Reclaim SSD space from deleted partition

Your internal disk is set up as a CoreStorage Volume Group. You can't easily expand it with Disk Utility booted from the internal main volume. To modify it you have to boot to Internet Recovery Mode or to an external boot drive.

Preparation:

Backup your data.
Detach any external drive (especially your external Time Machine backup drive).
Restart to Internet Recovery Mode by pressing alt cmd R at startup.
The prerequisites are the latest firmware update installed, either ethernet or WLAN (WPA/WPA2) and a router with DHCP activated.
On a 50 Mbps-line it takes about 4 min (presenting a small animated globe) to boot to a recovery netboot image which usually is loaded from an apple/akamai server.

I recommend ethernet because it's more reliable. If you are restricted to WIFI and the boot process fails, just restart your Mac until you succeed booting.

Alternatively you may start from a bootable installer thumb drive (Mavericks or Yosemite) or a thumb drive containing a full system (Mavericks or Yosemite).

Modify CoreStorage stack:

Open in the menubar Utilities/Terminal

First you should get an overview of your disks and the partition layout:

Enter diskutil list
Example listing:

/dev/disk0
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      GUID_partition_scheme                       *500.3 GB    disk0
   1:                        EFI EFI                    209.7 MB    disk0s1
   2:          Apple_CoreStorage                        449.4 GB    disk0s2
   3:                 Apple_Boot Recovery HD            650.0 MB    disk0s3
   4:                        EFI No Name EFI            100.0 MB    disk0s4
/dev/disk1
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:     Apple_partition_scheme                         *1.3 GB    disk1
   1:        Apple_partition_map                         30.7 KB    disk1s1
   2:                  Apple_HFS OS X Base System        *1.3 GB    disk1s2
/dev/disk2
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:                  Apple_HFS Macintosh HD          *449.0 GB    disk2
                                 Logical Volume on disk0s2
                                 7527240B-2663-4F9F-8803-B602F828E193
                                 Unencrypted
/dev/disk3-disk12 ...belong to the OS X Base System (your recovery system you booted to previously)

Disk0 is your main internal disk device containing the EFI-partition (dis0s1), the CoreStorage partition (disk0s2) and the Recovery HD (disk0s3).

Disk1 is a logical disk created by booting to the netboot image which contains a recovery system (OS X Base System = disk1s2) similar to the Recovery HD.

Disk2 is also a logical disk residing in disk0s2 and it contains the CoreStorage stack.
Enter gpt -r -vv show /dev/disk0
Example listing:

sudo gpt -r show /dev/disk0
      start       size  index  contents
          0          1         PMBR
          1          1         Pri GPT header
          2         32         Pri GPT table
         34          6
         40     409600      1  GPT part - C12A7328-F81F-11D2-BA4B-00A0C93EC93B
     409640  877662072      2  GPT part - 53746F72-6167-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC
  878071712    1269536      3  GPT part - 426F6F74-0000-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC
  879341248   97763779
  977105027         32         Sec GPT table
  977105059          1         Sec GPT header

Enter diskutil cs list
Example listing:

  CoreStorage logical volume groups (1 found)
|
+-- Logical Volume Group A629E051-D7B0-4B8C-A803-074F62704636
    =========================================================
    Name:         System
    Status:       Online
    Size:         449362980864 B (449.0 GB)
    Free Space:   16777216 B (16.8 MB)
    |
    +-< Physical Volume 90C09FC0-4215-4871-901B-70E2C9C7D464
    |   ----------------------------------------------------
    |   Index:    0
    |   Disk:     disk0s2
    |   Status:   Online
    |   Size:     449362980864 B (449.0 GB)
    |
    +-> Logical Volume Family F6962E38-50E4-4458-BFE6-CF2E179352F5
        ----------------------------------------------------------
        Encryption Status:       Unlocked
        Encryption Type:         None
        Conversion Status:       NoConversion
        Conversion Direction:    -none-
        Has Encrypted Extents:   No
        Fully Secure:            No
        Passphrase Required:     No
        |
        +-> Logical Volume 7527240B-2663-4F9F-8803-B602F828E193
            ---------------------------------------------------
            Disk:                  disk2
            Status:                Online
            Size (Total):          4488010800 B (448.8 GB )
            Conversion Progress:   -none-
            Revertible:            Yes (no decryption required)
            LV Name:               System
            Volume Name:           System
            Content Hint:          Apple_HFS

You don't have a blocking No Name EFI (disk0s4) which usually is created while installing Windows with the Boot Camp Assistant - even if the install fails.
You may now immediately resize the CoreStorage volume with

diskutil cs resizeStack LVUUID size

with LVUUID: UUID of the logical volume and size: the final size of your CoreStorage volume.
Examples:

diskutil cs resizeStack 7527240B-2663-4F9F-8803-B602F828E193 475g

to expand it to 475 GB

diskutil cs resizeStack 7527240B-2663-4F9F-8803-B602F828E193 0g

to expand it to the full available size (0g is a magic number here).

Your Recovery HD should be moved automatically.
Quit Terminal by entering exit and open Disk Utility.
Check the superior Logical Volume Group (Macintosh HD) and the Logical Volume (the ingferior Macintosh HD) for errors.
Reboot your Mac to your main volume.


OS X 10.6.8 Function Keys (brightness, playback control) no longer working

Have you tried Change Keyboard Type in System Preferences -> Keyboard?


How do I create a shortcut to IPython's interactive shell on the dock?

Open AppleScript Editor (/Applications/Utilities) and type this:

do shell script "open 'ipython qtconsole &'"

Save it as an application and add it to the dock.


How can I disable Bluetooth A2DP profiles on the iPhone 4?

The app you are referring to has a manual process you can try, but it is not for the faint of heart: http://blog.ramondeklein.nl/?p=257

  Howto disable A2DP on the iPhone

  The interesting directory is
  /var/mobile/Library/Preferences, where
  the iPhone stores the BlueTooth
  settings. These settings are stored in
  the PLIST format, so you need a PLIST
  editor (Mac or PC) or you need to
  convert them by hand. Transfer the
  com.apple.MobileBluetooth.services.plist
  to your computer or you can use iFile
  to edit the file on your iPhone
  directly.

  Open the
  com.apple.MobileBluetooth.services.plist
  in your PLIST editor and make sure you
  edit the A2DPService section and store
  the devices you don’t want to use A2DP
  in the UnauthorizeList (without the
  letter “d”). This dictionary will
  probably not exist yet, so you need to
  add it by hand. You need to know the
  MAC address, but it is probably listed
  already in this file.

<key>A2DPService</key>
<dict>
  <key>State</key>
  <true/>
  <key>UnauthorizeList</key>
  <dict>
    <key>00:10:60:D0:91:D0</key>        <!-- This is the MAC address -->
    <date>2009-08-08T01:00:00Z</date>   <!-- Timestamp -->
  </dict>
</dict>

  Transfer the PLIST file back to your iPhone and reboot the device. Once it gets back on,  then the A2DP service should be disabled.


Is whatsapp is available for iPhone 2G with iOS v3.1.3

Unfortunately, no.

https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/whatsapp-messenger/id310633997

  Compatibility: Requires iOS 4.3 or later. Compatible with iPhone.
  This app is optimized for iPhone 5.


Your SSD as you said is empty, so this is why you do not have any recovery partition to reinstall the OS.

You need to boot to an external device (USB key or DVD depending on your Mac) in order to format and install Mac OS on your new SSD. You can use software like DiskMaker X to create a bootable OS X device.

You will need another Mac to create the bootable drive or you can reinstall your old disk, create the bootable drive and then reinstall your SSD.


How much data has been written to my SSD over its lifetime?

Read out the following S.M.A.R.T attributes of your SSD with an appropriate tool*:
241 - Total LBAs Written:   The total number of 512-byte sectors written during the entire lifetime of the device.
242 - Total LBAs Read:  The total number of 512-byte sectors read during the entire lifetime of the device.
A second set of attributes is:
174 - Host_Reads_MiB
175 - Host_Writes_MiB
But i don't know if the values found in the second set really make sense (at least for me with a 120 GB SSD as one part of a Fusion drive) because considerably more data is written to the SSD than the HDD though the SSD has only 1/25th of the size:
0xae Host_Reads_MiB          ----CK   100   100   000    -    12268569 (~12 TiB)
0xaf Host_Writes_MiB         ----CK   100   100   000    -    16481745 (~16 TiB)

compared to the 3 TB HDD (the second part of the Fusion drive):
0xf1 Total_LBAs_Written      ------   100   253   000    -    21361815408 (~10 TiB)
0xf2 Total_LBAs_Read         ------   100   253   000    -    23925221693 (~11 TiB)

After installing smartmontools the following commands give the written data in GB if the attribute "242 Total_LBAs_Written" exists:
smartctl -s on -i -A -f brief -f hex,id -l devstat /dev/DiskIdentifier | grep 0xf1 | awk '{ print $8/1953125 }'

or in TB:
smartctl -s on -i -A -f brief -f hex,id -l devstat /dev/DiskIdentifier | grep 0xf1 | awk '{ print $8/1953125000 }'

Replace "DiskIdentifier" with the identifier of your internal SSD found with diskutil list. Probably it's disk0.
The following command gives the written data in GB if the attribute "175 - Host_Writes_MiB" exists (treat the result with caution):
smartctl -s on -i -A -f brief -f hex,id -l devstat /dev/DiskIdentifier | grep 0xaf | awk '{ print $8/953.67 }'

For some SSDs, like the Sandisk Plus 120Gb, the $8 value is already in GB so you'll need to use division to calculate the value.
Like already mentioned earlier replace "DiskIdentifier" with the identifier of your internal SSD found with diskutil list. Probably it's disk0.
The smartctl commands above doesn't work very reliable (at least for me).
If you get an error like "Read SMART Data failed: Undefined error: 0", try smartctl -A /dev/disk0 first.
If you get an error like "SMART Disabled. Use option -s with argument 'on' to enable it.", try smartctl -s on -A /dev/disk0
Then retry the above commands to readout and calculate data written to disk.
*smartmontools


How to permanently block all incoming connections in the macOS firewall?

You might want to install Little Snitch, a tool that helps you to identify and control any incoming and outgoing traffic and what it was initiated from.

Note that I assume it is not advisable to completely block any incoming traffic.


"Ineligible" iCloud Songs on iOS devices

Most likely, they are ineligbile because the bit rate is less than 96kb so rerip them.  You don't have to do the originals, you can rerip the ones that are already in iTunes.  The audio quality doesn't change and the files are bigger but Match will accept the new ones.


