How can Find My iPhone be working with no data plan?

Yes, the device can communicate with Find my iPhone over Wi-Fi. Find my iPhone uses the currently available network connection, regardless of whether that be Wi-Fi or cellular. The GPS is still used to obtain location information along with Wi-Fi data and the location is sent over Wi-Fi to Find my iPhone.


Creating a wifi hotspot on OSX with a connected USB wifi adapter instead of airport (OSX Lion)

I think this will only work on wifi adaptors that support bridged mode wireless. Not all of them do. The internal Airport does which is why it can be turned into a hotspot.

I think you'll be able to go this way

Share your connection from : [usb wifi adaptor]
To Computers using : [airport]

Setting up all security features as per normal.


Why does "if exists" fail with a false positive?

You need to reference a file for the test to function properly.

set thePath to path to application support folder from user domain
tell application "System Events" to exists file ((thePath as text) & "Test.file")

With the conditional:

set thePath to path to application support folder from user domain
tell application "System Events" to exists file ((thePath as text) & "Test.file")
if the result then
    display dialog "The file was found!" buttons {"OK"} default button 1
else
    display dialog "The was file wasn't found." buttons {"OK"} default button 1
end if


I would suggest you download and install a fresh copy of iTunes and report back.

Before doing that, though, I suggest you create new user account on the iMac and see if iTunes hangs up when you plug in the phone. If there is no problem, then perhaps something is wrong with the iTunes preference files for your account.

Lastly, you might want to sign out of the iTunes Store (if you are currently logged in) and sign in again.


Keyboard maestro: Defining "if app active" macros

To define Keyboard Maestro macros only active in specific applications you need to define a new Macro Group (left most column in the Keyboard Maestro Editor) and select the application(s) on group level.


Which apps do these menu bar icons belong to?

From left to right…

RescueTime
Divvy
Clusters
LittleIpsum
LogMeIn
OS X Screen Sharing
OS X Messages/iChat


Is it possible to recover "Could not find APFS system volume handle!" which is reported in verbose mode?

The best chance for data backup (assuming you don’t have any backups) is to connect the Mac to another in target disk mode.

If you don’t want to pay for recovery software, you could boot to recovery HD and let disk utility try to repair the volume. This can cause further data loss (the file system heals but files with data get deleted).

Disk Utility isn’t designed to lose data and most of the time will warn you if the next step is expensive data recovery or an erase and reinstall.


Can I completely turn off the fans on a MacBook Pro (0 RPM)

Disabling the fans is not recommended but appears possible through the software below:

  smc-command

  This tool will allow you to write values to the SMC which could irreversably damage your computer.

  ...

  This program will allow you to read and write values to the SMC using the AppleSMC kernel
  extension.  The purpose of this is to show how to talk to the controller.

smcFanControl is a graphical interface for sic-command with additional safely limits:

  smcFanControl

  smcFanControl lets the user set a minimum speed for built-in fans. It allows you to increase your minimum fan speed to make your Intel Mac run cooler. In order to not damage your machine, smcFanControl does not let you set a minimum speed to a value below Apple's defaults.

Being open source, you could remove the minimum limits imposed by smcFanControl.


OS X: CM Storm Devastator keyboard doesn't light up

I have created a fork of the apple LED test script specifically to turn on and off the LED Backlight on cmstorm keyboards. This should also work for anyone who needs to turn on scroll lock on their external keyboards (which is the backlight key for most keyboards).
To use it:

Download the binary and install it in your Applications folder
wget https://github.com/pykler/led-backlight-osx/blob/master/led-backlight-osx?raw=true -O led-backlight-osx
chmod +x led-backlight-osx
mv led-backlight-osx /Applications

Then you can either

run it on the terminal like so
   /Applications/led-backlight-osx # turns the backlight on
   /Applications/led-backlight-osx off # turns the backlight off

