How to backup/export photos/videos from the new Photos app to an external hard disk?

If you simply want the entire Masters structure copied to a new drive, then

first find your iPhoto or Photos Library file. Default location for both is ~/Pictures/
Right click the Library file & select Show Package Contents - that will expose the 'file' as the folder it really is.
The Masters folder should be just inside. You can copy that to anywhere.
It is sorted into years, then months. Not all contained folders will actually be populated, if old photos were ever deleted, the file structure remains.

As pointed out in comments, if you need the copied structure to be readable natively on Windows, then you ought to format the target disk as ExFAT.
Windows cannot natively read Mac OS Extended disks & would need 3rd party support.


All my files and pictures got lost or deleted while installing the OS X El Capitan software

You can try a recovery software like wondershare recovery data or Disk Drill (i think you can download free trial), Those soft will be able to detect lost data (even deleted). There are many other soft you can test, but those two are great !

Hope this will help,

Peace


How to Format exFAT on Mac with custom block size (Read only problem!)

Answering my own question here!
Use this wonderful app, which mounts the disk perfectly:
exfat


Possible to force a sync of Game Center Achievements already gained?

I am not aware of a way to force the updating other than running the apps to see if they will update things as a matter of course. Some app developers store the achievements in a way that they flow back from the game center - but it's more about how each developer chooses to use all the Game Center options.

Look for a much better experience when iCloud allows developers to store more app data in the cloud so you don't have to export/import and otherwise work to get your settings and loot to a new instance of the same app.

An alternate tack is to dive into the library of each app using a tool like PhoneView. You don't need to jailbreak the device - but often can find the folder where achievements are stored and you can put them back when they go missing.


How do I verify the integrity of my OSX installation? (Files, versions, and preferences)

Mount both volumes on a Mac and drag both drives into a file comparison tool like Kaleidoscope. It will show file differences as well as hilight files that exist on one folder as opposed to the other folder.

You could also diff a file listing like ls -laR or whatever other flags you prefer to see what differences (excepting file metadata and ACL / special flags that either take other ls flags or are invisible to a simple file listing.) Some people go so far as to create a listing with md5 or other hashes that checksum the actual contents of files, but that's more appropriate for a security scan / configuration management suite like munki or tripwire.

Lots of blogs cover that sort of professional system management like these entries from 318, Inc.


When does the warranty period start for an Apple iPhone 4s?

As far as I know Apple stopped selling the 4s last fall. Therefore the person/reseller you bought it from might have twisted the truth. Where did you buy it? In the U.S.?

You can verify the warranty service and support coverage on: https://selfsolve.apple.com/agreementWarrantyDynamic.do

Apple Warranty starts on the date you buy it (date of purchase). Not on the day you start using it.

Apple:

  WHAT IS COVERED BY THIS WARRANTY?

  Apple Inc. of One Infinite Loop, Cupertino, California, U.S.A. 95014 (“Apple”) warrants the
  Apple-branded iPhone, iPad or iPod hardware product and accessories
  contained in the original packaging (“Apple Product”) against defects
  in materials and workmanship when used normally in accordance with
  Apple's published guidelines for a period of ONE (1) YEAR from the
  date of original retail purchase by the end-user purchaser ("Warranty
  Period"). Apple’s published guidelines include but are not limited to
  information contained in technical specifications, user manuals and
  service communications.

  Source: US-Warranty http://www.apple.com/legal/warranty/products/ios-warranty-document-us.html

If you bought it at Apple and you are not happy with the sale, Apple usually gives 14 days to return the device.

If you do not need it I would suggest returning/selling the device or otherwise start using it. ;-)


Applescript giving error 1728 when checking if file exists

Try:

set dest_folder to POSIX path of dest_folder
set newFilepathPOSIX to dest_folder & "video.mp4"

tell application "System Events" to exists file newFilepathPOSIX
if the result then
    display dialog "There is already a file named \"video.mp4\". Do you want to replace the file?" buttons {"Quit", "No", "Yes"} cancel button 1
    if button returned of the result = "No" then
        beep
        --Insert your code here
    end if
end if

EDIT

 set handPath to "/Volumes/Flash Drive/HandBrakeCLI"
set dest_folder to POSIX path of dest_folder
if text -1 of dest_folder ≠ "/" then set dest_folder to dest_folder & "/"
set newFilepathPOSIX to dest_folder & "video.mp4"

tell application "System Events" to exists newFilepathPOSIX
if the result then
    display dialog "There is already a file named \"video.mp4\". Do you want to replace the file?" buttons {"Quit", "No", "Yes"} cancel button 1
    if button returned of the result = "No" then set newFilepathPOSIX to dest_folder & "video" & getDateAsString(current date) & ".mp4"
end if

set shellCommand to quoted form of handPath & " -i " & quoted form of origFilepathPOSIX & " -o " & quoted form of newFilepathPOSIX & " --preset=\"Classic\""
do shell script shellCommand

on getDateAsString(myDate)
    set creationDateString to year of myDate as string
    set creationDateString to creationDateString & text -2 thru -1 of ("0" & (month of myDate as integer) as text)
    set creationDateString to creationDateString & text -2 thru -1 of ("0" & day of myDate as text)
    set creationDateString to creationDateString & text -2 thru -1 of ("0" & hours of myDate as text)
    set creationDateString to creationDateString & text -2 thru -1 of ("0" & minutes of myDate as text)
    set creationDateString to creationDateString & text -2 thru -1 of ("0" & seconds of myDate as text)
end getDateAsString


Why does iterating over a list in applescript with `repeat with … in` fail with error code `-1731` part way through the list?

Add an explicit get to resolve the reference to the tracks:

tell application "iTunes"
    repeat with t in (get tracks of playlist "Listen Smart" where shufflable is false)
        set shufflable of t to true
    end repeat
    repeat with t in (get tracks of playlist "Listen Smart" where bookmarkable is false)
        set bookmarkable of t to true
    end repeat
end tell

Try running a script like this:

tell application "iTunes"
    repeat with t in (tracks of playlist "Listen Smart" where shufflable is false)
        t
    end repeat
end tell

If the playlist has three tracks where shufflable is false, the result at the end will be something like item 3 of every track of playlist "Listen Smart" of application "iTunes" whose shufflable = false. If you set the shufflable of the first two tracks to true inside the repeat loop, there won't be an item 3 where shufflable is false.

If you replace repeat with t in (tracks with repeat with t in (get tracks, the result at the end will be something like item 3 of {file track id 54774 of user playlist id 54771 of source id 73 of application "iTunes", file track id 54775 of user playlist id 54771 of source id 73 of application "iTunes", file track id 54776 of user playlist id 54771 of source id 73 of application "iTunes"}.


Edit the Display Name for a contact in Contacts.app

Hope this may help you somehow. Download Bento for Mac from here. Unfortunately, it's not supported by FileMaker anymore, but anyway it works fine even on El Capitan (I use it here :)) Open it and it will ask permission to access your Contacts. Allow it. This it will open very convenient interface for mass editing your Contacts in list and/or individually with ability to add your own fields. Cheers.


It took me 7 years to type off the text from enough keys to irritate me on my last keyboard. By that time the surfaces were completely smooth & shiny.

Simple extrapolation would tell me the 'text' is mounded into the plastic in a different colour, not a cheap screenprint that can be 'washed' off.


How do I disable the redirect to Skype when I click "call via iPhone" in safari?

Go to FaceTime -> Preferences. There, change "default for calls" (or something like it, my Mac is in dutch) to FaceTime.


Access VirtualBox shared folders in Yosemite

AFAIK the shared folder feature of VirtualBox only works with the VirtualBox guest additions. The additions can't be installed in a OS X/macOS guest. Thus you can't use this feature.

Instead share a folder in the OS X/macOS guest system by enabling "File Sharing" in System Preferences > Sharing > File Sharing.

If the default public user folder is not sufficient, add another folder and determine user permissions. The protocol can be chosen by hitting the "Options" button.

Depending on your host system you can also configure a shared folder there.

Visibility of the guest's shared folder:

Let's assume the host system's only physical network interface (e.g. an Ethernet adapter) has an IP in the network 192.168.0.0/24.

If you attach the guest's network adapter to the Bridged network > (Host's) Ethernet adapter and configure the guest's Ethernet adapter with a (unique) IP of the 192.168.0.0/24 network, the shared folder of the guest is visible for all hosts and virtual hosts in the 192.168.0.0/24 network. To access the folder your hosts have to talk afp, smb (or nfs - which has to be set up seperately) of course.

If you attach the guest's network adapter to the Host-only network > vboxnet0, the shared folder of the guest is visible for all guest hosts attached to the vboxnet0 network on the same machine and the host machine itself.

If you attach the guest's network adapter to a NAT network > vboxnatnet01, the shared folder of the guest is visible for all guest hosts attached to the vboxnatnet01 network on the same machine and the host machine itself. If you enable port forwarding properly the shared folder is also visible for other hosts or virtual hosts in the 192.168.0.0/24 network.


Dropped MacBook, lots of disk io errors. How to fix?

Sounds like your harddisk is busted.  There is a feature in MacBooks which is there to help protect the disk by parking the head in the event of a fall but it's not foolproof.  Even if you managed to resolve the errors, I wouldn't trust that the disk had not been damaged and you just risk further data loss in future.  Best thing you can do is backup anything you can salvage if you don't already have a backup while the disk can still operate and either have Apple or an authorized repair centre replace the harddisk.  You can also replace the disk yourself if you feel capable.  There are instructions in the manual and also on the Apple support pages.  You haven't said which model of 2011 MacBook you have but here are the instructions for the 13-inch (page 37)

http://manuals.info.apple.com/en_US/macbook_pro_13inch_early2011.pdf


Mac OS S Snow Leopard Single User - can it be used on more than one machine?

I am not a lawyer, so take this all with appropriate caution.

The Snow Leopard License states

  Transfer. You may not rent, lease, lend, sell, redistribute or sublicense the Apple Software. Subject to the restrictions set forth below, you may, however, make a one-time permanent transfer of all of your license rights to the Apple Software (in its original form as provided by Apple) to another party, provided that: (a) the transfer must include all of the Apple Software, including all its component parts (excluding Apple Boot ROM code and firmware), original media, printed materials and this License; (b) you do not retain any copies of the Apple Software, full or partial, including copies stored on a computer or other storage device; and (c) the party receiving the Apple Software reads and agrees to accept the terms and conditions of this License. You may not rent, lease, lend, redistribute, sublicense or transfer any Apple Software that has been modified or replaced under Section 2H above. All components of the Apple Software are provided as part of a bundle and may not be separated from the bundle and distributed as standalone applications. Apple Software provided with a particular Apple-branded hardware product may not run on other models of Apple-branded hardware.

