What are the risks if you install an app that's not from the App Store?

With the improved Masque attack, it is possible to perform many actions, including full kernel and user memoryspace traversal, which would include any sort of temporary or permanent backdoor against jailed iOS, including version 8.2 (i.e., this does not require a jailbroken device). When combined with a shim, this can be a devastating attack against other previously-installed apps, perhaps even without memoryspace access. Futher combined with OS X DLL hijacking (another new attack), things get really clever.

Today, as of March 2015, nearly anything is possible. The entire security of the iOS platform has been undone due to Enterprise certificate attacks (i.e., improved Masque), repackaging apps (e.g., Theos), library shimming (i.e., the load operation), and lazy binding abuse. This could lead to function hooking on a jailed device, which could lead to subversion of many concepts, including subversion of the KeyChain, TouchID, and much more than forensics tools are currently capable of (even assuming a lockdown certificate is set and no recoverable lockdown cert or backup is possible on, say, jailed iPhone 6 with iOS 8.2).


Importing without coping to the library doesn't give Photos.app ownership of the file. So to be safe you can't delete it directly from the application. You can right-click on the picture and select Show related file in Finder and delete it from there. Unfortunately, it will not delete it from the photo library so you have to do it by yourself.


Long time ago I bound my right shift key to F3, how can I undo that?

I did exactly as you described recently and you are right that there seems to be no trace to go back to that function to undo it. After talking to several Mac users, including store staff, it got resolved by trial and error by an Apple Store senior support person;
he expressed himself that it was an odd solution to the problem and that the key mapping may be faulty but it worked.

None of the people I talked to are aware of this capability to alter the function of the right shift key; if it wasn't for your post, they would have convinced me that there was no such function. Anyway, this is what he did:

go to System Preferences, then Exposé/Spaces.
in Exposé, for the "Application Windows" setting, choose "-"


By default, OS X has system-wide symbol and text substitution. You can disable this one substitution, all substitutions or even modify the TM trigger so you are less likely to accidentally trigger a ™ inadvertently.

System Preferences > Language & Text > Text pane/tab


App Store: Not enough disk space to install Xcode

There's really no easy way to produce a definite answer for you. The definite answer varies from system to system.

You could get the definitive answer by freeing a small amount of disk space. Taking a full backup of your system. Try installing. When it fails, restore from backup. Repeat until you have the definitive answer.

It would be an unrealistic amount of work to get to a number that you would then have no interest in having, as you have already installed the software.

EDIT: You have changed your question so that you no longer require a "definitive" answer, but rather want an "approximate answer". To that I can I add that my installations of Xcode are approx. 15-20 GB in size depending on what exactly is installed on each computer. Note that for updating you'll need room for both the currently installed version plus update files. You might find that it is easier on your disk space requirements to simply delete Xcode, and then reinstall it. You might get be with even less disk space if you download Xcode manually from the Apple web site instead of from the App Store.


Home Sharing, but without syncing purchases?

Home Sharing is done under a different Apple ID than the one the computer is authorized for. I have my computer registered under my ID (with automatic downloads on!), and Home Sharing set up under a family ID.

To do this correctly:

Make sure you are signed in to your ID under the Store menu.
Log in to the shared ID with the appropriate command under the Advanced menu.
Voilà!

Alternatively, you don't even need to use Home Sharing. You can play tracks without enabling it, as long as sharing is enabled under iTunes > Preferences > Sharing > Share my library on my local network. Enabling Home Sharing will let you copy files to the local library, whereas this option will not.


how to run stickies ONLY on desktop space 1

Open Stickies on the Desktop you want the app to only show on. Or, if it's already open, change to the Desktop you want to app to only show on.
Right-click (or control-click) its Dock Tile
Mouse over: Options
Under Assign To, click: This Desktop, or if you already have numbered Desktops showing, then select the one you want it to only show on.

The image above is from a default install with additional Desktops added but having never selected a specific one for an app yet. You may see menu entries e.g. Desktop 1, Desktop 2, etc.


Cannot access Boot Camp partition after OS X reinstall

Neither of the suggested proposals is advisable. If you erase and reinstall Windows all the music will be lost. Creating a second bootable disk is a complex and error-prone task.

If the Windows volume really still exists you can access it in read-only mode and save your music to the OS X volume by default. If you also need write access install an appropriate tool like NTFS for Mac 14 or a free tool like NTFS-3G for Mac OS X.

You may also salvage the bootability of the Windows partition by adding appropriate MBR entries. Check for several questions and answers here at apple.stackexchange solving this issue.


Can the "new book" tag be restored in iBooks (iOS)

I think the only purpose of the "New" tag is to show books that have never been opened. Once a book has been viewed, it is no longer New.

Maybe with enough feedback Apple will add a "Reading" tag to the icon...


Something's eating my disc space - Mac OS X

The biggest issue here is that you need to run your analysis tools as root. If you don't do this, you'll only see the files that your account has access to, and so you won't see everything that is taking up space.

I like GrandPerspective personally. If it's in your Applications folder, the command to run it as root looks like this:

sudo /Applications/GrandPerspective.app/Contents/MacOS/GrandPerspective


applescript: determine the date of last Sunday

The following example AppleScript code works for me in macOS High Sierra and will return the date string of the previous Sunday:

set now to (current date)

if weekday of now is Monday then
    return date string of (now - 86400)
else if weekday of now is Tuesday then
    return date string of (now - 86400 * 2)
else if weekday of now is Wednesday then
    return date string of (now - 86400 * 3)
else if weekday of now is Thursday then
    return date string of (now - 86400 * 4)
else if weekday of now is Friday then
    return date string of (now - 86400 * 5)
else if weekday of now is Saturday then
    return date string of (now - 86400 * 6)
else if weekday of now is Sunday then
    return date string of (now - 86400 * 7)
end if


Searching for files on SMB share shows all files as question marks "?" on macOS High Sierra

I did a clean install of High Sierra and it's working now. I guess some system files had been corrupted during the upgrade.

Not really a fix, so if someone has a better answer I'll hapily give them the points. I consider it closed for now.


I have faced similar problem on one of the Macs in my office.

I couldn't solve it directly, so I chose to delete the account, by backing up of all the important folders/files into another partition. Alternatively, you may move it out of the home folder to another folder (e.g. /Users/Shared/) temporarily. I deleted the user account and created a new one, which will solve problems with permissions, clear hidden data in the account and/or configuration problems like you are currently experiencing.


Can I store all the content of my previous iPhone in a new iPhone using iTunes?

Yes.

The easiest way to do this is to do a full backup of your iPhone 4s via iTunes.

Then you would connect the new iPhone to iTunes as well and then do a Restore from the iPhone 4s backup to your new iPhone.

Important

The iPhone 4s was available in various sizes, namely 8GB, 16GB, 32GB and 64GB. So you will need to ensure that your new iPhone has as a minimum the same capacity as your old one.

You should also select the "Encrypt local backup" option as this will "allow account passwords, Health and HomeKit data to be backed up". Of course, in your specific case, an iPhone 4S doesn't have health and home data.


Wow am I a doof. I forgot to actually turn on syntax highlighting in VIM. Once I did it worked just fine.

:syntax on

Welp, at least I learned something about VIM and OS X directory structure I guess! Sorry folks.


Is is possible to re-purchase an app for which I requested a refund?

It's not possible. Once an app is refunded, you cannot re-purchase it, for all eternity. I've spent about 2h with various levels of Apple support without success.

Also, it's worth mentioning that you cannot get updates for a refunded app (makes sense).


There are several ways to install Python and which way affects the later answers.
In all cases you should install a later Python 3 version - 3.1.3 is the latest released version. For choosing which to run I would call python3.1 or python2.6 to be explicit as the language differs enough that the code is specific to the 2.x or 3.x branches. In fact much code starts with the #!/usr/bin/env python line but is 2.x specific. I would say that having the python executable on your path being linked to python3.1 would be a problem Apple scripts that use python always look for /usr/bin/python so will always find the Apple version and not a properly installed other version.

easy_install is from an external package setuptools and you can tell setup.py where to put it.

Simplest is install from the python.org installer This will give a python3 executable in /usr/local/bin (and possibly python as well). In this case I would create a python symbolic link in ~/bin (pointing to the apple python or python3 and you can switch where it points as you require without sudo which a link in /usr/local/bin would require.
In this case I think easy_install for python3 will by default end up in /usr/local/bin and the apple one is in /usr/bin

I use macports versions and they install in /opt/local and have a script port select that will switch /opt/local/bin/python between the 3.1 or 2.6 versions (or any others you have installed) - unfortunately not does not do this for  easy_install which is in  /opt/local/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.6/bin (or 3.1 etc)


How can I split a 60 GB file into 5 GB pieces on a Mac?

OS X includes a command line tool called split. See man split for all the details.

You can call split using the Terminal.app and the command:

split -b 5000m MYBIGFILE

To combine it again, have the receiver store all parts in a dedicated folder, open Terminal there and run

cat x?? > MYBIGFILE

(This assumes that you used the default output names when running split.)


Visual hints to better spot the currently active window?

There isn't a lot that's easily customizable about color schemes on OS X. One suggestion is that if you're using the Graphite color scheme, switch to the Blue color scheme. In earlier versions of OS X,there used to be quite a bit of difference between them, and many developers went with the more subdued Graphite scheme, but by Lion, one of the only surviving differences is the traffic-light dots in the upper left corner of a window. In the graphite color scheme, they're all grey, but in the "blue" scheme, they're colored when the window is the active one.


iCloud PreferencesPane crashes after upgrade to Yosemite

iCloud preferences seem to be spread across a few different plist files. The main one (funnily enough) seems to be called /Users/YOURUSERNAME/Library/Preferences/MobileMeAccounts.plist. That's the one that stores your account details (ID, UUID, DSID and AlternateDSID) and information about the services you have enabled or disabled.

You could try closing System Preferences entirely, renaming that file temporarily, restarting your Mac and then seeing if System Preferences can then open its iCloud pane.


App was rejected for use of protected 3rd party material

There are several avenues you can take to resolve this. The first is to log into the developer center for your iOS developer account and go to the Resolution Center and verify that the reason is correct and see if they have identified specific assets (music, artwork, code that could reasonably be protected by copyright in the US.).

There is an App Review board, but I wouldn't rush to that as it's kind of a final step and you'll want all your ducks in a row if you go that route.

