tab on the Spotlight screen
Click the "+" icon at the bottom of the screen and add a folder (any folder) to the list of folders excluded from spotlight
Once you've added the folder to the list of folders excluded from Spotlight, select that folder from the list
Click the "-" icon to remove the folder from the list of excluded folders.
From the System Preferences menu, select Quit.

The change to the excluded folders list should start the (long) process of rebuilding the Spotlight index. I can't promise that this will fix your problem, but it has a good shot at it.


If you're willing to pay the 99$ yearly Apple Developer Program enrollment fee, the easiest option for you would be to use "Ad-hoc Distribution". This is slighly more involved than TestFlight, but will allow your users to use the app for a full year instead of 90 days.

Essentially you need to get the UDID (unique ID number visible in iTunes or on the device) for each of the devices that you want to deploy to. You add those UDIDs to in the Developer Portal and then you sign the app with your certificate and add your provisioning profile with the UDIDs in (these steps are automatically done by Xcode). It is really much simpler than it sounds like.

You can then install the app on all the devices for which you had UDIDs. They will last a year before you need to renew your enrollment in the developer program.

Note that you do not need the Apple-IDs used on the devices you want to deploy on (in contrary to TestFlight). Therefore you will not have the same problems with Apple-IDs here.

Another option is to use the more expensive (299$) Enterprise Program (note that you need to own or otherwise be entitled to sign for a business to enroll). Here the signing certificate is valid for 3 years, however the actual provisioning profile still expires after 1 year. So you would need to pay the fee every year, and users will need to be online to renew the profile, etc.


Will the "cracked" wire of a MacBook charger eletrocute me

Can you get electrocuted?

It depends on which side of the adapter.

If it's on the "mains" side (below left image) you could potentially be hit with a 110V or 220V (AC) electrical charge (US, Canada and the rest of the world respectively).  There is enough voltage and amperes here to electrocute you.

If it's on the cable on the MagSafe side (above right image), then you are only dealing with voltage of no more than 18V (DC).  You will get a shock, but it won't be dangerous except in three cases:

If you have a a pacemaker or other medical device or heart condition - any electricity could in rare circumstances cause you problems - check with your doctor on this.
Fire risk - the frayed cord and current levels are enough to start a fire in the right circumstances.
If the transformer section that separates the high and low voltage size is compromised or broken then the high voltage could get past into the low voltage side. On Apple products this is basically unheard of due to multiple failsafe, monitoring and the design and manufacture of the adapter. Third party knock off adapters - some of these fail and are criminal negligence-level bad and unsafe.

The bottom line - An Apple genuine power adapter with a damaged and exposed wire should be fixed but isn't a safety hazard.  Get it fixed  to prevent serious damage to electronic components or starting a fire as opposed to getting electrocuted.


Anaconda Navigator broken: Can I still access my Jupyter notebooks, created through AN?

I would delete any version of Anaconda Navigator you have and then reinstall it from scratch.  Be sure to have a complete backup. Once you have reinstalled it, things should work normally.


What is hardware type ID in keylayout xml file?

I got an excellent answer in the Google Group "Ukelele Users" (link directly to the answer) from John Brownie. The hardware ID is what is returned by CGEventSourceGetKeyboardType. Mr Brownie writes:

  The keyboard ID is what is reported back to the system when certain
  system calls are made. Historically, these were 'gestalt' calls, but
  currently it uses Quartz Events, calling CGEventSourceGetKeyboardType.

For a list of IDs, see the answer in the group.


Mac mini server A1347 can't use Wi-Fi during setup

There is no (reasonable) way around this. Basically, what's going on is that the firmware's network stack isn't smart enough to do 802.1X authentication (which is what's used for "enterprise" Wi-Fi authentication with both username and password). It can only do "personal" Wi-Fi authentication (network password, no username) an open networks (no captive portals either -- they require a browser). And ethernet, of course.

As for resharing the network (e.g. from your Mac) there's no technical reason this can't be done, but there's an extremely good practical one: 802.1X authentication implies a relatively high-security network, and particularly one where the network admins want to be able to tell who's connected where and when. Resharing such a network connection would open a hole in the network security, as well as potentially allowing untraceable and probably unauthorized people to connect to the network. From a security policy perspective, this would be very very bad. So macOS doesn't allow it.

