How can I avoid repeated "Time Machine must create a new backup" errors when backing up to a third party NAS?

Suitability of HFS Plus

Whilst Time Machine must use HFS Plus for most things, it's worth noting that the file system is not ideally suited for the task.

An example

Coincidence: a few hours after my first edition of this answer, my own Time Machine Backups volume (a sparse bundle disk image) suffered a file system failure. I'm certain that the underlying storage is OK – a ZFS pool scrubbed, without error, before and after the HFS Plus failure. For the record:

2013-06-07 18:02:54.332 com.apple.backupd[18433]    Starting automatic backup
2013-06-07 18:02:56.292 com.apple.backupd[18433]    Resizing backup disk image from 2.65 TB to 2.6 TB
2013-06-07 18:03:34.119 com.apple.backupd[18433]    Disk image /Volumes/tall/com.apple.backupd/GPES3E-gjp4-1.sparsebundle mounted at: /Volumes/Time Machine Backups
2013-06-07 18:03:35.244 com.apple.backupd[18433]    Backing up to: /Volumes/Time Machine Backups/Backups.backupdb
2013-06-07 18:03:44.013 com.apple.backupd[18433]    Inherited root volume OS, UUID: C5C41F95-133B-3EB0-9013-F94DAAA0D99B
2013-06-07 18:03:44.147 com.apple.backupd[18433]    Forcing deep traversal on source: "OS" (mount: '/' fsUUID: 03AF4C8A-66E8-3DE2-B30F-176C0C2337C3 eventDBUUID: BDCB9532-A4A8-4B94-A6C1-928FD741B07A)
2013-06-07 18:03:44.148 com.apple.backupd[18433]    Event store UUIDs don't match for volume: spare
2013-06-07 18:03:44.150 com.apple.backupd[18433]    Event store UUIDs don't match for volume: disk0s3
2013-06-07 18:03:47.612 com.apple.backupd[18433]    Mobile backup /Volumes/MobileBackups/Backups.backupdb/GPES3E-gjp4-1/2013-06-07-103948 does not contain spare.  Skipping it.
2013-06-07 18:03:47.663 com.apple.backupd[18433]    Mobile backup /Volumes/MobileBackups/Backups.backupdb/GPES3E-gjp4-1/2013-06-06-215311 does not contain spare.  Skipping it.
2013-06-07 18:03:47.714 com.apple.backupd[18433]    Mobile backup /Volumes/MobileBackups/Backups.backupdb/GPES3E-gjp4-1/2013-06-07-075155 does not contain spare.  Skipping it.
2013-06-07 18:03:47.764 com.apple.backupd[18433]    Mobile backup /Volumes/MobileBackups/Backups.backupdb/GPES3E-gjp4-1/2013-06-07-055748 does not contain spare.  Skipping it.
2013-06-07 18:03:47.827 com.apple.backupd[18433]    Mobile backup /Volumes/MobileBackups/Backups.backupdb/GPES3E-gjp4-1/2013-06-06-220121 does not contain spare.  Skipping it.
2013-06-07 18:03:47.888 com.apple.backupd[18433]    Mobile backup /Volumes/MobileBackups/Backups.backupdb/GPES3E-gjp4-1/2013-06-07-081211 does not contain spare.  Skipping it.
2013-06-07 18:03:47.966 com.apple.backupd[18433]    Mobile backup /Volumes/MobileBackups/Backups.backupdb/GPES3E-gjp4-1/2013-06-06-215312 does not contain spare.  Skipping it.
2013-06-07 18:03:48.025 com.apple.backupd[18433]    Mobile backup /Volumes/MobileBackups/Backups.backupdb/GPES3E-gjp4-1/2013-06-06-235752 does not contain spare.  Skipping it.
2013-06-07 18:03:48.087 com.apple.backupd[18433]    Mobile backup /Volumes/MobileBackups/Backups.backupdb/GPES3E-gjp4-1/2013-06-07-140311 does not contain spare.  Skipping it.
2013-06-07 18:03:48.145 com.apple.backupd[18433]    Mobile backup /Volumes/MobileBackups/Backups.backupdb/GPES3E-gjp4-1/2013-06-06-215718 does not contain spare.  Skipping it.
2013-06-07 18:03:48.202 com.apple.backupd[18433]    Mobile backup /Volumes/MobileBackups/Backups.backupdb/GPES3E-gjp4-1/2013-06-07-005749 does not contain spare.  Skipping it.
2013-06-07 18:03:48.261 com.apple.backupd[18433]    Mobile backup /Volumes/MobileBackups/Backups.backupdb/GPES3E-gjp4-1/2013-06-06-235753 does not contain spare.  Skipping it.
2013-06-07 18:03:48.321 com.apple.backupd[18433]    Mobile backup /Volumes/MobileBackups/Backups.backupdb/GPES3E-gjp4-1/2013-06-07-160310 does not contain spare.  Skipping it.
2013-06-07 18:03:48.558 com.apple.backupd[18433]    Mobile backup /Volumes/MobileBackups/Backups.backupdb/GPES3E-gjp4-1/2013-06-07-074020 does not contain spare.  Skipping it.
2013-06-07 18:03:48.619 com.apple.backupd[18433]    Mobile backup /Volumes/MobileBackups/Backups.backupdb/GPES3E-gjp4-1/2013-06-07-025748 does not contain spare.  Skipping it.
2013-06-07 18:03:48.709 com.apple.backupd[18433]    Mobile backup /Volumes/MobileBackups/Backups.backupdb/GPES3E-gjp4-1/2013-06-07-015751 does not contain spare.  Skipping it.
2013-06-07 18:03:48.904 com.apple.backupd[18433]    Mobile backup /Volumes/MobileBackups/Backups.backupdb/GPES3E-gjp4-1/2013-06-07-025749 does not contain spare.  Skipping it.
2013-06-07 18:03:48.954 com.apple.backupd[18433]    Mobile backup /Volumes/MobileBackups/Backups.backupdb/GPES3E-gjp4-1/2013-06-07-015752 does not contain spare.  Skipping it.
2013-06-07 18:03:49.004 com.apple.backupd[18433]    Mobile backup /Volumes/MobileBackups/Backups.backupdb/GPES3E-gjp4-1/2013-06-07-130310 does not contain spare.  Skipping it.
2013-06-07 18:03:49.055 com.apple.backupd[18433]    Mobile backup /Volumes/MobileBackups/Backups.backupdb/GPES3E-gjp4-1/2013-06-07-045748 does not contain spare.  Skipping it.
2013-06-07 18:03:49.162 com.apple.backupd[18433]    Mobile backup /Volumes/MobileBackups/Backups.backupdb/GPES3E-gjp4-1/2013-06-06-215950 does not contain spare.  Skipping it.
2013-06-07 18:03:49.211 com.apple.backupd[18433]    Mobile backup /Volumes/MobileBackups/Backups.backupdb/GPES3E-gjp4-1/2013-06-07-092036 does not contain spare.  Skipping it.
2013-06-07 18:03:49.273 com.apple.backupd[18433]    Mobile backup /Volumes/MobileBackups/Backups.backupdb/GPES3E-gjp4-1/2013-06-07-035751 does not contain spare.  Skipping it.
2013-06-07 18:03:49.321 com.apple.backupd[18433]    Mobile backup /Volumes/MobileBackups/Backups.backupdb/GPES3E-gjp4-1/2013-06-06-225752 does not contain spare.  Skipping it.
2013-06-07 18:03:49.371 com.apple.backupd[18433]    Mobile backup /Volumes/MobileBackups/Backups.backupdb/GPES3E-gjp4-1/2013-06-07-065747 does not contain spare.  Skipping it.
2013-06-07 18:03:49.420 com.apple.backupd[18433]    Mobile backup /Volumes/MobileBackups/Backups.backupdb/GPES3E-gjp4-1/2013-06-07-045749 does not contain spare.  Skipping it.
2013-06-07 18:03:49.470 com.apple.backupd[18433]    Mobile backup /Volumes/MobileBackups/Backups.backupdb/GPES3E-gjp4-1/2013-06-06-213710 does not contain spare.  Skipping it.
2013-06-07 18:03:49.519 com.apple.backupd[18433]    Mobile backup /Volumes/MobileBackups/Backups.backupdb/GPES3E-gjp4-1/2013-06-07-091305 does not contain spare.  Skipping it.
2013-06-07 18:03:49.589 com.apple.backupd[18433]    Mobile backup /Volumes/MobileBackups/Backups.backupdb/GPES3E-gjp4-1/2013-06-07-150310 does not contain spare.  Skipping it.
2013-06-07 18:03:49.639 com.apple.backupd[18433]    Mobile backup /Volumes/MobileBackups/Backups.backupdb/GPES3E-gjp4-1/2013-06-07-065748 does not contain spare.  Skipping it.
2013-06-07 18:03:49.688 com.apple.backupd[18433]    Mobile backup /Volumes/MobileBackups/Backups.backupdb/GPES3E-gjp4-1/2013-06-07-074521 does not contain spare.  Skipping it.
2013-06-07 18:03:49.776 com.apple.backupd[18433]    Mobile backup /Volumes/MobileBackups/Backups.backupdb/GPES3E-gjp4-1/2013-06-06-220105 does not contain spare.  Skipping it.
2013-06-07 18:03:49.838 com.apple.backupd[18433]    Mobile backup /Volumes/MobileBackups/Backups.backupdb/GPES3E-gjp4-1/2013-06-06-225749 does not contain spare.  Skipping it.
2013-06-07 18:03:49.899 com.apple.backupd[18433]    Mobile backup /Volumes/MobileBackups/Backups.backupdb/GPES3E-gjp4-1/2013-06-07-092118 does not contain spare.  Skipping it.
2013-06-07 18:03:50.119 com.apple.backupd[18433]    Mobile backup /Volumes/MobileBackups/Backups.backupdb/GPES3E-gjp4-1/2013-06-07-120311 does not contain spare.  Skipping it.
2013-06-07 18:03:50.388 com.apple.backupd[18433]    Mobile backup /Volumes/MobileBackups/Backups.backupdb/GPES3E-gjp4-1/2013-06-07-035749 does not contain spare.  Skipping it.
2013-06-07 18:03:51.141 com.apple.backupd[18433]    Deep event scan at path:/ reason:must scan subdirs|require scan|
2013-06-07 18:03:51.141 com.apple.backupd[18433]    Finished scan
2013-06-07 18:16:29.077 com.apple.backupd[18433]    Deep event scan at path:/Volumes/spare reason:must scan subdirs|new event db|
2013-06-07 18:16:29.086 com.apple.backupd[18433]    Finished scan
2013-06-07 18:16:29.570 com.apple.backupd[18433]    Deep event scan at path:/Volumes/disk0s3 reason:must scan subdirs|new event db|
2013-06-07 18:16:29.786 com.apple.backupd[18433]    Finished scan
2013-06-07 18:16:30.310 com.apple.backupd[18433]    Found 1695685 files (84.93 GB) needing backup
2013-06-07 18:16:31.053 com.apple.backupd[18433]    109.44 GB required (including padding), 2 TB available
2013-06-07 18:54:10.918 com.apple.backupd[18433]    Unexpected result from MDBackupIndexFile (1) for: /Applications/Freenet/datastore/CHK-cache.hd, /Volumes/Time Machine Backups/Backups.backupdb/GPES3E-gjp4-1/2013-06-06-215332.inProgress/9086512E-E386-475E-AE99-34BAA1D2E485/OS/Applications/Freenet/datastore/CHK-cache.hd
2013-06-07 18:54:24.848 com.apple.backupd[18433]    Unexpected result from MDBackupIndexFile (1) for: /Applications/Freenet/datastore/CHK-store.hd, /Volumes/Time Machine Backups/Backups.backupdb/GPES3E-gjp4-1/2013-06-06-215332.inProgress/9086512E-E386-475E-AE99-34BAA1D2E485/OS/Applications/Freenet/datastore/CHK-store.hd
2013-06-07 19:03:44.609 com.apple.backupd[18433]    Copied 18.81 GB of 84.93 GB, 460244 of 1695685 items
2013-06-07 20:03:44.827 com.apple.backupd[18433]    Copied 34.12 GB of 84.93 GB, 815234 of 1695685 items
2013-06-07 21:03:54.004 com.apple.backupd[18433]    Copied 40.73 GB of 84.93 GB, 1013214 of 1695685 items
2013-06-07 22:03:54.678 com.apple.backupd[18433]    Copied 67.55 GB of 84.93 GB, 1508426 of 1695685 items
2013-06-07 22:28:43.226 com.apple.backupd[18433]    Copied 1786731 files (77.59 GB) from volume OS.
2013-06-07 22:28:49.157 com.apple.backupd[18433]    Unexpected result from MDBackupIndexFile (1) for: /Volumes/spare/Tocar y Luchar JAA.cdr, /Volumes/Time Machine Backups/Backups.backupdb/GPES3E-gjp4-1/2013-06-06-215332.inProgress/9086512E-E386-475E-AE99-34BAA1D2E485/spare/Tocar y Luchar JAA.cdr
2013-06-07 22:28:51.508 com.apple.backupd[18433]    Error: Flushing index to disk returned an error: 1
2013-06-07 22:28:51.508 com.apple.backupd[18433]    Copied 1786746 files (77.59 GB) from volume spare.
2013-06-07 22:29:11.108 com.apple.backupd[18433]    Backup canceled.
2013-06-07 22:29:23.227 com.apple.backupd[18433]    Ejected Time Machine disk image: /Volumes/tall/com.apple.backupd/GPES3E-gjp4-1.sparsebundle
2013-06-07 23:10:44.791 com.apple.backupd[28884]    Starting automatic backup
2013-06-07 23:10:45.269 com.apple.backupd[28884]    Backup failed with error: 1002
2013-06-07 23:10:45.382 com.apple.backupd[28884]    Starting automatic backup
2013-06-07 23:10:46.446 com.apple.backupd[28884]    Resizing backup disk image from 2.6 TB to 2.6 TB
2013-06-07 23:10:50.162 com.apple.backupd[28884]    Runtime corruption detected on /Volumes/tall/com.apple.backupd/GPES3E-gjp4-1.sparsebundle (fsck_hfs -q termination status: 3)