OR use an automator script as described in the following answer. Replace the automator script in step 11 with the following.
 ```/Applications/led-backlight-osx```

to create a script to turn it off create another automator script with the following
/Applications/led-backlight-osx off

The details for the automator script are in the edit below.

EDIT: to add this as a keyboard shortcut you must use Automator as in @AlexanderTaylor's answer, in summary:

Launch "Automator" from either Launchpad or Finder/Applications

Choose "Service" type (For Catalina, first choose "Quick Actions" on "New")

(On the left) "Library" -> "Utilities", drag "Run Shell Script" to the workflow pane.

At the top of the workflow pan, choose "no input" in "any application"

For "pass input" choose "as arguments"

For "shell" choose "/bin/sh"

Paste in this script:
 /Applications/led-backlight-osx

Click "File" -> "Save", save it as "CMStormLedOn"

Go to System Preferences -> Keyboard -> Shortcuts -> Services -> CMStormLedOn and click on the shortcut ⌘+ScrLk. (it will show up as ⌘+F14)

Done. Now typing ⌘+ScrLk should turn those LEDs on.


How do I copy PDFs onto my iPad and read them there?

iBooks has built-in PDF reader support. Just download it for free from the App Store, then drag the PDFs that you want to copy to your iPad into iTunes. The PDFs will be listed under the "Books" section. Sync your iPad, then when you open iBooks, tap the "PDFs" tab and your PDFs will be listed.


Why does restoring a photo from Time Machine only restore the original in iPhoto and not the edited version?

an complete TM restore restores your entire computer as the time when it was backed up.

my qualified guess is that when you restored your indevidual pictures, you restored the original file, and not the edited vertion,

give it another go, and make sure you choose your edited file if you want to be sure!


Need to know if I've bought a used iPhone? (multiple Apple IDs connected)

I remembered I had this issue when I was restoring an iPhone 5s backup to the iPhone 6 I bought at launch in 2014. I had a string of unknown email addresses pop-up asking for passwords to enable store purchases. Obviously the phone could not have been used or stolen as I received it on launch day directly from Apple.

The issue is that content originally purchased from an iTunes store was obtained from other people and on your prior device at the time of backup, such as music, eBooks or videos.

In turn, when you make a backup of your device, for purchased content iTunes/iCloud doesn't store the content directly in the backup. It simply logs (essentially) the content ID and the account used to purchase it. When you restore a backup, it prompts you to login to each account that the backup knows about so it can re-download the purchased content.

If you bypass that password screen for the unknown email, you will simply get an error message stating:

Some items could not be downloaded. If they are on your computer, you can restore them by syncing with iTunes.

After the restore is completed, sync with iTunes to add the content back directly from your computer.

The device is not stolen or compromised, nor is your Apple ID.


How to downgrade iOS 11 beta to iOS 10 without PC?

It's impossible without a PC or a Mac to initiate the wipe and also host the reinstall image download and USB control during the downgrade.

In addition to the "computer" - you need an Apple tool like iTunes (Mac or PC) or Xcode or Apple Configurator (or a third party one like Ground Control) to reload the older OS, since there is no OTA bundle for downgrading.


Why is my MacBook Pro beeping when performing a keyboard shortcut?

On your Mac, choose Apple menu  > System Preferences, click Sound, then click Sound Effects.
Find the alert sound that is causing the issue.  When you click on it, it will play the sound effect.  In my case, every time I used the keyboard shortcut cmd-shift-p - even though it was a valid shortcut in some apps - it made the alert sound from "Ping".   I muted the Output volume for "Ping" and that solved the issue.


How to elegantly obstruct the iSight lens?

Elegant would be black glossy vinyl circular sticker that would adhere to the glass naturally.

If you were paranoid, black is a bad color as you will not have visual confirmation that the sticker has moved should it shift. That is why most people I know put a very visual color and use adhesive as they want to see when it moves and not have it slip.

Removing the camera kernel extension is far better for my use since I can't accidentally have that "fall off" when I'm not looking.

How do I deactivate my microphone and iSight for security reasons?

With that solution, the elegance of Apple's physical design is maintained and I only have to disable software updates or set a watcher script to alert me if that kext is reloaded / replaced.


Kernel Panic on login and when mounting for write access (Catalina, Late 2014 iMac)

panic(cpu 0 caller 0xfff...) /AppleInternal/BuildRoot/Library/Caches/com.apple.xbs/Sources/apfs/apfs-1412.141.1/nx/fusion_mt.c:651 Assertion failed: length

Your filesystem is corrupted (probably from continued operation while full). Because there is not yet any third-party tool for repairing APFS volumes, you need to:

Already have, or make, a backup of your essential files. Continue reading below for details.
Erase the disk and reinstall macOS.

There is, unfortunately, no other way out of this. APFS is wonderful when it works, and a complete clusterfuck when it does not.
If you do not already have all of your essential files backed up, you can attempt to salvage them. In decreasing order of convenience, your options for this are:

Target Disk Mode.
Low-level imaging of the drive while booted into an external (non-Mac) OS.
