My AppleCare is about to expire with my battery at 81%. Is there a good way to get it to 79% so I can get a new battery?

What’s the harm in asking them to diagnose your battery and not even say anything about wanting a free swap? See what they say and document they had a chance to diagnose things before the warranty ends.

My feeling and expectation is Apple would not offer to replace things unless you have them perform diagnostics and they see something amiss or feel it’s about to fail. I also see +- 5% FCC estimate when I run things from day to day, so I wouldn’t worry about +- 1% either to be eligible for a swap on the pooled plan (you are pooling risk - so it’s not free, it’s paid for out of the pool). It’s also not free since you would waste a 80% good battery that might last for years if your assumption that the only thing wrong would be measured capacity below 80% FCC within 3 years of delivery.

The 80% FCC is the standard, so it’s understandable for you to look at things around that as a line, since Apple established that design line and goal, but in practice, 60% FCC still gives a lot of run time and sometimes it’s not even worth paying for batteries below 40% or less. For some needs 40% FCC is perfectly serviceable and causes no real harm.

AppleCare plans are pro-rated and you’re paying for the term benefit (just like paying in for insurance of any kind) and no one gets to collect for “close to needing care” or a refund if you don’t use the benefit. Of course, you can cancel the coverage any time before it ends (and then the return is pro-rated). If you really think through the coverage, I think you’ll join me in “not wanting to get something for your payments” since the FCC is just one aspect of performance.

I would hope Apple wouldn’t replace the battery unless they feel it’s not performing, so I would just get it service diagnosed now and then about 2 weeks before the end of the coverage (or anytime you see 75% FCC). Since Apple can run diagnostics remotely , you can get a quick diagnosis and chance Apple would want to swap out parts (maybe something other than the battery needs service).

In the end, I gladly pay for battery service when it’s needed and if it takes 3 years to get to 80% FCC you might have another 1-3 years before the charge falls off and only have AppleCare and a $90 or so service for 6 years of productive use of a Mac spanning one original battery.

So in the end I would recommend:

read up and learn what the numbers mean
talk about the trade offs - some are being green, some are being frugal and not wasting time / resources / materials
balance the potential harm if you don’t get it serviced - your time is also valuable - driving in or having to go back for a repeat test also wastes resources
my experience is that when batteries are just being exhausted, they don’t fall sharply and any 5 to 9% change is meaningless to the eventual out of service date.
my experience is that when batteries fail, they plummet in days or weeks and Apple still covers them even after since they were at 85% and now are at 45% within a short period of the end of warranty.


Unscrupulous apps on iTunes -- bank account hacked by iTunes merchant?

Forget about working with Apple. Just tell your credit card company.


Thanks to @tubedogg for linking me to this post and giving me the tips.

To fix the issue I had to run the commands diskutil cs revert <disk id> and diskutil cs resizeStack (Not sure if that worked since I think it game me an error).

I had to reboot for the effects to change and I partitioned my drive in recovery mode (think you can do it within OS X though).


How do I install OS X Yosemite without a working Mac App Store application?

My MAS application is still broken and there are glitches everywhere.

Looks like FUBAR BUNDY!

I recommend a clean install.

Backup any additional files which aren't already in your SuperDuper! image. Probably it's faster to just backup/copy your or all user folder(s) to an external drive.
Please check your hardware with your original system DVD (Apple Support: de_DE en_US) or if the DVD is not available with the appropriate Apple Hardware Test image.
Do a SMC-reset (Apple Support: de-DE en-US)
Do a PRAM-reset (Apple Support: de_DE en_US)
Since your recovery volume is probably corrupted, you have to initiate an internet recovery by restarting your mac and pressing alt cmd R.
The prerequisites for an internet recovery are listed here: supported Pre Lion Macs and Recovery/Internet Recovery.
In a few words you need the latest firmware update installed, either ethernet or WLAN (WPA/WPA2) and a router with DHCP activated for a successful internet recovery.
On a 50 Mbps-line it takes about 4 min (presenting a small animated globe) to boot into the recovery netboot image which is loaded from an apple server.
(Additionally you might need an external drive or a thumb drive with at least 32 GB if you want to install to an external disk.)
In the opening window choose Disk Utility and format/partition the drive you want to install the system to. Choose Mac OS Extended (Journaled) and GUID partition table (available with the option button). Quit Disk Utility.
Choose Reinstall OS X and Continue. After some verification steps you will be asked to choose a partition for the new system. Continue until the system is installed. Depending on your internet connection it might take several hours to download and install 5.5 GB. If you get a message like 'Could not find installation information for this machine' just restart your Mac and continue with step 5. (The netboot image seems to be very picky with the WLAN connection and it took me two attempts to get around this step)
Set up your new system.
Start App Store.app and log into your Apple Store account.
Download and install Yosemite if it wasn't already installed in step 7 or just download it and quit the installer to get the Yosemite installation app for any further use.


Backup Disk 'doesn’t contain an EFI system partition'

Unless I'm missing something here it shouldn't be much more complicated than booting into your recovery partition (assuming it's working correctly), reinstalling OS X and then restoring your data from the TM backup on your WD drive when prompted at the end of the OS X installation process.

If you have issues with the recovery partition go for Internet Recovery instead, using Disk Utility to erase your drive before attempting an OS X installation. This will allow the OS X installer to create a new clean recovery partition that should be accessible from CMD + R.

The WD drive should be usable for recovering your data in its present state as Time Machine will alert you the first time you try to use a drive if it has an incompatible file system. As you've made a TM backup the drive must already be correctly formatted. The EFI issue should only really affect you if you are trying to boot from the external drive, which you're not as it doesn't have OS X installed on it. If you've any doubts about your external WD drive then repartition it once you've restored your old data, this should flush out the Microsoft system partition and create a new EFI partition in the correct location on the disk.


Can I rescind the choice to share data about my iTunes library contents with Apple?

In iTunes, you can opt back out of sharing details by opening the preferences and selecting the store preferences tab.


Does Mountain lion download Apple's JDK or the OpenJDK when attempting to load a Java app?

It prompts you (just tried to open Aptana). I let it install and

java -version

gives

java version "1.6.0_33"
Java(TM) SE Runtime Environment (build 1.6.0_33-b03-424-11M3720)
Java HotSpot(TM) 64-Bit Server VM (build 20.8-b03-424, mixed mode)


You can try with this app: Record And Listen

This app solves the problem of not being able to record a video while playing music from your library. You choose a song and record a video which is automatically saved to your phone. This app is great for taking dance videos, or if you just want to continue playing your music while taking a video. Price is 0.99$.


Automator service: delete last page from PDF with use of pdfsplit via bash

You have a couple of errors on your syntax. Replace the following lines:

pages=`pdfcount "$f"`
pagescut=`$(( ${pages} - 1 ))`

With this ones:

pages=$(pdfcount "$f")
pagescut=$(($pages - 1))


The Safari Keyword Search extension can help you define new search engines to be used by Safari.  It can also change the default search engine Safari is using.  You could then use it to put the Google search URL as the default search.

See the instructions on the extension website.


How to disable plug in sound on late 2016 macbook pro?

defaults write com.apple.PowerChime ChimeOnAllHardware -bool false; killall PowerChime

It resets upon boot up but this will do it temporarily.  I'd love to find out how to disable this permanently.

EDIT: I am so proud of myself.  Here is what a dummy can learn to do for himself.  After I found that code for Terminal above, I had to figure out how to make that command run upon login.

Open TextEdit and type

#!/bin/bash

defaults write com.apple.PowerChime ChimeOnAllHardware -bool false; killall PowerChime

exit 0

... and save it on the desktop as "PCK.txt."  (Powerchime killer)

Rename that file to "PCK.ps"

Open up Terminal and enter

cd ~/desktop

to navigate to the desktop, where the PCK file is.  Then type

chmod +x PCK.ps

Now you can test the script if you want, hopefully it works and the sound is killed!

Next, under the Terminal drop down menu, there are preferences.  Under the Profiles tab there is a Shell "sub tab" on the right.  In this tab there is a "When the shell exits" section, under which is a box that you can choose one of three options.  I chose "Close if the shell exited cleanly," and now when I double click my "PCK.ps" file, a Terminal window flashes and that stupid powerchime is dead.

The final step is to add PCK.ps to my specific user login items.  The login items are located in Preferences / Users and Groups / >user of choice< / Login Items.  Then, click the plus sign and browse to PCK.ps and add it.  Check the box and now try a reboot!


Move from android after intially declining

You have to wipe the phone to get the assistant to run. It won’t merge content, just import on to a blank device.  Make a backup if you want and then in settings, erase all content and settings. Then you can run the Android import and get all the migration done and review.

Worst case, you examine the data, sync or export contacts and apps and then erase / restore your current backup and merge the data.


Do Apple Software Updates really take up as much space as it shows in the size column?

When you go to update your Mac software via Apple Update, each line item contains the size of the file. Is this the size of the download or the actual size it will take up once the update is installed?

It's the size of the download not the update itself. However, in the case of a new OS update, generally the file size and the actual install size is similar, since the OS updates normally replaces all files with new one's, and often can change a whole big set of files in one go.

  For example, say I have 1,000 MB of free space, and there's an update which says "200 MB" in the Size column. Generally, once I install this update, will I now have 800 MB of space left on my system?

It depends on the update. Most updates replaces the existing files completely, so the increase should only be by the amount of the stored download, and any additional space needed by new files, or increase of the file sizes of any existing files.

Please ask if the above doesn't make sense

  Or is there a chance that this is not an incremental upgrade and it will replace existing files that are already taking up space on the system?

For few official updates are incremental. For the OS updates, the manual downloads offer two versions:

Version 1 contains only the latest update, and is generally smaller. This will be downloaded if your only one version behind during the version check.
Version 2 contains all the updates from release 0. This is normally bigger, and will be downloaded when you are more then one version behind, irrelevant of the version your actually on.

The above applies to the OS updates

AppStore updates at the moment is always a complete full version of the new application being downloaded, the copy you have replaced, and the balance trashed.


a PDF reader which can read notes on PDF

I found answers, two apps work, I provided the screenshots for each app as well.

Documents

Foxit pdf


What are the best apps for rescuing deleted data on flash drives?