While you cannot "sell" the software (because you don't own it; Apple does, and licenses it to you), you can make a one-time transfer of your license to someone else (and could charge them for it), so effectively, yes, you sell your copy, as long as you don't keep Snow Leopard around after that.

So what happens if you upgrade to Lion?

The Lion license states

  you are granted a limited, non-transferable, non-exclusive license to download, install, use and run for personal, non-commercial use, one (1) copy of the Apple Software directly on each Apple-branded computer running Mac OS X Snow Leopard or Mac OS X Snow Leopard Server (“Mac Computer”) that you own or control;

So the computer has to have Snow Leopard installed at the time you install Lion, but the Lion license never states you have to continue to own Snow Leopard. So perhaps if you install Lion and Snow Leopard is obliterated from your computer, you can sell Snow Leopard -- but wait, there's more.

Under Transfer, the license states:

  A. If you obtained the Apple Software preinstalled on Apple-branded hardware, you may make a one-time permanent transfer of all of your license rights to the Apple Software (in its original form as provided by Apple) to another party, provided that: (i) the Apple Software is transferred together with your Apple-branded hardware; (ii) the transfer must include all of the Apple Software, including all its component parts, printed materials and this License; (iii) you do not retain any copies of the Apple Software, full or partial, including copies stored on a computer or other storage device; and (iv) the party receiving the Apple Software reads and agrees to accept the terms and conditions of this License. For purposes of this License, if Apple provides an update (e.g., version 10.7 to 10.7.1) to the Apple Software, the update is considered part of the Apple Software and may not be transferred separately from the pre-update version of the Apple Software.

So you can't sell 10.7 because you're now using 10.7.1. But 10.7.1 isn't a separately licensed, separately purchased piece of software. They don't explicitly say anything about a separately licensed version. So no road blocks yet... BUT

  B. If you obtained your license to the Apple Software from the Mac App Store, it is not transferable. If you sell your Apple-branded hardware to a third party, you must remove the Apple Software from the Apple- branded hardware before doing so, and you may restore your system to the version of the Apple operating system software that originally came with your Apple hardware (the “Original Apple OS”) and permanently transfer the Original Apple OS together with your Apple hardware, provided that: (i) the transfer must include all of the Original Apple OS, including all its component parts, printed materials and its license; (ii) you do not retain any copies of the Original Apple OS, full or partial, including copies stored on a computer or other storage device; and (iii) the party receiving the Original Apple OS reads and agrees to accept the terms and conditions of the Original Apple OS license.

If you sell your computer, and it didn't ship with Lion, but rather you upgraded it via the Mac App Store, you are not allowed to transfer your copy of Lion to the new owner. You are told to re-install the operating system that shipped with your computer, which, in this case, should be Leopard or earlier. So you can't downgrade to Snow Leopard, because you've transferred your rights to that operating system to someone else.

All in all, if you want to be sure, seek legal advice from a competent lawyer, but from a layman's reading of this, it sounds legitimate to me to sell SL once you've upgraded to Lion.


You're looking for Powerline which originally came about as a Vim plugin (although the bash version has a different author). You need patched fonts to deal with the symbols. Like these

Edit:

This screenshot is also using the Solarized theme I believe.


How to prevent auto mounting of a volume in macOS High Sierra?

To prevent a volume from automatically mounting you need to know the filesystem type and either the volume name or volume UUID. This information can be found by using the Terminal application command diskutil info name, where name is the volume name. For example, volume names can be found under Devices in the sidebar of a Finder application window.

On my computer, the output from the command diskutil info "Macintosh HD" is given below.

   Device Identifier:        disk2s1
   Device Node:              /dev/disk2s1
   Whole:                    No
   Part of Whole:            disk2

   Volume Name:              Macintosh HD
   Mounted:                  Yes
   Mount Point:              /Volumes/Macintosh HD

   Partition Type:           41504653-0000-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC
   File System Personality:  APFS
   Type (Bundle):            apfs
   Name (User Visible):      APFS
   Owners:                   Disabled

   OS Can Be Installed:      Yes
   Media Type:               Generic
   Protocol:                 Disk Image
   SMART Status:             Not Supported
   Volume UUID:              F21AD81B-B114-456C-B2A0-BF4452E4842D
   Disk / Partition UUID:    F21AD81B-B114-456C-B2A0-BF4452E4842D

   Disk Size:                1000.0 MB (999981056 Bytes) (exactly 1953088 512-Byte-Units)
   Device Block Size:        4096 Bytes

   Volume Total Space:       1000.0 MB (999981056 Bytes) (exactly 1953088 512-Byte-Units)
   Volume Used Space:        3.4 MB (3416064 Bytes) (exactly 6672 512-Byte-Units) (0.3%)
   Volume Available Space:   996.6 MB (996564992 Bytes) (exactly 1946416 512-Byte-Units) (99.7%)
   Allocation Block Size:    4096 Bytes

   Read-Only Media:          No
   Read-Only Volume:         No

   Device Location:          External
   Removable Media:          Removable
   Media Removal:            Software-Activated

The pertinent lines are shown below.

   Volume Name:              Macintosh HD
   Type (Bundle):            apfs
   Volume UUID:              F21AD81B-B114-456C-B2A0-BF4452E4842D

Note: You can not use the Disk / Partition UUID, except when the Disk / Partition UUID is the same as the Volume UUID.

Either of the lines given below could be added to the /etc/fstab file to prevent this volume from automatically mounting.

UUID=F21AD81B-B114-456C-B2A0-BF4452E4842D none apfs rw,noauto
LABEL=Macintosh\040HD none apfs rw,noauto

Note: The character sequence \040 is just the octal representation of the space character.


Rosetta stopped working in a virtualized Snow Leopard hosted in Mavericks (Parallels or Virtualbox)

it turned out that the type of the hard disk I initially chose for installing Snow Leopard on matters.
So, when creating the virtual hard disk drive in VirtualBox, selecting a "hdd" Parallels type file, was the key. I tried with VDI, and VMDK (VMware) but all installations with these lead to a sucessful install of Snow Leopard, but a non-functioning Rosetta.


iPad only charges up to 1% and at that, only if charged from 0%

It sounds like its about time to buy a new cable and possibly an ipad charger. I go through cables all the time on my iphone/ipad. They always get frayed where the cord meets the lightning plug.
Go to best buy and buy a new one, worst comes to worst, you can always return it. If the new cable doesn't work, its time to call apple and send it in for service.


How to reset iCloud status of a song when using apple music

Try the menu item File > Library > Update iCloud Music Library.

I had quit iTunes after initially enabling iCloud Music Library in preferences when it was only partially done uploading.  To get it going again I used this menu item Update iCloud Music Library, the progress indicator in the upper right appeared and it continued uploading.  This was on OS X 10.10.4 and iTunes 12.2.0.145.


Force an App to Open Full Screen in a Specific Desktop Space

Go to System Preferences, Mission Control, and untick "Automatically rearrange Spaces based on most recent use"

This has worked for me for the last 10 minutes


Reinstall mac os x 10.10 yosemite; never had mac os license assigned to my icloud account

It may be asking you for the iCloud account that was originally used on the machine.  Try to get the iCloud account/password that was originally used on the machine, if it was a company machine, and de-register it with that iCloud account so you can register it on yours.

There may be no need to buy a license.  If the current OS is Mavericks or higher, upgrading is free.  If it is older than you should buy a license.


The Back arrow, top left, or  Cmd ⌘   [

You can also return to your search with the forward arrow or  Cmd ⌘   ]


Trying to restore Time Machine. Lost boot disk

Depending on how old the original MBA is compared to the new one, you probably won't be able to do a bare metal restore.

What you can do, is do a fresh OS install (if not done already) and "Migrate Your Settings" from the Time Machine Backup.


How to Install Game Boy Advance Emulator on my iPhone 6

There are many emulators out there espeically for Game Boy Advance, but the most current one is GBA4iOS. Check it out and see if that help.


How can I mount a remote SSH folder on Mac?

Transmit - The ultimate Mac OS X FTP + SFTP + S3 app can do this.

Another choice would be ExpanDrive - SFTP/FTP/S3 Drive but I think Transmit is the better option (I own both and am affiliated with neither).

There are demos of both programs available, so you can try both.

Note that Transmit is sold both through the Mac App Store and directly the developer (Panic). You would be better off buying it from Panic directly because of the impending sandboxing rules for the Mac App Store.


Selling water damaged MacBook Air 2017: Is it safe to simply remove the SSD?

Yes, you can assume that none of your data is still on the MacBook Air. All personal data stored on the laptop itself is stored on the SSD, so removing this effectively removes the data from the laptop.

It is also possible that the SSD is still fully functioning, so if you made the mistake of not backing up your data, you may be able to still access it from the SSD, via adaptors, external enclosures or another MBA of the same generation.

You may also want to refer to Apple's advice on what to do before you sell, give away, or trade in your Mac.


Acknowledging an Exchange calendar response triggers a new invitation

This is a problem between Microsoft Exchange and your mac. I have had same issue a while ago, and decided not to change stuff via an Apple device.

I know it's not the answer you were hoping for, but's the reality at this moment.


Automatically Move Files Created In Folder

Try using a feature of OS X called "Folder Actions".

Right click on any folder and select "Folder Actions Setup".

It will gives you a whole list of options. These options come with the operating system. If you would like to modify a script you can double click it and make a duplicate. You can edit your script to do what ever you want. For example, I could code the script so that once an item has been added to the folder, it would play a sound or send me an email. It's quite useful.

Once you have coded your script you need to move it to the correct path. Go to Finder and select "Go", then press "Go to Folder". Type in this path: /Library/Scripts/Folder Action Scripts/. Drag and drop your script to that folder. You may be prompted for a password.

Next, go to the folder that you want the script to be applied to. Right click and your new script should be listed. Select it and hit Attach.

There you go!

Hope this helps.