Physically removing the drive from the computer, which requires separating the LCD from the chassis.

TDM is easiest (assuming you have a second Mac available). However, given the problems you had with merely mounting the drive, this may fail in the same way. There's a slight chance that using a newer macOS (i.e., Big Sur) on your lifeboat Mac could possibly work better than trying Catalina, as there's a chance that it contains a newer APFS driver implementation which could handle corruption more gracefully.
If you do install Big Sur on your lifeboat and are able to mount the iMac's TDM'd drive, copy your most essential files off of it first, then attempt to repair with Disk Utility. Do not, under any circumstance, attempt to delete or modify anything on the drive. Otherwise you risk corrupting it beyond repair.


If the Strong Passwords suggestion isn’t showing up, it means you don’t have iCloud Keychain enabled.

Go to Settings -> Accounts & Passwords -> AutoFill Passwords and enable iCloud Keychain.


Outlook 2011: Re-mapping keyboard shortcuts?

You can't disable it, but you can re-map the shortcut so you're far less likely to hit it.

Open System Preferences, go to Keyboard > Shortcuts (tab)> App Shortcuts (Left field). Click the "+", select "Microsoft Outlook" from the "Application:" list, change "Menu Title:" to "Send," and change the shortcut to something you aren't likely to hit accidentally, such as Shift + CMD + Option + G," or similar.

Close and re-open Outlook. Enjoy not accidentally sending unfinished eMail!


How do I remove the right side bar on Sublime Text?

If you are talking about the document preview it is called the Minimap. It can be hidden from: View > Hide Minimap


Yes, the contacts remain in iCloud. However, once you reset the iPhone to factory settings, the iPhone is no longer logged in to your iCloud account which means that there are no contacts appearing on the iPhone whatsoever.

You can further log in to your iCloud account on your computer via a web browser (icloud.com) and erase the contacts from there if you wish.


Replace password prompt with Touch ID to read Keychain password

Investigating this I was not able to find any method that would allow for the security command to make use of Touch ID. This article titled: How to Use Touch ID to Authenticate sudo on Mac OS, mentioned in a comment regarding sudo and then use of the Touch ID, will not work here since that makes use of the addition of this line:

auth sufficient pam_tid.so

to sudo's PAM file, /etc/pam.d/sudo. There is nothing equivalent to the security command since it doesn't make use of sudo.

Therefore you're left with using one of the 2 methods mentioned in the dialog when running the security command:

Always Allow
Allow

If you pick "Always Allow" this will grant access indefinitely just to the security command. If you pick "Allow" it will grant security access just 1 time to Keychain.

Example

Here I've created an application password item in Keychain called TestPassword.

We can see that nothing has been given access to it by looking at the ACL tab of this dialog.

If I run this security command:

$ security find-generic-password -w -s "TestPassword"

And permanently "Always Allow" I'll be given the password for this item from Keychain:

TestPassword123

But more importantly I'll add security to the ACL for this item in Keychain.


How do I get out of split screen mode when I never entered it completely?

Pressing Esc has worked for me. In High Sierra, the option is blocked in the first place, and in the case of no other windows supporting split screen you can click in the blurry area with no available windows.


Does official AT&T unlock also upgrade the operating system?

Yes, a backup and restore will force iTunes to update the device with the latest version of iOS. In order to get around it, follow a slightly different procedure described at How to restore iOS without updating (edited instructions here):

  Backup the iPhone in iTunes
  Disconnect the iPhone from the computer
  On the iPhone, go to Settings > General > Reset and select "Erase All Contents and Settings"
  Wait for the phone to display the swipe to setup screen
  With iTunes already running, connect it to the computer
  iTunes will display the unlock message
  Click on Done
  iTunes will present the option to restore from a backup
  Restore from the recent backup you made
  iTunes will also sync all your apps after the data and settings restore is completed (the entire process may take a while depending on the amount of space used on the iPhone)

See:


License and royalty specifics for AppleLoops in Logic

All of the AppleLoops supplied with Logic or purchased via JamPacks are licensed to you for unlimited, perpetual use in any derivative creative work. That is: you can use the inside of your own music, but you can't just give away or resell the samples themselves.

For example: if you made a "song" that was one AppleLoop, looping for 3 minutes, and tried to sell that. Well, that's not really a derivative work because it's just the loop and nothing else. You couldn't give that away or sell it. But combine two of them together? Now it's derivative (it is unlike either of it's pieces, a new thing unto itself) and you can give that away or sell it as you, the creator, see fit.

See this discussion on AppleLoops in Jam Packs for more details and from the EULA:

  B. Except as otherwise indicated, you may use the Apple and third party audio file content (including, but not limited to, the Apple Loops, built-in sound files, samples and impulse responses) (collectively the “Audio Content”), contained in or otherwise included with the Apple Software, on a royalty-free basis, to create your own original soundtracks for your film, video and audio projects. You may broadcast and/or distribute your own soundtracks that were created using the Audio Content, however, individual Apple loops, audio files, sound settings, samples and impulse responses may not be commercially or otherwise distributed on anor may they be repackaged in whole or in part as audio samples, sound files, sound effects or music beds.