Possible solutions: Can you get access to the campus network over ethernet? If so, you could use that (unless it also requires 802.1X authentication, but that's rare). If not, you're going to have to take the Mac Mini somewhere else to get an Internet connection it can use.

Another possible solution is to download the macOS installer app to your MacBook (in the App Store), then use DiskMaker X to make a bootable installer disk (you need an erasable USB flash drive at least 8GB), then boot the Mini from that. This might need a network connection, but as long as the installer is for the latest version of macOS, it should only need to check for & download the latest firmware for the Mini -- your iPhone hotspot should be able to handle that.


Opening multiple outlook windows on macbook Pro

To open multiple windows, simply go to File -> New -> Open New Main Window.

This will allow you to open your calendar and your email is separate windows so you can see both at the same time.


Mac Chess app crashes each time i open it

This is a wonderful issue to follow the two articles Apple publishes on isolating issues (not that it's wonderful to crash, but this is a very small contained issue that should be easy to isolate and then fix):

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT203161 - Isolating issues in Mac OS X

That sets the table for you to dive into software isolation (which this is clearly the first thing to try)

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201516 - Mac OS X: How to troubleshoot a software issue

In your case, making a new user account, verifying if the crash is system wide or just your account is the next step I’d take. Once that’s done, you can think about updates / verifying a backup, etc...


How to view the Home/Library file on an external drive?

When looking at the home folder where the Library folder would be, toggle ‘Show hidden files’ with shift-cmd-. then the Library folder (and other hidden files) will be shown.


Is there an app that lets me use an iPhone as a mouse?

To the best of my knowledge, the answer is no.  Of course, without trying out every single mouse app in the App Store, I can't be 100% certain.

I can tell you that I've been a long time user of Mobile Mouse.  They have about the best mouse/remote control app I've found.  They put a lot of effort into trying to get the app to work like a real mouse, and eventually decided that it couldn't be done, at least not with an acceptable level of performance (see FAQ #6).  They decided on the "air mouse" mode instead, and though it doesn't work like a real mouse, it does work very well for what it is.

Best of luck in your search, and of course if you do find such an app, please let us know!


Does Mail have to be open for Notification Center to work in Mountain Lion?

The notifications that you receive for Mail within Notification Center are local notifications, not push notifications from some Apple server.  As such, the program has to be running in order for the action that will trigger a notification to be able to do so.

Notification Center cannot check for new mails by itself, it has no in-built capabilities for polling/checking etc in order to create notifications, it merely receives them and displays them.

It is possible that in due course some email app will be made available that supports push notifications, but at present none do, including Apple's own.  The fact that you get such notifications on iOS is more a feature that the mail client is always running in order to check for new mail, and create the local notifications accordingly.  Leaving mail open all the time on your Mac isn't really an issue, it's hardly resource intensive, and if upon receiving a mail alert you wish to act upon it, then opening the alert will only open mail for you anyway.

The best way to summarise it is that NC just listens for alerts that other applications create, and displays them according to your preferences.  It takes no part in the creation of alerts.


Since you've already reset both the NVRAM and SMC and established the SSD is capable of booting another MacBook, I'd try testing your MacBook Air hardware.

Run Apple Hardware Test

Your model of MacBook Air uses Apple Hardware Test. To use this, follow these steps:

Shut down your MacBook Air
Restart your MacBook Air
Press and hold the D key before the gray startup screen appears.
After a while, Apple Hardware Test (AHT) will start.
When prompted, select your language and click the right arrow.
When the AHT console appears, you can choose to run Basic tests by clicking the Test button. However, I suggest you select the "Perform extended testing" checkbox before you click the Test button.
Your test results will appear in the window in the bottom-right of the console.

Note 1: that the extended test will take some time. Take a note of the results and report back.

Note 2: If pressing and holding the D key at Step 3 doesn't work, start again at Step 1 and, at Step 3 press and hold both the OptionD keys instead. This will try and run diagnostics from the internet instead, so you will need to allow more time for it to complete.

Once complete, let us know your results.