I recommend ProSoft's Data Rescue which can recover a very wide variety of file types. Even if you don't see the file type listed, ProSoft maybe able to help you recover the data. I once had a client delete a their QuickBook's for Mac data file. It was a new version of QuickBooks with a radically different file format from prior versions. The current Data Rescue didn't recover the data; however, ProSoft was able to provide a new file definition and all of the data was recovered.

There are separate Mac and PC versions of Data Rescue. I have used both with good results, but I have far more experience with the Mac version.

I find $99 for Data Rescue to be a very fair price, however, if you are only needing to recover image files from digital cameras, checkout ProSoft's Image Rescue for $20. I believe Image Rescue comes with both Mac and PC licenses.


Weak/Variable Connection between our Macs and our WiFi router

When you added the NAS to the LAN did you move the router?  It's possible that even a very minor shift in the position of the router or the antenna could impact the shape of the signal zone.

You might try pairing up with your husband where one of you is in by the router and the other in key use-areas and recording signal strength based on the location, orientation and position of the router and router antennas. (don't know if this model has external antenna, if not rotating the router itself).

There are tools that can give you more detailed report on the signal strength, for instance you might want to download and install Kismac on your MacBook.  Kismac and similar tools can also give you some insight into what other networks might be interfering with your own.  If you see strong signals on the same channel that you are using you might consider moving your network to another channel.


How do I disable scaling for specific apps on Retina MacBook Pro?

SwitchResX is what you want. It will allow you to set application specific display sets.

SwitchResX is a commercial third party application, but it is available to try for free and for download. Probably because it is technically a hack to use the full resolution of Retina Displays, it appears to be unavailable on the Mac App Store.

By creating display sets for each application you wish to use the full native Retina Display resolution, effectively, you can disable the scaling for individual applications.


Boot from USB drive on a Macbook Pro with Windows 7 installation

Unfortunately, A1286 is not enough information to identify which particular MacBook Pro model you're using, as that's the part number for the 15" unibody case, not the computer.  All non-Retina 15" MacBook Pros made between late 2008 and mid-2012 carry this number.

However, it's a good bet that the model you have cannot boot anything from USB other than the MacOS itself.  Since these models have optical drives, the only Apple-supported way to install Windows on them was to do so from a Windows DVD, and thus the firmware didn't support Windows USB install sticks.

Since you're trying to boot KillDisk, I'm guessing you want to destroy the drive for the purposes of selling or junking the laptop.  Fortunately, you have several options available to you:

Option 1:  Boot the machine to Internet Recovery and use Disk Utility to wipe the drive.  This is only supported on 2010 models and later.  You can access it by holding down CTRL+Option+R immediately after hitting the power button.  This is the option with the least amount of hassle if your Mac supports it.

Option 2:  Extract the drive from the computer and place it into another computer (PC or Mac doesn't matter), and use whatever tool you want to wipe the drive.  Unlike Retina 2012 and newer Mac models, the hard drive in yours is easily removable.  This is the option with the least amount of hassle if you're comfortable with opening up the computer's case and handling components.

Option 3:  You can make a bootable MacOS USB drive.  You'll need another Mac to do this, of course.  But you'll be able to use Disk Utility to wipe the drive once you've booted from it.

Option 4: Connect to another Mac with a FireWire or Thunderbolt cable and boot the machine into Target Disk Mode by holding down the T key immediately after hitting the power button.  The computer will then show up as a removable drive on the other Mac, and you can use Disk Utility from there to wipe the drive. This one is probably the most problematic unless you've got a FireWire or Thunderbolt cable lying around (probably not).

Just FYI, The "boot chime" is one of the defining characteristics of a Mac, and has been present in every model ever made until Apple (curiously) got rid of it in their 2016 and later models.  You should be hearing the chime as soon as you hit the power button, before the OS begins loading.  The only reason you wouldn't hear it would be if the volume were all the way down and the setting was saved that way in the P-RAM.  But the fact that you can't hear it shouldn't affect your ability to use the various startup keys that Macs understand.

You can reset the P-RAM to the defaults by holding down Command+Option+P+R immediately after hitting the power button and you should be able to hear the chime again.  I would recommend doing this anyway, because if you're selling it, the buyer would expect to hear it.


No.

From AppleInsider: "Unlike with the 12-inch MacBook, which uses the USB-C port for both charging and syncing, the USB-C connection on the Apple TV will only be used for diagnostics purposes."

Also, from AppDevice "The USB-C cable offers the only way for the new Apple TV to interface with a computer for things like taking screenshots of screen recordings from the device and, more important, restoring the device to factory settings via iTunes (in the event that over-the-air restore doesn’t work)."


connection line grayed out in iBooks Author

The option to connect boxes does not work with the title page.  Create two new boxes within the document, select both boxes using the Command Key then try connecting the boxes  again.


There is an additional set of margins in a Pages document.

I exported a document to Pages '09 and opened it with the old version.  In the Layout Inspector, I found the "Layout Margins". The "Left" and "Before" margins were non-zero and the numbers matched the unwanted margins I saw in Pages 5.2.  Here's a sample:

I changed those layout margins to 0, saved the Pages '09 document, and opened it in Pages 5.2.  Hurrah!  The unwanted margins are gone!

If there's a UI control to view or change the Layout Margins in Pages 5.2, I haven't found it.

Update: BigCaseyDog's answer describes the Document Margins, which are available in Pages 5.2 as well as Pages '09.  In Pages '09, the Layout Margins are available in addition to the Document Margins.  The Pages 5.2 templates -- at least some of them -- are built with non-zero Layout Margins, but Pages 5.2 doesn't seem to give us a way to change the Layout Margins.


"Unable to download the app at this time"

Please try the following steps to fix your problem. After each step, check whether you are still having this problem.

Simply double tap the icon of the app that you are unable to download and wait for a few seconds. Your download should resume.
If you are presented with a button with the option to "try again," note the download progress up to the point where the error occurred, and tap "try again."  The error may return, but if the progress has advanced, then keep tapping "try again" over and over until the app is fully downloaded.  After doing so, the problem may not return at all for future app updates.
Tap Settings > General > Date and Time > Set Automatically > and slide to turn off “Set Automatically”. Manually set the date one year ahead. Now try to re-download the apps. If you get an error message, go back to turn on “Set Automatically”  then try to download the apps again.
Restart your iOS device. Simply press and hold the on/off (sleep/wake) button until you see the red slider and slide the slider to turn your device off. To turn back on, press and hold the on/off button until the Apple logo appears.
Settings > iTunes & App Store > Your Apple ID > Sign Out.  Restart your device, then Settings>iTunes & App Store>Sign in and then try again.
Tap Settings > Wi-Fi and turn Wi-Fi off and then on again.
Reset Network Settings by tapping  Settings > General > Reset > Reset Network Settings, and then your iDevice will restart. Note that will reset all network settings including your Wi-Fi passwords.
Reset your device by pressing and holding the sleep/wake button and the Home button together until you see the Apple logo.


Lost Wi-Fi passwords after reset network settings on iPhone

I came across this question and this was suggested by someone on a forum:

Disable iCloud Keychain from the iCloud settings page (On the top of settings if running iOS 10.3, down the list if running other versions of iOS)
Do the "Reset network settings" to debug the network issue you're experiencing
All the Wi-Fi passwords should now be deleted. What you now have to do is to connect to a network manually, then re enabling your iCloud Keychain, your old WiFi passwords should have resynced and you should now have access to all previously connected WiFis.

Note that I haven't tested this personally, but I just came across this because I'm trying to debug a problem when my iPad disconnects from WiFi only when streaming Netflix.


Is there open source or free software to use my touchpad as absolute touch?

I just found a app called Inklet.

I did not try it my self, but will consider it for any pen drawing work where the use of mouse or trackpad is difficult.

It does cost $20, but it might be worth, but there is a free demo version to try first.


App can't be deleted having no name, just numbers

First, try resetting your home screen layout

Resetting your iPhone's home screen layout should clear icons from apps that aren't downloaded (the relevant app icon appears to not be downloaded). This only involves moving icons around to suit your desire after the reset, no other data will be lost.

Go to Settings > General > Reset > Reset Home Screen Layout.

Tip: take pictures of your old layout before resetting to make the process smoother.

If that doesn't work, do a factory reset

Doing a factory reset and restoring your phone from a backup should fix this issue because the reset will clear all of your app icons and start the home screen from scratch.

Here's how to do that:

Back up your iPhone to either iTunes or iCloud (if you choose iTunes, make sure to do a complete backup). How do I backup my iPhone?
Perform a factory reset of the iPhone after the backup completes in Settings > General > Reset. How do I factory reset my iPhone?
During setup, choose to restore your iPhone from another iPhone and choose the backup you just made. How do I restore my iPhone's data from a backup?
Watch as all your data returns (allow a few hours for apps and photos to re-download), almost definitely without the odd app icon in question.

Note: data from apps that specifically request data not be backed up (like Google Authenticator) will be lost.

tl;dr: try resetting home screen layout first, but if that fails you'll need to do a factory reset.

Fun tidbit: You just found out Spotify's SKU, a unique ID for an app in the Apple system that is not seen by users.


VMware Fusion taking too long to expand disk?

Solution to this is: just wait.

However, there is a little caveat, if you want that this transition is really successfully and fast you need to temporary turn on Time Machine backup.


multiple dropbox instances hangs in starting loop

Personal Dropbox does not work in this fashion, as it causes open preference file conflicts, thus the hang on the startup of the second instance. You must login and logout of each personal Dropbox account to use them individually, or used shared folders for common files. You can also have two Dropbox accounts open in different web browser windows.

If you are a Dropbox for Business user, you can have personal and Business accounts sync to single devices, which is what you may be looking for.


Does the FaceTime eavesdropping bug affect iOS11 devices?

There are no public vulnerabilities for iOS 11 being affected by this specific bug or any of similar function or scope.

As far as the bug from late January on iOS 12 - Group FaceTime is disabled globally since 1/28 so no devices are vulnerable.

Before the service was suspended, only devices with Group FaceTime capabilities could be exploited or considered vulnerable.

Devices on iOS 11 were not affected and won’t be until/unless that feature is added to an update to iOS 11.

Looking back, the steps to reproduce the bug involved dialing a contact via FaceTime, and before they picked up, dialing a second contact to initiate a Group FaceTime. So, anyone can convince themselves that the issue is mitigated and also test once the service presumably gets re-enabled on patched devices.