More Information on Folder Actions here


2006 Mac Pro - vmware fusion - snow leopard / VM's with Mavericks

I'm guessing you can, and here's why (from VirtualBox):

  VirtualBox supports 64-bit guest operating systems, even on 32-bit host operating systems provided that the following conditions are met:

  You need a 64-bit processor with hardware virtualization support (see Section 10.3, “Hardware vs. software virtualization”).
  You must enable hardware virtualization for the particular VM for which you want 64-bit support; software virtualization is not supported for 64-bit VMs.
  If you want to use 64-bit guest support on a 32-bit host operating system, you must also select a 64-bit operating system for the particular VM. Since supporting 64 bits on 32-bit hosts incurs additional overhead, VirtualBox only enables this support upon explicit request.

VMWare Fusion says something similar (search the FAQ for "64-bit").

Assuming your Mac Pro is the 2.66 Quad Core, EveryMac confirms that your processor is 64-bit.  Give it a try, hit the forums, and good luck!


Control odd-even page pairing in Preview in two-page mode

I recommend to add a blank page as the new first page:

Menu View->Contact Sheet
Click page 1
Menu Edit->Insert->Blank page
Move the new blank page to the first place
Now you can view it in 2-page mode.


arRsync is a free OS X GUI to the rsync command line utility. It will get you started on the path to rsync enlightenment. You can save common sync operations to recall them at a later time for easy rsync. And it supports the common rsync use case scenarios: push A to B but leave stuff that's in B but not A in place, push A to B and delete stuff that's in B but not in A, make A and B look the same (with a conflict report).


I spent a lot of time researching this problem some years ago - my conclusion is that it is simply not possible with the information available to us. The control of the power happens at a much lower level than the macOS kernel itself, so it is not just a question of configuring macOS or poking at the right kernel data structure. You have to modify firmware which is not possible for ordinary users.

The only working solution I found is to use a hub. This worked very well for me. If you have a hub that supports ganged power switching, you can easily turn off/on the power for each gang (set of ports). Similarly if you have a hub that supports per-port power switching, you can turn off/on each port on the hub individually.

You can download software for macOS to control the hub from here:

https://github.com/mvp/uhubctl

Note that this utility only supports controlling hubs that allow per-port power switching. The web site has a list of supported USB hubs.

Once I went with the hub solution, the hardest part really was finding a USB hub that supports ganged or per-port power switching. The actual software part is very easy.


How to open and read particular files on iOS (.xpt .por)?

.xpt files are SAS XPORT files; .por files are ascii data files created by SPSS.

StatsGuru for SPSS is a iOS app:

  Stats Guru is a tool to help social scientists determine the correct
  statistical test for their data. The tool then provides a walk-through
  for each test, using SPSS Version 21.

SAS Mobile BI is an iOS app.

  SAS® Mobile BI empowers decision makers with business reports and
  dashboards anywhere, anytime! SAS Mobile BI, part of the SAS® Visual
  Analytics solution, enables you to access and interact with reports
  and report elements such as graphs, tables, KPIs, and data grids.


Is there a way to track a run with a map on Apple Watch 2?

It turns out that it is possible. Runkeeper updated their app just after I posted this question.

Also, in the Activity app, go to the Workouts tab, tap a workout that would have been tracked with GPS and scroll down to the Route. Tapping the Route will display a map of the route.


Prevent Spotlight from indexing external drive

You could have a script that runs at startup that employs the technique suggested in this post https://apple.stackexchange.com/a/91759/183505

When booting from DriveA (when you want to disable spotlight indexing for External DriveB) you could execute :

touch /Volumes/DriveB/.metadata_never_index

When booting from external DriveB and you want to re-enable spotlight perhaps you could have your startup script execute:

rm /Volumes/DriveB/.metadata_never_index

The linked post also lists other ways to programatically alter the spotlight exclusions.

Here are some ways to add a script that will launch at login : https://stackoverflow.com/questions/6442364/running-script-upon-login-mac

Good luck!

Edit : Method using bash scripts and plist files

First create a startup script. I chose to create one at ~/script.sh

Make sure it's executable chmod +x ~/script.sh

Script for OS that wants to hide a drive from spotlight

#!/bin/bash
flagLocation="/Volumes/DriveToHide"
flagRemoved=".ney_the_index"  # a new name

# if flag exists rename it.
if [ -a "$flagLocation/.metadata_never_index" ]; then
    mv "$flagLocation/.metadata_never_index" "$flagLocation/$flagRemoved";
fi

Script on the OS that wants to index the drive

#!/bin/bash
flagLocation="/Volumes/DriveToHide"
flagRemoved=".ney_the_index"

if [ -a "$flagLocation/$flagRemoved" ]; then
    mv "$flagLocation/$flagRemoved" "$flagLocation/.metadata_never_index"
fi

if [ ! -a "$flagLocation/$flagRemoved" ] || [ ! -a "$flagLocation/.metadata_never_index" ] ; then
    touch "$flagLocation/.metadata_never_index"
fi

Create a plist file ~/Library/LaunchAgents/com.user.loginscript.plist

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple Computer//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN" "http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd">
<plist version="1.0">
<dict>
   <key>Label</key>
   <string>com.user.loginscript</string>
   <key>Program</key>
   <string>/Users/yourusername/script.sh</string>
   <key>RunAtLoad</key>
   <true/>
</dict>
</plist>

Test it by loading and unloading it:

launchctl load ~/Library/LaunchAgents/com.user.loginscript.plist


Is there a iPod touch 1st gen recall program by Apple?

There's no exchange or repair for the 1st Gen iPod touch. Perhaps someone confused the exchange from the 1st gen nano with the touch

You can find a full list of Apple exchange and extended service plans here:

https://www.apple.com/support/exchange_repair/

A recall means specific things in the US and most other countries and you would see formal advertisements, probably a note on Apple's home page www.apple.com as well as receive email and/or direct postal mail if a product was recalled. The iPod touch hasn't been recalled in the normal sense of that word.


Single DHCP server using Airport Express as primary router and Time Time Capsule in bridge mode

Your setup as described contains one DHCP server on the Airport Express. The Time Capsule in bridge mode basically acts as a repeater and does not assign IP addresses or add a separate subnet.


How do I install rEFInd on a MacBook running macOS Sierra?

After reading through the refind-install script (at version 0.10.4), I discovered that all I needed to do was make sure that the EFI partition was mounted.

From the terminal, run diskutil list to find the EFI partition. In my case this was /dev/disk0s1.
Mount the EFI partition from the location identified in step 1. For me this was mount /dev/disk0s1
Run the rEFInd install script (from the unzipped rEFInd directory): sudo ./refind-install

I got friendly output in my terminal: Installation has completed successfully. After this rEFInd worked on my MacBook Pro.


Restoring my current Time Machine (Lion) with my DVD of Leopard?

If you have a USB to SATA adapter or drive caddy, you can easily put your new HDD into this, use Disk Utility to partition it with a GUID partition table and format it Mac OS Extended Journaled.

Once that's done, restart your system and hold CMD + R to boot into the Lion recovery mode. From there you can choose to install Lion to your new drive. Once that's done you can migrate from the internal drive so that the new drive is now running Lion and has all of your data.

Now you can safely swap the drives over.

If you have no USB to SATA adapter, or drive caddy, you can create a USB Lion installer with Apple's own Lion Recovery Disk Assistant to install Lion on the new drive, and then restore your data from Time Machine.

You shouldn't need to touch the Leopard DVD this way.


How to do a case-sensitive search in Preview application?

In preview there is no option for case sensitive search , but you can use the mac third party apps from ADOBE where you can get more search options like case sensitive,stemming ..etc More reference use this


I accidentally deleted all my photos in iPhoto on my Mac

If you did not empty the trash, then they will still be in iPhoto's trash. Select the photos in the trash and choose Photos → Restore to iPhoto Library.


Is there a hook for triggering scripts when a particular notification is displayed?

In calendar.app you’re able to set a file to run instead of an alert. Try creating an Automator file, and select the calendar type


How to change bluetooth device type on Mac (e.g. force recognition of bluetooth device as a keyboard)

Go into System Preferences > Keyboard and then click on the Set Up Bluetooth keyboard button and see if you are able to properly configure your bluetooth keyboard that way.


Mac Mail deleted an entired thread of emails without my consent

Don't know what your current settings are, But for future safety, in mail → preferences → accounts → mailbox behaviours, keep trash mails for a month. In case they were deleted by an inadvertent action.

If there were a backup, ~/Library/Mail/Vx (where x is a number) would have the mails. You can try though.

You can also ask your IT department(if any) to check in their backups. Most of them keep it for some days.


Mail.App deleted, how do I restore it (It's not anywhere accessible on restore media)

The official word from Apple on this is that you need to reinstall the OS.

  If I remove one of the bundled
  applications, such as Safari or Mail,
  how can I get them back?
  You must
  reinstall Mac OS X from the MacBook
  Air Software Reinstall Drive to
  restore bundled applications. To bring
  your computer up to date, use Software
  Update after Mac OS X finishes
  installing.

Another Mac - Before reinstalling the OS, I'd check with a friend that has a Mac and see if you can copy the app from another Mac.

Reinstall to Another Drive - Rather than reinstalling the OS to your  main MacBook Air drive, you could try reinstalling to another drive (e.g. external USB drive). Then you could simply copy the app to your main MacBook Air drive.

Standard Reinstall - If you have to reinstall the OS over your current system, it isn't as painful as on Windows if that is what you are used to. You can keep your user accounts and settings so it may not be too painful.


How can I save images that are on an iPhone but not in iCloud?

Try the following:
Connect your iPhone with your Mac and start "Image Capture" for importing photos.

In general, the circled explanation mark indicates that those photos have not been loaded from iCloud. It may download with network connection (mostly Wi-Fi only). If there are no photos on iCloud this might be because of file corruption on iCloud.

Also, iOS support for iPhone 4 stopped with iOS 7.1.2 - iCloud Photo library needs iOS 8.3 or newer. Your device therefore only supports iCloud My Photo Stream which only contains your newest pictures. There is no chance for your full library to be synced with iCloud.
(This does not count for iPhone 4s which supports iOS 9.3.5)

One last thing: Make sure photos are not indicated as "Transferred from Mac" (transferred photos can not be saved on any other Mac as the original source and won´t be shown on your current Mac).

