Missing Mac partitions - unrecognized file system

Windows' Disk Management has overwritten the GUID partition table with an MBR partition table. This usually only effects the partition table but not the content of your disk (though it seems to be gone)! To restore a proper GUID partition table, the MBR has to be deleted and a proper GUID partition table has to be restored.

The particular obstacle here is: the OP neither has a thumb drive nor a second Mac or an external drive.

The answer below is NOT intended for users WITH a thumb drive or an external disk! If you have one of those devices much easier solutions exist.

Preparation:

Restart to Internet Recovery Mode by pressing alt cmd R at startup.

The prerequisites are the latest firmware update installed, either ethernet or WLAN (WPA/WPA2) and a router with DHCP activated.
On a 50 Mbps-line it takes about 4 min (presenting a small animated globe) to boot into a recovery netboot image which usually is loaded from an Apple/Akamai server.

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

Alternatively you may start from a bootable installer thumb drive (preferably Yosemite or El Capitan) or a thumb drive containing a full system (preferably Yosemite or El Capitan). If you boot to a full system and login as admin you have to prepend sudo to execute some commands like gpt ... or newfs_hfs ...!

Remove the MBR and modify the GUID partition table

Enter diskutil list and gpt -r show /dev/diskX (with diskX: the disk identifier of your internal disk (probably disk0) to get an overview. In the commands below I assume the disk identifier is disk0.

You should get the following output (the types may be different in your diskutil listing:

-bash-3.2# diskutil list
/dev/disk0
    #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
    0:     FDisk_partition_scheme                        *500.0 GB   disk0
    1:                       NTFS                         253.5 GB   disk0s1
    2:                       NTFS                         122.4 GB   disk0s2
    3:                       NTFS                         124.1 GB   disk0s3
/dev/disk1...~/dev/disk12 belong to the recovery system

-bash-3.2# gpt -r show /dev/disk0
      start       size index   contents
          0          1         MBR
          1  488493055     1   MBR  part  66
  488493056  248700928     2   MBR  part  66
  737193984  239577136     3   MBR  part  66
  976771120       2048

Now replace the MBR by a GUID partition table:

diskutil umountDisk /dev/disk0
dd if=/dev/random of=/dev/disk0 count=1 bs=512
gpt create /dev/disk0

Add the EFI partition in the partition table:

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

Now you can either guess the old content of the GUID partition table or you can install OS X to a new partiton - without overwriting your old OS X partitions - and try to detect the sizes of the old partitions with appropriate tools (like Test Disk/wxHexEditor).

Installing a new OS X

This will destroy the content of the Windows partition(s).

Add a new partition in the (old) OS X part of your disk to protect it.

gpt add -b 409640 -i 2 -s 488083416 -t FFFFFFFF-FFFF-FFFF-FFFF-FFFFFFFFFFFF /dev/disk0

This might be superfluous.
Add new partitions in the (old) Windows part of your disk. The first one is a new system partition, the second one a recovery partition:

gpt add -b 800000000 -i 4 -s 100000000 -t 48465300-0000-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC /dev/disk0
gpt add -b 900000000 -i 5 -s 1269536 -t 426F6F74-0000-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC /dev/disk0

Now you have to format the new partitions:

diskutil list
newfs_hfs -v "TempSystem" -J /dev/disk0s4 #use the proper partition found in diskutil list. It should have a size of ~50 GB
newfs_hfs -v "Recovery HD" -J /dev/disk0s5
diskutil mount /dev/disk0s4

Exit Terminal by entering exit and quit it.
Open Restore OS X and install OS X to the partition TempSystem
Configure the new system and enable internet access. Don't initialize any "unknown" volumes if asked.
Enable the root user
Log-out as admin and log-in as root
Download and install wxHexEditor

Detect the start block and type of your old OS X volume and the start block of your old Recovery HD with wxHexEditor:

The approach is similar as in my answer here: HFS+ invalid number of allocation blocks

Since the start block of a main partition and the size of a recovery partition have fixed sizes/boundaries you can usually calculate the proper GUID partition entries of your old partition(s).

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

JHFS+ or CoreStorage partition?

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

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

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

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

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

If you get a fundamentally different picture stop here.
Where does the Recovery HD partition start?

That's probably the most difficult part because you have to find a string which is not very specific.
Jump almost to the end of your old second partition (in your case ~1000 MB/1953125 sectors less than 488493056 = 486539931)

Then enter "HFSJ" like in the picture below, search for this string two times and make readable! hand-written notes of the different offsets. To restore your old OS X you have to boot to Internet Recovery Mode later and all on-screen findings in the current temporary OS X will be lost!

The reason to search for the string "HFSJ" is that all HFSJ+ volumes contain this string in the third sector of its partition. The string may also occur later and at the end!

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

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

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

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

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

Boot back to Internet Recovery Mode and open Terminal
Enter diskutil listand gpt -r show /dev/disk0
Remove the second partition (the protective FFFFFFFF-FFFF-FFFF-FFFF-FFFFFFFFFFFF type partition):

diskutil umountDisk /dev/disk0
gpt remove -i 2 /dev/disk0

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

Calculate the size of the main volume: the start block is 409640.
The end block has been found in the section "Where does the Recovery HD partition start?": 1 less than the start block of the Recovery HD.
The size is then StartBlockOfRecoveryHD-409640.
If you've found a classical JHFS+ earlier the following command should fix partition 2:

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

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

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

To rebuild the Recovery HD enter:

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

Now you may try to mount and verify your old OS X volume:

diskutil mount /dev/disk0s2
diskutil verifyVolume /dev/disk0s2

If you get an error mounting or verifying the volume its boundaries might be wrong. Stop here and consult me.
If the verification was successful you may either boot to your old OS X volume and check if it works and delete TempSystem and the new Recovery HD later or delete both immediately. The downside of booting to your old OS X volume first is that you have to boot to Internet Recovery Mode once more to delete TempSystem and the new Recovery HD.
To delete both dispensable partitions booted to Internet Recovery Mode enter:

diskutil list
gpt -r show /dev/disk0
diskutil umountDisk /dev/disk0
gpt remove -i 4 /dev/disk0 # remove the partition starting at block 800000000
diskutil umountDisk /dev/disk0 # remove the partition starting at block 900000000
gpt remove -i 5 /dev/disk0

Depending on the partition type (HFSJ+ or CoreStorage) you may either use diskutil resizeVolume ... or diskutil cs resizeStack ... to expand your recovered OS X volume.

Estimating (guessing) the proper GUID partition table entries

Guessing the partition often works because a default "one-visible-volume" OS X install has very characteristic start blocks and sizes of all partitions:

A classical partition map of a Yosemite install without any Boot Camp partition would probably look like this on your Mac:

sudo gpt -r show disk0
      start       size  index  contents
          0           1         PMBR
          1           1         Pri GPT header
          2          32         Pri GPT table
         34           6
         40      409600      1  GPT part - C12A7328-F81F-11D2-BA4B-00A0C93EC93B
     409640   975093952      2  GPT part - 48465300-0000-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC
  975503592     1269536      3  GPT part - 426F6F74-0000-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC
  976773128           7
  976773135          32         Sec GPT table
  976773167           1         Sec GPT header

All start blocks and sizes of partitions are aligned to 4096 bytes blocks - they are all dividable through 8 (e.g. 975093952:8=121886744)!

After installing Windows with Boot Camp Assistant the main OS X partition is shrunk and the Recovery HD is moved:

sudo gpt -r show disk0
      start       size  index  contents
          0           1         PMBR
          1           1         Pri GPT header
          2          32         Pri GPT table
         34           6
         40      409600      1  GPT part - C12A7328-F81F-11D2-BA4B-00A0C93EC93B
     409640   486813880      2  GPT part - 48465300-0000-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC
  487223520     1269536      3  GPT part - 426F6F74-0000-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC
  488493056   488280072      4  GPT part - EBD0A0A2-B9E5-4433-87C0-68B6B72699C7
  976773128           7
  976773135          32         Sec GPT table
  976773167           1         Sec GPT header

The fourth partition is the NTFS partition. Some Windows installs add a second EFI partition:

  488493056   488280072      4  GPT part - EBD0A0A2-B9E5-4433-87C0-68B6B72699C7

->

  488493056      204800      4  GPT part - C12A7328-F81F-11D2-BA4B-00A0C93EC93B
  488697856   488075272      5  GPT part - EBD0A0A2-B9E5-4433-87C0-68B6B72699C7

After partitioning the Windows partition from within Windows the partition map was overwritten and replaced by a MBR partition map:

gpt -r show /dev/disk0
      start       size index   contents
          0          1         MBR
          1  488493055     1   MBR  part  66
  488493056  248700928     2   MBR  part  66
  737193984  239577136     3   MBR  part  66
  976771120       2048

Now one may assume that the first 488493056 blocks (block 0 - block 488493055) are untouched (except the MBT of course) and still represent the former OS X part. Since you already replaced the MBR by a GUID partition table and recovered the EFI partition in a previous step you only have to restore the main OS X partition and the Recovery HD.

