Switching from Ubuntu to OS X and I'm lost

Welcome to OS X. It can be a great aid to your workflow, and make you more productive. You should be able to adjust pretty quickly after the initial learning curve. Please be advised that there are some small things you'll have to change in your workflow, as OS X is after all a completely different OS. But over time, you'll grow to enjoy it. I'll address your specific concerns.

Dock Behaviour

The Dock has several sections. Assuming you kept your dock on the bottom, the left side contains pinned and currently running apps. This is actually similar to Unity. You can enable a "dot" under running applications by right-clicking an empty space in the Dock and clicking Dock Preferences from the context menu, and selecting Show indicator lights for open applications.

After the divider, which can be clicked and dragged to resize the dock, there are your stacks. Stacks are previews to commonly-accessed folders, and you can drag any folder into this spot. You can preview the contents of stacks in several ways, right-click it to view the stack's options.

To the right of the stacks are the minimised windows or documents. OS X typically dedicates windows to documents, so the terms (especially in the old days) were considered pretty interchangeable.

Window Management

This was one of the biggest pain points when I switched, and now I really enjoy it.

Viewing Application Windows

You can quickly switch between open windows of the same app by pressing Cmd+`.

As you Cmd + Tab, you notice that you're tabbing through apps and not their individual windows. Note that you can activate an app (i.e. un-minimise or un-hide windows by holding down alt (option in the US).

If you want to see what windows an application has, you can either:

Press the Down arrow while the Cmd + Tab selector box is over the app.
Right-click the app's dock icon and select "Show All Windows".
If you are in the app, swipe three or four fingers down on your trackpad (configured by  click the Apple on the top left, opening System Preferences, opening Trackpad, navigating to the More Gestures tab, and selecting to activate App Exposé with three or four fingers.).
Swipe three or four fingers down on its dock icon.

Any of those options (there might be more) will take you to App Exposé, this will show all the open windows in the center of the screen, and any minimised or hidden windows as thumbnails.

Switching to a minimised window in a different workspaces

This behaviour is app-dependent. Using a Finder window, the behaviour is as you wish. i.e.  the window un-minimises itself, and the workspace is switched. Make sure to click the minimised window and not the app icon.

You might want to make certain apps available on all your workspaces. To do this, right-click the app's dock icon, and select its behaviour under the Options > Assign To section. The app needs to support this feature.

Moving and Resizing

Windows can be moved using only the chrome (the grey area above the app's actual content). Most of the chrome is on the top of the window, but certain apps such as Finder have bottom chrome that can be used to move the window around.

OS X does not recognise right-click drags. It just doesn't. The only real way to resize windows is by dragging from any edge using the left mouse button.

Using BetterTouchTool

If you want, you can download the excellent BetterTouchTool. Under Preferences, Advanced, Action Settings, Window Moving & Resizing, you can choose to move the window under the mouse by simply holding down a key (e.g. the alt (opt) key.

You can use BTT to change certain behaviours to just the way you want them. It's extremely powerful. You can also assign custom gestures to do almost anything, in any app (or globally).

BetterTouchTool's advanced settings.

Maximising and Zooming

OS X does not use the green "+" button  to represent "maximise". That's the "zoom" button. The idea is that the app expands itself to occupy as much space as it needs. Unfortunately, the behaviour is extremely inconsistent, especially with third party apps.

More and more apps are beginning to support the FullScreen mode, which was a feature introduced in OS X 10.7 (Lion) . This button, if an app has it, will dedicate an entire space to the application. It will be accessible from Mission Control.

I'll give you two options, both involving third-party apps:

BetterTouchTool has an option to enable Windows-style snapping. So when you drag a window to the top of the screen, it will expand to fill the screen.

Another option is to use RightZoom, which claims to change the functionality of the green zoom button to mimic a maximise button. It's free, but I haven't yet tried it.

Shortcuts

You can create a ton of shortcuts in OS X, even to specific menu-items from System Preferences. I'll address your specific concerns here.

Middle click to open and close tabs

I long ago solved this with BetterTouchTool. All you need to do is assign a shortcut like below, and it will be mapped to a three-finger click on your touchpad. You can choose  anything else (e.g. three-finger tap if you prefer).

Middle click allow you to open a link in a new tab.

Safari does not support the closing of tabs using middle-click. You either need to click the little "x" that appears over the tab, or press Cmd+W.

Google Chrome supports middle click for both closing tabs.

Global Shortcuts

BetterTouchTool can make quick work of assigning some global shortcuts. I don't think you'll be able to replicate the Ctrl + Alt + B (opens a text box, then executes the command in a terminal).

Cmd + M will minimise a window, no need for BTT for this.

Etc

Apologies, but I can't answer your MOSH question

Alt-2 in Terminal

On my laptop, Alt + 2 produces the euro symbol, so it's keyboard-dependent. If you want the "@" symbol, it's normally found by pressing Shift + 2.

SFTP

I normally use CyberDuck for all my FTP needs. However, a quick web search  turned up this: How to mount SFTP shares in Lion.


Format External Western Digital Drive to be used with only Mac

The standard for Lion is GUID partition scheme with one volume HFS+ Journaled.

The journaling is preferred since the filesystem can be checked in moments when the system reboots rather than running an exhaustive fcsk each time the drive is unmounted cleanly.

You don't want a case sensitive file system as some programs are not ready for dealing with fiLe.txt being different than file.txt - you'll need extra time for testing / finding bugs if you work on a filesystem that's different than the majority.

You can refer to another question on when GUID/GPT might be better than APM: When is the GUID partition table (GPT) preferred over Apple partition map (APM) for external drives?


HDMI TV not showing as audio output in System Preferences

If you are using a Mini Displayport to HDMI adapter this should help you.  If you are using Mini-DVI to HDMI adapter then you will have to get audio from your headphone port via an external cable because DVI is strictly video.


Open a terminal, and run:

cd /Library/Internet\ Plug-Ins
ls

Does it show "something something McAfee"?

If yes, try moving it somewhere else (to be able to restore it later, if something goes wrong), replace McAfeeFooBar with the actual name (you can press tab to complete the name):

mv McAfeeFooBar ~/
killall Safari

and start Safari again. If the Toolbar is gone and McAfee still works, you're done!

If you get something along the lines of "permission denied" while trying the mv command, prepend it by sudo and enter your password when requested.

If this doesn't lead to the desired effect, or McAfee breaks, revert your changes by typing

cd
mv McAfeeFooBar /Library/Internet\ Plug-Ins/

again prepending the mv command with sudo if necessary.


Install Sierra without a recovery partition?

If you install Sierra and a Recovery partition is created, I suppose you could just delete the Recovery partition and expand the Sierra partition to include the freed space. The easiest way to delete a partition is with then third party command gdisk. The freed space can be recovered by using the diskutil command.


Did a full format and install from internet recovery (⌘+R)- worked perfectly!


How can I recover iCloud Calendar backup to iPhone 4?

If you previously synced your iPhone calendar with iCloud, you do not need to restore your iPhone. Just make sure you enable iCloud calendar sync by going to Settings → iCloud → Calendars → ON.

Always make sure to keep a safe backup of iPhone calendars and other data too in case you need to restore it later.


Thunderbolt cable that only works as USB 3.1

I'll step through some obvious reasons this might not work, so don't feel offended if this sounds "basic" and you've done this already.  The setup you describe should work so it comes down to a bad setup or bad hardware.
The first thing is to see if the cables are in fact Thunderbolt cables.  They should have USB-C connectors on each end and the Thunderbolt icon on one or both connectors.  If you don't know what the icons look like for the different connectors/ports then take a look at Apple's support page on this: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201736
The second thing to check is that the devices needing the most bandwidth are connected closest to the computer.  Connect the Thunderbolt cable to the Thunderbolt ports on the Mac and the display.  Any USB-C devices connected in this chain should be connected to the ports on the back of the display.  It's best to connect any USB-C devices directly to the Mac if you can since they can "steal" needed bandwidth from the display.
A Thunderbolt cable is "dumb", as in these cables don't often have any electronics in them to identify them as a Thunderbolt cable when connected to a Mac.  A Thunderbolt cable when used to connect a USB 3.x device will look like a USB cable to the computer, it doesn't know the difference.
If walking through the wiring and checking that it's like I describe then perhaps something is broken.  Do what you can to verify all cables are working, as well as the display and devices.


If your media browser in Garage Band is only showing tabs for Audio and Movies, this means the first time you tried to use the Media Browser you didn't give GarageBand permission to access your Photos.

In other words, you would have had a prompt such as:

As you can see from the image above, you can still provide access after initially denying access by:

Going to Apple > System Preferences > Security & Privacy
Select the Privacy tab
Select the Photos app from the list of apps on the left
You should now see something similar to:

Now tick the checkbox next to GarageBand
If GarageBand is running, you'll see a prompt asking you if you want to Quit GarageBand now or later - select Quit Now.

Once you launch GarageBand again you'll see that Photos are now available within your Media Browser.


How to compile an app on Xcode without developer account

Try changing the identifier to something unique to you, like "net.plato.kodi-ios" and then try having Xcode fix the issue.
I eventually got Kodi to compile on my own after tweaking some of the provisioning settings, but I have active developer profiles and haven't ever done anything with the free account.
There have been limits on the number of free apps you can sign. See this link to stack overflow if you run into errors.

Xcode Error: Unable to install app (Error Code: Code: -402620383)


As Photos is supposed to be included in the 10.10.3 update automatically, I would suspect something may have gone wrong with the OS update itself.

In cases like this, I would always try downloading the current combo updater from Apple - currently 10.10.3 from https://support.apple.com/kb/DL1804 but you can always Google for "Apple combo updater [current number]" to find the latest.

The combo updater, unlike the regular delta updater, includes all changes since the last major update, in this case 10.10.0

I would also run Disk Utility & check permissions & drive integrity - before & after running the combo, just to be certain.


To me this looks like ffmpeg ignores the arguments in the command line. What is the problem?

The flags capture_cursor and capture_mouse_clicks are boolean and defaulted to "0"; set them to "1" and put them before the first input.

The format that you want to use for ffmpeg goes like this:

% ffmpeg [input1 flags] -i input1 \
  [input2 flags] -i input2 \
  ...
  [inputN flags] -i inputN \
  [output1 flags] output1 \
  [output2 flags] output2

So, in this case, the -capture_cursor 1 and -capture_mouse_clicks 1 must come before the first input (-i).

As for the errors, The frame rate is too high for the muxer that you're using.  Just go with something simple:

% ffmpeg -capture_cursor 1 -capture_mouse_clicks 1 -f avfoundation -i "1" -r 10 -s 1280x720  -t 20 ~/Desktop/screen.mkv

The above will capture the screen at a 1280x720 resolution for 20 seconds and capture both the cursor and the mouse clicks.