Enjoy those loops! Make lots of awesome music!


Seeking spam filter that uses a database shared by all its users

The short answer to this is NO.

I think you are confusing Gmail's SPAM filtering methodology with single user methodology.  What you have to remember is that Gmail is a cloud based service and it IS providing mail service to billions of users.  So, even though you have a single email address with SPAM filtering, it's filtering for all users.

Additionally, SPAM filtering is a "learning" process - meaning the system learns what SPAM is as it goes.  The moment you take it from the cloud (or server) to your local machine, it can't learn from other email accounts.  (Which is why you want to share the database)

Once you have to create an infrastructure to start sharing the database to be able share what it has learned, you would have found it's easier and cheaper to set up a mail server and use a SPAM filter module.

My suggestion is to use a cloud based email provider.  I personally use hosted Exchange directly from Microsoft and I pay on $48 per year for this service.  In addition, I have a "private" email address I only give to colleagues and "disposable" email address I use when registering for websites, trade shows, and product downloads.  Using this technique I can easily identify SPAM; the result is that I have an extremely clean mailbox.


How to get rid of annoying Non-secure Jabber Login popup?

Normally you've to just turn on the 'Use SSL' option (Preferences->Accounts->Google->Server Settings).

It's greyed out, because the option 'Automatically find server and port' is enabled. If the option is greyed as well, disable temporary the account then disable the option, then set the manual settings or try to click on 'Use Default Settings' option. You can use either 5222, 5223 or 443.


How to rebuild Mac partition showing unexpected GPT table size

Based on the latest information posted in the question, here is what to enter. The assumption is the values posted are correct. The drive used a 4096 sector size. Since image files are fixed at a 512 byte sector size, all the values need to be multiplied by 8.

  Note: You may get an error message when entering the command to destroy the GPT. You should ignore this message.

sudo chown $USER:staff path/to/file.dmg
hdiutil attach -nomount path/to/file.dmg
gpt destroy disk2
gpt create disk2
gpt add -i 1 -b $((6*8)) -s $(((51205-6+1)*8)) -t efi disk2
gpt add -i 2 -b $((51206*8)) -s $(((732533871-51206+1)*8)) -t hfs disk2
diskutil mount disk3

The GPT you posed has a partition type GUID for Core Storage, but the header you posted for this partition indicates the partition type GUID should be for a Hierarchical File System Plus (HFS+) partition. My answer assumed the header is correct.

References

The 16,384 byte size requirement for the GPT Partition Entry Array is defined in section 5.3.1 "GPT overview" on page 117 of the Unified Extensible Firmware Interface (UEFI) Specification version 2.8, March 2019.

Technical Note TN1150: HFS Plus Volume Format

GUID Partition Table


Script that checks for apps with open window asks 'Where is Electron" in Electron apps

You need to use a different name for your repeat statement’s loop variable - the term name is an AppleScript property and is also in System Events scripting dictionary.  Your usage isn’t generating a syntax error, but it is probably causing more confusion than usual and is winding up targeting the wrong item (welcome to AppleScript).

You can use pipes around variable names like this where there may be a conflict (e.g. |name|), but CJK’s solution also avoids the repeat statement altogether.


Will I still be able to buy and install Lion after Mountain Lion is released?

I called 1-800-MY-APPLE and bought Lion 10.7 for only $19. I told the automated machine that I wanted to buy OS X 10.7 Lion. I was transferred to a sales representative, and he looked it up and said it was $19.99 plus taxes. I was surprised because I was expecting a $29.99 price tag. So I made him double check to make sure it was indeed 10.7 Lion and not 10.8 Mountain Lion. He said that it was for sure and that I would be emailed a PDF with a redemption code to get it.

I went through with the purchase last night (November 6, 2012) and got the email today. I was able to redeem the code in the App Store and download it from there!


Am I going to lose my data on my Mac partition if I delete the Linux partition to extend my Mac partition?

The answer is no you will not lose your data.

You now are a potential member in the "Unintended Consequences" club. So what we do here is change "no" to "you probably won't lose data if everything goes well."

Which means, backup the entire Mac partition and then boot from the backup and make sure it is good before proceeding.

Once you have your backup that Murphy's Law of Unnecessary Backups says you will now never need the backup you just made, you may now proceed with deleting the Linux partition and expanding the macOS partition into the empty space. Which is not supposed to delete anything on your macOS partition, if everything goes well.


Upgrade to new MBP with OS X without reinstalling applications?

The new MBP will come with Mountain Lion pre-installed. To update the old MBP, you probably need a different source of Mountain Lion. The easier solution might be either making a backup of the old MBP with Time Machine or using the Migration Assistant of Mac OS.