Contact names are gone, but still shown in Messages

Try these possible fixes :

Settings > Mail, Contacts, Calendars > iCloud > toggle Contacts on and off

The Second fix only applies if you have multiple email accounts synced with your iPhone (iCloud,Gmail etc) :

Settings > Mail, Contacts, Calendars > Gmail or whichever you use > toggle Contacts on and off

Also check the Default Account in Settings to see which email account is selected.


Where is the "Send all traffic over VPN connection" setting in OSX 10.9 Mavericks?

I guess not all VPN connections of the build-in VPN client in Mac have that option.

The PPTP and L2TP do offer the option: Open your network settings:

Select your VPN connection and click on the advanced button.

A new window will pop up with three check-boxes under the heading "Session options".
The last one of these checkboxes is the one you want: "redirect all traffic over VPN".

However, like you said. The advanced button does not pop up with Cisco IPSec.

I found this thread (https://superuser.com/questions/91191/how-to-force-split-tunnel-routing-on-mac-to-a-cisco-vpn) that maybe could be an answer to your problem (if you use it to route the whole ip range):

  Any one know how to hack the routing table (on a mac) to defeat the
  forcing of VPN routing for every thing over a cisco VPN? pretty much
  what I want to do is have only 10.121.* and 10.122.* addresses over
  the VPN and everything else straight to the internet.

The following works for me. Run these after connecting to the cisco vpn. (I'm using OS X's built-in cisco client, not the Cisco branded client.)

sudo route -nv add -net 10 -interface utun0
sudo route change default 192.168.0.1

Replace "10" in the first command with the network that's on the other side of the tunnel.

Replace "192.168.0.1" with your local network's gateway.

I put it into a bash script, like this:

$ cat vpn.sh
#!/bin/bash

if [[ $EUID -ne 0 ]]; then
    echo "Run this as root"
    exit 1
fi

route -nv add -net 10 -interface utun0
route change default 192.168.0.1

I also found an explanation on how to run this automatically when you connect the VPN, but it's late on Friday and I don't feel like trying it :)

https://gist.github.com/675916

Edit:

I have since left the job where I was using the Cisco VPN, so this is from memory.

The "10" in the first command is the network that you want to route over the VPN. "10" is short hand for "10.0.0.0/8". In Tuan Anh Tran's case, it looks like the network is "192.168.5.0/24".

As for which gateway to specify in the second command, it should be your local gateway. When you log into a VPN that prevents split-tunneling, it is enforcing that policy by changing your routing tables so that all packets are routed on the virtual interface. So you want to change your default route back to what it was prior to getting on the VPN.

The easiest way to figure out the gateway is to run netstat -rn before logging into the VPN, and look at the IP address to the right of the "default" destination. For example, here's what it looks like on my box right now:

Internet:
Destination        Gateway            Flags        Refs      Use   Netif Expire
default            10.0.1.1           UGSc           29        0     en1
10.0.1/24          link#5             UCS             3        0     en1
10.0.1.1           0:1e:52:xx:xx:xx   UHLWIi         55   520896     en1    481
10.0.1.51          7c:c5:37:xx:xx:xx   UHLWIi          0     1083     en1    350
10.0.1.52          127.0.0.1          UHS             0        0     lo0

My gateway is 10.0.1.1 -- it is to the right of the "default" destination.


This should work for you

tell application "Safari"
    activate
    do JavaScript "document.getElementsByClassName('btn-standard')[0].click();" in document 1
end tell

When in doubt, You can always use APPLESCRIPT MAKER  Which will create the correct JavaScript for you

I'm not really sure because I never use Safari but maybe enabling "Allow JavaScript from Apple Events" Needs to be enabled?


What meta-data does iCloud drive save and restore for each file or directory?

iCloud Drive is not stored on a traditional file system per se on Apple's servers.

On your Mac, the files in iCloud Drive are stored simply on the existing file system on your hard drive - usually HFS+. You can find the files at the following path:

~/Library/Mobile\ Documents/com~apple~CloudDocs/


MacBook Pro 17 2009 - fails to turn on after optical drive upgrade

Based on this iFixit guide (see step 13), you seem to have disconnected the subwoofer/right speaker cable incorrectly, damaging the socket in the process (supported by this diagram on page 185 of the Apple Technician Guide of the logic board, labels working counterclockwise from the top right.)

Page 113 of the same guide details how to properly remove the cable: it appears that you somehow damaged the socket whilst removing the cable.

I'm not sure why this would cause your Mac to fail to boot however: perhaps it's an incompatible Superdrive, though my belief was that they are compatible. Can you detail how far you get into the boot process and look for any additional damage that may have occurred?


Command line: Sending a zip file via e-mail

The quick and dirty way to send an attachment is to uuencode the file and mail it.

uuencode report.pdf report.pdf | mail -s "Here is the report" bossman@company.com

If you want to do it easily and build a proper MIME encoded message, you could install mutt, and use the -a flag to attach your message.

If you don't want to install anything else, you could build your own MIME message by hand, or use the perl MIME::Entity module to help you:

#!/usr/bin/perl
use MIME::Entity;

$message = MIME::Entity->build(
  Type    => "multipart/mixed",
  From    => "me\@company.com",
  To      => "bossman\@company.com",
  Subject => "Report attached" );

$message->attach(Data=>"Here is the report, as promised.");

$message->attach(
  Path     => "./report.pdf",
  Type     => "application/pdf",
  Encoding => "base64");

open MAIL, "| /usr/sbin/sendmail -t -oi";
$message->print(\*MAIL);
close MAIL;


Installing Lion with duplicated installer

There is no reason that running it from the installer won't work.  That's the way Apple intended the installation to run, so that is probably the safest way to perform the upgrade.


How do I prevent spam from appearing in Messages on iOS?

It’s too late for iOS to reclassify previous contacts once they are in Known. For those, make one contact called Telemarket Spam and block that contact.

https://apple.stackexchange.com/a/345784/5472

As more trickle in, take manual action on them if you don’t want to engage your carrier to block them.
So far, my Known hasn’t been breached, so I’m crossing my fingers I can avoid SMS spam for 38 days. I’ve got about 125 numbers I needed to block since they got through when I had filter unknown callers off (like when I need to accept a return call from AppleCare and spam leaks in) (My email accounts x RIP, spam city due to the election funding and drama llamas and sharing lists I presume). T-Mobile USA is doing an excellent job once I enabled their free block service for spam.


They are stored in the Keychain. Usually you have these stored in your login keychain, which on disk is located at ~/Library/Keychains/login.keychain-db. However that file is not for manual manipulation.

In order to save them to files for transferring to another computer, you can open Keychain Access. Click on the desired certificate (which contains the public key) or key (meaning the private key), and then right-click and choose "Export".


Try CtrlF2 - that should highlight the Apple-symbol on the main menubar.

edit: The cursor keys and Enter then allow you to navigate, drill-down and ultimately select an item - just as you can on Windows.

also - can't claim credit for this, I learnt it here on the site! What are your favorite Mac OS X keyboard shortcuts?


macOS suddenly exhibits weird mouse acceleration after idling

I've had similar issues with a Logitech MX2 & Logi Options.
My bet is the Logi controller that 'forgets' what it's doing.
Tests would include:-

uninstalling their drivers & see if the same happens without;
test a different mouse;
see if your G-series can be used fully with something like SteerMouse or USB Overdrive.


Gmail notifications in Notification Center

I assume you are talking about a Mac with OS X?

To make the Notifications stay till you dismiss them for emails received in Mail.app:

Open the system preferences + Notification.

Click on Mail.

Choose the "Alerts" (not the Banners).

It will stay displayed till you click Close. After that it is no longer in the Notification center.

This is not the same as the original Gmail notifications. To get those:

You need to be signed in to Gmail and have Gmail open in your browser to see desktop notifications. If you want to use that, then you need to use Chrome browser with a extension called "Checker Plus for Gmail ". With that extension you can configure the duration and other stuff.

If you want to filter the Notifications, you can use the mail.app Rules.

For example for Junk mail make a rule to mark it as read, and it wont show in the notifications.

You can play with the Mail-Rules for other emails you do not want to see in the Notification (set them as read).


I'm planning to sell my laptop, and I need to know if I have my bases covered. Kindly confirm please?

You will not be able to erase the entire contents of the disk, format/remove the partitions (securely or otherwise) while the volume is mounted. Because of this practical limitation, without having your original installation disc from which to boot into Disk Utility, you're stuck with a system that is in a vulnerable state to sell. While you can create a throw-away admin account from which to securely delete your user profile, OS X still splatters information, such as network connections, all over the place.

As Buscar correctly stated, the resale value on what I would I imagine is a circa 2008/2009 system is low enough already WITH all the original discs. Without them, the possibility of selling is fairly low. The biggest reason for this is that you need the original discs for running diagnostics. Apple Diagnostic software is mated to the particular hardware.

Although Apple no longer supports these systems and, therefore, does not sell replacement DVDs, you can purchase recycled installation DVDs from ifixit.com. I purchased original Leopard install DVDs from iFixit for an Early 2008 MacBook4,1 that was gifted to me without discs. Highly recommended.

With the correct DVDs, you can securely erase the HDD and let go of the system with complete confidence. Alternatively, you may consider simply replacing the HDD in the system with a new one and destroying the one you've been using. Your out-of-pocket cost is probably around the same, but the original DVDs would likely net you a higher resale value.


Mac Terminal: emacs-style command editing messed up

Drop the '\[' and '\]'. They mean "the enclosed stuff doesn't take up display space", and are messing up the count, as you suspected. They are usually used to enclose strings that set the following text color, f/ex.  Without them, the prompt - and emacs editing - will work correctly.

Here's a handy prompt-syntax reference card.


Macbook Pro Airplay 2 support for Sonos Play:5 Speakers

All speakers with this label on the packaging, you can stream to from your MacBook without a Home Pod.

AirPlay 2 will work on the Sonos Play 5 second generation.

  Enjoy AirPlay 2 on your entire Sonos system. Even though AirPlay 2 is only supported on Sonos One, Beam, Playbase and Play:5 (2nd generation), grouping your other speakers to any of these and you can use AirPlay across your entire home sound system.

(Source)

From the System Requirements:

You can stream from:

  Mac or PC with iTunes 12.8 or later

To update your iTunes version see here.


Apple's official website has a compare section for Macs where you can compare between three different models of Mac simultaneously. You can access it by going to the following link:

https://www.apple.com/mac/compare/

When making a purchase decision, the first distinction that you have to make is whether you are looking to buy a desktop or a laptop.