the message at 2013-06-07 22:28:49 is eye-catching, but expected in my case (symptom of a bug involving HFS Plus; a corruption that involves AppleFSCompression) – probably negligible in the context of this answer
the message at 2013-06-07 22:28:51 may be more relevant to the file system failure.

/private/var/log/fsck_hfs.log then showed:

/dev/rdisk7s2: fsck_hfs run at Fri Jun  7 23:10:48 2013
/dev/rdisk7s2: ** /dev/rdisk7s2 (NO WRITE)
/dev/rdisk7s2:    Executing fsck_hfs (version diskdev_cmds-557.3.1~5).
QUICKCHECK ONLY; FILESYSTEM DIRTY

/dev/rdisk7s2: fsck_hfs run at Fri Jun  7 23:10:49 2013
/dev/rdisk7s2: ** /dev/rdisk7s2 (NO WRITE)
/dev/rdisk7s2:    Executing fsck_hfs (version diskdev_cmds-557.3.1~5).
QUICKCHECK ONLY; FILESYSTEM DIRTY

Confirming that no error affected the underlying storage at the time:

GPES3E-gjp4-1:~ gjp22$ date
Sat  8 Jun 2013 06:57:46 BST
GPES3E-gjp4-1:~ gjp22$ uptime
 6:57  up 21:51, 5 users, load averages: 0.92 1.27 1.37
GPES3E-gjp4-1:~ gjp22$ zpool status
  pool: gjp22
 state: ONLINE
 scan: scrub repaired 0 in 24h8m with 0 errors on Sat May 25 23:25:38 2013
config:

    NAME                                         STATE     READ WRITE CKSUM
    gjp22                                        ONLINE       0     0     0
      GPTE_71B8BDA2-3EBA-4B91-9E1C-2AE2B1DAAD06  ONLINE       0     0     0  at disk3s2
    cache
      GPTE_2605CCB0-67B7-4C93-A4B1-83EF764CE617  OFFLINE        1.48Ki     0

errors: No known data errors

  pool: tall
 state: ONLINE
 scan: scrub repaired 0 in 28h10m with 0 errors on Sun May 26 18:47:22 2013
config:

    NAME                                         STATE     READ WRITE CKSUM
    tall                                         ONLINE       0     0     0
      GPTE_78301A52-4AFF-4D96-8DE9-E76ABC14909C  ONLINE       0     0     0  at disk2s2
      GPTE_99056308-F5E2-4314-852C-4DA04732A2D0  ONLINE       0     0     0  at disk6s2

errors: No known data errors
GPES3E-gjp4-1:~ gjp22$

In simple terms

Whilst we'd like a solution, file system failures such as this seem to be:

unpredictable
unavoidable
sometimes irreparable.

In the absence of a good solution, my best advice is to not rely on a single Time Machine backup. The risk of eventual failure and inability to repair is simply too high.

Degrees of failure

In the past I sometimes forced fsck_hfs(8) to rebuild b-tree files … with limited success but not certainty. Whilst a file system may appear to be OK (in Disk Utility and the like) I would not no longer trust it for Time Machine backup or restoration purposes.

In the most recent case (above) multiple applications of force (multiple rebuilds of the catalog b-tree, a rebuild of the extended attributes b-tree and a rebuild of the extents b-tree) have not led to a verifiable file system. I have debug logs from these attempts, which I'll not begin to summarise here; they're massive.

With locally attached disks (USB 2.0), attempts to repair Time Machine backup volumes can be extraordinarily time consuming. Wireless – over AFP – you may find the time required intolerable.

Time Machine - Troubleshooting – C13.  "…Time Machine must create a new backup for you." (James Pond) includes much useful information. Essentially:

  … backups are corrupted beyond Disk Utility's ability to fix …

When OS X reports that an HFS Plus file system appears to be OK, there may be significant issues with the disk – issues that OS X simply can not detect.

As corruption has occurred more than once, there may be a problem with:

hardware, firmware and/or software of the NAS.

What make and model is the NAS?

Hard disks of the NAS

If the OS of the NAS allows you to verify integrity of blocks on its disks: please do so.

If the OS of the NAS lacks that capability, then aim to boot the hardware with a different OS that's more suitable for testing. Options might include Ubuntu and a run of badblocks.

Checks of this type:

will be time consuming; but
should help you to determine whether the state of the disk(s) is contributory to the multiple failures.


If your visudo does not work as expected, maybe because your editor does not work correctly, try setting the the EDITOR environment variable to a sane value, then launching visudo:

EDITOR=nano visudo

for sh, bash, dash, and compatible.


The processes you mention would all be killed by one command:

kill -9 -1

That would also log you out and kill all the programs you run so it's not ideal, but it would speed up your Mac and dedicate all further memory and resources to the system.

Practically, you would need to use launchctl to list all user tasks and quit them one by one. The tasks you mention all get started when you log in, so killing them might not do anything but cause them to exit, and re-start.

I would recommend instead of killing - doing the work to really measure the aspect of the system that's causing you constraint. RAM, CPU, Network, disk IO and focus on apps that impact that. The CPU times of the tasks you mentioned are so trivially small, it's hard to see them as any sort of problem, but perhaps you have data and measurements showing otherwise.

OS X can run thousands of small processes and juggle memory, and it's a rare instance where one program has a large enough memory leak or doesn't idle when it's not in use that it's unlikely you have a problem that doing all the work to script a kill tool would ever make you back the time you spent on it. I'd say, work on that script if you need it to learn how things work and not to make any difference going forward. In this instance, don't solve the general problem is my advice...


Copy spotlight comments into a text file?

You can use mdls to list the metadata attributes for a specific file. Here's how to show the comment for an imaginary file called myPhoto.jpeg in the Pictures folder:

mdls -name kMDItemFinderComment -r ~/Pictures/myPhoto.jpeg

And here's how to find all files on the computer that have a comment:

mdfind "kMDItemFinderComment=*"

Here's how to dump all comments for all files:

mdfind "kMDItemFinderComment=*" | xargs mdls -name kMDItemFinderComment -r

And dump the names of all commented files, along with their comments, as a CSV:

mdfind "kMDItemFinderComment=*" | xargs mdls -name kMDItemFinderComment -name kMDItemFSName -r | xargs -0 -n1 echo | awk 'NR%2==1{printf "\"" $0 "\","} NR%2==0{print "\"" $0 "\""}'


How to transfer notes on the iPhone between different IMAP account?

I asked apple, the response is that there is no other way than copy and paste.


Mac Mini 2018 Kernel panic bug_type 210 after Security Update 2020-002

I can confirm similar issues post Security Update 2020-002 on a 2018 Mac Mini runnign 10.14.6.

A few days later I power it down. On restart refuses to boot normally, taken to Internet restore, which ends in Error -1008F.
After clearing NVRAM it boots normally.
Left to sleep overnight
In the morning, it had shutdown and on starting up normally I received an ‘Unexpected Shutdown message, the crash log showed a panic with iBridge.

Reported to Apple with Feedback Assistant

Update: Security Update 2020-003 has updated Bridge OS so hopefully fixes the issue....


Is OS X on VirtualBox on Windows suitable for iOS app development using Xcode?

The OS X license does only allow to install a virtual copy on Apple hardware.

  Due to Apple licensing restrictions, you may only create and run this virtual machine on Apple-labeled hardware. For more information, see Apple's Hardware & Software Product Agreements.


SIM card transferrable between iPhone models?

Yes. If you are not using a carrier locked iPhone and using a standard SIM card, it can be easily transferred from one iPhone to another.

However, newer iPhones support cellular and connectivity technologies which may not be available on older models. For e.g. iPhone 5s and earlier lack support for 4G networking. You may wish to keep this in mind.


One Excellent third party tool that can make amazing edits to the keyboard mapping is named Karabiner.

To accomplish option and function key changes, create a filter for the external keyboard and adjust the modifier keys.