If you really have no clue what parts of your app might be problematic, you can use a support incident and ask Developer Technical Support to point you to the specific items that are problematic and flagged by the reviewer. My guess is you will have a good idea and can substitute a royalty free drawing or song to resubmit the app and confirm whether the items you suspect being flagged for rejection are the actual items.

At that point, you will need to decide if you want to push things and use the assets and somehow justify why copyright material isn't in your app or get approval from the copyright owner and submit that evidence to Apple.

You could also ask the reviewer to send you the list of assets so you can start the rights check documentation. Depending on the issue they see, it could be a simple letter from your lawyer to something much more involved if Apple has had previous legal requests from copyright holders and you have run afoul of that with your recent review denial.

All of the above would be most applicable if the app contains assets that were flagged. If your app during testing consumes or downloads other copyright material, you may need to have a more direct discussion with Apple to understand if you are even going to be allowed to distribute your App through Apple's storefront.

Worst case, you can request clarification of the rejection from https://developer.apple.com/appstore/contact/


I do not have enough free space on the C:\ drive of my Windows computer to run the updater for iOS 5 in iTunes

I think that iTunes is trying to use your gobal Windows temporary folder. By default, this directory is in your user Local Settings directory, located on the same drive as Windows. This is a system-wide setting that applications are supposed to follow.

You can change the path to this temporary folder by changing the value of the TEMP environment variable. You'll have to restart iTunes after changing the variable to have it take effect.


A command line utility to test the status of files in iCloud drive directory

You can use brctl status.

It outputs alot, but you can grep pretty easily, for example brctl status |grep needs-sync-up |cut -d'"' -f2 will show you all files waiting for being uploaded (without their path), or use brctl status |grep 'somefile.ext' for checking the status of somefile.ext.

See brctl --help for more.


Removing EFI partition from external Disk?

EFI partition is a partition that stores boot files for operating systems, but since it is an external drive, it's not needed. When you erase your disk and create a new GUID Partitioning Table on it, macOS will automatically create an EFI partition. If you don't want that EFI partition, you have a few options:

You can erase your disk and create a new MBR instead of GPT. To do this, follow these steps:

Open Terminal. You can use spotlight to find it
Make sure your external disk is inserted. Type diskutil list and identify your disk (in the output you provided, it looks like it's disk1).
Type diskutil eraseDisk JHFS+ MYDISK MBR diskX and replace diskX with the actual disk's identifier (for example, disk1)
Your disk will be erased without an EFI partition now.

You can use diskpart.exe to partition the disk on Windows. Windows doesn't create an EFI partition.


iOS: can one pause a screen recording for continuing it later?

I have not heard of any way to do that, nor any 3rd-party app that can do it.

Your best bet would be to find an app (or Shortcut, possibly) which can merge multiple videos together, and then you could run that after taking 2 or more.


Issue reading removable drive during macOS install

According to everyman.com, you mac appears to be a mid/late 2007 model.

The Pre-Installed operating system was OS X 10.4.9 (8Q1058) (Tiger). The Maximum operating system is OS X 10.11.6 (El Capitan).

If you are using TransMac, I assume you have a DMG file. You can use DMG files to upgrade OS X, but you can not use a DMG file to do an clean install of OS X. For example, if you purchase Lion from Apple, then you must first have Snow Leopard installed in order to use the purchased file to upgrade to Lion.

Apple still sells Snow Leopard DVDs, but you can also download an ISO from the internet. There are plenty of websites that explain how to make a bootable USB Snow Leopard installer. I have not tried any of these methods. If you succeed, then maybe you could post a method that works.

  I would recommend burning the Snow Leopard ISO file to a DL DVD.

Once you have Snow Leopard installed, you should install all the available Snow Leopard updates. This would update Snow Leopard to OS X 10.6.8.

Once Snow Leopard OS X 10.6.8 is installed, you can upgrade to El Capitan for free.
Enter this address: https://itunes.apple.com/app/os-x-el-capitan/id1147835434?mt=12 into Safari on the Mac running Snow Leopard. You should be able to download El Capitan. Follow the instructions at https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201372 to create a bootable USB El Capitan installer.

Please post of comment, if you needed an Apple Id to download El Capitan.


Since it's only one photo you might find it easiest to Export it from iPhoto (as a .png perhaps) as "Current", then open it in Preview and rotate it four times, then Save it (if it's .png then you won't lose quality). Preview should have made a new thumbnail for you— now you can re-import into iPhoto and check to make sure everything is ok. You will have to redo location, Faces, and tagging info. But if everything is satisfactory then you can delete the messed up version you had before.

If you have lots of images with wrong thumbnails then you should launch iPhoto while holding CMD Option and rebuild the database.


What is the difference between the iPad Mini model numbers A1454 and A1455?

The comparable page you're looking for is: http://www.apple.com/ipad/LTE/. A1454 is used for AT&T and similar Canadian networks only, while Sprint, Verizon and overseas carriers use A1455.

All bands are also listed on the specs page:

Model A1454

GSM/EDGE (850, 900, 1800, 1900 MHz)
UMTS/HSPA+/DC-HSDPA (850, 900, 1900, 2100 MHz)
LTE (Bands 4 and 17)

Model A1455

CDMA EV-DO Rev. A and Rev. B (800, 1900, 2100 MHz)
GSM/EDGE (850, 900, 1800, 1900 MHz)
UMTS/HSPA+/DC-HSDPA (850, 900, 1900, 2100 MHz)
LTE (Bands 1, 3, 5, 13, 25)


Why are my app settings not appearing in the Settings app?

I experienced this issue for the first time this morning, on iOS 10.3. To fix, I simply opened multitasking view (double-click Home), and ejected the Settings app. Upon reopening it, app settings returned beneath TV Provider.

I’m quite surprised at the number of bugs with the Settings app since iOS 10 (another would be the disappearing navigation arrow in the upper-left).


Not currently. The 'disk' space in iCloud is not like the iDisk option in MobileMe. Since iOS doesn't really expose its file system, they don't map this to the Mac in a 'mountable' way.

So currently, the only way to access iCloud data would be through APIs.


How to download file under same filename?

There is no way to override that "feature" permanently.  However, there are a couple of workarounds:
Hold the Option Key
Hold down the Option key when you click on the link and it will tell Safari to overwrite the file if it already exists.
I just tested it on Safari 10.10.3 and it works as expected.

Use Download Linked File As...
You can also specify interactively if you want to overwrite the file using the Download Linked File As... option.
Click on the link while holding the Control key (or right click) and you will be presented with a context
 menu.
After the "Save File Location" dialog box, if the file exists, you will be prompted to Replace or Cancel.

Set Safari to alway ask where to save downloads
This is done in Safari Preferences (⌘, while in Safari).  With this set as Ask for each download. if the file you are attempting to save already exists, you will be presented with a confirmation dialog as above.


Mail.app connection errors (offline) after sleep

This might seem weird and unlikely, but these steps (originally written to restore broken Dictation) fixed it for me:

Go to ~/Library/Preferences
( ⇧+⌘+G )
Locate com.apple.assistant.plist and move it to the Trash
Open Dictation & Speech preference panel, disable dictation
Reboot
Re-enable Dictation & Speech.

Any hints on why this is working are very welcome!


Why do iPhone photos have Microsoft in Exif data?

"Primary Platform" is part of the ICC profile, which is related to colorspace. Under "Device Model" and "Colorspace", you should see sRGB, which was created jointly by Microsoft and Hewlett-Packard (HP). If you look further you should also see the color profile is listed as being created by, and copyrighted to, HP.

It appears that somewhere along the line, the color profile is being added to the image. It's not clear if this is on iOS (which I've seen claims stating it is not color-managed), during the move to Mac or in iPhoto/Photos. I have images that were in iPhoto and copied back out, and have not been touched by Photos, that have the same Exif data. I have also used the Photo Investigator app on iPhone to view Exif data for images that were taken on iPhone but have not yet been transferred to a computer, and they list the Color Model as RGB, not sRGB, so it would appear the profile is added later.


How do I install an application from a .dmg disk image?

Applications that are distributed on disk images (.dmg files) are designed to be installed using drag and drop. You can safely drag and drop the application from the virtual drive into your Applications folder and use it from your Applications folder. After copying it to your Applications folder it's safe to eject the virtual drive and delete the disk image file.

Nearly all applications will work just fine running off that virtual hard drive as they store their content in your user folder (eg. browsers, mail applications, etc.). It will however stop you from running application updates as the disk image is read only.


How to make Final Cut Pro to use my Tera bytes' HDD and not my Laptop's HDD?

Change the Save to location to be your external drive.

Since 10.1 you can also create a library which can be stored externally. See:

http://support.apple.com/kb/HT5958


How to make it clear that a value is being changed using keynote

Use the Inspector tool to add build-in and build-out transition to your texts and cross.

You'll have 4 build order steps :

cross fade in
cross disappear
text "20%" disappear
text "40%" appear

Play with duration and 'start build' settings to obtain desired effect.
See http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1X-5AizWIJE for a screencast ;)


Why is my Final Cut Pro library file so bloated?

You are right to leave media in the original location to help save space. Beyond this setting, take a look at your Library's settings.

Manage Storage Locations

Final Cut Pro is likely creating proxy and optimised copies of your original media. By default, these temporary files are stored within your Final Cut Pro libraries. You can change the location of temporary files, see Final Cut Pro X: Manage storage locations.

When you finish working on a project, ask Final Cut Pro to delete all associated runtime created files:

Final Cut Pro.app > File (menu) > Delete Generated Library Files…

This will dramatically reduce the file size of your library.


Mac OS X Mavericks Contacts Database is a SQLite db, how can i open it with a SQLite App?

Address Book contacts and data are stored in

~/Library/Application Support/AddressBook/AddressBook-v22.abcddb.

You will have to load the file into your Sqlite Broswer App and export whichever tables you want.  Each field in a contact is set to a different table.

While in the Contacts.app do a File-->Export.  This is a good idea to make a backup of your contacts before you start playing with the database it uses.  Not knowing what sqlite app you use it's hard to say but there should be an option to Export whatever tables you need.


Google's Chrome browser includes a built-in flash plugin. I uninstalled Flash on my system too but I use Chrome for loading up sites which require flash.

Another tack you might try is to install Click to Plugin. I was going to recommend Click to Flash, but apparently that isn't under development anymore and the developer recommends Click to Plugin.


Retrieving an accidently deleted notes folder well after 30 days

If you haven't got backups of your device, it is very unlikely that you'll be able to retrieve these notes after 8 months. If you've left the device on the shelf, powered off for those 8 months, there's a slim chance - but if you have used the device, it is extremely unlikely.