Broadly speaking, Apple currently makes three kind of laptops:

MacBook Air - A 13" ultra-portable.
13" MacBook Pro - A lightweight laptop for professionals.
16" MacBook Pro - A spec heavy laptop geared towards users needing extreme performance.

and three kinds of desktops:

Mac mini - A bare bones lunch-box size computer sans display, keyboard and mouse.
iMac - A fully integrated desktop computer.
Mac Pro - An expandable desktop tower for users requiring extreme performance.

Once you have filtered down to the determine computers that you are looking to choose from, head over to the Mac - Compare Models web-page and select the desired ones. You can compare upto three different computers at a time.

Here's a comparison between a 16" MacBook Pro, a 13" MacBook Pro and a 21.5" iMac looks like:


Yellow pattern all over application windows

It seems to be a GPU problem.

Apple introduced Repair Extension program for some iMacs sold between May 2011 and October 2012. It is not on main Repair programs site though.

The affected iMacs contain serial numbers with the last four characters of DHJQ, DHJW, DL8Q, DNGH, DNJ9, DMW8, DPM1, DPM2, DPNV, DNY0, DRVP, DY6F, or F610. Source

Check with this numbers and Apple to get a repair.


how to stop spotlight indexing an attached camera

System Preferences > Spotlight > Privacy

Add your camera once and it should be remembered.


Disassociate an Apple ID from a computer

Go to System Preferences, and check "iCloud" and "Internet Accounts". Sign out where necessary, and once neither of them list your personal account, you're good to go.

You may also want to make sure your web browsers don't remember any of your passwords.


What are the regulatory requirements that will halt the sale of the Mac Pro in Europe?

Here is a summary of the changes by TÜV Rheinland:

  EN 60950-1:2006/A1:2010 includes the following significant changes from EN 60950-1:2006/A11:2009.

  Modified requirements for bridging resistors (1.5.7.1 and 1.5.7.2)
  Additional requirements for VDR (1.5.9.4)
  Modified marking requirement for equipment with multiple MAINS SUPPLY connections (1.7.1.1)
  Modified compliance criteria for LPS (2.5 c)
  Additional and modified requirements for safety interlocks (2.8.4)
  Modified requirements for minimum creepage distances (Table 2N)
  Additional requirements for rack-mounted equipment that should comply with Annex DD (4.2.1)
  Additional requirements for rotating solid media (4.2.11)
  Additional requirements for UV radiation (4.3.13.3 & 4.3.13.4)
  Modified requirement for LEDs whose compliance standard is changed to IEC 62471 (4.3.13.5)
  Additional requirements for protection against moving fan blades (4.4.5)
  Additional requirements for evaluation of IC current limiters (Annex CC)
  Additional requirements for the mounting of rack-mounted equipment (Annex DD)
  Additional requirements for household and home/office document/media shredders (Annex EE)


Have you tried this method?  From this source:

Use Recovery Mode to reset your password
You'll need to boot your Mac into Recovery Mode in order to access the
password reset tool. I've found the easiest way to do that is to turn
off your Mac.
With your Mac turned off, press and hold the Command and R keys on
your keyboard, then press the power button. Hold in Command+R until
you see a progress bar show up below the Apple logo. You can also get
into Recovery Mode by restarting your Mac and trying to time the
keyboard combo of Command+R, but in my experience, starting with your
Mac turned off is the most reliable method.
With your Mac now in Recovery Mode, click on Utilities in the menu bar
followed by Terminal. A new window will show up, waiting for you to
enter a command. Type "resetpassword" as one word, without the quotes,
and press Return.
Close the Terminal window, where you will then find the Reset Password
tool. A list of all user accounts on your Mac will be on display. To
reset the password for your account, you'll need to set a new password
for all users. Make sure you write down the new password for anyone
who shares your Mac.


Only the iPhone 5S model and newer can be updated to iOS 11. The 5 cannot run iOS 11.


Connect older Mac Pro (DVI) to newer Apple Display (Mini DisplayPort)

DVI port cannot output DisplayPort protocols so a simple and cheap adapter (eg the reverse of the one Apple sells as posted in your question) will not work.  The reverse does work (a DisplayPort can output DVI signals), hence the proliferation of cheap adaptors to do this.

A number of manufacturers have build adapter boxes to allow the conversion to occur (there is electronics in these boxes that modify the signal appropriately to ensure it gets output in the DisplayPort protocol).  They are however more expensive that "just a cable adapter".

eg of manufacturers/products include :
Gefen : http://www.amazon.com/Gefen-Mini-DisplayPort-Converter-EXT-DVI-2-MDP/dp/B002QPWBEK
Atlona - http://www.amazon.com/AT-DP400-Dual-MINI-DISPLAY-FORMAT-CONVERTER/dp/B003CWEXWO

Bear in mind that you may need a dual-link DVI adapter box if powering a large screen (eg a 30")


USB Sticks not getting properly recognized

There's nothing wrong with what you are seeing.  That's the partition scheme for your bootable USB.  When you format it, you are not deleting the partition, just "blanking" the active partition.

Formatting a partition is not the same as deleting the partition.

To get back to a "single" partition (this is what I am assuming you want to do), issue this command in diskutil

diskutil partitionDisk /dev/disk3 1 GPT HFS+ NAME 100%

This command will permanently delete anything you have on the device.  Make sure you are using the correct device identifier

Be sure to replace "NAME" with the name you want to give to the USB.

Your drive partition map will be wiped, and the HFS+ (Mac OS Extended) file system installed.

What I suspect happened in your case is that you didn't "write" the new partition scheme to the USB.  This is done by issuing the "w" command.  Linuxhelp has an excellent tutorial on fdisk

More info can be found by typing man diskutil


2018 Macbook Air hot/slow when using UHD monitor

I have the same problem with my 2018 15" Macbook Pro. The only thing that helps is  to set the scaling for the display not to the max screen real estate.

It's not getting warm or anything, but the interface is kind of laggy.


Trackpad collapsed on the right side (unusable) and very risen on the left side. Is this fixable?

If the trackpad is lifting out of the casing, then it is likely a battery problem. Usually costs $200 USD to get everything that has been damaged replaced. This includes installation at an Apple Store.

Here is the price breakdown

Battery: $130 USD
Trackpad: $50 USD

Better get to Apple Store. They will likely warranty the new battery for a year just in case it happens again. Your choice though.

If you feel like taking the risk and doing it yourself, maybe see iFixit.com... I have attached this link for a trackpad replacement, and this link for a battery replacement.


Is there a technical reason that new (Apple Silicon) Macs need less RAM?

The 'technical justification' is that the RAM in the Apple Silicon chips is part of the chip itself, it is not a separate entity like all other processors before.
Presumably, they'll perfect how to enlarge this with successive generations.
The broad strokes of how they do this are on the announcement page - https://www.apple.com/mac/m1/
You could probably consider this first generation to be a more than adequate 'proof of concept'.


After all this turned out to be a side effect from com.apple.IconServicesAgent going wild and eating up lots of CPU.

Running mkdir ${TMPDIR}/com.apple.IconServices in Terminal solved the problem immediately.


Folder with sign question (no issues in hardware) - help

The folder with a flashing ? is an indication that there is no operating system installed on your MacBook.  Depending on whether your MacBook is an early or late 2011, it may not be equipped to do internet recovery  by starting it with CMD-OPT-R.   If CMD-OPT-R does not begin internet recovery, then you need either a USB installer, a Snow Leopard DVD disk, or to take it to an Apple Store for them to install an operating system on your MacBook, which they'll usually do for free.


Internally iPhones and iPads are very similar. They are both have the same operating system iOS, are programmed using the same language (Swift or Objective C), using the same tools (say XCode). Thus the logic of iPhone apps will work on Ipads and Vice Versa. However, iPhones and Ipads have different screen sizes and pixel densities, which the developer must take into account when writing the app. Otherwise the GUI (ie "app's screen"), will not look correct.

Let me explain in more detail, suppose you're developing an App, which shows a square to the user. You could simply program the square to have sides of say L = 2000 pixels. However, different screens have different numbers of pixels, and different pixel densities. Thus on a 1920x1080 monitor, you couldn't see the square, while on a 4 or 5k monitor the square would show up fine. Thus, as a developer, you must write your App so that it is able to compensate for the size and pixel density of the display.

Size can be accounted for by parameterizing your variables in terms of the screen size, in other words, making the variable a function of the screen size. For example, say the display has width = x, and height = y. To make sure the square fits on the screen, we can set the length of the side L = min{x/2,y/2}. Thus no side of the square will be larger than either half the height or width of the screen, whichever is smaller. Therefore, by defining each element of the UI in proportion to the screen size in pixels, all the App needs is the new screen size, and it can adjust the UI automatically if it has been coded as described. If an app has not been coded as described, then it cannot change its size to fit the screen, and thus can only be viewed at its original resolution (say the resolution of the iPhone) on a subset of the screen (say the iPpad).

Compensating for different pixel densities is harder, and is discussed in this article.

P.S. In researching this article, I learned that iOS developers are required to submit 3 different size images. Thus the bitmap images can scale along with the parameterized elements of the UI. See here, here, here. Moreover, by the Apple Developer Guidelines, section 2.4.1 "iPhone apps should run on iPad whenever possible"
.
They point developers to this article


Not able login into Google account on Mac with correct password

You could try resetting a new password altogether, it's slightly extreme but that should certainly solve it for you.


What is the "Verifying XXX.app" dialog and how do I get passed it?

One option to close stuck verification dialogs is to select CoreServicesUIAgent in the Activity Monitor's list of processes and kill it.
Or type in Terminal
 killall CoreServicesUIAgent


Just restart your phone. Then the app must bear visible on the springboard.


APFS - Is it possible to install 2 macOS versions inside one APFS container?

Yes, it possible to have multiple macOS installations inside a single container with multiple virtual partitions, but some of the partitions will be shared.

  Note: I do not think virtual partitions is the correct terminology. I believe the terminology should be APFS volumes sharing the same APFS partition.

I started  with High Sierra installed to volume labeled Macintosh HD in a APFS container. I using the Disk Utility application to add a new APFS volume labeled Macintosh HD 2. Next, I downloaded High Sierra from the App Store and installed to the Macintosh HD 2 volume. The result from diskutil list is shown below.

  Note: I used a external drive, so disk2 appears below instead of the expected disk1.