Here the assumption is: the last block of the first MBR partition is the last block of the Recovery HD. By counting backwards you can now restore the Recovery HD and the old OS X volume:

Fixed size of the Recovery HD: 1269536
Start block of the second partition: 488493056 - 1269536 = 487223520 (the start block of the Recovery partition)

The fixed last block of the EFI partition and the start block of the Recovery partition determine the start block and the size of the OS X volume:

Size: 487223520 - 409640 = 486813880
Fixed start block: 409640

Now derive the proper commands to restore the GUID partition table:

gpt add -b 487223520 -i 3 -s 1269536 -t 426F6F74-0000-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC disk0 # add the recovery partition
gpt add -b 409640 -i 2 -s 486813880 -t 48465300-0000-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC disk0 # add the main OS X partition

Verify the main volume with:

diskutil verifyVolume /dev/disk0s2

This approach might fail because sometimes unallocated disk space (usually 2048, 102400 or 204800 blocks) is added by disk partitioning tools. The unallocated disk space might be added at the end of a MBR partition

After accessing the remote Mac and inspecting the disk the final probable solution - following the wxHexEditor part of the answer - seems to be:

gpt add -b 487222344 -i 3 -s 1269536 -t 426F6F74-0000-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC /dev/disk0
gpt add -b 409640 -i 2 -s 486812704 -t 48465300-0000-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC /dev/disk0

Since some mounted volumes exist on disk0 and the protective partition (i=2) has to be removed before the original old partitions can be restored the complete command queue looks like this:

diskutil umountDisk /dev/disk0
gpt remove -i 2 /dev/disk0
diskutil umountDisk /dev/disk0
gpt add -b 487222344 -i 3 -s 1269536 -t 426F6F74-0000-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC /dev/disk0
diskutil umountDisk /dev/disk0
gpt add -b 409640 -i 2 -s 486812704 -t 48465300-0000-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC /dev/disk0


It'll become a little bit difficult to upgrade to Mavericks since it has been replaced by Yosemite now. You can in fact upgrade from Snow leopard directly to Yosemite. If you Mac supports Yosemite you'll have to upgrade to Yosemite or by using a DVD you might have a chance to make Mavericks working, but that is not supported or encouraged. And you'll need a DVD.

I encourage you to upgrade to Yosemite if you can. It's stable and works fine. If you still have software that doesn't support Yosemite than rather stay with Snow Leopard then upgrade to any new. But I see no reason to stay with Mavericks instead of Yosemite. Unless it's not supported anymore for your Mac.

In order to update to Mavericks first be sure the you're running on the most recent version of Snow leopard, 10.6.8 +. To check if you're Mac is still supported for Yosemite you can check it: https://www.apple.com/osx/how-to-upgrade/
It also states how to update :)

Good luck


Is it possible to upgrade Mail without upgrading the whole operating system?

Sorry but my guess would be that this is very unlikely if not impossible.

Mail isn't a single self-contained piece of code like a third-party application. Big chunks of the functionality that make up Mail as stored in frameworks that reside in places like /System/Library/Frameworks for example Message.framework.

So as well as the binary that sits in the /Applications folder you'd also need to upgrade any relevant frameworks from the /System/Library/Frameworks folder, and you wouldn't be able to just swap them out because that would break other functionality in the operating system that expected the native El Capitan versions.

There is likely a way to do it, but it's such a ridiculously complex task I wouldn't recommend pursuing it.

Sorry.


Cannot play videos in my iPad Air after upgrading to iOS 8.0.2

After posting this same question in Apple Support Communities Diavonex quickly replied with a simple solution:

  (A) Try reset iPad

  Hold the Sleep/Wake and Home button down together until you see the Apple Logo.

  Note: Data will not be affected.

  (B) Close all apps in the multi-task window

  1.Double-click the Home button.

  Swipe the app's preview up to close it.
  Preview will fly off the screen.

Reference: https://discussions.apple.com/message/26841501#26841501


Apple Wireless Keyboard not connecting automatically on wake

Resetting the SMC should be able to fix the issue. Note that this will reboot the MacBook, so you will lose any unsaved work.

Shut down the computer.
Plug in the MagSafe power adapter to a power source, connecting it to
the Mac if its not already connected.
On the built-in keyboard, press the (left side) Shift-Control-Option
keys and the power button at the same time.
Release all the keys and the power button at the same time.
Press the power button to turn on the computer.

Note: The LED on the MagSafe power adapter may change states or temporarily turn off when you reset the SMC.


How to make Safari warn me with a pop-up window before closing a tab?

Instead of using your mouse you can use the keyboard to cycle through the tabs. The keys Ctrl+Tab will go forward through your ten tabs and Ctrl+Shift+Tab will go backward. At no time will these key commands close a tab by mistake.

Should you want to close a tab however you can achieve this with Command+W. Once you've finished using your browser you can close it with Command+Q.

Edit: Further to my answer in the latest version of Safari you have the ability to pin tabs. Once a tab is pinned the only way to close it is to right click it with the mouse and select "close tab" Even the Command + W keyboard combination won't close it.


Should apps on iPad Pro work just like on any other iPad

TL;DR;

It depends on the app.

More explanation:

Many apps that look fine on all iPhones and iPads are basically the same app. They are written that way to work on all resolutions. (It's a good programming practice not to assume anything about screen resolution of the device the program is run. It's not always possible though).

However, there is the possibility that some apps don't look good on iPad Pro because developers haven't tested their apps on it. For example, in a game, you may view more of the field.


Can my early 2008 MacBook run Mavericks?

No you can't, if your device is not on the list. The minimum RAM required for Maverics is 2GB. Increased RAM will not help you.

By the way here are the supported devices

To install Mavericks, you need one of these Macs:

 - iMac (Mid-2007 or later)
 - MacBook (13-inch Aluminum, Late 2008), (13-inch, Early 2009 or later)
 - MacBook Pro (13-inch, Mid-2009 or later),
 - MacBook Pro (15-inch or 17-inch, Mid/Late 2007 or later)
 - MacBook Air (Late 2008 or later)
 - Mac mini (Early 2009 or later)
 - Mac Pro (Early 2008 or later)
 - Xserve (Early 2009)
Your Mac also needs:

OS X Mountain Lion, Lion, or Snow Leopard v10.6.8 already installed

 - 2 GB or more of memory
 - 8 GB or more of available space


Recovering Lost Mode then Deletion from Find my Iphone

You can use the PIN to unlock the device and connect to the internet (if needed)

Then open the find my phone app and go to that device.

Tap/select Turn Off Lost Mode

Alternatively, connect it to iTunes to complete the unlock on that device. Worst case, you have a chance to try backing it up (assuming you don't have a current backup). At that point, you can restore the device in iTunes.


Transfer video from iPhone to Mac without cable?

Emailing full resolution photos or videos

On your iPhone open your camera roll and navigate to the overview screen where all your recent captures are shown via small square icons. Press and hold on the icon for the video you wish to move to your computer and select copy from the pop-up menu that appears.

Still on your iPhone open Mail and create a new message. In the body of the message, press and hold the cursor, and select paste from the pop-up menu. The message you send will now have the full, unadulterated video attached which you can download on your desktop.

Note: on my iPhone 4 I created a 4 second clip with very little motion and it used 6 MB. You may hit your attachment limit very quickly depending on length and resolution.


Short answer
Until now (iOS 9.1) there has been no way to configure port forwarding in Personal Hotspot
Long Answer
Activating Personal Hotspot on an iOS device enables it's built-in NAT router. Other devices that connect to this iPhone (using USB, WiFi or Bluetooth) get an IP in the 172.16.0.0/12 subdomain.
There are no NAT settings in iOS, nor does it provide UPnP or NAT-PMP for remote NAT configuration.
Why?
Nobody knows Apple's reasons.
Wild guess: Knowing that availability of the Personal Hotspot feature on an iOS device depends on it's carrier, Apple may have disabled further features as way to play nice with the carriers.
Possible Workarounds

On the device that needs to accept incoming connections: connect to a VPN that provides a public IP and incoming connections
If you have access to the remote device you could create a tunnel (e.g. with ssh)
If the remote device is connected to the same iCloud account, enabling Back to my Mac will put you on the same private IPv6 network
Using a 4G modem instead of your iPhone will give you a direct internet connection accepting incoming connections

Edit: BUT...
Even you could bypass NAT on your device, your cellular IPv4 internet connection is very probably also behind a carrier-grade NAT.


Unable to flip a clip horizontally in iMovie 10.1.6

If I understand your question correctly, you can do what you want as follows:

Select the clip
Click on the icon you called the 3 overlapping circles
Click on the Clip Filter option
In the Choose Clip Filter window that appears, select the Flipped filter
This will now film your clip horizontally

I've created a visual diagram of steps 2 - 4  below:


Can I upgrade my iPhone from iOS 4.2.1 to iOS 5? iTunes only shows iOS 6

You can download old versions of iOS from this page (the downloads are direct from Apple, this site just collects the links). Make sure to get the proper file for your phone (likely iPhone 4 (GSM)).

It's important to note that just having the old version isn't enough. Before installing any OS upgrades, the iPhone checks Apple's servers for an authorization code. Apple stops authorizing older versions some time after the next major version is released, so you may be out of luck.

You can try upgrading by going into iTunes, and option-clicking (shift-click in Windows) the Update button for your device. You should get a file dialog, from which you can select the .ipsw file you just downloaded. You should then be able to go through the usual updating process, assuming Apple authorizes it.


First check the settings on the AirPort Extreme to ensure that the box labelled "Allow incoming IPSec authentication" in "Network Options..." under "Network" is checked.

Then I suspect what have happened is that your Mac Mini has received a different internal IP address. This could lead to the port forwardings that you have had setup not working anymore, which is confirmed by the fact that you cannot see your port forwarding of TCP port 1723 with a port scanner.

On the Mac Mini open System Preferences and Network, and find the internal IP address of your Mac Mini. It might be for example 192.168.2.10. Then check the port forwardings on the Airport Extreme under "Network" and "Port Settings...". Ensure that the field "Private IP Address" lists the internal IP address of your Mac Mini for all the VPN related ports  (UDP ports 500, 1701, 4500 and TCP port 1723).


Slow/laggy rMBP (mid 2014) - nVidia card not being used?

You could try installing the NVIDIA Web Driver for your GPU. That's what I did to try and improve GPU performance on my old MBP with GeForce 320M. It also adds a preference pane where you can always switch back to using Apple's default GPU driver.

Since the NVIDIA driver archive is a pain to navigate I recommend using the NVIDIA Web Driver Auto Installer from here to automatically find and install the correct driver for your GPU.


iPod Nano 5th Gen Can't Disable Shake Gesture

Have you tried running a full restore of the iPod? I know it's kind of a last ditch thing to do, but it seems like you may be experiencing a hiccup in the hardware. Also, make sure you've got the latest update from Apple installed on it.