Prerequisites: external keyboard

Download, install and open Karabiner
Open in the menulet Karabiner -> Preferences
Open the tab Misc & Uninstall
Hit the button Launch EventViewer
Hit the tab Devices
Make a note of the vendor and product ID of the external keyboard:

Hit the tab Main
Enter the (PC-)Ctrl-key, (PC-)Fn-key and the (PC-)Alt-key and make a note of the "event names/miscs":

Close the EventViewer
Hit the button Open private.xml
Open the file private.xml with an appropriate editor
Enter the customized keycode and replace the vendor name, the product name, the vendor and product ID by IDs and names found above as well as the "names/miscs" of the events (= KeyCode).

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<root>
  <devicevendordef>
    <vendorname>Cougar</vendorname>
    <vendorid>0x05ac</vendorid>
  </devicevendordef>
  <deviceproductdef>
    <productname>ATTACKX3</productname>
    <productid>0x0256</productid>
  </deviceproductdef>
  <item>
    <name>Function to Option for ATTACKX3</name>
    <identifier>private.fn2optExtK</identifier>
    <device_only>DeviceVendor::Cougar, DeviceProduct::ATTACKX3</device_only>
    <autogen>__KeyToKey__ KeyCode::Fn, KeyCode::OPTION_L</autogen>
  </item>
</root>

Depending on your findings in the Event Viewer you may have to remap (PC-)keys to Control_L and Command_L also.
Save the file
Open in the menulet Karabiner -> Preferences the tab Change Key
Hit the ReloadXML button
Enable the remapping. It should be listed at the beginning.


How to get Quick Look to print PDF files double-sided?

If you are on Mountain Lion when u use quick-look and press Command-P to print the document. The "Quick-look App" actually opens the document in "Preview App" and make a simple print.
I advise you to open the document in preview directly to print it double-sided.


Can I verify if data protection was enabled from a backup?

You'll not likely be able to establish security after the fact directly. The protection is a combination of the hardware in the iOS device and the setting of a passcode lock and not a preference stored on a filesystem - it's baked into the OS. The backed up data is not encrypted at rest in the same manner as iOS's security. The act of restoring the backup also overrides whatever passcode lock and settings you had, so that's not a good way to proceed.

What you can do is research the exact model of the phone and the version of iOS. Grab this pdf from Apple: http://www.apple.com/business/docs/iOS_Security_Guide.pdf

Starting on Page 9 it describes the conditions needed for data to be encrypted at rest. It also has valuable information about what types of data is readable if someone guesses your passcode.

What you can do is restore your backup to the same class of hardware and observe that with a passcode set, the data protection is enabled. Hopefully you have an A7 or later processor since the PIN entry is governed by hardware rate limiters to reduce the chance your PIN can be brute forced.


Question mark folder after reboot and cannot detect other boot option!

just to update.

the hard disk actually crashed!!!

omg, can't believe that actually happened.

and the guys at the service center told me my data was unrecoverable...

guess i learn my lesson the hard way.

so what i did was after they renew my mac with a new hdd,

i bought myself two external hdd,

one for time machine backup

and one for all my other files,

so i don't keep any master copy of data on my mac hdd anymore.


Mac operating system from disc at startup

Just press Alt/Optn on startup.
Absolutely
Yes
There is noting special, read here on other bootup options


Send file using wifi to my MacBook while connected to wi-fi

In my suggestion, instead of finding one virtual interface why not you add option in your script itself to associate with Transcend before transfer and when its done it comes back to your original network.

To do this, you just add below given commands to your script.

Whenever script finds a new file, it force to associate the Transcend's    SSID (I assume your Mac is already associated to Venue's Wi-Fi)

networksetup -setairportnetwork en0 Transcend_SSID PASSWORD
This command will force to associate with Transcend's SSID.
Check the association

networksetup -getairportnetwork en0
Once Transfer is done remove the Transcend SSID from the network and toggle the Wi-Fi power.

networksetup -removepreferredwirelessnetwork en0 Transcend_SSID

networksetup -setairportpower en0 off

networksetup -setairportpower en0 on
According to Wi-Fi property it will associate back to your venue's Wi-Fi.

I think it might be helpful to you. It will break your connectivity with Venue's Wi-Fi for very less time as script is always running in background. Please let me know your thoughts.


Why aren't Find My Friends location indicators working?

For seeing the icon indicator when someone checks your location, you need to go to Settings > Privacy > Location services > System services (all the way to the bottom). Then go to the bottom again and check “show status bar icon”.

Please note that this will make the indicator show whenever any of the system location services use your location, not necessarily when someone checks your location on Find my friends. You will probably see the icon very often and it might rarely be caused by Find my friends.

The purple and gray arrows can be seen on the same page, by the name “location sharing”. You can also disable it there so people won’t see you, but it’s better to enable or disable it directly on the Friends app.

For temporarily disabling your location on the service, open the Friends app and tap your name. Then enable or disable “share my location”.

If your location indicator on the map is red, you can’t be seen by your friends. If it’s blue, then the friends you are sharing your location with can check your location.

The message your friends get when you disable sharing is the same as they would if you didn’t have an internet connection: “location unavailable”.


Have you tried the following:

Go to System Preferences > Energy Saver
Set computer sleep to Never (or an appropriately long period of time)
Set display sleep to occur when you like
Now go to System Preferences > Security & Privacy
Click on General
Tick the box for Require password...after sleep or screen saver begins
Click on the drop-down menu to select how long after sleep you want the need for a password to be activated (Immediately, 5 secs, 1 min, etc etc)
Exit System Preferences

Note, if you want you can also use the Screen Saver function to achieve the same thing. You would still do the above steps, but in addition:

Go to System Preferences > Desktop & Screen Saver
Select the Screen Saver tab
Set the Start After option (at bottom left) to dictate when you want the Screen Saver to start - note you may want this to be set at a shorter period than your Energy Saver sleep settings (e.g. If you set your display sleep to occur after 15 mins, you may want your screen saver to start after 5 mins - this means your screen saver will be active for 10 minutes before your display will fully go to sleep)
Choose any other Screen Saver options you like
Exit System Preferences

If you have any problems/questions, let me know.


OSX Applications come in a .bundle file which is basically like a ZIP or other archive file in that it's actually a sort of folder. In that way all of your program files and dependencies are in one, neat package. Sometimes, though, other information like preferences will be stored throughout the system. Typical places to look are /Library and /Users/(user)/Library. Warning - do NOT delete anything unless you really, really want to mess something important up. If you have a legitimate concern I would suggest contacting the developer and asking for assistance.


I had a battery replaced on the day after iPhone 6 launch and the process took 50 minutes door to door. (Entering the store to leaving). We did have a reservation and chose to stay past the "50 minutes" to let the iCloud restore finish and get key apps from the in store cache / fast internet.

I would expect you might get in and out 10 minutes quicker on a less busy day and could wait twice that if several phones were ahead of you to have batteries replaced.


The OS is installed on the SSD. Most installations are non-specific: they will run on any Mac that the OS supports.

In any case: reinstalling the OS normally leaves your data intact on the volume. And you've got a backup in the event of something going wrong and your files being accidentally deleted. Of course you have.


Create a computer-to-computer network

If you want to set up a temporary Wi-Fi connection between your Mac and another device, you can create your own network using the Wi-Fi menu.

Click the Wi-Fi status icon  in the menu bar and choose Create Network.
Enter a name and choose a channel for your network.
Click Create.

When you create a computer-to-computer network, the Wi-Fi menu icon changes to show a computer . When you’re done, click the Wi-Fi menu again and choose Disconnect to close the network you created.

Show Wi-Fi status in the menu bar

Use the Wi-Fi status icon  in the menu bar to switch between Wi-Fi networks, turn Wi-Fi on or off, or open Network preferences.

If the Wi-Fi status icon isn’t in the menu bar, choose Apple menu > System Preferences, then click Network.
Click Wi-Fi in the list at the left.

If Wi-Fi isn’t in the list, click the Add button  at the bottom of the list. Click the Interface pop-up menu, choose Wi-Fi, give the Wi-Fi service a name, then click Create.
Select “Show Wi-Fi status in menu bar.”

Four signal bars appear in the Wi-Fi status icon in the menu bar. The more black bars you see, the higher the signal quality.

References

macOS Sierra: Create a computer-to-computer network

macOS Sierra: Show Wi-Fi status in the menu bar


Can I get my Touch Bar to play sounds to acknowledge my Touch Bar key presses?

Actually you’re in luck. A while back I came across Haptic Touch Bar.

This software not only offers the sound feedback you’re looking for, but actually provides tactile feedback by activating the trackpad magnets to vibrate the MBP when you're using the Touch Bar.

NOTE: I am not affiliated with the developer or this software in any way.


Parallels Desktop: Option not available: "Install macOS Using the Recovery Partition"

Parallels support chat told me that macOS vm's are not (yet) supported on M1 processors.
I should follow https://kb.parallels.com/125053.


Notification when Apple compressor is done

Create an Automator workflow that sends a notification.
Set the Automator workflow as the action to use on completion.

Run Automator Workflow
The Automator Workflow job action applies an Automator workflow to an output file after transcoding.

Workflow: Click the Choose button to set the Automator workflow that the job action triggers.

https://support.apple.com/en-gb/guide/compressor/cpsr6463a5b3/4.5.1/mac/10.15.6


Cannot break running process in Terminal

To exit screen you press ControlA followed by Control\.

You can find a comprehensive list of all the default key bindings in the man page (man screen).


Cannot resize APFS partition - “The new size must be different than the existing size”

This helped me:

repair (internal, disk0 - in your case)
diskutil repairdisk disk0

resize (synthesized, disk1 - in your case with HS)
diskutil apfs resizeContainer disk1 0

After repairdisk resizeContainer works with no errors. You can see a similar issue over here for more context: Cannot resize APFS partition - "The new size must be different than the existing size"


Streaming purchased DVD through Apple TV

Try using VLC to play the DVD instead of the OS X's DVD Player app.

You can also rip your DVD to a format the Apple TV can play directly using Handbrake, but obviously this isn't really an on-demand solution (it will probably yield better quality than VLC + AirPlay Mirroring though).

Also see this question for details on how you could set up direct streaming without AirPlay mirroring, which should yield better quality (at the cost of some time setting it up at first): Can I stream any video played with VLC player to Apple TV?


Why are subscribed podcasts appearing more than once on my iPod touch 5g?

I had this issue with multiple copies podcasts on iOS 8.

The new version on iOS 9 seems to have fixed this if you also make sure the podcast is subscribed on both iOS and iTunes.

The alternative is downcast to old iOS which had podcasts as part of Music as that worked perfectly for me.


How to handle bundle identifiers with spaces?

A proper bundle identifier should not have a space in it. According to Apple's App Distribution Guide -> About Bundle IDs, a

  "...bundle ID string must be a uniform type identifier (UTI) that contains
  only alphanumeric characters (A-Z,a-z,0-9), hyphen (-), and period
  (.). The string should be in reverse-DNS format. For example, if your
  organization’s domain is Acme.com and you create an app named Hello,
  you could assign the string com.Acme.Hello as your app’s bundle ID.