Hopefully you´ll be able to access your photos. I hope these information may help you to understand your situation. Good luck!


You might want to look at the code for KeyRemap4MacBook.  There is functionality in there for remapping these keys to whatever you like, I'm not sure however if it would become clear how to "register" those keys.


Try

produce_image | open -a Preview.app -f

(To be honest, I was quite surprised to learn that this works)


Bootcamp is not affected by an upgrade from Mavericks to Yosemite.


App like Lightroom and Photos to display geotagged images in a map

Check out HoudahGeo — it's an inexpensive Mac app that lets you easily drag and drop photos to view on a map, edit location info, etc.


Directories being shared without being on the file sharing list

The simple act of clicking the "File Sharing" check box will allow the following things to happen.

Any user account can connect to the machine and access their own home folder, as well as the public folders on any other user account.
Any administrator users can access the boot disk.

The list of shared folders in the preference pane is for fine-tuning access to public folders and defining customized share points.

You can fine-tune the basic share points with Mac OS X Lion Server, which is available as a software package from the App Store nowadays. It's not terribly practical to try to hack this yourself on the command line. While it may be possible to just mess with the server daemon's configuration files, it may be more trouble than its worth when you could just disable the built-in server and install Netatalk.

Really, the easiest option if you just want to open up parts of your computer to specific logins, would be to create "sharing only" user accounts, allow them access to specific share points that you manually define in System Preferences, and disallow them access to the public folders.


Does Graphic Card affects on picture quality and color depth?

DisplayPort is a digital interface, yes. The actual display signal is sent essentially as 0's and 1's in a packetized protocol that ensures that either (1) what is sent by the computer is what is received by the monitor, or (2) the monitors knows that the something is wrong with the signal and will usually just show blank (black) screen.

In practice there are some other factors playing into it. DisplayPort comes in various versions supporting various sets of features. In addition DisplayPort supports several transfer speeds, so a "low quality" cable might only support slower speeds (i.e. lower resolution, color depth and/or frames per second) compared to a "high quality" cable. Beyond this some transfer modes employ a lossy compression, which is commonly referred to as "visually lossless" - i.e. in the digital sense you're not getting the exact same data before and after compression/decompression, but to the viewer it looks (almost) the same.

That being said, it is not so that the graphics card has no influence on picture quality at all. Nothing could be further from the truth. The programs on the computer are not spitting out DisplayPort packets that the graphics is simply responsible for transferring from the PC to the monitor. The graphics card performs a lot of duties in between the input from the operating system and running applications, and the output to the monitor.

Essentially an old, low-quality graphics card might for example only offer low resolution, low color depth, few color spaces and color formats, etc. when compared to a newer and/or higher-quality graphics card. When you look at 3D (for games or very graphical applications) there's tonnes of other features that the graphics card might or might not support in various degrees of quality and speeds. These can affect the image quality hugely.

Besides the above mentioned, you might also experience better quality simply because you had a non-optimal setup/configuration of your old graphics card. Or it might be because the new operating system install contains better drivers.


How do I download photos from my iPhone?

When I connect my iPhone to a Windows machine, it does appear as a digital camera and allows me to copy files from the DCIM folder or to use the "Import Pictures" option from Windows.

I just tried this in a Windows 7 VM and was able to view all the pictures in my Camera Roll.
From there, I could drag and drop pictures to my desktop.

I don't have iTunes installed in the Windows 7 VM.

It works the same way in my Windows XP machine, at work. There it is a physical machine and I have iTunes installed, but I can copy the pictures from the iPhone without syncing, anyway.


Why Does My Apple Watch Lose Connection to My iPhone When Using a VPN

I have come to the conclusion that a VPN simply causes a lot of connection issues when dealing with iOS and watchOS. For example, I found that iMessage and standard texts were not working correctly on my iPhone when my VPN was on. This is all besides the Apple Watch connection issues.

My answer is a non-answer in that VPNs and iOS/WatchOS do not play well together. I wish I could point you towards some documentation on why, but I cannot find any.


How do I fix non-responsive keyboard and trackpad after sleep on MacBook Pro Retina 15?

The problem seems to have stopped since I upgraded to OS X 10.9 Mavericks.


How to manage remote music library but at the same time have some music still on the MacBook (preferably in sync)?

You could set up something like this (Make sure that your iTunes Library File (iTunes Music Library.xml) is on your mac, not on your NAS):

Create a playlist "On the go"
Use this script to move the files in the playlist from your NAS (iTunes media location) to your mac.
On the go, with no connection to your NAS: iTunes will tell you that the files are not available when you click to play, click "search" and select the folder you´ve synced the files to.
When you add new music on the go, iTunes will copy that to the default location  (/music/iTunes/) on your mac.
When you have access to your NAS again: Check that the iTunes Media Location is your NAS (Settings > advanced) and click File > Media Library > Organise Media Library. All Files you added while on the go will be copied to your NAS.
Delete the Files in your local iTunes Media Folder.


Does Apple Music store original ripped music in cloud?

Actually, according to this Apple Music support page, lossless formats will NOT be preserved in the cloud:

"Songs encoded in ALAC, WAV, or AIFF formats will be transcoded to a separate temporary AAC 256 Kbps file locally, before they're uploaded to iCloud."

Meanwhile, the Apple Music product description states that they "compare every track in your collection to the Apple Music library to see if we have a copy. If we do, you can automatically listen to it straight from the cloud," which suggests that higher quality files do not, in fact, replace Apple's default in-cloud counterparts.

Sorry to dash your dreams. Maybe you could disguise the metadata on each of your files with slightly-off album names to prevent Apple from recognizing them, then use a higher quality file other than the formats mentioned above, which would be converted to AAC. Alternatively, Google Play's default bitrate is 320 kbps, and its uploading service is currently free.


Mission control - application windows cascade view

During your app expose, you can hover the mouse on the window you want and press the Space Bar to enlarge it allowing you to have a sneak peak in full size. It works in mission control too.

Also in mission control you can move your mouse to the app and scroll up to scatter the app windows, then you can use the Space Bar to have a sneak peak of the window at full size.


What happens if your iPhone becomes damaged while preparing for AppleCare+ Repair?

I would send it in, protect it as best you can - write a short note, I tried to get the SIM out, that didn’t go well, please help.
Send it off. If they call you and requote, you can decide if you pay more. If they fix it all, you’re set.
If you can’t write a short note, maybe just send it, but I would expect they’ll wonder more if it comes in shape not the same.
If you really are concerned, maybe get photos and call - but I’m guessing Apple will say send it in so we can look at it.


Assuming that you're talking about SSDs within the same generations of Mac, then capacity has no bearing on the speed, quality and/or expected lifespan of the components being used.

For example, the 1TB, 2TB and 4TB options of SSDs in an iMac Pro are the same as each other in terms of quality and performance. Likewise for the various SSD options in current models of 15" MacBook Pro and so on.

Where you will see differences are when you're comparing different drives, either because they're in different generations (or even types) of Mac models (e.g. 13" MBP v 15" MBP) or because they're a different type of storage device (e.g. traditional v fusion v solid state drives).


Can Gatekeeper be disabled via terminal in OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion?

The spctl tool should do the job.

sudo spctl --master-disable will turn off the Gatekeeper checks, and sudo spctl --master-enable will re-enable them (to the default setting of App Store and signed apps — it doesn't appear that setting it to App Store-only is possible).

Note that it will not throw any error if you run it without sudo permissions, but sudo is in fact required.


Go to the Preferences for Dictionary.app and uncheck everything and restart.  Then go back to the Preferences and check what you want to have showing.


I upgraded to macOS Sierra. Now my disk utility doesn't show what types of files are taking up space

Spotlight can get stuck and show you wrong information, so right after an update, you might need to wait a day or so if you don't leave the computer running.

Open About This Mac from the Apple menu and then select Storage:

The gross storage should match Disk Utility which his out of the business of knowing what's in the drive - just that it's used. If you get a blank or wrong diagram - there's no progress bar letting you know background processes are recalculating, but eventually you should see a better image like below:

Note:

the size of the free space is NOT TO SCALE.  I have 45% and 42% free space above but the "free space" white area is clearly not to scale.
the "System" can include data from other users that you might expect to be calculated as photos or documents or videos. Even some of your iCloud data can get lumped into System.


Backblaze and similar services not necessary for a small hdd? Upload full disk dmg to cloud services easier?

Firstly, I think this depends on your personal price sensitivity, and factors like desire, or expectation for single file restoration, and tracking deleted files, as well as your internet connection. This is a fundamentally subjective and opinion based question.
Yes, you could image and save the whole image every month, but that comes with several drawbacks:

Backblaze is 'only' $4 more per month - this is dependent on your price sensitivity.
You have to remember to do it (although this could probably be automated, that's an investment of your time and energy). Something like CarbonCopyCloner will give you drive image back-ups.
You only get monthly point-in-time restoration. If your drive dies tomorrow (or you lose local back-ups), you're losing a month of data.
Backblaze gives you the ability to restore files from anywhere.
Backblaze gives you the ability to restore individual files quickly and easily
Uploading a whole drive every month could be taxing / time consuming on your internet connection.

To directly answer the questions in the title:

Necessary - this is entirely dependent on your risk tolerance and highly subjective. My personal opinion - backup everything that's personal to you (ie. can't be replaced), regardless of size.
Easier, no, Backblaze you set and forget and it uploads files every time they change. It's about as easy a solution as you can possibly get.

Backblaze is not your only option though:

iCloud will give you all your Documents off-site, and integrates into iOS and macOS so that it's as easy as Backblaze
Something like Arq allows you to backup to many different cloud providers - eg. AWS S3, and include Google Drive as a target option.


Dictation with browser : have Mac Book Pro speak out web pages

In Safari:

Mark text, secondary click (aka right-click), speech.

Alternatively it's also in the edit menu.

Settings can be adjusted in System Preferences -> Speech


Is there an alternative to "Everything" on OS X?

In your case probably the

  mdfind

will do great job.

It is not a GUI but a Terminal command, and it will search everywhere and everything.

Once found you can triple click on the line (to select it) and Right Click and use the "Reveal in Finder".


Plugging iPhone 5 into computer resets USB hub and devices

Wow, 7 USB ports is a lot for a laptop!