How to I make my text messages go as iMessages

I've had this happen before, and it took erasing the phone number and re-adding it to the contact for the iMessage system to correctly "sync up".

Another thing you can try doing is deleting the phone number, and then adding his Apple registered email address first (add the email, save the contact, then add the phone number).


How to change the order of my Favorites in the Special Characters palette?

Yes - they are drag and drop in the palette itself on Lion (so that's the easiest for me to get them in order).

If that doesn't work for you, you can also edit the plist when the Special Characters picker isn't running.

The favorites are (hopefully for your OS level) stored in ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.CharacterPaletteIM.plist

If your editor lets you drag "Item 2" up to "CVFavorites" it will be the new first item. You can open the triangles to see what the favorites are and reorder them fairly painlessly and then save your work.


iPhone won’t install previously deleted default app

Try restarting your iPhone. Sometimes rebooting it , helps.


I don't have a specific answer as to what causes macOS to do this, however there is an issue on the VS Code GitHub repository which has lots of discussions about this (for VS Code app at least).
It seems to have something to do with launching an app directly (executing the binary inside XYZ.app/Contents/MacOS) instead of via Launch Services (the open command).


Why does sudo ask for a password in terminal?

sudo su asks for a password on my system. Did you run another sudo command before the sudo su? Once you've run sudo and entered your password, it doesn't require a password again for a period of time.


How can I get the resources under Mac OSX like windows?

I find the solution.

1.Finder Command + K -> Go to Server.

2.Then type in the server address.

3.Connect it.


How do you insert literal control chars in vim on Mac?

It's the same like in Unix/Linux:

^V^M

But, if you want to use the character in a substitution string, then you should write it like it is, \r, e.g.

:%s/blabla/\r/


Time machine over samba, "The identity of the backup disk has changed"

Edit: Find my solution below.

I have the same problem on Raspian with a Ext4 file system (no LVM). Samba is version 4.8.5, compiled from source by myself. MacOS is High Sierra, backup is encrypted.

Time Machine pretends to have finished the backup successfully. When it starts the next time, the message about the changed identity appears. After choosing "backup anyway", it creates a completely new backup in a new sparse file. (Like @thaimin described it).

On the Samba mailing list someone states:

  Recompile samba with  --enable-spotlight and all works.

That is not true in my case, because I did compile Samba 4.8.5 with this option (what I didn't do is setting up tracker as suggested in this blog post).

Workaround

I compiled Samba in the previous version (4.8.4). Now it works as expected (same system, same dependencies, same configuration).
Someone already created a bug ticket for Samba.


Always use man X directly on the Mac itself to see what is available for command X.  The reason is that OS X was originally based on BSD and not GNU (most likely to avoid the GPL) so you should not follow Linux tutorials for MacOS.


Above and Below Display Arrangement in El Capitan

I think I may have just solved it.  I have two accounts on this Mac, my Admin account and my daily use account.  The admin account didn't have the same screen orientation as the the daily use account, and on the login screen the admin account was listed first.  I suspect that when no accounts are logged in that OS X grabs the screen configuration of the first account that it finds - which happened to be the admin account in my case.


Safari playing a youtube video in the background

You might want to try this solution from Apple's own forum (be sure to back-up your Bookmarks first):

  Open a Finder window. Select your Home folder in the Sidebar on the
  left. Now open the Library folder then the Safari folder.

  Move the LastSession.plist and the Downloads.plist files from the
  Safari folder to the Trash.

  Restart your Mac.

It also could be an extension messing up with Safari.


I suggest you gather some more information.  For each of the login scripts (/etc/zshenv, /etc/zprofile, /etc/zshrc, /etc/zlogin, .zshenv, .zprofile, .zshrc, .zlogin), add a line at the beginning that prints to stdout something like ".zshenv starts" and a line at the end like ".zshenv ends".  Once you figure out which script is responsible, scatter some print statements to pin down the exact command.


skype wants to export "Apple ID Authentication" from the keychain

I seem to have fixed this... unfortunately I don't know what part of what I tried was the actual key to the fix.

