Putting Mountain Lion in the Applications folder

From the description of your problem I'm going to guess you are trying to use Lion DiskMaker.  If that is the case then this hopefully will help with your issue and if it is not the case, here is another possibility for making a bootable USB drive.

Lion DiskMaker looks for the install image you downloaded from the App Store when you upgraded.  The problem is that when you upgrade the install application removes the install image once it is complete.  Good news is you can go into the App Store and download the install image again.  Once the image is downloaded it will be located in /Applications.  Now Lion DiskMaker will locate the image when you go to create the USB device.

Below are a couple of links for more information and clarification on the software.

Lion DiskMaker

Cult of Mac Instructions


How do I remove the previous App Store user from my computer?

The App Store app uses spotlight to find all the apps on your Mac that were downloaded from the store. You need to run a search and delete all those apps from the Mac (your personal data and settings do not get deleted) and re-download the app. Remember, you could have more than one copy of an app, so keep checking until they all are deleted.
Step one of course, it to sign out from the other account if you haven't done that yet. When the App Store App is running, choose the Store -> Sign Out menu item.
The details on how the App Store app actually knows if an app was downloaded is buried inside the application bundle as descrtibed on this quesiton about avoiding updates to apps entirely.

How can I opt out of updates for one app when using the App Store?


can't download Xcode 9.3, disk is full in fact it is not

If there is a partial download begun of the app/purchase, deleting the partially downloaded file and starting from scratch may help. (Check in your Applications folder or downloads area for this partial file. It may end in .partial or .part.)

I also had to download the installer from the apple site, not through the App Store, when I recently installed xcode:
https://developer.apple.com/xcode/

For reference, older downloads may be available here:
https://developer.apple.com/download/more
Warning: if you aren't logged in when you visit the 'more' link, it will redirect you to the latest download site once login is complete. Don't be fooled and just re-enter this URL again to go to the archive.


Simplest way to get a public URL for a photo from Photos App?

Right-click a picture in Photos, Share [More... if you don't see all the options]

Flickr has a built-in uploader option, but not Imgur.

There are some tools listed on Imgur Help, though I haven't tried any of them personally.

Otherwise the 'simplest' way to get pictures from Photos to Imgur is to drag from Photos to the Desktop, then from the Desktop to the Imgur page... [then throw away the one on the Desktop]

Alternatively, Gyazo has an app that will let you instantly upload & add a link to your clipboard.

Dropbox allows you to right click & share a link to any file stored in it - though you'd have to follow the 'drag to Desktop [or Dropbox]' procedure as above, without then discarding the original.


Macbook Lion Recovery Disk Utilities cannot detect newly installed SSD

Boot into Recovery from the USB.
Instead of opening Disk Utility, open Terminal instead.
Run the command diskutil list to see that your drive is being recognised. It should list two disks, one being your bootable drive, the other your SSD, and provide you with a disk identifier (such as disk0). If it doesn't show up, check that you have installed it properly.
If it is showing up, then type diskutil partitionDisk disk0 GPT JHFS+ MacHD to correctly set the partition map to GPT and create a HFS+ Journaled volume. Change disk0 to the appropriate identifier for your SSD. You can rename the 'MacHD' volume later in Disk Utility or Finder, if you wish.
Quit Terminal.

You should now be able to pick up the disk in Disk Utility and Time Machine to restore your backup.


iPhone and iPad don't play audio for certain videos

Not at all - nothing in that metadata looks like it would be problematic.

MP3 support is quite good
h264 is one of the preferred codecs for iOS since quite some time.

You may have to check the correctness of the file or transcode it or get a more thorough error confpdition if ones like this fail to play on iOS.


Any way to use a VLOOKUP formula in Numbers to insert an image instead of text value?

The images aren't the actual content of the cell, they're just cell formatting (background image), and formula cannot interact with formatting, only with cell contents.
Conditional formatting can only apply a restricted set of formatting options and unfortunately images are not one of these.
AppleScript does not provide the ability to set cell background images, only cell background colours (even though shapes and text items do have the ability for background images).

Therefore currently this is not possible.


Is there a keyboard shortcuts for switching tabs at Safari?

Select previous tab: ⌃⇧⇥ (control-shift-tab), ⇧⌘← (shift-command-left), or ⇧⌘[ (shift-command-[)
Select next tab: ⌃⇥ (control-tab), ⇧⌘→ (shift-command-right), or ⇧⌘] (shift-command-])

You can customize the shortcuts from System Preferences:


From Apple KB - OS X Yosemite: Enter characters with accent marks

  Press and hold a key on the keyboard (for example, e) to display an accent menu.

  If the key you press and hold doesn’t have any possible accent marks, the menu isn’t shown.
  Select a character (for example, é).

  Click a character, press the number key shown for a character, or use the arrow keys to cycle through the characters. Then press the Space bar to select one.

  You can also enter characters with accent marks using the Keyboard Viewer or Character Viewer.

  Use the Keyboard Viewer
  Use the Character Viewer
  Use input sources to type in other languages
  Format text in documents

The press & hold accent menu can be enabled or disabled from Terminal

To disable the character accent menu in OS X, launch Terminal from /Applications/Utilities, enter the following command and press Return:

defaults write -g ApplePressAndHoldEnabled -bool false

To re-enable, change false to true


How to selectively copy parts of my Time Machine backup onto my new OS (Yosemite)?

Typically the migration assistant doesn't copy system files from your backup.  But you're right that maybe one of your home-folder's installed files (a PrefPane or something) could have caused your problem.

I would still run the full Migration Assistant (just let it run for however long it takes), and hope that the problem doesn't come back.  This is typically the case.

If you problem does come back, then you know it stems from your home folder, in which case you can boot while holding Shift down, to disable all non-essential extensions/plugins.  Then you can remove all 3rd party files from /Users/HOME/Library/PreferencePanes, LaunchAgents, LaunchDaemons, QuickLook, Services or whatever type of error you think was happening.


Accidentally deleted history in Safari. Is there any way to get it back?

No, once you delete history, it is removed from the database.

That database is backed up, so you can use your backup method (Time Machine backup, etc) to restore the following files:

~/Library/Safari/History*


How to print on a Yosemite managed printer from a Panther Mac?

For clarity I will name your Power Mac G4 running Panther: Pant and your iMac running Yosemite: Yose.
Yosemite has problem to print in an IPv4 environment (see: How to make shared printing works on Yosemite within an IPv4 only network?.
On the other hand Panther is able to run IPv6.
Check IPv6
Hence the 1rst point to check to be able to print from Pant is that Ipv6 is up and running. If Pant and Yose are connected through Ethernet, you will check this with (this is a command to enter within Terminal):
ifconfig en0

and you should get an output containing a line starting as:
inet6 fe80::

Which prooves that Pant has an IPv6 address and is IPv6 connected.
If they are connected through AirPort, you have to check the same output with:
ifconfig en1

If Pant doesn't have an IPv6 address, you will have to modify its network configuration through:
System Preferences > Network

select Advanced...
and under the TCP/IP window, select
Configure IPv6: Automatically

Click OK, Apply.
Check that IPv6 is now up and running.
Check cupsd
If you just enabled IPv6 for the 1st time on Pant then you will have to restart cupsd so that it will be able to talk this protocol.
The easiest way is to simply restart Pant. (But if you prefer to understand what you modify clearly, to restart cupsd is sufficient).
You will now have to check that cupsd is able to talk IPv6. (If I would had a Panther running Mac at hand I would have answered directly, but I don't).
Here are the command to type within Terminal to perform this checking:
ps ax | egrep '[ /](PID|cupsd)'

will display you 2 lines as:
  PID   TT  STAT      TIME COMMAND
76864   ??  Ss     0:00.26 /usr/sbin/cupsd -l

where the number PID is the proces id of the cupsd daemon.
Use this process id (here 76864) to check if this daemon is talking IPv6 through the help of lsof as follows:
/usr/bin/sudo lsof -p 76864 | egrep '(COMMAND|IPv)'

This is a priviledged command, hence you have to use sudo which will
ask you your user password.
This command should give you an output very similar to:

COMMAND   PID USER   FD     TYPE             DEVICE  SIZE/OFF      NODE NAME
cupsd   76864 root    9u    IPv4 0x9007abdfc3bf58ad       0t0       TCP localhost:ipp (LISTEN)
cupsd   76864 root   15u    IPv6 0x9007abdfb88bf0cd       0t0       TCP localhost:ipp (LISTEN)

If you have a line where TYPE == IPv6 then the cupsd on Pant is talking IPv6.
Restart the sharing
If you just enabled IPv6 for the 1st time on Pant then you will have
to enable from fresh the sharing on Yose so that Pant will see it correctly through the IPv6 channel.
On Yose open
System Preferences > Sharing

stop Printer Sharing, wait for Printer Sharing: Off to display, and restart it.
On Pant add a new printer, and you should see a new one to add and configure on Yose.
Disclaimer
This is a blind receipe (I don't have a Panther to fully check it).
I tried to avoid at most dangerous modifications on MacOS.
Any feedback would be appreciated to improve this draft answer.


How do I know which Python install is being used?

/System/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.7/bin/python is most likely a symlink.

readlink on a simlink will give you the target.

For example on my Mavericks installation I have following :

$readlink /System/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.7/bin/python
python2
$readlink /System/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.7/bin/python2
python2.7

Which means when I run python it actually runs /System/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.7/bin/python2.7

Also there is something funny, when running /System/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.7/bin/python2.7

Try this

>>> import sys
>>> print sys.executable

Which will return this :

/System/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.7/Resources/Python.app/Contents/MacOs/Python


Under these circumstances - only one main volume - the proper command to expand it to its full size is:

diskutil resizeVolume /dev/disk0s2 R

This command will not work if your main volume is part of a CoreStorage Volume Group.


Do any USB 3.0 to Gigabit Ethernet adapter work with OS X?

StarTech makes the USB31000S, which is a USB 3.0 to Gigabit Ethernet adapter with support for VLANs, jumbo frames and checksum offloading. List price is about USD 55.

These are based on the ASIX AX88179 chip, which has drivers for OS X 10.6 - 10.8 available (bottom of previous link). Any other product using this chip would also work.


Is there a way to force the iPhone to use its own microphone when connected to a Bluetooth speaker?

The simpler solution would be swiping up on the screen and selecting Airplay to select the output mode as iPhone or iPhone speaker, This will make the iPhone mic in use, but it will remove the speaker from Bluetooth as well for the time being.


Using iTunes match on a computer that has two libraries

In general it's recommended to have one computer account per user (in your case one for your sister and one for yourself), each with its own settings, home folder, iTunes library etc. This also takes care of separating mail, calendars, iTunes Match settings etc. without having to go through a lot of loops.