Because (as you mentioned) the iPhone and iPad consume above-standard amperages, they can sometimes cause issues such as this.  Most USB controllers are dynamic enough to simply provide a standard amount of power to just the iPhone, but there have been a couple of cases I've seen where the hub crashes as you're describing.  When the hub provides a USB-standard amperage to the device, the device will indicate that it is not charging (though explicitly indicating that it is plugged in).

I'm interested to know what model laptop you're using as it may be a known issue for the corresponding USB controller.

As for a fix, you can see if there is updated firmware for the controller.  If those are unavailable or don't resolve the issue, I suggest getting a powered external USB hub.  Using one will eliminate the power strain on the motherboard and will probably extend the life of the PSU.


Safari - How to retain downloaded zip files?

Safari doesn't handle the unzipping itself, it simply opens the zip with the default program, which is the OS X Archive Utility, unless you've changed it.

By default, Archive Utility shouldn't delete zip files, but it's possible the preferences got changed. To stop the archives from being deleted, open Archive Utility, located in /System/Library/CoreServices/, then open its preferences.

Change the After expanding: setting to leave archive alone.


To rearrange the position of the displays, please see Configuring Mac OS X for Multiple Displays.


How can I write to a USB 3 flash drive faster than 15 mb/s?

Depends on the speed of the flash. Most flash drives allow faster read then write since writing to a flash is a "destructive operation"

A site like http://usbspeed.nirsoft.net/ might provide further information.

As an example SSD drives are rates at a number of Input/Output Operations/s (IOPS) commonly read is faster then on even the best most expensive drives.


Apple Developer certificates for signing mail?

If you have a look at a developer certificate in Keychain, you'll see that the root CA is Apple itself. I'm not familiar with mail signature authorities, but I'm guessing that Apple isn't recognized by most of them (and I would also suspect that the developer root CA would be distinct from any other CA they may run).


MacBook Pro (2011) shows flashing folder at startup but the disk is valid

The problem was a faulty hard drive connector cable. I ordered a replacement from iFixIt and the laptop is functioning again.


But if you run sudo -l you will come to know that the admin user can execute all superuser commands. Then what is the point of disabling superuser?

Any user that can escalate their privilidges to root can execute all superuser commands, and any member of the admin group on OS X can escalate to root privilidges using sudo. Generally, without escalating to root privileges, a user cannot execute commands reserved to root, so you may be reading more into sudo -l than is there.

There is only one root account, one superuser. The point of disabling it is so that no one can gain access to the actual root account, they can only gain root privilidges by using sudo. Sudo offers some benefits: all attempts to authenticate with sudo are logged, and all commands run using sudo are logged; sudo can be restricted with user permissions using the /private/etc/sudoers file; sudo can be run using an admin users' password, so they don't need to know the root password; sudo will also eventually time out, and require authentication again.

I found a very nice article here on the benefits of sudo and how it compares to using su or logging in as root. The article concerns Ubuntu, but the basic information remains the same for OS X and any BSD or UNIX flavor.


Sharing an Apple Calendar with a Google Calendar User

You can subscribe to her Google calendar if all you want is for the events to show up for you. Easy enough to have her create a read-only link for you - and you can do the same for an iCal calendar (https://www.imore.com/how-publicly-share-calendar-your-iphone-and-ipad).


How to repair or back up external hard drive when disk utility can't repair it?

You could try to "mount" it via Terminal.

First, make a mount point:

sudo mkdir /Volumes/EXT_HD

Now mount (your device numbers may be different, e.g. /dev/disk2s1 — you can determine what it is as it will the the highest number when you issue the command ‘ls /dev/disk*’):

sudo mount -t msdos /dev/disk3s1 /Volumes/EXT_HD/

It might eventually show up in Devices in Finder.


The best way to install anything on OSX is (IMHO) with Homebrew. You can install Homebrew with this command:

/usr/bin/ruby -e "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Homebrew/install/master/install)"

Then you can install stuff (like handbrakeCLI) like this:

brew install handbrake

Then you can run it straight away from any command prompt with:

handbrakeCLI ...


Finding which files the migration assistant failed to transfer

Open a terminal and execute:
diff -qr /Volumes/newharddrive /Volumes/oldharddrive

you have to change the names of the hard drives (or directories) according to your setup.
diff -qr /Volumes/newharddrive /Volumes/oldhardrive | grep ' differ'

is a variant to reduce the output clutter.
You can redirect the output from the terminal to a text file for easier reading:
diff -qr /Volumes/newharddrive /Volumes/oldhardrive >compare.txt


Apple's "Mail" does not show when opened

This is standard OS X behaviour for apps that can have multiple windows.

Close (by red button or the File->Close menu) closes the front window but leaves the app running. You can still switch to the app. To open a window do File->New Viewer Window or File-> New Message.

To stop the app you need to chose Mail->Quit Mail


Deleting iPhone's Apple Support General Log File

Yes, all log files are safe to delete. I’ve often run iCleaner’s file type cleanup, which removes all .log files across the entire filesystem, without any unintended consequences.


App icon switches to low resolution upon launching an app

This appears to be a bug in the app itself. It's also affecting the Wolfram app and affects not only the icon in the dock, but also the app switcher icon. I tried creating a new WolframDesktop.icns file, but the application still reverts back to the lower resolution icon on my 13" MacBook Pro. The icon renders fine on a 15" MacBook Pro. Both are running Mojave.


Here are the specs for the mid 2009 13" MacBook Pro:

Double Data Rate Small Outline Dual Inline Memory Module (DDR3) format
30mm (1.18 inch)
2 GB or 4 GB
204-pin
PC3-8500 DDR3 1066 MHz type RAM

And the mid 2012 13" MacBook Pro:

Double Data Rate Small Outline Dual Inline Memory Module (DDR3) format
67.6mm x 30mm (1.18 inch)
2 GB or 4 GB
204-pin
PC3-12800 DDR3 1600 MHz type RAM

It'll work, it's slightly faster than the RAM it came with.


macOS Sierra: Increase mouse cursor speed beyond System Preferences maximum

There are 2 FREE ways to accomplish getting mouse speeds over 5.0 accelleration on mac OS High Sierra:

First, is by executing the command-line:

defaults write -g com.apple.mouse.scaling  X

where X is the amount of acceleration you want in the form of a number with one decimal space after it, then logging out, and logging back in.
Therefore if you wanted to increase your speed to 8 acceleration you would type in the terminal the following command:

defaults write -g com.apple.mouse.scaling  8.0

Note: If afterwords, you adjust the mouse controls in System Preferences again, you have to once again enter the terminal command and log out to regain your accelerated mouse settings.

Second, is to use an app called mousezoom. It gets installed in preferences pane.


Copying files to SMB share in Finder: Error code -36

The problem was solved using the utility Keychain Access.app to delete the keys related to my NAS.
After a restart, I had to provide login credentials, and copying files was once again possible.


Rename iOS device without needing to restore

Connect your device and open iTunes.
In the source list (the left-hand column of iTunes), double-click on the name of the device.
Type the new name for your device and press Return on the keyboard.
Sync the device (press Sync in the bottom right corner of the screen).


I create a location for places like that.  I have the default location(Auto) for my house but for each of my job sites I have a location with specific hard-coded IP/DNS.  You can create a location in Systems Perf -> Network.  Then to select each location go to the Apple icon -> location -> xxx.  That is the simplest way I think to do it.


How do I get the messages view back in Mail on OS X?

I think you've dragged the right edge of the middle list all the way to the right, which then hides the preview of the messages. If you hover your mouse of the right edge of the scroll bar on the right you should get the draggable crosshair mouse pointer. Hold it and drag left and you should get the previews back.


Network Caller ID on iOS without a computer

Since there didn't seem to be a stand-alone solution, I made a little app that connects to a NCID Server and gets the list of phone numbers:

http://erike.net/ncid/

Unfortunately Apple didn't allow me to keep the connection open in the background, but I may release a fix for this in Cydia.


Wi-Fi connection randomly disconnects on 2012 MacBook Air

This is a topic I have followed online and in "real life" for several months. Anecdotally, Apple seems to have a wifi problem with the 2012 MacBookAir. I have no firm figures concerning how widespread this situation is, but I know of two other MacBook Air laptops that have displayed this issue:

the MBA I purchased in hopes that I could use it attached to a
projector as the remote end of a video presentation at a conference I
had to miss for health reasons. I returned the computer one week
later after investing ten or so hours trying to fix dropping WiFi
connections.
my oldest daughter's 2012 12" MBA that she still has and is now connecting more reliably, close to 95%+

The resulting story is long, but reading the full adventure might help to open your eyes to the minutiae that helped me resolve her WiFi nightmare.

Shortly after purchasing the MBA for my daughter, she started complaining of wifi drops, initially at home and then she began experiencing drops everywhere--but not at my office where my AirPort Extreme literally sits on a shelf, three feet above my head. My initial thought focused on signal strength and distance from the router. While attending college she lives at my parents' home. The walls are lathe and plaster and the WiFi access point was at the opposite side of the house. I don't remember the brand, but it could have been a Linksys or DLink, and was only a 2.4GHz wireless-G unit.

While working with my daughter, I started some online research, including Apple Discussion boards. When I saw how many posts and complaints floated around the internet, and how few people had positive response from Genius Bar denizens, I figured that I would need strong documentation if I was going to get anywhere with them.

I worked to document and remedy connection stability on two fronts.

If you'd rather cut to The Chase and skip the steps that expanded my understanding of the issue, scroll down to the end of my post.

Tracking and replicating problems with her computer

Apple includes WiFi Diagnostics with OS X. Select Open WiFi Diagnostics from the WiFi menu while holding the OPTION key.
Don't worry about the three options on the main app screen, but first select Wi-Fi Scan from the View menu.

The channel, width, band, signal and noise are all listed.
You want the least competition for channels. Change that at the router if needed.
Signal and Noise are affected by interference from walls, electrical wiring and other environmental issues.

The larger the gap between the signal and noise represents a better connection.

Much of this information is available on the WiFi menu if you hold the OPTION key while clicking on the menu.
You can get a visual ticker tape for signal/noise by selecting Performance in the Network Utilities window.

Keep a log of approximate time/date, RSSI (signal strength), transmit rate and any important events.