With the Migration Assistant, you can transfer data and applications from the old MBP to the new one. You can start the Migration Assistant from Spotlight. Click the magnifier in the menu bar, enter Migration Assistant and hit enter. This will start a guided process to get the data to the new MBP. If you buy the new MBP at an Apple store, they might assist you in doing this.

If you prefer the backup idea, you need to get an external hard drive and connect it to the old MBP. Open System Preferences, click on Time Machine, select the external hard drive as your backup drive and turn Time Machine on.
When the backup is finished, eject the backup drive (you can do this in the Finder) and connect it to the new MBP. You can then restore user data and applications from the backup to the new MBP. Make sure the Time Machine icon is shown in the menu bar, click the icon, and choose Browse other Backup Disks. This way you can copy specific data and applications to the new computer.

AFAIK it is not possible to switch hardware in a MBP nowadays.


"Setting up your Mac..." at every login (10.15.5)

Following jaume's comment, I checked my login items (https://support.apple.com/guide/mac-help/mac-a-blue-screen-startup-problems-mh21210/mac).
It turns out that Setup Assistant had ended up in there, and was impossible to quit once opened. Removing it from Login Items and rebooting solved the issue.


Rather than simulating a keyboard shortcut, you can simply call the shutdown dialog itself with the following AppleScript:

tell application "loginwindow" to «event aevtrsdn»

…or for the restart dialog:

tell application "loginwindow" to «event aevtrrst»


Prevent Finder from opening all folders in list view

Delete the invisible .DS_Store file in that folder to reset the default views.
(You may need to turn on show invisible files or search invisible files in Finder help to see that control file.)

Finder should remember your changes, but once corrupt, sometimes you can't get changes to save to the store file.


Changing the type of an App to Universal App later in App Store?

Yes.

Xcode has built-in support for targeting specific devices with your app. It's as simple as selecting the target device from a drop-down list.

This could enable you to create an initial version that targets either iPhone or iPad, and then later switch to Universal and submit it as a new version. The App Store will then automatically recognize that the new version of the app is Universal, and you would need to add additional screenshots, etc. for the new devices.


What is the difference "FTP on the Go" and "FTP on the Go Pro" for iOS?

Looks like the main difference is that the Pro version is universal. That means it will work on iPhone and iPad whereas the normal version only works on iPhone.

From the website:

  Optimized for iPad, but also runs perfectly on an iPhone or iPod touch.
  View many files at once in the tabbed viewer. This lets you easily copy between files, compare, etc.
  Switch between browsing and full-screen viewing or editing with just a tap.
  Quick-scrollers let you scroll through files or folders super fast.


Can a Mac Pro drive more than 2 monitors?

If you look at the Apple Store page for buying a Mac Pro, you'll see it comes with the ATI Radeon HD 5770 1GB.

Under "Second Display," it says:

  All Mac Pro graphics cards support up to three displays: two using Mini DisplayPort and one using DVI.

Under "Graphics," it says:

  Configure your Mac Pro with two cards to power up to six displays simultaneously for visualization projects and large display walls.

If you click on the "Learn more" link under Graphics, it says:

  ATI Radeon HD 5770

  Ideal for motion graphics, 3D modeling, rendering, or animation, the ATI Radeon HD 5770 with 1GB of fast GDDR5 memory comes standard — and provides up to 5x more performance than previous Mac Pro standard graphics cards. It also includes two Mini DisplayPort outputs and a dual-link DVI port.

and

  Dual-display and triple-display modes

  Both ATI Radeon HD cards each have two Mini DisplayPort outputs and one dual-link DVI output for a total of three video ports. All three ports are available for simultaneous use, depending upon the type of connection…

  Note: If you are using more than one Mini DisplayPort to Single-Link DVI adapter, only two displays are supported across the three ports. To connect up to two Mini DisplayPort displays and up to a 30-inch DVI display simultaneously, use the ports without any adapters. To connect two DVI displays, use the dual-link DVI port and the Apple Mini DisplayPort to DVI Adapter or the Apple Mini DisplayPort to Dual-Link DVI Adapter (sold separately). To connect three DVI displays at once, you must use two Apple Mini DisplayPort to Dual-Link DVI Adapters (sold separately). To connect up to three VGA displays simultaneously, use the Mini DisplayPort to VGA adapter and DVI to VGA adapters (sold separately).

However, based on this blog post, it's worth reading these two Knowledge Base articles before making a buying decision:

Mac Pro: Supported display configurations
Mac Pro: Issues with three displays and multiple DVI, HDMI connections


How much time do I have left on my iPhone 4s

While I do not think there is any official testing data that can accurately answer your question, turning off your iPhone should more than certainly leave you with battery 6 hours later.

In the past, I've tested out the standby capabilities of both my iPhone 4 and iPhone 4S. My test consisted of charging the iPhones to 100%, switching them to Airplane Mode, and locking the screen. I left them in that state over night (about 9 hours) and checked the battery percentage. They both reported 98% to 100% capacity, which surprised me greatly.

So I would like to think that you powering your iPhone 4s for 6 hours should keep the bulk of your charge in place. Maybe left with 25% of charge.