In addition you need a separate AppleID for each user (especially if both want to use iTunes Match independently).


iMac G3 (Bondi Blue): What Kind of Plastic is the Shell?

I believe that the plastic casing is polyvinyl chloride (PVC) because of it's durability and physical characteristics.  However, I don't have access to that machine to do any definitive testing.  That said, with a small sample of the plastic, you can determine what type it is with some very simple tests you can do at home;  see below.

(I don't believe it to be Lexan (acrylic plexiglass) due to how easily it scratches with a fingernail.)

Personal note:  Way back when, I worked for an electronics manufacturer that reverse engineered products to see how they could make them cheaper (they were based in the good ol' USA).  One of the engineers taught me how they identified certain materials like plastics.  I had to go look this up since it was so long ago I actually used this type of info.

Basic Plastic Testing1

There is some basic tests you can do to plastics to identify the type of plastic material.  Basically, the test involves:

Look:  Is it transparent, translucent or opaque?
Feel: Does it bend? Can it be scratched? What does the surface feel like?
Cut:  Does it cut easily? Are the edges smooth or jagged? Does it crumble or flake?
Float:  Does it float or sink? (Note: not applicable to expanded foam materials. Water should be around room temperature).
Burn:  What is the size and colour of the flame? Do molten drips fall from the sample and continue to burn? Does the sample self-extinguish? Is there any odour when the flame has been extinguished?

Low density polyethylene (LDPE)

Transparent only as thin film, translucent in thicker sections
Fairly flexible; soft, 'waxy' feel, easily scratched
Easily and smoothly cut
Floats
Not self-extinguishing; molten droplets which usually go out on reaching bench or floor; blue flame with yellow tip and little smoke, smell of burning candle/paraffin when flame is extinguished

High density polyethylene (HDPE)

Transparent only as thin film, translucent in thicker sections
Fairly stiff and hard, can be scratched by fingernail
Easily cut with smooth edges
Floats
Not self-extinguishing; molten droplets which usually go out on reaching bench or floor; blue flame with yellow tip and little smoke, smell of burning candle/paraffin when the flame is extinguished

Polypropylene (PP)

Transparent only as thin film, translucent in thicker sections
Stiff; hard, can be scratched by fingernail
Easily cut, fairly smooth edges, when cut with chisel leaves white mark
Floats
Not self-extinguishing; molten droplets which usually go out on reaching bench or floor; flame mainly yellow with a trace of clear blue at the bottom; smell of burning candle/diesel when flame is extinguished.

Polyvinyl Chloride, Unplasticised (uPVC)

Transparent (unless fillers or pigments have been added)
Stiff; hard
Fairly easy to cut, smooth edges
Sinks
Burns with difficulty, self-extinguishing; yellow flame, blue-green at bottom edges; unpleasant, acrid odour of hydrochloric acid.

1 How, using simple manual tests, can I identify an unknown plastic material?


Desktop icons are disappearing & not behaving

I had a similar problem where icons would stay when files were deleted on the Desktop.

I ran AppleJack to clear the caches and it went away. I'm not sure exactly what cache it cleared that fixed it but it worked.

I'm assuming you have tried a restart.


What is the s/mime encryption strength on iOS?

SHA-1 is most likely it. Here's what I've found to support that claim:
On the Cryptographic Message Syntax Services Reference document, it is stated that the S/MIME version used is 3.1, which is defined here and where it's stated that it supports SHA-1, SHA-256, SHA-384, and SHA-512 but:

The SHA-256, SHA-384, and SHA-512 algorithms [FIPS180-2] are not currently recommended in S/MIME, and are included here for completeness.

Even more, on the Certificate, Key, and Trust Services Reference document (although it's the Mac version), it's stated that the default algorithm used is the SHA-1.
In another document, it is said:

The most common hash function you will use is SHA-1, an algorithm developed and published by the U.S. Government that produces a 160-bit hash value from any data up to 2**64 bits in length. There are also a number of more exotic algorithms such as SHA-2, elliptic-curve-based algorithms, and so on.
For compatibility with existing systems and infrastructure, you may occasionally need to use older algorithms such as MD5, but they are not recommended for use in new designs because of known weaknesses.

So, although I couldn't find any direct statement confirming the use of the SHA-1 algorithm, clues point in that direction.


How much space does iPod Touch video take?

The recording is HD (720p) up to 30 frames per second with audio - but since both the audio and video are compressed using lossy algorithms, you might sometimes get significantly storage depending on the source.

In practice the iPhone 4 uses 4.8 GB / hour with the same HD (720p) up to 30 frames per second - but the few recording I've seen from the iPod touch have data rates about half as high (which use about half the space). My iPhone usually records between 2 and 10 Mbit/s. The lower end is for static, mostly black images and if things are moving or detailed, you get to the higher end of the range pretty easily.

You can make some test recordings and open them in QuickTime Player where the inspector window will show you the details for the video you are shooting. A little pen and paper or a spreadsheet will convince you of how much time you can expect to capture before your device runs out of space.


iOS app with subscription on remote server

Yes this is allowed. However you are required to let users sign up through the iOS app. You get 85% and Apple gets 15%.

3.1.3 Content-based “Reader” Apps
Apps may allow a user to access previously purchased content or content subscriptions (specifically:
magazines, newspapers, books, audio, music, video, access to
professional databases, VoIP, cloud storage, and approved services
such as educational apps that manage student grades and schedules),
provided the app does not direct users to a purchasing mechanism other
than IAP.
3.1.4 Content Codes
Apps may not use their own mechanisms to unlock content or functionality, such as license keys, augmented reality markers, QR codes, etc. In limited circumstances, such as when features are dependent upon specific hardware to function, the app may unlock that functionality without using in-app purchase (e.g. an astronomy app that adds features when synced with a telescope).

Source: https://developer.apple.com/app-store/review/guidelines/#content-based-reader-apps


How to upgrade the ssh program on OS X 10.6.8?

Note that ssh on OS X is part of the default OpenSSH suite included with OS X. So to upgrade ssh you should upgrade the entire OpenSSH suite of programs to get a newer version of the ssh program.

Check out the OpenSSH Portable version

Download load the version you want.

  The portable OpenSSH follows development of the official version, but releases are not synchronized. Portable releases are marked with a 'p' (e.g. 4.0p1). The official OpenBSD source will never use the 'p' suffix, but will instead increment the version number when they hit 'stable spots' in their development.

Read the Installation instructions carefully, before installing.

As noted there:

  The OpenSSH provided here is designed to run on the following Unix operating systems:

  AIX

  HP-UX

  Irix

  Linux

  NeXT

  SCO

  SNI/Reliant Unix

  Solaris

  Digital Unix/Tru64/OSF

  Mac OS X

  Cygwin

  ... and more are being added all the time.


MacBook 5,1 Upgrade, Leapfrog to Yosemite and MBA Backup

No, your Time Machine backup should restore to a supported Mac just fine.  I do it all the time to save time installing multiple machines from scratch.


How do I turn off Airpod notifications on MacOS Big Sur?

Go to System Preferences → Bluetooth and for your AirPods choose Options and set ‘Connect to This Mac’ to ‘When Last Connected to This Mac’.


The fantastic thing with iExplorer is that it not only transfers and imports your media data into iTunes but also imports the playlists. And you can access all data, even the preferences files from the apps. And you can make backups on your own on app basis if you like. :) Great software, fully worth the ~ 35 dollars.


Replacement for iPod.app on old iPhone 3G with large buttons for play/pause and prev/next track

You can try Track 8 - swipe to change tracks - but I'm not sure whether it is iOS 5 or later.


The machine will automatically use Internet Recovery on holding  Cmd ⌘   R  if it can find no suitable Recovery Partition.

Extrapolation of that is that your hard drive may have had a failure & cannot currently be read by the machine - or simply that there is a bootable drive, but no additional Recovery Partition.

Once Internet Recovery has booted, you may be able to investigate further.


Syncing photos from iPhoto on a Mac to Photos under iOS8

Sync Photos from ... iPhoto [or Aperture, a named folder, or Pictures]

All photos, albums, Events & Faces

That's everything.

Alternatively,

Selected albums Events & Faces & automatically include events from...


MacBook Pro 2018 ventilation slots blocked

Apple had to replace the entire bottom plate (within warranty) of the MacBook. The foil is not related to the battery but rather a sort of inner lining that runs along the sides. The people at genius bar couldn't state any apparent reason for this happening.


Global convert to uppercase and lowercase in macOS?

You can do it in Safari, but Chrome ignores the standard Mac Toolbox, unfortunately.

System Prefs > Keyboard > Shortcuts > App Shortcuts

You can set key commands for All Applications, which will then work for all that have the requisite menu option.

This is my own setup, which shows keys already set for Capitalise & Lower Case
I use it a lot for such as Stack Exchange.


Will my Canon CanoScan 500F scanner work with Lion?

It looks like some old saved settings were causing the scanner to hang indefinitely  - pressing scan over and over wasn't working.

I pressed the show details button a few times but didn't realize things were working slowly in the background. After a minute or so - I was able to get into the details, change some settings, and it has been working well.

Those TWAIN errors are not logging now either. Life is good again in Lion scan land.


Display failure after waking up from standby

If you are seeing something like this, I suggest you contact Apple Support for a hardware check.

Picture from Apple support communities.


Is there free utility to amplify the system volume?

If you're happy to get your hands dirty and you're a registered Apple Developer, you could use Soundflower to pipe your system audio into AU Lab (search for AU Lab on the ADC Downloads page) and push everything through Apple's own awful AUDynamicsProcessor Audio Unit.


Can I manually update my display driver?

There are no driver updates for components found within a MacBook Pro (or any Mac for that matter) found anywhere but through Apple's own update system. And as you say, it's not something you need to worry about.

They retain tight control over their components and mainly make driver changes through OS updates rather than parse everything into individual packages. However, they may release small updates that attend to these kinds of glitches periodically or when a serious issue arises.

So long as Software Update reports no new updates, you will be running the latest drivers available for your Mac. You won't find alternate drivers elsewhere.

Additionally, what you describe is not normal and I would suggest you see a Genius at an Apple Store (not a licensed vendor). They will investigate and you may just walk out with a new machine. Apple has legendary service; make use of it.


Open iTerm2 preferences and go to Profiles tab. Select your desired profile and go to Keys tab. Tap plus sign (+) and type the following:

Keyboard Shortcut: ⌘cmd+B
Action: Send Text
In the next line add the following command: git name-rev --name-only HEAD\n

After that, when you hit ⌘cmd+B, iTerm send that command to your terminal and will return your current branch.