/dev/disk2 (synthesized):
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      APFS Container Scheme -                      +200.0 GB   disk2
                                 Physical Store disk1s6
   1:                APFS Volume Macintosh HD            50.8 GB    disk2s1
   2:                APFS Volume Preboot                 46.1 MB    disk2s2
   3:                APFS Volume My Recovery             1.0 GB     disk2s3
   4:                APFS Volume VM                      8.6 GB     disk2s4
   5:                APFS Volume Machintosh HD 2         18.2 GB    disk2s5

While both High Sierra installations use different root volumes (disk2s1 and disk2s5), the installations share disk2s2, disk2s3 and disk2s4.

Next, I created another APFS volume labeled Mojava 1 and then downloaded Mojava Beta from this Apple website. The result after installing is shown below.

/dev/disk2 (synthesized):
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      APFS Container Scheme -                      +200.0 GB   disk2
                                 Physical Store disk1s6
   1:                APFS Volume Macintosh HD            50.8 GB    disk2s1
   2:                APFS Volume Preboot                 74.5 MB    disk2s2
   3:                APFS Volume My Recovery             1.5 GB     disk2s3
   4:                APFS Volume VM                      8.6 GB     disk2s4
   5:                APFS Volume Machintosh HD 2         18.1 GB    disk2s5
   6:                APFS Volume Mojava 1                35.8 GB    disk2s6

Mojava installed to disk2s6 and shares share disk2s2, disk2s3 and disk2s4 with the other two High Sierra installations.

So there is now three macOS Recoveries for both High Sierra and Mojava. In my case, both High Sierra macOS Recoveries are Version 1.0 (327) and the Mojava macOS Recovery is Version 1.0 (330).

I can boot to one of the three macOS Recoveries stored on disk2s3 by holding down the ⌘+R key combination at startup. If the default startup disk is a APFS volume containing macOS, then the corresponding macOS recovery will startup. For example, if the startup disk is set to the APFS volume Machintosh HD 2, then holding down the ⌘+R key combination at startup will result in the Mac booting to High Sierra macOS Recovery on APFS Volume My Recovery.

  Note: macOS Recovery no longer appears in the Mac Startup Manager. However, macOS Recovery, for a given macOS installation, can be booted using the rEFInd Boot Manager.

BTW: Removing Mojave from the APFS container is covering in my answer to the question: Erase an APFS volume?


How can I operate 2 XServes and 2 iMacs from 1 keyboard and 1 mouse (both bluetooth)?

I use a combination of synergy for my laptop (macbook pro), and workstation (ubuntu linux). To get to my servers (some freebsd, some linux) I use just SSH, but if I need an X session I can export it over ssh. As Lyken mentions, ARD is the way to go. VNC is more crossplatform, but since you're running all Macs, its a piece of piss to get working.

Synergy would be worth a go with your two iMacs.

With that setup, you won't need any extra hardware, just a working network.


Keyboard shortcut for buttons in dialogue box

Almost, though not quite, universal on macOS is the use of  Cmd ⌘   Backspace ⌫  [or Delete on keyboards without a distinct Backspace key] to discard, or discard changes.

This should also work to invoke "Don't Save" in dialogs too.
Some apps still accept the alternative of  Cmd ⌘   D  to do this, but Backspace has been the recommended method for several years [since Lion or so].


Silencing “Your disk is almost full” notification

Put mac on do not disturb - this worked for me w/ Mojave


At last, one developer is making both tools you seek.

Howard Oakley has beta versions of his programs at https://eclecticlight.co/downloads/ and blogs regularly about how to use these and explore the new log archive formats on macOS / iOS / tvOS / watchOS

His downloads page has two apps of interest (use the left downloads link as the product versions below are beta and may not be current in a day or week):

Consolation - an alternative console browser
Woodpile - a tool to count / bin / analyze patterns of logging

If you picked one blog post of his to look at regarding logging, I would start here:

https://eclecticlight.co/2017/11/22/the-unified-log-in-high-sierra-10-13-1/


Was having the same problem – apparently the options to swap axes moved to the bottom left when Editing Data References:

Answer found here.


In iTunes you should have two options for listing to radio stations.

1) Internet stations (available in all Countries) - see the "Internet" tap under Music, where you should be able to find live stations with or without news.

2) Radio (not available in all Countries) - see the "Radio" tab under Music, this will only offer music streaming from a standard radio setup (possible to setup with your own music taste).


Remove video from iPod Nano 6th-generation

How did you ad the video? iTunes won't let you add videos to a 6th gen nano.

One thought: is it a music video? Those you would probably have to remove via the Music tab.

Edit: after trying with my own nano: if you send a music video to the iPod, it will be sent and show up as a video in the bar graph.


AppleScript: can I trigger the eyedropper tool upon opening the Mac colour picker?

Updated Answer
I download the trial of BetterTouchTool and resolved the issue in the following manner:

Added a keyboard shortcut assigning it: ⇧⌃P
Added the built-in Show Color Picker action to the aforementioned keyboard shortcut.
Added a Run AppleScript (async in background) action, to the aforementioned keyboard shortcut, with the following AppleScript code:

    tell application "System Events" to ¬
        click (checkbox 1 of ¬
            splitter group 1 of ¬
            window "Colors" of ¬
            application process "BetterTouchTool")

Note that this was done under macOS Big Sur and it works without issue after the initial setup and permissions setting as were prompted.
Now when I press ⇧⌃P the Color window opens and the color picker button is clicked, and it is active to select a color where the mouse pointer was when the keyboard shortcut was pressed.

Original Answer
I do not have BetterTouchTool, so using Script Editor I find that if one just runs the choose color command, the Colors window is modal and does not allow any additional code that would click the color picker button to run.
To work around this, the choose color command can be wrapped within an ignoring application responses statement. However, while this allows the color picker button to be clicked by additional code, one does not get back, e.g. {14896, 20151, 65429} from the choose color command when the OK button is cliched after picking the color.
Example AppleScript code:
ignoring application responses
    choose color
end ignoring

delay 0.5

tell application "System Events" to ¬
    click (checkbox 1 of ¬
        splitter group 1 of ¬
        window "Colors" of ¬
        application process "Script Editor")

This was tested under macOS Catalina.


Hide AppDelegate.scpt source code for macOS application - Xcode

When you save the AppleScript file you have the option of checking "Run Only" - in that case the script is compiled into a new form that can be run exactly as the original script, but it is not meant for further editing/development.

It doesn't mean that the run-only file is complete protected or non-readable, but parts of your code, comments, etc. are not included or not easily readable.

If you want to do more you'll need a code obfuscator if you still want to use AppleScript - however I'm not sure if one exists on the market, or you need to develop your own.

Regarding the second part of your question - most programmers do not use AppleScript. For other languages such as Objective-C, C, C++, etc. the problem is not the same as their programs are ordinarily compiled before they can run, and in the process of compilation they are translated into a non-human readable form.

Some implementations of languages do not exhibit this behaviour - for example ordinary PHP scripts are interpreted or compiled at run-time. For PHP, Javascript, etc. you can buy obfuscators that helps "masking" or "hiding" the original source code while allowing the program to run.


Will Apple send payment after expiration of Developer program membership

Payments and Financial Reports section of the iTunes Connect Help FAQs should help with answer to your query:

  When will I be paid?

  Payments are made within 45 days of the last day of the month in which app purchases were made. To receive payment, you must have provided all required banking and tax information and documentation, as well as meeting the minimum payment threshold.

  If your bank and bank account currency is listed in the minimum payment threshold, you must exceed a minimum payment threshold of $10 USD. All other bank countries and bank account currencies must exceed a minimum payment threshold of $150 USD.

If you have specific concerns and queries not addresses in the help documents and FAQs, you can get in touch with the Apple Developer Support.


Yosemite Spotlight Calculator suddenly stopped working

Delete the spotlight preferences file:

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

And then reboot. I was having the same problem and that fixed it for me.


MacBook lid opened while away (possible bug?)

Thanks for your help,

Using pmset -g log, I have found that EC.Lidopen occurred in conjunction with scheduled wake ups. And true, waking the computer by opening the lid does not render an 'EC.Lidopen' wake-up reason but rather a 'Host (0x01)'.

An EC.Lidopen event in my case is generated when the Mac goes to sleep either after closing the lid manually or after it wakes from Deep Idle due to maintenance and goes to sleep again. I think a lot of people who use the wake up reason to find if someones using their computer can be confused by this function...


Mac Pro (mid 2010) grinds to a halt when display is rotated to portrait

This is the sort of thing a well documented bug would let an engineer fix the code to avoid crippling a powerful Mac with a video change.

https://developer.apple.com/bugreporter/
Once you have the machine blocked, type sudo sysdiagnose in terminal and send that output in with the bug report as an attachment.
Usually, you never hear back, but sometimes you'll get an email requesting more details to help engineering isolate the behavior you are seeing.


It is specified in the iOS Human Interface Guidelines that there is a default back button positioned in the top left. In full, it reads:

  A navigation bar appears at the top of an app screen, below the status bar, and enables navigation through a series of hierarchical app screens. When a new screen is displayed, a back button, often labeled with the title of the previous screen, appears on the left side of the bar. Sometimes, the right side of a navigation bar contains a control, such as an Edit or a Done button…

More information can be found in the API documentation on the UINavigationBar.


128GB SSD and 23GB of sleep image + swap file, what to do?

You can disable Hibernate to regain your size in RAM on your SSD/HD:
First disable it:

sudo pmset -a hibernatemode 0

Then free up space:

sudo rm /var/vm/sleepimage

... if you want to enable it again:

sudo pmset -a hibernatemode 3

Note: -a means on charger and on battery, -b means battery and -c means with charger.

Alternatively if you have more than one disk you can symlink sleepimage to an HD so it can physically locate there.

Swap

First disable Swap:

sudo launchctl unload -w /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.dynamic_pager.plist

Later delete the files:

sudo rm /private/var/vm/swapfile*

... if you want to enable it again do:

sudo launchctl load -wF /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.dynamic_pager.plist


15 inch MacBook Pro A1226 (2009) died suddenly

If the LED does not illuminate, then you have a hardware failure that could be as simple as needing to take the battery out and run without.

All unibody Mac with built-in batteries have very delicate cells, so use great care to avoid puncturing them - even when discharged, you could start a fire.

You could take it in for service or try a DIY repair, and as long as you don't leave any small debris between the battery and the case (and ensure nothing is left inside the case that fits that description), the skilled DIYer can easily exchange the battery.

Depending on your budget, you might delay buying a battery and have it serviced to see if there isn't a different failure of the charging system or the computer itself that caused a dead battery or will prevent operation even with a good battery.