Don't worry about keeping this log religiously.
Make a note any time you experience a noticeable change in WiFi speed.
Note the times you reset the WiFi router.
Every time you have a WiFi drop, be sure to note the event and the signal strength and rate.
More than dates and strengths, look for patterns.

At home, WIFI dropped
Logged out and back in
Walked from room
Connected to the DSL WiFi router at dad's house and dropped.
Rebooted laptop
Laptop on table
Lots if static from wind
At library, no WIFI drops
Just rebooted router
At dad's and connected to the Time Capsule. Not dropped.
At hardware store, WIFI dropped

Note any errors the MBA displays.

Unexpected WiFi timeout

If all else fails, you have something to take with you to the Genius Bar or discuss with Apple support that has stronger documentation than "The damn thing doesn't work!"
I also attempted to replicate the WiFi problems with my early-2009 17" MacBook Pro. My laptop remained connected every time we were together and hers dropped the WiFi.

Tracking and replicating problems with the router

General router information...

What make/model is your wireless router?
How old is it?
Are you connecting using 2.4GHz, 5GHz or both?

General site description...

How far away is the router from where you use your MBA?

Create a wireless site survey with NetSpot

It's a free download from the Mac App Store.
Use the program to draw out a map of where you use your computer (home, office, etc.) including all the interior walls between you and the router.
You walk around the site, using NetSpot to capture signal strength, noise and other information.
Post a capture of the results and I'll be happy to help see what might help.

Generally, you'll have better connectivity closer to the router. If you have a clear line of sight to the router, you should have a good signal.

I know my daughter got sick and tired of having WiFi drop, rebooting the router and/or her MBA.

How I finally made things better

I ended up controlling the two variables I could directly manipulate: signal strength and age of WiFi router. In the end, my solution improved internet connectivity throughout my parents' home, benefitting everyone.

I started out replacing the router with another older, non-Apple one I had sitting around my office, possibly an old AirLink. No positive affect. Then I replaced it with a third slightly-newer, non-Apple router. Again, no change. In order to re-connect after a drop, my daughter would walk to the other side of the house and reboot the router every time there was a wireless drop.

I brought a 30' length of CAT-5 from the office so I could position the various router closer to her bedroom. WiFi signal strength and overall quality improved, but she still experienced the drops three or four times a day. I think she would have been happy at this point, but the problem had become personal with me.

As I analyzed everything, I decided to introduce the one element she had not experienced from my office into my daughter's home:

I snagged an AirPort Express from my shop and reconfigured it for her
local network. It replaced the older, non-Apple router that was
there. Unbeknownst to me, we had the AirPort Express plugged into
a power outlet shared with a lamp that was controlled by a wall
switch. My daughter switched off the light when she would leave for
college, and also the router. Quality improved once again, with
signal drops once or twice a day. My parents were starting to get
annoyed by a twisty blue wire running through their home.
We changed the outlet to one with permanent power and after a couple
of days the signal stabilized and seemed to finally start running
properly. However, my parents were still annoyed by the twisty blue
wire running through their home. I figured I was close enough to a
stable solution that I invested some money in hopes of staunching the
flow of time and phone calls at all hours of the night. Money became
less important than sleep.
I installed a AirPort Extreme where the DSL modem is located at the
far end of my parents' house, in my dad's office. The Extreme bathes
the office with multichannel 5GHz goodness that links between 300MBs
and 450MBs. This one access point covers that half of the house with
2.4GHz coverage and 150MBs to 270MBs connectivity.
I dragged a CAT6 cable through the hot and dusty attic to a location
near my daughter's bedroom, near the other end of the house. I
attached an AirPort Express at this end which provides a near mirror
of the Extreme.
I bound the 5GHz and 2.4GHz into a single SSID/Network name.
I enabled the Express to extend the Extreme's wireless network,
connecting the two access points for passwords and transparent
passing from one access point to the other as one moves throughout
the house.
Both the AirPorts are powered and connected to the DSL modem 24/7.
While I was at it, I enabled a guest network with a separate
password.

The Chase

I think the 2012 MacBook Air WiFi issue might be because Apple has integrated Intel's more aggressive power-saving modes into the laptop. In a drive to maximize battery life, these new low-power modes change how (and how often) the laptop communicates with the wireless access point.

Apple introduces Intel's deep power states as Power Nap on their latest equipment.
From what I've been able to read on OEMs implementing the new lower
power modes (and we'll group Apple in as just another OEMs), Intel needs
greater control of the various components on the motherboard and has met resistance.
The price-sensitive business model that drives the Windows world
forces most OEMs to include the lowest-cost subsystems, not
necessarily the latest technology.
Since Apple does not play in the race to the bottom with prices and
profitability, the company often offers newer technology in their
products.
Apple is pushing the limits of throughput vs power consumption with
the 2012 MBA's WiFi subsystems. My 2009 MBP keeps the WiFi powered on
at all times so will never see the problem introduced when mixing an
older router with a newer laptop.
Older routers would see an IP address turning themselves off at
random times...  which then would drop the connection.
The 2012 MBA expects wireless access points to provide a longer time duration
before releasing a connection.
I found timeout durations in all the older routers' HTML-based
configuration systems, but could not make a change to any of them
from the default values.
When a system that has powered down the WiFi subsystem (even though
the user believes they are still working merrily right along) needs
to ping the Internet, the MBA powers up the "sleeping" WiFi
subsystem, only to discover the wireless access point has terminated
their connection.

Yes, this is a long-winded and overly-detailed story. I spent several hours this afternoon thinking through each element of the plot as I typed the events, and I'm somewhat embarrassed to admit I completely rewrote the ending because of thoughts developed and linked with random memories that I hadn't seen as possibly being interrelated.

There are many times that my quick, three line answer does not allow me the time to "think with my fingers". Instead of resolving an issue I sloppily (and possibly expensively) slapped a band-aid on the owie.

I resolved the dropped network issue by replacing the "antiquated" WiFi router with a "modern" one. I just happened to select one manufactured by Apple.
Either

increase the time an older router will keep an inactive connection
alive before timeout (which may not be changeable in any given older
router), or
replace it with one that supports Intel's newer power-saving states.


Messages wont open: the Messages database is being updated

I've been getting the same thing on and off for a long time now. I wait for any period of time and still get the same, most always a reboot of the system makes it work again...frustrating!

I'm running El Capitan 10.11.3


How to prevent Macbook from bluetooth reconnecting to lost connections?

For now I did an workaround with Controlplane:
Run program if connected to specific wifi?
When I leave work and my Mac does not detect the wifi it will turn off bluetooth.


Retrieve image coordinates at mouse cursor in Preview.app

You can do this simply by dragging from the desired pixel to the upper left corner of the screen. This will create a selection rectangle, and the size of that rectangle is shown in the screen. Since the rectangle can only stretch until it reaches the origin (the corner), its size will be the same as the pixel coordinates you're looking for.


Apple Mail reply arrow not working reliably

As far as I know, the issue is that Microsoft doesn't provide the Active Sync API to anything other than mobile devices. This is why using Exchange on Mac is a bit buggy.

I would recommend using Microsoft's own Outlook Web App (OWA) for your Exchange emails. Or installing the actual Outlook program for your computer. Those are what I use. :)

Those are probably your two best options if you need your email to be 100% reliable on your Mac.


Reset NVRAM, PRAM, and SMC, all in one go from the terminal?

I'd try with a script using the following outline

sudo nvram -c

which should clear the contents of NVRAM.

curl 'https://sourceforge.net/projects/refind/files/0.11.4/refind-flashdrive-0.11.4.zip/download' --output refind.usbimage

copy SmcFlasher there (https://discussions.apple.com/thread/4855319?answerId=22024754022#22024754022)

shutdown -r now

and then you will have to manually follow the smcflasher instuctions up to

SmcFlasher.efi -reset 1

you can of course automate that as well by modifying the USB image accordingly and you'd be right where you want to be.


You can log in to iTunes with multiple Apple ID accounts. In my case I have a personal account and a work account with dev access.

Once the xcode (or any app) is installed it doesn't case who's Apple ID is logged in, however you may have to do some bouncing between accounts if you have installed apps from both accounts and you need to update them. other then that two accounts works fine.


How to make itunes stop asking "do you want to allow this computer to access information" on my iphone?

Have you checked this box in the laptop's iTunes preferences?


iPhone: Safari and Chrome stop working when I connect iPhone to MacBook

As OP said, "Internet sharing is on and all the sub-boxes are checked", I think this is the problem.

Not all apps in iOS can detect and use network coming through iPhone USB. Most of them check only Cellular data, Wi-Fi and Bluetooth for internet

On Mac System Preferences -> Sharing, Internet Sharing by USB cable should be turned off for using iPhone apps.


iMac 27“ Mid 2011 - Can‘t reinstall macOS

It sounds like you've somehow installed a MacOS installer disk onto your internal drive. Then you're booting up to that, and trying to install the OS over itself, or trying to partition the volume of the running system.

Boot to Recovery (Command R at restart) and wipe the disk from there. Then install the OS.


If I add an SSD to a non-retina MBP 13" will weight drop to 3.5 lbs

If you upgrade the 13" non-retina MBP to a 256 GB SSD, that only saves you $100 vs. a retina MBP with the same 256 GB SSD ($1599 vs. $1699).

Furthermore, the non-retina MBP will still have the optical drive no matter what (you can't configure it without one). So the only difference in weight will be the difference between the SSD and traditional HDD, whatever that is (I suspect not much, since Apple's own tech specs only say "actual weight varies by configuration").

The 13" MacBook Air is a much better fit for what you're looking for: lower price ($1299), much lower weight (2.96 lbs).


How to install MacPorts on user-only account?

Neither.

Macports is installed as root and uses its own account macports for some things. It does not use your account for anything.

To do MacPorts actions e.g. install, selfupdate you need to run it as root. Which in this case is run via sudo. So to do these actions you do need an admin account.

To use MacPorts executables or libraries you just need to add MacPorts to your user environment, which is the same for any user on your machine. e.g. add /opt/local/bin to $PATH to put the executables on your path, as described in the MacPorts manual.