$ git name-rev --name-only HEAD
master


How do I transfer Phonegap app to my iPhone

The easiest way is using a Mac.  Xcode (using the Devices window) can install ipa files on developer registered iOS devices.  The Apple Configurator 2 app (available from the Mac App store) will also allow you to select ipa files and install them (assuming they are provisioned correctly) on iOS devices.

Without a Mac, it may be possible to use an https service that allows downloading a correctly provisioned app (Ad Hoc or Enterprise) using a wireless installation manifest.


How can I delete a paused application download on my iPhone?

If you can't delete the paused download (which, I'm thinking, suggests you aren't on the most recent release of iOS), then the simplest option that doesn't require a restore is going to be to find a WiFi hotspot and let the app finish downloading. Personally, I'd go that route (especially if out-and-about or on vacation, etc.) before wiping my data and having to restore again.

Alternatively, leave it on paused until you get home to your primary network. Your phone doesn't care two cents about your paused app downloads, so it shouldn't get in the way of anything.


You might want to take a look at Audio Hijack Pro which can record any audio you can hear on your computer. Free to try.

There's also the cheaper, simpler Piezo from the same company.


This will check if Chrome is installed in the default location, then open a file at a path with arguments you have set.

CHROMEPATH="/Applications/Google Chrome.app/Contents/MacOS/Google Chrome"
if [ -x "$CHROMEPATH" ]; then
    "$CHROMEPATH" file:///path/to/file --yourargs
fi


How to open time machine progress bar window

I am 100% sure there is no way to see how long the the backup takes just the size of the backup and how much portion of the size it has already backed up like shown below.

The only time duration that Time Machine shows is when you are restoring from a backup and during the first time you set up Time Machine using a empty hard disk.

I just noticed that "Open Time Machine Preferences" shows a progress bar for the current backup operation. I just upgraded to Maverick recently so this may be a new feature.


The resources are stored at

/System/Library/CoreServices/SystemAppearance.bundle/Contents/Resources

Note there is currently no known way to extract the art from the .car files, as far as I can tell.


What do the partitions /dev/disk1s* in filesystem mean (disk storage management)?

The disk1s* in /dev/disk1s* are identifiers for the APFS volumes and snapshot in the container with the identifier disk1. These are not partitions as stated in your question. The APFS container resides in either a single partition on a drive or two partition on separate drives. In your example, the APFS volumes and snapshot all share in the same APFS container. Below shows the sum of the volumes, snapshot and available space equal the APFS container size. There is no lost of space.
 disk1s5s1    14. Gi
 disk1s4       5. Gi
 disk1s2       0.320 Gi
 disk1s6       0.001 Gi
 disk1s1     192. Gi
 disk1s3        .569 Gi
 Available    22. Gi
           ------------
 Size        233. Gi

Note: You did not include in your question the size of the unmounted Recovery volume (disk1s3). The value of 569 MiB came from my Big Sur installation. This value should be the same on your Big Sur installation.

Below was taken from man diskutil. I edited out the text that does not directly relate to the OP's question.

You are referring to disk identifiers. In your example, the (BSD) disk identifier string variously identifies a virtual logical volume.  It will take the form of diskCsV, or diskCsVsS where C, S, and V are positive decimal integers (possibly multi-digit), and where:

C is an APFS Container.  This is a virtual disk constructed by
APFS to represent a collection of APFS Volumes.  Multiple APFS
Containers can be active simultaneously.
V is an APFS Volume; it refers to a virtual logical volume that
is shared out of an APFS Container.  For example, exported from
an APFS Container designated as disk1 there might be an APFS
Volume disk1s1, mountable as a file system and usable for file
storage via its mountpoint path.
S is an APFS Snapshot; it refers to a frozen moment in time of
the state of files on an APFS Volume.  For example, if APFS
Container disk6 has an APFS Volume disk6s3, and two APFS Snapshots
have been "taken" on it, these, when mounted, might be
designated as disk6s3s1 and disk6s3s2. Zero or more snapshots
can be persistently defined on a volume, but only "active"
(mounted) snapshots have disk identifiers.

It is important for software to avoid relying on numerical ordering of
any of the parts.  Activities including but not limited to partition
deletions and insertions, partition resizing, virtual volume deletions
and additions, device ejects and attachments due to media insertion
cycles, plug cycles, authentication lock cycles or reboots, can all cause
(temporary) gaps and non-increments in the numerical ordering of any of
the parts. You must rely on more persistent means of identification, such
as the various UUIDs.


It is writeable when you use a ntfs driver: it is not the disk but the OSX that you should "help".
 There are several: the most experienced (in my opinion) are Tuxeira NTFS (opensource) and Paragon NTFS. Lately Tuxeira is the fastest update when the OSX is updated/upgraded.


umount will unmount a block storage device. Once the device is unmounted, it is safe to remove/unplug it. There doesn't appear to be a udiskctl for macos.


What you're seeing is the Location Services indicator.

This will appear whenever an app is currently using Location Services.

It's not just an indicator, you can also click it to see which apps are using Location Services.

For more information refer to About Location Services.


Terminal: run source ~/.bash_profile every time start new terminal

If you are using oh-my-zsh,
the default one that will be loaded automatically is ~/.zshrc. All you need to do is adding the following at the end of ~/.zshrc:

if [ -f ~/.bash_profile ]; then
  . ~/.bash_profile
fi


Error popups from Apple Calendar application

Close the Calendar Program
Remove the two caches (Or squirrel them away someplace, just in case.)

~/Library/Calendars/Calendar Cache

~/Library/Caches/com.apple.iCal

Open Calendar and wait for it to synchronize.

This takes care of most problems that are do to some sort of caching issue.

[For Advanced users]
If that doesn't work, you can disconnect from the networked accounts, export backups of you local calendars (make sure you have good solid backups of everything!), then move ~/Library/Calendars out of the way. Start Calendar, restore your local calendars, and re-connect your network calendars. Once everything synchronizes, your calendars should be clean.

If you continue to have issues, you may have to be patient and wait for Google to fix an issue with their servers.


Is there a way to enable Java only for specific applications?

There is a way, but it's convoluted and non-intuitive.  I will say that I do not recommend this approach, but I am listing it for completeness.

Java Default Policy Administration is the official doc on Java's own internal security and access policy.

The idea is that you can set deny access to files/folders at a global level, then add specific grant permissions to those Java classes/jars you want to allow.

The permission's that can be set are listed in the JDK Permissions

Some examples of what can be done can be found at ExampleDepot


How can I permanently disable App Store notifications in Big Sur?

See https://lapcatsoftware.com/articles/mas-notifications.html for a solution to this
defaults write com.apple.appstored LastUpdateNotification -date "2029-12-12 12:00:00 +0000"

You can use any future date of course :-)


What's the best way to back up an external hard drive onto a Macbook?

You can use Disk Utility to create an image of the external hard drive.

Plug in the external hard drive and then start Disk Utility--it's in the Utilities folder under Applications--and then select the external hard drive from the list along the lefthand side of the Disk Utility window.  Once you've selected the external drive, click on New Image at the top of the window and it will ask you where you want to store the image file.  Select a location and then let it do its thing.

Once completed, you can restore the image to the same or another external drive or you can simply double-click the image file to mount the disk and explore its contents using finder as you would normally.


opendirectoryd taking up 1/4 of the cpu and driving fans crazy on MacBook Air

Here are the results of my investigation: https://superuser.com/a/426719/135263

--

As mentioned by @juanpablo, this may be caused by symlinks.

Apparently, if a symlink points to /home, autofs or automountd fire and take a lot of CPU to figure out that the place indeed doesn't exist.

Take a look at /etc/auto_home and /etc/autofs.conf.

To see if you're being hit by this particular problem, set

AUTOMOUNTD_VERBOSE=TRUE

option in autofs.conf, restart automountd

sudo launchctl stop com.apple.automountd

and review the syslog.log (you may use application: Console). You're affected by this problem if you see something like that:

May 20 17:53:43 xxx automountd[31709]: od_search failed

To workaround, edit the file /etc/auto_master and remove (or hash out #) the line starting with /home. Then run:

sudo automount -vc


Mac Preview: Search only in current page

I always hate being the bearer of bad news but unfortunately this is the expected behaviour of the Preview application and there is no setting to change it.

Some 3rd party PDF viewers do include the functionality that you're looking for though. May I suggest one called Adobe Acrobat Reader? It does exactly what you want it to do by default (without having to mess with any settings), it's by a reputable software company, and it's free. I just double-checked to make sure it still functions the way I remember and current page searches are working flawlessly for me.

Note: If you remember to set it as your default PDF viewer after installing it (it will prompt you) it will also automatically open each time you attempt to open a PDF file; no fumbling for the right application every time!


If lightweight means command line, then get ffmpeg

https://brew.sh - install homebrew package manager
brew install ffmpeg
profit

See any of the plethora of tutorials online or questions on the network :

https://stackoverflow.com/questions/9446578/how-to-replace-audio-track-in-mkv-file-on-ubuntu-11-10
https://superuser.com/questions/800234/how-to-replace-an-audio-stream-in-a-video-file-with-multiple-audio-streams
https://stackoverflow.com/questions/11779490/how-to-add-a-new-audio-not-mixing-into-a-video-using-ffmpeg


There should be a small disclosure triangle next to where you input the document file name.

If you click on it, it will expand the Save As box and allow you to select a different folder to save the document to.


Is it possible to downgrade modemfirmware?

In general, it's not possible to downgrade the modem firmware / baseband software version on iOS, even if you jailbreak the device or use software designed to install modified software on an iPhone.

It's a popular request, so I imagine many people are working on it but nothing is out today to perform the task you ask on the iPhone 4.


LuaRocks default installation location in macOS

If you have installed LuaRocks via Homebrew by following the installation instructions by running

brew install luarocks

the install location can be determined by running

`brew info luarocks

Homebrew installs it in a directory under

/usr/local/Cellar/luarocks/

directory.

The rocks themselves are installed in the following directory:

/usr/local/lib/luarocks/


On startup Calendar shows only one calendar

Close Calendar app. Go to Finder. Press cmd+G to navigate to a folder. Type in ~/Library/Preferences. Locate a file called com.apple.iCal.plist. Move it to Trash.

Now try to relaunch Calendar. Hopefully you should now be able to select the calendars you want to see and have them still be selected once you quit and reopen Calendar.


How to add metadata to log archive, so that `log show --last` works?

I have a very unsatisfying answer to this question: wait 10 days and hope the problem goes away by itself.