MacBook Air has delay when waking from sleep

Airs do go into standby mode more readily than other macs.

MacBook Air (Late 2010) and later: About standby mode

Assuming its not just the extra time to exit standby mode (and isn't really sleeping anymore), have you checked the startup disk preference as the article above recommends?

You may have to look in the console log for sleep / standby messages in case your mac is entering standby / hibernate earlier than the expected one hour. The pmset command can show you the details of your Air's power management settings. Here's what a Mid 2011 Air looks like with mostly default settings:

mac:~ me$ pmset -g
Active Profiles:
Battery Power       -1
AC Power        -1*
Currently in use:
 standbydelay   4200
 standby    1
 womp       1
 halfdim    1
 panicrestart   157680000
 hibernatefile  /var/vm/sleepimage
 networkoversleep   0
 disksleep  10
 sleep      10
 hibernatemode  3
 ttyskeepawake  1
 displaysleep   10
 acwake     0
 lidwake    1

You can also use pmset to change either the number of seconds before standby kicks in, which is standbydelay; or turn standby off completely by setting standby to 0. Use the command man pmset for details.


" Item can't be played " whenever I tap on a song

This happened to me too (itunes 12.4.1.6-ipad 2). If you're trying to sync over wi-fi, try plugging in directly with the cable... worked for me.


Better understanding Family Sharing (Can I share app from OSX to my iOS device?)

Sorry, but one cannot share apps (all apps, not just Tweetbot) cross-platform, for whatever reason. Not with Family Sharing or iCloud. The only way to get it would be to purchase it at full price from the iOS App Store.


How to open PDF files stored in iBooks on iPad in Adobe Reader

Unfortunately iBooks on iOS doesn't have the ability to show a share sheet for a document, and therefore can't share to Adobe Reader directly. A workaround is to tap Share → Email, email the PDF to yourself, then use Mail to open the attachment with Adobe Reader.


How can I extend the lock screen timeout in iOS?

Without jailbreaking your iPhone there Is no option to change that.


How do I add a buddy to more than one group in OS X Messages.app?

The Messages (Mavericks): Use buddy lists Apple support article explains how to add a contact to more than one group:

  Add a buddy to more than one group:   Press Option and drag the buddy
  to each additional group.

Hat tip to @DaveDelong.


Thats a glitch in the split view feature.

I would suggest holding down the full-screen button   in the upper-left corner of Chrome. And select a different Window to enter split screen with. Then simply get out of split screen my click the same button on either of the windows. This should reset the feature.

If that doesn't work try running sudo killall WindowsServer and enter your password. This is what controls the split view function (no citation, it just appeared this way through minimal testing). This will log you out but hopefully fix the issue.


Ok, so it's something like this

SUMIF(B2:B37,"=IP",C2:C37)

Where B is the text column to test,=IP is the test condition, C are the values to sum.


How does AirPrint (on iOS) decide what printer settings to use, and can I change them?

The app ("Photos" in this case) makes those decisions based on your content and on what your printer supports.

If you are uncomfortable with this I have developed an app for printing photos that lets you control paper size, job type, sizes (inches or cm), crop, layout and ppi: http://www.clafou.com/print


Efficiently add builds to all slides in Keynote 6.2

Under the "format" menu, you should be able to copy the animation you want and paste it for any other object. Does that not work?


Make the most out of a mac without admin account

Ask your IT folks if they'd be OK with you running an OS X VM inside VMware Fusion and have admin rights inside the VM.

That approach would allow you to get what you want (a developer environment where you could install things) while sandboxing it (which may satisfy the security rules and policies that your IT folks need to abide by.)


iPhone connected to charger and shows charging but not charging battery

It happened to me once. Your charger is an Apple charger? When I was using a fake charger it was a really problem for me, so my way to fix it was rebooting via LOCK + HOME buttons and then check if the iPhone was charging. It could be just a bug.

If it's still not charging, change your charger because it can be broke somewhere or getting voltage changes. Apple Support have all the graphics for voltage changes with fake wires or chargers.


How to switch language of OS X dictionary?

Whichever dictionaries you enable in the Dictionary app's preferences will be available in the dictionary popover. You could either change these whenever you want to switch, or perhaps just leave both languages enabled all the time.


Synchronising contacts between iCloud and iOS

From iCloud settings turned off contacts, then back on. Then missing contacts appeared on iCloud although I got double contacts on iPhone. So I close iCloud contacts again and remove iPhone contacts, then back on and contacts sync with iCloud properly without doubles..


eGPUs to enable utilization of (even) more monitors with MacBook Pro?

Unfortunately Apple hasn't made any comments about this yet. I think no one will be able to answer your question at this time.


iTunes Match doesn't download anything by default. Once you have your big library uploaded or matched (or both) and the process has finished in your desktop computer, all you need to do is use the same iTunes Match account on your laptop. It will automatically bring all your tracks, playlists and such, but they will be stored in the iCloud servers. You can listen and buy music and such, but they will only be temporarily downloaded/streamed so you can listen them. If there's a particular song/album that you want to have locally stored (in case you don't have connectivity), you can click the "download" icon next to each uploaded/matched song and iTunes will automatically start a download process.

If you later want to remove the downloaded track(s), you can simply remove and move to trash. There will be a checkbox asking if you also want to remove it from iCloud (and you shouldn't check that unless you want to wipe the track!).

So as you can see, you can download your songs, remove them, re-download them as many times as you wish (I think). But if space is your concern, you don't need to download them in order to enjoy your music. I have a Mac Pro with a 90GB library that has been "matched/uploaded" and tho I keep the library in the Mac Pro (for backup purposes), my Macbook Air with a 250SSD doesn't have a local library, I just listen from the Cloud.

Bear in mind that when you press play on a non-downloaded track, there's a slight 1-5 sec delay before it starts. If you have a good internet connection, the track is downloaded in 2-5 secs too, so this is not a huge problem. If you're playing an Album from the cloud, iTunes starts downloading the next track before the current ends, so there's no unwanted gap. It comes to my understanding (but I haven't taken a look yet) that these temporarily downloaded tracks eventually go away, but not instantly, for if you replay the same track a few minutes later, it's still there.

I've come to like Match, it's exactly what I was looking for. Having the ability to "carry" my 90GB library when I'm traveling (and where I need Internet connection anyway) without sacrificing 90GB of an already small 256GB drive.

I am even considering removing some tracks from my Mac Pro (tracks that I don't really listen too much or I don't really care).

Happy Matching!


Can't Login to App Store, iTunes , Xcode , iClouds on Mac 10.12.5

After i try to figure out now i found the solution

Open your Terminal and put this command

sudo mkdir -p /Users/Shared
sudo chown root:wheel /Users/Shared
sudo chmod -R 1777 /Users/Shared

Fixed it


How to display a 'delete button' on the touchbar?

I haven't tried this but in theory I think it could work.

You can try making the touchbar show function keys for that app so that you do not need to hold fn: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT207240

Then download Karabiner-Elements (which is free) to change one of the function keys to a delete key.


Source:

These are offloaded apps, new for iOS 11.  A cloud next to an icon means you enabled offloaded apps and this app was deleted, but the data was saved and you can re-download the app by tapping on it.  When you tap the app, it begins to redownload to your device, as you've seen.

To change this behaviour, go to Settings -> iTunes & App Store and change the switch for Offload unused apps.


How to stop Setup Assistant from showing up on every restart on Mac Mini with OS X Mavericks?

If Setup Assistant is running then the boot process almost certainly found no copy of  /var/db/.AppleSetupDone

Try sudo touch /var/db/.AppleSetupDone in Terminal then reboot.

If you are having trouble after that with strange parts of the install process staying around then you may have some widespread permission problems. Use Disk Utility to verify and then fix permissions on the volume and see how much that will fix after another reboot. You may find the problems still there on the first reboot after fixing them - it's the second that will tell.

I doubt if the Server app is causing anything as it really is just an application that provides a GUI for setting up some stuff already on your Mac.


Unable to format internal drive as APFS on 2018 MacBook Pro

Below are three examples of how to erase the drive and create a APFS volume named MyVolume. You only need to follow one of the examples.

The commands given below create a Mac OS Extended (Journaled) partition, then reformat to APFS.

diskutil eraseDisk JHFS+ dummy GPT disk0
diskutil apfs create disk0s2 MyVolume

The commands given below create a Mac OS Extended (Journaled) partition, then convert to APFS.

diskutil eraseDisk JHFS+ myVolume GPT disk0
diskutil apfs convert disk0s2

The commands given below create a Mac OS Extended (Journaled) partition, then convert to an empty APFS container. Finally an APFS volume is added to the container..

diskutil eraseDisk JHFS+ dummy GPT disk0
diskutil apfs createContainer disk0s2
Container=$(diskutil info disk0s2 | grep Container)
diskutil apfs addVolume "${Container##* }" APFS myVolume


Import wav files to iPhone using SD card reader

No, you can only transfer certain images and videos.  This adapter will not transfer documents or audio files.

You could put those audio files on Dropbox or a network drive and then access them with the iPhone.  You should be able to transfer the wav's that way.


iPhone 6, iOS 8, App Store Update count doesn't update

Solution: Open Settings > iTunes & App Store > Automatic Downloads > Updates set to On.


From Menubar
1. Edit -> Select All
2. Message -> Mark -> As Read


Recording direct from camera into MacBook Pro via HDMI?

This is how it works for me camera's HDMI -> Mac's USB but it requires a special device:

I have a Panasonic HC-V777 camera which has a micro HDMI output (the micro HDMI - HDMI cabel is provided with the camera out of the box).
I have a Corsair Elgato HD60 S capture device which has 2 HDMIs: input and output. Also it provides an output port and a cable that connects HD60 to my Macbook's USB.
I connect my camera to HD60 which connects the camera to the USB.
OBS Studio is software that works on macOS and is HD60-friendly: it supports a special adapter that makes it possible to both record and stream the input from the camera coming to HD60 from the camera's micro HDMI.

The disadvantage of this approach is the need in the extra device (HD60 S) and also this device requires output to go somewhere otherwise the capture does not work. I connect it to the second monitor where I see the output from my camera that is passed through the HD60.


Can you tell if your Mac computer is infested with malware from the CIA?