I spoke to Skype support, live chat. They hadn't heard of the issue - though tbh, 1st line support are always going to be 'last to know'.
The best I could get was 'Have you tried reinstalling it?" I said, it's a Mac, reinstalling isn't going to make any difference.
We tried it - it didn't. No surprise there.
I did it again, this time using CleanMyMac to get all the prefs & hidden stuff, kexts etc; rebooted & tried again. It still remembered my login details so I'm not sure how successful that was.

I looked in keychain to see what was in there. I was surprised at how many bits & pieces there were.
Having made sure I knew my login details, I deleted the whole lot; everything that came up when I searched 'skype' - maybe 10 or 12 keys - & rebooted again.
Skype had lost my auto-login... good.
I could then see which new keys it added as I completed a manual login.
There were only two keys - Skype for Desktop & Skype for Desktop MSA. After several days there are still only two.
No functionality seems to have been lost. Conversation histories etc appear to be stored at Skype, not on the local Mac.

It hasn't asked me to export anything since.

It would probably be useful if someone else with this issue could try deleting only the Keychain entries, or only doing the 'clean' reinstall; reboot & see how that goes. See if we can figure whether it's the 'clean' reinstall or the keychain deletion that actually fixes it.

Note: This machine has a complete line-of-sight migration path back to my first OS X Mac in 2005 & some data from before that, when I migrated from OS 9. Skype has been on it since it was invented, so I may have a whole lot more historic cruft than most people.


Install Homebrew package with all available options

Disclaimer: I'm not so familiar with grep. Smarter solutions are welcome.

You can list all options with this command.

brew options target_formula

And you can get all --with-* options with this.

brew options target_formula | grep 'with-'

So you can install a formula with all --with-* options by this.

brew install target_formula `brew options target_formula | grep 'with-'`

Note that some formula, especially in unofficial tap, can have old options not prefixed with --with- or --without.

EDIT:
If you want to exclude specific option, for example --with-zimg, you can do that with this.
(grep -v 'with-zimg' is fine, but grep -v 'zimg' is shorter)

brew install target_formula `brew options target_formula | grep 'with-' | grep -v 'zimg'`


How stop my IDE from showing hidden files on Sierra?

It's up to individual apps to decide whether to show hidden files and to provide options to change it.

The ‘AppleShowAllFiles’ key is written to ‘com.apple.Finder’, so it only applies in Finder. Finder's GUI option for changing this setting is ⇧⌘..
Other apps may have their own options, which you'll need to investigate on a per-app basis. For example, How do I hide certain files from the sidebar in Visual Studio Code?.


You will need the exact model information,
not just as you say pre-2013

then we can help you looking to download the correct AHT for your model on the web (if it exists), since the AHT are model specific.

From the screen shot you can see it is a:

MacBook Pro (15 inch, Mid 2010) (MacBookPro6,2/Mac-F22586C8)

Using the above information now we have to find the unique Model Number identifier for the AHT file.

There is no method or listing for that just plain web search.

Getting the AHT is sort of back door in to Apple support.

> http://download.info.apple.com/Apple_Hardware_Test/018-[MODEL
> NUMBER]-A.dmg

UPDATE

I did some searching for you and, I found it:

Mac-F22586C8, MacBookPro6,2

022-4597-A.dmg

Enter that in the above link.

Let me know if I got the right file for my records.

More Update:

There is also a very nice database containing Apple Hardware Diagnostics files, all you need is your Model Identifier (found in About this Mac.


What sysmond does on OS X

Watching the CPU usage of sysmond through Activity Monitor is pointless! It turns out that sysmond process is what Activity Monitor uses to get it's readings.

So if sysmond is using lots of CPU, just kill activity monitor for it to stop.

Warning

Increasing the update interval for Activity Monitor dramatically increases the CPU load, that's why I initially never noticed it and see it a lot more right now.


I created a RAID set using two USB sticks with Disk Utility in macOS Sierra 10.12.6. While I was only presented with Mac OS Extended options during the setup, once the RAID set was created I could erase it and choose another format.

After formatting the volume as ExFAT, I was able to store data on the RAID set.

However, I can't say what standard of RAID is used creating these sets. If you intend to connect the RAID set to another OS other than macOS, your millage may vary.