That approach just worked for me:

% date
Sun 19 Jan 2020 07:26:30 PST
% log show --last 2s --style syslog
Skipping info and debug messages, pass --info and/or --debug to include.
Timestamp                       (process)[PID]
% echo $?
0

Note that the message, log: warning: The log archive contains partial or missing metadata no longer appears, and the --last option now works.

While investigating, I came across the very useful essay, Inside the macOS log: logd and the files that it manages, by Howard Oakley. This pointed me to the directories /var/db/diagnostics/ and /var/db/uuidtext/.

I observe that subdirectories /var/db/diagnostics/Persist/ and /var/db/diagnostics/Special/ contain opaque .tracev3 data files:

% cd /var/db/diagnostics
% ls -lF@ Persist
total 533688
-rw-r--r--@ 1 root  admin   2730128 21 Dec 14:02 0000000000000061.tracev3
    com.apple.logd.metadata       40
-rw-r--r--@ 1 root  admin  10477520 22 Dec 20:45 0000000000000062.tracev3
    com.apple.logd.metadata       40
…[snip, omitted for brevity]…
-rw-r--r--@ 1 root  admin  10479128 18 Jan 22:56 000000000000007b.tracev3
    com.apple.logd.metadata       40
-rw-r--r--@ 1 root  admin   2431808 19 Jan 06:29 000000000000007c.tracev3
    com.apple.logd.metadata       40
% ls -lF@ Special
total 35624
-rw-r--r--  1 root  admin     1544 10 Jan 06:35 0000000000000048.tracev3
-rw-r--r--  1 root  admin     1536 13 Jan 04:43 0000000000000049.tracev3
-rw-r--r--  1 root  admin     1416 18 Jan 04:56 000000000000004b.tracev3
-rw-r--r--  1 root  admin   258128 19 Jan 05:25 000000000000004c.tracev3
-rw-r--r--@ 1 root  admin  2082432  8 Jan 02:58 000000000000004d.tracev3
    com.apple.logd.metadata      40
-rw-r--r--@ 1 root  admin  2087952 10 Jan 21:52 000000000000004e.tracev3
    com.apple.logd.metadata      40
…[snip, omitted for brevity]…
-rw-r--r--@ 1 root  admin  2097344 18 Jan 23:11 0000000000000054.tracev3
    com.apple.logd.metadata      40
-rw-r--r--@ 1 root  admin   984016 19 Jan 06:27 0000000000000055.tracev3
    com.apple.logd.metadata      40

Oakley says that the macOS log system rotates these files: gradually prunes out old and unnecessary content, then deletes old files altogether. The date stamps back him up. Note that the oldest tracev3 file in Special/ is only 10 days old. Older files existed in this directory when I originally had the problem, but are now gone.

It is interesting that many (but not all) of these files contain an extended file attribute "com.apple.logd.metadata". Oakley, in xattr: com.apple.logd.metadata, log metadata, says "their content and function are unknown". I speculate that the "metadata" term in the error message might be a reference to the data in the "com.apple.logd.metadata" xattr.

So, a wild guess is that a file in /var/db/diagnostics/Special/ had a corrupted or missing xattr "com.apple.logd.metadata". In the course of a week, this file became old enough and was discarded. Once that file was discarded, its metadata was gone, and the so was the problem.


Are there iPhone applications like INFOMAPS?


Are these two optical drives interchangeable?

They are not interchangeable.

ATA is also referred to as PATA (Parallel ATtachment or IDE). SATA is is Serial ATA or Serial Attachment.  ATAPI (ATA Packet Interface) is just the drive communication protocol used to "talk" to the drives.

Using the "larger" drives as a visual reference since the micro connectors' size in a laptop can be deceiving, we can see the huge difference between a PATA connector and the SATA connector.

Even though they use the same protocol, the two are completely different.  A protocol is how devices communicate (what runs over the cable).

Let's use a more common interface, electricity, as an analogy.  Even though the exact same thing (electric current) runs through these devices, they are no way "compatible."  The first picture is a US 220V appliance outlet and the second is a common PC electrical plug.  If you were to get one connected to the other, it most definitely wouldn't work (ever again).


How does apple's EFI compare to the UEFI standard?

The Apple EFI firmwares are always automatically updated when you update the version of an OS or upgrade the OS. You can check it: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201518.


Can you upload programs you write to the iPad without involving the Apple store?

Yes, there is Ad Hoc distribution that lets you install your app on 100 iPods or iPads. There is something similar for corporations which allows more than 100 devices.

  Ad Hoc Distribution
  Share your application with up to 100 other iPad, iPhone, or iPod touch users with Ad Hoc distribution. Share your application through email, or by posting it to a web site or server.


how to use HomePod mini as a mic for Mac mini

It cannot be used as a microphone and DOES NOT show up under input in the sound settings.

https://reddit.com/r/macmini/comments/k1b271/limitations_of_using_a_homepod_or_homepod_mini_as/gdngtrm
It acts as an AirPlay receiver like Apple TV, not a Bluetooth device like AirPods.


There doesn't seem to be an entry for the shortcut in com.apple.symbolichotkeys.plist. The media keys cannot be configured in DefaultKeyBinding.dict or keylayout files. I didn't find any hidden preferences with strings either.

I was able to disable it with KeyRemap4MacBook, but only on my laptop's keyboard; not on an Apple Wireless Keyboard.

Save a file like this as ~/Library/Application Support/KeyRemap4MacBook/private.xml

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<root>
  <item>
    <name>Disable Command-F1</name>
    <identifier>private.disable.command.f1</identifier>
    <autogen>--ConsumerToConsumer-- ConsumerKeyCode::BRIGHTNESS_DOWN, ModifierFlag::COMMAND_L, ConsumerKeyCode::BRIGHTNESS_DOWN</autogen>
    <autogen>--ConsumerToConsumer-- ConsumerKeyCode::BRIGHTNESS_DOWN, ModifierFlag::COMMAND_R, ConsumerKeyCode::BRIGHTNESS_DOWN</autogen>
  </item>
</root>

Press the ReloadXML button and enable the new remapping in the first tab


If all your machines are running Lion or Mountain Lion, and you're using the same iCloud account on them, then you can use iCloud to ssh as described in this blog post from One Thing Well

First, find your Back To My Mac account number by running.

dns-sd -E

Then SSH to another machine like so

ssh -2 -6 username@computer-name.[account number].members.btmm.icloud.com

You can also add this to your ~/.ssh/config to make it easier

Host mac-remote
User username
HostName computername.[account number].members.btmm.icloud.com
AddressFamily inet6
Protocol 2


.ibooks files are a special Apple-only multi-touch version of the epub standard.  They can only be created using the iBooks Author app, and they can only be read by the iBooks app on an iOS device or a Mac running OS 10.9 or higher.

The main attraction of the .ibooks format for authors is that it can easily incorporate a large variety of interactive features via widgets.  The Apple list is at http://support.apple.com/kb/PH2789 and a 3rd party list is at https://bookry.com/author/widget/library/

.epub is an open standard which can be produced by a number of apps (including Apple's Pages) and can be read on any platform using a variety of apps (including Apple's iBooks).  There is no way to convert .epub to .ibooks, other than to put the content into iBooks Author and republish it from that app.

Starting with version 2.3 of June 2015, iBooks Author can also produce .epub format, as long as one of the .epub templates is used.


Make sure your phone is updated to iOS 8.1.2 - this was a known issue in 8.1.1

As you update you will get a notice about it & a link to follow to get your ringtones back.

See Restore missing tones on your iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch running iOS 8.1.1


Is it possible that the formula you have in cell B1 in the Amortization table is slightly different than the one you typed in the question above?

After creating two tables with the same column and row names as yours, I am able to replicate your problem and get the same error message which is "This formula can’t reference its own cell, or depend on another formula that references this cell". This happens, for example, if I place the following formula which has no space after the word "Rate" in cell B1 in the Amortization table:

=INDIRECT("Interest Rate"&E1)

However, the formula in cell B1 works correctly if I add a single space after the word "Rate" but before the ending double quote as follows:

=INDIRECT("Interest Rate "&E1)

The same error can also be caused by the words "Interest Rate" to be slightly misspelled in the formula in cell B1 even if the space after the word "Rate" is actually there.

Interestingly, the first formula above (or any version of it with a spelling mistake) causes a different error message ("The formula contains an invalid reference") if it is placed anywhere outside the header rows or header columns.

I have done all of the above via Numbers v6.1 but I doubt this makes any difference as far as the problem you are experiencing is concerned.

Hope this helps.


cut is part of CoreUtils.

To install it :

brew install coreutils

Then it's available in terminal as gcut.


How can I edit contacts at Skype iPad version?

It appears that it is currently not possible to edit contacts in Skype for iPad.

This Skype KB article mentions viewing and deleting contacts, but makes no mention of editing contacts. This is in contrast to the related articles for other systems such as Windows/Mac that does mention editing contacts.

How do I manage my contacts in Skype for iPad?

In addition, this Skype Community thread asks the question and is met by a moderator's response mentioning that it is not possible:

Skype for iPad/Editing Contacts


Not receiving verification code while trying to sign into iCloud and Apple Store

Was able to sign into iCloud on the mac using Google Chrome, but not Safari. Was not able to click Account Settings or anything else. The difference here was that was able to use text verification code as other option for 2 factor authentication, and same with below.
Was able to sign into iCloud on Android Chrome, then going into Account Settings led to signing into Apple ID website. From there, going to list of devices, the same mac with the previous OS was listed! Decided to remove this, this was the main issue, and restart the mac. After waiting for a couple of minutes, was able to start receiving auth codes through text.
The first time you enter password and get error message asking for code to be entered. You have to wait a bit, get the code, and try signing in again with format: yourpasswordcode, no space or other character in between. Then, upgrade proceeds.


Macbook Pro Retina Mid 2014 Heat and fan confusion

Yes, this perfectly normal behaviour, 55 is a very reasonable temperature as well. If you start using your device more heavily, like encoding video, playing games, or installing certain software, you should start to notice the fans picking up.


Does it make sense to use Aperture 3 in combination with iPhoto or can you drop iPhoto?

You should consider Aperture to be a replacement for iPhoto. When you switch to Aperture, you will import your iPhoto DB of photos into Aperture and work with your photos exclusively in Aperture. The features that you are used to in iPhoto will be available in Aperture.

Aperture still have a 30-day free trial available from Apple.

What you can do is make a backup of your iphoto library (because backup are good, right), import the photos into Aperture and give it a try. Over the next 30 days, when you import new photos, import them into both Aperture and iPhoto. This way, if you don't like Aperture, you still have an up-to-date iPhoto library. If you are going to switch to Aperture, then you can delete your iPhoto library to get back that space.