Kaspery Lab posted a few Yara rules for specific malware.

rule apt_equation_exploitlib_mutexes { meta:
copyright = “Kaspersky Lab”
description = “Rule to detect Equation group's Exploitation library” version = “1.0”
last_modi ed = “2015-02-16”
reference = “https://securelist.com/blog/”
strings:
$mz=“MZ”
$a1=“prkMtx” wide $a2=“cnFormSyncExFBC” wide $a3=“cnFormVoidFBC” wide $a4=“cnFormSyncExFBC” $a5=“cnFormVoidFBC”
condition:
(($mz at 0) and any of ($a*)) }

rule apt_equation_doublefantasy_genericresource { meta:
copyright = “Kaspersky Lab”
description = “Rule to detect DoubleFantasy encoded con g” version = “1.0”
last_modi ed = “2015-02-16”
reference = “https://securelist.com/blog/”
strings:
$mz=“MZ”
$a1={06 00 42 00 49 00 4E 00 52 00 45 00 53 00} $a2=“yyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy”
$a3=“002”
condition:
(($mz at 0) and all of ($a*)) and  lesize < 500000 }

rule apt_equation_equationlaser_runtimeclasses { meta:
copyright = “Kaspersky Lab”
description = “Rule to detect the EquationLaser malware” version = “1.0”
last_modi ed = “2015-02-16”
reference = “https://securelist.com/blog/”
strings: $a1=“?a73957838_2@@YAXXZ” $a2=“?a84884@@YAXXZ” $a3=“?b823838_9839@@YAXXZ” $a4=“?e747383_94@@YAXXZ” $a5=“?e83834@@YAXXZ” $a6=“?e929348_827@@YAXXZ”
condition: any of them
}

rule apt_equation_cryptotable { meta:
copyright = “Kaspersky Lab”
description = “Rule to detect the crypto library used in Equation group malware”
version = “1.0”
last_modi ed = “2015-02-16”
reference = “https://securelist.com/blog/”
strings:
$a={37 DF E8 B6 C7 9C 0B AE 91 EF F0 3B 90 C6 80 85 5D 19 4B 45 44 12 3C E2 0D 5C 1C 7B C4 FF D6 05 17 14 4F 03 74 1E 41 DA 8F 7D DE 7E 99 F1 35 AC B8 46 93 CE 23 82 07 EB 2B D4 72 71 40 F3 B0 F7 78 D7 4C D1 55 1A 39 83 18 FA E1 9A 56 B1 96 AB A6 30 C5 5F BE 0C 50 C1}
condition: $a
}


Defaults documentation for builtin apps?

Nope. There are many hidden settings that users figure out themselves, as Apple has not published a list showing which preferences are available


What mail program offers spam filtering and a unified way to check multiple mailboxes?

Its hard to pick a best it really is up to what works best for you! I would recommend searching around for more mac e-mail clients using your favorite search engine and try as man as you can.  This Wikipedia list will get you started Comparison of email clients for some more e-mail clients to research.


Some native screen savers can cause this problem as well (don't ask me why).

Just pick a simple plain one and see if it still happens (try a few of them).

Hope it helps :)


Is it at all possible that the campus network does not broadcast it's SSID?

Try this, go into Settings -> Wi-Fi and tap on "Other..."

Type in the name of the campus WiFi network and its password.

Will that allow you to connect?


App store ranking - effect of downloads from multiple countries

Not sure if this is the correct place to ask this kind of question, you should try the Apple Dev Fora (http://devforums.apple.com). Beside this, no-one will be able to answer this question 100% sure except Apple engineers, however, we can assume Apple is isolation the stats per store, meaning lot of downloads wont affect the rankings in other stores.


Automatic conversion between .ps to .pdf upon download onto Mac OSX?

You could use the Folder Action for that.

Right click on to your download folder

select Folder Action Set up:

Choose Covert PostScript to pdf action.

done

If you feel like modifying the script go ahead.


Why is Mavericks forcing a password reset on every lock screen?

I figured it out. Somewhere during the upgrade process the password policy maxMinutesUntilChangePassword was set to 100. So every 100 minutes I had to reset the password...

To solve it I used the pwpolicy command:

pwpolicy -u "MyUserName" -setglobalpolicy "maxMinutesUntilChangePassword=86400"


No audio devices on Macbook Pro (Late 2011)

The sound chip or the connection is probably broken. Try Apple Hardware Test or Apple Diagnostics. Depending on the issue it might be able to detect the malfunction. If it detects nothing, it might be a clean break. If it gives you an error code, it could indicate the location of the failure.


How do I import only some of my data from Snow Leopard to Mountain Lion?

This is definitely possible. For starters you may want to look at Migration Assistant, which will allow you to migrate only certain items.

If you want finer grained control, you can manually copy just about anything if you know where it lives. Most programs can be copied over without any trouble, and most apps have a folder in ~/Library/Application Support/ to store their settings and data.

Safari bookmarks can be transferred by either copying the ~/Library/Safari/Bookmarks.plist file, or using the Import/Export Bookmarks commands in the Safari File menu.

This blog post by Matt Gemmell has a good walkthrough of some items that may be useful to migrate manually.

If you need advice on transferring specific items, try searching for them directly on here or Google, or post a question specific to them if you can't find an answer already.


Apple has started selling OS X Lion redemption codes,  for £14 (in the UK) so you can still buy the old OS if you need to.

See also: Is It Possible to Still Upgrade to OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion.


HFS+ invalid number of allocation blocks

In my opinion "TestDisk" hosed your GPT.

Please compare the TestDisk result with my disks. The disks in my example are equally sized, disk0 contains a CoreStorage partition and disk2 an old-style JHFS+ partition. I'm using two separate disks because it's unknown (at least to me) which formatting type (CS or JHFS+) was used originally.

The PMBR/GPT and the first three partitions (EFI/Macintosh HD/Recovery HD) should look like this, if you had a CoreStorage partition previously:

    root# gpt -r -vv show disk0
gpt show: disk0: mediasize=68719476736; sectorsize=512; blocks=134217728
gpt show: disk0: PMBR at sector 0
gpt show: disk0: Pri GPT at sector 1
gpt show: disk0: Sec GPT at sector 134217727
      start       size  index  contents
          0          1         PMBR
          1          1         Pri GPT header
          2         32         Pri GPT table
         34          6
         40     409600      1  GPT part - C12A7328-F81F-11D2-BA4B-00A0C93EC93B
     409640  132538512      2  GPT part - 53746F72-6167-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC
  132948152    1269536      3  GPT part - 426F6F74-0000-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC

or like this, if you had a classical JHFS+ volume previously:

root# gpt -r -vv show disk2
gpt show: disk2: mediasize=68719476736; sectorsize=512; blocks=134217728
gpt show: disk2: PMBR at sector 0
gpt show: disk2: Pri GPT at sector 1
gpt show: disk2: Sec GPT at sector 134217727
      start       size  index  contents
          0          1         PMBR
          1          1         Pri GPT header
          2         32         Pri GPT table
         34          6
         40     409600      1  GPT part - C12A7328-F81F-11D2-BA4B-00A0C93EC93B
     409640  132538512      2  GPT part - 48465300-0000-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC
  132948152    1269536      3  GPT part - 426F6F74-0000-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC

(Please consider that the mediasize, the blocks, the sector of the secondary GPT, the size of the 2nd volume and the start block of the 3rd volume are different to yours, because i use smaller example disks here.)

Your problem should be solved by rewriting the GPT once more.

Preparation:

Install a full vanilla system (Mavericks or Yosemite should work) on a thumb drive (or an external drive). A recovery system will not work. Boot to the thumb drive, download and install wxHexEditor. Enable the root user and log-in as root.

Hint: While working with wxHexEditor don't use copy and paste. Enter everything manually! You might accidentally write directly to your disk.

JHFS+ or CoreStorage partition?

First you have to determine, if you had a JHFS+ or CoreStorage partition at index number 2.

Open the Calculator. Open wxHexEditor. Check that you work in read-only mode ("Options" -> "File mode" -> "Read only"). In the menubar go to "Devices" -> "Open disk device" -> choose the appropriate diskNumber. Probably it's disk0. The disk should have further partitions (disk0s1 - disk0s5). Please try to arrange the wxHexEditor window like in the examples below with straight red lines.

Then hit the "Go to offset"-button (marked with the green circle) and enter 409640 exactly like in the picture below. Sometimes you have do that twice to jump to the correct sector. Re-check the correct sector by entering the offset (marked red) in the Calculator and divide it through 512.

The first 3 sectors of a CoreStorage partition look like this:

The first 3 sectors of a JHFS+ look like this:

If you get a fundamentally different picture stop here.

Where does the EFI partition start?

Hit the "Go to offset"-button and enter 40 exactly like in the picture below:

If you see the same entries like in the picture above (XEBSD  4.4...EFI...FAT32) this is the start sector of your EFI-Partition. If there are only zeros this could be valid too.

Where does the Recovery HD partition start?

That's probably the most difficult part because you have to find a string which is not very specific.
Jump almost to the end of your 2nd partition (in your case ~400 MB/781250 sectors less than 1164570456 = 1163789206)

Then enter "HFSJ" like in the picture below, search for this string two times and make notes of the different offsets:

You may have two really different results depending on the partition type:

Calculate the sector number of the first finding. In my example (see picture above) it's 68069452800/512=132948150.
Continue searching and calculate the sector of the second finding. In my case it was 68069454848/512=132948154 (no picture).
The difference between the two finding is 4 blocks (=2 KB).

This is typical for the boundary between a JHFS+ partition and the Recovery HD.
The Recovery HD starts then at the sector of the second finding - 2 (in my example 132948154-2=132948152).
Calculate the sector number of the first finding. In my example it was 67733904384/512=132292782 (no picture).
Continue searching and calculate the sector of the second finding. In my case it was 68069454848/512=132948154 (no picture).
The difference between the two findings is 655372 (~336 MB)

This is typical for the boundary between a CoreStorage partition and the Recovery HD.
The Recovery HD starts then at the sector of the second finding - 2 (in my example 132948154-2=132948152).

With those results you should be able to restore your GPT properly. Quit wxHexEditor. If you are asked to save changes don't save them!.

Rebuild a proper GPT

Here i assume the identifier of your main disk is disk0.
First you have to unmount your main disk:

diskutil umountDisk disk0

Check the partition layout then remove the first three partitions:

gpt -r -vv show /dev/disk0

gpt remove -i 3 disk0
gpt remove -i 2 disk0
gpt remove -i 1 disk0

Since the EFI and the Recovery HD usually have fixed sizes we can calculate the start and end block of your main volume.

First we rebuild the EFI with:

gpt add -b 40 -i 1 -s 409600 -t C12A7328-F81F-11D2-BA4B-00A0C93EC93B disk0

Then we calculate the size of the main volume: the start block is 409640.
The end block has been found in the section "Where does the Recovery HD partition start?": 1 less than the start block of the Recovery HD.
The size is then StartBlockOfRecoveryHD-409640.