How to use control key with remote access app using an iPad and bluetooth keyboard?

iSSH has a button on the toolbar for exactly this purpose:

Tap that button, view that menu, enable the feature!


Can I cause auto-correct in Lion to beep and to get a summary of the changes?

As a Mac developer I've been working on a solution to this problem, so far I've been able to detect autocorrect in a NSTextView within the app itself and play a sound to alert the user.

At the moment I am working on making it able to detect autocorrect in any NSTextView in any app but that's a bit harder and may take longer so I thought I would just brief you on what I've done so far.

I'll edit this answer with the final app when it can detect autocorrection in any app.

Here's what I've got done so far: [Most up to date download link further down]

I'm currently in the process of testing a version of the app which is generalised and works on every single text view no matter which app is active. It uses a slightly different method to how I did it when it was just a NSTextView within the app itself as when you deal with these things with other apps (via the Accesability API) you don't have direct access to the objects themselves.

Anyway enough with the 'jibber-jabber', here are some screen shots of the preferences:

General - At the moment it just lets you choose the sound to play when autocomplete is detected.

Blacklist - Allows you to blacklist certain apps so that autocorrect detection is turned off and no sound is played.

The reason I am testing it is because the method I use is not completely sound, it simply detects any change in text before the cursor. This means it will detect autocomplete but in general will detect any change in text that is NOT directly done by the user (e.g a button which clears all text) other than this it works pretty well.

I'll update this answer with a download link once I've finished testing.

I've finished testing, so… here's the download link: http://cl.ly/9CIZ

It runs in the background, so has no dock icon. To access the preferences double click on the app in Finder.

Again, this doesn't work perfectly and has a couple of bugs but it should work 99% of the time!


Time Machine tries to connect when I'm away from home

I have done two things in this case.

1) Connect a hard drive to change the destination - even if I don't connect that drive often, the local drive check seems faster than a network check. You can then re-establish the network backups to no ill effect when you return home. Having many Time Machine destinations is nice to have a second copy and works well for me.

2) Log into your Time Capsule and sign in again to MobileMe / iCloud and then delete that "find my mac" functionality. This seems to lessen the Time Machine "seeing" the remote drive but has an obvious downside of not being able to re-connect as well to your "home" AirPort / Time Capsule while on the road.

For advanced debugging, you could also run tm_diagnose and pore over the logs collected to see if any error conditions are present in the extremely undocumented and verbose logs that the diagnostic command collects. I would caution people without a UNIX or software background that "errors" in system logs are often not errors in the sense that something is broken - but more for the people who write and maintain the code to remember to clean some thing up or a minor "assumption" was not proven out in practice. There can be lots of false positives when looking at unix logs, but also a lot of learning how things work under the hood.


Deleting empty Directory with File's Ghosts?

Move the folder to the trash. Open the trash and right click on the folder. You should see an option to "delete immediately". Select that option and folder should delete.


MacBook Pro updated to EL Captain 10.11 but QuickTime Player didn't upgrade

QuickTime 10.4 is the newest version. It was already possible to record your iOS-device in Yosemite. Source.


Finder not showing DVD/CD drive even when it is checked in the Preferences

From comments, it seems like a simple 'wrong pref'.
The pref in the posted image is for Desktop visibility.
To show in the Finder sidebar, the one required is in the 3rd tab, Sidebar.


My terminal prompt has a weird, unfamiliar name in it.

First, I'd check what WiFi access point your Mac is connected to.

One explanation for your screenshot is that your MacBook is acquiring (or has recently acquired) its IP address from a DHCP server on the device called Breezys-iPhone. That's most likely to happen if that iPhone is acting as a tethered hotspot, and your Mac is connecting to it rather than your usual WiFi access point.

You can find additional information about the hostname shown in the terminal prompt in the answers to this question.


Understanding photo libraries when migrating from iPhoto to Photo

Some more information about the structure can be found here. The three folders you see all reference to the same set of image files on your Mac, using hard links.
The 150-photos difference MAY be due to one of these reasons:

Your Photos library already had some photos before you migrated iPhoto library (More likely).

You had RAW and JPEG pairs for some photos. iPhoto counted each pair as one photo, but in migration they exported separately, increasing the count (Less likely).