Since SIP was disabled there is a high chance this was a user error on my side like the comments suggested. I did not want to do a complete reinstall due to all the hassle that would ensue.

This problem ended up getting fixed by itself when the next macOS update was released. After installing the update the open executable was back at its original place.

Hope this helps people encountering a similar issue.


You can't change grep's behavior, but you can change the file it sees:

tr '\r' '\n' <file | grep foo

Also, \r line endings are legacy these days; OS X officially uses \n, although there are still things that haven't been updated.  In particular, AppleScript still hasn't quite caught up, which also shows in its using pre-OS X file paths by default and requiring POSIX file to indicate OS X native paths; also, many Carbon applications still use \r, Carbon being a transition framework from Mac OS 9 to OS X.


Client isolation while using Internet Sharing over WiFi

I guess you have to turn off the Firewall in your iMac or at least go the Firewall setting and turn off "Enable Stealth mode" if this is ON. You can test first with this and if this don't help, then you can turn off Firewall fully on your iMac. It should work in this way. Let me know how it goes.


Suddenly "Safari Starts With: A New Window" Setting Is Missing

That setting is dependant on another setting in System Prefs > General > Close Windows when quitting an app.
If that is checked, you get the new Window option. If it is unchecked, then you're essentially telling Safari [& all apps] to remember what they were doing at quit.


How can I upgrade MacBook Pro disk space?

You could probably go with your 1st option from an Apple Service provider or DIY, but Apple doesn't upgrade storage on any shipping Mac. The last one to offer that was the Mac Pro which had no-tool, user swappable hard drive bays.

Your 2nd option will tie your laptop to the network providing the NAS for full operation. You would want an iSCSI initiator for the fastest storage, but NAS would be just fine for large files and folders you access infrequently.

I propose a third option: external storage.

I taped a 1TB SSD to the lid of my MBP. Not that attractive but very effective. Thunderbolt is the fastest DAS (direct attached storage vs network attached storage) but USB 3 is no slouch either.

Be sure to tape the connector and cables as well to prevent jiggle disconnects.

I didn't care about the looks. Consider this a proof of concept (tape is enduring nearly one year :-) So there is enough room for improvement. But I'm very happy with this solution. I travel daily with this setup with all my music and stuff.

Pictures of opened lid


Is it possible to increase the font size in iTunes?

It is possible to to change/customize every font/font-size within iTunes.app, that is used for the menu, pop-up dialogs, view-field etc..

In order to do so navigate to /Applications/iTunes.app/Contents/Resources/English.lproj and make a backup of Localized.rsrc first, just to be on the save side.

Then download ThemePark3.1 in order to open and edit the Localized.rsrc file. Once you edited the font(s)/size to your liking, you need to save your changes from within ThemePark.

It might be, that you also need to reboot first to see the changes!!

Edit:
There is also an iTunes.rsrc file under /Applications/iTunes.app/Contents/Resources/ which might be of help and lately .css stylesheet-files are being used for theming as well (in Linux (GTK3).

If that is also true for 10.7 (still running 10.6.8, therefore can only guess), please confirm this information!! Basically "simple" images can be drawn and rendered from code instead of using single image files, in png, tiff, jpg - format.

Those .css files also manage font information, like font-style, color values, size etc...


How do I change the email address that iCal alerts are sent to?

The simplest solution would be to add the address to which you want alarms sent to your Address Book entry. Beyond that, I don't have an elegant workaround, but you could, for example, run a script that could contain a variable to send alerts to multiple recipients.

I sympathize in that it's annoying that your Address Book entry is forced to contain a mix of public and private information used for various, and differing, purposes. This is one of Apple's many decisions that (I assume) works for the majority of the user population, but bites the outliers in various ways.


Can't update boot ROM firmware on iMac Late 2006

You could try with Apple's Firmware Restoration CD:

http://support.apple.com/kb/TA24012


I think you'd have to use Xcode 4 (I did). But since you mentioned it worked with your iPad 2, try to first register the device in the developer portal.


How to permanently unhide the Users Library folder in Catalina

There's a visible pref for it, no need to dig in defaults

This is simplest if you use Icon or List view*

Open to your User's Home folder - /users/[yourname]/ -  then either View Menu > Show View Options or  Cmd ⌘   J
Check the box for Show Library Folder.

*This is just because in Column view you're less certain exactly which folder you are affecting. The Show Library option only appears when you're in exactly the right folder.


I believe you'll need to use a Launch Agent to watch for when the /Library/Preferences/com.apple.loginwindow.plist file is touched, as it is when the lock screen is unlocked, to have something you want to have happen when the lock screen password unlock event occurs.
Please read the answer in its entirety before implementing it.
The following was tested and works on a clean install of macOS Catalina 10.15.6.
Open Terminal and execute the following commands:
mkdir -p ~/Library/LaunchAgents
cd ~/Library/LaunchAgents
touch com.my.detect.screen.unlocked.plist
open -e com.my.detect.screen.unlocked.plist

Copy and paste the example XML code, shown further below, into the opened com.my.detect.screen.unlocked.plist document and then save and close the document.
Back in Terminal, execute the following command:
launchctl load com.my.detect.screen.unlocked.plist

You can now close Terminal, if you wish.
To test, click the Lock Screen menu item on the  menu, then log back in.

Example XML code:
<?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>com.my.detect.screen.unlocked</string>
    <key>ProgramArguments</key>
    <array>
        <string>/usr/bin/afplay</string>
        <string>/System/Library/Frameworks/SecurityInterface.framework/Versions/A/Resources/lockOpening.aif</string>
    </array>
    <key>RunAtLoad</key>
    <false/>
    <key>WatchPaths</key>
    <array>
        <string>/Library/Preferences/com.apple.loginwindow.plist</string>
    </array>
</dict>
</plist>

Notes:

The sound file in this example XML code obviously can be changed to whatever you'd like, however, I'd suggest that its path is not within default folders of the root of your Home folder as there may be an issue accessing it. You'll have to test if it's an issue for you. As an example, in the root of my Home folder I have folders I've created that where not originally there, that is where I'd place it.

This will also trigger when you log out as the /Library/Preferences/com.apple.loginwindow.plist file is also touched during a log out. By touched, it means at a minimum the date/time of the file has changed, not necessarily its contents. (I was not able to trap a change to its contents, if there even was one, in spite of the date/time of the file having changed.)  There may be other events that can cause it to be touched, so this is not a perfect solution. I'd still implement it and test it for a while. If you are satisfied, you can leave it in place or remove it as you wish.

To stop the /Library/Preferences/com.apple.loginwindow.plist file from being watched, and thus the sound no longer being played when the lock screen is unlocked, you'll need to unload the com.my.detect.screen.unlocked.plist file and then delete it.

In Terminal:
cd ~/Library/LaunchAgents
launchctl unload com.my.detect.screen.unlocked.plist
rm com.my.detect.screen.unlocked.plist

Alternate Method
This involves the use of a third-party application called EventScripts which costs $4.99 USD on the US App Store, however, there is a demo version you can download from the developers website to give a test run to see if you feel it's worth the price.
This application sits in the menu bar area with the other menu applets and response to a variety of events, the one in particular of this subject is Screen password unlocked in which you'd use the AppleScript do shell script command to execute, e.g. afplay /path/to/filename.mp3.
 Note: I am not affiliated with the developer of EventScripts, just a satisfied user of the product.
Example AppleScript code:
on run eventArgs
    set thisTrigger to (trigger of eventArgs)
    if thisTrigger is "Screen password unlocked" then
        do shell script "/usr/bin/afplay /System/Library/Frameworks/SecurityInterface.framework/Versions/A/Resources/lockOpening.aif"
    end if
end run


The paid app iExplorer can show Voice Memos in a Finder-like interface. iExplorer has a free trial which will allow you to verify if the Voice Memo exists as a file on your iPhone. You will need to purchase the app to download the memo file.

Disclaimer: I'm a highly satisfied user of iExplorer and I'm not connected with Macroplant LLC financially or otherwise.


Post a file from pages.app to a Yahoo! group

Did you try exporting as ms word files or PDF files and then uploading that to yahoo!group? If all things fail there is still the snap shop option of taking a screenshot of the document and uploading as a jpg graphics file. You can take screenshots by holding down the on and home button *at the same time.


2010 27" iMac vs 2011 27" thunderbolt display

If anyone is wondering the answer to this… The actual panels are identical, but the connectors on the back of them are different. Also the display mounts on the actual display are different as well. So in conclusion, without some insane modifications, this cannot be done.


See the number of open windows for an app in the macOS Dock

Apple doesn’t inject code into a running app to provide this count (basically it’s up to the app to manage badges, not the OS). One solution would be to choose apps that have code added to display their window count as a badge (like they do in the window menu and other parts of the app). This is trivial to program as a sample app, but making changes to a large program like Chrome is typically far from trivial. If this feature is important, I think the browser team could make the effort to do it.

Like the mail app counts messages unread and read, it can display arbitrary information in a badge.

Have you seen if this is a feature hidden or made a request to the chrome development team?

https://www.google.com/chrome/dev/

Although since chrome was created to remove chrome like that, they might see this as more clutter. Hard to guess without engaging them, perhaps.


Corruptions within Calendar: duplicates. How to analyse their cause and fix?

I haven't yet a correct explanation of these corruptions, but at least I wrote a solution to have a clear vision of the extent of the damage and to fix it.