I'd take it in for service unless you have a high interest in learning or there really are no good options where you could mail or take it directly. Apple should be able to quote you a cost to repair the battery in a mail in service and you can decide from there whether to seek other quotes or have them work on it with the expectation that you'll pay for a battery or get a call if the repair costs more than quoted. At that point you can decide to go ahead or not, but if it's just a battery, you'll end up paying for the service and get a 90 day warranty on the machine and the work.


Can I install 64 bit software on a 32 bit OS X - 10.5.8 - Leopard?

Short answer: if your model of MacBook has a 64-bit capable CPU, you can run 64-bit apps under 10.5.8. You can check the CPU with the command sysctl hw.cpu64bit_capable (0 means no, 1 means yes) or by looking up the model (if it has a "Core Solo" or "Core Duo" CPU it's 32-bit only; if it's a "Core 2 Duo" -- note the "2" -- it's 64-bit).

Long answer: OS X doesn't have 32-bit and 64-bit versions; it uses a universal binary format which allows programs, system components, etc to be installed with both 32- and 64-bit code, and the system simply picks the "best" one to use based on the CPU you're on. Over different versions of OS X, what comes with the OS has gradually migrated from 32-bit-only (through 10.2) to having minimal support for background-only 64-bit apps (10.3 and 10.4), to full support for 64-bit Cocoa apps (10.5), to a full 32/64 OS including the kernel (10.6) to actually starting to drop support for 32-bit mode (10.7 shipped with many 64-bit-only system apps, and will not run on a 32-bit-only CPU).

The 64-bit-capable kernel that was added in 10.6 is cool, but basically irrelevant to user applications. OS X is unusual in that it can transparently run 64-bit apps under a 32-bit kernel as well as 32-bit apps under a 64-bit kernel. Since 10.5 has full support for 64-bit Cocoa apps, upgrading to 10.6 is not necessary.

Adendum: even if you do upgrade to 10.6, the kernel may not actually run in 64-bit mode -- Apple configured it to boot in 32-bit mode on most models by default. If your model uses 64-bit EFI firmware, you can configure 10.6 to boot in 64-bit mode, but if it's an older one that uses 32-bit EFI, even that's not possible. But again, it doesn't really matter, since 64-bit apps work fine either way.


How to stop Safari from hijacking Amazon app links?

It's not Safari hijacking the link but rather the Amazon app reading the link it was passed and declaring that it can't handle the link, throwing it back at Safari to handle generically.

Amazon's website declares the links that should open in the app should the app be installed on your iPhone. You can download this list yourself by going to amazon.com/apple-app-site-association.
Opening a link on iOS which matches one of these links will instead pass the link to the Amazon app.
The app ‘opens’ the link (switching Amazon to the foreground) and the Amazon app ‘reads’ the contents of the link, attempting to navigate to a reasonable page within the Amazon app to reflect the intention of the link. This uses application(_:continue:restorationHandler:).
If for whatever reason the Amazon app was unable to complete the intention of the link, the Amazon app can return false ‘to let iOS know that [the] app did not handle the activity’. This occurs within the Amazon app code.
Since the Amazon app refused to open the link, Safari is opened as a backup and navigates to the link.


Display preferences pane could not be loaded

This is so old, and I guess they've fixed it in El Capitan. One of the worst bugs I've ever ran into, because once it's triggered you'd struggle to fix it while your screen is upside down, especially if you don't have any peripherals handy. So, here are the steps just in case some unfortunate souls run into this.
* Assuming you're doing this on MacBook, or otherwise you know you're dealing with your main display. If you know better, run fb-rotate without parameters for help message.
Manually

Go to https://github.com/CdLbB/fb-rotate
Instead of following the instructions at the top to download the source and compile, you might want to scroll down, download the binary and run it directly. There's certainly risk, but your screen is now upside down so.
Follow the links, download fb-rotateNEW2.zip and extract it.
Open your favorite terminal such as Terminal.app
Go to where you've extracted it e.g. cd ~/Downloads/fb-rotateNEW2/
Run: ./fb-rotate -d0 -r0

Easy way
Copy the following single line and paste it into Terminal.app (Note the link and names might change, so if it fails fall back to the manual steps above. If you don't see 'done' at the end of the output it failed):
cd ~/Downloads && curl -LO http://dl.dropbox.com/u/6347985/Modbookish/Downloads/MacFlip/fb-rotateNEW2.zip && unzip fb-rotateNEW2.zip && fb-rotateNEW2/fb-rotate -d0 -r0 && echo done
If you're still getting the display preference pane error:
Open system preferences -> hold option/alt key and click on its dock icon -> force quit -> re-open it
That should fix it.
I managed to find the answer and fixed this like a real engineer, flipping my mbpr one way to type, another way to read, so proud of myself after this. God bless.


Can fiber channel cards be used to connect a Mac Pro server to our unmanaged switch?

If it is a network switch then the fibre connection will not be for fibre channel, I'll be ethernet on fibre.  To switch fibre channel you need a fibre channel switch not a network switch.


What could be stopping my WiFi printer from working?

One more thing you could try :

Uninstall all HP printer driver software using the HP uninstaller in Applications > Hewlett-Packard.
Reboot / restart your mac.
Reset the printing system via : Sys Prefs, Print & Fax
Right (control) click in the rectangle listing your printers and then choose Reset Printing System.

CAUTION : The above steps will delete all of your printers.

Select the plus sign to re-add it. Look for the printer, select it and wait until the "Add" button becomes available. Click it.

Hope this helps.


Have to reconnect to WiFi every time computer goes to sleep

I had the same issue with my 2011 MacBook Air with Lion, and I think it had to do with having changed security preferences on my preferred wireless network. I went to System Preferences > Network > Advanced > WiFi and deleted all existing Preferred Networks, then re-added them. So far, so good. It joins my preferred network automatically after awakening from sleep mode.


Is Macintosh System Software 1.0 (Classic MacOS) Free?

No, System 1.0 is not open source and not in the public domain. Apple provided it with the purchase of a Macintosh. The system software was not available for separate purchase.

History

With MacOS 1.0 you are probably referring to the first version of Apple's operating system.

In 1984, with the release of the first Macintosh (128K), the system was actually not called MacOS but was just Mac System Software.

Apple has called it MacOS since version 7.6.

You can read (and learn) a lot about it on Wikipedia.

Emulation

About an emulator of the first Mac system. There is one you can use : mini vMac

It will require a ROM to run vMac
and finally a disk image of the system

Unzip everything, start the mini vMac, it will load the ROM and you'll get a blinking floppy with a question mark because it couldn't find the system. To solve it just drag the system image over vMac and the system will start !


How can I repeat my ringtone and increase the delay until a caller is sent to voicemail?

You need to talk to your phone service provider.  They can set the "delay before divert to voicemail", or provide you with a magic number to dial so you can set the delay.

I know my provider only allows a maximum of 25 seconds, which I agree is too short.


Can we hide Photos/Videos on iPhone 6s and higher?

Starting with iOS 8, you can hide a photo or video from the Photos app by opening it, then tapping the Share Sheet (box with upward arrow). On the bottom row of share actions, tap Hide.

You can select multiple photos and hide them in a single stroke this way.

This will hide the photo or video from Moments, Collections and Years, but not from Albums. Starting with iOS 11, hidden photos will no longer appear in automatic albums such as Bursts and Selfies.


Xcode 5 can be downloaded only from the Mac App Store or from the Apple Developer site.

You could create an Apple ID and use the Mac App Store to download it.

OR

You could create a free developer account at the Apple Developer portal
go to the downloads section
check only Developer Tools under Categories on the left (uncheck others, to make it simpler to find)
then download the Xcode 5 DMG file.


Impossible to Delete Catalina Installers

If you cannot delete it normally, you can either attempt to find what file is keeping it from being deleted or just delete it from macOS Recovery.
To check for an open file that's in the Trash, from Terminal:
lsof | grep '.Trash'

Or macOS Recovery:
From macOS, running normally, open Terminal and execute the following compound command to reboot to macOS Recovery:
sudo nvram "recovery-boot-mode=unused"; sleep 2; sudo reboot

In macOS Recovery, open Terminal from the Utilities menu and run the following commands:
find /Volumes -maxdepth 4 -type d -name '.Trash'

On my system it returned:
/Volumes/Macintosh HD/Users/me/.Trash
/Volumes/Macintosh HD - Data/Users/me/.Trash

Then change directory to your .Trash directory, either one if two are listed for the target user, delete the .app application bundle, and reboot:
cd '/Volumes/Macintosh HD/Users/me/.Trash'
rm -r *.app
reboot

Or from Terminal in macOS Recovery you can simply run the following compound command and it will delete all .Trash directories and reboot. The .Trash directories will be recreated automatically when logging into your account.
find /Volumes -maxdepth 4 -type d -name '.Trash' -exec rm -r '{}' \; 2>/dev/null; reboot


Does FaceTime take up data or calling minutes when in a Wi-Fi area?

According to Apple Support:

  Check that each person has an active Wi-Fi connection.

Since both parties must use Wi-fi, no cellular data or voice usage will be charged.

More information can be found in this Apple.SE post, as it may be possible to use Facetime over 3G if the phone is jailbroken.


Yes, the "+" button to the right of the pathname text field will save the path for you.

Also, when you authenticate to the server, there should be a checkbox beneath the username/password fields.  The checkbox should read "Remember this password in my keychain."  If that's selected when you successfully authenticate, then your credentials will be saved to your keychain and used automatically when you try to connect.


after I logged off and logged back in with my Apple account it worked...


Is your copy of music from the iTunes store the same as mine?

iTunes removed DRM from it's music catalog in 2009, so I'm wondering if your question is about iTunes at all? If not, you might be better off specifying what DRM scheme you have a question about.

That said, iTunes used FairPlay for DRM before, and as explained here, it does generate a unique key for every user. So, it will indeed be different for every customer. The same should be true for all DRM schemes, since if the customer could not be identified from the data inside the DRM scheme, it would defeat the purpose of DRM to start with.

It is also worth noting that while DRM was removed from iTunes, current downloads still contain your Apple ID in the downloaded file. However, tool exists to remove this meta-data from the media.


Is there something like "did you forget to attach a file" in Apple Mail?

For OS X, there is a beta version of an older free (donationware) plugin called Attachment Scanner Plugin for Mail.app that is compatible with OS X Lion and OS X Mountain Lion. It works similar to the one you have mentioned for Mozilla Thunderbird. Since OS X Mavericks was only recently released, you can test it to see if it works or contact the author.

On iOS though, there's nothing of this sort in the stock Mail.app. Due to application sandboxing, third party developers cannot develop plugins for any application (Apple's apps or otherwise). This can only be supported if Apple makes such a feature available in Mail.app. I do not know if third party mail apps have such a feature.