I am a terrible photographer and I don't mind Aperture's way of organizing v. iPhoto. Trying to keep two applications in sync with photos, however, is not an ideal solution for long-term use, IMO.


2006 macbook give me flashing folder with question mark without disk

The folder with question mark on start up means that the Mac is unable to locate your boot drive.

Many possible causes:

Corrupted boot disk.

You can try Disk Utility using a boot via external unit (CD-ROM, external HDD, USB) to repair the disk. If you are unable to see the primary disk via Disk Utility follow the two possibility below.

HDD broken.

Replace your HDD and install a fresh copy of OS X or try to extract your data form the broken HDD and move it to the new one.

HDD SATA cable disconnected / broken.

Your HDD is connected via SATA flat cable. Open your Mac, check this cable if it is disconnected or try to replace it.


line 1: syntax error near unexpected token `newline' with HTML + shell script

HTML is not a script, it's a markup language. You need a browser to render HTML. To view it, you probably want

open sysinfo_page.html


Question about Mail. How to limit amount stored locally. Where is mail stored?

Mail will be stored in ~/Library/Mail. Gmail and Yahoo typically use IMAP, which means the messages are held on their server until you delete them. Doubtful that this is what is eating up a big chunk of your drive space; my Mail folder weighs in at just under 9GB for nine accounts, one of which has messages going back 8+ years. There are a few options in Mail/Preferences/Accounts on how to handle mail storage, but nothing that will limit the time period for what mail messages are stored locally. Removing the accounts from Mail then expunging any of their associated files will clear up some space, but I'd be looking at other places for what is using disk space. Movies and music are big space hogs, for example.


Alias of app not showing up in launchpad

You can drag the real application to the Launchpad icon on the dock. It will add it regardless of what directory it's in.


How can I teach Siri how to spell my child's name correctly in texts?

Siri isn't the brightest bulb in the box and she often misunderstands
  unusual words and names. Fortunately, you can teach her how to speak
  properly by adding phonetic pronunciations to your contacts.

  How do you do this? Watch this video or follow these
  instructions:

  Open up your uniquely-named contact and tap the Edit button up top.
  Scroll down to the bottom of the contact page and find the area that
  says "Add New Field."
  From your options, choose "Phonetic First
  Name" (or "Phonetic Last Name," depending on which one is the
  problem).
  Enter in the phonetic version of the problematic name and
  tap Save. Now when you ask Siri to recognize or say a name, she'll
  get it right.

Source: Teach Siri to Correctly Recognize and Pronounce Names in Your Address Book


When I try to delete my iCloud account on my iPhone it tells me to sign out using my old email and password. I don't remember the old password

You can easily reset your password if you have access to the email account that you've used while creating your Apple ID. Go to this page: https://iforgot.apple.com/password/verify/appleid and the email your primary or rescue email address and hit the 'Forget Apple ID' button.

You can also reset your Apple ID password by answering the security questions. You might find this Apple Knowledgebase article useful: https://support.apple.com/en-in/HT201487


You can log out from the App Store after you click "Account" at the Quick Links sidebar (inside the "Feature" Tap)
  You can log out and change the Apple ID inside the OS X settings
  You need to log in with the Apple ID you bought the apps with
  You can delete certain apps and keep the files. Like iPhoto keeps its Library inside the Pictures folder in your Home directory
  You have to buy the Apps again if they cost money if you want to update them with your other Apple ID


What do the "Energy Impact" numbers displayed in the new OSX 10.9 mean and how are they calculated?

I don't think you would want this numbers to be percentile and adding to 100 at any point because that would mean that your battery would die nearly instantaneously.

If I was to make an educated guess just to help you out a bit, your computer (specifically MacBooks) have their battery capacity measure in mAh or milli Ampere-hour typically somewhere in the ballpark of 6500 mAh or 6.5 Ampere-hour. I would hazard a guess (if the moderators allow it) that your are seeing the actual usage to the second of how many mA are going to the specific app per refresh (call time by the Activity Monitor daemon).

So if you were to add up the average power draw of your active apps and multiple that per second you would know how long your computer battery would last without power (roughly). Additionally you have to factor in what internal components are working hard (AirPort, Bluetooth, Display brightness, hard drive rotations) and you have yourself the estimated time until depletion.

Oh, and as to how they are calculated. There is a tiny integrated circuit on your main logic board called the SMC and it's job is to allocate DC current to the resource that needs it most. It keeps  track of energy usage and demands by the RAM, CPU, GPU, etc. so that it can help make sure your computer stays energy efficient.


iOS 11.3.1 Mail app doesn't shown new mail until the iPhone is rebooted - any cure?

A couple of things to try

Delete the Account from your phone and re add it.
Go into Settings > General > Reset and reset the network settings

You will lose the WiFi networks you have already been on and authenticated to but all you have to do is re-connect and re-authenticate.

Failing the above I would back up the phone (password protect the backup so you don't lose your saved passwords.) Wipe it (Settings > General > Reset > Erase all content and settings) and then restore from the backup you just made.


Do MacBook Pros with TouchID contain TPMs?

Apple's iOS secure enclave is almost certainly the "flavor of TPM" that is built into the MacBook Pro. I would say it's a very, very long shot that it would be exposed to BootCamp or other virtualization apps, but there is of course hope when you have API for third party apps to get at the fingerprint sensor from macOS.

You are correct that this is the first time Apple has included this hardware on the Mac so maybe some time in the future you can expect the functionality you rightly desire. For now, I'd plan on yubikey or manual password entry.


PHP not locating mcrypt while using MAMP

I don't think MAMP relies on the php package installed in Terminal (or in OS X for that matter). MAMP uses it's own php version located at /Applications/MAMP/bin/php/php5.5.3

The modules are in the folder I noted above in a subfolder called /modules. You would have to manually get mcrypt in the modules folder for MAMP to work with mcrypt.


How do I run Apple2.saver from XScreensaver as an application?

The two savers that can run as apps are actually supplied as separate apps, you don't need to pick apart the .saver files to get them to run.

Using the 'Install Everything' option will install Apple2 and Phosphor to your regular Applications folder. Double-click to run, like any other app.


Fix virtualenv after installing python 3 with brew

I eventually solved the issue by running

brew switch python 2.7.14
brew link --overwrite python

I'm not sure if that was the correct solution, but at least it seems to be working now.


iPad (iOS 7) time-language inconsistency

You should try toggling to 24h format, force quit Settings, and then reset it to 12h format.

You could also try toggling to German and back to English, once again after force quitting Settings.

Sometimes something simple as toggling a setting will get the app to execute some code that it didn't when you switched the language setting.

Good Luck.


How do I mount an SSD I got from an old Macbook?

If diskutil mount /dev/disk2s2 doesn't work, then I'd suggest the SSD is faulty, and you will need to use data recovery software, which will rarely give you the filenames and folder structures.

Backup?


If you are open to using third party software, you should try Funter, which is free. You can search hidden file in an easy way like SpotLight.

  Use Funter to show hidden files, switch hidden files visibility in Finder,
  hide files, copy, move or remove them.


Bookmarking an on-screen position in macOS?

A possible alternative to using a Finder window as a bookmark is using the built-in Stickies app (if you are not using the apps as a fullscreen space).

Simply open the Stickies app and make a new note via File > New Note. While the sticky window is selected, you can make it float on top of other windows at Window > Float on Top. This will make the sticky note remain on top of the other window, regardless of app focus. You can resize the sticky to your liking and you can even collapse it to make it much smaller.

It's not an elegant solution and it falls apart if the sticky or the window are moved, but it is better than using Finder as a bookmark.

Here is an example of what it looks like floating on a list of numbers on an active Chrome window:


tmux on Mac, how can I enable vi mode for the command line

Add set -o vi to the ~/.bash_profile file


AppleScript - Get the path to an application without opening it

Use Finder to get an application file object:

tell application "Finder"
    POSIX path of (application file id "org.chromium.Chromium" as alias)
end tell

You can also get the bundle identifier with id of app "Chromium".


How does the iPad auto-correct work exactly?

AutoCorrect will automatically replace the word unless you cancel it manually by tapping it. (Note the small × sign in the suggestion bubble indicating that tapping it will cancel the suggestion.)

So, as soon as an AutoCorrect suggestion appears that you want to use, just hit Space (or insert a punctuation mark) and continue typing.


Does iPad 9.7 2019 have a different Touch ID?

There are two different generations of Touch ID hardware in Apple devices. The 2nd gen Touch ID hardware is widely regarded as being much faster — nearly instantaneous — compared to the 1st gen Touch ID.

Regarding the specific Apple products in your question: the 2019 iPad uses 1st gen Touch ID and the MacBook and iPhone 7 both use 2nd gen.

See this Wikipedia article on Touch ID for more details.

As of this writing, the breakdown between products with 1st gen vs 2nd gen Touch ID is:

1st Gen

iPhone 5S
iPhone SE (1st generation)
iPhone 6
iPhone 6 Plus
iPad mini 3
iPad (2017)
iPad (2018)
iPad (2019)

2nd Gen

iPhone 6S
iPhone 6S Plus
iPhone 7
iPhone 7 Plus
iPhone 8
iPhone 8 Plus
iPhone SE (2nd generation)
iPad Pro 12.9-inch (1st generation)
iPad Pro 9.7-inch
iPad Pro 12.9-inch (2nd generation)
iPad Pro 10.5-inch
iPad Air 2
iPad Air (3rd generation)
iPad mini 4
iPad mini (5th generation)
MacBook Air (2018)
MacBook Pro


PowerPC based Macs are old, too old to run Yosemite by a good number of years so I'm going to guess that you have a MacPro and an Apple Cinema Display in which case:

http://support.apple.com/en-us/ht2811

Should help.

Edit:
I should expand on my rather terse answer. I think that the timing of you upgrading to Yosemite is a bit of a red herring. The problem according to the KB article seems to be to do with the power supply. It may have been damaged in some way (or maybe just 'got old'). Check everything is plugged in snugly and that nothing is shorting (no hissy-poppy-crackeling sounds). Also check for excessive heat coming from the power adapter. It shouldn't be too hot to hold, if it is it implies some form of damage.

~W


What happens if I use a 60W rated USB-C cable to charge my Macbook from the 85W power brick?

What happens if I use a 60W rated USB-C cable to charge my MacBook
  from the 85W power brick?

Nothing.  It will work fine.