You'll have to take the iPhone to a lab that does recovery from the flash storage devices on iPhones. It will be costly, and there's really only a very, very slim small chance that your notes can be found again.


Unable to configure to native resolution on LCD of retina macbook pro

Apple's System Preferences don't allow you to change to full native resolution.

You can use the displaymode command line tool to change to the native resolution.

Download the binary from the "releases" section, and extract it if necessary.  Then from Terminal.app, cd to the directory the displaymode file is in and run:

./displaymode t 2880 1800


Is there a free program to join and cut AVI movie files?

You can also use the concat demuxer with ffmpeg:

ffmpeg -f concat -i <(for f in $PWD/*.avi;do echo "file '$f'";done) -c copy output.avi

-c copy disables re-encoding the streams.

You can install ffmpeg with brew install ffmpeg after installing Homebrew.

See https://trac.ffmpeg.org/wiki/How%20to%20concatenate%20%28join,%20merge%29%20media%20files for more information.


Forcing `open` command to open unsigned app?

Create and add a Gatekeeper label to the app. (‘Approved’ is an arbitrary string.)

spctl --add --label "Approved" /path/to/xyz.app

Approve all apps with the label.

spctl --enable --label "Approved"

This only needs to be done once and adding the same named label to apps in the future automatically enables their access.
Open the app as usual.

open xyz.app

For more information about spctl (SecAssessment system policy security), see the man page.


Share to Messages from Safari fails - missing library

User error - I had an older version of Messages that was being opened on login.  When I used the version in the Applications folder Share worked correctly.


How can I delete "Passenger" from my "System Preference"?

Just right click the icon and select remove. (it will be moved to trash which you can empty to get rid of it completely)


Maximum drive size size (dimensions) that will fit in a Mac Mini Server 2012

As it turns out, 9.5mm (0.374") is the maximum size that can be installed without modifications to the Mac. Bummer.


How can I clean up my user Library folder?

Your Library folder contains several things which may be quite large: all your mails (including attachments), various caches, databases of some applications (e.g. Evernote) etc., so the big size might be ok (or even desired!).

To identify the big stuff you can open Terminal.app and run

cd ~/Library
du -sm * | sort -n

which will show you the largest directories at the end. Use cd again to drill further done and repeat the du command.

PS: Just for reference: My Library folder currently holds about 16 GB of Evernote data, 4 GB Developer docs from Xcode, 1 GB mail and 1.5 GB iOS software updates.


Yes, you can upgrade the drive in your MacBook Pro 13 Mid 2012 to an SSD. Here is a detailed guide from iFixit specifically on hard drive replacement.

And here are more tutorials from Other World Computing on how to handle various upgrades such as memory, hard drive, battery replacement, etc…


Alternative to Preview app to search for text in multiple documents at the same time

Use Spotlight.

  Spotlight is a system-wide desktop search feature of Apple's macOS and
  iOS operating systems. Spotlight is a selection-based search system,
  which creates an index of all items and files on the system. It is
  designed to allow the user to quickly locate a wide variety of items
  on the computer, including documents, pictures, music, applications,
  and System Preferences. In addition, specific words in documents and
  in web pages in a web browser's history or bookmarks can be searched.
  It also allows the user to narrow down searches with creation dates,
  modification dates, sizes, types and other attributes.

With Spotlight you can do advanced searches and filter for example on file extensions like .pdf.


How to turn off the iSight indicator when I'm using the Camera?

No, you cant.
Fortunately (or in your case unfortunately) there is no way to simply hit a switch that turns off the light. The problem is that the iSight camera's light is set to come on whenever an application uses it.
It's partly a security feature built-in for your own convenience. Think if it like the "On Air" sign in a way.
Depending on your model of mac (you didn't mention one specifically) it may be possible to physically disconnect the LED light from the controller, rendering it offline until plugged in again. However, for the majority of new Macs this may prove a challenge.
If your bezel doesn't happen to be white metal (think MacBook Air), you could go over it with a black permanent marker. Something that greatly reduces the light emitted from the iSight indicator.

At this time, there is no software to disable it. You would either:

Quit the Application using the camera.
Inhibit the physical connection to the indicator.

Hopefully that shed some light on the situation in 2018 as similar questions have attracted a lot of attention over the years. Even I have searched for a solution many years ago but have learnt since to ignore it.

Let me know what model you have and I might be able to be a little more specific in my reasoning (much has changed in the physical layout of the bezel). Let me know how you make out or if you come up with a better solution, I'd be very interested myself.


It will likely run higher than 2.4 GHz in bursts and then throttle itself as heat builds up and/or all cores are busy constantly at which time you should expect full load 1.1 GHz or better.

So - it will run at both speeds and many others.

There is no indication that the Intel CPU works any differently in the MacBook than all the rest recent Mac hardware. The lower number is a steady state / worst case / all cores are active and running and the heat being generated by the CPU is being removed as designed - you get 1.1 GHz clock rate for hours long calculations.

When you wake the Mac from sleeping, it will generally start in power savings mode and the CPU only spins up cores / clock rate when there is work to do, but it will ramp up to the burst GHz (or possibly higher) once you have one thread worth of work to get done.

If your work is single threaded, you can expect performance similar to a 2.4 GHz clock rate CPU unless/until the internal temperature near the CPU raises close to the design limit.

Since this product isn't shipping, only Apple's engineers really know how the case without a blower will cool the processor and what loads will run at which speeds.

No Apple software allows you to "boost" things on previous MacBook / Pro / Air - so it's hard to guess if they will continue that pattern.


Is there any way to backup and restore your iOS apps *without* re-downloading all of them?

You can backup the iphone from itunes from a mac/windows pc and the when you need to restore choose to restore from an itunes backup.


MBP Retina screen, shows facebook page faded even after closed

Apparently it is called ghosting and happens on MBPs with LG display units.

http://www.macworld.co.uk/mac/news/?newsid=3435647


Whatsapp on iOS, how to delete voice messages?

Now, after 1000 views on this question it's worth updating my answer:

Recently, a function has been added to Whatsapp that lets you delete ALL voice messages from a chat.

open Whatsapp
hit "Settings"
click "Data and Storage Usage"
click "Storage Usage"
select a chat
click "Manage..."
remove every checkmark except for "Voice Messages"

(You can also delete other stuff in there but I wanna keep all of that haha)


What I can see from the photo, it doesn't look like scratches. Instead it looks like the anti-reflective coating is "peeling off". This is a manufacturing defect.

Apple has a program where you can get a free display replacement, if this is indeed the case.

The following laptops are eligible:

• MacBook Pro (13-inch, Early 2013)
• MacBook Pro (15-inch, Early 2013)
• MacBook Pro (13-inch, Late 2013)
• MacBook Pro (15-inch, Late 2013)
• MacBook Pro (13-inch, Mid 2014)
• MacBook Pro (15-inch, Mid 2014)
• MacBook Pro (13-inch, Early 2015)
• MacBook Pro (15-inch, Mid 2015)
• MacBook Pro (13-inch, 2016)
• MacBook Pro (15-inch, 2016)
• MacBook Pro (13-inch, 2017)
• MacBook Pro (15-inch, 2017)
• MacBook (12-inch, Early 2015)
• MacBook (12-inch, Early 2016)
• MacBook (12-inch, Early 2017)

The program seems to cover them for 4 years from the original purchase date.

You'll need to contact Apple Support to find out if this is really the problem with your laptop, and whether or not it is covered for a free screen replacement.


You can use

Mail
Dropbox
Google Drive
And many more

Basically you just need to be able to watch the pdf on your iPad in order to save and open it with iBooks also, you can still sync with iTunes


Go to System Preferences, then Keyboard. Select Shortcuts. On the left pane, find Accessibility. Now on the right pane enable Invert colors and then click on the shortcut box to reassign the shortcut to Cmd+Q.

That's it. Now when you press Cmd+Q the colors of the screen will be inverted. Press it again to go back to normal colors. No more accidentally quitting applications (like closing over two hundred tabs on Firefox when trying to use Cmd+a or three dozen pdfs on Preview when trying to use Cmd+tab; last two things I did, never again.)

P.S. Whoever thought it was a good idea to use Cmd+Q to quit applications should go back to usability school.

There's also a nice plugin that you can use called Always Ask, which forces a prompt dialog before leaving Firefox.


Unable to view secure web pages from one particular user account

When any User Account mysteriously acts up, the fastest, easiest thing is ofen to make a new User Account, log in to that and see if the problem reocccurs. It's also a logical troubleshooting step.


How to create a simple keyboard macro with Automator?

If you don't want to use any third party apps you are really complicating your life. Although I think it's possible.

1) Open Automator and create a new Service. In your workflow you want to Run Applescript. In there you tell it to press the keys you want.

Once you save it as a Service you can then set up a keyboard shortcut for it in System Preferences. It should automatically show up under the General group. Make sure it's enabled and give it a keyboard shortcut.

I have gotten this to work by testing the Show history function Cmd-Y. Hopefully the above isn't too cryptic.

If you want to set global shortcuts and run scripts you might want to look at BetterTouchTool: http://blog.boastr.net/


To add /Library/PostgreSQL/9.5/bin to the path simply add the line:

export PATH="/Library/PostgreSQL/9.5/bin:$PATH"

to the file ~/.bash_profile. If you have a second similar line starting with export PATH... try to concatenate them.

After adding then line quit and open Terminal.app or enter source ~/.bash_profile to reload the modified .bash_profile.

Check the path with echo $PATH (which should yield: /Library/PostgreSQL/9.5/bin:/usr/bin:/bin:/usr/sbin:/sbin:/usr/local/bin and the "existence" of psql with which psql: /Library/PostgreSQL/9.5/bin/psql.

Afterwards enter psql -d database_name -U database_user_name with the following result:

Password for user database_user_name:
psql (9.5.1)
Type "help" for help.

postgres=#

Simply entering psql is as futile as entering mkdir or ssh only.


Dual boot on macbook pro 2015 (macOS Sierra and Kali Linux)

I used the guide on Kali's official website for me, which is here: http://docs.kali.org/installation/kali-linux-dual-boot-on-mac-hardware. I to have a MacBook Pro Retina running OS Sierra, I hope that will help your installation.


App rejected for age rating, despite having no adult content whatsoever

Requests for changed metadata happen all the time. If after a day or two of careful review of the iTunes Connect FAQ and guidelines, you still aren't comfortable you can always ask for more help.

In iTunes Connect - select contact us.