Stickies and Notifications center hybrid

One option is to use the lighter version of Stickies available in the Dashboard.

Then use System Preferences to set a trackpad gesture to activate it. Then stickies are easily accessible while also out of sight when you don't need them.


macbookair 2014-15 model yosemite macos 10.10.5 external DELL HDMI monitor sound and brightness control

Minimum OS requirement, according to the github page, is Sierra, macOS 10.12
A MacBook Air from 2014 is perfectly capable of running 10.15, Catalina.


macOS 10.12.4 keeps losing Wi-Fi connection

I would totally remove your Wi-Fi service, restart, and add your Wi-Fi service back.

To do this:

Go to Apple > System Preferences > Network
Select the Wi-Fi service on the left-hand side
Click on the cog icon at bottom-left and select Make Service Inactive
Now delete the service by clicking on the minus sign (i.e. the - button) at left of the cog
Click on the Apply button
Exit Network preferences
Restart your MBP
Go to Apple > System Preferences > Network
Click on the plus sign (i.e. the + button) at left of the cog
In the pop-up window, ensure that Wi-Fi is selected from the drop-down menu
Click on the Create button
Make sure Wi-Fi is on and connected (it should remember your previous settings, but if not just re-add your Wi-Fi network again)

Let me know if this resolves the issue.

Boot into Safe Mode

Since removing the Wi-Fi service etc didn't work, let's try booting your Mac into Safe Mode:

Fully shut down your Mac
Restart your Mac
Immediately press the Shift key and keep it down
Let go of the Shift key when you see the login window (NOTE: If you
have FileVault enabled you may need to log in twice).
Test to see what happens
Exit Safe Mode by restarting your Mac as normal
Test again to see what happens

Note, booting into Safe Mode will take longer than usual.

Run Apple Diagnostics

Okay, time to test your hardware. Follow these steps to run Apple Diagnostics:

Fully shut down your Mac
Restart your Mac
Immediately press the D key and keep it down until you see the Diagnostics screen appear
Wait for Diagnostics to finish (this typically only takes a few minutes)
Once complete, one of two things will appear on the screen:

a No issues found message
a brief description of any errors found plus further instructions

If the diagnostics test does find errors, take a note of what they are

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

Regardless, let me know how you went.


I'm not aware of a way to do it with the built-in Terminal app, but this is a feature that some terminal replacement apps, like iTerm 2, support.


The best manual is the manual that is supplied with the command you are using whether that manual is old or new. Assuming that you have not hard coded MANPATH then man would determine the manual with your PATH and man.conf. If you are installing your own tools then possibly man.conf may need to be configured with your installation prefix.

If you have duplicate tools installed then the manual for the command first in your PATH is presented. You can read another manual by pointing man to the directory in which that man page resides.

    man -M /path/to/share/man COMMAND

You can read all the manuals of a particular command.

    man -a COMMAND


Memory terminology in Mavericks Activity Monitory

For each process there is

Real Memory (always at least as big as Memory)

Total Memory currently consumed by an application (including Virtual pages)

Memory

Memory used in RAM

Purgeable Memory

Memory which can be cleaned by MMU, if another process needs more real memory.

Then, for the system in total

Physical Memory

The amount of RAM installed.

Memory Used

The amount of RAM being used and not immediately available.

Virtual Memory

The amount of disk or flash drive space being used as virtual memory.

Swap Used

The space on your drive being used to swap unused files to and from RAM.

App Memory

The amount of space being used by apps.

Wired Memory

Memory that can’t be cached to disk, so it must stay in RAM. This memory can’t be borrowed by other apps.

Compressed

The amount of memory in RAM that is compressed.

File Cache

The space being used to temporarily store files that are not currently being used.


Downgrade iOS 10 beta 2 to iOS 10 beta 1?

As long as you have a physical copy of that previous beta then you should be able to do it thru DFU mode but it's Not Recommended to downgrade and bear in mind that these betas do expire after a certain date and the earlier the number the sooner they'll expire.


Can you turn the pages of an ebook on your iPad with your iPhone?

There is feature described in documentation Use Switch Control on your device to control another Apple device. Is it capable to deliver desired result?


Virtually all USB and Bluetooth keyboards work just fine with Macs.

There are about a zillion Mac-compatible keyboards, and just because one person loves a given model doesn't mean it will suit another (I still use my Apple Extended Keyboard, for instance). Some of the bigger makers in the field are Kensington, Logitech, Macally, Matias1, and Adesso.

What in particular (besides bigger arrow keys) matters to you? What do you hate? What do you love? Do you want wireless, or is USB ok?

You might want to check out these two Macworld articles:

Review Roundup: Keyboards and mice
Keyboards buying guide

1 I bought a Matias keyboard. I hated it. I don't recommend them.


Warranty on products received as a giveaway

Your mini should be covered under warranty since they haven't been out for a full year yet, however you can double check using Apple's public facing service site - SelfSolve.Apple.com

Apple's warranty follows the device by it's serial number, not the owner, so winning it through a raffle shouldn't have any effect other than it may have been purchased weeks/months before it reached your hands.


Word attachment file name prints as icon with ? inside when I print email

Same problem here with a MacPro Yosemite and an old hp printer. At least you can get it to display properly in your and the recipient's computer though not to print properly.

Go to Mail Preferences - Accounts - Advanced and uncheck "automatically detect and maintain mail settings"


You can save your cv in iCloud Drive, and then attach it.
Start writing an email on your phone, long press the text area, press the right arrow till you can see an add attachments button.

You can upload to iCloud Drive from finder on a Mac, save to iCloud Drive on iOS, or use iCloud.com on Windows.

Apple support about iCloud Drive


The argument for osascript -e can contain newlines:

osascript -e 'set x to "a"
say x'

You can also specify multiple -e arguments:

osascript -e 'set x to "a"' -e 'say x'

Or if you use a heredoc, bash interprets three characters (\, $, and `) between <<END and END but no characters between <<'END' and END.

osascript <<'END'
set x to "a"
say x
END

Edit:

Since osascript can operate with a heredoc (ie take input from /dev/stdin) then one can just write the script as a whole file and prepend with the correct shebang line:

#!/usr/bin/env osascript

set x to "a"
say x

This also allows you to save your apple script as a actual program in ~/Applications/.app using the following procedure (changing  for your script's name):

mkdir -p ~/Applications/<APP_NAME>.app/Contents/MacOS
touch ~/Applications/<APP_NAME>.app/Contents/MacOS/<APP_NAME>
open -A TextEdit ~/Applications/<APP_NAME>.app/Contents/MacOS/<APP_NAME>

Ensure that both the script file in .../MacOS/ and the  matches


using Microsoft Arc Mouse surface edition on MacBook Air 2015

Found a solution.

Open system settings/bluetooth.
switch bluetooth off and back on again, this way it will start scanning for new bluetooth devices
click and hold (for 5 seconds) the button on the mouse to start the pairing process. The led lights on the mouse will flash red and green
After a few seconds the mouse appears on screen, and next to it a big "PAIR" button.
Click it! :)


Why doesn't the keyboard appear to type name or number in Contacts?

Delete any other keyboards you're using like emoji etc then it should be fine.

I was facing the same issue and it resolved only when I deleted the keyboard.

Go to settings, general, keyboard and then look if there are any extra keyboards there.


Is there a safe way to move the /Users folder to a separate volume/drive?

The best way to do this is probably to setup /Users as an automounted partition, with all your home directories in the root of that partition. I am going to assume you have already copied over the home directories properly (with permissions enabled). Now you just need to add the volume to /etc/fstab. Assuming the parition is named Users, you add a line like this:

LABEL=Users /Users  hfs rw,auto

Instead of using the volume name you could also use the volumes GUID if you know how to find it, which would be slightly more reliable (it would prevent mishaps if you ever inserted another volume with the name Users. That would looks something like:

UUID=DF000C7E-AE0C-3B15-B730-DFD2EF15CB91   /Users  hfs rw,auto

You can find more information in man 5 fstab. Be warned, that manpage is mostly about the programming interface for fstab, but also goes into the file. Unfortunately it does not go into all the options available, there really appears to be no good documentation for it, but this should give you enough to get what you want done.


How do I stop my Mac from syncing my whole library to my iPhone?

This is fairly straightforward to disable. Follow these steps:

Launch iTunes
Go to iTunes > Preferences
Select the Devices tab
At the bottom, uncheck the Prevent iPods, iPhones, and iPads from syncing automatically
Exit Preferences

Let us know if this doesn't resolve your issue.


Identify and tag music from iTunes library under OS X

You have many choices, you can download one of these software and correct all of your ID3 Tags:

TuneUP
Musicbrainz
Jaikoz


Although your question is not an exact duplicate, it basically covers Window Management, so I suggest you take a look at this and this.


Can I update to OS X 10.8 from OS X 10.7 without doing all softwares updates?

Yes, I was able to update from 10.7.3 to 10.8 without running software updates (10.7.4) and Mountain Lion runs great.


Half of keyboard backlight dim after soda mishap

Unfortunately, there's not a lot that you can do. Liquid damage is tough to repair without replacing components. The only way to get to the underside of the top case is to remove every component in the machine, which I'm guessing you're not set up or trained to do. Even if you could get to it, it's unlikely that you'd be able to restore the backlight. The best thing to do is to take your machine to the Apple Store and tell them exactly what happened. Since liquid damage is not covered by AppleCare, you will have to pay for this. Sometimes they are able to help you out with the repair cost, but not always. The worst case scenario would be sending the machine to an Apple repair center for a complete repair of all components affected. This costs a flat rate of around $1250.

I know this isn't the news you were hoping for, but I hope it helps!


How do I reload an OS X "bash" user-environment

For anyone from the future ..

bash can be run with -l to execute full login goodies.
So, my launchd script goes from;

<ProgramArguments>
    <array>
        <string>java</string>
        <string>-jar</string>
        <string>jenkins.war</string>
    </array>

... to ...

<ProgramArguments>
    <array>
        <string>bash</string>
        <string>-l</string>
        <string>-c</string>
        <string>java -jar jenkins.war</string>
    </array>


Grab list of Stats, Application Data, and Serials off OSX 10.6 to prepare for reformat and fresh install?

Most of what you need (i.e. hardware, network information, software etc. thats similar to what Belarc Advisor returns) can be obtained using the built-in System Profiler application (/Applications/Utilities/System Profiler.app).

You can then export the information to a file using File ➔ Save As.., then select either "Plain Text" or "Rich Text Format" from the "File Format" dropdown.