So, technically, org.mozilla.tor browser is not a valid bundle identifier, so you'll get unexpected results when trying to work with it. It should likely be changed (by the developer) to something like org.mozilla.tor.browser or org.mozilla.tor-browser, etc.


Finding files with square brackets in filename

In Terminal, use \ to escape any character:

ls *\[a\]*


How does the digital compass "figure of eight" waving for calibration work?

The reason for moving your device in a figure eight is to help it calibrate itself against magnetic interference. By moving it slightly its able to detect the differences and return a more accurate reading.

You can read the Apple knowledge base article here


Can music be played simultaneously on Homepod and another device using the same account?

You can definitely listen to Apple Music on multiple devices simultaneously.

(In fact, my Homepod, Apple TV, and iPhone have an annoying propensity for all trying to play songs at the same time, instead of controlling one-another.)


Is there an escape sequence that will change the background color in Terminal?

I have this in my bash_profile:

# Change the terminal theme when SSH to remote
function tabc() {
    NAME=$1; if [ -z "$NAME" ]; then NAME="Default"; fi
    osascript -e "tell application \"Terminal\" to set current settings of front window to settings set \"$NAME\""
}

# Change the terminal color when remote
function ssh {
  tabc "Hiltmon-Remote"
  /usr/bin/ssh "$@"
  tabc "Hiltmon"
}

It uses Applescript (which you don't want) to change the terminal profile.  Replace the Hiltmon and Hiltmon-Remote with your own color scheme names. When you use the ssh command, the macro changes the shell theme, then runs ssh. When you exit the remote session, it changes it back. Very cool!

I tried using the shell color escape sequences like \[\e[36m\] and \[\e[0m\] but the remote session can and does reset them. This works great for me.


Do different Macs have different quality audio ADCs?

The physical 3.5mm input jacks are likely the same or nearly identical, but the relative quality will be determined by the audio chipset used. I would check System Report on both machines, go to Audio, and see what chipsets are being used. It may not show you enough detail to know exactly which version it is, but hopefully will provide enough detail to research their respective specs online.

I wouldn't use the 3.5mm jack though. Since you have a Mac Pro you should have an on optical input available. This will be much higher resolution than the mini jack - 24bit/48k vs 16bit/44k (in most cases). Take advantage of that with something inexpensive like a Behringer UCA202 ($25 I believe.) The ADC's on it are designed for digitizing vinyl, and it has an optical out that you can connect to your Mac Pro, for the cleanest possible signal transfer to your recording software. Most people who digitize vinyl do it at 24/48 because of the added headroom it provides.

(Edit: I should have asked if your turntable's amp provides RCA outs, because that's how you would connect it to the Behringer. If it only has 3.5mm out, and you don't want to purchase a separate preamp, then your only choice would be to plug it in directly to one of your Mac's 3.5mm jacks. Just realize those are very low fidelity inputs without much amperage, so you will need to do major volume boosting in your recording software to compensate, which will introduce noise.)


Compability of Brew Cask VirtualBox and Parallels?

Yes, the brew cask virtualbox and Parallels Desktop 12 seem to be compatible. I tested them and they are working together.

Anyway if they become incompatible at some point, there are also other alternatives. As mentioned in the comments, other alternatives contain

Parallels Desktop 12 for Mac Pro Edition where you can use the free vagrant-parallels
also an experimental vagrant provider for xhyve > shave > Apple > Hypervisor.framework by this comment


As far as I know, Yosemite Romaji IM's failure to honor option and shift dead keys is a bug that Apple will have to fix via an OS update.  It has been reported elsewhere (e.g. https://discussions.apple.com/message/26864874#26864874  ).  It would be good to use Apple's feedback channel to encourage quick action on this.

The OS X 10.10.1 update does not fix this bug in Kotoeri, but the 10.10.2 update of Jan 27, 2015 DOES fix it.

The behavior described for the US International PC keyboard layout is not a bug, but intended.  People who use this keyboard want the ` ~ ^ " ' keys to be dead keys for producing accented characters, and they learn to add a space when they need the stand alone version.

I have not seen any other reports of the US keyboard layout not working right in Yosemite.  When the US flag is showing at the top right of the screen, you should be able to use the standard option dead keys to produce accented characters without problems.  You should also be able to use the Character Picker, where you hold down the key for the base letter and a popup menu appears where you can select accented versions.  If that is not the case for you, the OS is broken somewhere and may need to be reinstalled.


How to temporarily suspend iTunes Connect payments for app earnings?

You can adjust your app's price tier in iTunes Connect, including making it free and including setting start and end dates for the price tier change.

See these instructions from Apple for details of the steps to take for the app itself.

See these instructions from Apple for details of the steps to take for an in-app-purchase.


How do i change the column type in Numbers from number to string

Highlight the cells you want to change.
Click the paintbrush icon to display the Formatting sidebar.
In the Data Format dropdown, select Text


Where is my .bash_profile located? (Mac OS 10.10.5)

You can edit bash profile with vi ~/.bash_profile make sure the PATH was not added in ~/.bashrc or to /etc/profile

To remove the PATH you can either remove it from the file where it was added, or simply re export the ones you need export PATH=/here/is/one:/here/is/another


Spotlight not showing Bing results on iOS 8

There's only one location in Settings where I've seen reference to this. Try going to...

Settings > General > Spotlight Search

This is what I see when I go to those settings. You should be able to select the option there. If you don't see that option, you might try setting Bing as your default search engine for Safari. Let me know if that helps or what you find.

Hope that helps!


Switching between Chrome Developer Tools and main window full screen

You can use Mission Control (Ctrl+Up) to drag the main Chrome window and the DevTools window to adjacent spaces, if they are not already next to each other. You can use Ctrl+Left and Ctrl+Right to cycle through spaces.

Mac users will generally keep all related spaces adjacent to each other, in a group, and use Ctrl+Left and Ctrl+Right to navigate between them.


You don't need additional software for this, the standard vi installed by macOS can edit binary files.

cd /Applications/Microsoft\ Word.app/Contents/MacOS/
cp Microsoft\ Word Microsoft\ Word.orig
vi -b Microsoft\ Word

Now, assuming you are not used to vi:

Type /app-sandbox followed by Return to jump to the definition you want to change

Press Return again to move the cursor to the next line
Type ct/<false followed by ESC

Type ZZ to save and quit

PS: If you get stuck within vi, press ESC twice and then type :q! to quit without saving.

If you want to script this, use (at our own risk)

vi -b Microsoft\ Word '+/app-sandbox/+1s/true/false/' '+wq'

which basically does the same thing as the interactive sequence above in one go.

/app-sandbox/+1 makes the following command (the substitution) only apply on the line after the one containing the app-sandbox string
s/true/false/ is the substitution and replaces true by false
wq writes the modified file back to disk and quits


osascript -e command for displaying a text in status bar?

There is not a way to use AppleScript to put something in the menu bar, as far as I can tell, and I looked for a long time.

There are two apps that will put stuff into the menu bar, based on scripts of various kinds:

BitBar
TextBar

BitBar made a big splash a few years ago, but it's pretty much dead now.

TextBar is less well-known, but it's a much better app, in my opinion, and the developer is very responsive. You can find examples on GitHub of the types of things you can do with it.


I don't know if there's a difference in Canada, but here in the US if you select the Purchased tab in iTunes, it now appears to be split into 3 sections. Music, Movies and TV Shows.

This more apparent on the iPhone. On the iPad in the upper left corner is a tab indicating "View: Music". If you tap it you can change to Movies or TV Shows.


How to install memcache on Mavericks? (MAMP)

It seems there are 2 memcache extensions.
There is memcached and memcache the latter one does not seem to be maintained anymore last stable from 2012.

It looks like your code depends on Memcache since you are using brew, you could just do:

brew install php55-memcache

or

pecl install

Install brew by issuing:

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


Tap on the Share button, then select the photos you want to delete by tapping on them and then tap Delete.


How to avoid 'Move to Applications folder' prompt?

Although this is hard to check, it seems like Gatekeeper was being overly-protective, but has since been adjusted.

When using macOS Sierra (10.12) or later, if an app is in /Applications/ but prompts to be moved to /Applications/ when run, then chances are very high that the app has recognized that it has been subjected to Gatekeeper’s “app translocation”. If you’re interested in the details you can find them online, but the practical effect is that if you went into Terminal (or iTerm) and ran

ps auxwww | fgrep -i YourAppHere

You would see a path that is not /Applications/YourAppHere.app but more like /private/var/folders/[something-random-looking]/AppTranslocation/YourAppHere.app.

The preferred way of moving apps around (according to Apple) is with the Finder. If you drag an app from the ~/Downloads/ folder to /Applications then it will not be 'translocated'.

If you insist on not doing things Apple’s preferred way, your only option is to remove the quarantine flag from the app. This will remove all of Gatekeeper’s protections, so use at your own risk. You can remove the quarantine flag using this command:

find "/Applications/iTerm.app" -exec xattr -r -d com.apple.quarantine {} \;

Replace "/Applications/iTerm.app" with the appropriate app name as needed, obviously.

You will need to re-launch the app for the app translocation to go away.


Can’t delete "com.avira.scanservice.systemextension" leftover from AVIRA Free Antivirus

I am very displeased with this software. It litters the Mac with a
lot of files all over the place. I work in enterprise IT and I thought
the expensive security tools were insane. This is just plain terrible
software with sloppy packaging and removal.
I suspect you ran into trouble because you installed this prior to upgrading to Catalina. Then decided to remove it afterwards.  For future reference, if you install security tools you need to take note and verify they are compatible before you upgrade the operating system.  It is not uncommon to brick your Mac when upgrading the operating system with an incompatible security tool.  Especially those that use kernel system extensions.

The Avira support site provides a script you can download, decompress and run but the file will be initially blocked as it's from an Unidentified Developer. You'll need to allow the script to run and then execute it in Terminal via the sudo (Super User Do) command. I've analyzed the script and it doesn't do anything it is not supposed to be doing.
https://support.avira.com/hc/en-us/article_attachments/360001695365/Avira_Uninstaller.zip
I recommend not running this tool in the GUI but from Terminal manually as below:
xattr -dr com.apple.quarantine ~/Downloads/Avira.Uninstall.command
sudo ~/Downloads/Avira.Uninstall.command

The Avira support pages seem to indicate there is an uninstall tool located in /Applications/Utilities/Avira-Uninstall.app/Contents/MacOS/Avira-Uninstall and that you may need to run this from Terminal instead of clicking the App in the /Applications/Utilities directory.