For the first option - App Review.
For the second option - App Store Review
For the third option - Ask/Address Review Questions

From your posted answers, you could also go for the 4+ rating and put a parental gate in rather than ask people to confirm they are 13+ before entering user information. The easiest fix might be to not ask for registration at all. Also, if you have any sort of web browser or user configurable internet search lookup or feeds, you’ll want to disclose you have unfiltered access to the internet.

My suspicion is you’re hung up on section 5.1 privacy. https://developer.apple.com/app-store/review/guidelines/#privacy

In the end, you are correct that it’s your call on which you feel best serves your app - no sense compromising your answers if you’re certain that’s most important.


Can I connect Amazon fire TV/fire TV stick to my Macbook Pro instead of TV?

Amazon Fire TV requires a TV with an HDMI input channel to display video, something MacBooks (or pretty much any computer) are lacking. So no, this will not work (it won't work with an Apple TV/MacBook combination either).


You can turn on Home Sharing in iTunes and allow other users to stream music from it to iOS devices or Apple TV and copy content to their own libraries. You can also prevent their playcounts from being updated in your library.

Open iTunes
Go to iTunes > Preferences
Go to the Sharing tab
Check Share my library on my local network
Choose entire library or specific playlists
Uncheck Home Sharing computers and  devices update play counts if you do not want this to be updated

See Setting up Home Sharing on your computer for more information.


What steps should I take next, to investigate this issue without
  harming the failed drive further?

Stop using, manipulating, testing, whatever you're doing to the drive immediately.

At this point, all you know is that your RAID array failed.  You don't know what in your RAID failed and it could be one of two components:

The enclosure
The drives

If it's the enclosure, your drives are likely fine.  Continued use of them, even if interrogating them for diagnostics could compromise the RAID table sending your data into oblivion.  You can test the enclosure by putting in two more drives; cheap, used ones are fine and they don't have to be large capacity as you're just testing functionality.  If things fail again, it's the enclosure.

If it is the drive, you don't want to keep testing them out or attempting data recovery, you could further damage them making recovery impossible.

If the drives are somewhat operational and if possible, make a bit-for-bit clone of your drive to a file.  You can use dd for this task and you will do it for each drive:

$ sudo dd if=/dev/rdiskX of=/path/do/imagefileY.img

You will end up with two image files, one for each disk.  rdiskX is the disk identifier of the disk you're copying.  You can then write those images to good disks to attempt to reconstruct your array as many times as you want without the risk of further data loss.

If the drives are physically damaged, you may still be able to recover them by sending them out to a shop that specializes in this type of recovery.  Many times, it's the PCB, the drive motor (the one that spins the platters) or the stepper motor (the one that moves the heads).  This company will replace the broken components so that you (or them) will be able to extract the data.

RAID Recovery Software

You mentioned that you don't know what RAID Level you were using.

  I have a macOS Server setup which is connected to two RAID (0, I think) systems.

This is not entirely critical.  If the drives can be remounted, the RAID table which holds the configuration can be read and recovery can proceed.  I have recovered RAID arrays in Windows several times using software made by Stellar Phoenix with excellent results.  There are a couple of RAID recovery vendors for Mac, though I haven't used them (because I changed my backup strategy long ago) - take a look at Prosoft Engineering and Easus.  I have heard (anecdotally) good things about each.

This brings us to the final point that needs mentioning...

RAID is not a backup!

RAID is for performance and/or redundancy, not for backups.  RAID 0, is striping data across at least 2 drives meaning the two drives are "combined" to serve as one big drive and both drives working in tandem means you get twice the performance (two drives reading one file).  RAID 1 is mirroring which is great for redundancy and uptime.  If a drive fails you continue to function lessening the impact of downtime.

PC Magazine has an excellent write up on the different RAID levels.

Backup Strategy

Going back to what I said about changing my backup strategy a long time ago, I architect everything (in my server rooms) for redundancy.  Multiple servers would connect to two mirrored disk arrays that was either RAID 5, RAID 10, or RAID 0+1.  Then we had two backups - one that did a differential every day and another that imaged the whole array weekly.

This is overkill for your purposes, but it illustrates the point of not relying on RAID for your backups.

In your case, you can use your RAID enclosure for backup.  However, I would also have a cheap USB drive (a second backup)  that backed up your system as well.  The chances of both failing are much smaller now.  I've written several answers on backup strategies:

How to backup Time Machine's backup to a cloud?
Offsite Backup Strategy for Multiple Macs
How to backup data from one external drive to another (one-way)


.ZIP from Windows to Mac: folder structure lost - how to avoid that?

The default install of macOS does not have an "Extra File" context menu - it seems like that could be a third party program / plugin.

The default install of macOS comes with the Archive Utility for uncompressing for example ZIP files. It will preserve folder structure by default.

So in your case, either you're using a third party extractor, that does not by default preserve folder structure, or you have made a mistake when making the compressed file.

I would test by building a small test folder structure on the Mac, then select the top folder in Finder and choose "Compress" from the context menu. Now you'll have a ZIP-file that you can try uncompressing in a different folder. This should create the same folder structure that you initially compressed.


It should appear as a Radio icon on the lower left. If it doesn't, try closing the Music app by swiping up from the App Switcher view, then re-starting, making sure that you are connected to the Internet when you open the Music app.

Also, make sure that you are using an Apple ID that is based in the US.


before we go on fixing lets find out it is working at all.

In Terminal type (to turn it on)

networksetup -setairportpower en0 on

Next type (to scan)

/System/Library/PrivateFrameworks/Apple80211.framework/Versions/A/Resources/airport scan

Finally type (to connect)

networksetup -setairportnetwork en0 WIFI_SSID_I_WANT_TO_JOIN WIFI_PASSWORD

Also:

While holding the alt key click on the wifi icon

In the pop up window select Open Wireless Diagnostics...follow the instructions.


Is it possible to rename "iCloud Drive"?

The iCloud Drive item in the sidebar actually points to ~/Library/Mobile Documents/com~apple~CloudDocs. That said, it is not possible to rename the sidebar item, and do NOT rename the folder. Doing so will likely definitely cause iCloud Drive to stop functioning (if it even lets you rename it).


How to disable restore/resume/saved-state for a specific application in Yosemite

After some playing around I found a workaround, not sure if there's something better:

Open Preview, close all documents, close Preview.
cd ~/Library/Containers/com.apple.Preview/Data/Library/Saved\ Application\ State/com.apple.Preview.savedState
chmod -w .
chmod -w *

There will be similar folders for other applications.


Isn't Inactive memory a waste of resources?

Inactive memory got a horrible rap due to a crappy name. It should have been called something like "make your Mac really fast the second, third, and fourth time it does the same task" memory except that's an awful name, too.

Apple re-wrote the activity monitor when it introduced several new features and added compressed memory, so some of this no longer applies to macOS that don’t show “Inactive Memory” but this still applies to Mac OS X memory management as documented against this version of Activity Monitor: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201538

Here's how I explained things to someone new to the concept of virtual memory on OS X:

Wired: The system cannot run without this amount of RAM (never swapped)
Active: Programs are really using this memory now or in the last few seconds
Inactive: Things that programs have read from the slow disk or elsewhere and said they never need again. Engineers know better, you will go back to Facebook in a few minutes or re-launch Word after quitting it. The same things happen again and again on computers.
Free: Totally Wasted RAM - the system only needs one or two MB free to cover short term allocation requests. For largest allocations, it simply uses some of the Inactive RAM by allocating it to active/wired and removing the information on what it used to hold.

The problem arises when Free+Inactive is less than roughly 1/3 of the total and then things can really get slow.

Inactive memory is bonus speed / double duty RAM. It serves as free at a moment's notice, but also makes repeated tasks much, much faster if the system guessed correctly and kept something in RAM that you will do again. It's faster than swapped memory since it's already loaded in RAM and accelerates things when the virtual memory system makes good guesses.

When you are wondering if RAM is a problem, rather than looking at each of the 4 categories (5 if you count active swap), you can couple W+A as slowing down a new program/task and F+I as speeding up a new program/task. The more F+I you have, the more new programs you can launch before the RAM needs to rely on swapping to juggle the memory that has been allocated.

You don't really need to know how swap works since I mentioned it above. Basically, when a program is sitting idle and hasn't been used for days (or hours) the system will write that RAM to the hard drive rather than kill the program. This lets the system shuffle and handle all sorts of things relating to memory management and keeps each program from needing to talk amongst themselves to agree who will use less memory when the system runs out.

Here is a real world example of how inactive RAM is used.

Quit all apps and make sure the two Apps we are testing are not set to auto start when you log in
Reboot your Mac
Fire up your Activity Monitor and watch the RAM throughout
Time how long it takes to start Application A (MS Word would be a good choice)
Quit A
Time how long it takes to start Application B (Adobe something would also be good)
Quit B
Time how long the second launch of A takes
Quit A
Time B's second launch.
Time A's start the third time with B running.

You should see dramatic speedups for the second / third launch as the system learns to keep in inactive RAM the things these two apps need to run.

In your case - the total of Wired and Active means that some swapping to disk is likely happening and your Mac isn't as fast as it could be since your inactive RAM isn't large enough to store all the things you might need to reuse. If you have a fast SSD drive, this RAM allocation is OK and instead of starting to slow down once less than 1/2 of your RAM is F+I, you can cut things closer to like 1/4 of the total RAM for F+I before seeing noticeable slowness. These guidelines are general, and you'll want to watch vm_stat 15 or some similar interval to ensure continual and medium volume swapping isn't making your Mac slow.


I assume you should try to test the SIM with another phone in order to see if it really works.

Test

All you have to do is pretty simple:

Get your SIM ejector and take it off from your current iPhone
Get another iPhone and put it in
Unlock the SIM on the new iPhone and make sure LTE is activated properly under Settings > Cellular > Cellular Data Options

Once done this, I'd definitely try to contact your carrier's support (which if I'm not wrong is AT&T in your case) and report them the result of the test and see how they can help you.

Hope this helped you out, and don't forget to let me up to date on the question!


If I buy an SSL Certificate, is this trusted in Apple without installing cert file in iOS?

Purchasing an SSL certificate will not require any further configuration on the device, regardless of whether this is from a 'standard' Certificate Authority.

If the certificate is purchased from a standard Certificate Authority, this provides the additional benefit of verifying the company being represented by the domain, but this is tangental to the actual HTTPS requirement by Ad-Hoc distribution.


How to kerberize services on Mac bound to Kerberos KDC on Linux?