Same dedicated Windows drive for Boot Camp and VirtualBox?

The answer is No. Sorry. I have done this already. Here is the problem. VirtualBox and your Apple use different hardware. If you try to switch between the hardware you are going to drive windows insane.

If you first install Windows using VirtualBox's virtual hardware and a physical disk partition, then switch to Apple's physical hardware with the same physical disk partition then you have to run Microsoft's "System Preparation Tool". This tool is meant to be run once, not repeatedly. See
the procedure at this link

The other problem would be now are you going to activate the software for both machines. Are you going to active while running under VirtualBox or BootCamp?

When you boot between the physical Apple hardware and the virtual VirtualBox hardware, the Windows operating system is going to detect the change. For example, the two machines do not share the same MBR. Each MBR will have a different signature. Windows stores this signature in its boot partition and compares the value with the MBR when booting.


Is it possible to select the previous similar text in Sublime?

You can Find Previous by using:

⇧ ⌘ G

Using (Shift + Command + G) will jump back to similar selected text, then you can tap (Command + D) to select multiples.


Macbook doesn't display on external screen until after I log in (Yosemite). How to fix?

To Fix this issue do the following while your external monitor is plugged into the MacBook:

Open Displays in System Preferences
Click on Arrangement at the top of the window
If Mirror Displays is checked, uncheck it
The position of the two displays should now be shown in the Displays Window
One of them will have a white bar at the top.  This is probably your MacBook
Click on each display in the window and you will see the relevant display framed in red.
If the white bar is at the top of your MacBook display, move it to the top of the external monitor display.
Then click Mirror Displays again.
This should resolve the issue


Is it possible to update Java7 without first uninstalling Java8?

With Mac OS X 10.10 and the most recent JDK versions (7.72 and 8.25) the problem seems to have been fixed.


Family sharing - Ask to Buy does not offer in-person approval

What you will need to do is make sure your device (s) are on the latest build of iOS. Make sure the app your child would like to download is in full screen (tap on it before you tap GET) Once it's full screen tap get, then Ask, (It will ask for Touch ID first if it is turned on) and at the top select Approve in person from the message displayed.


rsync -a not preserving file ownership or group

I encountered the same problem and found a solution that worked for me. I created a Sparse Image called Backup. On a hard drive directory, file ownership was preserved during the rsync backup but not on the backup image.
1. Ownership of the Destination
I noticed that the ownership of the backup image was the current user (me) and I changed to something like that:
drwxrwx---@ 13 root    staff   510B 12 jul 10:59 Backup

2. Run rsync as sudo
And on the Linux host I modified the command to run rsync as sudo.
rsync -avh --rsync-path="sudo rsync" ...

And for the macOS backup host accept to execute rsync as sudo without password:
sudo visudo
# and add this line
# replace username with your current user name.
username ALL= NOPASSWD:/usr/bin/rsync

I also added these flags to the command but I cannot say that this would help to resolve the current problem:
/usr/bin/rsync -avzh  --sparse --super --numeric-ids --relative --rsync-path="sudo rsync" ...

Hope this help.


Problem with Non English(Farsi, ...) subtitle

According to Trezoid answer on superuser the solution is:

By default the language encoding on VLC (and possibly others) is set to "default" which is windows-1252 (possibly only if your language is set to english, but I'm not sure)

This will not display other languages very well. To fix it, open up VLC preferences, click on the Subtitles and OSD tab, and change "default encoding" to UTF-8

This will give the program a much wider choice of characters to display from allowing it to render the characters as they should be.


How do I send compass app data to apple watch?

There's currently no way to get data from the iPhone's Compass app to your Apple Watch, and no complication option available. There is no API on watchOS for compass heading and you would need to have your iPhone / iPad out and pointing in a specific location for the watch to match the iOS device.

I suppose you could mount the phone to a stand inside a ship or vehicle and know that the watch is showing where the other device is pointing and not necessarily where your watch is "pointing"

https://developer.apple.com/documentation/corelocation/getting_heading_and_course_information

This sort of "making do with what's available" is documented here in open source as well as dozens of App Store apps where no one in particular stands out as good or useful to me.

https://github.com/woutercx/iOS.Compass.Sample

You would have to adapt that for watchOS complication and iOS companion app.
In the Watch app on your iPhone you'll find an App Store icon on the bottom that allows you to search for Apple Watch apps directly. You'll find there's a number of Compass apps available you can try doing exactly what the code above allows and no more or no less.

There isn't a magnetometer in the watch so it doesn't get it's own magnet in early 2019 at least.


Following the unmount you should also eject the disc before unplugging it.

diskutil unmount /dev/disk1s2
diskutil eject /dev/disk1s2

Alternatively you could use the usual methods: eject via finder, via dragging the drive icon into the waste bin, or with third-party apps like Alfred or Launchbar.


Move Wifi passwords from one mac to another

I believe that in Mojave you cannot simply copy the keychain file. I found the best solution to be to sync the keychain in iCloud. This assumes that you have access to
both machines.

Go to system preferences -> ICloud. Select Keychain.

Repeat this on the second machine.

Your keychains should now be transferred.


Can I (or should I) use a MacBook charger on my iPhone?

Unless there is some reason to the contrary that I'm not aware of, yes, you can use your MacBook charger with your iPhone. The power adapter will only convert as much power as is drawn, and the iPhone will only draw as much power as it needs.

(Note that it is not a good idea to charge your MacBook with an iPhone or iPad charger!)


Add RSS feeds to google reader from iPad

If you use an RSS reader like Mr Reader or Reeder, you can add new subscriptions using the + button on the main screen of each.


Simcard not recognized iPhone 3GS iOS 6.1.6

Remove the Simcard and place it back, get a paperclip to do this for an iPhone 3GS.

Try it (several times if it does not recognize it after one try) and it should recognize the simcard.


No, this is currently not possible. Safari Private Browsing tabs and windows do not share any session data and are completely independent.

From the Apple Support KB "Safari for Mac: Use Private Browsing windows in Safari":

Each tab in the window is isolated from the others, so websites you view in one tab can’t track your browsing in other tabs.


As far as I am aware, you can't do this easily, at least not through the iPad. I suspect that those $50 are tied to an account in your husband's name? If so, you may wish to contact Apple to see if you can gift that to another account in your name.


How do I remove drafts from the iOS Notification Center?

Apple does hide the settings for the drafts folder pretty well, but in general you have a choice of saving drafts on the device or on your mail server.  It seems you have set them to be on the device.  I suggest moving them to the server.

Here's how I get to the setting for my account.  Your path might be slightly different as I think it is different for different kinds of servers:

Settings
Mail, Contacts, Calendars
Under "Accounts", click on the mail account to bring up a popup with settings for that account
Select "Account" again
Select "Advanced"
Under "Mailbox Behaviors" select "Drafts Mailbox"
Under "On the Server" select the "Drafts" mailbox

I like having them on the server as then they are synced everywhere.


check mail for certain word before sending

Are you committed to using just Mail.app?

If you go to http://macupdate.com and search for Mail Merge there are a page of hits.  At first blush, this one seemed to be right up your alley, but I may not understand fully what you are looking for.

https://www.macupdate.com/app/mac/11731/mailmergeapp
Claims to use your address book, and a composed message, and it does the substituting.

If your outgoing messages are batched, take a look at external software for sending out email.  In my other life I use Mail Chimp to send out news letters, but there are many many others, with various features.

A final possibility is to abandon Mail.app alltogether, and throw together a perl script that does the substitutions, and makes a call to /bin/mail for sending.


What is a good processor speed for FCP 6 real-time playback?

Certainly get the fastest you can afford, but processor speed is only part of the equation.  You should also get as much RAM as you can afford.

It is a fallacy that higher processor speed = shorter task completion times.  A fast processor helps, but RAM is more important than processor speed.  More RAM means the processor can handle more tasks at once.

A MacBook Pro tops out at 8GB currently.  For video editing, I always max out RAM on a laptop.  For a desktop, I might go to 16GB or more if I was planning to work with multiple uncompressed tracks.


This is probably not a problem with Screen Sharing, but a problem with iTeleport. Using screen sharing's default setup, I can see both of my iMac's displays from another computer:

And, it appears that iTeleport also supports multiple displays (see their FAQs).

I suggest that you check the connections to the extra display, and see if there are any settings for iTeleport.

You can also look at the Screen Sharing preferences by opening /System/Library/CoreServices/Screen Sharing.app and going to Screen Sharing-> Preferences. However, it doesn't appear that that allows you to change which display(s) are used.


Is there perf profiler tool for Mac to trace all page faults?

No - there is no linux kernel to profile on OS X - so that tool is a fish out of water. OS X probably ships with everything you need though.

On macOS / OS X - there is a mach_kernel in use. It's exhaustively documented at: https://developer.apple.com/library/prerelease/content/documentation/Darwin/Conceptual/KernelProgramming/About/About.html

Additionally, you might be fine profiling the BSD based unix layer with the supplied command line tools. It really depends on which operations or aspect of system performance you wish to measure or debug.

To the specific topic of page faults, you can get cumulative statistics from top and vm_stat and then dig into specific processes using either dtrace or Instruments - which is a free tool part of Xcode on the app store and has a graphical interface for profiling the system calls per process or as a system.


What does this popup mean, "New Location Detected", what application is displaying it?

On my system, I get this too; it is from Jabber.

If I click on the popup, Jabber appeared in the menu bar.  I think Preferences->Locations controls it.


Apple store Rejected app submit - Guideline 4.2.2 - Design - Minimum Functionality

If you are new to the App Store, I’d review the summary guidelines. If you’re using a third party tool (react or phone gap or similar) the native requirement likely weeds out thousands of sample project submissions. The 4.2.2 rejections is in the top 10 list for the past week so your app may look too much like a web app and not a native app.

https://developer.apple.com/app-store/review/rejections/

It’s hard to know since the only people that know your specific app are you and the review team. I would pick one native only feature you can get done in two weeks and submit that new build - pointing out the native feature top billing in the app description.  You didn’t mention, but next time I would also submit only for test flight beta and not for final review when you have a new build of your app.