Here is a perl script: duplicate.pl:

$ cat <<'eof' >duplicate.pl
#!/usr/bin/perl
use strict ;
use warnings ;

# program reading on its standard input a file under
# ics format exported by iCal or Calendar
# Both only export one calendar at a time

# file = name of created file for a given calendar

my %file = () ;

# filedesc = file descriptor of the created calendar file

my %filedesc = () ;

# hash of all unduplicated events local_event_id
my %events = () ;

# current event storage
my @event = () ;
my $dtstart = '' ;
my $dtend = '' ;

# number of events analysed
my $num_event = 0 ;
my $duplicate = 0 ;
my $calendar = '' ;

# state booleans
my $in_header = 1 ;
my $in_event = 0 ;
my $in_summary = 0 ;
my $line = '' ;
my $summary = '' ;

# local event identifier :      summary;dtstart;dtend
# because ';' is never used within a name
my $local_event_id = '' ;

while (<STDIN>) {
        $line = $_ ;

# header :      BEGIN:VCALENDAR
#               ...
#               BEGIN:VEVENT

        if ( $in_summary ) {

#               continuation line of summary

                if ( $line =~ /^ (.+)\r\n$/ ) {
                        $summary .= $1 ;
                } else {

#                       end of summary continuation lines analysis

                        $in_summary = 0 ;
                }
        }
        if ( $line =~ /^SUMMARY[^:]*:(.+)\r\n$/ ) {
                $summary = $1 ;
                $in_summary = 1 ;
        } elsif ( $line =~ /^BEGIN:VEVENT/) {
                if ( $in_header ) {
                        $in_header = 0 ;

#                       print every lines of event or header

                        foreach $line (@event) {
                                printf {$filedesc{$calendar}} "%s", $line ;
                        }
                }
                $in_event = 1 ;
                @event = () ;
        } elsif ( $line =~ /^X-WR-CALNAME:(.+)\r\n$/) {
                $calendar = $1 ;

#               create .ics file

                if ( ! defined $file{$calendar} ) {
                        $file{$calendar} = $calendar . ".ics" ;
                        if ( -e $file{$calendar} ) {
                                die "$file{$calendar} already exists\n" ;
                        }
                        open ($filedesc{$calendar}, ">", $file{$calendar}) ;

#                       print every lines of header

                        foreach $line (@event) {
                                printf {$filedesc{$calendar}} "%s", $line ;
                        }
                        @event = () ;
                        $in_event = 0 ;
                }
#               printf STDOUT "calendar = %s\n", $calendar ;
#               printf STDOUT "file = %s\n", $file{$calendar} ;
#               printf STDOUT "fh = %d\n", $filedesc{$calendar} ;

        } elsif ( $line =~ /^DTSTART[^:]*:(.*)\r\n$/ ) {
                $dtstart = $1 ;

#               printf STDOUT "DTSTART = %32s\n", $dtstart ;

        } elsif ( $line =~ /^DTEND[^:]*:(.*)\r\n$/ ) {
                $dtend = $1 ;

#               printf STDOUT "DTEND = %32s\n", $dtend ;

        } elsif ( $line =~ /^END:VEVENT/ ) {

# it's only on closing an event definition that we have
# a complete local event identifier

                $local_event_id = "$summary" . ";" . "$dtstart" . ";" . "$dtend" ;

                if ( defined ( $events{"$local_event_id"} )) {

#                       duplicate event

                        printf STDOUT "\n\tduplicate\t%s\n", $local_event_id ;

#                       free event storage

                        @event = () ;
                        $in_event = 0 ;
                        $duplicate++ ;
                } else {

#                       new event
                        $events{$local_event_id} = 1;

                        if ($in_event) {

#                               print every lines of stored event

                                foreach $line (@event) {
                                        printf {$filedesc{$calendar}} "%s", $line ;
                                }
                                @event = () ;
                                $in_event = 0 ;
                                $num_event++ ;
                                $in_header = 1 ;

#                               show progress
                                if (($num_event % 100) == 0) {
                                        printf STDOUT "\n%8d", $num_event ;
                                } else {
                                        print STDOUT "." ;
                                }
                        }
                }
        } elsif ( $in_event == 0 ) {
                $in_header = 1 ;
        }

#       store every line of event or header

        if ($in_event || $in_header) {
                push (@event, $line) ;
        }

}

printf STDOUT "\nevents:%12d\n", $num_event ;
printf STDOUT "duplicates:%8d\n", $duplicate ;

#                       print every lines of ending

                        foreach $line (@event) {
                                printf {$filedesc{$calendar}} "%s", $line ;
                        }

close ($filedesc{$calendar}) ;
exit 0 ;
eof
$ chmod u+x duplicate.pl

And here is the way I used it:

From Calendar, export a given calendar through:

File > Export > Export...

let's say it is: Documents/Calendar/2015/professionnal.ics

NB.: this will be a backup in case of problem, and a much more practical one than any file manipulation with the help of Time Machine
Install the above script as:

~/Documents/Calendar/src/duplicate.pl

Go in directory to test for fixed version, for example:

mkdir ~/Documents/Calendar/2015.fixed
cd ~/Documents/Calendar/2015.fixed

Run duplicate.pl:

../src/duplicate.pl <../2015/professionnal.ics

which will  display the number of events read and the number of duplicate found and create here a fixed version of the calendar:

~/Documents/Calendar/2015.fixed/professionnal.ics

Compare the result with the original corrupted version to check everything is OK:

 diff ../2015/professionnal.ics .

Within Calendar select the calendar professionnal and delete it
through:

Edit > Delete
Import the fixed one through:

File > Import > Import...


Display won't follow sleep settings, uses disabled screensaver instead

I noticed the same effect in full Yosemite installation: screensaver starts when the computer (macbook air) is put down to sleep. If we add to this the battery "eating" behaviour I observed as well. I have unchecked every item that can use power, icloud and handsoff included, but the system itself needs a lot more energy than Mavericks. The general picture of power management seems to be worse than ever.


Shift–Command–Left/Right Arrow started switching tabs in macOS Mojave Finder, clashes with text movement?

If you set your own shortcut for moving between tabs of a window, the Shift-Command-Arrow combinations will work as before.

To set your own shortcut:

Open System Preferences -> Keyboard -> Shortcuts
Select App Shortcuts at the bottom.
Click the + button to add a shortcut.
Make sure that "All Applications" is selected
Type in the exact names of the commands, on an English system they would be 'Show Previous Tab' and 'Show Next Tab'. Check this in the Window Menu in Finder if you're not sure.
Add your preferred shortcut to switch between tabs in either direction


Your Calendar must be set to automatically accept invitations from email.
CHECK FOR THIS SETTING:

Automatically retrieve CalDAV invitations from Mail
Select this checkbox to have Calendar get event invitations from Mail.

Go to Preferences in your Calendar and turn it off. (for now)

Next, set junk filtering in your Gmail.
Also block this specific user.
Just to make sure, change your Gmail password.
Clean all Internet saved browsing (the history) including cookies.
Then run a virus scanner to finalize.
Once you are sure you got your Gmail account under control with decent junk filtering, you can turn the auto Calendar invites on, if you wish to use it.
If there is a leftover from previous owner, check the Delegation set up in Calendar, by clicking on the EDIT. There should be no names in there.


Can I use my Macbook Pro Retina as a monitor for PS3?

No, the video ports (HDMI and Thunderbolt) are output only. The MacBooks aren't designed to function as monitors.

You could try getting a video capture device that supports live viewing, but the performance and quality are likely to be far from optimal—such solutions are designed for recording video, not live playback or gaming.


Transferring iPhone message history to new Mac?

did you make backups of the iPhone on the mac (with iTunes or iMazing):
if so you can easily restore the messages from the backup.


Is there a max price limit for in app purchases?

The highest tier is tier 87. This equates to $999.99 or £699.99.

Source: App Store Pricing Matrix (requires iTunes Connect; dynamic link)


Bluetooth Manager not present in Boot Camp (Windows 7)

It seems this has to do with your older macbook pro because I have a more recent iMac and my Bootcamp version shows Bluetooth devices. When did you download that version of Bootcamp? If you're still using the original version from years ago, you may want to try downloading a new version as it may include the Bluetooth capability. If not, your computer may just be too old. Hope this helps, good luck!


How do I run apple script on a particular instance of Firefox?

To test the example AppleScript code, I duplicated Firefox and renamed the copy as Firefox 2.
This was texted under macOS High Sierra, using different scenarios:

Both Firefox and Firefox 2 running, with Firefox started first.

Firefox being frontmost.
Firefox 2 being frontmost.

Both Firefox and Firefox 2 running, with Firefox 2 started first.

Firefox being frontmost.
Firefox 2 being frontmost.

Just Firefox 2 running.

In all tested scenarios the example AppleScript code preformed as wanted, Firefox being the one acted upon, not Firefox 2.
I believe the key here is using the fully qualified pathname, e.g. "/Applications/Firefox.app" verses just "Firefox".
tell application "/Applications/Firefox.app" to activate
delay 1
tell application "System Events"
    keystroke "n" using {command down}
    delay 1
    keystroke "l" using {command down}
    keystroke "a" using {command down}
    key code 51
    keystroke "https://google.com"
    key code 36
end tell

Note: The use of the delay command may be necessary between events where appropriate, e.g. delay 0.5, with the value of the delay set appropriately.


Need to type password again installing next apps, after 15 minutes. How to disable?

No, the only options available are Immediately or After 15 minutes.


Where to change websites settings on Safari, IPadOS 14

What seems to be happening is that the website thinks you are using Safari for macOS and in reality you are using Safari for iOS which uses the same rendering engine but is entirely different in the way it lets you set the media handing.
In fact I didn't see any setting for auto play here:
Settings > Safari
Settings for iOS apps are almost always in the Settings app. The Apple (built-in) apps all have their settings there.
What I did see what an option for "Request Desktop Website."
It might be that is on and it may need to be off for this particular website to work properly. If it is on turn it off and the website will then realize that you are on an iPhone and switch the content around to be optimized for a mobile device.
It is also possible that you ran into a bug in the beta software you have installed on your phone, that there is no fix for until (maybe) the next beta release.


From the Obsidian Menu Bar page:

To give the Clock, Battery and Fast user switching menu items readable
text, copy WhiteUIServer.menu by Alex Zielenski to somewhere on your
harddrive and open it. Also add it to System Preferences> Users & Groups>
Login Items to keep the text tray.

"Somewhere" on your hard disk could be, say, in your Documents folder. Basically any place that you know where it is and are unlikely to muck with it later, e.g., move it. When you've placed it where you want it to be, double click it.

Last, add it to your account's login items: http://support.apple.com/kb/ht2602

That article is a bit old, but the basics are the same in later versions of OS X.


Books - PDF - Preview - Search : "No Results Found"

The culprit is Preview. Also for a (text) PDF file which is not in Books the "No Results Found" message shows up.

I killed and restarted Preview a few times on the same PDF file. And then the Search worked again.

Annoying. But it seems a solution.


If you don't have view permissions it will report itself as taking zero space to the directory that encloses it. This is especially visible with the "Users" folder. Take another User's folder.

Notice how oddly small this folder appears. Yet it is reporting a valid file size, as I have read permissions to the folder.

Now look at the contents of this folder.