If you've found a classical JHFS+ earlier the following command should fix partition 2:

gpt add -b 409640 -i 2 -s StartBlockOfRecoveryHD-409640 -t 48465300-0000-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC disk0

If you've found a CoreStorage partition earlier the following command should fix partition 2:

gpt add -b 409640 -i 2 -s StartBlockOfRecoveryHD-409640 -t 53746F72-6167-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC disk0

To rebuild the Recovery HD enter:

gpt add -b StartBlockOfRecoveryHD -i 3 -s 1269536 -t 426F6F74-0000-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC disk0

Remount disk0 with:

diskutil mountDisk disk0

Quit Terminal, start Disk Utility and check your main volume (probably Macintosh HD) for errors and try to repair them if necessary.
If you've found a CoreStorage partition earlier, you might have to reboot to your thumb drive before repairing the volumes with Disk Utility, because the CoreStorage logical volume might not be recognized/mounted properly. In your setup - 1 main disk and the thumb drive - the logical volume should be disk2.

I hope this solves your problems.

If you run into problems (e.g you can't find the proper starting sector of your Recovery HD), have doubts or questions immediately stop and contact me with a comment @klanomath!


Scaling all UI elements when using an external monitor

The OS X UI is not resolution-independent, the only thing you can do is to change the resolution. Which is essentially what OS X does on HiDPI screens when switching to Larger Text or More Space, but since they are retina displays, you can't see that the resolution in some cases is not native, which you definitively can on non-retina displays.

There is a terminal command to change the interface size (which I can't seem to find right now, but I have tried once in 10.6 I believe), but it doesn't work well, especially in 3rd party applications. Some are absolutely unusable.


Diagnosing Hardware vs Software Problem
As stated in my comment, to diagnose if it is a software or hardware issue (most likely hardware), try connecting the Macbook to an external monitor. If the external monitor displays the screen, then your Macbook must have the problem (It's a hardware issue). If both the external monitor and the Macbook pro still won't display anything, it is a software issue.
The Problem
The display probably went bad. You can try pressing the screen at certain points and see if it gets restored (This won't fix anything).
Resetting the NVRAM/PRAM- Last Chance
One last thing to try is resetting the NVRAM/PRAM (I read this on a post once, I don't think it will work but it cannot hurt to try):

Shut down your Mac.
Locate the following keys on the keyboard: Command (⌘), Option, P, and R. You will need to hold these keys down simultaneously in step 4.
Turn on the computer.
Press and hold the Command (⌘)-Option-P-R keys before the gray screen appears.
Hold the keys down until the computer restarts and you hear the startup sound for the second time.
Release the keys.

Related Links
Apple Discussion

I have the same problem. Resetting PRAM is the only way to boot and it
only works on that boot. If the system is off for more than maybe 5
minutes, I'm back to the vertical colored lines. Multiple reboots in a
short amount of time are ok.

Does this happen for you too when you reset the PRAM?
Take it to the Genius Bar at the Apple Store (hopefully you have AppleCare or under 1 year limited warranty).


How can I use spotlight search to open a specific file path

If you open Spotlight and type in the path of a specific folder and hit return that folder will open on your desktop in Finder. Put the full pathname but don't put open in the Spotlight search window.

Example: To open my python folder I type the following in the Spotlight window.
/User/myname/python . Now when I hit the return key the folder opens.


MacBook Pro detects syncmaster (monitor) but doesn't display

It's most likely because you are doing two conversions of the video signal and at some point it's either being  degraded and/or becoming out of sync.

The two conversions I am referring to is going from DisplayPort to HDMI then going from HDMI to DVI.  In your original question, you never mention specifically what adapters you are using nor if they are active or passive.

Why an "active" adapter? Active adapters "recreates" the signal and passive just reorders the signals.

To solve this issue, you need to limit your adapter to just one conversion (no conversions at all is ideal - mini DisplayPort to DisplayPort) and do so with an active DisplayPort to DVI adapter.


How do I delete or show the size of a non-TimeMachine APFS snapshot

I received a reply from the author of ChronoSync, and he helpfully explained the following option to manage snapshots.

To list snapshots:

diskutil apfs listSnapshots /

To delete snapshots:

diskutil apfs deleteSnapshot / -name <name_of_snapshot>

This seems the better option, which unfortunately doesn't seem listed elsewhere (all other guides I found only mention tmutil).
I couldn't test, since I already deleted it with CCC.


How do you get Spotlight to search in sub-directories?

This seems like a bug with Spotlight in OS X.

Spotlight should search recursively in whatever directory it is told to, however after some testing it seems this functionality breaks with some exFAT and NTFS partitions.

If you want to search by name in such cases, you can use 'find':

find /path/to/folder -name "*name*"


Will iphone 5s convert text emoticons in SMS? Text emoticon for Rose emoji

None of these are converted for me by my iPhone on iOS 9.3.3.


Mac book pro Sierra does not shutdown - stays idle with a black screen and mouse pointer

The solution I have found  after long suffering this problem in High Sierra after trying to upgrade from version 10.13.5 to 10.13.6. I deleted these files through terminal, then rebooted.

You may need to run with admin permissions, i.e. "sudo rm -f etc." and enter your admin password when asked:

rm -f /Library/Preferences/com.apple.loginwindow.plist

rm -f /private/var/db/.AppleUpgrade

rm -f /private/var/db/.SoftwareUpdateAtLogout

reboot


finding the remote IP address used by a mounted SMB share

Since it is advertising its presence on the network with Bonjour, you should be able to simply ping it:

ping -c 1 nas-smb.local


Upgrading to Bluetooth 4.0 internally iMac 2011 21.5 (A1311)

Plug in an external USB adapter. Much easier and less expensive, even if you’re already in the Mac to repair things.

I have no reason to doubt that part would work since the OS and software all support this and it’s about the hardware receiver that needs swapping whether you do it internally or externally. This works.


Ugly graphical glitches in High Sierra 10.13.2

That is not a software issue. Your graphics card is getting inappropriate power. You probably have a capacitor or transistor that is dying (if you're lucky; if you're REALLY lucky you might be able to pinpoint the exact component by visual inspection) or the graphics chip is nearing the end of its lifespan.

If there is a shop that does board-level repairs near where you live it might be repairable, usually using donor parts from other dead boards.

Most often, instead of just dying one day, the glitches might slowly degrade to something like this.

I think on the 2011 iMacs the dGPU was a mezzanine card? I don't know if you would feel it is worth it to repair, maybe you could find a replacement for cheap.

If this is the integrated graphics, I don't think there is anything that can be done.

As for the MacBook, that's a completely different machine in terms of architecture, and not just for the GPU. Probably unrelated, but you could provide more details on what the issues on that machine are like in another question.


Is there a reason to prefer HFS+ over APFS for disk images in High Sierra and/or Mojave?

Whether you choose APFS or HFS+ for the sparse disk image will matter very little. They are synthetic filesystems and pass through iOPS and data to the underlying filesystem. That will have some technical details to consider and illuminate the differences how each relies on the storage to store filesystem data and work with or against the hardware that records the bits physically.

HFS+ has more third party data recovery options and is further backward compatible so those are two main technical reasons to potentially prefer HFS+ over APFS. If you’re storing the data on a spinning disk, that might be a technical advantage or might not. You’ll have to test that on your kit as benchmarks vary widely there.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_File_System

You give up the metadata protection checksums, crash protection of copy on write and encryption advances of APFS as well as the redesign of the filesystem to take advantage of flash/ssd.  You also lose snapshots, clone copy and don’t receive the more flexible space allocation features of APFS.

Speed chould be a wash on flash / ssd for your use case, but I would still  benchmark your sparse images on both file systems. HFS+ might be far better tuned for a HDD still ( or possible for evermore) as APFS sacrifices HDD performance for flash and ssd performance today as implemented.


How long would it take to crack AES-128 knowing a 12 character length password?

The average 12 character password will take 6 billion years to brute-force at 100,000 passwords per second.

WolframAlpha "password of 12 characters"

Allowing special characters brings this to around 150 billion years.

WolframAlpha "password of 12 characters" with password rules

For more information, see Security.SE:

How long would it take to brute force an AES-128 protected pdf knowing the key is 20 letter long and that the charset is A-Z,0-9?


Is there a method to target an open Finder window from the "Save" dialog?

The specific software you are probably alluding to is Default Folder X - which even allows you to click through any intervening windows to return to a folder visibly open on the Finder desktop. It also has a pre-determined list of 'useful' places & a history list. I do consider it one of the indispensible utilities on Mac.

Alternatively, macOS itself allows you to drag any visible folder onto a file-picker dialog to send the dialog to that location.

Fullscreen apps may interrupt either of those efforts - but I have a particular set of reasons I absolutely never use fullscreen, so I'm not certain how it will respond.


Can I use Adblock/Adblock Plus to block ads in games that are not in a browser?

You are going to want to use a hosts file to block all ads in all games. First you're going to have to find the domain name of the server that the ads are coming from. You can use a number of programs to monitor network traffic for this step. My favorite is ettercap-ng, but you might prefer Little Snitch (if you want to do this on a per-app per-port basis, then Little Snitch will be just right for you without having to modify your hosts file). Once you've determined the domain of the ad server you're wishing to block, open up /etc/hosts in your favorite terminal text editor with sudo permissions (sudo nano /etc/hosts) (the file has no extension; it's simply named hosts). Add this line to the end of the file after replacing "domain.com" with the domain you're trying to block:
127.0.0.1 domain.com
This will tell your Mac to loopback when it comes across "domain.com", thus returning nothing, which essentially gets rid of all ads from that server in every app/program/game on your Mac (keep adding more lines for each ad server, and make them all loopback to 127.0.0.1). This method will also work on JailBroken devices and Linux.
If you want to use my omnipotent hosts file that blocks nearly all ads (it was written primarily for my JailBroken iPod), knock yourself out by replacing yours with mine: http://ss.gy/u Mine works on both desktop computers and mobile devices in multiple countries/languages (primarily the United States and France).


*    Under construction

Docker for Mac is launched sandboxed (or not, if disabled in the Docker prefs) while logging in by a LogInItem in the application bundle probably using this HelperApp method.

This is the reason why neither a launch agent nor a login item (in System Preferences > User & Groups > $USER > Login Item) is available.

Probably it's very costly to impossible to launch a user owned sandboxed container & webserver image to serve the wanted HTTP interface.

Maybe it's possible by using a classical method and installing xhyve & docker-machine-driver-xhyve with homebrew instead of a VirtualBox solution and linking the boot/user Docker environment and the user Docker environment.