You don’t need to bind a mac to use Kerberos. In fact, binding brings a whole host of issues, one of which is lack of clarity at which problem you are chasing down.

To test and validate Kerberos tickets and transactions are operational at the command line use kinit and klist (both of which have quite adequate manual pages that describe the detaults. You will want to point kinit at your service principal with the -S or --service argument the first time you initialize Kerberos.)

Perhaps I don’t fully understand what you are trying to accomplish - if so, please comment and/or ask a follow on question with those details. We’re using this to great benefit at work and haven’t needed to bind any macs and have ripped out the binding on all but a few that need to share out files as servers and they don’t need kinit or klist - just to be bound properly one time.


Are purchasing items through apps against the rules of the App Store?

Amazon and eBay are not using In-App Purchases (IAP) to purchase their products.  For instance, I have an app that allows an IAP for users to access other features of the app.  The purchases are made in the app for something that is part of the app and the users are able to pay via iTunes/AppStore payment process.

Amazon and eBay allow you to make purchases thru their apps but they're not done for things like 'no advertising' or 'add social media access'.  They're for goods and services that are not being made thru the Apple-provided buying medium, iTunes or the App Store.  So these purchases are not IAP purchases.


How often do my Mac contacts sync with Gmail?

Assuming you've synced your contacts via Address Book then, if you want a deterministic way of syncing in addition to the periodic sync, you can invoke a sync manually from the menu bar app.

OSX is a bit unpleasant in that it will only add this menu item if you set up iCloud, however, you can add this menu to your menu bar without iCloud :) To do so, you need to open a file called Sync.menu located in System/Library/CoreServices/Menu Extras on your install volume (usually Macintosh HD).

You should only need to open this file once and then the menu item will remain on your menu bar until you remove it and should persist through logins and reboots.

If you want a quick terminal command to do the above then fire up Terminal and enter the following:

open /System/Library/CoreServices/Menu\ Extras/Sync.menu


Is anyone else having signal strength problems on an iPhone 3GS since the iOS 4.1 upgrade?

Did you move from 4.0 to 4.1, or from 4.0.1/2 to 4.1? Between 4.0 and 4.0.1 Apple changed the calibration of the bar display, such that at a given signal strength it shows a fewer bars. They did that in response to the iPhone 4 antenna publicity, but the changes were done for all devices that support 4.x.

So, if you went straight from 4.0 to 4.1 getting fewer bars is expected, though if you are dropping calls where you previously didn't that is a real issue, or if you updated from 4.0.2.


finder is very slow to show files in yosemite 10.10.3

I also faced a very, very slow Finder. After looking around on the Internet I just started trying different things.

This worked for me:

Make sure you have a backup using Time Machine (I did not need it, but you better do it in case...).
Open Disk Utility and check the Macintosh.
It showed different problems in my case, and wasn't able to repair it using Disk Utility. Therefore follow the next steps.
Restart your laptop holding cmd+R until the Apple logo appears.
Choose to repair the disk.


Does Yosemite have a problem reaching alternate subnets?

No - I've not had any issues with 10.10 or 10.11 with multiple subnets, multiple IP address per host and multiple network interfaces on a single OS/Mac.

I'd think something else is up. Are you familiar with the bonjour utility:

dns-sd -B _http
dns-sd -B _ipp

You can take the instance name and then dig up the IP address and cross reference it with arp -a to figure out many printing network issues...

mac:~ me$ dns-sd -L "Living Room HP D110" _ipp local.
Lookup Living Room HP D110._ipp._tcp.local.
DATE: ---Sat 28 Nov 2015---
12:44:33.139  ...STARTING...
12:44:33.584  Living\032Room\032HP\032D110._ipp._tcp.local. can be reached at hp.local.:631 (interface 4)
 txtvers=1 qtotal=1 pdl=application/vnd.hp-PCL,image/urf,image/jpeg rp=ipp/printer URF=CP1,MT1-2-8-9-10-11,OB9,OFU0,PQ3-4-5,RS300-600,SRGB24,W8,IS1 ty=Photosmart\ D110\ series product=\(HP\ Photosmart\ D110\ series\) usb_MFG=HP usb_MDL=Photosmart\ D110\ series priority=60 mac=68:b5:99:3e:a3:8b adminurl=http://hp.local. note=Family\ Room Color=T Duplex=F Scan=T
^C

Also, pings are the first packets to get dropped in most network overload scenarios, so try telnet on a known port (80 or 631 in this case) to get a reliable indication of health of the printer or device on the network.

You might need to handle IPv6 and IPv4 versions of the tools, too. (ping6 and telnet -6)


Touch ID not working after replacement of display unit of iPhone

I read a lot of rumors in the internet. I read stories about people that spent several hundreds of euros for this. People keep telling that its hopeless and only Apple could fix this. In fact theres so much disinformation that I decided to write here in the hope to reach more frustrated users. Further there is common confusion with the "Error 53" when changing the home button. I dare to say that the cause of most of the nonfunctional buttons out there is the following:

The connector for the homebutton is floating. The short flex cable of the male connector below makes is hard to use directed force to plug the connector in. Since you don't want to damage anything you will just softly push it until it sticks. Therefore there is a high chance it is not connected correctly. I recommend using something as a pad below the connectors, e.g. the plastic scoop delivered with most of the display sets, to apply a counter force from below. This way the flex cable won't be damaged and the connector can be plugged in correctly.


The login information is discrete for Amazon Kindle and Apple iCloud. You may need to re-login to your Kindle account, but the iCloud account shouldn't effect it any other way.


How do I find out the applescript commands available for a particular app?

Yes, there is a simple way.

Open the Script Editor app (formerly called AppleScript Editor)
Go to File -> Open Dictionary
Select the app you want to find out more about.

When you open it, you can browse through the available AppleScript commands for that application and find what you want.


How to view Chrome browsing history on ipad?

A new iPad version of Chrome has this feature where you can type chrome://history into the search field / address bar to retrieve history.

Currently the iOS version of Google Chrome is 28.0.1500.16 so presumably older versions of the app do not have any way to get history, but newer versions do.


ignore duplicates when browsing bash history

Adding

export HISTCONTROL=ignoreboth:erasedups

to ~/.bash_profile worked for me.


I use Go2Shell for that purpose. It's a free app which can be added to Finder. Clicking on it will open a new Terminal window with the current directory.

You can get it on the Mac App Store.


The rule is if a monitor is attached, GPU needs to push content to it, therefore taking out memory space.

The good thing is, that space is quite small when a game is in fullscreen since it's just a big black canvas being pushed.

The bad news is, performance isn't degraded because of the VRAM, it's rendering units.

Each GPUs is made up of different units specialized in performing different tasks. There's one kind of units that are specialized in rendering outputs.

That said, even if the retina display is blank, it still consumes a great deal of rendering unit's resources. That is what I think make the game slow.

It's like the difference between my recently purchased GTX 660 TI and 670. They are as good as each other in terms of calculation performance (texel rate, effects), but it has slower RAM and less rendering units. That makes it perform much worse in high resolution.


AirPort Utility (5.6) stuck on "Configuring your existing wireless network to allow it to be joined"

AirPort Utility 5.6 isn't really supported anymore, so I found the only true solution to be to use Airport Utility 6.1.

To solve this question, I had to reset every single AirPort Express, Extreme and Time Capsule, but it works a lot better now.


gfxCardStatus is a free app that lives in your menu bar. When you click it, it tells you which graphics card you're using. It also has a beta feature that lets you manually switch to one or the other.

Hope it serves you well.


Can't stream audio from OSX Mavericks to Apple TV

much simpler command:

sudo pkill coreaudiod


If it's a first generation MacBook Air, the latest OS it can run is 10.7.5

Source: EveryMac


MySQL - Ruby on Rails mysql gem not working on snow leopard

This looks like a permissions problem.  Make sure you have a password set in your mysql and are able to login from the command line

mysql -u root -p

This should prompt you for your root password.  If you can login there, that means you should be set.  All you need to do then is put the password in your database.yml file and retry the rake command.


Can I back up one external hard drive to a smaller external hard drive via Time Machine?

Question 1:
The short answer is 'yes' so long as there is room for the data.  But:
Time Machine will backup your system disk plus your 10 GB disk to another disk which has is large enough for the data you have plus space for future changes.
You might consider benefits of using Time Machine for just your system disk, but to use something else for backup of your external 10TB drive.  Examples I would recommend are Carbon Copy Cloner and Chronosync. Using Chronosync in a one way sync is appropriate if you occasionally (or frequently!) reorganise your data - this is not Time Machine friendly.
Question 2:
Only you can answer that as it depends on how much data you expect to add.
A longer answer is that you would seem to be a good candidate for using a NAS.
Caveat: I have attempted this answer with the assumption that your only disks are internal system disk and the two externals.
Aside: For always on continuous use I prefer a mains powered disk (desktop) over a bus powered (portable) hard disk drive.


How to renew Apple Developer Membership manually?

You can renew starting 30 days before the expiration date of your existing membership or any time after it expires. Your expiration date is available in your account on the developer website. To renew, sign in to your account with the Apple ID you used to enroll, and click the "Renew Membership” button.

https://developer.apple.com/support/renewal/


Make sure you have all of your iPhone songs already loaded in your iTunes library. If you previously synced iTunes on your computer with your iPhone, this is most certainly the case.
Connect your iPad to your computer and run iTunes
In your iPad from within iTunes, navigate to the "Music" tab and make sure that the "Sync music" and "Entire library" options are ticked.
Click on the Apply button.

Your iTunes library songs will now be pushed to your iPad.

You can alternatively enable iTunes match on both your iPhone and your iPad, and have iTunes Match push your iPhone songs to your iPad. More information about iTunes Match here:

http://support.apple.com/kb/ht4914


I've found this app called Vox. I was looking for something similar to yourself and it seems to be the best option that I can find.
Here is an image of some of the UI (from their website, linked above):

(source: coppertino.com)
When the app is running, you also get menu bar icons like these:
The lefthand button shows a dropdown with the 6 next songs and has a shortcut to open the full app again:

A couple of points to note:

I've found that if you have playlists organised into playlist folders in iTunes, that unfortunately it won't recognise them all.
You have to reload your music from iTunes every time you open the app.

I know this is a late answer, but hope it helps! :)


Copy the file from another system or a trusted person's machine

If you have a second machine with a comparable build of OS X installed on it, you can copy the file from it. Feel free to ask for the checksum of a file in chat to compare it to if you wish to make sure that the file is correct (not modified accidentally/purposefully).