Of course, this is all assumption ;).


macOS 10.13: Windows 10 installation with Boot Camp

This question is possibly related to
  Disk Could Not Be Partitioned - First Aid not helping — I'm duplicating my
  answer here.

I had very similar problem. After contacting Apple Support and following their instructions, I've reinstalled macos (instructions here). This is not a wipeout reinstall, but do make a backup.

After the reinstall partitioning worked like a charm.

And so do Bootcamp installation.


Rename when copying from case-sensitive to case-insensitive

Try using rsync -b or gcp -b. Both add a tilde to the end of the filename if a file with the same name exists in the target.


ram upgrade works in safe mode but not in normal mode

First thing is to simply remove and reseat the chips. Restart, zapping the P-RAM as you go - might be surprised to find it's all okay.


The TV app in ios 10.2 is showing deleted movies

Realised you're talking about the new TV app, sorry.

The same method will work though. sign out of your iTunes account in Settings and then sign back in.

*Your Apple TV might be using outdated data that hasn't refreshed yet. Sign out of your Apple ID on your ATV and ensure the movies are not on your account.

Then sign back in and only the movies you've purchased will show up.


How can I run a partially referenced iTunes library?

Have you look into Tune Span?  http://tunespan.com/


British Mac Keyboard - § and ` key the wrong way around

Your machine thinks your keyboard is of the ANSI type when it is actually of the ISO type.  See this note for some possible help.


Apple's information article on recording on the iPod nano is here.

The iPod nano can operate for up to 24 hours on a battery charge.

The built-in microphone is monaural and, I guarantee you, is of the lowest quality. You may be able to purchase a compatible third-party external monaural microphone of higher quality that connects through the headphone port or the dock connector. Consult the microphone or headset manufacturer for compatibility information for the iPod nano.

Apple does not state any restriction on the length of the recording. The document I cite above states that the iPod nano records in WAV format, which usually implies 16-bit 44.1KHz uncompressed audio, and in this case it will be monaural using the built-in microphone. This kind of file takes up 5MB per minute in file size, and I assume that you can continue recording until the iPod nano's battery runs down or until the iPod nano no longer has any available file space to hold the recording.


How to use "diskutil corestorage revert lvuuid" on Yosemite if disk says it is not reversible?

looking at your diskutil list output, your disk0s2 partition type is not correct; it should be Apple_CoreStorage, but has remained Apple_HFS (probably due to the interruption of the conversion process). If you are able to access the data on your internal disk, I would recommend backing up your data first.
erasing your internal disk and doing a clean reinstallation of OS X, running Software Update to bring it up-to-date, and then restoring from your backup maybe the simple way.

if you want to do, you can find a way to fix that. Unfortunately I can not reproduce the problem, so I can not give exact instructions.

BTW: after making a backup, you can try disk utility app to repair disk, maybe it will solve this issue.


How to find recently connected external disks?

The following commands will show you all the external disks which were mounted upon your Mac during the last 7 days (unless you modified the conservation limit of system logs):

grep mounted /var/log/system.log
zgrep mounted /var/log/system.log.*

If you would like to increase your auditing possibility on this sort of event, here is the way (for the ones at ease with the Unix talk):

open the newsyslog configuration file:

/usr/bin/sudo vi /etc/newsyslog.conf

change the following line:

/var/log/system.log                     640  7     *    @T00  J

with:

/var/log/system.log                     640  30    *    @T00  J

(which means keep 30 versions of my old /var/log/syslog files)
save this modified /etc/newsyslog.conf.


How to retrieve notification once I cleared them?

Notifications cleared from the notifications screen (swiping from the top down) cannot be retrieved.


Closing iPhone SE cover does not lock the phone

The desired feature requires hardware support to be built into the device, which iPhone SE doesn’t have. In fact no iPhone support automatic screen lock with cover based cases.

However the same feature is built into modern iPad(s) (iPad 3 and later) when used with compatible cases.

This feature require presence of magnets in both the device and the case. iPhone doesn’t come with build in magnets.

Also, the website for the case in question nowhere mentions support for this feature.


What you're seeing is not "the system" (as a separate entity) using up your CPU time so that "your programs" are not getting their fair share. This is not what happens.
In order to interpret the screenshot, you'll need to know that modern computers are designed to have their work load split between what is known as "user space" and "system space" (also known as kernel space). This is a form of protection.
The programs you're running will have their code running in "user space" consuming "user CPU time". This would involve the various computations and data juggling that your program does by itself.
However most programs do not live on an island. They need to access privileged resources such as a reading files from a disk, sending information on a network, etc. To do this safely, they need to ask the system to perform these tasks for them. In doing so work is transitioned to "system space" and thus taking up "system CPU time".