The one edge case is the install from the disk image which will run a script on your current user to add a line to your .bash_profile to set up your path.
You can also manually add the following line to your Admin's .bash_profile:

export PATH=/opt/local/bin:/opt/local/sbin:$PATH


I can't change administrator password on G5 PPC OS X 10.5.8

If you're referring to this thread, then from looking at your screen shot it appears that you didn't enter exactly what was specified. For example, there was the command mount -uw / but you didn't put the space between the command switches and the slash. Since that didn't execute the mount that you wanted, I'm not surprised the rest of it didn't work :-)

As a side note, though Apple HFS+ installations tend to be case insensitive, it is always possible that case sensitivity is enabled on the computer. As such, you entered the rm .Applesetupdone line incorrectly since it should have been .AppleSetupDone.

You'll probably have improved luck with the mount statement, but when working with the UNIX shell you should always be case sensitive and careful with spaces, dashes, quotes, etc. since UNIX traditionally is VERY sensitive to these things and the wrong keystroke can render the OS installation non-bootable.


How do I use the verification code to generate a password for icloud server smtp.mail.me.com password

I've seen this happen from time to time. So you have both a Gmail and a .me/.mac/icloud (Apple) email address?

If so mail.app (or whatever you are using as a mail client) has gotten confused about what server to use for what account. This should be easy to fix.

Open mail.app and select Preferences from the Mail menu
Select the Accounts icon at the top of the preferences window
On the left is a list of your mail accounts. Select the first one
Now select Server settings and see what server is listed at the bottom under Outgoing Mail Server (SMTP).

The latter should correspond to the account you have selected. So if you selected your Gmail account your server should have gmail in the name and not me.com. If it does change it to the one in the menu for gmail.

Now if you are using Outlook for email that is similar but not exactly the same. I don't have Outlook set up for Gmail so I can't help you there.

If I have missed something let me know and we'll go from there.


Connected a Cinema Display to MacBook Pro, recognizes sound output device but no sound

(I solved my own problem right as I was about to post here.)

The Mini DisplayPort must be plugged in before the USB cable.  Unplug both, plug them in in the correct order, and it should recognize the sound.

Unplugging only the USB cable will not work.


How to sync starred photos from Picasa to my iPhone/iPad?

You could set up the symlink script to run daily (or however often you possibly sync your device) to at least generate the symlink folder automatically. If you are uncomfortable writing the plists for the LaunchDeamons, you can use an app like Lingon to generate them. At this point, they may not even need to be symlinks, just a copied 'export' if you will, using the same logic.

Either way, you are still stuck doing the 'iPod Photo Cache'. I think the only reason this is slightly faster when using Aperture or iPhoto is due to them having various thumbnails and other sizes rendered, but it still takes time to process, especially the first time.

Assuming smaller files would actually process faster, you could also update the script that exports the stared items with symlinks to actually copy the files elsewhere, and then resize them using a tool like sips.

For example, sips -Z 1024 image.jpg would resize the image down to 1024x768, retaining the aspect ration (more examples can be found on this blog, or elsewhere online).

You may have to find which process works best for you and your workflow, and where the bottle neck would be. Again, if this export could be daily, outside of the actual sync to your device, that folder could always 'be ready'.

Then, you just keep your iOS device sync the same, but it can process smaller files, and you have automated most of the process. The iPod Photo Cache may also be incremental, so if these files stay the same, and then just have new ones added, only the new ones are added to the cache as well.


corrupted library (?) preventing ipad upload to icloud photos

I can only tell you that I have the same problem, but on my iPhone. The only time I get it to work is when I turn iCloud entirely on and off. Yet – after a successful sync with all images and videos everywhere, the sync problem reemerge. Your mileage may vary. Try a complete iCloud off/on (and – I would recommend – a reboot in between) and see what happens.


Xcode failed to download. Use the Purchases page to try again

Deleting the temporary folders as recommended didn't help. In the end I got it working again by enabling the Debug menu for the App Store app and resetting the application; it is now finally downloading the update as it should.

Steps:

Open Terminal.
Run the following command:

defaults write com.apple.appstore ShowDebugMenu -bool true

Relaunch the App Store.
Choose the menu item Debug → Reset Application.

Based on steps from: https://discussions.apple.com/thread/4398074?start=0&tstart=0

It is possible that signing out (Store → Sign Out) might have solved the issue too (part of the application reset process is to sign you out) but this was not tested.


Safari, Yosemite: Where is "Reopen all windows from last session" stored?

It's stored in ~/Library/Safari/LastSession.plist, where ~ is your home folder of course.


How can I save a file to a specific "keyed" location?

You can use Command -> Shift -> G in the save dialogue box too, just like in Finder.

Default Folder X is great for saving some as favorites or specific defaults for certain apps. IT does way more than just keyboard shortcuts, but that is one of its super-powers.

https://www.apple.com/accessibility/mac/mobility/

Accessibility lets you use keyboard commands to select graphical elements and then tab / type / navigate to whatever folders you prefer.

Control F7 allows tab to select more items and move around using your keyboard in the save dialog.


From which version does Safari not support 32 bit architecture?

According to Wikipedia - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Safari_(web_browser)#64-bit_builds - Safari has been 64-bit since Snow Leopard OS X 10.6 in 2009, which would be Safari 5, [around the same time they stopped supporting Windows.]
All Macs since then have been 64-bit capable, but until Catalina have been backwards compatible with 32-bit applications.
The last OS X to be capable of running on 32-bit architecture was also Snow Leopard, 10.6
The App Store will only offer you builds of Safari compatible with your Mac's hardware & OS
Safari 11 - 10.11 to 10.12
Safari 12 - 10.12 to 10.13
Safari 13 - 10.13 to 10.15
Safari 14 - macOS 11 [backwards compatibility currently unknown]


Copying Xcode.app from App Store to another computer (under different Apple ID)

You can simply copy Xcode to the other machine. There is a chance it will just work. Otherwise, when you try to launch the app it should ask you to sign in again, and if you sign in with an Apple ID that has already downloaded Xcode, you'll be good to go. (So your idea is right — you can start downloading it, then cancel and replace it with your own copy.)
More details: apps have the option to validate their receipt on launch. If the app is running on the wrong machine, it quits with an exit code of 173.

This exit status notifies the system that your application has determined that its receipt is invalid. At this point, the system attempts to obtain a valid receipt and may prompt for the user’s iTunes credentials.
If the system successfully obtains a valid receipt, it relaunches the application. Otherwise, it displays an error message to the user, explaining the problem.

However, plenty of apps don't bother, and will launch without issue when moved to a different computer.


Font Used in OS X 'Yosemite' Version of Terminal's Icon?

The font used in the version of Terminal's icon included with OS X 10.10.0 'Yosemite' has been identified here on WhatTheFont! as 'Menlo,' the same font used by default in Terminal's own shells.


How to use an old iMac as an external display for a MacBook via wifi?

I've answered the question you've mentioned. Perhaps it helps you too:

  It seems ScreenRecycler does what you need. There's a trial version available, so you can try it.


iMac late 2015 running Mac os 10.15.4: Connection Logging file is to big to delete

If all you want is to delete the file you can open a terminal window by launching Applications -> Utilities -> terminal , typing rm into the terminal followed by a single space, then drag the file into the terminal window (it should copy the name & full path into terminal) and finally hitting enter.

That location looks like it could possibly require admin privileges to modify files. This would be for a good reason: don't modify any files unless you're completely certain that it's safe to do so. If you do run into access issues, it's possible to proceed by typing sudo followed by a space, followed by the line you would have generated in the previous paragraph. Proceed with caution and make sure you have an up to date backup before trying this method.


Programs take a long time to load after startup

How many items are there on the desktop? How much RAM does your machine has? How much storage are you using?

If you are using lot of storage then try cleaning up your temporary files using cleanmymac or some software from mac app store. That should help.


Does the Catalina Music app preserve star ratings from iTunes?

Yes, but it's disabled by default. I had the exact same question and found the answer here (screenshots included):

  The Music app won’t show the iTunes Store or your star ratings by default. You can re-enable these features by clicking on Music > Preferences then enabling “iTunes Store” and “Star ratings” on the General tab.


Does FileVault protect against ransomware?

Ransomware works by selecting certain files (normally by type - like docs, bitcoin wallets, etc), encrypting those individual files and forcing you to pay up for a key to decrypt them.

FileVault protects your data on your Mac by encrypting the whole disk. When you boot up your Mac, you put in a password that effectively "decrypts" the drive and allows it to run as-is. That said, once you've put the key in the lock, so to speak, FileVault wouldn't be protecting you from ransomware. You'd still be just as vulnerable as the ransomware would be running after FileVault had been unlocked.

As for the Time Machine backups, this is more complicated. Those backups are stored encrypted at rest, and only decrypted when they're accessed. This means the files inside the backups themselves would not be individually identifiable to ransomware that was running - however the entire backup could be. So the ransomware could encrypt the whole thing as a unit, instead of just the individual files.

As for OSX's "trusted sources" setting, there have been multiple exploits against this feature as of late and it's not as trustworthy as it seems. I couldn't say for certain it wouldn't protect you, but I wouldn't count on it.

I'd recommend some kind of cloud-based or off-computer backup if you really want to protect your data running through a third party application. In other words, don't connect to a network share and backup your data there, use an application to do it. It's unlikely that ransomware would be sophisticated and specific enough to know about specific backup applications, how they connect to their third party service, and how to encrypt the files on that service. Dropbox is a simple example here if you pay for their cloud backup service -- even if the ransomware did encrypt your files in Dropbox, they keep versions backed up so you'd have something to revert to.


My computer name keeps changing when I plug it into a Thunderbolt display

Try making your hostname permanent by typing this command into the Terminal:

sudo scutil --set HostName yourcomputer

My hostname kept changing when I connected to the network because the router was broadcasting a different hostname, and this fixed it.


Existing mail viewer window doesn't open when I click on Mail App dock icon

I had this problem but it went away when I removed mail from the dock and then docked it again.

Right click icon, select options, uncheck "Keep in Dock"

Right click icon, select quit

Then start mail from Finder>Applications and recheck "Keep in Dock" from the icon that reappears in the dock


Mac OS X Lion to mountain lion upgrade failed "NO Recovery"

Have you attempted to boot into safe mode and run the recovery update in safe mode?

You can boot into safe mode by holding down the left shift key.

Full details here: http://support.apple.com/kb/ht1455


New Seagate hard drive freezes MacBook Pro

Try resetting both the NV-RAM (P-RAM) but more importantly, the SMC Power Manager for your model, which can be looked up on Apple Support to be certain. It's usually: remove battery, unplug, hold down Power key for 10 seconds.