Pacifist with OS X install media

If you've got an OS X install media and Pacifist, you can browse the install media and grab the file.

If you have Pacifist but no install media, it will prompt you to download the installer.


How to turn off "terminal would like to administer your computer" message?

Please also see Reset All Mojave App Permissions

These are new(ish) security features that have been gradually introduced in recent macOS versions.  Apple noticeable ramped up these security controls with the release of mojave.

The system noticed that Terminal was being used to access files that aren't normally edited by end users.  (Were you attempting to edit the crontab for the root user? ... i.e. sudo crontab -e?

The command line utility that can control this is tccutil.

To reset warnings associated with the Terminal app, you can use tccutil reset All com.apple.Terminal.  This will reset permissions and warnings associated with Terminal back to factory defaults ... but from here you would be allowed to grant permissions to Terminal.


Google Keep for iOS - Is there a setting to play a sound with reminder?

Google Keep for iOS was updated today 11/5/2015, after some quick tests the issue appears resolved. Sound/Vibrate on reminders is working in my case.

Thanks to all who read or posted on SO or elsewhere regarding this question.

Also, thanks go out to Google. Well played.


Is there a way to figure out when was my ipad / iphone disconnected from charge cable?

In my professional experience I say it was definitely the cats.


Can I use two USB-C to HDMI/DVI cables to hook up to two monitors from my MacBook Pro (2017)?

Can I buy a USB-C to DVI cable and plug the USB-C side directly to the MacBook Pro USB-C port?

Yes.  This is exactly how you would do it.
I would avoid using HDMI on your first monitor and instead opt for a pure DisplayPort to DisplayPort connection (the Thunderbolt ports natively output a DP signal). But if you must, use an active adapter for best results.   As for the monitor that uses the DVI port, a simple converter should do, depending on the monitor.  Depending on the resolution that monitor is capable of, you may need a dual link DVI adapter.  In that case, it  must be active.

Connect Apple 30" Cinema Display to new MacBook USB-C
What's wrong with HDMI?


What is "usernoted" and why is it eating my CPU?

Usernoted is a process that is responsible for notifications on OS X.

The instructions from this post solved usernoted sitting at 100% CPU on my Mac, even though they were intended to only fix stuck Notification settings:

Open the Library folder in your Home folder.
In the Library folder, open the Application Support folder.
Locate the folder named NotificationCenter. Drag this folder to the desktop.
Next, open the Terminal application.
Copy and paste each line of these commands into the Terminal window, in order. Press return after each line:

cd `getconf DARWIN_USER_DIR`
rm -rf com.apple.notificationcenter
killall usernoted; killall NotificationCenter

Close the Terminal app.
Restart your computer.

For me, the problem started after I had upgraded from Yosemite to El Capitan: usernoted was constantly sitting at 100% CPU and nothing I tried (force-quitting usernoted, checking if Growl or Bark are installed, booting into safe mode, SMC reset, running all the maintenance and cleaning scripts in Onynx, etc.) seemed to help until I tried the steps listed above.


Installing Nikon Capture NX2 on 10.12 Sierra

I had the same issue when I upgraded from Mavericks straight to Sierra. Capture NX2 broke. However, I had earlier installed Capture NX2 on my wife's computer running Yosemite. In desperation I copy pasted the program from her computer to mine and it is now working in Sierra. This was more by luck than design so I cannot guarantee the same results.

The process I followed was:

Disable SIP (system integrity protection). Please check online how to do this. It can be re-enabled later. This step may or may not be necessary but it was what I followed.
Uninstall everything Nikon related from Sierra first. Make sure you clean up any Nikon associated files from HD/Library/Application support and HD/Libraries/Preferences in Sierra. This will have to be done manually.
Then copy paste from a Yosemite computer running Capture NX2 2.4.7. The folders and files I copied were:

The NIKON software folder from Applications to Applications on new computer.
Copy the Nikon folder from /Library/Applications Support (It contains a Nikon sub folder which in turn contains a further six sub folders) to HD/Library/Application Support on the new computer. Subfolders in Nikon folder are listed below:

a Capture NX 2

b Common

c OptionalPictureControl

d Picture Control Utility

e Profiles

f Uninstaller
Copy all Nikon related files from /Library/Preferences to HD/Library/Preferences on the new computer. These files are listed below:

a Capture NX 2.plist

b jp.co.nikon.MCA.plist

c jp.co.nikon.MCA2.plist

d jp.co.nikon.Nikon Message Center 2.plist

e jp.co.nikon.UninstallCenter (This one is a folder)

Thats it. I was surprised it worked as it was a last ditch attempt. I had tried all the other methods I could find on the internet without success. I hope this works for you, but as I said earlier this was more by luck than intent.

I had read online that users who gradually updated their OS incrementally though the various iterations of OS X retained Capture NX2 functionality. Skipping iterations especially after Yosemite was the problem.

NOTE: It is crucial to have this working on Yosemite before upgrading to later versions of OS X.


AppleTV is multilingual. Mine is configured in german. Unfortunately I don't know the Disney Jr Francais.


Blocking incoming hostile traffic dynamically with PF and fail2ban on OS X

Here is an improved walkthrough to install fail2ban on OS X 10.10 (it probably works on 10.9 also) based on the (somehow faulty) guide at forgetcomputers.zendisk.com.

The automated installer didn't work at all for me so I did it manually.

cd to ~/Downloads and download fail2ban-0.8.10

cd ~/Downloads
curl -O https://forgetcomputers.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/article_attachments/200287990/fail2ban-0.8.10.tar.gz

Unpack the tar package:

tar xzf fail2ban-0.8.10.tar.gz

cd to fail2ban-0.8.10 and install the software:

cd fail2ban-0.8.10/
sudo python setup.py install

Make a file for the log:

sudo touch /var/log/fail2ban.log

cd back and download the modifications package:

cd ~/Downloads/
curl -O https://forgetcomputers.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/article_attachments/200287980/install_fail2ban_mods.tar.gz

Unpack this package:

tar xzf install_fail2ban_mods.tar.gz

Run the install script from the modifications package:

sudo ./fail2ban_mods/install_fail2ban_mod.sh

Make yourself sudo and rename /etc/fail2ban/jail.local (the file jail.local is superior to jail.conf and might break everything because the installed file contains a totally useless configuration):

sudo bash
mv /etc/fail2ban/jail.local /etc/fail2ban/jail.local.bak

Add the following two lines to /etc/pf.conf with nano /etc/pf.conf:

table <fail2ban> persist
block drop log quick from <fail2ban> to any

In /etc/fail2ban/jail.conf, modify the [ssh-pf] section at the end with nano as follows:

[ssh-pf]

enabled  = true
filter   = sshd
action   = pf
logpath  = /var/log/system.log
maxretry = 3

You may enter another maxretry count or define an individual bantime or findtime.
In /etc/fail2ban/action.d/pf.conf, ensure that the following values are set and modify them if necessary with nano /etc/fail2ban/action.d/pf.conf:

actionban = /sbin/pfctl -t fail2ban -T add <ip>
actionunban = pfctl -t fail2ban -T delete `pfctl -t fail2ban -T show 2>/dev/null | grep <ip>`
[Init]
tablename = fail2ban
localhost = 127.0.0.1

Shutdown pf, tell it to reload its configuration, and start it again:

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

Stop the fail2ban daemon if it is already running, and start it with launchctl:

fail2ban-client stop
launchctl load -w /Library/LaunchDaemons/org.fail2ban.init.plist
launchctl load -w /Library/LaunchDaemons/org.fail2ban.redo.plist
launchctl load -w /Library/LaunchDaemons/org.fail2ban.reset.plist

Testing the System

Open a terminal window and watch fail2ban's log (live-update):

sudo tail -f /var/log/fail2ban.log

While keeping this terminal active on the server, SSH into the server from a client and watch the server's terminal output (username is arbitrary, since we are testing what will happen when an incorrect login is attempted; replace server_ip with the IP address or hostname of the server):

 ssh username@server_ip

On the client machine, type the wrong password several times until you see a message in fail2ban's log that indicates that the client has been banned. This message will look something like this:

  2015-08-04 18:56:25,001 fail2ban.actions        [216]: NOTICE  [ssh-pf] Ban 192.168.8.15

When you see this message, the client machine's IP has been banned. At this point, any future SSH attempts from this IP (within fail2ban's bantime period) should time-out and be unsuccessful.
To stop tail just enter ctrlC

If you want to install the latest fail2ban 0.9.1

Download manually fail2ban to your ~/Downloads folder
cd to ~/Downloads and unpack the tar package:

cd ~/Downloads
tar xzf fail2ban-0.9.1.tar.gz

cd to fail2ban-0.9.1 and install the software:

cd fail2ban-0.9.1/
sudo python setup.py install

Make a file for the log:

sudo touch /var/log/fail2ban.log

cd back and download the modifications package:

cd ~/Downloads/
curl -O https://forgetcomputers.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/article_attachments/200287980/install_fail2ban_mods.tar.gz

Unpack this package:

tar xzf install_fail2ban_mods.tar.gz

Make a backup of /etc/fail2ban/filter.d/sshd.conf and copy the file from the mod_pack to the fail2ban/filter.d directory. You may copy the other filter.conf but better make a backup of the original files. I didn't test these though.

sudo bash
mv /etc/fail2ban/filter.d/sshd.conf /etc/fail2ban/filter.d/sshd.conf.old
cp ~/Downloads/fail2ban_mods/filter.d/sshd.conf /etc/fail2ban/filter.d/
cp ~/Downloads/fail2ban_mods/fail2ban_reset.sh /private/etc/fail2ban
cp ~/Downloads/fail2ban_mods/lib-launchdaemons/org.fail2ban* /Library/LaunchDaemons

Add the following two lines to /etc/pf.conf with nano /etc/pf.conf:

table <fail2ban> persist
block drop log quick from <fail2ban> to any

In /etc/fail2ban/jail.conf, modify the [ssh-pf] section at the end with nano as follows:

[ssh-pf]

enabled  = true
filter   = sshd
action   = pf
logpath  = /var/log/system.log
maxretry = 3

You may enter another maxretry count or define an individual bantime or findtime.
In /etc/fail2ban/action.d/pf.conf, ensure that the following values are set and modify them if necessary with nano /etc/fail2ban/action.d/pf.conf:

actionban = /sbin/pfctl -t fail2ban -T add <ip>/32
actionunban = /sbin/pfctl -t fail2ban -T delete <ip>/32
[Init]
tablename = fail2ban

Shutdown pf, tell it to reload its configuration, and start it again:

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

Stop the fail2ban daemon if it is already running and start it again:

fail2ban-client stop
launchctl load -w /Library/LaunchDaemons/org.fail2ban.init.plist
launchctl load -w /Library/LaunchDaemons/org.fail2ban.redo.plist
launchctl load -w /Library/LaunchDaemons/org.fail2ban.reset.plist

Now test your system again like described above.