Open Terminal
Type the following command

sudo /Applications/Utilities/Avira-Uninstall.app/Contents/MacOS/Avira-Uninstall

Enter your Mac user password and I would recommend rebooting when it's finished.
If this does not work, then you can manually remove the AVIRA system extension. It looks scary and complex but it's not as bad as it looks it's just tedious.
Manual Process:
Fortunately, Apple provides a developer tool to fix this problem called "systemextensionsctl". Unfortunately, it is complicated by needing to disable SIP (System Integrity Protection) as well as enabling the root user account then retrieving the AVIRA system extension developer TeamIdentifier and Bundle Identifier information then uninstalling the system extension and finally turning SIP back on and turning off the root user account. All this in the name of improved security...
Prerequisites:

macOS Catalina (you have that covered)
Disable SIP (System Integrity Protection)
Enable root account

Disable SIP:

Restart the computer while holding CMD + R to enter Recovery Mode
Click on the Utilities pull down menu and select Terminal and enter
command below:

csrutil disable

Click the Apple pulldown menu and restart
Follow this Apple Support document to enable the root user account
https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204012
Don't forget to sign-out and back on as the root user with the password you created when following the Apple Support document. Do not reboot, but logout and back on instead

Open the Terminal (CMD + Spacebar type Terminal then press Return
You'll need to find the Team identifier of the certificate used to sign the system extension as well as the Bundle identifier for the system extension as you will need to supply them to the systemextensionctl tool so you can uninstall the AVIRA system extension. There's another tool from Apple called codesign that will give you that information.
Copy this command and paste into Terminal to return the TeamIdentifier code for the AVIRA system extension
codesign -dvvv /Library/SystemExtensions/511A3B18-B8D9-4324-A145-25F85A6CA02/com.avira.scanservice.systemextension 2>&1 | awk -F= '/^TeamIdentifier/ {print $NF}'

It will return the TeamIdentifier which will be a alphanumeric code something like:
AVY94IG3PA (sample result, use the result you receive)
Now copy and paste this slightly different command to obtain the Identifier for AVIRA
codesign -dvvv /Library/SystemExtensions/511A3B18-B8D9-4324-A145-25F85A6CA02/com.avira.scanservice.systemextension 2>&1 | awk -F= '/^Identifier/ {print $NF}'

This one should return something like:
com.avira.scanservice.extension (sample result use the one you receive)
Once you have both of these pieces of information displayed in the Terminal you can enter the actual command to remove the system extension: (enter the TeamIdentifier and Bundle Identifiers you retrieved earlier. The codes below are only an example do not copy and paste the command below)
systemextensionsctl uninstall AVY94IG3PA com.avira.scanservice.extension

IMPORTANT: Do not forget to Enable SIP and Disable the root user account when you are done. These two items are important to keep your Mac protected from truly nasty security threats.


SSDs degrade over time because the 'cells' they use to store memory can only be written to a certain number of times before they start degrading. As SSDs degrade, they start to become slower and eventually stop working all together (though the drive usually fails before all memory cells become non-functioning).

To help slow down the rate at which SSDs degrade, many SSDs implement a technique called wear levelling, which requires a bit of additional memory management. In some SSDs, this can cause writes to become slower because it has to examine more memory blocks before it finds an unused are to write to (As mentioned here: http://www.anandtech.com/show/2738/8).

Thus, if the entire device is wiped (i.e. all bits are 'zeroed') and the data is rewritten to it, the memory will be rewritten in the order it went in and all clump near one are, meaning new writes should become faster again because there's now all the blank pages are grouped together and nothing needs to be overwritten.

At least, that's the theory. Now for the reality.

In reality all SSDs have different methods of reducing wear so this will only work for some. That article was written ~5-6 years ago, SSDs have changed a lot since then, they've become much better at reducing wear and employ different techniques.

Finally, remember that in clearing the entire SSD (i.e. writing a zero to every address) and then rewriting all its old data back onto it, you are performing quite a few writes to various cells. Depending on how your SSD actually works, this could improve write-speeds, but it could also not improve write speeds. One thing is guaranteed though, it'll wear down the SSD a bit and it will die a tiny bit faster. If you were to do this every week for the entire time you owned the SSD, you'd probably waste a fair chunk of its write limit just wiping it and writing data back to it.

Long story short: don't bother trying to screw around with tricks like this, just trust that the people with years of experience researching and designing SSDs know how to do wear levelling better than a bunch of self-proclaimed 'hackers'. Ultimately if your SSD write speeds are slow enough to be noticeably bad, you're better off buying a new SSD anyway.


Trying to script partitioning Macintosh HD in command line?

Your main disk is already partitioned. You can't use diskutil partitionDisk /dev/disk0 GPT ... booted to the same disk.

In my opinion you have three options:

Resize the current Logical Volume "Macintosh HD" and create a second logical volume in the LVG
Resize the whole stack and add a fourth volume at the end
Create a growing sparsebundle image in your encrypted volume "Macintosh HD"

Resize the logical volume:

resize the logical volume:

diskutil cs resizeVolume EFDB0B2F-EEBB-4CAC-8AFE-69F4C1803A54 399055m

add a second logical volume in the free LVG space:

diskutil cs createVolume 5E012656-B5D2-43E3-999F-5EF2E2D0C138 jhfsx "dev" 100%

Result:

/dev/disk0 (internal, physical):
  #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE           IDENTIFIER
  0:      GUID_partition_scheme                        *500.3 GB       disk0
  1:                        EFI EFI                     209.7 MB       disk0s1
  2:          Apple_CoreStorage Macintosh HD            499.4 GB       disk0s2
  3:                 Apple_Boot Recovery HD             650.0 MB       disk0s3

/dev/disk1 (internal, virtual):
  #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE           IDENTIFIER
  0:                  Apple_HFS Macintosh HD           +399.1 GB       disk1
                         Logical Volume on disk0s2
                         EFDB0B2F-EEBB-4CAC-8AFE-69F4C1803A5
                         Unlocked Encrypted
/dev/disk2 (internal, virtual):
  #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE           IDENTIFIER
  0:                  Apple_HFS dev                     100.0 GB       disk2
                         Logical Volume on disk0s2
                         C7C75FC4-4062-42E7-B2F5-576CFCA257854
                         Unencrypted

Resize the stack:

resize the whole stack:

diskutil cs resizeStack EFDB0B2F-EEBB-4CAC-8AFE-69F4C1803A54 399055m

add a fourth volume with gdisk (download required)

sudo gdisk /dev/disk0

Enter the following key sequence: N/Enter/Enter/Enter/AF00/W/Y Check the help with `?`!

format case-sensitive after getting the new device identifier

diskutil list
sudo newfs_hfs -v dev -J -s disk0s4 #use the appropriate device identifier here

modify volume permissions with chgrp/chmod if necessary
Result:

/dev/disk0 (internal, physical):
  #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE           IDENTIFIER
  0:      GUID_partition_scheme                        *500.3 GB       disk0
  1:                        EFI EFI                     209.7 MB       disk0s1
  2:          Apple_CoreStorage Macintosh HD            399.4 GB       disk0s2
  3:                 Apple_Boot Recovery HD             650.0 MB       disk0s3
  4:                  Apple_HFS dev                     100.0 GB       disk0s4
/dev/disk1 (internal, virtual):
  #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE           IDENTIFIER
  0:                  Apple_HFS Macintosh HD           +399.1 GB       disk1
                         Logical Volume on disk0s2
                         EFDB0B2F-EEBB-4CAC-8AFE-69F4C1803A5
                         Unlocked Encrypted

Create a growing sparsebundle:

hdiutil create -type SPARSEBUNDLE -size 100g -fs JHFS+X -volname dev dev

Check man hdiutil for other formats like SPARSE etc.

Scripting this is rather difficult but not impossible - except the last proposal which is easy to implement.


MacBook is attacked but can't find any threats

"Going slow" is not really an indicator of malware. Most malware can do its job without using significant CPU, and malware designers want their software to be unnoticed.

If several malware apps have said "it's not malware", then that's probably true.

It's much more likely that there are other problems with your Mac. Check Activity Monitor, and see what is using excessive CPU. Remove third-party Launch Agents or any other software that runs in the background. Test a new user account, and see if that it better. If so: it's a user account problem.

Make sure you have low memory pressure (also in Activity Monitor), and that you have plenty of free disk space.


Airport Extreme 802.11ac Can't See USB HDD

If the HDD is a 2.5' (laptop drive) that draws power from nothing else but the USB port it will never work with a USB Hub. They all share the same power source on the Airport that has a limit of 500mA. That would work with the hdd directly in the Airport but connecting an unpowered USB Hub draws around 80-100mA and the hdd is left with 400mA to start... which is too low.

I can only imagine, but i think you are using this setup to connect more than one drive to the Airport and having multiple disks shared by it. That's ok but...

For this to work you need a special USB hub known as a Powered USB hub that you can connect to the wall socket separately. This separate power adapter draws 2-2.5A of power from the wall socket to power each USB Hub port with its own 500mA thus being able to give enough current to the hdd to operate correctly.

Check this out. Notice the wall socket power adaptor.
http://www.ebay.co.uk/bhp/powered-usb-hub
Also try to get a decent brand so it lasts... and doesn't cause a fire or fry your hdd in the long run.


You can prevent the Mac from sleeping in the Energy Saver preferences panel. There are a few options, but if you want to simply keep it awake the either:

Dragging the Computer sleep slider to Off.
Checking Prevent computer from sleeping automatically when the display is off.

You can find more options and details in Apple’s Support Document.


Install Flash Player 11.9 on case-sensitive filesystem

As I posted on an Adobe forum post the reason is the following: The installation tries to access /usr/libexec/Plistbuddy but the correct spelling is /usr/libexec/PlistBuddy. You can execute the following commands in a terminal to solve the problem and successfully complete the installation:

cd /usr/libexec
sudo ln -s PlistBuddy Plistbuddy


How can I tell if an email from Apple is genuine? I keep getting asked to verify my identity

The from email address can be anything, so that means this can be anyone.

To tell if it is really them:

View the full header of the email. Open Mail, open the email, press Cmnd+Shift+H to view the header, look where it came from, obviously you wanna look for apple.com, anything else is most likely fake. Here is part of an example of a legitimate Apple header:

  smtp.mailfrom=new_ndt_bounces@applemusic.com; dkim=pass (identity
  alignment result is pass and alignment mode is relaxed)
  header.d=applemusic.com; x-hmca=pass header.id=new@applemusic.com

See where the link goes. Right click on their "Verify" link, paste it in a text editor and verify if you see any apple.com domains in this link, if not it is most likely fake. If it's a shortened URL, verify it first at Expand URL then check for Apple domains again.


Mac mini 2018 HDMI surround sound output

Ok, I managed to get 5.1 surround to work!

The solution was to configure the SONY Receiver to accept A.F.D. AUTO, which

  Presets the sound as it was recorded/ encoded without adding any
  surround effects.

according to the manual.


What happened to my books in iPad update?

I had a similar problem since iOS 13, but only on my iPad not my iPhone.

I have about 500 books and I like the bookshelf view. After the iOS 13 update, several of the books disappeared. The rectangle for the cover view was still there, but it was blank. When I clicked on it, nothing happened except that the app froze.

The problem seemed to be with books on iCloud, not those stored locally.

I tried various things:

Switching off syncing for Reading now brought them back - for a short time
I deleted the app and reinstalled it. The books displayed correctly as the books downloaded from iCloud but when downloading was complete, they disappeared again.