Activity Monitor shows you this split of your CPU usage. 70% is used in "system space", 20% in "user space" and approx. 10% "idle" in your case.
This does not mean that "the system" is somehow sucking up 70% of the CPU time taking it away from your programs - rather it means your programs have asked the system to do stuff for them - and that takes 70% of the CPU time.
In the top part of Activity Monitor you'll see the percentages of CPU time that each program has used. This percentage is based on the SUM of the process' usage of both user and system CPU time.


How to find source formula of brew package (github repo)?

If your package is in homebrew-core, then you can view the recipe's ruby source and its changes from the homebrew-core repo in the Formula directory

https://github.com/Homebrew/homebrew-core/tree/master/Formula

Unfortunately, finding the recipe for a given brew package on github.com may be tricky, since there's too many dirs and GitHub may truncate or refuse the output.
Instead, you can get and list all the homebrew forumulas with the following commands in zsh:
git clone https://github.com/Homebrew/homebrew-core.git
cd homebrew-core/Formula
find . | grep -i <package>

Then you can show the history of a given formula with git log
For example, I was able to discover that the python@3.7 package in brew changed yesterday:
user@host ~ % git clone https://github.com/Homebrew/homebrew-core.git
Cloning into 'homebrew-core'...
remote: Enumerating objects: 77, done.
remote: Counting objects: 100% (77/77), done.
remote: Compressing objects: 100% (34/34), done.
remote: Total 791472 (delta 51), reused 59 (delta 43), pack-reused 791395
Receiving objects: 100% (791472/791472), 316.25 MiB | 9.55 MiB/s, done.
Resolving deltas: 100% (529456/529456), done.
Updating files: 100% (5476/5476), done.
user@host ~ % cd homebrew-core/Formula
user@host Formula %

user@host Formula % find . | grep -i python
./python-yq.rb
./boost-python.rb
./python-markdown.rb
./app-engine-python.rb
./ipython.rb
./python@3.7.rb
./gst-python.rb
./micropython.rb
./wxpython.rb
./reorder-python-imports.rb
./python@3.8.rb
./boost-python3.rb
user@host ~ %

user@host Formula % git log master -n1 python@3.7.rb
commit 10d3df6c9a263c4e7dea4752a00a1b98ddc9c05a
Author: BrewTestBot <1589480+BrewTestBot@users.noreply.github.com>
Date:   Wed Sep 9 00:40:17 2020 +0000

    python@3.7: update 3.7.9 bottle.
user@host Formula %


brew install ffmpeg sox

#!/bin/bash

for f in *.m4a; do ffmpeg -i "$f" "${f%m4a}wav"; done
sox *.wav combined.wav
ffmpeg -i combined.wav -acodec libfaac -ac 2 -ab 192k combined.m4a
rm *.wav


I have found that creating a "dummy" calendar event on my iPhone will unjam synching issues and force OS X and iOS systems to talk to each other. This is not a very elegant method, but it's effective. Simply delete the fake entry when your Mac and iPhone have shared their respective calendars.


zless/zmore will use /usr/bin/more as the default PAGER unless PAGER is set. Add the following lines to your shell login/env file (bash, ksh, and zsh).

PAGER=/usr/bin/less
export PAGER

For tcsh:

setenv PAGER /usr/bin/less


iPhone shows 1.3GB of photos but I don't have any

I'm pretty sure I have your answer!  I just had the same problem myself.

It seems that the Photos app has a "nice feature" called "Recently Deleted" that CONTINUES TO KEEP deleted photos on your device for a certain period of time.  SO ... Just click on your photos app, then click on its RECENTLY DELETED folder, then empty its contents.

Hope that helps!


Copy and paste from skype includes unwanted characters

As far as I know it is impossible avoid the copy of these weird characters.
But you can remove them using an editor like TextWrangler. TextWrangler has an useful menu option "Text" -> "Zap gremlins".

This options identify and replace:

Non Ascii characters
Control characters
Null (Ascii 0) characters

So, when I cannot avoid to copy from Skype (I suggest to use emails for important text) and I would be sure to remove all weird characters, better paste/zap/copy all the text within TextWrangler.


Disk usage: How to only show max depth folders?

du alone won't help here, but you can combine du with find to accomplish this:

find . -type d -exec sh -c '(ls -p "{}" | grep -q /) || du "{}"' \;

What this does is the following:

find . -type d -exec ... \; finds all directories and executes the part in ... for each of them (with {} getting replaced by the path of the directory)
sh -c '...' executes the ... part in a subshell (because -exec only can execute a binary and doesn't itself know about shell syntax)
(ls -p "{}" | grep -q /) lists all entries within the directory with a / appended if an entry itself is a directory, and then greps silently for lines containing /. We are only interested in the return code of grep here so if you want to manually check what it does run (ls -p "DIR" | grep -q /); echo $? with various DIRs to see the difference between directories containing sub-directories and directories which don't
|| du "{}" gets executed only if the previous part ((...)) did not find any matches (meaning we are in a directory without further directories)

PS: Tip of the hat to https://stackoverflow.com/questions/4269798/use-gnu-find-to-show-only-the-leaf-directories for the essential details.


As you say it is a mess and there is no easy way to undo this as it is difficult to tell which ones were installed from which source.

The ones which should be in /usr/include come from OS X directly or Xcode and its command line tools.

So in theory you can identify which are Homebrew and which are not.