Notice the variety of folder that I don't have view permissions for. As a result, when viewing the overall user folder, it simply assumes they take no space instead of reporting an error of some sort. Thus, the folder size is deceptively small.

If you want a more accurate report, I would recommend using something like DaisyDisk or a free alternative to scan the entire disk as admin so you can properly see what's taking up space.


How to prevent Safari from stopping downloads when sleeping?

Could not figure out why this was happening but using the caffeinate command I was able to fix it.

https://developer.apple.com/legacy/library/documentation/Darwin/Reference/ManPages/man8/caffeinate.8.html

I ended up just created a LaunchDaeomon to run it at certain times.


After iPad restore (from iCloud) apps still appear as 'waiting'

Here is a quick and short how-to guide.

They say:

  A final step involves re-downloading all your apps from the App Store,
  a process that the iPhone/iPad handled automatically.

So my guess, your iPad and iTunes are clever enough to handle it by itself. When they notice an App is already installed, they wil leave it alone. If they find an uninstalled app, it will be installed.


Show all flagged items in Archive in Mail (iOS 7)

In Mail for iOS 7 you can tap on Archive Mailbox then type the word flagged in the search box. You can then pull down on the results list which gives you the option of All Mailboxes, or Current Mailbox, which is actually pretty useful. Selecting All Mailboxes should show all flagged messaged globally, and Current Mailbox only the ones in the Archive that have been flagged. I realize that this is more of a work-around than the way it's done for the normal Inbox, although seems to work relatively well considering there's no actual Flagged button for messages in the Archive.

I've found that the Flagged button doesn't always show all the flagged items in the Inbox anyway. It appears that it has something to do with flagged messages that are stored on iCloud or possibly doesn't search for flagged messages past a certain date. I usually end up typing flagged in the search and sure enough it finds items that weren't listed when I had initially tapped the Flagged button. After the search completes then older flagged items end up showing when tapping the Flagged button.

*I believe flagged messages are also put at the top of the message list by default when you tap on the Archive Mailbox (at least on mine). If someone has a better solution it would be nice to know, however, in meantime hopefully this helps.


Spaces (Mission Control) jumps to a space but won't stay there

I cannot reproduce the problem at present, so it is "solved". So, "hooray" (spoken in a quiet, self-defeated voice).


External windows mouse invert scroll except touchpad

I've had a simular issue as an inverted (external) mouse is pretty... annoying.
If you never use another computer, you will get used to it eventually.

But if you would like to customize buttons, I would recommend you steermouse as per their site:

  SteerMouse is a mouse driver that lets you freely customize buttons,
  wheels and cursor speed. Both USB and Bluetooth mice are supported, no
  matter whether the mouse is designed for Windows or Mac.


Macbook pro looses the connection to USB adapter after sleeping

In order to make the adapter work again, I have to unplug and replug the charger to the adapter 2.

Basically, you have to reset the adapter.  The problem sounds like the USB controller on the adapter doesn’t handle sleep well (or at least waking from sleep).  This isn’t something that you can fix in macOS (or even should) as it’s an issue with the USB adapter itself - not a software configuration thing.

However, looking at your configuration, I would recommend you getting a dock instead of having multiple adapters (see this answer to a similar situation).  The dock will give you a much more stable connection and being Thunderbolt, it will be connected to the PCIe bus rather than the USB bus.


Does the Macintosh classic have the signatures of the original Mac team?

No. The signatures were really only in the 128K. Each time some the case saw some minor modification, some of the signatures would be cut off in part or in whole. The 512K Mac contained some of the signatures, and the Macintosh Plus contained a few less. At some point, the signatures disappeared entirely.

The Macintosh Classic was an entirely new case design, though, six years later. There were no signatures on it.

Also, not being fully satisfied, I found a picture:

Cracking Open the Apple Macintosh Classic


How do I "say . . . using" in Javascript for Automation?

Apple's documentation describes how to call commands which have both direct parameters (the text) and named parameters (the using). In this case, you would do this:

var ScriptEditor = Application("Script Editor");
ScriptEditor.includeStandardAdditions = true;

ScriptEditor.say("Hello", {using: "Alex"})


Not able to search installed Apps anymore

I was able to solve it by reinstalling IOS on my iphone. It wasn't a very good solution, but sadly nothing else worked for me.

Apple is not very different from Microsoft after all.


Xcode 4.1 stuck trying to load debug symbols from iPhone 3G

In case anybody is still interested, this issue changed slightly with Xcode 4.2, and I posted an updated question here:
https://stackoverflow.com/questions/7922308/xcode-4-2-error-0xc002-when-trying-to-use-a-jailbroken-iphone-3g-for-developmen


This may vary by browser, but in Safari, if you press ⌘⌥A, you bring up the Activity window. Find the largest file being downloaded for the current page; that is generally the Flash Video. Double click it, and it will be downloaded to your downloads folder.

This avoids having to learn the various places Mac OS X will store temporary files on disk. In general, things that aren't expected to be cached for re-use end up in /private/var/tmp and things that are in ~/Library/Caches but in your case, safari will expose that file more directly and allow you to fetch it.

If you are ever curious - you can watch filesystem activity in real time with some quick commands like sudo fs_usage -w | grep Safari


Question 1:
In both cases the display is running at the same actual resolution (3840x2160). However, the graphics are rendered virtually at a resolution of 6400x3600 before being downsampled to the actual resolution.
This is done because 3200x1800 is not an integer multiple of the actual resolution, therefore there's going to be some compromises made regarding image quality when viewing it on screen. In order to make the right compromises, the display is rendered virtually to a much higher resolution that is then downsampled to the actual resolution. This enables the computer to use those extra bits of display data to choose a better pixel value for each position on the display, than if it just had a 3840x2160 virtual rendering to work with.
Question 2:
Yes, I think that is the case here.


iCloud and AppleID 'married' to Macintosh

The tie of an AppleID to a device is associated with the "Find My" capability. On an iPad or iPhone, this tie to the given AppleID makes it so that new users of the device cannot wipe it or change the AppleID without providing the previous user's AppleID login credentials.

The good news is that the tie to an account is not as "strong" on an iMac.  For that device, you can merely reformat the drive and install the desired version of MacOS.


How to get Mail.app to display (rather than hide) duplicate messages

defaults write com.apple.mail _AlwaysShowDuplicates -bool true

This should be working.


Performing a factory reset and restoring the system from a Time Machine backup has resolved the login freezing issue with Yubikey's Yubico 5C.
The Time Machine backup restored to the Mac was created right before doing the factory reset.


Even before trying to fix permissions - I would make a new user account and then see if you can open these three apps:

Calculator - check if self-contained apps work
Safari - check if networking works
Calendar - check something that can connect to cloud data - substitute contacts if you don't sync calendars. Mail is usually a huge amount to download - so that's generally a bad test app.

If your new account works, the system and online and network are fine and it's just your settings in your user account that are amiss (or third party apps). If you can't make a new user work - then consider wiping the Mac and restoring from your backup once you have a clean install.


I used gparted on a Linux machine (Raspberry Pi) to delete the partition table.

Disk Utility then recognised it, and I could create a GPT partition table.

Added to Time Machine and it seems to be working (150GB to go) .


Screen resolution messed up when upgrading to latest Macbook Air

Very weird and unusual problem, I solved it this way.

Open a terminal. Fin your DisplayPrefsKey

ioreg -l -x -w0 | grep IODisplayPrefsKey

Came out this:

"IODisplayPrefsKey" ="IOService:/AppleACPIPlatformExpert/PCI0@0/AppleACPIPCI/IGPU@2/AppleIntelFramebuffer@1/display0/AppleDisplay-756e6b6e-717"

The important part is the last, AppleDisplay-756e6b6e-717.

Inside /System/Library/Displays/Overrides/ there is a folder  DisplayVendorID-756e6b6e. Now it's vim time:

vim DisplayProductID-717

Inside there is an XML file with values in Hexadecimal. If you edit it correctly, restart, OS X will do exactly what you told it to. If you get it wrong, you could fry your screen (maybe, didn't want to test that part).

So how do you get the values right? Look at other config files and find a suitable resolution that would work for your screen. In my case, I was lucky that my other MacBook Air from 2013 had the screen working properly. I copied the configuration, replaced the file (which had a different name), and voilà!

Small issue, if you're not perfectly comfortable editing file in hex, you have two options:

Use PlistEdit Pro for Mac (now free and part of XCode)
Use SwitchResX (~$20) to copy the config from one computer and port it on the other.

Hope this saves the 7 hours of work I put in yesterday to whomever is reading this :)

Useful resources:

http://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/274957-guide-how-to-fix-spdisplays-display-in-about-this-mac-window-20120820-update-tiny-app-added/
http://hints.macworld.com/article.php?story=20030212065523164
http://embdev.net/topic/284710


how can I use $HOME, ~ or environment variable in plist file of LaunchDaemons

Plists, or property lists, are just a file format for storing serialized objects - for example configurations or similar. The file format specifies how strings are stores, but it doesn't specify anything about higher level details - such as how file names are stored, parsed or otherwise dealt with.

This means that it is not possible to answer your question in general for plists.

The interpretation of $HOME, ~ and environment variables in general in plists are thus application specific. For some programs, it could work - for others it wouldn't. Depends entirely on how that program was made.

UPDATE: You have changed your question to be about LaunchDaemons specifically, and not about plists in general.

For /Library/LaunchDaemons/startup.plist it is not possible to refer directly to the environment variables you mention. They're not parsed and replaced with values by launchd. In addition it probably wouldn't have worked like you thought even if they were, because LaunchDaemons are run by root if nothing else is specified.

What you can do is refer a program in the startup.plist that when run can access the environment and do the variable substitution for you. For example like this:

<key>ProgramArguments</key>
<array>
    <string>/bin/sh</string>
    <string>-c</string>
    <string>exec $HOME/startup.sh</string>
</array>


How can I remove the window shadow in Mountain Lion?

This one works well for me: toggle-osx-shadows.

It is easy to compile and use, and there are only 17 lines of code.


First of all, iCloud is built into OS X and iOS deeply and you can't just remove it completely, but you can avoid its use by disabling it.

http://support.apple.com/kb/PH2613

Choose Apple menu > System Preferences, click iCloud, select "sign out".

This way iCloud will not be used on your mac and could not be used by any application.


Why quarter step increment on brightness, volume and backlight is not working on a Touch Bar MacBook Pro?