In the end, changing to the list view seems to be a workaround! The icons are still blank, but the details are shown in the list and the books will download if I click on them.


Erasing Data from a Water Damaged MacBook Air

First, the SSD is PCIe based so it's removable.  Open the back cover and remove the SSD. There's an excellent step-by-step guide on iFixit.

Removing the SSD will ensure that nobody else will have your data and at this point, you can list your MBA for sale without the fear of your data ending up in someone else's possession.

You then have the option of installing it into a USB enclosure so that you can access the data (via the other Mac), though there's no guarantee that it (SSD) will work.  If it does work, you can copy your data off and then wipe the drive and sell it as well.

Could you install it into a similar MBA (mid 2013 through 2017 MBAs)?  Sure, but I am hesitant to put electronic components that are of questionable functionality into working machines.  I personally wouldn't take the risk.


What are the utilities included in the Mavericks recovery partition?

The recovery partition for OS X 10.7 and above includes the following utility applications:

Firmware Password Utility
Network Utility
Disk Utility
Terminal

In addition, the recovery partition allows you to use a version of Safari to better help you research and diagnose problems, restore from a Time Machine backup, and install OS X.


Changing Word 2011 Save Location Drop-Down Menu

I think what you are looking for is the button that expands the save dialog to the expanded size. I took the below screenshot in Word 2016 running on Yosemite, but as this is (almost) the standard OS X save dialog I think you should find it in the same place in Word 2011.


How to safely eject a volume when the icon has disappeared?

If a disk has been ejected via Finder and the icon has disappeared but you feel it hasn't yet, then here are some things you can try:

Does it show up in Disk Utility? If it does, eject it from there and if not, then it's safe to unplug.

In Terminal, diskutil list -- It the device is not listed then it's safe to unplug it. If it is listed use e.g. diskutil eject diskN where diskN is e.g. disk3, then follow it up with diskutil unmountDisk diskN.  If it doesn't unmount you can use: diskutil unmountDisk force diskN


Why can I not maximize Activity Monitor to full screen?

Each application can opt in or out of full screen mode. From Apple's perspective, Activity Monitor is an "instrument", like a calculator or a multimeter, for example. You can test it on your machine - Calculator app also refuses to go full screen because it is just an instrument.
So the devs concluded that Activity Monitor is not something that users would want in full screen. Users would rather want it on the side while they are focused on the actual program whose CPU/Memory/Disk/Network activity they want to keep an eye on.

The section of human interface guidelines on design for full screen mode has this guidance:

Enable full-screen windows only when it makes sense. Full-screen mode is useful when a user wants to be immersed in a task, but not all apps require immersion. For example, some utility apps like Calculator work better with smaller windows that reside onscreen alongside other apps. When porting an iOS app to macOS, don’t assume the app must support full-screen mode in macOS

Perhaps, the utility aspect of this is prioritized so the menu bar isn’t hidden for people that wish to be immersed in the activity display.


Will encrypting the Windows partition with BitLocker wipe out the macOS partition?

On a Mac, via BootCamp, BitLocker will only encrypt the Windows' system volume (drive C:). So MacOS will not be modified.

Of course, accessing your BitLocker encrypted volume when you are using your computer with MacOS is another matter. There are software doing this.


Write permissions on a new encrypted partition

I assume this happened as you have used the partition on Extended Journaled
Open the finder, find the drive under ‘Devices’, then right-click and select ‘Get Info’.  A dialog box should pop up and display the basic info of the drive. At the bottom, there is a collapsed menu for ‘Sharing & Permissions’, make sure your username has read and write permission, and check "Ignore ownership on this volume"

If you are unable to do this , then first try to disable Journaling, and do the previous step shared above
Open Disk Utility, Select the partition and then hold down the alt key. Select the file from the top menu and you will then see an option to ‘disable Journalling’


I don't recognize that, but you can usually figure out any menu bar item by
clicking it or option clicking it. You can usually option drag any Apple item out of the menu bar to remove it:

How can I get rid of this icon in my menu bar?

If not in this specific case, go download this menu bar tool and start digging into what it tells you about that item.

http://www.macbartender.com
Where that icon on my OS X menu bar comes from?

Alternatively, you could isolate this to a user process or system process following this guide:

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204772

Once you know if it's a system or user program, you can look at all the places where apps start and figure what software was installed to make that icon. You could save all work and make a system backup and then start killing user processes in Activity Monitor one by one that belong to your user to see which process makes that icon. It's likely not anything from Apple, so simply uninstalling all third party software would be a last resort.


The dot icon on the dock stays despite I have closed the app

The presence of a dot below an app icon in Dock indicates that the app is still running.

Clicking on the red  traffic light button in the app window title bar, doesn't quit every macOS app. The default behavior of a macOS is to not quit upon clicking the button.

Some apps are programmed to quit upon clicking the red  traffic light button, but most keep running unless you explicitly quit them by running the App Name → Quit App Name command in the menu bar, or using the keyboard shortcut Command + Q, or right clicking on the app icon in the Dock and selecting Quit.


The new openssh version (7.0+) deprecated DSA keys and is not using DSA keys by default (not on server or client). The keys are not preferred to be used anymore, so if you can, I would recommend to use RSA keys where possible.

If you really need to use DSA keys, you need to explicitly allow them in your client config using

PubkeyAcceptedKeyTypes +ssh-dss

Should be enough to put that line in ~/.ssh/config, as the verbose message is trying to tell you. Ref.


iCloud is not syncing files within Pages and Numbers folders

I managed to do it by signing completely out of iCloud and signing back in.


Download Entire iMessage History with One Person as Plain Text

The Messages app stores history in ~/Library/Messages/chat.db, which is a database in SQLite format. To open it and inspect it, you'll need to install the SQLite tools, which are available from the SQLite website or from Homebrew with brew install sqlite.
In a terminal, run sqlite3 ~/Library/Messages/chat.db, which will open the sqlite3 command line. Type SELECT * FROM handle; and search for the relevant conversation - its ID is the number in the first column.
Next, run .output filename.txt to set a path for the output to be saved, and
then run the following command, replacing 12345 with the ID of the conversation you're exporting.
SELECT handle_id, date, datetime(date / 1000000000,'unixepoch','31 years'), text
FROM message T1
INNER JOIN chat_message_join T2
    ON T2.chat_id=12345
    AND T1.ROWID=T2.message_id
ORDER BY T1.date;

You will now have a text file, filename.txt, containing this conversation in chronological order. You can run .schema message to see the full list of columns if you would like to save more data - simply add a comma and the name of the column onto the SELECT statement.


How to remove emoji autocomplete suggestions?

This is untested but I did find this method for disabling emojis in the Messages app.

NOTE: In any applications where emojis are supported you should find a similar item under that app's Edit → Substitions menu. Simply uncheck emojis per app.

References

How to Stop Automatic Emoji Replacing Emoticons in Messages for Mac OS X


Is my MagSafe covered under my MacBook's AppleCare?

Troubleshooting MagSafe adapters

Whether your product is in or out of warranty, you can take your adapter to an Apple Authorized Service Provider or Apple Retail Store for evaluation and replacement if necessary. Pending the results of the evaluation, you may or may not be eligible for a replacement adapter free of charge. Signs of accidental damage would negate any coverage. Be sure to bring in the computer used with the adapter; it is required to process potential adapter replacements.

So there are competing things at play. If your cable is otherwise pristine, no bends, no mars, no scuffs and it's clearly not worn - you might think that this split could be caused by either abuse/nick/cut/carelessness or perhaps not holding up as designed. If the rest of the adapter cord is worn and starting to show normal signs that it's just wearing out (no cord lasts forever, especially when wrapped, unwrapped, tugged) you might be asked to pay for a replacement if it's not clear the physical separation was a defect in manufacturing.
If Apple didn't make the cable correctly, it's likely it would fail immediately, but the longer the time that passes until you take it in for service, it's more likely to be an external force causing the tear. Usually by inspecting the rest of the cable (not pictured) you will see other signs of excessive force so absent those signs of stretching and tearing, this might be covered despite what looks like an obvious cut/rip due to a tug.


What model Mac do you have? That will limit the recovery options. Internet recovery or putting your Mac into target mode and connecting it to another Mac to run the installer are two good places to start.

Also, you can install Lion onto any old USB drive and then bring that to your Mac to boot up and fix things. Remember you only need a Mac that runs 10.6.8 to get at Lion from the app store. As long as you have an Internet connection, you can download the lion installer and run it to install over your Mac. Assuming it has a FireWire port, you can run the install in target disk mode. If not, you'll need to install to an external USB drive then take that drive to your Mac to boot things up.


What does the Key icon mean when I type in a password in terminal?

It means that what you're about to type won't be printed out to the terminal — it's hidden input. It's not making any reference to Keychain or other security features.


Does Safari and Google Chrome for macOS use the same rendering engine?

No. While Google Chrome used WebKit for macOS client at one point, that's no longer the case for current stable build. From the Wikipedia entry for Google Chrome:

  WebKit was the original rendering engine, but Google eventually forked it to create the Blink engine; all Chrome variants except iOS now use Blink

The restriction to use WebKit as the rendering engine for 3rd party Web browser apps exists solely on iOS. From the App Store Review Guidelines:

  2.5.6 Apps that browse the web must use the appropriate WebKit framework and WebKit Javascript.


I deleted iMovie by accident, how can I get it back?

If you've registered your iLife with the Mac App Store, you can find it in the Purchased tab.

Alternatively, if you have a Time Machine backup or other backup of /Applications, you can restore the file through that.


Swapping Modifier Keys on a PS/2 Keyboard

Odd. I use an old-school keyboard as well, and have not experienced the same problem. I can offer no suggestion on the software side, but you may find it useful to know that you can get a modern USB keyboard with IBM buckling spring keys at http://pckeyboard.com/page/category/UKBD


Google Calendar subscription shared with iCloud

You can not sync a Google calendar and an iCloud calendar out of the box. (Google and Apple both seem to avoid making it possible, probably because they both try to pull users onto their side.)

However:

All Apple devices can use and sync with Google calendars additional to iCloud calendars (I use it a lot with >10 Google calendars from >5 different users)
I saw some syncing tools that keep iCloud and Google calendars in sync, but a) they have to be always running somewhere and b) they are usually hacky and unstable.

You can Google both; I recommend 1.


From the beginning of Accessing Health Records:

  HealthKit’s clinical record support lets you read Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources (FHIR) from the HealthKit store. Users can download their FHIR records from supported healthcare institutions. The system then updates the records in the background on a regular basis.

So it's the other way round: Users can (with means not described on that page) get their FHIR records and load them into HealthKit (the local store of Health data on your iDevice). The document describes how to access that data from an application.


How should I properly format my iPod nano 5th generation?

The best way to handle an iPod Restore is to do it from iTunes.

iTunes knows what it is & how to format it - it will even actually format differently depending on whether you have iTunes on a PC or Mac, to enable easier file handling afterwards.

If it's a model with a lock switch at the top [red dot visible] switch the lock off first [white dot] - Some models will crash if you don't.
Plug it into the computer, launch iTunes if it doesn't launch automatically.
Click the device icon in the top bar, choose the iPod if you see multiple devices listed.
Click Restore. Follow the onscreen instructions.
You will need to resync afterwards.