A watt is a unit of work (power) and is calculated with the formula:

Watts = Volts * Amps

A cable is rated for how much current (amps) it can handle - volts mean nothing.  For example, using the same cable and a 60W load on 22 AWG wire (22 gauge) with two different scenarios

3V at 10A would fry the cable
12V at 5A would be fine

I could put 50,000 volts so long as I didn't exceed the amperage, I'm ok.

This is why a wattage rating on a cable is incorrect.

Given that the Thunderbolt cable conforms to USB 3.1 and the power delivery spec for calls for up to 20V at 5A or 100W, your cable will handle it.


Prevent application from displaying badge icon in Dock

No - the normal path is to use the Notifications prefpane to turn off notifications, but this would not help, since Spotify is not listed there.

I'm also very annoyed by Spotify's constant flood of notifications. I wonder if there was a way to drop all the social-related network traffic that goes into Spotify and somehow nip these notifications at the bud.


Toggle default between Imessage and Text for specific recipient?

is there a way to toggle my phone to default to sending as a text
  until she has roaming availability?

No.  This is not possible.

There is no way for your iPhone, Mac, or even Apple's iMessage servers to know whether your wife's phone is roaming or not.

Roaming is a carrier function designed to allow the user to seamlessly use their home carrier services on a different carriers network.  The phone doesn't notify any other phones it's not on its home network.

  roaming refers to the ability for a cellular customer to automatically make and receive voice calls, send and receive data, or access other services, including home data services, when traveling outside the geographical coverage area of the home network, by means of using a visited network.

If roaming is an issue, you should use a 3rd party app like WhatsApp or have your wife turn off roaming altogether.


I have no idea what made it work correctly again (I only have 1 cursor). I think its because it was all disconnected and shut off. Not exactly sure though


How to automatically deliver /var/mail/USER to my Gmail?

On my High Sierra (10.13.4) machine, mail honors the .forward file. Create a file in your home directory called ".forward" containing an email address. All your mail on the Mac system will be forwarded to this address.

It makes good sense to limit access to this file, with chmod.

For example (open Terminal in your home directory):

cube:~ borg$ cat > .forward
locutus@borg.org <return>
<ctrl-d>
cube:~ borg$ chmod 600 .forward

Then you can test by sending a mail to yourself, from the command line:

cube:~ borg$ mail borg
Subject: test
This is a test.
<ctrl-d>EOT
cube:~ borg$ mail
No mail for borg
cube:~ borg$

Note: this only works for forwarding MacOS system mail, not for forwarding from any of your cloud mail services. You can enter any valid e-mail address in the file.


I recently cleaned my spacebar and a piece is stuck

The scissors are quite delicate - you might need to buy some replacement parts or a used / damaged model and harvest parts. Without a very detailed picture, I can offer general advice.

Look for hinge pins that are sheared off.
Get a scrap part from a similar model (keep in mind - keyboard revisions are quite possible on very similar models in time - a mid year bump can have changed physical keys - especially hidden under the black parts)
carefully examine the function of the pins, the spacers under a bright task light - dim lights and lack of magnification can easily let you miss a sheared part or other damage bending of small metal and plastic parts.


How do you get monitor to shut off when screen is locked?

Locking your screen and putting your display to sleep are two totally different things.  Locking your screen is preventing others from accessing your desktop and does not necessarily put your display to sleep.

There are a couple options for you to immediately put your display to sleep and lock the display:

Keyboard Shortcut:  If you want to put your display to sleep, use the keyboard shortcut  ^Control⇧ ShiftPower Button.

Hot Corners.  You can also set a Hot Corner.  Just move your mouse to the desired corner and it will put your display to sleep.

The key here, to get the display to lock and go to sleep  is to make sure that you have your security settings set to require a password (from "immediately" to "8 hours").


Use USB microphone (like a Snowball by Blue) to iPhone with Lightning cable

You'll need the Lightning to USB Camera adapter from Apple and then connect your microphone there.

Depending on the microphone, you could require an external USB power source. This is normally done by adding in a powered USB hub.

Note that this might not work with your specific microphone. It works with some USB microphones, but it is not really supported hardware by Apple.


How to fix iPhone 5S reporting excessive space used for Photo Library?

apparently the "recently deleted"-feature in iOS8 is broken.
Photos you've deleted don't disappear after 30 days, they're just hidden on your device.
The storage being used isn't "phantom usage", since the photos are still safely stored.
The easiest short term solution is to set back your date on the phone month by month (until the release of iOS8), and your deleted photos will reappear in the "recently deleted"-folder. There you can manually and permanently delete them.

As long you regularly delete all "recently deleted" images, your storage won't clog up.

If you want to get an overview of the photos on your iphone just download iexplorer. There you'll see all of them, even those you can't see on your iphone.

Here's a blog post about the issue: https://blog.tmoehle.de/ios-photo-problem/

Cheers,


Where do you get the tool they use at the Genius Bar to remove SIM cards?

If you purchase an international or unlocked iPhone, it comes with this SIM ejection tool. They cannot be purchased from Apple, however they are sold on eBay/Amazon/etc.


How to truly disable Ethernet and Firewire?

Recommend taking a "throw-away" computer and not one you will continue using after returning.  You're not going to be able to secure it just by disabling access (even with restricting boot).


How can I install template from 3rd party to Keynote?

The specific location where the files are stored is:

~/Library/Containers/com.apple.iWork.Keynote/Data/Library/Application Support/User Templates

OR

You can just use the Save Theme > Add Theme to Chooser option to achieve the same result.

However, you will need to add the missing slides to your set of Master Slides manually.

Adding New Master Slides

To do that:

Go to a unique slide that came with the theme and copy the unique elements
Under View, Select Edit Master Slides
Make sure you can view the Navigator on the left
Right-click (two-finger click) over the Navigator and make a new Master Slide
On the new Master Slide - clear out any default elements if it's not blank
Paste the unique elements from the slide copied into step #1
Rename the new master slide to something memorable about the content
Exit the master slide editor (Done button)
(Repeat for as many slides that you want to use with the template)

When finished you should be able to save and use the updated Keynote template normally.

Keynote used: version 8.0.1 (5579)

  Missing fonts - Lots of 3rd party templates come without the fonts.
  You'll need to install these or choose substitutes and then reboot to
  have Keynote recognize all the fonts.


Code Signing: Where is the "encrypted hash" of a signed blob?

Here is the basic test I made.

I have OS X 10.10 installed on a external disk under volume name "Steelhead3". I entered the following commands.

cd "/Volumes/Steelhead3/Applications/Utilities"
sudo codesign -fs - "Boot Camp Assistant.app"

I then made a copy of the folder "Boot Camp Assistant.app". Next, I edited the "/Volumes/Steelhead3/Applications/Utilities/Boot Camp Assistant.app/Contents/Info.plist" and made a small change regarding the model Macs that can make the Windows USB installer.

At this point I reran the following commands.

cd "/Volumes/Steelhead3/Applications/Utilities"
sudo codesign -fs - "Boot Camp Assistant.app"

From here I booted to Windows and used the Windiff.exe application to compare the files. I expected to see the change made to the "Info.plist" files, which I did. Also, the "/Volumes/Steelhead3/Applications/Utilities/Boot Camp Assistant.app/Contents/MacOs/Boot Camp Assistant" files appeared to have changed. Since this is a binary file, I first converted the before and after versions to hex characters, then Windiff.exe was used to find the differences. Below is the only differences.

It appears the only difference is a 20 byte change in the the executable binary file. I assume this is where the hash is stored. All other files were unchanged.


Starting with iOS 10.3, the Settings app features a section dedicated to your personal profile at the very top. You’ll find the old iCloud submenu in there.

Screenshot courtesy of MacRumors:


Brew doctor asking to update xcode, while its already updated

The problem here is just simply that brew is detecting an old version of Xcode. If it was objecting to the version of the command line tools that you have installed you'd be getting a different error message.

A newer Command Line Tools release is available.
Update them from Software Update in the App Store.

You can see the actual code here yourself. The checks for Xcode and the command line tools are separate.

The way to fix this message from brew doctor is either to remove the old version of Xcode or update it.


What are alternatives to EyeTV for watching live TV

No this unicorn doesn't exist.  I was looking to revamp my MacMini/EyeTv setup earlier this year and looked around quite a bit at alternatives. What I found was that cable and dish DVR's have pretty much destroyed the computer hobby market for TV along with DRM licensing costs.

I think the closest you're going to get are the boxes from SiliconDust or Hauppage. Both have DVR and sharing abilities, but their software is a bit more high maintenance than EyeTV's to achieve most of your programming goals.

I finally decided to stick with EyeTV for my DVR and live viewing. Fingers crossed that they will keep the software updated. I use the TitanTV program guide to manually schedule recordings. EyeTV still does an excellent job of exporting programs for archiving. Good luck finding auto commercial removal, the last company to try that, Replay, was sued out of existence.


How to backup all files in my iphone? including the operating system files

I am not sure, but I think you can still back up your iPhone with iTunes/iCloud even if it is jail broken. If you really want to back up iPhone as much as iPhone data without iTunes/iCloud there are paid/free third-party methods to do so.


Performance issues with Dynadock after upgrading to OS X Sierra 10.12.6

The issue is mostly resolved and performance is better.  I went to displaylink.org and downloaded the latest display driver for OSX.  This appears to be the source for OSX compatible Toshiba Displaylink drivers, as Toshiba only seems to publish Windows version on their support site.  After installing the new driver a colleague  mentioned that I should make sure that mission control has screens as "Separate workspaces".

I confirmed that I already had this setting checked, but did a test with it un-checked, and I can confirm that this made update performance worse.

So in general, having the new latest driver did seem to restore performance, however, I am still seeing per application issues.  For instance, I can drag the Safari and Chrome browsers across the Displaylink screens as smooth as butter, but dragging Firefox is choppy and typing into the browser is very difficult to do with any kind of fluidity.


I want software to slow down my typing and increase my accuracy

You can use Karabiner to play a sound when you press delete. For example save this file as ~/Library/Application Support/Karabiner/private.xml:

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<root>
  <vkopenurldef>
    <name>KeyCode::VK_OPEN_URL_SHELL_BEEP</name>
    <url type="shell">afplay /System/Library/PrivateFrameworks/ScreenReader.framework/Versions/A/Resources/Sounds/BrailleChordFailed.aiff</url>
  </vkopenurldef>
  <item>
    <name>custom</name>
    <identifier>custom</identifier>
    <autogen>__KeyToKey__ KeyCode::DELETE, ModifierFlag::NONE, KeyCode::DELETE, KeyCode::VK_OPEN_URL_SHELL_BEEP</autogen>
  </item>
</root>

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

You could also use Master Key or TypeRacer to practice typing pieces of plain text.