Tap the arrow on the left of the system area to expand the full list of system buttons, then use the brightness increase and decrease buttons from there.
(If you've removed them, you might need to go to View → Customize Touch Bar and add them back in.)
Since those buttons have the exact same function as non-Touch Bar models, you can use the alt + shift combination to get the quarter-step changes.


How can I change colors for the minimise / close / maximise controls in the titlebar on macOS?

Make backup for safety

DISABLE " SIP " from recovery mode How do I disable System Integrity Protection (SIP) AKA "rootless" on macOs [OS X] and reboot to do rest of the steps, while SIP is disabled.
Download this app (latest release) https://github.com/alexzielenski/ThemeEngine/releases
Then follow this path      (/System/Library/CoreServices/SystemAppearance.bundle/Contents/Resources/).
Just open Finder and in the top menu choose Go > Go to Folder and insert the path.
Now there are many .car files. You need to choose one of these (depending what you trying to edit.

SystemAppearance.car (It stands for any color scheme [blue, purple, pink, red, orange, yellow, green] EXCEPT GREY scheme.
GraphiteAppearance.car (Only for grey scheme)
GraphiteDarkAppearance.car (For grey + dark theme)

Copy-paste chosen file 2 times, on different locations. First for modding and second for safety.
Open the file for modification (using ThemeEngine) and scroll down. Find the "Folder" with the circles. Use the filter "Scale" in the bottom of application.
Use 1x icons for not-retina displays and 2x for retina. You can modify only "regular" circles, because you won't see small size circles probably anywhere.
Copy the pictures (drag it from app to desktop) you want to modify in the separate folders. You need this, because they will rename as they get together.
Open copies in any photo editor (I used Photoshop) and paint them as u wish. But don't forget to check the size. They mustn't be too big compare to the original, because they won't fit in some apps.
Once you finished - drag and drop modified files to their place. For example: Modified close button > Original close button. Replace all of the regular size pictures with your's.
Quit the app after saving your preset. Copy this modified file one more time for safety.
Drag and drop it in the original folder where you took it. Confirm all of the suggestions and REPLACE the original.
Reboot into recovery mode and turn on SIP using csrutil enable.

Well done! You did it! Congratulations!

If you have any problems with step 11 - you probably haven't disabled SIP.

Original files and my preset (white buttons, black symbols):
https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1SewDd32Pwll_O4iZvomL0y8xtBwz17Py?usp=sharing


If you are really working on Jamf MDM and to have centralized AV, then I highly recommend Crowdstrike from Falcon.

Crowdstrike's Lightweight sensor technology is ideal for mobile devices, and CrowdStrike’s cloud-native platform provides the perfect conduit to manage, administer and hunt for data.

More detail on: Crowdstrike for mobile

Go through it and do your research. We are using this for all macOS and iOS devices. It is very light on the end-user. JAMF highly supports scripts as well.


How do you disable cellular data use for all apps except for one?

In the Settings menu, once you've scrolled past Twitter/Facebook/Flickr/Vimeo, you can see all of your installed apps. Tap any app, and you can uncheck Background App Refresh and Cellular Data individually.  Do that for every app except WhatsApp, and you should be set!


How can I open a port (not application) in the OS X 10.6 firewall?

Worked for me.

I wanted to open traffic on port 70, so I entered the following:

sudo ipfw add 7000 allow tcp from any to any dst-port 70

The response from the command-prompt was:

07000 allow tcp from any to any dst-port 70

Yes, the 0 was automatically added to the rule #, so it is worth noting that any rule ID < 10,000 will be prefixed by one or more zeroes.


Banish "You have forced XXX to quit" from showing on my screen again

Run the following, then log out and back in

defaults write com.apple.CrashReporter DialogType none


What you can do is to check if you are running the right build. It's just to check that you are not still running the developer preview. Lion is free for developers anyway, so that might be the reason you got it for free.


Using imovie, how can I create a short highlight films from a long movie?

If you like the movie trailer format but you want to customize the length of the clip segments, you can convert the special movie trailer project into a normal iMovie project by going to (File>Convert Trailer to Movie).

Video Tutorial about this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-lBbqgqgTVA

Otherwise you need to edit your project manually. A trick to limit the length of a project is to first insert a blank image into your project and to make it the length you want your video to be. Then you can start adding clips to your project by dragging the clips over the blank image (if it doesn't cover the clip completely select the cutaway function). This method can help your project stay a certain time length.


MBP Late 2016 Thunderbolt 3 issue: connected cables not recognized after sleep/wake up

I've had a similar issue with the Monoprice Select Series USB-C to 3x USB-A 3.0, Gigabit Ethernet & USB-C Adapter. If I use the MacBook Pro 2016 w/ touchbar in clamshell mode with this adapter, the MBP will not wake from sleep at all. It's almost as if the adapter has gone to sleep, even though the lights on the ethernet port light up and blink and the AC adapter is plugged into the usb-c port on the adapter.

I have another ethernet adapter made by Anker that has 3 USB-A 3.0 ports on it that works just fine though. Might be a difference in chip set?


Why does my iMac reboot every day at the same time?

This is a shot in the dark but worth checking, since it is so specific time wise, have you maybe by accident set up an automatic restart under the Energy Saver?

Open Preferences
Open Engery Saver
Click on Schedule


Can I restore Address Book's pre-Lion layout?

I don't have my SL disk handy, so I cant vouch for this, but maybe try copying the Address Book.app from SL (or a backup) over to Lion?


Geektool coding to remove image after a set time

Use the delay command. It's very simple: it simply delays by the given time in seconds. Example: delay 5 would delay for 5 seconds.


If you bought the phone from some other person, and not from an official store, the seller might have stolen the iPhone and sold it to you and now the owner is looking for it (I doubt it since you had it for 2 years)

If you bought your phone from the official store, your iCloud ID might have been hacked. The solution to activating it would be to go to an Apple store, prove to them that you are the rightful owner and they will reset it for you. After that, if you have a backup, restore the phone from the backup. Also, change your iCloud ID password Immediately. If you cannot log in, it might have been hijacked. In that case, click forgot password and reset from email.


The @ sign means that the files have extended attributes. What you noticed was the extended attribute com.apple.FinderInfo, which can be modified to have Finder hide the file.

Using ls -@, you can see the extended attributes of the file.

This is what shows up when I run ls -dl@ Library when my Library folder is hidden:

drwx------@ 54 me  staff  1836 Aug 31 11:16 Library
     com.apple.FinderInfo   32

and when it is showing (a setting in Show View Options in Finder on your home directory):

drwx------+ 54 me  staff  1836 Aug 31 11:16 Library

The com.apple.FinderInfo   32  means that the file is hidden. (32 is just the bit  they chose to represent it, 1<<5. This is called a bitmask.)

You can hide and show files with chflags hidden and chflags nohidden, enabling and disabling that bit of com.apple.FinderInfo.


Mac OS Mojave 10.14.1 File Sharing services off after restart

I just upgraded to macOS Mojave 10.14.3.  Looks like Apple has fixed this bug.

Anyone else having this problem: update to 10.14.3 or later.


What's a good app for project management?

If you have the money, you should give a try at OmniFocus. It might be a bit overwhelming in the beginning, you will need some time to adjust yourself to the application and find the most suitable configuration of the app. But as soon as you get in "autopilot mode" you will be quite satisfied.

If you are looking for some free alternatives I would recommend:

Asana
Producteev

They are not actually free, not as in beer anyway. They are freemium: you will have a set of features that are free, and another set of features that are payed, but I think that the free version do most of the job.

And there's also Trello that is simultaneously minimalistic and powerful.


Reset the iOS device: Hold down the On/Off button and the Home button at the same time for at
least ten seconds, until the Apple logo appears.

Make sure WiFi and Bluetooth are turned on. Those are required to use AirDrop and won’t work without them. The try again to turn AirDrop on, if the issue persists you should contact Apppe Support.


Microsoft Excel - Conditional formatting, finding duplicates

I found a solution; it's not "pretty", but it works. Unfortunately, it is a bit hard to describe, so I'll make an
example file with explanations available, instead. In short, it uses

a "helper cell" the locate and mark duplicates
Excel's use a formula to determine which cells to format Conditional Formatting option to then color the original cells


The best ssh client I've used on iOS is Prompt from Panic Software.

That being said, there are open source ssh clients for iOS, like Blink Shell. If you have a dev license (100 dollars), you can build it and push it to your phone. Or pay the 20 dollars and get it from the app store.


OSX Boot drive selection screen is slow, un-responsive and takes forever to load in Macbook Pro (early 2015)

Troubleshooting is often a process of elimination, so it can take time and patience. We'll have to work through these steps one at a time until we can identify the cause and resolve it.

1. Software

As a starting point, I would update macOS Sierra to 10.12.2 (it's been out for about two weeks now).

I'd also ensure you have the latest version of Paragon NTFS for Mac OS X and FUSE for macOS installed.

Once you've ensured you have the latest versions installed, let us know how you go.


bug: unable to turn on "Show date and time in menu bar"

It's possible com.apple.menuextra.clock.plist located in your user /Users/yourShortNameHere/Library/Preferences is corrupted.

Close the System Preferences window. Move that plist out of its directory, and re-launch the System Preferences.

Feedback if it doesn't work.


Export long iPhone message conversation via command line to PDF or HTML?

This is not a complete answer but this blog post[1] is a possible lead. Apparently this guy found out where some of the files are located. I have yet to try his solution. I will post back here after I've tried it.

[1] https://linuxsleuthing.blogspot.com/2015/01/getting-attached-apple-messaging.html


My first generation Apple Pencil works with Trello on a 10.5" iPad Pro running iOS 13.2.

If it doesn't work for you, there are some Trello alternatives like Asana – there are really too many to list here! Since Trello works well for me, I haven't explored other options.


Set the default search to current folder?


Restricting remote user to a single directory in 10.11

Create a file /bin/rbash, make it executable and and set it as a shell for this newly created user:

#!/bin/bash
exec /bin/bash -r "$@"

The user over ssh is limited as manual page for bash describes in  "RESTRICTED SHELL" section.


Should Do Not Disturb be cancelling incoming calls?

The iOS 7 description of Do Not Disturb states(accessible over Settings > Do Not Disturb)

  When Do Not Disturb is enabled calls and alerts that arrive while locked will be silenced, and a moon icon will appear in the status bar.