Is it a good idea to reinstall OS X to attempt to fix some minor issues?

Yes, a variety of strange software problems can be fixed by reinstalling OS X. Providing the installer detects an existing install (which will only not happen if the disk can't boot) your files and settings will be preserved. If you've made any changes to the system such as modifying a keyboard layout or changing the boot logo, you will need to back these up as they will be wiped.


Transfer iPad games to external hard drive?

No, unless the device is jailbroken. Without jailbreaking, the applications can't be transferred elsewhere and remain useable.


Software development tends to be a very CPU-centric task, but the question is whether or not a few extra GHz is going to buy you significant enough longevity to stave off your next computer purchase by any significant amount. I somehow doubt it. I'd go for the 3.8GHz i5.

...or at least I would, but you mentioned Python. Python is one of the slowest of the various interpreted languages commonly used. It can use all the help it can get. If you do a significant amount of Python coding, I'd go for the faster processor.


I just upgrade my iPhone to iOS 4.2. Where did all my email go?

Email is not included in the backups according to this apple support page.  This probably makes sense as you would normally have a copy on a server whereas with SMS, MMS etc you wouldn't necessarily have a copy on the server.  So the answer to where is your email gone is it gets wiped by the backup process.

To get your email back you should be able to just go into your email accounts and click the circular arrow button to refresh or if you're setup for push mail then it should sync automatically.  You can take a look in Settings > Mail, Contacts, Calendars for your mail accounts which should still be there.  If they're not syncing try turning the mail off and back on in one of the account setting screens.


According to a very old source [circa 2006]

  In Terminal,

  hdiutil convert disk.dmg -format RdWr -o disk.img

  where disk.dmg is the path to your image (input)
  and disk.img the output image


You can't do that in Artists view. The only way to do that is to show the Column Browser (View > Column Browser > Show Column Browser, or Command-B). Unfortunately, in iTunes 11, the column browser is only available in Songs view, or when you're viewing a playlist. But it will show all the artists, even those in compilations, as long as you choose View > Column Browser and uncheck Group Compilations.

iTunes 10 was much better for using the Column Browser, alas.


Is it possible to create a service using only the shell and bypassing automator altogether?

Having read through the Services Implementation Guide I'm going to have to say no to using only a shell script.  If you do not want to use Automator then you'll have to create a Service using Xcode and unless you can perform that level of programming, then Automator, as slow and clunky as it may be, is looking pretty good.

Just for the heck of it, I took what I learned from reading the Services Implementation Guide and was able to manually wrap the shell script in an application bundle with an appropriate Info.plist file that did make an entry on the Services menu in Finder as I coded in the .plist file. However, that's were things stopped as there was no mechanism within to pass what was selected in Finder to the shell script, masquerading as a Service in this case, like what the Automator Service takes care of automatically without one having to resort to Xcode.

In closing... Automator, as slow and clunky as it may be, is the easiest way to create a Service for the non-programmer average everyday user of OS X.


/opt folder no longer accessible in finder on Catalina

Make sure that you are using /System/Volumes/Data/opt instead of /opt, because the later is not writable due to security features. If you are sure the folder is on the data partition, then chflags nohidden /System/Volumes/Data/opt should unhide it.


Can I encrypt an external hard disc that is used for backup and is also bootable?

Another "less work" idea:
Use CarboCopyCloner or SuperDuper! to clone your internal disk to the external disk from time to time: it will be an exact copy of the internal disk and bootable: the OS is up to date and configured as the internal disk, and your files ditto.


Using ipad as Internet connection in a wifi hub

Unfortunately none of Apple's routers can use the iPhone or iPad tethering as a source internet connection.

It looks like it might be possible using certain builds of the DD-WRT custom firmware with the Linksys WRT160NL, but based on that link, it looks like it will likely require a fair bit of hacking, beyond just installing the custom firmware (i.e. it needs to be certain versions, and it looks like further drivers need to be compiled/installed).

If you have a Mac handy, you could tether the iPad to it (with USB or Bluetooth), then use the Mac's Internet Sharing to share to the other devices over Wi-Fi.

Alternatively, you could look into getting a 3G/LTE hotspot device from your wireless provider. It would likely entail some additional cost, but it would be most suited to what you're wanting to do. Some providers offer some data plan sharing amongst devices as well, so the additional costs might be minimal.


Sounds like you may have accidentally turned on the Message Filter, which hides read messages by default? If so, you can turn it off again with View>Disable Message Filter, or hitting Cmd-L.

(I only found about this feature a couple of years ago when I accidentally turned it on in the default layout, then switched back to Classic layout. At that time, the filter setting carried over, but there was no indication that the filter was turned on. In High Sierra, it appears they've avoided this problem by disabling the filtering capability in Classic layout.)


How do I get my user directory working for web sharing again?

Here is how you can re-enable the web page with the command line using Terminal.

First copy this and paste it into Terminal.  You may have to press enter after pasting to run it.  It will ask for your password because it is adding a file to your system directory.

USER_DIR=$(basename $(echo ~))
sudo bash -c "cat > /etc/apache2/users/$USER_DIR.conf" <<TEXT
<Directory "/Users/$USER_DIR/Sites">
     Options Indexes MultiViews
     AllowOverride None
     Order allow,deny
     Allow from all
</Directory>
TEXT

Then run this command to restart the web server:

sudo apachectl restart


In the Network Preferences panel there should be a listing for thunderbolt bridge. If there is not click on the "+" button at the bottom of the left-hand pane and add it to both Macs.

You can leave the setting on DHCP and they should both get an IP address in the range of 169.254.x.x. Make sure each is different.

You should now be able to go into terminal and ping the other Mac from each. Once you have verified that, just go into the Finder's "Go" menu and "connect to server". Enter the IP address of the other Mac, it should ask you for your username and password, enter the appropriate username and password from the other Mac, and you are connected.

You should be able to do the same with an ethernet cable between both Macs as well.


Glad you like the app…

To minimize the XRG window, just double-click on the title bar.  This will be either on the top or right side of the window depending on which graph orientation you are using.


Can I upgrade from Lion to Mavericks? Or must I upgrade to Mountain Lion, first?

According to the Mavericks How To Upgrade page you can update from Snow Leopard (10.6.8) Lion (10.7), or Mountain Lion(10.8) later to Mavericks (10.9) if your hardware meets the requirements, which yours does. I upgraded my 2012 MacBook Air to Mavericks about two weeks ago and the battery life is noticeably better.


"t" key is delayed and doesn't capitalize

Resetting PRAM and SMC seems to have done the trick...


Hotkey for automator service without giving permissions to all applications

I had the same issue. What worked for me:

1: Saving the automator workflow as an application (File > Convert To > Application. Save > File Format = Application).

2: Then creating a separate Automator Quick Action with the sole purpose of launching the application created in 1 (File > New > Quick Action. Save normally as a workflow.).

The application containing the target workflow (1) will then need to be given Accessibility permissions via the usual (Security and Privacy > Privacy > Accessibility) and the key shortcut should be bound to the workflow (2) as you described.

This successfully bypasses the security settings of the currently active application by running the workflow in a self-contained app (with its own Accessibility preferences) negating the need for multiple permissions.


How can I remove the "apple watch" app, which recently appeared on a home screen?

You can't remove several of the Apple-supplied apps (try removing the ever-useful Stocks app, for example).

The Apple Watch app is one of these.

Generally, people tend to move these to a folder that they use to hide the 'useless' apps, or move them to a different screen - just so you're not staring at them all the time.

Where I live, the Apple Watch is not even available yet, but still I got the app staring at me to remind me of this constantly. It got hidden pretty quickly!


How can I control iTunes from another Mac?

I've been using TuneConnect to do pretty much what you're after. It's got, what I consider to be, a much nicer UI that iTunes Remote Control. You install a server component on your iTunes machine and the remote component on the machine you want to control iTunes from and it just...works.

I've been running it without any issues on Lion. It ran well for me on Snow Leopard as well.


System detects digital output when headphones plugged in, audio does not work

Do you have a pair of OEM Apple headphones (from an iPhone or so)? There are some cases, that only the OEM headphones work, and 3rd party do not. If they do work, try the following:

Plug your headphones back in.
Play a bit of sound through them (e.g., a song), then stop the sound.
Make sure Preferences is quit.
Launch Preferences and open the Sound pane.
While the Sound pane is open and set to Headphones, pull out the headphone plug from the jack.
It will reset itself to "Internal Speakers" and you are good to go.


outlook for mac - wrong date on the sent items

Follow the steps mentioned below :

Create a new identity to remove database issues
Check your folder’s arrangement and system settings

To create a new user, the predefined path is :

Go to System Preferences --> Create a New User in Accounts.

Then Switch to the New User by logging out/in or you can try user Switching option.

If you still face this issue then problem exists into folders i.e. associated with Outlook Mac backup file.


Aperture and iTunes freezing, bringing down Snow Leopard entirely

Since more than one application is having issues, it's unlikely to be two bugs and more likely to be a system or hardware issue.

Before spending a lot of time, make a new user and see if that user has issues as well. You could have bad luck and lots of corruption in your user folder and this will let you know if the problem is with the apps/system/hardware or not.

Drive Genius might help to run more involved tests, but it might be cheaper to just buy a spare external drive and back things up. You can zero the drive and clear all bad blocks - give that hardware the best chance to work again. You will know soon after restoring your data on the newly erased and installed mac if the problem is resolved.

Good Luck!


Office for macOS: Word document opens in a tiny window

Close all Word documents.
Open a blank Word document.
Resize the window to the preferred size.
Finally quit Word by using Menu bar command Word → Quit Word or using the keyboard shortcut Command + Q.

Next time when you open your Word document it should remain in the previously set window size.


"type" and "which" programs coming up empty for programs on the path

As you can see in your first screenshot, there is no application called and ‘kafka-‘.  Therefore, it cannot look up its path.