How to read passwords and notes from keychain on non-apple OS?

According to some sources another Mac or a VM running macOS/OS X is required to dump your macOS keychain.

You can then convert the data and import it in e.g. 1Password with a perl script.

If you have problems finding another Mac, send me your login.keychain from the backup and its password ;-).


MacPro Hard Drive 3 TB or Larger formatted to Logical Volume Group by Disk Utility

This problem has been reported to occur on Intel MacPro's using internal drives from various manufactures with capacities >= 3 TB. Specifically, it's been reported when using Disk Utility in OS X Mountain Lion (10.8) and Mavericks (10.9).
Although there have been solutions involving using diskutil in Terminal posted here at AskDifferent and elsewhere on the web, I found a simpler solution: Format the disk using Disk Utility from an OS X Snow Leopard (10.6) Install DVD.

Warning: This solution will cause you to lose all data on the drive.

Backup any valuable data from the drive in question.
Reboot using the OS X Snow Leopard (10.6) Install DVD. (Hold down the C-Key to boot from the DVD.)
Choose your language (eg. English).
Instead of installing OS X, choose Disk Utility from the Utilities menu.
Select your drive from the pane on the left of the Disk Utility screen.
Choose the Partition tab.
Select your desired Partition Layout.
Select Mac OS Extended (Journaled) under Format:
Check the Options button and verify that GUID is selected as the partition scheme.
Click the Apply button and verify you want to proceed.
When the partition and format process is complete, quit Disk Utility and reboot.

The disk will now be correctly formatted using a GUID partition table.
(If you need to repartition or reformat the drive in the future, you will need to repeat this process. Hopefully Apple will fix this bug in a later version of Disk Utility.)


Sorting through windows that are grouped together

If you're in the app where the document is, you can use App Exposé to show just the windows of the current app, nicely spread out on the screen. I've got App Exposé set to a four finger swipe down, but I'm not sure that it's the default. You can find the settings in System Preferences -> Trackpad -> More Gestures (or similar if you've got a Magic Mouse, I would guess).

You can also press F10 to trigger App Exposé.


You can follow Apple's own steps on how to diagnose your WiFi connection. You can look specifically for the report section in that page, which explains how to and where to save the resulting data.

As a TL;DR, look in Spotlight for Wireless Diagnostics and click Window in the menu bar, there go to Logs.


How do I Change my old iPod Apple ID to my new Current ID to match the one on my iPhone?

Sign in with your old Apple ID at iCloud.com, go to Settings->Manage (Apple ID)->Click on your iPod and remove it from the list of devices. And finally use your new Apple ID on your iPod.


For TextWrangler there is a setting in the preferences — it's the second from the top in the following screenshot.

There is probably a setting in TextMate too, but as of version 2, it's probably a defaults setting, since almost everything has ben stripped from the preferences GUI.


How to run script using cron or launchd for Guest user account in El Capitan

In my opinion the following should work - it does in my VM! -  launched as /Library/LaunchDaemons/org.user.plist:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN" "http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd">
<plist version="1.0">
<dict>
    <key>Label</key>
    <string>org.user</string>
    <key>ProgramArguments</key>
    <array>
        <string>/usr/bin/touch</string>
        <string>-f</string>
        <string>/Users/Guest/Desktop/test.txt</string>
    </array>
    <key>UserName</key>
    <string>Guest</string>
    <key>GroupName</key>
    <string>_guest</string>
    <key>InitGroups</key>
    <true/>
    <key>WatchPaths</key>
    <array>
        <string>/Users/Guest/Library</string>
    </array>
</dict>
</plist>

As example task I use /usr/bin/touch -f /Users/Guest/Desktop/test.txt.

The trick here is that the complete content of the Guest folder is deleted after a log out. After a new Guest logs in the whole content is recreated from scratch. As soon as the folder /Users/Guest/Library is created, the example task (touch ...) is started due to the WatchPaths key.

Since the task/script/app has to be executed as guest you can't use launch agents because the path /Users/Guest/Library/LaunchAgents/ simply doesn't exist.

Use a launch daemon instead and run it as Guest/_guest. Your ruby script /usr/local/bin/notify-custom has to be world readable/executable? of course.

I also tried to run the task every 60 seconds - which works properly but throws some errors after the guest's log out. Probably it's better to implement the whole thing in the ruby script. Depending on your script your mileage may vary though.

If you have two different tasks to execute (e.g show a banner every 10 minutes with Ruby and a timer to force log out after 30 minutes) it's probably better to create two different launch daemons.


How can I change the default alerts of Calendar (iCal)?

As far as I know, these are the only two ways to change Calendar alert sounds. In both cases, unfortunately, they are universal changes—there is no way to override them for individual events.

Disable all Calendar alert sounds

Go to System Preferences > Notifications > Calendar and disable "Play sound for notifications."

Change all Calendar alert sounds (pre-El Capitan)

We'll be digging around in System a bit, so be prepared to enter your password a couple times. I'm on El Cap now (my only Mac), and this isn't working for me, but I know it worked in the past. My guess is System Integrity Protection. This should probably work if you're on an earlier version or have SIP disabled; let me know if it doesn't.

In the Finder, go to /System/Library/Sounds
Change the name of Basso.aiff to something like Basso-original.aiff
Add a new audio file of your choice named Basso.aiff


Prevent auto-pairing for certain devices (Bluetooth)

I had the same problem and FINALLY found a workable solution. Run this in your terminal. After this you just need to manually connect to your bluetooth audio system.

sudo defaults write /Library/Preferences/com.apple.Bluetooth.plist DontPageAudioDevices 1


Not a definitive answer, but anecdotally…
It's happened on every Mac here that is linked to an iOS device, on first connect after 14.1/14.2 [we held off 14 for a while]
Why, idk, but yes, something changed [or is about to change once you do update to 14] in the phone/pad that needs a macOS/iTunes update.
No Catalina here, but his happened on both High Sierra & Mojave Macs. I had assumed, prior to your question, the it was because we weren't up to date on macOS itself, but it seems not to be the case.


I've tried to export from Photos to hard drive but it says my Mac Hard Drive is in "read" only mode How change so I can export?

If you are running OS X 10.10 "Yosemite" or earlier, see this Apple support article.


How to set Finder to *always* use list view

Open finder
Select your hard disc
CommandJ
Check the top two check boxes (Always open in list view, browse in list view)
Click use as defaults
Open Applications->Utilities->Terminal

sudo find / -name ".DS_Store"  -exec rm {} \;

Enter your root password, press enter


All you have to do is hold down the OPTION and COMMAND buttons while launching Photos. You’ll need an Administrator name and password for the computer to authorize running the repair tool.

It will allow an option to Repair Library. Try to repair it and it should work if it was working without any issue before upgrade.


How safe is Force Restart [Control-Command-Power Button] keyboard shortcut?

Force restart is not safe mode of operation.

What happens is the power to the system is simply just cut off.

There is no soft landing in here, no flush buffers, umounts filesystems ect.. just brute force pull the plug.

You might want to consider following shortcuts in order before forcing it.

Hold down the power button for 1.5 seconds -    Show the restart / sleep
/ shutdown dialog in OS X Mavericks
Hold down the power button for 5 seconds    -Force the Mac to power off
Command-Control-power button    -Force the Mac to restart

As said, it is not safe mode, so frequent use can lead to multitude of problems. It is not possible to exactly specify what can happen, but results could be as bad as damage to the computer, mostly to the hard drive.


Finder connects to FTP server, but has blank file list

If you haven't waited more than ten minutes for the files to appear, you haven't waited long enough. Leave the blank Finder window open, and go make yourself a nice cup of hot coffee/tea/chocolate. When you come back, the files should be there. Should you need to open a subfolder, be prepared for the possibility of another long wait.

If ten minutes sounds like an excessively long time, well, yes it is. While it's cool that Finder natively supports FTP connections, it is in practice an exceptionally poor FTP client.

P.S. I chose ten minutes somewhat arbitrarily as a maximum time limit. It's not a magic number.

P.P.S. To be fair to Apple, not all servers are this slow. But it's not unusual at all.


Is my Fusion Drive set up on my iMac correct? or is there a fix?

Klanomath and all -

Objective: Properly erase an iMac running Catalina built in 2013

A functional computer should be able to be erased. I was trying to determine the viability of the computer>

Background: I needed to erase my iMac (running Catalina) with a Fusion Drive and was told that ERASE should be accessible while in Disk Utilities in Internet Recovery Mode. ERASE was not accessible on my iMac.

RESOLUTION:  My understanding is now that ERASE will NOT be accessible if a Mac has a Fusion Drive and is running Catalina in Disk Utilities in Internet Recovery Mode.

In the end, I could not use Apple's How to erase a disk (https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT208496) documentation, but I can use the directions in Apple's How to split a Fusion Drive (using the Terminal) https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT207584. My understanding is the latter splits or fixes a split, erases and re-fuses the Fusion Drive.

As I can now erase the iMac using the How to split a fusion drive documentation, I have been told the computer is useable.

Side note:  I found and so did the people I was working with, the Apple Documentation to be confusing - it can be interpreted in a variety of ways and is not clear with respect to Fusion Drives and how to erase them.

If anyone sees an issue with what I wrote, please feel free to chime in.


Will the iPhone X be innoculated against Blueborne?

After a quick Google, I found a few articles. To sum up. If you run anything higher than iOS 10.0, you're fine. If you run anything lower than iOS 10, you should upgrade. iPhone X is running iOS 11, so it will have all the latest security updates.

This is a good example why you always need to update to the latest iOS version. Yes, it is okay to wait a few days and see if there are any bugs. There are updates for a reason. You do not always see any change. But boy a lot happens under the hood.

  Apple fans will be delighted to hear that the current
  versions of its software are not vulnerable. That means anything more
  recent than iOS 9.3.5 or, for Apple TV users, version 7.2.2 of the
  software for that device. iOS 10 is definitely OK, Armis said.

Source: fortune.com

  Any iPhones running iOS 10 are immune to the attack

Source: theverge.com

  Apple mitigated the flaw in iOS 10, but all iPhones, iPads, and iPod
  touch devices with iOS 9.3.5 or lower, and Apple TV devices with
  version 7.2.2 or lower are at risk.

Source: pcmag.com


Remove entries from finder's context menu?

You can actually remove native MacOS items from the context menu....but unfortunately, it doesn't appear you can remove the ones you indicated above. Regardless, if you want to take a look, head to

System Prefs > Keyboard > Keyboard Shortcuts > Services

and then uncheck the items you don't want on the menu.

It's unfortunate that you can't remove all of them. But it can at least help you get rid of some of the clutter.


Where is the '^]' character on an AZERTY (French) keyboard?