Improvements

Since the implementation of the fail2ban table and rule is non-standard and real fail2ban-blocking doesn't survive a reboot, I reworked the whole pf-mechanism, created a separate anchor (inspired by IceFloor) to remove any dependency on Apple's /etc/pf.conf file and modified the ban action.

Starting from the fail2ban 0.9.1 install described above enter:

sudo bash
nano /etc/fail2ban/action.d/pf.conf

and change in the file /etc/fail2ban/action.d/pf.conf the lines starting with

actionban = ....

to

actionban = /sbin/pfctl -a fail2ban.anchor -t fail2ban -T add <ip>/32 && /sbin/pfctl -k <ip>/32 && /sbin/pfctl -Ef /etc/fail2ban/pf/fail2ban.conf

and

actionunban = ....

to

actionunban = /sbin/pfctl -a fail2ban.anchor -t fail2ban -T delete <ip>/32

Create a folder pf in /etc/fail2ban/

mkdir /etc/fail2ban/pf

Create three files fail2ban, fail2ban.conf and fail2ban.sh in the previously made folder with the following content; afterwards make fail2ban.sh executable with chmod:

fail2ban:

table <fail2ban> persist
block drop log quick from <fail2ban> to any

fail2ban.conf:

############### LOOPBACK ###############
#
# skip loopback (no filtering on loopback interface)
set skip on lo0

scrub-anchor "com.apple/*"

############### INBOUND ###############
#
anchor "fail2ban.anchor"
load anchor "fail2ban.anchor" from "/etc/fail2ban/pf/fail2ban"

fail2ban.sh:

#!/bin/sh

# start
#
# We need to trap on TERM signals, according to Apple's launchd docs:
#
trap 'exit 1' 15

#
# Use the "ipconfig waitall" command to wait for all the interfaces to come up:
#
ipconfig waitall
sleep 5
#
# System sysctl
#
sysctl -w net.inet6.ip6.fw.verbose=0
sysctl -w net.inet.ip.fw.verbose=0
sysctl -w net.inet.ip.fw.verbose_limit=0

#
# interface forwarding enabled by default
#
sysctl -w net.inet.ip.forwarding=1

# enable PF and load rules from default fail2ban configuration file using tokens (apple specific PF options -E and -X)
#
/sbin/pfctl -e
/sbin/pfctl -Ef /etc/fail2ban/pf/fail2ban.conf

# Exit with a clean status
exit 0

# this file is public domain and is available to everyone with no exceptions.

Create the file org.fail2ban.plist in /Library/LaunchDaemon with the following content:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN" "http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd">
<plist version="1.0">
<dict>
    <key>Disabled</key>
    <false/>
    <key>ExitTimeOut</key>
    <integer>1</integer>
    <key>Label</key>
    <string>org.fail2ban</string>
    <key>Program</key>
    <string>/etc/fail2ban/pf/fail2ban.sh</string>
    <key>RunAtLoad</key>
    <true/>
</dict>
</plist>

Remove the following two lines from /etc/pf.conf with nano /etc/pf.conf:

table <fail2ban> persist
block drop log quick from <fail2ban> to any

Load the file /Library/LaunchDaemons/org.fail2ban.plist with launchctl after stopping fail2ban and pf:

fail2ban-client stop
pfctl -d
pfctl -f /etc/pf.conf
launchctl load -w /Library/LaunchDaemons/org.fail2ban.plist
fail2ban-client start

or reboot your Mac after loading org.fail2ban.plist with launchctl.

Now banning works properly even after rebooting your system. If you want to add an IP-address manually to block it, just enter:

sudo /sbin/pfctl -a fail2ban.anchor -t fail2ban -T add <ip>/32 && /sbin/pfctl -k <ip>/32 && /sbin/pfctl -Ef /etc/fail2ban/pf/fail2ban.conf

To un-ban it (it will not automatically be un-banned after the fail2ban bantime!) enter:

sudo /sbin/pfctl -a fail2ban.anchor -t fail2ban -T delete <ip>/32

So to answer your question:

If you want to use the fail2ban table to ban an IP manually after applying the improvements, you have to enter the command above. The reason for the additional parts:

/sbin/pfctl -k <ip>/32 is needed to kill all of the state entries originating from the specified host.
/sbin/pfctl -Ef /etc/fail2ban/pf/fail2ban.conf to reload the fail2ban.conf gracefully and reflect the changes you made in the table fail2ban.

Without the above improvements you may use:

sudo /sbin/pfctl -t fail2ban -T add <ip>/32 && /sbin/pfctl -k <ip>/32 && /sbin/pfctl -Ef /etc/pf.conf

Installation of fail2ban 0.9.1 on El Capitan

I got it installed on El Capitan in rootless mode (sudo nvram boot-args="rootless=0" and reboot) after removing the doc-install part to /usr/share/docs/fail2ban (= the lines 140-143) in the setup.py of fail2ban 0.9.1.

Use the improved 0.9.1 install and config method. If the command pfctl -sA doesn't reveal fail2ban.anchor check for the correct double-quotes (no smart-quotes!) in the file /etc/fail2ban/pf/fail2ban.conf.


Help choose a better upgrade for my MacBook5,2

Snow Leopard, Lion or Mountain Lion.  As da4 mentioned, you will need to find out the capabilities of your machine and look up the requirements of the operating systems I listed.


WiFi internet sharing from iMac unreliable

From my own experience Internet Sharing is not, and has never been, as reliable as it should. Connection coming back and forth is a usual behavior of the service, heavily depending on the usage of the machine which is sharing the internet connection.

Apparently, updating to 10.7.4 makes things even worse.


Mac book pro 16 slows down completely when connected to an external monitor

After spending weeks of trying out various things: different HDMI cables, different USB-C to HDMI dongles, cleaning the fans and even leaving the air conditioner on to cool the room, the issue turned out to be:
Plugging the power cable on the left-hand side of the Macbook.
Solution:
Plugging the power cable to the right-hand side of the MacBook and the monitors to the left-hand side, solved the issue for me immediately.
Came across this Forbes article:
https://www.forbes.com/sites/barrycollins/2020/04/24/why-you-shouldnt-charge-your-macbook-pro-from-the-left-hand-side/?sh=6209dcda78ff
Which I can now say, works. So if you are experiencing something similar and if your power cable is on the left hand side, moving it to the right hand side may fix it for you.
The other thing I would try (which I did) was to clean out your fans if this still does not work for you.


Can I safely delete from my iphone photos shared by friends?

Photos of a shared stream can only be deleted by the owner thereof. Once deleted, this photos will be automatically deleted from any device of anyone subscribed to the stream.

The photos you've previously saved to the Camera Roll, for instance, won't be deleted, though.


macOS Sierra - iMessage corrects me despite spellcheck is turned off

In Messages, go to Edit > Spelling and Grammar and make sure the items for automatic correction are UNchecked.


How can I stream tv shows on my iPhone 5s (without downloading)?

I'm sure there is an answer for stuff downloaded from iTunes, but since you didn't specify, then the standard solution you are looking for is PLEX MEDIA SERVER -- https://plex.tv.

They offer a Plex Pass, which you have to pay for in order to receive extra features, but I believe the free version has everything you need.

Setup the media server on your home computer.  You can even setup a NAT port on your router to access it externally, and it can either support authentication via Plex Pass or there is a hackish script somewhere on Github that allows authentication without having to purchase a Plex Pass subscription.

Then download the app on your smart phone, and you will be able to stream all of your downloaded movies that you are sharing from your Plex Media Server.  I do this all the time, and it works perfectly.  It supports transcoding on-the-fly, so you never have to worry about buffering and such.

XBMC, which is called something else now, is also an alternative, as well as OpenElec.  I've done my research though, and Plex is the definitely the most full-featured of them all.

The setup is even simpler if you only plan to watch on your own wireless network and not over the Internet.  Your mobile app (or smart TV) can find the server on its own, and it's pretty much set it and forget it.

There are multiple apps that you can download for Plex as well that integrate with Couch Potato, Sickbeard, etc.  I do this all the time for my kids in the morning when I'm making their breakfast and they want to watch something that's not OnDemand or DVR.  I just have all of their favorite shows downloaded to a folder on a Mac Mini running Plex Media Server.

I fire up the app on the iPad and get a few minutes of morning peace and quiet while getting breakfast ready.  It's pretty much perfect in all aspects.

Also, to answer your question in regards to using data, if you stream over your wireless network, you will not use any additional mobile data, as long as your mobile device is connected to WiFi.

I know your question is regarding watching on your mobile device, but here's some additional helpful info for other users:

It should be known, that not all smart TV apps offer full integration with the free version of Plex.  For instance, my parents Samsung smart TV has full Plex app integration, no problem (as does Google Chromecast).  However, my Vizio smart TV requires a Plex Pass subscription in order for the app to even work at all.


Migrating / Syncing iCloud Email to Exchange account

I find the solution, it's was too obvious, but just Mailbox menu > Export mailbox

and then can move them to correct account :  ~/Library/Mail/V4

(or import them from the menu)


Windows shortcut support for macOS Sierra

Swapping Command ⌘ and Control

NOTE: If doing the other keys, do this last. You'll have to do it again on the virtual keyboard otherwise.

Go into System Preferences.

Go into Keyboard.

Click on "Modifier Keys…"

Click on the menu adjacent to "Command (⌘) Key".

This menu should show up. Just remap Control to Command ⌘, and vice versa.

Non- Command ⌘ / Control Keys

Quite frankly, a large number of apps already support the Windows keybindings, and Mission Control makes Control+Arrow a small nightmare. But, if you must, this is how you do it.