Try, for example, ‘which kafka-configs’ and it will show you the path.


How to get git update-index working with macOS?

You are possible executing the command incorrectly. There is no git-update-index command.

Instead try, git update-index.

There is no additional steps required to install git-update-index.


If you've downloaded them on the Mac App Store.
- You can find them again in the "Purchased" tab inside Mac App Store.

If you downloaded them outside of the Mac App Store.
- They might be in your specified "Downloads" folder, if you haven't deleted them from that.

If you downloaded them on your iPhone/iPad.
- You can find your previously purchased apps on these devices either on iTunes or in App Store on your device. Go to the "Updates" tab and choose "Purchased".


I would open up activity monitor and see what the effective instantaneous (and recent) transfer rate for data and more importantly iops.

Often many small files tax the total amount of IO operations and it's not a bandwidth issue at all. Large files that are stored sequentially on the filesystem (or when the platters and heads can not delay the transfer) will typically hit between 30 and 80 MB/s on a Mac Pro that's otherwise idle.

Similarly, more than 1,000 iops would saturate most pairs of SATA drives and perhaps far fewer IO could be limiting depending on catalog and file fragmentation or just long head seek times.


I guess this AppleScript should do:

set numberOfWindows to "0"

tell application "System Events"
    set allProcesses to application processes
    repeat with i from 1 to number of allProcesses
        tell process i
            set numberOfWindows to (numberOfWindows + (count windows))
        end tell
    end repeat
end tell


Are my safari and chrome passwords synced?

No - the browsers can try and grab a one time dump of settings, but you'll need a third party tool to either store/inject the password from a unified database or sync the results.

Best suggestion I have is to invest in 1Password, which syncs thru multiple methods and has extensions for Safari, Chrome and Firefox.

The data also syncs to iOS devices Manual import of various settings when you open a browser repeatedly is a pain.


How does iPhone know I'm travelling with location services switched off

It's not geolocation. It's detection of specific motion. See Settings > Do Not Disturb.

See How to Use Do Not Disturb While Driving


I encountered this problem for the last two days on Catalina on my iMac. I tried some suggested methods, but lacked an Apple keyboard, and didn't restart or use SSH.
What eventually worked for me, I didn't find elsewhere:

Ctrl+Cmd+Q
Esc
login

Hitting Esc makes the screen go black, which I guess cancels the screensaver.


iPhone photos app 'syncing' lots and not showing photos in other apps

What settings do you have under Settings app > iCloud > Photos? I'm assuming you have iCloud Photo Library turned on and Optimize iPhone Storage checked. See this.

Regarding the thumbnails not showing up in your GIF app, it's likely due to the way the app reads your photo library and probably hasn't been updated to account for Optimized Storage with iCloud Photo Library.

In an app that reads the library correctly, the thumbnails of all photos should show up, and for a photo whose full size isn't cached on your device, it will download at the time you tap on it.


Yes - booting to Recovery HD is the best option. Then you can do the bit for bit copy. I'm liking to do installs and then run Migration Assistant (over the network if needed or) by connecting over target disk mode to migrate from the old Mac to the clean new OS during the initial setup.

The procedure for that is to boot the new Mac to Recovery HD and to erase it completely if it already ran the setup assistant and created an initial user.

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204904

The reasons I like migration is:

You know the new OS is clean/pristine
It's faster - sometimes far faster
System unique files are actually unique so that the two "clones" aren't too close a match for some oddball edge cases and Time Machine backup cases.


Apple does recommend visiting AMD's website for updated Windows graphics drivers. See Boot Camp Support or more specifically Update AMD graphics drivers for Windows in Boot Camp. I would assume AMD would provide the most up-to-date drivers for their products. Also, often Apple Software Update and as well as Microsoft Update will provide updated drivers for Windows hardware.


what is the purpose of /private/var/db/crls folder

It's system-wide cache of Certificate Revocation Lists (CRLs).
I think Safari puts its cache there, that's why you see it's being updated.


I don't have Fantastical but does this work?

parse sentence "my sentence" notes "my notes" add immediately true


IOS 10 Control Center volume linked to Gas Buddy on iPhone

The sound control in Control Centre gives either the currently playing source of sound or the most recent source of sound. I'm assuming Gas Buddy had some kind of background sound going on. If you start to play music through the Music app, Control Centre should list Music as the app.


Services Manager seems to just modify .GlobalPreferences.plist:

defaults write -g NSServicesMinimumItemCountForContextSubmenu -int 999

You have to reopen applications to apply the changes.


Most of the third party iPhone ones are mostly safe most of the time. However there isn't a good way to tell which ones aren't. Here is a teardown of an Apple one and a clone.

I say most of the time since some of the safety issues are only problems if there are faults. But in a poorly designed one, faults can cause fire and/or shock. Also poorly designed ones can get hot, which might be a problem in an enclosed space.

I personally would avoid anything that claims to be from Apple but is priced lower than theirs. That demonstrates the seller is willing to lie, so they are questionable to begin with. A reputable seller wouldn't try to pretend they are selling Apple chargers.


How to know if the System Management Controller (SMC) has been reset?

Actually, as per my experience if you are going to do the SMC reset and your not fully charged battery Macintosh machine is charging, the charging indicator will be the reset indicator as below.

When battery is not fully charged:

Charging indicator is orange light when machine powered off.
Keep pressing Shift + Option + Control + Power for 10 seconds and indicator is still orange.
Indicator turns to green when release all keystrokes and keeps almost 1 second.
Light turns to orange then.


WhatsApp is backed up in iCloud Storage and iCloud Backup

Deleting one does not affect the other as they are backups of different types.

The backup in iCloud Backup (first screenshot) is a backup of the contents of the app container on your iPhone. This is backed up every night as your iCloud Backup takes place, or manually when you Back Up Now.
The ‘backup’ in iCloud Storage (second screenshot) is a backup created by WhatsApp using WhatsApp Settings → Chats → Chat Backup. This is backed up at most per the interval set in WhatsApp settings, or manually when you Back Up Now.

It is up to you which backup you choose to keep. Personally I would use WhatsApp own backup service with iCloud rather than iCloud Backup.


How can I downloading a pdf file to someplace other than downloads

Right click the link & 'Download Linked File as...'


F.lux does not always work on resolution changes. Is there a way to check if the resolution changes?

Can you try downloading again or ensure that the about box says "v18.0"? v18 should fix this bug (we haven't pushed the auto-update due to some unresolved issues with hybrid graphics cards.)


Installing homebrew after upgrading to MacOS High Sierra

The warning at the end is telling you that the root user (denoted by default with the uid 0) doesn't own the /etc/sudoers file anymore. This is bad. At some point you may have accidentally changed this, perhaps by mistyping a command. The sudoers file denotes which users and groups are allowed to escalate to a root privilege set by prefacing a command with sudo and typing their login password.

The chown command you've been using above changes the ownership of files from one user and/or group to another. Because you've changed ownership of the sudoers file you probably won't be able to sudo yourself out of trouble as the sudo command won't run for security reasons if the sudoers file from which it draws its configuration is owned by a user other than root (this is why homebrew is spitting out the last error message above).

I'd suggest the following:

Enable the root user using Apple's instructions here (under the section 'Enable or disable the root user').
Open Terminal and switch to the root user by typing su - and entering the password you assigned to your root user account in step 1.
As the root user, change ownership of the sudoers file back to root and the wheel group with the following:

chown root:wheel /etc/passwd

Follow the instructions in step 1 again but this time disable the root user again.

You should now be able to use the sudo command again with your regular admin user. You can run sudo ls for instance in a new shell; if the contents of the current directory are listed and you don't see that ownership error above then all is well.

Although this falls outside the bounds of your question, I'm concerned that if you've unwittingly changed ownership of the sudoers file while attempting to change ownership of /usr/local/ you may have done this to other important files as well. Run ls -l /etc/ and examine the output of that command. The third column in from the left shows the user who owns a given file. By default, pretty much every file in the /etc/ directory is meant to be owned by root (an obvious one is /etc/passwd). If you see the majority are owned by another user (your own username for instance), the problem is far more extensive than your sudoers file.

As a general point, you need to be very careful running any command prefaced by sudo. Only run commands in your terminal if you understand the command and know exactly what it will do when passed a given set of options/arguments. There are some safeguards provided by the more recent Mac operating systems with System Integrity Protection (SIP) but you can still wreak plenty of havoc on your system.

If you want to learn what a particular command and its various arguments do, try checking the manual first by typing man + the command you want information on (man sudo or man chown for example).


How to remotely connect to a laptop's local users directory?

You can get a list of all macOS-accounts with

 dscl . list /Users | grep -v '_'

daemon, nobody, and root are system-defined accounts. So here you have the list of all local users.


I've seen this intermittently for a few releases now. I fix it by restarting the "Dock" process (which handles Spaces/MissionControl) using this Terminal command:

killall Dock

I don't know how to do that via the regular GUI, sorry. And before you run that command, do killall -s Dock to see the processes which will get killed. If only the one "Dock" process is listed then you're good to go.  Hope this helps!


How do I automatically reconnect my AirPods when my Mac wakes from sleep?

Go to System Preferences > Bluetooth:

Open AirPods Options and select "Connect to This Mac Automatically":


Download iTunes for windows here and follow the recovery procedure.


How to view individual images in photos app

On the top right corner, you should see import photos button. Pressing it will import them. What you're seeing now is the preview and selection window where you choose which photos to import.


You could create an AppleScript to minimise all windows and then pin it in your dock. An example of a script that minimises all windows can be found here:

Create a new Automator application that executes an AppleScript

Export this to save it as an app somewhere (File > Export)
Add the exported application to your dock
The first time the application runs, it will request the ability to control your computer, you need to allow it so that it can minimise apps.

You can optionally set a nice icon for this application, by selecting it and pressing cmd+i to open the info window and then pasting your custom icon over the current icon:


Unified Switching between Keyboard Layouts in Various OSs

Yes, should be possible. You just need to unify your keyboard shortcuts in each OS.