How to enable echo service for tcp or udp on well-known port 7 on Mac OS X 10.8 or above?

AFAIK the echo service isn't implemented in OS X. You may use either a Java echo client/server or CocoaEcho instead.

After unzipping the file check the folder .../build/Debug. I tested CocoaEcho server/client in 10.9.5 and it still works though it was built for 10.7. If you use a newer OS X version you may have to recompile it.


Show github notifications in Mountain Lion Notification Center

The simplest way at the moment would be to install one of the github growl notifiers, either githubnotifier or gitifier, which forwards github notifications to growl and then use hiss (a separate app) to forward growl messages to the Notification Centre.


What affects the order of applications in Lauchpad?

On a clean install, the core Mac OS X apps are originally ordered alphabetically. Newly installed apps will be appended at the back on an empty spot starting with page 2 (they will never be appended on page 1, even if there is room available, but you can ofcourse drag them there).

Apps can then be arranged manually, and they should remain in the order you sort them. However, I have noticed quite some buggy behaviors, mainly apps changing position after a reboot, and MAS updates pushing apps of the page.

I hope these will get ironed out in a coming update.


How to turn off "moving into" in IOS camera? (Live Photo)

It sounds like you're talking about the "Live" photos feature. At the top of your camera app screen are the icons for things like the flash and HDR settings. In the middle you should see one that looks like a bunch of concentric yellow circles. Tap it to turn off Live photos.


How much free space needs to be available in order to download from iCloud Drive?

The current belief is that it starts complaining about free disk space somewhere around 20% left. So if you have 282 GB free and are trying to download 185 GB, that would leave 77 GB free, which is less than 20% of your 500 GB hard drive.

I don't believe there's anywhere that codifies what "low" means in this context, though, so I can't point you to an official source that says it's 20%.


Can I create OneNote links that open in the desktop app instead of the web app?

From looking at this post,  manually adding a / / (forward slash x 2) to the front of the HTTP works.
IE:
onenote://https://xxxx-my.sharepoint.com/personal/my_name/Documents/Anotebookname/Notebook.one#ASectionName/etc/etc/&end


Sort songs within an Apple Music Playlist - by Artist, Song Name, etc

I found the way (but still you need iTunes to set order on your iOS device).

Open iTunes
Right click on a playlist
Select Copy to Play Order to set the default order for this playlist when copied to a device


Go to system preferences/keyboard/input sources and remove the item called "British PC" and make sure only the item called "British" is there.


Yes you can do this by buying a bluetooth speaker and a pluggable microphone. I would recommend using the Ultra Slim Bluetooth Speaker as the bluetooth speaker (it is available for $50, pretty affordable) and the Zoom iQ7 as your microphone ($99.99). In Zoom iQ7, there is a headphone plug so you might not even need the speaker if you have the Zoom iQ7.


Why iOS settings and iTunes report the storage usage differently?

I reset my iPhone and recover the backup data.  My all installed apps and data are seemingly maintained well, but its storage usage became changed: about 7 GB of new free space came out.  Also, it’s reported in the same way by both iTunes and iOS settings.

I’m still not aware of the cause, but my problem was anyway solved.


Other devices (including iPads, iPods, Macs, and other iPhones) connected to the same iCloud account as your iPhone will, if in WiFi range, automatically connect to your iPhone's hotspot when it's turned on (according to this Apple Support page and my personal experience). That means if any of your other devices are lying around, they will automatically connect to your iPhone's hotspot using iCloud.

tl;dr: Other devices tied to the same iCloud account might automatically be joining your iPhone's hotspot network.


Why does chunkwm fail with "Permission denied" error for .chunkwmrc

You have accidentially gone done a wrong path in trying to fix the bug. The error message does not mean that the user does not have permission to read the .chunkwmrc file - instead it means that the user does not have permission to execute the file.

The configuration file for chunkwm (.chunkwmrc) is actually a shell script that is run with bash (in your case). Therefore it needs to be executable.

You have set the permissions so that it is not executable, and that's why it fails. You need to run the following command:

chmod +x ~/.chunkwmrc

This will set the executable bit so that you are allowed to execute the file.

To answer your other questions about determining current uid for a process - the easiest way to do that is run the following command in Terminal:

ps xau | grep chunkwm

You'll see the username (or uid) as the first column of the result.

The /proc file system is Linux specific and doesn't exist in macOS (nor in many other operating systems). That's why the commands you have found regarding /proc do not work for you.

The /dev directory holds device nodes. macOS does not create device nodes for each running process that could give the uid of the running process. This is similar to other operating systems such as Linux, FreeBSD, etc. as this is simply not how /dev is meant to be used.

All in all remember that your specific problem here had nothing to do with uid's being changed, so there was no reason to lookup the uid's or trying to "stop" them being changed.


copy/paste of large amount of text to terminal leads to scrambled/missing characters

When I need to paste a lot of text into a Terminal application window, I use the cat command to transfer the text to a file. For example, I would enter the command below before pasting the text with the ⌘+V key combination.

cat >myfile.txt

When finished pasting text, enter the control+D key combination. This will terminate the cat command.

  Note: The control+D key combination must be entered at the beginning of a line. If not at the beginning of a line after pasting the text, then press the return key before entering the control+D key combination.


Reverse tethering of Android device to OSX over WIFI

My only experience with this issue was never resolved as Android at the time did not support ad-hoc networks.  According to this article, you may need to use 3rd-party software.


How can I set a default zoom level in Safari?

According to this post from Apple's Safari Support discussion forum:

  1) Create a file named defaultzoom.css (or any name you like, just make sure it has a css extension.)

  2) Copy and paste in the following:

    body {
      zoom: 130%;
    }

  change 130 to whatever number suits you. >100 means zoom in, <100 means zoom out. Don't forget the % percent sign!

  3) In safari, go to Preferences > Advanced. Under style sheet, select Other... and point to the file you created.

  4) You may need to restart safari for the change to take effect.

[In the above, both the emphasis and code formatting (for non-code-related text) were added to the original quote by Am1rr3zA].


How to prevent keychain passwords being seen with iPhone passcode?

I hate to reference unreleased software, but quite frankly the solution may be for you to enroll now in the iOS 9 public beta or simply wait for it's official Fall release. iOS 9 (at least in its current state) gives the option to set a custom alphanumeric password in place of the familiar 4-digit pin.

So, if you have hardware with touch ID capability you could use that for your everyday login and reserve a more complex passcode (even the same as your iCloud one, like you mention) for protecting your keychain in case of theft, etc.


How to get an old iCloud password reset?

When you have two-step vertification enabled, apple could not reset your password. You will need to use the recovery code aplle provided.

Is two-step vertification is not enabled, you could call applecare. They can reset the password for you.

For a list with all applecare numbers you can visit this link


3 finger swipe up / down in Finder not working Catalina

I don't think there is an up/down swipe gesture to navigate pages - these clash with other swipe gestures like app expose and mission control.
So, to find other options:

Why would you need to swipe up/down in Finder?
Are you trying to switch between different windows of Finder or trying to switch to another app?

If you are trying to switch to a different window of Finder, you can press Command+` or use app expose's three/four finger swipe down. These commands/swipes work for all applications, not just Finder.
If you want to switch to a different application you can press Command+tab or use mission control's three/four finger swipe up.
If you're in Finder's list view and are trying to collapse/expand a folder, you can just press the Left key to collapse the selected folder or press the Right key to expand the selected folder.


How can I connect to one server using two user names - at the same time?

You can always cheat and use a different protocol for the second connection.  OS X works with SMB.


$PATH only shows RVM files-other Path are not shown in Macbook

I followed the steps provided in the Apple website on how to change the shell and restarted my Terminal app as a Bash shell instead of zsh shell - then I was able to verify the Class path and the PATH Environment variables without any issues


A guitarist needs to learn to follow a drummer so you'd be better off choosing your drum pattern and then playing along to that. Select a very simple beat at first. Not sure what you mean by "what is the best effect for a verse in GarageBand"


if your iPhone is jailbroken you can download this tweak (xMessages
) for free from the cydia store


Lost my iPhone 5s, can I get non-iMessage texts back after I replace it?

iCloud backups do include any SMS and MMS messages on your device. The same is true if you back up to your computer using iTunes.

When you get your new phone, your messages will be there if you restore from one of those backups.


iPhone differences in different countries or carriers

There are different hardware models by country / carrier to support different LTE bands. Apple has a list at http://www.apple.com/iphone/LTE/


How do I close all tabs on Safari for iPad after the app crashes

Force-quit Safari (double-tap the home button, then tap and hold on the Safari icon until it shakes, then tap the red minus sign).
Go to Settings > Safari.
Tap Clear History.

This should clear out all open tabs.


What redundant, on-site, low-downtime backup strategies exist for servers?

CrashPlan and TimeMachine have been very helpful for almost all the situations I've seen where one copy isn't enough.

Crash Plan software is very good - watch your java CPU usage until you're comfortable things are running smoothly in incremental mode, but it's as good as any of the other software that's out these days. The software will run on both the sending and the receiving computer elsewhere on your campus/building.

You can of course back up to your offsite storage but once you've got it to the other computer, tapes, off site drive cloning and other non-bandwidth consuming options can work well.

Just watch Java CPU usage when you have large file changes - you can throttle things if needed, but it's pretty self-sufficient with the out of the box settings.


Screen annotation software to draw on any app in OSX

Check out Snappy App - it allows you to grab any part of your screen and float it above the screen - then you can draw on it, change its transparency, shrink it down, whatever. There's a free version which does more or less all you'd want and the in-app purchases are very cheap (you need an in-app to draw on things).
I've also just recently been introduced to https://presentify.compzets.com/ which takes a different approach but might also meet the requirements.


OS X Snow Leopard - Can't boot from HD, Target Mode or CD

(Just to provide an actual answer that you can accept).

It looks like so far you've not actually tried accessing the Boot selection menu. Rather, you've mistakenly entered target disk mode.

Press and hold the alt key immediately after powering on the system (before you hear the chime). You should get a selection of the available boot volumes (if any). If you have an external drive or install DVD, this should appear. Use the arrow keys to navigate to your choice and hit enter to boot from that volume.

Use your alternative boot to backup data and repair/reinstall your main boot disk.


How can I expand the number of special characters I can type using my keyboard?

Custom text entry key bindings

OS X has a very nice text editing system, which you can extend using Key Bindings. You can, for instance:

Set up special characters to be entered when you press a certain key command.
Insert more than one character at once.
Include navigation commands and change the selection.
Use multi-stroke key bindings — this is how I type the ⌃⌥⇧⌘ characters.

To set this up, you just create the file ~/Library/KeyBindings/DefaultKeyBinding.dict and put your customizations there. This article describes the steps in detail.

Here's a list of the default key bindings, and here's Apple's official guide to the text system and key bindings.