Also try a Safe Boot. And repairing the hard disk from an external startup, so that Disk Utilities can fully repair. But the problem you describe usually indicates some kind of electrical glitch, which needs to be solved.


16GB 1600mhz vs 16GB 1866mhz RAM for Macbook Pro 13" mid 2012

2012 MacBook Pro 13" specification states that it supports 1600 MHz RAM. So, Kingston modules do not have an advantage, as the memory will run at 1600 MHz.

Purely, from numbers point of view, your geekbench results point to Crucial being faster. However, I suspect it is due to variance. You can try to rerun the same test several times and see how the scores differ from run to run.

Both Kingston and Crucial are well known brands with low failure rates. And unless you are going to put your computer under heavy load, memory intensive constant tasks, you will not notice any difference between the two in terms of speed. So, if I were you, I would buy whichever is cheaper.


Can you run Samba on Snow Leopard workstations?

File sharing is available on the client under System Preferences>Sharing>File Sharing.

You can then select what to share. Once you've done that click the options button. And select the third option shown in the image below.


How to make Mac's mouse icon to be left hand friendly?

You can use the following app called Mousecape:

https://github.com/alexzielenski/Mousecape/releases/tag/0.0.5

After downloading, installing both the app and the helper app, do the following:

Go to the Mousecape preferences and choose “I am left handed”.
Dump the system cursors into a cape from the menu: “Capes” → “Dump
Cursors”
Apply the Cursor Dump cape (right click → apply)

Done!


nfs and nfsd are not available in Mavericks

nfsd is in /sbin which won't be on the default path


Problem booting from a DVD: How do I eject the DVD?

If it's an Intel based Mac, you can press either F12, or Eject, or the Mouse button on startup.


How can I transfer annotations from a PDF to another in iPad?

GoodReader can't do this and GoodReader suppport is unaware of a product that can, since they operate in this space I assume there isn't an iOS app for this.

GoodReader can display PDF files, add annotations to them, and save those annotations to that specific file. Unfortunately it's not able to edit the content of a PDF file, merge files or create new PDF files.

On a computer, the software that does this is Adobe Acrobat Pro. Unfortunately I can't recommend an iOS app that can perform these functions.


Replacement RSS reader for Mountain Lion, integrated with Notification Center?

Firstly, in order to integrate into Notification Centre, an app needs to have been purchased from the App Store.  Only App Store apps can use it (same with most iCloud features).  So your search needs to start there.

2 very popular RSS readers are Reeder and NewsNetWire.  Neither have been update to use Notification Centre yet so far as I know, but for sure some of them will be.

It's likely that if you can find an RSS reader that used to use Growl as it's notification method, then it will be modified in time to use Notification Centre instead, but there are so many RSS readers (particularly on iOS, perhaps less so on the Mac App Store) that I can't name a particular app right now.

I quick search for "rss notification" yields no results, but "rss growl" gives 3 hits (Note that for those who are not aware, Growl is in effect a third party tool that has done what Notification Centre will do for years already, and loads of apps already support it):

http://itunes.apple.com/gb/app/cappuccino/id492594411?mt=12

http://itunes.apple.com/gb/app/monotony/id533978766?mt=12

http://itunes.apple.com/gb/app/feeds/id458374415?mt=12

The fact that these 3 already support some form of notifications may be indicative they they will be amogst the first to support OS X 10.8 Notification Centre.

However there is another way:

For those apps (not just RSS) that use Growl, there is talk that Growl will morph into a sort of bridge between the Notification Centre and non MAS apps, because it is on the MAS itself, and as such can install notifications into the tray, and it can also poll other apps for Growl notifications and simply pass them on without the originating app needing to know about Notification Centre formally.  See this blog post for info.

It's not happened yet tho, although there is already an app to bridge between Growl and Notification Centre called HISS (See here http://9to5mac.com/2012/07/25/put-growl-in-your-notification-center-with-hiss/) which will punt any grown notification into NC instead, although it's very much Beta, and frankly will be superceded as soon as Growl get their own act together, but at least it is available now.

As such you may be able to roll your own temporary bodge using a combination of an RSS reader as suggested above that supports Growl, installing and using Growl, installing Hiss to pass Growl notifications into the Notification Centre...


The current 2016 Bluetooth magic keyboard has larger keys so your press feels lighter even though I believe the stiffness is either the same absolutely or perhaps a bit stiffer if you were to calculate or measure the force.

Structurally, the scissors are more even and the keys don't wobble as much. If you hated the old one, the new one is sufficiently different that you should probably spend the time test driving one or buy from Apple with their 14 day, no questions asked return policy.

You may not love it, but you can type enough to let your initial impressions fade and them make a decision based on how your typing adjusts to the keyboard. Someone who likes a mechanical keyboard probably isn't going to like any of Apple's current keyboards.


MacBook Pro 2009 won't go to sleep when lid is closed

Looks like that well-known Mac-borker.. Boom2

com.apple.audio.Boom2Engine:0.context.preventuseridlesleep

Uninstall it [your speakers will last longer] or see if there's an update that fixes the issue.


Applescript to read facebook notifications

AppleScript is built by Apple, for Apple (though unfortunately support has steadily declined since the move from 10.6.8 to 10.7)

While it is possible to do what you describe with AppleScript (or any language, with enough blood, sweat, tears, and coffee), it will be much more difficult than using Facebook's API to view your notifications (or using OS X's built-in Facebook plugin).

As far as scripting Chrome with AppleScript, Safari will be easier as it has some built-in hooks. I'd start with something to download a YouTube video (non-copyrighted, of course) using Safari, else you may get bogged down in authentication and trying to parse HTML, rather than actually having fun coding.


How can I play video with spacial audio stored locally on device?

Spatial audio changes the left right balance of any sound. You don’t have to encode anything other than having stereo sound.

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT211775

Playing video from the files app works for me. Whether you choose local storage or Cloud storage, the processing of my head moving relative to the device works.


Reclaim hard drive space from deleted partition and reclaim Apple bootloader

The disk giving you problems uses the GUID partition table (GPT) to define the its layout. You provided me with the relevant contents of this table when you posted the output from the command sudo gpt -r show /dev/disk0. These values appear to be correct, except for the entry with an index of 3. This entry is shown below.

      480002496    1269536      3  GPT part - 48465300-0000-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC

The start and size values of 480002496 and 1269536, respectively, are OK, but the contents should be GPT part - 426F6F74-0000-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC.

To correct the problem you need to boot to OS X Internet Recovery and enter the following commands in a Terminal window.

gpt  -r  show  /dev/disk0
diskutil  unmountDisk  /dev/disk0
gpt  remove  -i  3  /dev/disk0
diskutil  unmountDisk  /dev/disk0
gpt  add  -i  3  -b  480002496  -s  1269536  -t  426F6F74-0000-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC  /dev/disk0

Once completed, you can boot back to OS X and open the Disk Utility application. The "Recovery HD" partition should no longer appear. You will need to move the slider on the "Macintosh HD" partition as far down as it will go. Click the "Apply" button to recover the free space.

Note: The "Recovery HD" partition has not been deleted. Normally, it is hidden by the Disk Utility application. The partition will still appear when using the diskutil list command. When you move the slider down be aware the Disk Utility application will have to relocate the "Recovery HD" partition to the end of the disk. This can take a while, so be patient after clicking the "Apply" button.

Example Using a Flash Drive

I tested the procedure using a flash drive. Before fixing, the flash drive appeared as such:

Using similar Terminal commands resulted in:

This allowed me to move the slider as such:

Clicking the "Apply" button produced:

In your case, the small free space shown above will not appear. (This is not free space, it is the space taken by the hidden partitions.)


corestorage failure: missing disk, how to recover data?

Your CoreStorage Logical Volume Group is missing a Physical Volume with the UUID DDD40234-2DC7-44B2-BE95-D9C0FA46F96A.

Your internal drive probably is (or worse: was) a Fusion Drive and the SSD part is missing. The SSD is either damaged or has to be reseated, if it doesn't show up entering diskutil list or if it shows up: the internal structure of the LVG got corrupted.

A Fusion Drive works similar as a RAID0: 2 (or more) disks occur as one: The whole file system spans over two or more disks. One big difference of a Fusion Drive is that files often aren't sliced and therefore either reside on the SSD or the HDD. Depending on the file type and the access frequency or last access time the "less important" files are relocated to the HDD part. The file system files (e.g. catalog file) and most system files usually reside on the SSD part.

You may try to dd disk0s2 to an external drive (either as partition or as raw file to an existing volume) and inspect it with a decent file recovery tool. If you enabled FileVault previously the data can't be recovered.

Rewriting the GPT (or MBR) doesn't help at all or on the contrary: it makes things worse.

If you have further questions leave a comment.


Unable to run Postgres after Installation on OSX - El Capitan

First, I would advise running brew doctor to make sure your homebrew installation is still intact.  It will instruct you on changes that need to be made after your upgrade.

If you are still having trouble and have database backups or nothing critical that you believe could get broken, I believe an easy fix would be to run something like

brew uninstall postgres && brew install postgres

By default, homebrew recognizes your OS version, and will reinstall from a "bottle" specifically-intended for El Capitan, which should fix your particular issue.

You could also try brew upgrade postgres (or whatever the equivalent command is).


How do you add a book to multiple iBook collections?

There is simply no way to do this tagging on iOS 8 or lower. You are correct about the inability to have a book in more than one collection.

I don't see forking a second copy of a book to have it in the completed category as well as a second one.

My best advice would to be use a spreadsheet (numbers) to track completed status or some other third party note app or list manager.

Perhaps look into Things by Cultured Code which is free this week in the US store. It makes lists amazingly powerful to manage and curate.


I have to turn off and on my WiFi every hour or so. What's wrong?

I agree that since your problem occurs over many devices it is unlikely to be a problem with the Apple devices. I appreciate your point about the Ubuntu device still appearing to work, but it still seems more likely to be a router problem (it could be for example the router is producing multiple errors that the Apple software is catching).

I'd suggest a hard reset of the router as Step 1 (before you do so however make sure you know ALL your current router settings, not just your name and password. I take a screenshot of each setting page)

Most routers have a Reset button you have to press with a paperclip.

Power off the router for several minutes, then apply power and do an immediate reset.