For OS X it's in "System Preferences" → "Keyboard"/"Keyboard Shortcuts" for Snowleopard it's in "Keyboard & Text Input" on the left side and then you enter your desired shortcut by clicking on the assigned shortcut and pressing the combination you want.

Note that cmd+space is usually assigned to Spotlight search, so you would need to change that too.

And I think you know how to change it in Windows and Ubuntu, or you're able to find out - right ?


Disable Spotlight

Spotlight is Apple’s technology for indexing all your disk’s contents to facilitate fast searching.

When making a disk clone, you do not want the booted Mac to re-index all that copied content. No need. Worse, Spotlight is fighting for the limited USB to read from that external disk while SuperDuper is trying to write to that external disk.

Fortunately Apple provides a "Privacy" feature where you can pick a folder, or even an entire disk, telling Spotlight to ignore the nested content. In System Preferences app, in the Spotlight option, click the Privacy tab. There you can add your external disk to the list of exclusions. Click the plus-icon button and select the external disk.

This sped up my disk-cloning multiple time faster, at least 3-5 times faster. At first, after 10-20 minutes, it looked like 233 gigs would take 24-30 hours to clone. Then I used Spotlight > Privacy. Over 10-20 more minutes, the throughput reported a doubling of speed. Cloning took 4 hours.

Remove Drive

…try at your own risk…

Another option is removing the hard disk from inside the MacBook. Then use Voyager-type or such to attach to another Mac with FireWire/Thunderbolt ports to do the copy.

Removal is easy enough to do if you have a model with a removable battery. The disk is accessible through the battery bay.

The only trick is sometimes the rubber strip that hold the drive in place. If that comes loose while sliding the drive back in, things get tricky.


Why is Facebook app for iPhone so slow to load the content?

The predominant theory as to why the current Facebook app for iOS is so sluggish is that the app:

suffers from its heavy use of JavaScript in a UIWebView component which does not currently benefit from the "Nitro" Javascript engine which is available to Mobile Safari
is poorly designed

The app uses very little native code, and thus most of your interaction takes place within a UIWebView displaying HTML and executing Javascript.

Essentially, anywhere where an app is displaying something that looks and acts like it's "embedding a web browser", that's a UIWebView.

In very simple terms, the Nitro Javascript engine makes Javascript "faster".

iOS 4.3 brought the Nitro engine to Mobile Safari, and IOS 5 brought the Nitro engine to web shortcuts launched from the home screen. This is one potential reason why your use of Facebook within Mobile Safari seems so much more responsive.

As of iOS 5.1, UIWebView does not benefit from the Nitro Javascript engine.

This issue has been recently discussed on the Mobtest blog, "Here’s why the Facebook iOS app is so bad (UIWebViews and no Nitro)" with a number of comments in the related Hacker News thread.

Within the current app, Facebook has recently increased their promotion of additional iOS apps:

Facebook Messenger
Facebook Pages Manager
Facebook Camera

These apps -- ranging from "old news" to "brand new" -- seem to do a good job of focusing on doing a single Facebook-related task well, in some cases adding support for something which the general Facebook iOS app does not even support.


iPhone 5 doesn’t connect or show up in iTunes

Make sure that you have correctly entered the pin code and
deactivated the device auto-lock feature
Do not use a USB hub. Please connect your iPhone, iPad or iPod Touch
directly to your computer
Use a different USB port on the PC. For desktops with USB connectors
on the front and on the back, try with one of the back connectors
If possible, try using a different USB cable
Restart the Apple Mobile Device Service and set its Startup type to
“Automatic” by following these instructions precisely
Install the iOS drivers required for the PC to correctly recognize
the device separately and without installing iTunes.


Can iMessage send a video as-is, without converting it first?

I don’t think we get to directly influence this.
For my threat model, I’m not super concerned if iCloud and Apple can decrypt the attachments stored in iCloud, so I typically save the video to iCloud shared photo album and share a link. If you’re sharing copyright content or something you don’t wish the government to get at via a cell carrier I understand not wanting to upload that to a server.

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204042
https://support.apple.com/guide/security/imessage-overview-secd9764312f/web

Also, be sure your carrier settings are updated, some carriers influenced sending quality in the past, but I haven’t seen that happen lately in the US.
The function of iCloud and Messages/FaceTime varies greatly based on what region your device was sold and what region you associate your AppleID. Even in the US, Apple may upload the content of your messages to their servers, E2E encryption may not be compromised substantially when you are sending large attachments.

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT209110

If you need end-to-end encryption, letting the video be compressed might be the lesser of two evils.


Is it possible to have a URL that will open an app on an iOS device, without the app being specially coded to handle that?

The app have to be coded for it, and the server needs some configuration too.

Check this for more information: Support Universal Links.


What happens with existing apps on device when synching with new computer?

At that point, yes - if you click Don't Sync Apps you are telling iTunes to reset the link between another iTunes library and your iPad - which will result in this computer deleting your apps on the device and replacing them with the apps on that iTunes Library. Cancel should let the rest of the sync proceed and leave your apps alone this time. Go into the Apps tab and deselect app syncing to prevent this message from coming back the next time you connect.

The iOS devices and iTunes are happy to have different computers feed it Apps, Information, Music, etc...

I don't see an authoritative document specifying how many different computers can routinely share syncing duties - each providing the minimum amount of content in terms of the Info / Apps / Ringtones (etc...) tabs in iTunes.

My experience is the six music related tabs are treated as one, so you could have your device get data from 5 different computers and not have any problems. In your case - you could easily sync everything but apps from computer A and the apps from computer B.

iTunes stores the App purchase history and syncing in preference files as well as in two locations on a Mac or a PC.

The two or three folders you need to move are:

The iOS backup folder maintained by iTunes
The iTunes database folder (which contains everything else - except for potentially the music files)
The iTunes media folder(s) (which may be consolidated in one folder or scattered across multiple drives or network locations in the worst case)

Assuming you want everything to move from the old computer to the new one and the new one has nothing (you can overwrite everything there), you simply:

Optionally - consolidate all the music media to one folder (for ease of transfer and surety the library will link correctly when moved)
Quit iTunes (to close all files properly before the move)
Move the backup folder (they are just plain files/folders)
Move the iTunes Library folder as well as the media

iTunes for Windows: Moving your iTunes Media folder
iTunes for Mac: Moving your iTunes Media folder

The first time you launch iTunes on the new mac - just be sure no devices are connected and go to preferences and review the settings - make sure the music library points to the correct folder on the new mac and try playing a song or two. You can then connect your devices and resume normal sync/backup as if the new computer was the old one. Do use care to destroy / not use the old computer - the device could get confused if you sync to two versions of the "same library".


Burst images will not upload when sharing to iCloud via iPhoto

If you take photos with burst mode or image stabilization on your iPhone 5s, only the photos you select as favorites when using burst mode and the final composite image shot with image stabilization are added to My Photo Stream.

If you want all burst-mode photos uploaded to My Photo Stream and your iPhone has iOS 7.1 or later, go to Settings > Photos & Camera and turn on Upload Burst Photos.

Source: iCloud: My Photo Stream overview


Permission denied for ls -l in a folder with symlinks

A symlink basically is a special file containing the path to the symlink target. So if you restrict access to the symlink itself to root you prevent all other users from reading the content of the symlink, which results in a "permission denied" error when ls tries to read the symlink to identify the target.

To prevent ls from following the symlink (reading its content), use ls -P.

You can still remove the symlink (or actually any file not owned/accessible by yourself) as long as you have write access to the directory the symlink is in. A directory is basically an index, you can add/remove entries from it even without having access to the content of these entries.


MacBook Pro login screen characters replaced by question marks

The linked question covers the why of the fonts being messed up. The part of the system that renders the system fonts is damaged or intentionally changed (but perhaps without realizing the ramification of disabling the fonts until now.)

characters in login screen replaced by question marks

The fix is to boot to recovery HD and reinstall the core OS. That will replace the part of the system that has the needed fonts and not overwrite / erase your data like Applications and emails and photos and such.

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201314 - About macOS recovery
https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204904 - Reinstall macOS


Is there a way to email photos from the Yosemite photos app, ideally with layout options?

Not directly, as far as I'm aware, but you could make a greetings card, then save as PDF…

Select photos to add - 13 pics appears to be the limit for the automatic layouts.
File menu > Create card
Choose flat style
Select a theme, then Landscape or portrait
Once selected, 'Options' under the card lets you choose number of photos & layout
The Options 'inspector' is context-sensitive, so depends on what you select as to which editing options you see - number of photos - colour, crop & zoom etc.

When finished, right click anywhere in the card & 'Save Card as PDF'

Attach to email.

This has the advantage that it doesn't need the HTML that would need to be embedded in the email to achieve this without PDF, so it becomes portable, outside email.

Photos will also save this layout permanently, for if you ever need it again, or until manually deleted.


How to activate voice dictation on ipad 3?

This isn't a keyboard feature, it's an accessibility feature.

So go to Settings -> General -> Accessibility

Under vision you will see there is a button called Speak Selection, just press that and turn it on. When you select text you then have an option to let it read for you.

If this doesn't help, let us know, thanks. :)


iOS 7 weather app shows wrong sunrise/sunset time

The clear error would be a city in another state or country.

The sunrise and sunset data for Minneapolis, KS is going to be different than Minneapolis, MN.

Once you have ruled that out, you might need to file a bug with Apple in the case that their app is either requesting the wrong data from the weather service provider or the data source needs to be corrected. In both cases, you can't really change what happens in code or upstream and could only try to find a location that's close enough for weather purposes that has correct (or close enough) sunrise and sunset data.

http://apple.com/feedback might also be workable rather than filing a bug if enough people have issues where the current data set is lacking or off by hours.


How to manually trigger background image change?

I have found this MacWorld post showing an AppleScript that you can execute to force that.