Ctrl-$

Mnemonic: the $ key is where ] would be on a QWERTY keyboard.


The number of Recent Items in TextEdit or other applications is independent from the general settings in the System Preferences.
The amount of entries and the entries itself are stored in *.LSSharedFileList.plist files.

Example:

PlistEdit Pro method
To change the number for TextEdit clear the menu in TextEdit, quit TextEdit, open com.apple.TextEdit.LSSharedFileList.plist in ~/Library/Preferences/ with an appropriate application (e.g. PlistEdit Pro (free 14-day trial)) and enter 0 as MaxAmount.

You may have to create (if the file doesn't exist) and modify com.apple.TextEdit.plist afterwards:

touch ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.TextEdit.plist

to create the file com.apple.TextEdit.plist

defaults write com.apple.TextEdit NSRecentDocumentsLimit 0

to change the preferences.

plutil and nano method

Quit TextEdit and open Terminal.app and enter:

touch ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.TextEdit.plist

to create the file com.apple.TextEdit.plist if it doesn't exist

defaults write com.apple.TextEdit NSRecentDocumentsLimit 0

to change the preferences

plutil -convert xml1 ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.TextEdit.LSSharedFileList.plist

to convert the file to XML.

Open the file with nano

nano ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.TextEdit.LSSharedFileList.plist

and edit the value of MaxAmount, write out your edit to file with ctrlO and exit nano  ctrlX
and finally

plutil -convert binary1 ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.TextEdit.LSSharedFileList.plist

to convert it back to the original binary format.

defaults method works with 10.7, 10.8 and obviously 10.9:

defaults delete com.apple.TextEdit.LSSharedFileList RecentDocuments
touch ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.TextEdit.plist (if the file doesn't exist)
defaults write com.apple.TextEdit NSRecentDocumentsLimit 0
defaults write com.apple.TextEdit.LSSharedFileList RecentDocuments -dict-add MaxAmount 0
killall Dock


Can I put a dummy app in the App Store to install a GPL app?

This is not possible. Apps can't download other apps.

  2.5.2 Apps should be self-contained in their bundles, and may not read or write data outside the designated container area, nor may they download, install, or execute code, including other iOS, watchOS, macOS, or tvOS apps.

https://developer.apple.com/app-store/review/guidelines/#software-requirements


how do I turn free space into a useable partition?

As far as I know you may resize MacOS Extended partitions with Disk Utility but not foreign partitions like ExFAT. One option is to use the restore facility in Disk Utility: restore e.g. on an external disk, erase and recreate a bigger partition, restore from the external disk to the new partition.


How should I use VPN on a Mac to prevent compromise before the VPN starts?

Here is an approach totally outside of the MacOS X GUI.
Hence this approach of the problem won't interfere with any network
or VPN setting.

Let's say I want to use an IPSEC VPN (based on the use of 500/udp == isakmp & 50/ip == esp).

Create an ipfw configuration file just allowing the required protocols to build the VPN:

/usr/bin/sudo cat <<____eof >/etc/ipfw.vpn.rules
# VPN trafic contention
#
# DHCP
add 00100 permit udp from any to any src-port bootpc dst-port bootps
# DNS
add 01000 permit udp from me to any dst-port domain
add 01010 permit udp from any to me dst-port domain
# isakmp
add 01050 permit udp from me to any dst-port isakmp
add 01060 permit udp from any to me dst-port isakmp
# esp
add 01100 permit esp from me to any
add 01110 permit esp from any to me
# all other ip go to the central black hole
add 20000 deny ip from any to any
____eof

Check that its syntax is OK:

/usr/bin/sudo /sbin/ipfw -n /etc/ipfw.vpn.rules

Install it in the kernel:

/usr/bin/sudo /sbin/ipfw /etc/ipfw.vpn.rules

Check that your OS can reboot, and get its IP address through the
usual DHCP. Check that most of the IP protocols are blocked:

ping www.google.com

Of course, if you want to use a VPN on top of SSL, you will have to
adapt this configuration file (isakmp + esp → https).


diskutil info disk0 shows --> Volume Name: Not applicable (no file system)

Your findings are completely normal for a physical disk like an Apple SSD.

A common physical disk partitioned in macOS doesn't contain (a) file system(s)  but a partition table, partitions and some unallocated disk space on the first layer.

Consequently it can't be mounted and has no volume name/file system.

On the next layer (disk0sX) a partition usually is formatted with a file system and has a volume name (e.g. disk0s1: FAT32/EFI disk0s2: HFS+/"Macintosh HD").

In newer systems - especially with SSDs - another layer is added: an LVM (CoreStorage) and disk0s2 as a physical volume is part of an Logical Volume Group (which can contain one or more of them). Almost the entire part of an LVG  (i.e. a logical volume) is formatted with a file system and mounted with a volume name as a new logical disk (usually disk1 in a system with one disk or disk2 in a system with two disks like a Fusion Drive). Small parts of an LVG are not formatted with a common file system but contain administrative data (usually less than 0.3% of the total size of an LVG).


One contact with several numbers - sent messages

When typing in a contact name whilst creating a new message in Messages.app, if the contact sheet for that person has more than one number (or email addresses too) it'll display a list of all numbers. From there you can select which number you'd like to send the message to for that specific contact.

If you've already sent a message and wish to determine what number or email address your using; simply tap on the message -> details -> the "i" icon. The contact sheet will display the currently used number / email in blue (the other numbers will all remain black).

(I'm using iOS 8 - different versions of iOS may vary)

Update for newer iOS versions:

On iOS 12, the used number will have a grey tag next to it with the text RECENT. (and all the numbers are displayed in blue color)


Go to Settings > iCloud > Storage & Backup > Manage Storage > under "Backups" select the device you want to free up space on (i.e. "Jim's iPhone"). Go through and turn off different apps that you would like to not backup to iCloud. You can also see the applications that store data in the cloud (i.e. Camera Roll) and how much space each application has in cloud. This should show you where you can go to delete things and free up space. Or you could just turn off that apps backup.

The iCloud backup list sorts applications with the greatest users of backup space are sorted to the top of the list, so you can quickly assess whether you can thin out the content or need to either purchase more backup space or perhaps disable iCloud backups and instead back up to iTunes and then delete your iCloud backups to allow the space there to serve document sync and email storage.


Macbook Pro (mid 2009) crashes after RAM upgrade

I would strongly recommend to use compatible memory, at least.

As per Apple Support, it is 1066 MHz memory

  Processor and memory
   - ...
  - 4GB (two 2GB SO-DIMMs) of 1066MHz DDR3 memory; two SO-DIMM slots support up to 8GB

Also, I used to have such a 13 Inch '09 Macbook, I'm pretty sure it was MacBook5,5, and it was equipped with 8GB of RAM and 500GB SSD; it worked just fine.


Mac wakes up from sleep every night and then goes back to sleep immediately

I'd eliminate any external devices as the cause of waking first. You can set the MacMini to go to sleep automatically, then eject/unplug all external devices.  KVM & Mice are the usual suspects...

  (Port 1 of Hub at 0x15000000) may have caused a wake by issuing a
  remote wakeup (1)

If you haven't already, you may be able to identify the USB device suspected of issuing the remote WakeUp call.

About this Mac > System Report > Hardware > USB > USB Device Tree

or use the shell command system_profiler SPUSBDataType


Keyboard shortcut for toggling between Fn and F keys

Depending on what you're trying to do, you may be able to cut out the keyboard shortcuts altogether and completely automate this.  KeyRemap4MacBook allows you to set key re-mappings based on what application you're currently using.

I am using a setting that switches F1 through F12 to standard Function keys whenever I'm using RDC (Windows Remote Desktop).  Any other time they operate like their icons (brightness, volume, play, etc).


How can I combine multiple PDFs using the command line?

Have a look at "Combining PDF files on the command line in OSX" in Joining PDF Files in OS X From the Command Line.

  It turns out that from Tiger onwards, OSX ships with a Python script
  that does exactly what you need. The script is already executable, and
  Python is pre-installed on OS X, so all you need to do to run it is
  opening the Terminal and typing

"/System/Library/Automator/Combine PDF Pages.action/Contents/Resources/join.py" -o PATH/TO/YOUR/MERGED/FILE.pdf /PATH/TO/ORIGINAL/1.pdf /PATH/TO/ANOTHER/2.pdf /PATH/TO/A/WHOLE/DIR/*.pdf

Also on the linked page it suggests making a symbolic link for the join.py file to make typing easier however they omitted the -s in ln -s ... ..., and without it, a hard link is created.  Probably wouldn't matter, however though I'd mention it.


is there a way to disable being able to move icons on an ipod touch

Unfortunately, it is not possible to disable icon movement on a non-jailbroken iOS device.  As great as some of the "child-friendly" apps are, the stock UI of iOS devices is not designed to keep curious children at bay.

You could always load up an app for kids with built-in parent controls.  Then you'd want to protect the Home button from being pushed -- perhaps with a product like BubCaps.


If your ExFAT drive is not mounting, here is the solution.

sudo pkill -f fsck

fsck was holding the disk hostage. A quick ps aux | grep fsck revealed that indeed it was hijacking the disk/volume as soon as it was plugged in. sudo pkill -f fsck (or just kill with the PID if you prefer) immediately allowed the volume to be mounted.

Then to make the hard drive writable, you have to run the Disk Utility "S.O.S.", unmount then mount it again.


The easiest way that comes to mind on the Mac is to type the symbol, press ⌘Shift4, and use the resulting cross-hair pointer to draw a rectangle around the newly-typed character. That will take a screenshot of it, and save the resulting .png file to the Desktop.


applescript CURL with authentication fails

Dedicated Tools

Given the problems encountered with curl and AppleScript, consider using an alternative dedicated tool such as Beautiful Soup. See How To Scrape Web Pages with Beautiful Soup and Python 3 for a comprehensive introduction.

Alternatively, there are numerous tools other that can help, see Web scraping software on Wikipedia. Many of these tools are free, open-source, and can be called from the command line.

I have previously used Web::Scraper for extracting property listings.


Mac pop up notifications getting cut off on the right

From comments… based on nothing but guesswork, try the old "switch it off then on again" with a slight twist.

Try changing monitor resolution temporarily, maybe also reboot after you change it. Leave the external disconnected whilst testing.


Does apple get any payment for the Wired magazine viewer App?

No, Apple doesn't get any payment this way. There are a lot of newspapers, magazines etc. providing apps which allow electronic access. If they would offer in-app purchases Apple would take the usual 30%.