So DND should not cancel incoming calls.

This seems to be an ongoing problem/bug on the official apple forums.


Cannot copy certain podcast episodes to iPhone

Some podcasts are video and if the resolution is too high for your device, it will not work.


How do I remove bookmarks from Terminal window?

I double this is an issue still, however, I thought I would answer it for anyone else who comes across this minor problem.

In El Capitan, Bookmarks are not saved across different Terminal sessions. Therefore, after exiting/re-opening Terminal, your bookmarks are cleared. If you want to have the same effect as this, you may use CMD+K.


Is there a way to disable the "enter a password to unlock the disk" prompt for a disk?

I found this, which is basically the same as the quora.com method (link above):

http://www.idownloadblog.com/2016/11/24/prevent-partitions-from-mounting-mac/

However, for me, although it DOES prevent the volume from being mounted on startup, so far it DOES NOT prevent the popup "enter a password to unlock the disk".


How do you use Family Sharing to effectively merge multiple Apple IDs?

.The answer turned out to be only slightly convoluted.

Set up a new user on my mac, tempaccount.
Login as new user.
Use 3rd id as my icloud login.
Set up my gmail account as the Mail account.  (Since I don't intend to send email with this account on a regular basis, I don't really care if Mail.app gets confused.
Find the email forwarded from 3rd id to my gmail account.
Click and accept.

With luck this may help other people in similar circumstances.


Where can I find this green nature iPad mini wallpaper used in Apple's advert?

The image is available at PAPERS.co in both parallax and normal versions:

http://papers.co/ma28-frog-boy-leaf-flower-nature/


give read&write permission to only 1 file in folder

To allow user_name writing to preferences.plist add an ACL with:

sudo chmod +a "user_name allow write" /Library/Preferences/SystemConfiguration/preferences.plist

This changes the output of:

ls -laeO /Library/Preferences/SystemConfiguration/preferences.plist
-rw-r--r--  1 root  wheel  - 59715  9 Feb 23:25 /Library/Preferences/SystemConfiguration/preferences.plist

to:

ls -laeO /Library/Preferences/SystemConfiguration/preferences.plist
-rw-r--r--+ 1 root  wheel  - 59715  9 Feb 23:25 /Library/Preferences/SystemConfiguration/preferences.plist
0: user:user_name allow write

but doesn't change the permissions of the superior folder or other files residing in the same folder:

drwxr-xr-x  15 root      admin        -             510 24 Mär 17:23 SystemConfiguration

To remove the ACL later simply enter:

sudo chmod -a "user_name allow write" /Library/Preferences/SystemConfiguration/preferences.plist


Give away paid app on App Store for free

Will App Store allow me to upload a paid app but still give me the right to give away free licences to people I choose?

Yes, you can generate and distribute promo codes for your apps to your existing customers. Apps bought with promo codes work similar to apps bought normally and are linked to the customers Apple ID.

However, there's an upper cap on the total number of promo codes that can be generated in a given time duration. This approach will be useful only if the total number of such customers is under the set limit.

From the App Store Connect Resources and Help - FAQ:

  How do I offer promo codes?

  Promo codes allow you to offer a free copy of your app or in-app purchase for promotional purposes and are valid for 28 days from the day they are generated or until your agreement expires, whichever comes first. You can request up to 100 total promo codes for each platform version or 100 promo codes for each in-app purchase item, with a limit of 1,000 total in-app purchase codes per app every six months (resetting on January 1 and July 1). For more information, see Promo codes overview in App Store Connect Help.

From Promo codes overview:

  When a customer downloads an app using a promo code, the app behaves just as it would if it had been purchased. For example, the customer has the opportunity to update to new versions of the app. However, customers aren’t able to rate or review an app that was downloaded using an App Store Connect promo code.

and

  To get started using promo codes, request and download promo codes in App Store Connect.


How do I get Mac Calendar app to use outlook instead of Mail app for its email alerts

Sorry, that is not possible since Mac calender only works with mac Mail to send the alerts.

However, in Mac mail, you would be using your chosen email provider (same as in Outlook) so the emails would be send using that provider.

The receiver would not know where the email came from.


Applications on macbook pro close waking computer up after 1 hour lunch

Not sure what's going on with your settings, but I think you will find that caffeinate can prevent this behavior. At a terminal screen, type man caffeinate to learn about the utility. An option that may work for you is this:

  caffeinate -s

Alternatively, if you have an application you wish to run while you are away from your Mac, you can use this form:

  caffeinate -w PID &

where PID is the process ID of the app that's running (available via Activity Monitor, or ps -la), and & for running in background.


There's a number of options for doing this, but the easiest way is to just use your Login Items. More specifically:

In the Finder, press CommandK (or click on the Go menu and select Connect to Server...)
Now enter the server address
Click on the Connect button
IMPORTANT: If you're a registered user, when entering your login details you must ensure you enable the option for remembering your password in keychain
Once connected, go to Apple > System Preferences > Users & Groups
Select the Login Items tab
Now navigate to the mounted server (e.g. on your desktop) and drag it to the Login Items list
OPTIONAL: If you don't want the server window to open every time you startup, you can click on the Hide checkbox on the left of the server in the Login Items list

NOTES:

At step 4 the reason I say you must opt to remember the password is that macOS needs to remember this in order to be able to log in automatically!
At step 7, if you don't see the server mounted on your desktop, then go to Finder > Preferences > General and tick the checkbox for Connected servers.
Keep in mind that if for whatever reason your Mac can't connect to the server, this may in fact become more annoying then having to connect manually.

If your server doesn't mount on the desktop

If you can't get the server to mount on your desktop, try following these steps instead:

Go to Apple > System Preferences > Users & Groups
Select the Login Items tab
Click on the + button at the bottom of the Login Items list
In the window that opens, click on the server in your left Sidebar (or navigate to it)
If you're not already connected to it, then connect to it through this window. (IMPORTANT: If you're a registered user, when entering your login details you must ensure you enable the option for remembering your password in keychain)
Once connected, navigate to and select whichever folder on your server you use the most
After a moment the add button will become active. Click on this
Now the folder you selected at Step 6 will be added to your Login Items
OPTIONAL: If you don't want the server window to open every time you startup, you can click on the Hide checkbox on the left of the server in the Login Items list

To show network mounted volumes (SMB, AFP, NFS, etc.) on your desktop, issue the following command in Terminal:

defaults write com.apple. finder ShowMountedServersOnDesktop —bool true


How can I prevent my bluetooth headset from preempting the internal mic on connection?

You must go to System Preferences > Bluetooth, select the headset device and click the X on the right side to remove it. When you need to use the headset again, it will need re-pairing. (Screenshot below shows my Apple Trackpad, for which new batteries are imminently needed!)


I just had a hdd fail in my imac last week. So I know this method works:

Get all important files off of the hdd with Lazesoft Mac Data Recovery. You'll have to copy the files to another disk. If you have enough space, the one you used to boot with might be enough. It takes a LONG time to copy files off of a disk that will not mount in the OS! Be patient.

From there it's up to you. Personally I'd replace the failed drive. If it failed once, it will fail again. But if you have the luxury of time and patience, you can try to erase/reformat it yourself then copy the files back... hope for the best.

Otherwise, take it to Apple. They'll replace the drive and copy the data for you (if possible). They'll also break your bank =) They won't even give you a price over the phone!

I went with UBreakIFix. $100 got the replacement done. But I had to copy the files myself as described above. Also they didn't do the jumpers right so the fans come on at 100% until I put in a software solution to fix that. A lackluster experience for sure. But if you go in there with the knowledge of the SMC/fan situation, they'll probably set it up correctly for you.


iMessage on my MacBook Pro does not show current texts from my iPhone

iMessages and SMS messages from when you were not signed in will not be shown now that you have signed in. Messages does not retroactively obtain messages. Now that you have signed in, new messages will be delivered correctly.


Time Machine extremely slow and writing a lot of log entries

Information update:

In the meantime I have macOS version 10.12.2
Now there are only some few ( less than 100 ) lines of syslog entries.

But the situation is unchanged. It took 124 minutes to write 495 Mbyte of data to write. Which is about 68 kbyte/second.


rebooting in safe mode, and rebooting in normal mode solved exact same problem for me (it is method suggested in thread mentioned above My Retina MacBook Pro is missing some icons suddenly! What happened?)


The short answer is no.

This question straddles the line between a general discussion how the API works and how a user can use the tools as written.

The Keychain API only allows access - it's up to the programmer / developer to determine if a read or a write will happen and end users can't realistically change that behavior.

Using the built in Keychain tools and the Keychain app supplied by apple, you can't define a group of apps. You can't even select four or ten apps at once and add them in one step for a specific keychain entry. (The picker for adding apps simply won't allow you to select multiple apps or a folder containing those apps or aliases to those apps you wish to add together.)

The only workarounds would be to write a utility that knows how to handle a group of apps or a folder of apps and iterates over each and calls the keychain API to do the work. There is a basic dictionary or keychain in AppleScript, but it doesn't have any ACL specific commands, so you'll have to dig in the developer documents to see if it's even possible to automate with that tool.


How to enter password automatically in .command

You could store ssh keys or store your password in the ~/.ssh/config file (see man ssh_config for details) but that would be kind of cheating since it's not really in your .command file.

You could of course script the addition (and optionally removal) of the entries needed to modify ssh keys or config file changes.

I would make a simple expect script - to wait for the password prompt and then enter your password.

#!/usr/bin/expect -f
set bad_idea cleartext_passwords_are_insecure
set timeout -1
# now connect using ssh
spawn ssh user@example.com
expect "*?assword:*"
send -- "$bad_idea\r"
send -- "\r"
expect elf

You don't have use a $bad_idea variable and could just send the password before the \r


How do I avoid selfcontrol to stop just by changing time settings on mac?

You could try and contact the Developer. Tell them about this get around.

Ask them if they could find a way to avoid it.

For example:

Have their app check a online clock instead of the system clock.

That works like the Time and Date System preference which uses  Apple Americas/U.S. (time.apple.com.)

Suggest that since you are able to connect to the net ( which I assume is the problem ) then access to the online clock is essential for the app to allow you to browse.

If the app cannot connect to the online clock it will not allow you to browser for a set period.

And after that period example 2hrs. It will allow you 10 minutes grace to connect to or select a different clock in your time zone.
 And then stop for another two hours if it is still unable to connect to a clock.