The above can get quite verbose, so if you just want a quick snapshot of installed apps (including those installed by default, of course), you could start the Terminal (/Applications/Utilities/Terminal.app) then type

ls /Applications

or

ls /Applications > ~/Documents/apps.txt to send the output to the file apps.txt in your Documents folder.


Your android phone should make a WiFi hotspot when enabled, which acts like any other normal wifi hotspot as far as the iPad is concerned (connect via WIFI settings). It doesn't operate over Bluetooth at all, neither on the phone nor on the iPad.


Improptu restarting of Macbook Pro while in Sleep Mode

This is almost always hardware. Each time this happens, when you notice it, run sudo sysdiagnose from terminal.app and keep track of the times. You might find some clues looking at the system.log in each case to narrow down what was happening before the failure.

Also, you can start the Apple service online - sometimes they offer to run a diagnostic remotely, but usually that's for iOS and not Mac, but it might not hurt to request info on what a hardware repair might look like and/or cost from Apple. See https://locate.apple.com for your options there.


No - you get two windows in the current implementation. One on the left and one on the right.

I suppose the notification center slide over could be considered a "third window" but you can't put an application window there - it's just a system tray of sorts.

I would look at a program like Divvy on the Mac App Store for customizing a workspace with multiple tiled windows. It's not split view, but it's far more flexible and able to make use of the 27 inch display space to quite a granular basis.


Screen capture not working for satellite view of Maps

I'm not sure if you've jailbroken your iPhone or not, but default functionality for the home+sleep on all iPhones is to do a screenshot no matter the application that you are in.  Signed apps from the Apple App Store are not allowed to override this built-in OS level functionality.

Your home button or sleep buttons might have a problem.  Do they function normally on their own?  If so, then it could be that you have an accessibility feature enabled which is overriding or interfering with this default behavior.

Just in case none of the above is the situation, my final thought would be that you aren't correctly engaging the screenshot combination.  As a refresher or to clarify, you would hold the Home button along with the Sleep button at the same time.  I have found that sometimes starting with the Sleep button can throw it off, so I start with the Home button and then quickly add the Sleep button a short moment later and then let go of all of it once the screen flashes (if audio is not muted you also get a camera shot sound).

Also, I'm assuming you know, but maybe you don't: you find your screenshots in your camera roll in Photos.  I'm not sure if you were expecting it someplace else maybe.  It doesn't put it into the clipboard if that's what you might have thought.

In case you might be looking for capturing a video of your iPhone screen (or alternatively you can do a screenshot), you can accomplish this by running QuickTime Player on your Mac (if you have one), connect the iPhone via a lightning USB cable, then go to File → New Movie Recording (⌥⌘N).  From there you can see your iPhone's screen.


No sound when making calls with iPhone 6

This is not so common but it has happened to all of us.  It's usually due to a glitch in the cellular communication which can happen at any signal strength. It's of course possible that the person on the other end of the phone hit their mute button too.  In any case if you are not able to reliably repeat the problem then it is due to some random occurrences in the cellular network and not anything within your control.


OS X El Capitan port forwarding to Parallels VM using pfctl

There are two solutions for your problem with Parallels Desktop 11 (this doesn't apply to Parallels Desktop Pro/Enterprise 11, which both provide a convenient interface to configure port forwarding - nonetheless the solutions should work also in those enhanced versions):

Instead of attaching the VM's network interface to the "Shared Network" use a bridged interface (e.g. en0 or en1) and configure it with a IP/netmask in the respective network. Then you don't need NAT/port forwarding.

If you insist on a NAT'ed network do the following:

In the example below I use nc as server. To run a server enter nc -l -4 port and to connect to this server use nc server-IP port. You may also specify a source port: nc -p source-port server-IP port.

Here I use nc -l -4 11111 on the VM. To connect to this server I would run nc server-IP 11111 from a host in the same network. After starting the server and connecting the client you can simply enter some text, which is sent to the other console. To connect from a third host in a different network to the VM nc-server I want to use nc NAT-host-IP 22222. So I have to forward NAT-host-IP:22222 to VM-IP:11111. NAT-host in this case is the Mac hosting the Parallels VM.

attach the VM guest's network interface to the "Host-only Network". Usually Parallels' host-only network has the following host configuration (check this by entering ifconfig on the host machine):

vnic1: ...
...
inet 10.37.129.2 netmask 255.255.255.0 broadcast 10.37.129.255

So configure the VM guest as following:

IP: 10.37.129.x (with x ≠ 0,1,2,255) - below I assume it's 10.37.129.10
Netmask: 255.255.255.0
Gateway: 10.37.129.2
DNS: a real DNS server like 8.8.8.8

On the NAT-host machine enable forwarding in /etc/sysctl.conf:

net.inet.ip.forwarding=1
net.inet6.ip6.forwarding=1

and reboot the host.
On the NAT-host machine (with an example IP of en0: 192.168.0.2) create an anchor file org.user.forwarding in /private/etc/pf.anchors

sudo touch /private/etc/pf.anchors/org.user.forwarding

with the following content and a trailing empty line:

rdr pass on en0 inet proto tcp from any to any port 22222 -> 10.37.129.10 port 11111

On the NAT-host machine modify the file /private/etc/pf.conf but keep a trailing empty line

original file:

...
scrub-anchor "com.apple/*"
nat-anchor "com.apple/*"
rdr-anchor "com.apple/*"
dummynet-anchor "com.apple/*"
anchor "com.apple/*"
load anchor "com.apple" from "/etc/pf.anchors/com.apple"

to

...
scrub-anchor "com.apple/*"
nat-anchor "com.apple/*"
rdr-anchor "com.apple/*"
rdr-anchor "org.user.forwarding"
nat on en0 proto {tcp, udp, icmp} from 10.37.129.0/24 to any -> en0
pass from {lo0, 10.37.129.0/24} to any keep state
dummynet-anchor "com.apple/*"
anchor "com.apple/*"
load anchor "com.apple" from "/etc/pf.anchors/com.apple"
load anchor "org.user.forwarding" from "/etc/pf.anchors/org.user.forwarding"

Parse and test your anchor and your pf.conf file to make sure that there are no errors:

sudo pfctl -vnf /etc/pf.anchors/org.user.forwarding
sudo pfctl -vnf /etc/pf.conf

Enable pf with:

sudo pfctl -e -f /etc/pf.conf

To test this start the nc server on the VM with  nc -l -4 11111. Now on a third host in your physical network enter nc 192.168.0.2 22222.

After a reboot you have to start pf again. If you want to enable pf permanently check my other pf related answers.

After a system update or upgrade some of the original files above may have been replaced and you have to reapply all changes.


Can I make a song in my iTunes library into a ringtone

Yes. Follow this guide or any other after getting the song from ~/Music/iTunes/iTunes Music.

  Select and edit a song

  The first thing we'll need to do is choose a song in iTunes to use as a ringtone. Open up iTunes on your Mac or PC and click on the My Music tab. Choose a song that's on your hard drive then right click on it, choose Get Info, then click the Options tab.

  Within the main panel you'll see settings for Start and Stop. A ringtone can only be thirty seconds long, so use these settings to isolate the part of the song you want then click OK. You won't be deleting anything on the actual track itself, so don't worry.

  Now highlight the song, go up to File at the top of the screen and select Create New Version>Create AAC version. iTunes will duplicate the track, but if you look closely you'll see that the new version is only thirty seconds long. That's the one we'll use for our ringtone. Remember to go back to the original track now and untick the Start and Stop options, otherwise the track will only play that short section.

  Change the file type

  Highlight the short version of the song, then right click and select Show in Finder. Now you'll see the two versions of the song. The duplicate should have a 1 at the end of the name to differentiate it, and of course the file size will be smaller. To use it as a ringtone we'll need to convert the file type from .m4a to .m4r, which involves clicking on the name once to highlight it, then once again to edit the name so we can change the last three letters. Finder will then ask you if you are sure you want to use the new file type? Choose 'Use .m4r' in the pop up box to confirm. Leave the Finder window open for now, as we'll use it again in a moment.

  Delete the shorter track

  Return to iTunes and delete the short version of the track, remembering to check the length carefully before you do so. When prompted choose Keep File, as we want to remove the track from our music library but not our computer entirely.

  Import the track to iTunes as a ringtone

  Go back to the Finder window and double click the shorter file. Rather disconcertingly it will disappear from the box, but start playing in the background. Don't worry, it isn't really gone. Return to iTunes, go to the row of icons in the top left corner and click on the three dots. This brings up more options, one of which is Tones. Click this and you'll see that the short version of the song is now a ringtone.

  Sync the ringtone with your iPhone

  Connect your iPhone to iTunes and click on the little phone icon just to the right of the three dots. This will bring up the iTunes panel for your phone, from which you want to select Tones in the left hand column. Once inside click Sync Tones>Selected tones>then the track you've created. Finally go to the bottom right hand corner and click Apply.

  Set the new ringtone

  All that remains to be done now is to go to Settings on your iPhone, then Sounds, and you'll find the new ringtone at the top of the list. Tap on it to select it as your general tone.


How does the volume control work on my iPod touch?

You’re technically right. There are two settings, one for the speaker, one for the headphones. Both volumes are independent; if you have volume low on speaker and connect a headphone, you’re going to get the headphone volume, and that’s what you’re going to adjust until you disconnect it.

Now, applications can alter the device’s volume, but they can also have their own independent volume level. For example a game might have a volume setting and if you put it all the way down, the ipod’s volume (alarms, music, etc.) is not altered. As far as I can remember (should check the latest iOS SDK) that is possible.

Applications can of course mute themselves without altering the device’s settings.


Macbook Pro internal hard drive issues, any way to get this working?

I would start again to see if you can test the MacBook Pro's hardware (including the internal drive). This is also a good idea anyway because of its age and the fact you don't know the history of this Mac.

Run Apple Hardware Test

Your model MBP uses Apple Hardware Test. To use this, follow these steps:

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

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

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

Assuming you find no problems, I would then reset the NVRAM of your Mac as well. Before doing so, unplug all external devices (including monitors, keyboard, etc).

Resetting NVRAM on your model MacBook Pro

Your Mac use Non-Volatile Random-Access Memory (NVRAM) to store a whole range of settings. Here’s how to reset this:

Shut down your Mac. Yes, a full shut down, not just logging out.
Press the power button and then press the commandoptionPR keys. You have to make sure you press these keys before the gray screen appears or it won’t work.
Hold those keys down until your Mac tries rebooting again.
Let go of the keys and see if your Mac boots up (not likely).