Is it possible to use my public IP address to serve a website? (Catalina)

Much will depend on your network set-up and is beyond the scope of a single answer.
Try with my Miln Beyond application to confirm your primary outgoing IP address, and if a NAT or UPnP device is on your network. This is to test if the devices are configurable and your network is truly publicly accessible.
Use Beyond's Beyond Network window to see your computer and network's assigned IP addresses:

Do you have another computer or device on a separate network, such as a mobile phone with a data (non-wifi) connection? Use this second device to test access to your server. Testing access using the same network can provide misleading results.
If this works, then you can achieve the same via the command line and Apache httpd.
Unverified Address
You commented:

Unverified potentially accessible address. Provided by local Network Address Translation (NAT) or Universal Plug and Play (UPnP) device.

An "unverified" address is potentially accessible from the Internet. It is unverified only because Beyond has not actively checked it (that requires a membership).
The listing also suggests that your router supports NAT or UPnP to open external ports and allow incoming traffic.
Does your Internet router have a web interface? The router is a device often supplied by your Internet Service Provider (ISP). If so, look for NAT or UPnP settings; these may also be called Port Forwarding.
By default, your router should block incoming traffic from the Internet into your network. To offer a server to the wider Internet, your router needs to be told to accept specific incoming traffic and to pass it to the server inside your network.
For short lived servers and services, like video/voice calls, NAT and UPnP are used. This is what Beyond has managed to do on your network.


Is there a way to make the Function keys act as standard keys with a Logitech K811 keyboard?

According to Logitech you need they Preferences Manger download and installed.

Make sure you pick the right OS X and follow the instructions.


If you are using iOS 6 (which I am, I can't get iOS 7 on an iPod 4) and the power is on, no matter what you're doing, the easiest way I found was to press the sleep button to put it on standby, press it again to turn it on, find the little camera icon that's next to the "slide to unlock" bar, drag it up to open the camera, and capture your moment.

Of course, this answer is very conditional: it only works if you have iOS 6, the device is either on or on standby, and you do not have a passcode (if you have a passcode, it makes you type it in before you can use the camera). But it works for me all the time, and I think this would work pretty well for others, too.


What does the clear key do on Apple's numpad?

The standard OS X behaviour is for it to act similar to a delete key, but only when text is selected. It won't delete forwards or backwards like the standard delete keys. It also acts as a standard clear button in the Calculator app. This can vary by app however - in Excel for example, it functions identically to the backspace key.


Is the /Developer directory still needed for Xcode in OS X Mavericks?

You can delete this folder. The new /Developer is located in /Applications/Xcode.app/Contents/Developer, so /Developer can be deleted.


Generally, it does not affect, but there are some apps that don't properly work when you do it.

The only way to know is trying it. In the worst case, you can revert the changes without issues.

About accessing keychain, same thing, usually you won't have problems.

I haven't tested auto-update. I usually did it with old versions of apps, to have both old and new ones.


If you just want the side buttons to do back/forward in ANY
  app/environment, this app is the most basic, streamlined one I've
  found for this purpose on Mac OS X, and completely free (donate!).
  http://sensible-side-buttons.archagon.net/

This answer was copied from here: https://superuser.com/a/1230059/51328


How do I get my iPhone and Apple Watch to beta together?

This is solved. After a dozen hours then Apple has tweaked to their documentation. When watch is still on OS 5, you can upgrade iPhone first, then watch to OS 6 beta without issue.


Can iPhone 4S use Bluetooth and Bluetooth Low Energy channels simultaneously?

Yes, I can confrim it by doing some test. I have do the below experiment, after connect the bluetooth ear to play music, then open app BLE Utility on iphone4s, hit scan with BT2.0 device and BT4.0 device, which can find BT4.0 device on same time.
Though BT4.0 and 2.0 have physical difference, I think dual-mode BLE can work with two mode on same time by integrate those two parts into one.


How can I reinstall macOS without a working display?

Normally, the boot process on a computer is displayed on all connected displays. This unfortunately doesn't seem to necessary hold on all modern Apple laptops.
There's a workaround you could try though:

Connect an external display, keyboard, and mouse (ideally, ensure beforehand that this setup is working),
shut down the system (if it's not turned off already),
open the broken display, then
start it up. The Mac will now start booting and of course try to display all information on the broken display.
If you now close the lid during boot, the system will force the video signal to the (functioning) external display. And having an external keyboard (and mouse), you should be able to use your computer!

Alternatively:
In case you have another Mac at your disposal, you could try and hook them up together and start the one with the broken display in "targetdisk mode". (Look up this keyword if the solution above doesn't work and you need more information as to how to hook two Macs up with one another and/or how to start a Mac in target disk mode.)


How many lithium cells are there in a MacBook Pro 15"?

It has 6 cells.  However, they are of varying sizes.

I was able to find a shipping resource in the EU that addresses shipping laptops:

  Scenario 2: A package with a total of 3 or more lithium ion batteries
  contained inside of or with laptops.

  There is a label required on the box (see below), and the box itself
  must be of such strength as to not break or allow the batteries to
  come out or expel fumes, in other words, a good strong industrial box.

  Documentation Requirements

  A document is also required indicating the following

  The package contains lithium ion batteries
  The package must be handled with care and that a flammability hazard exists if the packaged is damaged
  If the package is damaged then special procedures including inspection and repacking may be necessary
  A telephone number to call for additional information


Only by disabling "Displays have separate Spaces"

System Prefs > Mission Control


Is it possible to add an app to your wishlist in the desktop version of the App Store

You're not missing anything, it is as you suggest. Make a feature request since the feature doesn't exist.


How to troubleshoot 802.11ac bandwidth problems

I would run /System/Library/CoreServices/Wireless Diagnostics to see if the tool can pick up on any problems with channel or interference. The drop off in speed seems too large to account for a switch from wired ethernet MTU to the overhead for WiFi, but it could be something that will get tuned with an update.

The good news is you get free support within 90 days of purchase so you could call AppleCare or visit a genius bar to review the Wireless Diagnostic scans and have them escalate the case to engineering at no cost to you if this slowdown persists. I'm sure they would be very interested in a test case where the hardware and software isn't working as expected.

In the mean time, you might have more details on SNR and Transmit Rate that might point to a reason why your transfers are slower over wireless than over wired.

You can even see how this tool can be used in action in this answer - where I turned on a microwave to show that there was some interference from that device.


Minimum partition size for normal osx usage?

You're on the right track with 9-10GB if you're doing a barebones OS X install.  See the OS X Mavericks requirements. However...

If you're keeping the root /Applications on the same volume as the OS, then you might want to leave additional space if you plan on adding applications to the system.  I've never tried to store /Applications on a separate volume from /System (the OS) and /Library (system-wide preferences, support files, etc.), but might be worth a shot if you have time to experiment.

My only concern would be disconnects between core OS X applications and their supporting frameworks.  A prime example would be something like "DVD Player."


Scripting Terminal Command with Automator

Here is a Automator task that can help you with.

1. Action: Get text
To do: Copy and paste desired text content.

2. Action: New text file
To do: File format 'simple text'; save as 'automatortempfile.txt'; In Where is tricky, when you click will show a select folder location, press Cmd+Shift+g and type /var/tmp.

3. Action: Execute Applescript
To do: Copy and paste this content.

tell application "System Events"
    activate
    return text returned of (display dialog "Enter password" default answer "" with hidden answer)
end tell

This will open a dialog with a message "Enter password", that you must provide user password (this user must have admin rights, because this is required to write in /Library/* folder).

4. Action: Execute shell script
To do: Copy and paste this content.

sudo -S mkdir -p /Library/LaunchDaemons
sudo -S mv /var/tmp/automatortempfile.txt /Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.launchd.limit.plist

First line: Create a folder LaunchDeamons if doesn't exist (just for ensure that folder exists).
Second Line: Move your created file automatortempfile.txt from /var/tmp folder to /Library/LaunchDaemons/ and rename it to com.apple.launchd.limit.plist.

sudo -S will read password from stdin.

Now, just save and use!


How can I stop Safari from playing videos on a site automatically?

The Safari extension ClickToPlugin is similar to other plugin-blocking extensions, but it has many features and customizable settings which most blockers don't, including the ability to block plugins other than Flash. Scroll down the linked page to see some of the other features.

Here is a screenshot of an example YouTube video, showing the video preview along with the type of plugin blocked:

Here is a sample of some of the settings in ClickToPlugin:


iCloud causing phone to crash whilst making a call

Those problems were reported by multiple owners. Apple claims to have solved those failing phone calls with the current iOS 5.1 update. Have you updated yet?


Is there a way to see the amp levels while charging my iPhone?

I don't believe so.

The available API for battery state in iOS gives you only 5% resolution. It might be possible to write an app that polls battery state and calculates a rate of charge based on the time between 5% intervals but I don't know of any apps that do this. If you want to get your app on the app store that's about the best way of measuring it directly. I know of an app that captures the screen and looks at the battery charge image to determine charge an alternative way but that's iffy, the size or appearance of the battery indicator might change between versions and then it breaks.

Jailbroken devices are a whole other can of worms. I know how to get 1% resolution on devices with a private API but you can't get such an app on the store so distribution is going to be limited.

BTW your terminology is a bit confusing. "Current" would be the right term, less commonly "amperage". I had to read a couple of times through to work it out, I thought you were talking about music volume at first.


How to recycle some magnetic disk of System on Mac OS?

Your system storage space is more than usual.

Cache files can take up a lot of space.

How to remove them:

From Mac Paw

  Open a Finder window and select Go in the  menu bar.

  Click on “Go to Folder…”

  Type in ~/Library/Caches. Delete the files/ folders that are taking
  up the most space.

  Now click on “Go to Folder…”

  Type in /Library/Caches (simply lose the ~  symbol) And, again, delete
  the folders that  take up the most space.

Another thing that could help is starting in safe mode.

From this Apple Discussion:

  Try this...

  Start your mac in Safe mode by holding the shift key before the power
  key

  Check your storage About This Mac/Storage etc. (In safe mode, mine
  showed accurate usage)

  Restart in normal mode

  Repeat step #2.


Unload the launch agent:

launchctl unload ~/Library/LaunchAgents/environment.plist

Modify the plist/env settings
Load the launch agent again:

launchctl load ~/Library/LaunchAgents/environment.plist

You have to quit and relaunch Terminal to get the new value of the variable in the shell.