The Photos library should be the superset containing all your photos, but the only confirmatory test I can think of is to extract the file lists from the SQL databases of those three folders and compare them.


Should I buy all new memory or combine with old?

The 8GB would be via two 4GB modules.

As far as replacing vs adding, the DIMM slots are dual channel so you'll just want to make sure they match. Look again in System Information at the speed column. It will likely say "1066 MHz". In that case, when shopping around, just make sure you're looking for a 1066MHz DDR3 4GB 204-Pin module. It doesn't have to be the same brand.


Recover deleted Encrypted OS X Extended volume

Under certain circumstances a deleted external HFS+ encrypted volume can be recovered after the disk has been formatted to a FAT32 volume:

The whole disk has been encrypted (to one volume).
The whole disk has been formatted to one FAT32 volume. The GUID partition table has not been replaced by an MBR. The disk still has an MBR (instead of a PMBR) though.

Some internal invisible CoreStorage data structures mustn't be overwritten.

the CoreStorage volume header structure at the (previous) volume block 0 (= disk block 409640)
a second block at the (previous)  volume block 8 (= disk block 409648)
an encrypted metadata block starting at the 577456th last block and ending at the 573360th last block (size 4096 blocks)
several Disk Label metadata items in the last 16392 blocks of the (previous) volume

If nothing has been written to the FAT32 volume those parts shouldn't be overwritten.

To recover the encrypted volume you have to use Terminal and do some math.

Detach any external drive except the mal-formatted one
Open Terminal and enter:

diskutil list

to get an overview and the disk identifier of the external disk. Below I assume the disk identifier is disk1
Make a backup of the whole disk with sudo dd if=/dev/disk1 of=/Volumes/BackupVolume_Name/disk1.bin just in case something goes wrong or for a future with advanced recovery tools.
Now get the partition table of the disk with:

sudo gpt -r show /dev/disk1

You should get a similar result as this one:

      start       size  index  contents
          0          1         MBR
          1          1         Pri GPT header
          2         32         Pri GPT table
         34          6
         40     409600      1  GPT part - C12A7328-F81F-11D2-BA4B-00A0C93EC93B
     409640       2008
     411648  133804032      2  GPT part - EBD0A0A2-B9E5-4433-87C0-68B6B72699C7
  134215680       2015
  134217695         32         Sec GPT table
  134217727          1         Sec GPT header

The first partition is the EFI volume, the second the FAT32 volume of the external disk. Your partition 2 is much larger than the one in the example though.

Even if you get a different output with no GUID partition table but only an MBR

      start       size index   contents
          0          1         MBR
          1          1
          2  134217726     1   MBR part 11

you can continue: encrypting a disk with FileVault requires a GUID partition table - so your disk previously had one. The probability to recover a FAT volume on a disk with a MBR seems to be much lower though. Apparently parts (namely some metadata and volume headers) may be overwritten by FAT32 file system stuff.

The same disk containing an encrypted external HFS+ volume should look like this:

      start       size  index  contents
          0          1         PMBR
          1          1         Pri GPT header
          2         32         Pri GPT table
         34          6
         40     409600      1  GPT part - C12A7328-F81F-11D2-BA4B-00A0C93EC93B
     409640  133545904      2  GPT part - 53746F72-6167-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC
  133955544     262144      3  GPT part - 426F6F74-0000-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC
  134217688          7
  134217695         32         Sec GPT table
  134217727          1         Sec GPT header

The first partition is the EFI partition with a fixed size and start block, the third one is an Apple_Boot partition with a fixed size and start block relative to the last block of the disk and the remaining disk space allocated to the encrypted Core Storage Logical Group. All partitions are aligned to the physical block size of the disk (4096 Bytes).
To restore the old partition table you have to unmount the disk, delete the actual partition table and do some math to create a new one:

diskutil umountDisk /dev/disk1
sudo gpt destroy /dev/disk1
diskutil umountDisk /dev/disk1
sudo gpt create -f /dev/disk1
gpt add -b 40 -i 1 -s 409600 -t C12A7328-F81F-11D2-BA4B-00A0C93EC93B disk1