Assuming it doesn't boot, try again to install macOS onto the internal drive to see if it makes any difference.

Finally, if you couldn't get Apple Hardware Test to work at all, but you do now have macOS installed on an external drive, you could boot up from that and see if you can run Disk Utility to test and/or repair the internal drive. Assuming you can do this and it passes, you could then try installing macOS again onto the internal drive while you're booted from your external drive.


For Mountain Lion, how does Apple define the Transparent App Lifecycle (TAL)?

Lion

Carbon Framework Release Notes (2011-04-11, three months before the OS was released) placed three things under Transparent App Lifecycle in relation to a seed of the OS:

persistent state
sudden termination
automatic termination.

Mountain Lion

In Mac App Programming Guide: The Core App Design (2012-07-23, two days before the OS was released) the app life cycle is:

  … the progress of an app from its launch through its termination. …

then automatic and sudden termination are:

  … techniques that make the termination of an app transparent …

(Unsurprisingly, no mention of Carbon in that guide.)

Summary

Maybe the 2010 man page for talagent, in both Lion and Mountain Lion, uses an expression (Transparent App Lifecycle) that was outdated before Lion was released.


Trackpad gesture that minimizes all windows?

I've found no default bindings that would make this occur, but I have found an application that possibly could be triggering what's occuring. There is a background application called MagicPrefs which allows for the addition of non-default bindings. MagicPrefs would also allow you to bind AppleScript to things like this as well.


How do I create an "artificial" redirect on iPad?

There's no IP address named 0.0.0.0. Therefore you cannot be running a web server on that address, and that is the reason why your iPad cannot open such an address.
You might be confused because when programming, it is usually possible to specify that you want to bind for example port 8080 on 0.0.0.0. However in that case, 0.0.0.0 is not an address - it is a specific non-address values that means that indicates to the operating system that you want to bind port 8080 on any network interface (i.e. on all the IP-addresses on your computer).
The problem here is not with the iPad. Instead you have a misconfiguration on your server that has caused it to send out redirections to 0.0.0.0. Those redirections are invalid in themselves. Ordinarily servers like that are by default setup to redirect to the same IP address that the user accessed the server by initially.


Is there any way to control Mac volume from Apple Watch?

I've used MacID with great success on my Pebble smartwatch but they also have support for Apple Watch. It's $4 but TOTALLY worth it!

https://macid.co/

The watch app requires the companion iPhone app to sync with the desktop app and control the volume and track selection.

And that's not all, the iPhone to Mac has a proximity sensor so you can set your computer to unlock AS YOU APPROACH IT and lock if you get up to walk away.

I hope this answer helps :)


Can I download apps larger than 50MB while using Personal Hotspot?

2 x Yes :-)

Yes, it's possible to download apps (or anything else) larger than 50 MB when using the iPhone as a Personal Hotspot
Yes, the limit is arbitrary and probably mainly exists to reduce the load on 3G data networks


This is the original fix I saw on the MacRumors forum:

https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/gtalk-messages-solution-found-high-sierra.2073393/

  Go to system settings and go to Internet Accounts and delete your google account.

  Open Terminal

find ~/Library/Preferences -name "*iChat*" -delete

  then

rm -rf ~/Library/Caches/com.apple.Messages

  then

rm -rf ~/Library/Messages

  and reboot

  Now open Messages and add your google account via Jabber. Then go to preferences in Messages and go to Accounts and go to server settings and make sure settings are as follows:

  Server: talk.google.com
  Port: 5223
  Check Use SSL

  Then go to Account Information and Enable this account

  I rebooted again and then opened Messages and made sure my buddy list was there.

  Then I went to System Preferences and go to Internet Accounts and add your google account.

  Upon doing this a message popped up for me asking to Add Google Talk to Messages and WHOA it is working.

  I can now send and receive messages, have my calendar and everything as before.

  Before this I could receive messages and see buddies but couldn't communicate with them.


Safe not to eject Timemachine USB drive?

Golden Rule - eject a drive before disconnecting it.
Even if it doesn't appear to be busy.
999 times out of a thousand, you'd get away with it - it's just that one last time that will completely wreck your file system.


How can I set multiple reminders for a contact’s birthday?

iCal calendars have very limited events notifications setup on iOS, not to mention Birthdays Calendar. There are some third party solutions that can add multiple alerts. Still you would have to go through each entry and add preferred notifications. I haven’t found any that can assign in batch on import.

I have around 70 birthday entries, so this would do as a workaround for me:

Export .iCal file from Birthdays calendar on Mac,
Add that file to Google Calendars and add preferred notifications to each birthday event
Connect Google Account in Settings of iPhone, toggle Calendars to sync
Set Birthdays not to display in iOS app


The values in your image look fine. Since the system is lagging, why not measure things over time:

vm_stat 60

You can let that run in a terminal to get an aggregate feel for when swapping happens and at what rate. It's highly likely that some other thing is the bottleneck like CPU or storage, but without seeing things change over time, it's hard to say what's causing the lag. I've never seen a system lag due to RAM without the memory pressure being yellow or worse, but that doesn't mean it's impossible to have.

That coupled with the fact that your system still has 10 GB of free RAM makes it even less likely it's contention for memory/swap causing slowness. Feel free to ping me if I miss an edit to the question with more data to go on.


Why do I have to reenter my passwords after moving HDD between Macs?

The problem lies in changes to the OS X Keychain apparently introduced with the extended iCloud support in Mavericks.

The Keychain has a new chain called Local items. The local items are stored in an sqlite database in a folder corresponding to the hardware UUID of the mainboard. Additionally it appears to be encrypted is a way that involves details from the mainboard (probably the UUID).

There are various people reporting to be unable to recover their local items after a hardware failure or after moving to new hardware. The only workaround to be affected by this problem appears to be enabling iCloud synchronization for the Keychain, thus the saved passwords are synced from the cloud to any new hardware. Of course, that is not helpful for people who are not interested in using iCloud.

See also:

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/6543257
New "Local Items" Keychain in Mavericks: What's it all about?
http://www.faqssys.info/how-do-i-migrate-my-keychains-local-items-to-a-new-mac/
http://forums.macrumors.com/threads/data-migration-local-keychain-passwords-not-appearing.1905840/

If anybody knows a way to actually recover/decrypt the local items after moving one's account to a different hardware, I'd be happy to learn about it.


Selectively control when Aperture/iPhoto opens

1) Open Image Capture from the Spotlight (You can also find it in the Applications folder)

2) Connect your iPad

3) You should see your device listed under devices column on the left. Select it.

4) In the bottom left, choose "No Application" under the option for choosing which application opens when this device is connected.


How do I display stop, pause, play and rewind audio file controls on my iMac?

There is nothing specifically built in to the macOS that allow the keyboard to control audio file (Music, voice notes, etc.) on the Mac.

Normally music and voice notes sync with and play in iTunes. And in iTunes you can select a song and tap the spacebar to play and pause but to move back and forth in the song or audio file you must use your mouse to move around in the file by clicking before or after the moving play indicator. You can also drag the play indicator back and forth to control where you want to play from.

But neither iTunes nor Quicktime player (seem to) allow the keyboard to control skipping forward or backwards in a song or other audio file.

If that does not answer your question you may need to give us a specific use case and how you would like to control playback. There are quite a number of audio playback and editing applications out there and they all have different controls.


Difference between back-up computer vs. complete copy of everything?

Time Machine (TM) will allow you to restore your computer to the way it was by copying the the TM files onto the disc in your computer.  When you do a TM restore, you will be back to the same state you were in at the time of the last backup.  There are a few caveats to this.  It assumes that your computer's hardware is fully functional--you have a good display, a good hard drive to copy to, etc.  It also assumes that, for a reasonably large TM backup, you have the time to spare to do the restore.  This can be easily half a day until you are back up and running.

When you create a bootable backup, you may also be able to restore from this backup, but the key advange is that it is immediately bootable.  No need to wait many hours for a restore, you can quickly get working again.  Additionally, you can use any hardware.  Lets assume that your computer is totally fried; just take your bootable backup to another machine, boot from it, and it appears to be your original machine.  Email is configured, documents are available, applications can be run.

My personal backup strategy is to use both TM backup and bootable backup.  If I have the time to restore from TM, I will do that.  I make my living from my Mac, so I have the bootable backup for emergencies.  I can be up and running quickly if I am under a tight deadline.  Hard drives are inexpensive, so my recommendation is to do both!


There are no guest additions for macOS in VirtualBox. The shared folder feature of VirtualBox won't work here.

You have to configure a share on the host system and access it from inside the guest with one of the common methods:

Finder > Go > Connect to server... cmdK
Terminal: mount -t smbfs //username:password@server/share .../mountpoint
Finder window > sidebar > Shared > choose share >

Some network connection between host and guest is required (e.g NAT or bridged adapter). Using the latter requires to set up an IP-address in macOS in the same network as the host's adapter.

To set up a bridged adapter for a guest (which has to be shut down) do the following:

Choose the VM > Settings > Network > Adapter 1 > Check Enable Network Adapter > Attached to > Bridged Adapter > choose a network interface of the host (usually either Ethernet or Wi-Fi)
Check the IP config of this interface in the host (e.g. IP= 192.168.0.2 Netmask= 255.255.255.0 Gateway=192.168.0.1 DNS=8.8.8.8)
Use the same config in the guest but choose a different IP (e.g. 192.168.0.111)
Connect from the guest to the host with cmdK > enter smb://192.168.0.2/Share_name > enter the credentials


How do i help for Ford Sync hear my demands better?

My wife has a Fiesta with the Ford Sync system and she had a similar question when we first purchased it.  When she was giving voice commands she was directing her voice to her iPhone 4, either by holding it up to her face or holding it in front of her.  The problem though is that the Sync system uses a microphone built into the car, not your iPhone, for receiving voice commands.  I'm not at home so I can't say with 100% certainty but I'm pretty sure her microphone is to the left of the rear view mirror.  With that said the location may depend on whichever Ford model you have.

I would check the Ford's owner manual, it should show the location.


According to the tech specs, you should be able to use OS X Lion (10.7) with the following specs:

Mac computer with an Intel Core 2 Duo, Core i3, Core i5, Core i7, or Xeon processor
2GB of memory
OS X v10.6.6 or later (v10.6.8 recommended)
7GB of available space

That would suggest to me that you would need to get onto 10.6 (Snow Leopard) + all updates and then could get to OSX Lion (10.7).

Mountain Lion+ Specifies an "early 2008 Mac Pro or newer", yours appears to be the iteration just before that.