Mac Could Not Restart After a Kernel Panic

Try to boot into recovery by holding down Cmd+R.

If your computer shipped with a Mac OS X Install disc, insert the installation disc, and restart the computer while holding the C key.

If using a Recovery partition or Internet Recovery (OS X Lion and later): When your computer finishes starting up, choose Disk Utility from the Utilities window.

If using an installation disc: Choose Disk Utility from the Installer menu.
Important: If you started from an installation disc, do not click Continue in the first screen of the Installer. If you do, you must start from the disc again to access Disk Utility.

Click the First Aid tab.

Click the disclosure triangle to the left of the hard drive icon to display the names of your hard disk volumes and partitions.

Select your OS X volume.

Click Repair. Disk Utility checks and repairs the disk.

Hopefully this might solve the issue. Otherwise I suggest backing-up your data and reinstall OSX.


Parallels or VirtualBox to run Clampfit on a MacBook Pro running Yosemite 10.10.3?

I suppose the VMWare is also an option.

However, as you know with Parallels, you can restrict the resources that are available to Window, such as the number of CPUs available between Mac and Win, the memory, and the video card memory.

Whereas a typical configuration might be to share these resources equally between Mac and Win, in your case it makes sense to reduce the resources for Win (and consequently for Clampfit), and you can fine-tune this to your liking.

I'm not certain about how much you can limit the amount of hard drive space available for Windows. I always went with the suggested 64 GB, and I don't recall if you could reduce this.


You are looking for qlcolorcode. qlcolorcode allows you to have syntax highlighting in your quicklook preview:


iCloud Photo Sharing upload from apps has nothing to do with Photo Library on iCloud

iCloud Photo Sharing is a different service than iCloud Photo Library. iCloud Photo Sharing allows you to share an album with another iCloud user (friends, relatives...) while iCloud Photo Library is just a cloud-based storage provided by Apple.

Basically iCloud Photo Library allows you to store and organize images (either from camera roll or from apps)into  albums and folders so you can access them on all your devices connected to iCloud an even from the web at icloud.com. albums and folders you created can be found at the "albums" tab of the iPad photo app.

On the other side iCloud Photo Sharing allows you to create a shared album that you can share via a link or directly to an iCloud user. This album is displayed in the "Shared" tab of your iPad photo app. removing this album won't delete the photos it contains from your photo library.

Concerning Vectornator app you have two options to save your work on iCloud:

Save the artwork to your iCloud Photo Library (export to PNG or JPEG)
Save the artwork as a file on iCloud Drive (export as PDF or SVG)

Note that iCloud Photo Library purpose is to save and organize photos, not professional work or other artwork so you must not (and cannot) save SVG files to iCloud Photo Library.


Are there more robust tools than Automator to extract text from multiple PDF?

I don't know how it compares against other options, but you could use pdfotext. It can be installed with brew install xpdf.

do shell script "/usr/local/bin/pdftotext /usr/share/doc/bash/bash.pdf -" without altering line endings

Calibre also comes with some command line utilities:

/Applications/calibre.app/Contents/MacOS/ebook-convert /usr/share/doc/bash/bash.pdf /tmp/output.txt

Related questions:

How to convert a pdf file into a text file?
PDF to TEXT open source command line tool
How to extract text from pdf in script on Linux?


Anyone knows how to view the nice value of a process under Mavericks?

Use ps with a lower case L to directly view current nice values:
ps -l

or for specific process id (PID)
ps -l -p __PID___


According to Everymac it can use anything from 10.4.8 to 10.7.5

I'd always be inclined to go for the latest OS a machine can use, even though it might make it slower than the earliest.


Where is the SafariStand menu/preferences?

Look for the "Stand" menu to appear between the "Window" and "Help" menus in your top menu bar.


From a technological standpoint this is possible - Skype makes voice calls just fine over 3G data on my iPhone. However, as far as I know, AT&T and Verizon do not permit you to run phone devices on their network without a phone plan, so it's unlikely that you will be able to do what you're looking for, as least officially.

I have heard that some people have had success transplanting the iPad SIM into an iPhone, but it's not something that's guaranteed to work and AT&T may block its use at some point in the future, if they haven't already.


MS Outlook Version 16.16 doesn't show calendar event reminders

The Mac version of Outlook actually has an app that is in charge of displaying/sounding reminders, so it is nothing that you can access outside of Outlook.

If you launch Outlook and go to the Outlook menu the fourth item down should say either "Turn off reminders," or "Turn on reminders."

If it is the former you may want to reinstall Outlook as something has happened to cause the reminder application to not work. If it is the latter... well, problem solved.


Go to the screen and right-click on the desktop. This brings up a menu and the last option is to "Show view options". Select this. You'll get a small window where you can adjust the icon size.

You can also change font size and icon spacing.


What should I do after I lost my MacBook data?

It depends on what condition the hard drive is in, if the drive is still at least partially working and can be connected and recognized by a computer, your in luck and you should be able to do your own recovery. Note that the drive does not have to be mountable it has to be able to show up in Disk Utility. If there was a mechanical or electrical controller failure with the storage drive then a recovery shop is the answer.

A Do it yourself solution if the drive is not dead

If you are using the drive to boot from, stop. Don't use the drive anymore until you have performed a recovery of the data.
If you don't have a external hard drive that you can boot from to do the recovery I recommend getting one, you can use it as your backup drive later. For now install SnowLeopard or Lion onto it, then boot up from it. Make sure it will be big enough to hold all the files you may want to recover including the size of OS X on the drive you are recovering data too.
Obtain a software recovery tool, I have used Data Rescue with great success several times in the past year. Additionally it is available at a great price Data Rescue at the Mac App Store, its cheaper since you can't recover from a hard drive you are booted from. This is not a problem, since besides one should not really recover onto a potentially failing drive or a drive where one accidentally deleted stuff.
Perform the recovery and save the recovered files onto your clean external drive you are booted from.
Recover and salvage whatever lost files you want to keep.


Managing and sorting home movies and shorts in iTunes?

This is a pretty personal question, but:

Personally, I keep home movies in iPhoto. Seems a better location to me. They go with the photos of the event, keeps everything together. iPhoto for me is personal collections of events, and iTunes is proper content to watch.

Shorts go in Movies (you can't create a top-level category in iTunes) with everything else. You can use Playlists to categorize. You can set your own Genre in the meta-data to aid categorization.


Can a Mail.app smart mailbox take *nesting* into account?

A Smart Mailbox with the rule Any recipient does not contain [email address of mailbox A] should work. The use of subfolders shouldn't impact this.
Or just add Account [accountName] for each mailbox that you DO want to include (excluding mailbox A).


DIY replacement of DVD drive with an SSD?

Two sites that are very Mac friendly are the iFixit site and the OWC (Other World Computing) site. OWC sells SSDs and many other Mac upgrades. I suggest you search the site for what you are looking for.

An iFixit example guide how to install a second HDD/SSD (with links where to buy all required parts and tools):

Installing MacBook Pro 15" Unibody Late 2011 Dual Hard Drive


It seems that VLC can do that, but I can't find a good howto to send to you.


Image editing software is the only way to go here. You'll have to determine which you want to use if you want us to be able to help you out how to do it. If it's a usual window, the easy route would be to only screenshot that window (cmd+shift+4, then hit the space bar and click the window). That will be easy to fill in.


Constant prompts for FaceTime Password, iCloud Password and iMessage Password

I had same problem on my i-phone 6, so  went into 'Settings' and turned 'Facetime' off!  I don't use Facetime, so it seemed the best way to get rid of the annoying pop up.


iTunes preferences are stored in

~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.iTunes.plist

I presume you access your two libraries by launching iTunes while holding down the Opt key.

An alternate method to launch iTunes and swap out pref files at the same time would be to make an Automator or AppleScript app that switches pref files, and makes a link from ~/Music/iTunes to one of the libraries, then launches iTunes for you.


Auto completion of accents and tilde OSX

I had same problem, just change U.S. International - PC input source for U.S.


Have all "ipad mini 2"s a retina display?

Yes, every model of the iPad mini 2 has a retina display. Those who call it the "iPad mini 2" are likely just using a shortened form of the name for convenience.

Source: apple.com


How to customize new Siri voice in the Speech of Accessibility?

The answer is simple--but I think you may not like it. Siri's voice can be selected for text-to-speech only on iOS devices. The reason you do not see it listed among your MacBook's System Voice choices is that Siri's voice is not available as a System Voice on MacOS. On Apple's computers, Siri will be heard only in its role as the Siri personal assistant. You need to use a iPhone or an iPad to have Siri speak selected text.


AppleScript with list selection and Cancel button suppressed or disabled

I had the same problem today and found this way out:

set theChoice to choose from list

is returning the list's choice or "false" when the user clicks "Cancel"

So I used it for a loop – honestly quite a bit dirty, but it works.

repeat until endloop is true
    set theChoice to choose from list
    if goTo is not false then
        beep
        display alert "Noo!"
    else
        set endloop to true
    end if
end repeat

I hope I was helpful with my first post in here.


Is it possible to force a apple wireless keyboard to disconnect, from the keyboard?

No, I do not believe the Apple Keyboard has a hotkey to do multi-device switching, but Logitech does have a couple with switching capability. Logitech Bluetooth Multi-Device Keyboard (K480) and the Easy Switch Keyboard (K811).


You could have a look at one of

Alfred

  Alfred saves you time when you search for files online or on your Mac. Be more productive with hotkeys, keywords and file actions at your fingertips.

Keyboard Maestro

  Keyboard Maestro 5 is now available with control flow, variables, calculations, file actions, image manipulation, macro library and more.

  Keyboard Maestro is a powerful macro program for Mac OS X Mountain Lion, Lion and Snow Leopard which has received glowing reviews.

Especially Alfred works like a command line for O X and gives you the option to control most of your system interaction with simple text commands. If you prefer menus and mouse clicks, Keyboard Maestro might be the better choice.


Is "All My Files" slow because of my git and svn repos?

It would seem that have too many files in Spotlight does indeed slow down "All My Files" in finder.

It doesn't really matter that the files are in code repos, although repos do tend to have lots of files.

Upon removing my ~/Sites folder from spotlight which contains only 15GB of data, but more than half of the 500,000 files Spotlight was indexing "All my Files" came up nearly instantly again.


How can I safely backup and remove Photos from MacBook (El Capitan)?

I have a simple solution for that:
Make sure to hold option key while clicking on Photos before lauching it.
Choose the folder where your different libraries are stored (if you want to create different libraries check this out
 Then, make sure to be in the Photos stack and select Command + A to select all the pictures.
Head to File > Export (or click on Command + Option + E).
Don't forget to specify your external files format and videos definition.