I have my desktop images set to change every 30 minutes in random order. Sometimes the desktop will display an image that displayed earlier in the day, and I wanted a way to 'advance' the image easily. The following AppleScript will cause the desktop image to change, in whatever order you have set, each time it is run:

And this is the script:
property theSwitch : 0
if theSwitch = 0 then
  tell application "System Events"
    tell current desktop
      set change interval to 1801.0
    end tell
  end tell
  set theSwitch to 1
else
  tell application "System Events"
    tell current desktop
      set change interval to 1800.0
    end tell
  end tell
  set theSwitch to 0
end if

Please check the link and the comments for more similar or complete alternatives.
Note: I have not tested this.
UPDATE I'm sorry to hear that it didn't work for you, yet it does for me on Snow Leopard with the following script:
tell application "System Events"
    tell current desktop
        set initInterval to get change interval -- get the currrent display interval
        set change interval to -1 -- force a change to happen right now
        set change interval to initInterval -- change it back to the original display interval
    end tell
end tell

WARNING
This assumes that you have
[X] "change picture ever x timesteps"
[X] Random Order
The above works for me. I ran it from the AppleScript Editor several times to make sure it was working and it indeed does change the Wallpaper.


Buying a new cable from apple was too expensive for that old MacBook,
  so I kicked out the SuperDrive and put my disk in there.

Doing a quick check, this is currently selling for $14 including shipping.  While I'm not against adding a second hard drive, this fix is very much economically feasible to keep your drive in it's default location.

  Considering that the old battery is 8 years old and there is more
  space now it should be possible almost double the battery capacity.

  Now I wonder if there is any way to get such a battery?

Unless you plan on building your own battery pack, this is simply not an option.  Your best bet is to replace the cable and battery and simply be done with it.


How to backup an iPhone, and restore it, with no side effects?

You can use a computer for backup. It only ties for that computer in regards of music and video content. If you want to sync it to another iTunes library at a later point, the music that was synced from that computer will be deleted. This is not the case for tracks bought in iTunes if that device is activated for that account, or if you're using iTunes match.

If you use the computer, you can choose to encrypt the backup, that way the passwords (for networks and whatnot) will be backed up and restored as well.

As a side note, it doesn't seem usual to me that you need to restore the phone for the unlock to take place. It usually is enough to connect it to a computer with iTunes open.


Why won't the audio switch back to my Internal Speakers after having used Apple TV?

I have had something similar on the Answer when directing sound vai the say command to my Apple Tv and then back to the Built in output.

I would have to run the command to switch back twice to get it back

You could open Terminal.app  and type and run

say -a 38 "I am Back"

a couple of times.


Problems with video resolution using VirtualBox on Mac OS X El Capitan

You may either download the OVA file for use with VirtualBox/VMWare: bio-linux-ova and import it ( File -> Import Appliance...) as a new VM. The ova file itself won't be modified. Before starting increase the video memory in the VM settings to 32 GB - 128 GB. The username/password are manager/manager.

Or you download the latest Oracle VM VirtualBox Extension Pack, import it (VirtualBox -> Preferences -> Extensions -> Blue Button with the orange arrow) and mount the Guest Additions (VirtualBox VM -> Devices -> Insert Guest Additions CD image...) after starting the VM.

You will be asked to allow the automated mounting. After entering your password the guest additions will be installed. After restarting the VM you are free to choose any available resolution.


Set Safari's default search engine to Google UK

You can try using the AnySearch Safari extension which will allow you to set custom search engines to be used as the default.

Add this as a search engine in AnySearch: https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=@@@


You should sign into your Apple Developer Account and review the License Agreements there.

License Agreements
The license agreements of the iOS Developer Program and Mac Developer Program detail your obligations and responsibilities as a member. The latest agreements can be reviewed in Member Center.
Sign in to Member Center

From the looks of it though, it is pretty generic protect Apple and Apple's Brand and Good Will. If you received any additional agreements when your app was approved to go on the App Store, then review them as well.
From the looks of it though, and from wha articles in trade publications indicate, many developers just walk away from their apps.
As it sounds like you are trying to do the right thing, hypothetically of course, I do recall that one app that I had, Catch Notes, did post a notice to their landing page on the App Store that their product was no longer going to be supported. If you are able to make updates or adds to the page, then that is likely the place to do it. Also Catch Notes no longer appears on the App Store, so there is some process for removal.
Here are some news reports that made the tech sites.
Engadget
CNET
Techcrunch
Check with an Apple representative. There may be a way that the app can be frozen from future downloads, to allow sufficient time for the app's page to be seen by the current user base without expanding it. It is also possible that they are able to message your user base through their records of the App Store purchases. If there is security risk and you feel that the users should completely remove the app, then this is the right thing to do.


Installed Windows on Mac, now want to go back to OS X

Reinstall macOS (OS X)

Boot to  Internet Recovery. See instructions below. You may need to reset your NVRAM. If so, see instructions below.
Use the Disk Utility app to erase the internal drive. Choose for Mac OS Extended (Journaled) for the format.
Install macOS (OS X).
Boot to macOS (OS X).
If the operating system is Snow Leopard and the version is not 10.6.8, then download and install this Mac OS X 10.6.8 Update Combo v1.1.
If the operation system is 10.6.8, then install this Mac App Store Update for OS X Snow Leopard
Upgrade to 10.11.6.

Start up from macOS (OS X) Recovery over the Internet

Turn on or restart your Mac, then immediately hold down the option+⌘+R key combination.
Release the keys when you see the Apple logo or a spinning globe.
When you see the macOS (OS X) Utilities window, you have finished booting.

Reset your computer’s NVRAM or PRAM

Shutdown the Mac.
Locate the following keys on the keyboard: option, ⌘, P, and R. You will need to press and hold these keys simultaneously in step 4.
Turn on your Mac.
Immediately press and hold the option+⌘+P+R key combination, before the black screen with the Apple logo appears.
Continue pressing the keys until your Mac restarts, about 15 seconds.
Release the keys.

Appendix

How to reset NVRAM on your Mac

How to reinstall macOS

About macOS Recovery


Publicly sharing an iCal calendar to allow web viewing

In iCal, click the "Calendars" button in the upper-left corner, just under the traffic light. Right-click on the calendar you want to share, then select "Share Calendar..." This will open a new dialog, allowing the choice you mentioned between sharing read-only with everyone, or editable with invitees; make your selection and hit "Share".

Once the calendar is shared, again click the Calendar button and right-click the calendar you just shared, this time selecting "Copy URL to Clipboard".

(There's also a "Stop Sharing" option, in case you ever change your mind.)


Sharing Hotspot from the mac that the iPhone or iPad can connect with?

You can create a Personal Network from the AirPort (Wi-Fi) menu.

Select Create Network ...
Define a name for your Network
Select the channel
Select the security (if selected, define a passphrase/key)
Click Create.

In my case I also have to define the IP addresses on the devices.

On your MacBook:

Go to System Preferences
Network
Select the Wi-Fi connection
Click Advanced
Select the tab TCP/IP
In the first field select the voice Manually
Set an IP (e.g. 192.168.1.1)
Set a Subnet Mask (255.255.255.0)
Click OK

On the iOS devices:

Go to Settings
Wi-Fi
Click the blue arrow on the righ of your ad hoc Wi-Fi connection
Select the tab Static
Set an IP (e.g. 192.168.1.2)
Set a Subnet Mask (255.255.255.0)


In the past, how long have Up-to-date OS upgrades taken to arrive?

This appears to be a real issue, per this MacRumors article from earlier today:

  Apple support staff have acknowledged the difficulties and are advising customers that they may need to wait up to three days to receive replacement codes, although some replacement codes are reportedly already coming through without any action required by the users.

Hopefully your codes will arrive within that window - if not, I recommend you contact Apple support; given proof-of-purchase on your MacBook, they should get you sorted.


Ok, found it: in the Photos app...
- go to "People"
- Click on "Select" in the upper right corner of the screen
- Then click on the "Merge" button in the lower right corner of the screen.


App store on iOS won't show the ratings and the rewievs

The problem might be the change of store.
Smaller stores don't have enough reviews to show. Look for a very popular app (Facebook, Snapchat) and you may see reviews, but even then, it may happen that there are not enough reviews for the current version. You can switch to see the reviews for all versions, that may have enough data to be shown.

Or you can switch stores; to do that, go to Settings > iTunes & App Store > Apple ID, enter your password, and tap on Country / Region to Chang your store back to the U.S.

If you have iTunes Match or Apple Music subscriptions running, you'll have to cancel them first.


Yosemite -Airdrop not working between 2012 Mac Mini and 2012 MacBook Pro Retina

Old Airdrop and new Airdrop are different apps.

This may or may not help you but I found it while trying a mid-2011 and late-2013 iMacs. The docs say anything older than 2009 iMacs and MBP meet the system requirements for Airdrop, however, they don't mention that anything before 2013 is using a different version of Airdrop altogether and it's almost name-only in similarities.

I don't know how this affects your two 2012 versions, but perhaps this is the case for late-2012 and you can check both computers to see if either are affected by this. You will know if one computer has a message like "If you would like to share with another Mac, ask them to open Airdrop in the finder." This is the old Airdrop version message.

If you see two links with selectable options with who to allow discovery of your machine, and another link that says, "Don't see who you're looking for?" Then this is the message with the new version of Airdrop.

If one of your computers is new version and one is old, you can fix this by clicking the "Don't see who you're looking for?" link on the newer version and select "Connect with older Mac."

Now you should see each other in your finder. If this is not the case, then these instructions will not help you.


Enable Disk Access was a feature on the iPods, but has never been an option on the iPhone, iPod Touch, or iPad.


Will FaceTime reveal my caller ID on an incoming call?

For all the experience I have, calling my family in multiple IDs, the person only knows the ID that they already have, and FaceTime has no options to automatically reveal the other IDs that person uses.

I wanted to enable some automatic thing like this for myself, because I have 4 different cell numbers and 3 e-mails with FaceTime.
Still have not found how to do it.

So for you, the answer is "no, they still only know about the ID they used".


What you will need is splitter so you can connect 2 displays to your Thunderbolt port so you can use the both iMac with Target Display Mode.