With the example of Kuldeep Yadav's comment the usr.aws.plist in ~/Library/LaunchAgent/ would look like this then:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN" "http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd">
<plist version="1.0">
<dict>
        <key>Label</key>
        <string>usr.aws</string>
        <key>ProgramArguments</key>
        <array>
                <string>/bin/launchctl</string>
                <string>setenv</string>
                <string>AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY</string>
                <string>loremipsum</string>
                <string>/bin/launchctl</string>
                <string>setenv</string>
                <string>AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID</string>
                <string>loremipsum2</string>
                <string>/bin/launchctl</string>
                <string>setenv</string>
                <string>AWS_ACCESS_KEY</string>
                <string>loremipsum3</string>
                <string>/bin/launchctl</string>
                <string>setenv</string>
                <string>AWS_SECRET_KEY</string>
                <string>loremipsum4</string>
        </array>
        <key>RunAtLoad</key>
        <true/>
</dict>
</plist>

This is only tested (& working) with bash & zsh.


Your terminology is slightly off. The "charger" is actually a chip INSIDE the phone that manages everything about the way your phone is charged, including overcharge protection, thermal protections, and much more. The power adapters are just that: power adapters. They're used for providing DC power to the charger within the phone.

I'm honestly not sure how any kind of 3rd party wireless charging solution works.


How to get my keyboard backlight back after Mountain Lion upgrade?

You're not alone, expect an OS X update to address this very soon, until then others have had success by disabling the auto dim in low light feature.

System Preferences > Keyboard > uncheck "Adjust keyboard brightness in low light".


Custom keyboard I created with ukalele not working

The Keyboard Name is not set correctly.  It duplicates one already in use by the system.  Instead you should make it koray1.


My iPhone 6s Plus doesn't want to download apps. Whenever I touch get it says that my request cannot be processed

Error 1009 appears when Apple sees the phone's IP address as coming from a location or country where the Apple Store (or this particular app) is blocked. Your phone's screenshot shows connectivity through Cubacel, so I presume you're in Cuba...and I'll bet Apple blocks the download for that reason. You could consider using a VPN (virtual private network) to anonymize your location, which might allow the download...and which might also contravene Cuban law.


Globbing isn't random, it's guaranteed to be alphabetical (a.k.a. lexicographic order according to your locale), which is different from numeric sorting order.

You can use brace expansion for this.  Replace '10' with the number of the last file.

cat {1..10}.txt > merged.txt

This uses bash brace expansion, which you can read about at LESS='+/Brace Expansion' man bash.

Note that unlike file globs, the brace expansion will generate arbitrary strings which need not be existing files; in this case that means you will get errors if there are files missing from the sequence (e.g. if 7.txt does not exist).  However, this won't affect the contents of merged.txt which will be produced as expected.


Can different Apple ID co-exist for iTunes and iCloud backup?

The description is not very clear, but yes, you can have different Apple IDs for iCloud and for iTunes purchases (if that's what you are asking).

To do this: on the iPhone, go to Settings > iCloud > E*nter the Apple ID you want to use for iCloud Backup* > Turn On "iCloud Backup".

Now, to setup a different Apple ID for iTunes purchases, go to Settings > "App Store" or "iTunes & App Stores" > Enter the other Apple ID to be used for purchases.

That way, you can sport 2 separate Apple IDs: one for iCloud backup and one for iTunes purchases.


Is it possible to update an iphone 3g ios 4.2.1 to ios 5?

No ,you can't update the the iOS 4.2.1 to iOS 5 in iPhone 3g.

The highest supporting operating system of iPhone 3g is iOS4.2.1.(Apple discontinued iPhone 3g on June 2010).

If you need iOS 5 like features on your iPhone 3G, try Whitedoor(it may help you).

Note: Whitedoor is just an iOS 3.1.3 so you won't be able to run your iOS 4.0-4.2.1 applications on it, but it has a separate store with the last 3.1.3 supported versions with a lot of application.


What's the equivalent of windows explorer?

You can access the finder via the Dock:

When in the terminal, you can open the current directory in the terminal via:
open .

Here's a finder window. I've created the directory ~/temp like you said.

You can also ⌘-click the info icon at the very top to see the path:


Applescript-how can I expand a list view window's contents so everything shows hierarchically and expanded

You can expand all sub-directories with an alt-click on the arrow left of your directory.


Videos taken on the iPhone will not sync to the iPad

The fact that iTunes silently skipped informing you that it did not add the videos is most probably caused because you checked the "Do not show this message again" upon the prompt the first time.

Are the videos in MOV or MP4 format? You can try installing the free VLC app on your iPad  and then add any video files to that app via iTunes File Sharing. Simply:

Run iTunes and connect the iPad
Enter the iPad settings in iTunes and navigate to the "Apps" tab
Select the VLC app under "File Sharing" (scroll all the way to the bottom to see "File Sharing")
Click on "Add files..." and select the videos from your PC
Click on the iTunes "Apply" button.

This should add the videos to the VLC app on your iPad from where you can access and play them.


You can use backgrounder iPhone tweak if jailbroken that will run apps in background While iPhone seems to be shut down I use this when downloading long files I just turn on backgrounder to have app run in background  and press button on top of iPhone so everthing is off but what your running in background


How can I prove my friend stole my iPod w/o a serial number

I had to retrieve a serial number from a device which was lost. If you go to https://supportprofile.apple.com/ and login with your iTunes account, then it should show every device you've either bought through the Apple Store, or synced with iTunes, along with the serial numbers. I hadn't known about this before I had to use it.


Lion Server: Send remote lock from outside LAN

Yes, you'll need to either forward these ports to your Lion server, or put the Lion server in your firewall's DMZ. You will also need to make sure that the DNS name of your Lion server is resolvable to devices outside of your network.

The Apple Push Notification service used by Profile Manager will tell your device "Check in with this server", but your server needs to be resolvable and accessible for your device to actually check in and get the command that you've set for it in Profile Manager. That's why the lock command is working while your laptop is on the same LAN as the server.


On the Mac, dia (specifically /Applications/Dia.app/Content/Resources/bin/dia) is just a shell script wrapper to the compiled dia-bin binary.  It sets a number of environmental variables, and then finishes by executing Dia as a GUI:

exec "$CWD/dia-bin" --integrated

You can make a copy (e.g. cp -p dia dia-cmd) and edit that last line in dia-cmd to become:

"$CWD/dia-bin" $@

and then you can use it as dia-cmd within the terminal.

Note:  I found that for my locale (en_US.UTF-8), at least, running dia-cmd in the terminal was way too chatty about trying to determine the correct locale, spewing ignorable warnings:

Warning: AppleCollationOrder setting not found, using AppleLocale.
Setting Language: en.UTF8

(process:33043): Gdk-WARNING **: locale not supported by C library

(process:33043): Gtk-WARNING **: Locale not supported by C library.
    Using the fallback 'C' locale.

You can eliminate that by also commenting-out those lines in dia-cmd, and manually forcing the correct locale:

## LANGSTR=`defaults read .GlobalPreferences AppleCollationOrder 2>/dev/null`
## if [ "x$LANGSTR" == "x" ]
## then
##    echo "Warning: AppleCollationOrder setting not found, using AppleLocale." 1>&2
##    LANGSTR=`defaults read .GlobalPreferences AppleLocale 2>/dev/null | \
##            sed 's/_.*//'`
## fi

# NOTE: Have to add ".UTF-8" to the LANG since omitting causes Dia
#       to crash on startup in locale_from_utf8().
## export LANG="$LANGSTR.UTF8"
 export LANG="en_US.UTF-8"
## echo "Setting Language: $LANG" 1>&2

Voila:

MYMACHINE:~ lars$ /Applications/Dia.app/Contents/Resources/bin/dia-cmd -v
Dia version 0.97.2, compiled 18:51:13 Mar 17 2012


High Sierra DNS fails intermittently for LAN-local hosts

macOS doesn't treat its DNS server list as having any sort of priority at all, it just scatters queries across all of them in a semirandom fashion. Set it to only use the internal DNS server, and you should get much more reliable lookups.


Disable iCloud Backup without deleting existing backup?

If you turn off iCloud Backup on your iPhone, the iCloud Backup isn't deleted from your account immediately.

The Backup does get "abandoned" some time after it stops receiving updates, I think it's like 6 months... but you should call up a AppleCare rep to confirm what time frame it is, I never found out how long, just that it is months afterward the backups stop from that device


Can MS Outlook work with iCloud? Can I iCloud-sync my iPad 2, iPhone 4S and Outlook 2010?

You should be able to set this up by using these instructions. You need to make sure you have the iCloud Control Panel for Windows. I've set this up on numerous occasions and it's worked well.


What's the most robust way to backup an iTunes library?

You simply need to backup the entire iTunes folder and optionally the alternate folder(s) where the media is stored.

To ensure your media is consolidated so you don't have to track more than two folders for backup, be sure to allow iTunes to consolidate and organize your music.

The files stored are readable by both mac and windows so you can place them on the new machine, perhaps re-link the directory structure since a Mac won't know what to do with C:\My Documents\Music\Itunes\whatever but everything including the counts, downloaded apps, artwork and playlists will all transfer. You may need to find the folder where iTunes stores iOS device backups as that may be in a different location but that's easy to recreate by plugging your device into the new iTunes and finishing one backup.

It's still a good idea to export the library as XML to cover you for times when the iTunes database gets corrupt but this will work across all versions of iTunes in the past.


Lost space after removing bootcamp partition via bootcamp assistant

Try to extend the size in the last shown screenshot by entering a new size in the field or dragging the white dot to the top in the chart on the left.

If this does not work, you need to manually resize the CoreStorage via the recovery system. Look here how to do it.


"That event does not belong to that event store" when trying to create a new calendar event

Try these:

Close the Calendar app completely, then retry (this worked for me)
Reboot iPhone
Try editing the default calendar setting (Settings ->
Mail, Contacts, Calendars -> Calendars)

If none of those helps, you could read through this apple.com thread for more tips.


Macbook Pro screen replacement doesn't display correctly

This happened to me as well. If your MacBook Pro was purchased between February 2011 and December 2013, Apple determined that a small percentage these systems may exhibit distorted video, no video, or unexpected system restarts. Check out this link for the official Apple report.


Some of my text contacts appear in red on Ipad/wont send

This happens when the person you are contacting is not registered with iMessage. Because your iPad is not connected to your phone policy (just data if anything), you are not able to text regular numbers. Your iPad is still a tablet, and so it cannot send regular SMS messages outside of iMessage, which is Apple's, not Verizon/AT&T/T-Mobile/Sprint's.


How to view Adobe Photoshop PDFs on my iPad

Photoshop PDFs are a bit wonky even outside the iPad, and I have found it best to flatten and place them in InDesign and output a PDF from there. Even so, the iPad's PDF support is limited and searching the web for "iPad PDF viewing" yields a lot of reviews for PDF-reading applications.

In the end, however, it would be best here to have a Plan B (i.e., laptop and projector) if this so important. PDF support for the iPad still has a long way to go.