Then you can choose to export your original or modified pics on your external hard drive.

Hope it helps ;)


Unable to boot to recovery mode after problematic High Sierra upgrade

When macOS' recovery partition fails, it creates a Catch-22 situation where you need the patient to be able to be able to perform brain surgery on itself.

If you have a ≥ 8gb usb drive you can erase handy, you can use it to create a recovery drive which you can use to diagnose and (one hopes) repair your intractable Mac drive(s).  It'll have all the same tools recovery mode offers:  you can test, run first aid, or perform other related functions without being dependent on the disk you're trying to repair.

Choose  > App Store… and download the High Sierra installer if /Applications/Install macOS High Sierra doesn't already exist.
When the download completes, the installer will open automatically.  Quit it.
Edit the following command, removing any returns to make one long line.  Replace YourDriveName with your USB drive name.

sudo "/Applications/Install macOS High Sierra.app/Contents/Resources/createinstallmedia" --volume "/Volumes/YourDriveName" --applicationpath "/Applications/Install macOS High Sierra.app" --nointeraction
Open /Applications/Utilities/Terminal.
Copy/paste the above command at the terminal prompt, press return, and enter your password.
After the process completes (it'll take awhile - be patient), restart your computer and immediately press and hold option.  This will eventually display the startup disk picker, from which you can choose the recovery drive you created rather than your normal start disk.  That'll at least give you a reliable work space unaffected by whatever's wrong with your drive.


To answer the last question first, no. You can always force a device to be off and then force an erase/restore. You should be able to tell since everything is gone. Worst case someone has an old backup of her content and restored that.

It is far more likely the culprit has guessed the passcode and is messing with you all. Second most likely is a jailbreak and known admin password.

If the suspect is technically sophisticated, it's possible they can pull this off but the security of passcodes on iOS is quite secure in general.


How do I check whether a file is available to download?

I usually check the HTTP Code and then run from there. Since this is tagged AppleScript here is an example handler I wrote:

use AppleScript version "2.4" -- Yosemite (10.10) or later
use scripting additions

set foundMP4 to my checkStream(c)

on checkStream(passedStream)
    try
        set serverCommand to "curl -o /dev/null -Iw '%{http_code}' " & passedStream
        set serverResult to do shell script serverCommand
        if serverResult does not start with "2" then
            return false
        else
            return true
        end if
    on error serverResult
        display dialog "Ran into issue checking server status, with error: " & serverResult with title "Server Check"
    end try
end checkStream

After you check the HTTP code you could write for the script to download the file.


Based on what you said, it looks like your PRAM did reset. I usually let it go 3 times before letting my Mac restart. The problem then lays outside of the realm of PRAM.

Have you tried checking the inbuilt application "Audio MIDI Setup" to confirm what the Inputs and Outputs are? And are the Inputs and Outputs turned up?

If that doesn't work, have you tried doing a SMC reset? Those usually deal with the problems relating to system software.


What is the "host name" in bash? (\h or \H)

First, you need to set your system name in System Preferences > Sharing > Computer Name. Let's assume for now that you set it to MyComputerName.

The next step is to make sure your computer name is not overridden by DHCP client (which is normally what happens and what you have observed - each time a DHCP server assigns and IP address to your computer, your mac will use the hostname associated with that IP address as its own).

To do that, you need to, in Terminal.app change the content of the /etc/hostconfig file, adding something similar to this:

HOSTNAME="MyComputerName"

where MyComputerName is a text string corresponds to the host name you set in System Preferences.

If you ever need to set it to change the hostname automatically based on the address received from the DHCP server, you can either remove this line from the /etc/hostconfig file or change it's value to -AUTOMATIC- instead of the "MyComputerName".

Finally, in bash you use \h as the host name token - so e.g. you can set your PS1 to:

PS1='[\u@\h \w] '


Block prompts when sites detect I'm using iOS

These sites are using JavaScript to detect Mobile Safari's user agent and displaying an alert.

You can disable JavaScript in Safari's settings but it's probably not worth the lost functionality.


If you have the 27" iMac MacTracker says it supports up to 32GB, even though Apple only says it supports 16GB. The 21.5" iMac can only support 8GB either way. OWC, a reputable memory retailer, started selling 32GB upgrade kits for the 2011 iMac last year.


In Sierra: How to get Qt 5.8.0 / PyQt 5.7.1 / sip 4.19 / Python3.5 to install & work correctly?

I am the one who did the Qt5 5.8.0 upgrade for Homebrew. This is a known problem that will persist until Riverbank upgrades their software. I suggest you contact them on their mailing list.

UPDATE: As a temporary workaround, I've added a qt@5.7 formula, and updated the PyQt5 formula to depend on it. See the following pull requests, which I've merged:

https://github.com/Homebrew/homebrew-core/pull/9297

https://github.com/Homebrew/homebrew-core/pull/9308


In Yosemite what does the indicator that looks like a scroll bar mean at the bottom of the desktop?

It looks like a bug, not some sort of meaningful indicator as I first thought.

After quitting every application and restarting it's now gone away!


Installing Windows on SSD in optical drive bay

yes, there is a way to do this (I've got 2 drives and have been running this config for several years:  Mac OS on main drive, and FAT/winblows on optical bay)..

you have to first do the setup of the windows drive with it in the main bay (for some reason it won't recognize in the optical for purposes of BootCamp)...

Then after you've installed, you can move it over, then you can option-boot from it..
An added advantage of this setup is thatif you've got VMWare (fusion) you can also boot it as a virtualized OS from within Mac...


Where are my phone's apps stored on my Mac?

Apple doesn’t delete the files out of the iTunes library so if you had old apps they are where they were. Going forward, no apps get saved so there is no new place, just the old one waiting for bit rot to set in or for you to delete your no longer used files.


MacBook Pro battery life tanking even after battery replacement?

If something is using that much CPU it will definitely eat your battery. I'm not completely sure what is causing it but you might wan to download the latest update to your OS (10.9.1 or something of the sort) and re-install it. If it keeps happening you might need to reinstall OS X. I hate re-installing an operating system if at all necessary but I'm not sure what is causing the CPU spike.


VM

Running in a VM would be the easiest way to go. There are a number of virtualisation apps available on OS X, but I recommend Parallels Desktop. This lets you use OS X and Linux at the same time, but it means that you sacrifice some performance in the VM.

VMs are very simple — select the ISO as the install media, and let Parallels Desktop's automatic install do the rest.

Dual-boot

Alternatively, you can dual-boot using Boot Camp. Begin the Boot Camp process as normal for Windows, but when you reboot after the partition has been created, simply insert your Linux media instead of Windows install media.


When I use cmd-R on boot to restore a computer, what version OS does it go to?

It will restore the current version installed on your Mac, unless you do Internet Recovery (command+option+r), which restores the first OS installed on that computer.


Discussion here on replacing Finder with nautilus.

You can add a Quit menu item to Finder and quit it like so:

defaults write com.apple.Finder QuitMenuItem 1; killall Finder

Now, run ForkLift.

You could try (WARNING: DANGEROUS) to rename ForkLift2.app as Finder.app and replace Finder.app, but I think this would probably just cause problems, possibly severe ones.

What do you mean by "open folders, paths, etc."? Almost all Finder interactions on my computer are initiated by me. Just use ForkLift instead. The only time something else uses Finder is if I double-click on a DMG, then it opens in Finder. If you have this, or other specific use cases that you would like to have interact with ForkLift, please clarify or post additional specific questions.


Is there an easy way to get web page shortcuts on the desktop to use the favicon from the site?

As the favicon is something that is accessible via the web, it is not an impossible request. But I cant seem to find anyway to change an icon without gui work, which means I guess you might be able to do it with Applescript if we are talking an entirely automated solution.

The way I had my web location show my favicon as its icon was:

Drag bookmark to Desktop for site I want.
Select the bookmark and press Cmd + I.
With the site still open, delete everything but the root TLD and add /favicon.ico (example http://support.apple.com/ts1275 becomes http://apple.com/favicon.ico) and go to that url.
Right click and copy image in Safari, and then paste on the image of the webloc.
Profit!

Honestly, I think the other websites description of using their images or material from the site is a lot better idea, but this is how you can actually use the favicon.


I needed to format a partition to ext3 on my USB flash drive. The drive was already formatted, and had 3 partitions, and I wanted to convert partition 1 from FAT32 to ext3.

install brew, visit http://brew.sh/
install e2fsprogs using brew install e2fsprogs
figure out the name of your partition or drive using diskutil list -- in my case, my partition had was on disk2 and had the identifier of disk2s1
If the drive is mounted, unmount it: diskutil unmountDisk disk2. Note that this is the drive in the listing above, not the partition.
sudo $(brew --prefix e2fsprogs)/sbin/mkfs.ext3 /dev/disk2s1 but you may need to change the drive from disk2s1 to the partition or drive that you want to format. This command will ask you to verify the name of the partition, just to be sure :)

Note, if you're able to ssh/telnet into your router running dd-wrt or tomato, you can already directly run mkfs.ext3 directly in the router, and don't need to do anything on your mac at all


How to find & delete an obscure file of which I only know the name?

There are a variety of ways of searching for a file by name.  I'd just open the Terminal and run locate xxxxxxxx-xxxxxxxx, although the locate index is only updated once a week, so if it's a new file it might not be listed.  If you want, you can manually force an update with sudo /usr/libexec/locate.updatedb (you'll need to enter your admin password for the sudo).

You can use Spotlight in the Finder, but it leaves out system files by default -- there's a way to change this, but it's a little complicated and may not be the same in 10.4. (EDIT: instructions for doing this in 10.6 are in Apple's KB #HT4355.)

Finally, you could use the find command: sudo find / -name xxxxxxxx-xxxxxxxx -- this will require your admin password for the sudo, and will be slow (it actually looks at all your files to find a match), but should find things the other options might miss.


No NTFS Access Using Paragon and Tuxera in Yosemite

Here's the only thing that worked for me, w/ 3 Seagate & 1toshiba w/ Paragon NTFS dominant over all till 10.10.3, - no access at all. Uninstall Incl** all plist files, you may need to look past your user folder library. Shutdown and disconnect pwr / & HDD's for 5 min. Boot /install a fresh full working copy of Paragon, restart / attatch HDD's / they should reappear normally. Don't forget to check the AccessPermissions in Paragon once booted. It's a combo perm' s & USB hiccup. Unhooking pwr made the diff 4 me btw( I'm stubborn). Hope it helps.