It's the only way to use these iMacs as screens.


How to find shortcut keys (⌘⌥⇧⌃) in Unicode popover?

⌘: type "place of interest" (this took me a while to figure out, had tried "point of.." and "attraction")
⌥ just type "option"!
⇧: type "upwards white arrow" (bonus: ⇪)
⌃: type "up arrowhead" (it's not the standard caret)

Bonus:

⌫ & ⌦: type "erase"


Finder's "All my files" section has pdf-documents category.


Public WiFi hotspots, especially free ones, tend to block certain sites just to limit bandwidth usage or potential liability issues. Workaround number one you have already found: use your own cellular data, which is not always an ideal situation.

VPN software is sometimes a good solution to this depending on if the public WiFi allows VPN connections. If it does you can get one that supports iOS (I use TorGuard but there are hundreds of others) and use that to bypass the limitations of some public WiFi hotspots.

Note: depending on what you are trying to do online that WiFi hotspot might see you sending and receiving large amounts of data (Netflix, YouTube, etc.) and block your MAC address and you are, again locked out of that particular WiFi hotspot.


Using command line to create bootable OS X USB drive

The copy/paste bits are fine, but you got your app path wrong...

sudo /Volumes/MacBook/OS\ OS\ X\ Yosemite.app
should be
sudo /Volumes/MacBook/OS/Install\ OS\ X\ Yosemite.app

To be certain you have the correct path, Terminal allows drag & drop.

Type sudo, then space.
Drag your Installer app to the Terminal
Hit backspace once [terminal adds a space to your dropped path]
copy/paste the rest of the line /Contents/Resources/createinstallmedia --volume /Volumes/Untitled --applicationpath
Drag your Installer again [NO backspace this time]
copy/paste --nointeraction


OSX 10.9.5 automount AFP network volume?

OK, I figured it out.  The keys in the auto_afp file are paths that are relative to the path specified in the top-level auto_master file.

So if your /etc/auto_master has: my/global/mount auto_afp

Then your /etc/auto_afp should have: point -fstype=....

Finally to get visibility into what automountd is doing, add AUTOMOUNTD_TRACE=2 to /etc/autofs.conf, watch /var/log/system.log with tail -f, and start navigating around your mount points.


Mac OS X Terminal: -bash: $: command not found

Your PATH looks fine. The PATH variable is a collection of folders/directories in which the shell looks for commands to execute. So if you install additional software like MacGPG there might get new parts added.

But I assume that the command you are calling is called pagekite.py and not actually $. So you should call it like

pagekite.py --signup

or (if it is in your current folder/directory)

./pagekite.py --signup

The $ is often used in documentation to represent the shell command prompt and should not be entered to run the command afterwards.


Is it okay to compress application files? (Especially licensed applications)

Most macOS applications are not actually like 'any other file' - they just look like one - and are actually a folder of files called a package. Right-click on most apps, and you will see a Show Package Contents command. Click that to see the folder structure of the app.

That being said, applications will compress and expand just fine. I've compressed and expanded Adobe apps with no effect on licensing so long as they are expanded onto the same system.

Compressing an application and expanding it on a different system may break licensing if the licensing mechanism itself resides outside the app's package, or if some other licensing scheme is in effect. There is no generic licensing scheme for all circumstances.


This is untested but two options spring to mind:

Use iPhoto on iPad to transfer to iTunes (Not free as you need to buy iOS iPhoto)
There's an option to share/save the photos to iTunes. You might need to make an album first and add the photos.
Make a new photostream on your iPad, add all the photos. Open up iPhoto on mac and copy them across from this photostream.


How Do I restore my computer's SSD to a new larger SSD?

You will need to repair the partition map. Disk utility only works within it's known partition maps. You disk duplicator probably didn't do it right. Instead, format the disk again and use disk utility to clone it. You can use the restore functionality for that.


Why does a 12 inch Macbook refuse to turn on with a lot of battery remaining unless it is plugged in?

Assuming it is a 12" MacBook (implying at most it's still a little shy of being a couple of years old) and not a 13" model (which could be a lot older), then the first thing I'd do is reset the System Management Controller.

For a 12" MacBook you reset the SMC as follows:

Shut down your computer
Keep the power cable plugged in.
Press at the same time shiftoptioncontrol
(on the left side of the keyboard) and the power button
Let go
Turn your computer back on with the power button.

Once you've done this report back on how it went.

If in fact it's not a 12" MacBook, then please update your question with the exact model so we can make sure we're providing accurate advice for your model.


Does iTunes sync Volume Adjustment and other per song settings?

Start and stop times do sync, as well as volume adjustments.

EQ settings sync as well. However, they only work under the following conditions:

You used a preset in iTunes (not custom EQ settings); and
You have EQ disabled on the phone.

As backwards as that second one sounds, if you EQ enabled on the phone, it uses that EQ setting and overrides the per-song EQ settings. If you have EQ disabled on the phone, it uses the per-song EQ settings.


Exporting all pictures from iPhone keeping all features

In order to keep all the functionality you mention, your options are really only to have either a Mac with the built-in Photos app, or an iPad or similar device that you could offload your content to.
As far as I know, there's no free software that provides these features in exactly the same way as Photos on the iPhone, but on a webserver or on Windows.
You could export your Photos to a Windows PC and then use any PC photo management software, but the feature list would vary from program to program. For example the only free, Windows-based photo management software I know that does face recognition is mylioX. It doesn't do it exactly the same way as Apple, nor does it has the same list of features.
Here's Apple's guide to exporting your photos to Windows or Mac computers:
https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201302#importpc


Spotlight re-indexing takes too long or doesn't work

OK, I solved it, it seems...

The Solution

Run

sudo /System/Library/Frameworks/CoreServices.framework/Frameworks/LaunchServices.framework/Support/lsregister -kill -seed -lint -r -f -v -dump -domain local -domain system -domain user -domain network

killall Dock

sudo mdutil -E /

Not sure if all of these are needed, but that's what worked for me. The first command resets the Launch Sservices Database, the second one resets the Dock, and the third one triggers Spotlight reindexing.

Note that before that I tried running

/System/Library/Frameworks/CoreServices.framework/Versions/A/Frameworks/LaunchServices.framework/Versions/A/Support/lsregister -kill -r -domain local -domain system -domain user

instead of the first command, and it didn't help. To be more precise, it seemed to have fixed search, but not spotlight.

I also tried sudo rm -R .Spotlight-V100/ suggested in the comments to the question, but it didn't help either.

Details

the issue was in the Launch Services Database. I figured it out by looking at the Console app. There were tons of messages like

errore  16:19:03.743202 +0100   mds LaunchServices: store or url (null) was nil -10813, retrying
errore  16:19:03.743247 +0100   mds LaunchServices: Database mapping failed with result -10813, retries = 7

I found this thread, which led me to trying to reset the Launch Services Database. First I tried the command above that failed. Then I found a fuller (it seems) version of that command, which is posted in the first code block in the "Solution" section above.


How would my friend install my iOS application without App Store?

You can share apps you develop by means of Ad-Hoc distribution. This involves adding the UDID of their device to your developer account (and consequently a provisioning profile) which lets you install the app on devices outside of the App Store.

For more information on Ad-Hoc distribution, see:

https://developer.apple.com/library/ios/documentation/IDEs/Conceptual/AppDistributionGuide/TestingYouriOSApp/TestingYouriOSApp.html

Apple does not operate a private App Store for non-apple use other than the custom business store and it's unlikely individuals would be accepted into that program so you have to self host the content as described above.


First check that your path variable is working or not just type (echo $PATH) from terminal it will return the O/P like: /usr/local/bin:/usr/bin:/bin:/usr/sbin:/sbin
if saying "commond not found"

Then you have to PATH variable to setup path variable below steps

1) vi /etc/paths
it's will vi editor to edit type "I" and enter below mention lines

/usr/local/bin
/usr/bin
/bin
/usr/sbin
/sbin

2) press esc and type wq to save exit.


Dingit.tv process running in Safari, using 1GB memory and 15% cpu

You can try running Dingit's uninstaller here:

http://kb.dingit.tv/article/114-how-do-i-uninstall-the-dingit-infinitehd-plugin

On OSX 10.10.5 when I browsed to the site the following appeared in the Activity Monitor:

http://www.dingit.tv

and it's actually just a window that's open in Safari and Safari will keep reopening it each time you kill it. The easy way to bring it onto the screen is to use the Merge All Windows option in Safari's Window menu and then close it.


MacBook Pro lost SSD during macOS High Sierra update

You should know that updating to High Sierra normally means to a change in the used disk format. (Apple introduced APFS for macOS High Sierra which will be used instead of HFS+). If you now updated the system on your SSD the SSD will probably be formatted as APFS and therefore the older version of OSX won't be able to read it's content.

Did you apply any encryption on the SSD system? Because I had trouble with my system too when the update produced a unknown failure and I tried to access the system partition using an El Kapitan system. (I was forced to wipe all data and sync back my time machine backup)

Maybe try to access the data by booting in recovery mode (because the recovery system should now also be upgraded to High Sierra)


On Windows XP
Documents and Settings\<User>\Application Data\Apple Computer\iTunes\iPhone Software Updates

On Windows Vista/Windows 7
Users\<User>\AppData\Roaming\Apple Computer\iTunes\iPhone Software Updates

On Mac
~/Library/iTunes/iPhone Software Updates

I believe that the updates do not delete after they are installed.

Via this iPhone FAQ article.


The answer is 'Yes, it will take them.' 8GB sticks were 'unsupported' at that time, but just turned out they worked.

I have an old Mac Pro that has the same 'unofficial' double-storage. Shoudld take 32GB 8x4, does in fact take 64GB, 8x8.

It's only the 21" iMac from that series that really can only take 16GB

Ref - Everymac & personal experience.

For specifically which sticks it will take, OWC doesn't ship here so I've never tested their algorithms. I would use Crucial's detector tool, which has never let me down.