In Karabiner-Elements, as shown by Clemsam, these combos are what you should map various keys to:

Home (Pos1): fn+control+←

End: fn+control+→

Control+←: Option+←

Control+→: Option+→

The JSON to do that is the following:

{
  "title": "Most Windows Behavior.",
  "rules": [
    {
      "description": "Change Home key to Windows behavior.",
      "manipulators": [
        {
          "type": "basic",
          "from": {
            "key_code": "home",
            "modifiers": {
              "optional": [
                "any"
              ]
            }
          },
          "to": [
            {
              "key_code": "left_arrow", "modifiers": ["fn", "left_control"]
            }
          ]
        }
      ]
    },
    {
      "description": "Change End key to Windows behavior",
      "manipulators": [
        {
          "type": "basic",
          "from": {
            "key_code": "end",
            "modifiers": {
              "optional": [
                "any"
              ]
            }
          },
          "to": [
            {
              "key_code": "right_arrow", "modifiers": ["fn", "left_control"]
            }
          ]
        }
      ]
    },
    {
      "description": "Change Control+Left Arrow to Windows behavior.",
      "manipulators": [
        {
          "type": "basic",
          "from": {
            "key_code": "right_arrow",
            "modifiers": {
              "mandatory": ["left_control"],
              "optional": [
                "any"
              ]
            }
          },
          "to": [
            {
              "key_code": "left_arrow",
              "modifiers": ["left_alt"]
            }
          ]
        }
      ]
    },
    {
      "description": "Change Control+Right Arrow key to Windows behavior.",
      "manipulators": [
        {
          "type": "basic",
          "from": {
            "key_code": "right_arrow",
            "modifiers": {
              "mandatory": [
                "left_control"
              ],
              "optional": [
                "any"
              ]
            }
          },
          "to": [
            {
              "key_code": "right_arrow", "modifiers": ["left_alt", "right_arrow"]
            }
          ]
        }
      ]
    }
  ]
}


Applications in the Menu Bar & The Ability to choose which are Active upon startup?

You can use Bartender to hide status menu items and menu extras.

Many applications have options to disable opening them at login or to hide the status menu items. You can also remove login items from System Preferences.


Clarification on upgrading the OS and using OWC SSD?

Where does it say OWC doesn't support El Captain? I can not image why the version of macOS would matter. I assume you would put the new drive in the computer and then install the current macOS. Afterwards you would run the Migration Assistant to copy your files to the new SSD.

In other words, I do not see the need to change or update your existing drive before swapping with the new SSD.


If I turn off imessage and get a message will I see it when I turn imessage back on?

You will only get the message, if you still had iMessage enabled on another device, so your cell/e-mail was still registered with iMessage. Then it will sync the message from this other iMessage enabled device.

Otherwise she wouldn't have been able to send you an iMessage, only a SMS or e-mail.


The last step in the FileVault conversion process is to restart.


Reinstall Mac OS. Will time machine really work?

Yes, it should really work!

However the best way to be sure of any backup is to always have multiple backups, so in this case a Time Machine backup and a drive clone using SuperDuper or Carbon Copy Cloner would be advisable.


Sure, since all networks are active, you simply have to set up network ranges so that each destination is routed to the correct network.

If you can manage the DNS locally, you can have your system point to your local DNS server that can look up all the local host names and then get you an external DNS as well.

Or you could just use IP addresses locally and then your computer knows how to get to all the machines over all of the adapters.

You could even have the wired network have two IP addresses on one connection, so it’s really flexible on the macOS end to match whatever network setup you choose to set up.

In your case, set the WiFi to be the default network setting - drag it higher in the list in the network setup, and have the ethernet lower than the WiFi and then the default route is to WiFi

you don’t need network locations to set this up unless you want to have a simpler setup when you leave the office. Here is the guide on setting service order and location setup if you wish to automate switching from a split network to a unified one:

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT202480#serviceorder


Why won't Apple allow users to access iCloud online via an iPhone?

Because iCloud.com has not been optimised for a mobile screen size and for touchscreen controls.
Because they want to promote 'the correct way'

Adding the iCloud account to Settings for access to Mail, etc.
Using the App Store apps for iWork


Empirically - having done this once & had to pick apart the result - it will make a separate, new account.

You'll then have to merge across your missing files manually & delete the account when finished.


External Monitor Periodically Flashes Blue with 2016 MBP on High Sierra

I have had this issue when restarting my MacBook Pro while being connected to a 4K TV. I found that in addition to the blue flash, it sometimes decides to turn black for a fraction of a second during normal operation (with an external monitor attached).

The way I was able to fix this is by connecting the Mac to power from the wall. Having researched this extensively a couple of months ago, I found out that the video initialization (and apparently frame rate conversion) to the 4K monitor or TV causes the blue flashing as it undergoes the process of colour matching, scaling etc. I am not too sure why it is blue, but that's a topic for later.

I'll spare you the links and instead have summarized it here. This issue annoyed me at the beginning but since having my mac plugged into the wall outlet, I have not come across it again. I hope my interpretation of your issue was correct, please let me know whether having the Mac plugged in makes a difference in your case, I'd be interested in following up with you on this.

Addition
If you have access to another High Speed HDMI cable, perhaps you can borrow one, I suggest you try replacing it with the current. My guess would be that perhaps the adaptor is somehow degrading the signal. I personally have had issues with non-Apple adaptors in the past - especially when 4K quality or high frame rate is key. I'm certainly no expert on accessories but maybe it is really worth testing another adaptor.


kernel_task on Macbook hogging CPU even after OS upgrades/downgrades; possible Flash malware?

When a system is infected with malware, the best course of action is format the drive and restore known-good backup from before the malware infection.

If you just reinstall the operating system on top of your infected system, while keeping all your own files on your drive, you're in high risk of keeping the malware - and/or simply reinfecting the system quickly after the upgrade.

In theory malware could change the firmware of the SMC or something like that, to persist even when the drive is formatted - but in practice Flash malware is very unlikely to do so.

However, I'm not entirely convinced that your problem with kernel_task is related to the malware. I would suggest rebooting your computer into "Recovery mode" by holding the Command and R buttons during boot. When in "Recovery Mode", open the Terminal and run the command:

top -ocpu

This should show a live updating overview of the currently running processes, sorted with the most CPU using process at the top.

If you still have kernel_task at the top spot with a large percentage, the problem is most likely unrelated to the malware, and could instead indicate a hardware problem regarding cooling. This could be a problem with a fan not operating properly, cooling paste, or even a sensor issue.


Unfortunately there is no easy one-click solution to downloading all your previously purchased apps.  Best you can do is look through the list of purchased apps and re-buy them (you will not be charged again).


Add TL Symbol to Character Viewer (Unicode 20BA) [TL simgesi]

Here is a reference to a font which will give you the character you are looking for in Character Viewer

http://m10lmac.blogspot.com/2012/05/font-with-new-turkish-lira-symbol.html

You may need to deactivate some other font if that has an interfering character -- I had one called PT on my machine.


iPad Camera Connection Kit - Photo resolution

The iPad Camera Connection Kit is simply a USB hardware interface. It performs no processing and can store raw as well as jpeg from a camera or SD cards.

The iOS photo app will show you the pictures it can, but of you have an exotic raw camera - it will simply hold the images unchanged to deliver to your computer rather than process or change any images.


It's possible that the kernel extension for the trackpad isn't loading properly.

Try these steps and see what happens.

Open Terminal and type kextstat | grep AppleBluetoothMultitouch and hit enter.

If nothing along the lines of 69    0 0x19d2000  0x3000     0x2000     com.apple.driver.AppleBluetoothMultitouch (160.7) <68 64 30 4 3>
 shows up, then the kext isn't loading.

If you did get text similar to that above, try unloading the driver with the command sudo kextunload /System/Library/Extensions/AppleBluetoothMultitouch.kext. There may be some error messages that spit out, you can ignore them for the moment.
Try reloading it with the command sudo kextload /System/Library/Extensions/AppleBluetoothMultitouch.kext

If after that it doesn't show up in Keyboard Preferences, I'm out of ideas - it may be time for an exchange or a trip to the Genius bar, as it's likely a hardware issue.

It may also be helpful for other's diagnostic purposes to amend your question with the output from the Bluetooth section of System Information (in the /Applications/Utilities folder).


macOS High Sierra - Time Machine no longer recognizing iMac backups on USB drive

The answer turned out to be very simple. In the command for tmutil I had copied the format and so I typed "[-a]" when I should have typed "-a". The error message always gave me the impression that the addresses were not correct. The proper error message should have said I should not include "[" or "]"


Gray Exclamation Point when importing raw photos

I checked Apple's Digital camera RAW formats supported by iOS 10 and macOS Sierra page and at present the Canon EOS 77D is not listed in terms of RAW format support.

I expect that support for your RAW format will be included in a future iOS and macOS software update.

In the meantime I would recommend you:

provide feedback to Apple
use one of the other formats


MacBook Pro showing Username and Passwordfield though unencrypted

Have you turned on FileVault 2 encryption? If you have, you can enable your third account by doing the following:

Open System Preferences
Click on Privacy & Security.
Click on the FileVault tab.

There should be an Enable users... button showing in the FileVault preference pane. Click it and you should be given the opportunity to enable the third account by providing the account's password.

On restart, the third account should now appear at the login screen.


VCE Player Lite is a good app and is free:
VCE Player Lite
For the full version, VCE Player ($14.99) would have more features:
Full version VCE Player


How does air-drop detect other air-drop devices?

I thought I would share what I found in case this information can shortcut someone else's learning.

Bluetooth Low Energy is a completely different Spec than older versions of bluetooth. There are completely different APIs from Microsoft to support BT LE: https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/hardware/jj159880%28v=vs.85%29.aspx

Unlike older versions of bluetooth, a BT LE "Peripheral" device (sending device) can advertise it's capabilities so that a connecting device (Also known as a "Central") can tell what the Peripheral is capable of without actually connecting/pairing with the Peripheral.

The capabilities of a Peripheral are communicated using a Generic Attribute Profile, or GATT for short.

Per my previous question, the BluetoothDeviceInfo structure is part of the older Microsoft API for bluetooth supporting non-BT LE devices: https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/desktop/aa363058%28v=vs.85%29.aspx

Also, the C# 32feet.net library to help with Bluetooth does not support BT LE.

I hope that helps someone.


How do you connect the new MacBook Air to the Cinema Display?

Yes, it works, but it's not graceful, it's ungainly:

Source: Apple Insider


I think that Apple's article on iTunes Home Sharing should cover what you're looking for. My husband and I have separate accounts, and anything we both want, we share.


How can I reclaim the partition's space from this shrunk volume?

This cannot be done in Disk Utility, or even while running the OS in the active partition.

I normally backup the partition to an external HD, then restore to the Mac.
This is easier if you have another OS, but you should be able to do it from the Recovery mode.

Another option is to remove the HD, and do it on another Mac.

There may be 3rd party utilities which can move partition, but none I have used let you move the active partition.