Diacritics

If you're just looking to be able to type more diacritics, and you use a U.S. keyboard, consider using the  U.S. Extended keyboard layout:

This allows you to type such characters as oòôȯóöơōṯțőo̊ɵỏọţǒŏõǫȏṵṷȍ. You can enable it from the Input Sources section of the Language & Text system preferences.

"Press and hold"

In Lion, you can type many special characters by holding down a similar key on your keyboard:

(It turns out this can be customized, if you're up to the task! All it takes is to edit a plist file.)

Arbitrary text substitutions

If you have specific phrases or characters you'd like to use, you can also set up custom substitutions for them in the Text section of Language & Text preferences:

Character palette

I guess you already know this, but I'll include it for completeness. If you enable "Keyboard & Character Viewer" in the Input Sources section of the Language & Text prefs, you can open the Character Viewer and browse through the entire Unicode character set (and you can also browse characters by category):

This window is easily accessible in most applications with ⌃+⌘+space (in older versions of OS X, the shortcut was ⌥+⌘+T).


TimeMachine/AFP extremely slow when accessing NAS over wifi

After your comments and my questions answered, here are my recommendations/best practices.

Probably the only real remedy would be to have the office AP switch local traffic indeed locally.
This feature is available in Cisco's APs/AP controller, called FlexConnect.

If you read the first paragraph and look at the illustration in the following PDF, you'll see that this is pretty much your use case. The AP controller is located in a remote location connected via a dedicated (VPN'ed) line – but traffic within the local branch/office is switched locally.

You should probably have a word with your net ops people to see if this is possible to setup or if your AP fits the requirements (a list of supported APs is also in the PDF).

https://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/td/docs/wireless/controller/8-1/Enterprise-Mobility-8-1-Design-Guide/Enterprise_Mobility_8-1_Deployment_Guide/ch7_HREA.pdf

The PDF is from the AP controller software version 8.1, but this feature goes way back (formerly known as Hybrid REAP). You should probably also consult the documentation version corresponding to your AP controller software version to have an accurate list of supported APs.

The real limiting factor will always be the sluggish data rate caused by your specific network setup, regardless of AFP vs. SMB.
So, all the following measures are only additional remedies and best practices you can try.

MTU

Check/set your maximum non-fragmenting network MTU over the Wi-Fi connection.

http://www.mseri.me/fixing-wifi-on-os-x-by-tweaking-the-mtu/

There is still the magic MTU number of 1453 floating around the interwebs in regards to (at least older) macOS versions, especially when interacting with Cisco equipment.

http://osxdaily.com/2013/01/14/set-mtu-size-from-the-command-line-of-mac-os-x/

SMB vs. AFP

SMB should generally be preferred over AFP by now, as AFP has been deprecated by Apple for quite some time.

AFP is not even supported anymore when sharing from APFS-formatted volumes.

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT208018

macOS SMB

Time Machine backups over SMB are supported in QNAP QTS version 4.3 and later.

https://www.qnap.com/en-us/how-to/tutorial/article/using-time-machine-to-back-up-your-mac-to-a-qnap-nas-via-smb/

By default, macOS packet-signs SMB connections, which greatly impacts transfer performance (transfer speed here with signing disabled is doubled!).

As I have no idea if/where you can disable signing globally/server-side in QTS (Syno guy :) or if this would be recommended in your use case, you can disable SMB packet-signing client-side on specific macOS machines.

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT205926

You can check if signing is disabled by using the command "smbutil statshares -a" (a SMB volume has to be mounted, otherwise the command output will be blank).

Please see the following URL fore more info:

https://kb.promise.com/thread/disable-smb-signing-on-os-x-10-11-5-10-12-x/

Samba settings

The two following best practices are not really related to Time Machine but greatly improve the general SMB experience for macOS clients.

You should augment the Samba config file (smb.conf) on the QNAP NAS according to the following URL:

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT207128

Ignore the FCP X specific stuff, this setting basically enables macOS-specific features in Samba.

Please check the QNAP specifics for Samba configuration.
(For instance, Synology uses a private Samba build with some configuration differences, like commas instead of spaces for multi-attribute config lines.

Also, augment the Samba config file by this:

access based share enum=yes

This setting forces Samba SMB shares to resemble the behaviour of AFP shares by only showing shares that you have permissions for.
By default Samba shows all shares, even the ones you don't have permissions for, which shows a permissions error message when trying to access a share w/o permissions.

Disable .DS_Store on network shares

You can try to disable creation of .DS_Store files on network volumes. This can speed up SMB performance.
First paragraph in the following URL:

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT208209

Time Machine

Try to exclude as many items/locations in the Time Machine preferences as feasible.
For instance, I excluded the /Applications folder, as it is usually the same/less hassle to reinstall an application than to recover it from a backup. Also, the ~/Downloads folder is usually a good no-backup candidate.
Additionally – but this is depending on the specific workflow – it can be feasible to exclude directories that contain data managed by version control systems.

Time Machine is a low priority process. Any other activity will suspend the Time Machine backup process.
You can try to disable the low priority throttling in macOS to speed up Time Machine.
Please see the following URL for more info (including how to make this setting permanent):

http://www.mackungfu.org/massively-speed-up-time-capsule-time-machine-backups

You can then use the free tool "Time Machine Editor" to exclude your work hours from the Time Machine schedule.

https://tclementdev.com/timemachineeditor/

DISCLAIMER:
Use these recommendations at your own risk. Specifially, try out the settings/modifications first on a test machine before rolling out to production systems.

These are my 2 cents (actually, it's more like 1,50 Euro).

Assuming from your name that you are located in a German-speaking region:

Viel Erfolg!

[EDIT] With QTS 4.3.5 it looks like QNAP added GUI options to enable access based share enumeration, so it is probably not necessary anymore to manually edit the smb.conf for this functionality. From the QNAP QTS 4.3.5 release notes:

  SAMBA
  - Added Microsoft Networking Advanced Options for ABE (access-based enumeration) and ABSE (access-based share enumeration).


ssh key persists even after I delete the private key from ~/.ssh -- why?

Welcome to the wonderful world of OS X Keychain and ssh-agent! From the man page:

  ssh-agent is a program to hold private keys used for public key authentication (RSA, DSA, ECDSA).  The
       idea is that ssh-agent is started in the beginning of an X-session or a login session, and all other
       windows or programs are started as clients to the ssh-agent program.  Through use of environment vari-ables variables
       ables the agent can be located and automatically used for authentication when logging in to other
       machines using ssh(1).

Your private key was cached in the agent and is being fetched from there to authenticate your session. OS X, via Keychain, does automatic ssh-agent caching for you because it's "user friendly". It can be a little alarming, but it's mostly a handy thing that this happens.

The default time-to-live for cached keys is forever. That's probably not a great default. It'll flush the cached keys on a logout/login-cycle or a reboot. Or you can force a flush by killing the current agent using:

ssh-add -D

You can list all credentials cached by the agent by running:

ssh-add -l

This will do the same but show the full public keys:

ssh-add -L


Need to restore from encrypted iPhone backup, but can’t due to missing password

I would try your iTunes password and any others you can think of.  Passwords don't magically set themselves.  You or someone else must have enabled the Encrypt iTunes Backups feature, which requires setting a password.
You might be in luck, because deleting text messages (at least in iOS 4.x) doesn't actually erase the data, it still exists in your sms.db file hidden on the phone.  You could seek an experienced iPhone expert to help you jailbreak and access your sms.db, or use a tool like DiskAid or PhoneView to attempt to access the Messages sms.db directly.  Then you (they) would use an SQLite database browser to search and view the text messages.


Creating and deploying a standard build of OS X 10.6 company-wide

This is done using Apple Remote Desktop 3 and a Task Server(s). It's available in the Mac AppStore for $79.

Another useful and powerful software is DeployStudio, which automates disk image installation over a network.


After upgrading to Catalina, is there a way to remote control the Apple Music app on my desktop?

No - not today. Apple needs to update their iTunes remote so it works with the Music app in catalina.


Is it possible to include emoji in the app description in the App Store? Wouldn't the app be rejected or banned?

Thanks for your question, Anastasia. Using emoji is not against the guidelines of Apple. Here you will find several tips you should be aware of: https://splitmetrics.com/blog/apple-app-store-guidelines/

Here you find an example in practical terms: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/9891204/additional-icon-in-app-name-lable

However, I think emojis should be used carefully, depending on what target group you want to reach and what you want to achieve...

Cheers, pallox


Does a free alternative to Proxifier or ProxyCap exist?

Try proximac.
https://github.com/csujedihy/proximac
Proximac is an command-line open-source alternative to Proxifier. With Proximac, it can force App to use SOCKS5 proxy. In the other words, it can forward any App's traffic to a specified SOCKS5 proxy. Moreover, Proximac now can forward all network traffic in your system to a proxy which means you may not need a VPN to do this job. I hope more developers can join this project.


Will macOS Big Sur remove the default Python installation for good?

No, on Apple Macs being shipped with Big Sur, Python 2 and Python 3 are both still included.
$ which python
/usr/bin/python

$ python --version
Python 2.7.16

$ which python3
/usr/bin/python3

$ python3 --version
Python 3.8.2

This is on an M1 Mac mini running macOS Version 11.0.1.


Terminal goes slow after install Mavericks OS

I had the same problem to and I was looking for the way to solve it.

Checking at the issue that Adam Albrecht commented, it looks like the problem was being caused by the zsh vi-mode plugin in combination with the apple provided git.

Installing git from homebrew solve the problem without having to deactivate the vi-mode plugin


What do you mean by "access"? If you mean editing files and/or copying files to and from Time Capsule, you might not be able to do that since the hard drive in Time Capsule is formatted using Mac Journaled file system. If all you want is to view files, some Android apps might be able to access the device over network.


By default, packages are installed in the way you describe... "Bottles" are precompiled binaries downloaded as compressed tape archives, the contents of which are then "poured" into the appropriate paths.

If you specify options, or use custom compile flags, then naturally brew will build from source. But if you for example, brew install nmap htop bmon, it will download the bottle for your system version and pour it along with any missing dependencies.

That being said, there are definitely situations where brew compiles from source, so to try to answer your question, how often is it that you find this a problem?

There's no way to set it up so that brew compiles on a different machine "automagically" (that is, unless you implement this as a feature and implement it into your installation of brew). You can imagine how this could be difficult; architecture differences aside, conflicts/dependencies needing to be resolved, the differences in environment, etc. would make this a nightmare.

If this is more of an occasional annoyance than a regular problem, what you might want to try is install whatever formula you want on the faster machine with --build-bottle. Then you can "bottle" the package yourself by running brew bottle to install on the slower machine.

I can't recommend this with any level of confidence though, since I don't know how well it would work for all formulae. You would need to be on the same OS/architecture, and the binaries will be compiled for the lowest common denominator CPU (unless you specify which one) so the build might perform worse, depending on which features it was designed to use.

If the difference in compilation time is so large that this seems like a viable route, the two machines might not even be compatible (I don't remember what the 2008 MacBook was, core 2?), and cross-compiling within brew would be a whole separate headache all on its own, you might be better off just not using a package manager at all and compiling/configuring the software yourself.