Now get the last block number of your disk (in my example that's 134217727) and substract 262183: LastBlockNumber-262183 is the start block of the 3rd partition (Apple_Boot). Add this partition with:

gpt add -b LastBlockNumber-262183 -i 3 -s 262144 -t 426F6F74-0000-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC disk1

Check the size of the unallocated disk space between partition 1 and partition 3 with:

sudo gpt -r show /dev/disk1

The size of unallocated disk space (UnAlloc) between index 1 and index 3 is probably the size of the old encrypted volume. The size has to be divisible by 8 - please check this! Add this as a partition with:

gpt add -b 409640 -i 2 -s UnAlloc -t 53746F72-6167-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC disk1 #with UnAlloc= size of unallocated disk space found above

After entering the last command you should be asked for password of the encrypted disk. if not then try:

diskutil cs list

to get a list of CoreStorage items. Try to mount the encrypted volume with:

diskutil cs unlockVolume LVUUID

with LVUUID: the UUID of the encrypted Logical Volume (usually the last one listed). If your main volume is also encrypted choose the proper LVUUID!

If the volume mounts successfully save the most important files and folders to an external volume because mounting the encrypted volume doesn' t necessarily mean that the volume isn't corrupted.

Unmount the volume and run diskutil verifyDisk /dev/disk1 and diskutil repairDisk /dev/disk1. The last command may completely corrupt the disk!

This might still fail. The encrypted volume may still be recoverable though. But then I need more information, because special (invisible) non-file system items have to been read directly from disk with a HexEditor and then restored/replaced.


How do I keep my session when I reboot in OS X?

ReLaunch does what you want. Also see a similar question on SuperUser.

The only major limitation of Relaunch is it does not (yet) support Spaces (virtual desktops).


Synching iPhone with internet calendar (.ics)

I found the answer to my particular issue.  The reason that my iPhone could not subscribe to a published Outlook .ics calendar was because the MIME type of the .ics file was wrong.  As recommended in this brilliant post by Joe Bradford, I went into IIS, changed the MIME type from application/octet-stream to text/calendar, and iPhone could connect and subscribe without further issue. Success!

PS: I did not run into the second issue that Joe chased down, which was having to remove the Byte Order Mark (BOM) from the .ics file via a hexadecimal editor.


How do I create a shortcut on the desktop?

Drag an app to the desktop, and hold both command and option while you release it. This will create a shortcut much like those on Windows.

You can also try activating Spotlight (Apple's name for the search functionality) by pressing command + space. You can then type the first letters of the name of the app you need, then press enter to launch it. This could be even ergonomically better, as you don't need access to the desktop or to move your hand to the mouse.


What are all the OS X special user folders?

~/Applications

For storing apps that you want to be private to your account, and does have a 'special icon' (the icon of /Applications) upon creation.

 ~/Sites

For storing your websites. Accessible on the network as /~username.

 ~/Library

If you're not already aware, there's a ~/Library which is hidden, but does have a 'special icon' if you unhide it using chflags nohidden ~/Library or enable Show Library Folder in View Options.


Quicktime screen recording on Retina display

Quicktime obeys the Displays preference pane like most other applications will.

The first step to increasing the resolution for recording will be to adjust the settings to have a larger equivalent screen size as I have done in this picture (and you can take things to even larger pixel counts by selecting More Space which in turn makes items like the menu bar physically smaller when rendered).

If that's not sufficient for your needs, you may need to select a tool like the Screeny app to record the "full" resolution.

In my case, I have the 13 inch MacBook Pro with Retina, so it will capture the screen at 2880x1800 no matter what setting you have on the Displays Preference when you choose "full screen" recording.

http://www.screenyapp.com


View login history in Macbook app store app

If you bought the Mac used, this could be the AppleID of the person who sold it to you. You should be able to find an option in the Store menu (Store —> Sign Out) to sign out of that AppleID. You’ll be able to sign in to your own ID after that. Be aware that apps that were provided with the Mac may need to be re-purchased or downloaded again to associate them with your ID, or to be able to use or update them after signing out.


I found the solution: It was the default download location of firefox. I changed it, deleted the folder, it never got recreated ever since.