The normal rules will apply if it can connect within the ten minutes grace.


How can I make OSX to upload files to icloud?

The menubar app Bailiff lets your pin files on your drive and evict them without needing to wait for the background processes to do the work for you.

https://eclecticlight.co/cirrus-bailiff/

Once you’ve got the files removed, you still need to wait for snapshots to purge. The df command isn’t going to show you purgeable content, so this tool. It might not be sufficient to fix what you’re trying to do in the end, but it does do what you asked.


How difficult is it to manually replace an Early 2015 Macbook Pro's battery?

So it can be done, but the battery is glued in. ifixit do sell a kit to remove this, but it is still a bit tricky.

Be very careful not to puncture the battery!


Inconsistency for Gmail and Exchange in Mail.app

Mail.app just mimics whatever structure is defined on the respective mail server. In Gmail folders are just labels (or saved searches for labels) so they show up outside of Inbox (as do iCloud folders actually, even though those are not searches).

If you want to unify the way folders are represented you probably should checker whether Exchange allows to create folders outside of Inbox.


Can I make a call from iPhone 5s via WiFi?

There are 2 VoIP apps that are widely used here in Southeast Asia.

http://www.viber.com/en/#iphone

https://itunes.apple.com/app/id414478124?mt=8&ls=1

Check them out.


Annoyance in macOS vs Windows: where to right-click when in list view in Finder?

Opt ⌥  + right click will show the overall 'folder' contextual menu as opposed to the 'item selected' menu.

...though, irritatingly, only in Column View.


Does factory unlock or GSM unlock mean I can put it on any service?

GSM Unlocked

The iPhone comes in two different models: GSM and CDMA. The GSM iPhone supports carriers including Cricket, AT&T, and T-Mobile. The CDMA iPhone supports carriers such as Sprint and Verizon. Buying a GSM Unlocked iPhone means that it is unable to support Sprint and Verizon and would not work with those carriers; a GSM iPhone works only with Cricket, AT&T, and T-Mobile. No single iPhone works with all the major carriers.

  Factory Unlocked

Buying an unlocked iPhone means the contract it originally came with expired; it means you could put in any SIM card from any of the supported carriers on that iPhone. Whereas a locked iPhone is under contract with the carrier whose SIM card is in the phone, an unlocked iPhone is fully out of contract. Make sure it is GSM if you want Cricket, AT&T, or T-Mobile, or CDMA if you want Verizon or Sprint.

Also, a piece of advice: I highly recommend not purchasing an iPhone 4. Though it is definitely inexpensive, it is far out of date (about 5 years old, that's a  long time) and performance will be very poor. It hasn't received a software update in 3 years, and it is stuck on iOS 7 (iOS 10 is about to come out). It is a much better to fork over a bit extra for an iPhone 5C (still slow but not bad) or an iPhone SE (more expensive but definitely top-of-the-line, only $400). If you can't afford the iPhone 5C, I would recommend purchasing your son an inexpensive Android phone like the Blu R1 HD which is much faster than an iPhone 4, runs the latest version of Android, and is only $50.

If you need a phone that works with any carrier Go for the Nexus 5X, Nexus 6, or Nexus 6P. They come with all the bands needed (both GSM and CDMA) for Verizon, AT&T, Sprint, T-Mobile, MetroPCS, US Cellular, Project Fi (a new low-cost carrier by Google), Cricket, and more.


Unfortunately, Apple hasn't provided an easy way to disable this functionality. However you can deny global access to the application that provides AirPlay mirroring by changing its unix permissions

In order to disable AirPlay mirroring, we have to deny the computer access to the application that allows the computer to AirPlay mirror: Fire up a terminal and enter the following command:

sudo chmod 000 /System/Library/CoreServices/AirPlayUIAgent.app/Contents/MacOS/AirPlayUIAgent

Enter the administrative password and restart the Mac afterwards. If you try to AirPlay mirror to an AppleTV now, the AirPlay icon will stay blue, as if it's still trying to connect but it never will.

The only disadvantage is that it locks up the menubar. The user won't be able to use any of the menu bar items after they tried mirroring the screen. You're still able to adjust the volume using the keyboard, though. Logging out and back in will restore the functionality of the menubar until you try to use AirPlay mirroring again.

To eliminate the temptation of using AirPlay you can hide the AirPlay icon by opening System Preferences > Displays and unchecking the "Show mirroring options in the menu bar when available" checkbox. You will need to repeat this step for every user on the system.


Connecting Dell U3011 to retina MacBook Pro via mini DisplayPort

Try resetting the PRAM and see if it detects the proper screen resolutions. If that still doesn't work, you could try cscreen (a command line tool to set a resolution) or SwitchResX.


Adding external wired NAS to Time Capsule

If the NAS is connected over Ethernet then you are dependant on the NAS software being able to present a share that supports TimeMachine.
For example, the Synology series of boxes let's you create a share on any volume (Raid or non-Raid) and has an option to allow TimeMachine backups to be made to this share.
I have not seen a NAS that would present a drive / share via USB.  A simple external drive can connect to the AP via usb and be used for TimeMachine this way though.
You have to be careful moving the backups from one drive to another - the format changes from a direct connected USB drive to those connected via AP or NAS and the actual mount point name will change - the NAS share name can be totally different from the AP name it is connected to.
Be aware you cannot encrypt the data drive on the AP so you have to set the TimeMachine backups to be encrypted for security of data.


Other Data on Apple - How do I clean cache and other unused data on Mac

Normally, you should not need to 'clean' caches. You will not recover much space, and the OS will immediately try to re-populate the caches, so the space will be filled again.

Apple's utility for Managing Storage is not always accurate in its categories (nor is the Storage display in About This Mac).

Usually, most stuff on your storage is yours. User data. Stuff you've created or downloaded. Click on File Browser on that window you've shown. That will give you a list of things on your disk, sorted by size. Then you can see what's taking the most space.


On your iPhone:

Open settings
At the top tap your name/Apple ID
Tap iCloud
Make sure the switch next to messages is on

On your Mac:

Open Messages on from your Dock or Applications folder.
Click Messages in the Menu bar.
Click Preferences.
Click Accounts.
Click the checkbox next to Enable Messages in iCloud.
Click Sync Now to begin syncing your messages.

Your messages should now begin syncing.


Terminal "history" command brings back different results

In other words, Terminal.app connects you to a certain shell, allowing you to access all sorts of them concurrently.
Run cat /etc/shells to see what shells are on your system.
I’m sure you’ve got Bash, ZSH, and a few others.
Then read up on configuring the history for your chosen shell, and try to make it a habit to always know which shell you’re using.
The fish shell, for instance, has an extensive and user friendly history browser, allowing you to see all commands you’ve run using fish.
With bash it’s a bit different.
Also Mac specific:
If you have apps that run maintenance and require administrative privileges, they likely run some of their tasks as simple shell scripts, and almost always using sh.
Think: Catalina Cache Cleaner, Cocktail and Onyx, to name a few.


How do I copy a TimeMachine backup to an encrypted disk?

Apple has some instructions in this KB. There are some restrictions - Apple suggests that you'll need to format the new drive as Mac OS Extended with a GUID partition.

Short summary:

  Drag the folder "Backups.backupdb" on the current backup drive to the
  root level of the new backup drive.

Follow the other instructions in the KB, and you'll be able to use your new drive as the TimeMachine drive.


AppleNApps
This is a list of games which take full advantage of AirPlay Mirroring by offering special full screen 720P HD modes to show off the power of the A5 ship.
There are other apps that work with AirPlay Mirroring which are not in this list, but they’re either poor apps overall, or it’s not a smooth translation.
(last updated on 7th November 2011)


mid 2009 iPod Touch not downloading from the app store

Contact Apple to ask about this behavior. Apple devices are relatively difficult to break, and it could be caused by the distance between your device and its home country (and servers).


After arduous research and trial and error, I've finally been able to solve this issue. First of all, if you're migrating Fusion VMs to ESXi, I recommend not using the OVF tool. At least for me, it never worked properly. Instead, I used the vmware-vdiskmanager tool, which is built into Fusion. The instructions for this migration are listed below:

  Open Terminal.
  Run the following command, inserting the correct VMWare Fusion vmdk file source and new vmdk destination:

    /Applications/VMware\ Fusion.app/Contents/Library/vmware-vdiskmanager -r /PATH/TO/vmware_fusion.vmwarevm/vmware_fusion.vmdk -t 4 /PATH/TO/esxi.vmdk

  The conversion process, once complete, will create two files: filename.vmdk, and filename-flat.vmdk.
  Launch the vSphere client through your web browser to your ESXi server.
  Once logged in, go to File | New | Virtual Machine.
  In the Configuration window, select Custom.
  In the Storage window, select the datastore location to store the new VM.
  In the Virtual Machine Version window, use the default option of Virtual Machine Version: 8.
  Select the desired settings for Guest OS, CPUs, Memory, Network, and SCSI Controller.
  In the Select a Disk window, choose the Do Not Create Disk option.
  Click the Finish button.
  In the ESXi server settings, select the Configuration tab then click on Storage.
  In Storage, select your datastore and right-click to select Browse Datastore.
  Select the folder name that corresponds to the new VM.
  Select the Upload button.
  Upload the filename.vmdk and filename-flat.vmdk files from Step 3.
  Once complete, you will only see the filename.vmdk file in the datastore.
  Select the VM and Edit virtual machine settings under the Get Started tab.
  Click the Add button in the Virtual Machine Properties window.
  For Device Type, select Hard Disk, and choose Use an existing virtual disk.
  Locate the datastore and select the existing disk.
  In the Advanced Options, leave the default settings.
  Select Finish and OK to close the Virtual Machine Properties.
  At this point, you should be able to boot to the newly migrated VM.

Guidance for this came from MacTech's June 2013 issue, reproduced at the author's blog here. Many kudos to Rich Trouton for this article.

Some updates for vSphere Client 6.7

Step 5: Go to Actions | New Virtual Machine.
Steps 6 - 9: Configure as desired.
Step 10: In the Customize hardware dialog, remove the New hard disk.
Step 12 - 13: Select storage, then Files.
Step 18: Select the VM and then Actions | Edit Settings....
Step 19: Click the Add New Device button.
Step 20: Select Existing Hard Disk.
Step 22: Ignore.


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