If you could then remove the /usr/local/include link mkdir a new /usr/local/include then mv the Homebrew items from /usr/include to the new dir. Then reinstall OS X and Xcode command line tools (the latter might be sufficient).  However I think this is not going to be doable in practice. So delete the link and directory and reinstall OS X, Xcode command line tools and Homebrew.

If all your builds have /usr/local/include as the first include directory then you won't have any issues but that is ALL builds. (for example python builds that use C in setup should use the same includes python was built with so should use /usr/include)


Upgrading OS X 10.6.8 to Mavericks on MB Air

I think the best option would be to create a bootable USB drive and install from there. But if you need to do it via a local file, I would copy the Upgrader File to the /Applications folder of the MB Air.

Yes, you should make a backup. Especially since you are jumping a couple versions of the OS.

(In truth, I have not had a problem with any of the 30 or 40 upgrades I have done with Mac OS X in the last 4 or 5 years. But I always had a backup, unless I was planning on wiping the system clean. )


Install Apache, PHP and MySQL on Mac w/o MacPorts?

Yes, Apache and PHP already come by default with a Mac OS X installation, and you can download an installer for MySQL on their website.

For a configuration guide, have a look at this related answer:

How to turn Mac OS X Lion into a web server?

The linked answer also applies to Mac OS X Snow Leopard.

Another popular (and imo superior) way of running development environments is running a Linux server with your preferred configuration in a VirtualBox virtual machine. Vagrant makes this workflow even easier. This is a very flexible solution, as you can easily add custom extensions and more specifically for one project, without messing with one centralized install.


Solution for logging into PC with macbook, using PC speakers to play music

In my experience, the performance and quality of Microsoft's Remote Desktop (free) is the best in the industry.  This isn't a personal preference but rather a trial and error using many other remote desktop apps.

In short...

Using Microsoft Remote Desktop 10 or higher, there should be a new option to play music on the remote machine.  Once toggled, I believe you'll get what you're looking for.. This is accessible through the + icon (new connection) or the ✏ icon (existing connection).

As an aside, there are some nuances to using RDP, some of which are shortcuts.  I would love the option to disable ⌘ + w, ⌘ + q as I tend to hit them on accident intending Ctrl + w, etc... but it'll only close the RDP session, not the stuff that's running on the remote machine.

The long...

Disclaimer: The solutions below may look subjective, but they're objectively evaluated for the requirement of 1. Free or not free.  2. Secure.  3. Play sounds on the remote computer.

VNC: (free and commercial) Comes in many variants (macOS built-in, TightVNC, UltraVNC, etc). Offers secure and insecure options.
Performance is the worst I've used but is viable on a very fast network.
Splashtop: Secure.  Cloud-based so you can get to it anywhere.  Performance is better than VNC.  Requests are routed through the cloud, so can be slower than other solutions on a LAN.  Linux support is still experimental
GoToMeeting, WebEx, AnyDesk, etc: Online meeting apps are great (performance, options, audio), but often contain tools designed for group voice conversations (dedicated phone number, etc), making remote access a toggleable feature, not ideal hoops to jump through each for a dedicated remote desktop.
TeamViewer (free and commercial): Secure.  Great quality, speed.  Universal solution on Linux, Windows, macOS.  Cloud-based so may perform worse than LAN-driven solutions like RDP and VNC, however in my experience out-performs VNC.
Microsoft RDP (free): Secure.  Performs best when connecting to a Windows machine.  Historically LAN-driven, but Azure's rise in success makes it more attractive over WAN too (popular choice for Windows Server).  Performance, speed and quality are the best if a Windows machine is what's being connected to.

RDP even has support for streaming content and some compositing, which is very nice for video playback as well as for a curated Windows 7+ compositioned desktop experience (thumbnailing, transparency, etc).

For your needs I believe RDP is the way to go, especially since they've offered the option to keep audio routed through the Windows machine, which wasn't available back in Remote Desktop 8.


Assign the launchPad hotkey to another Application

This isn't an ideal answer, but might be good enough:

Go to System Preferences > Keyboard > Keyboard
Check "Use all F1, F2, etc. keys as standard function keys"
Go to System Preferences > Keyboard > Shortcuts
Set F3 to "display application windows"
Set the other functions on the f-keys to their default (e.g. whichever f-key your keyboard has for play/pause, mine is F8 will be set to iTunes Play/Pause)

This will let you set the F keys to the functions you want and you won't have to press fn to access them.


Running a command via SSH on the Mac causes exception; works fine when directly connected

I found that I needed to unlock the security keychain:

Mac-mini:~ gravelld$ security unlock-keychain
password to unlock default:
Mac-mini:~ gravelld$ codesign -s "Developer ID Application: My Name" -f /path/to/appfile/mounted/elsewhere.app
/path/to/appfile/mounted/elsewhere.app: replacing existing signature
Mac-mini:~ gravelld$

Success! Hope this helps someone.


How to extend the time that a screenshot remains on screen on macOS Mojave?

I know this is slightly off-topic and not quite a direct solution to your question, but this option may be of interest to you. You mentioned taking screenshots for tutorials… . I use Take screenshot selection, upload to imgur. + more cool things almost exclusively.

The imgur-screenshot utility, straight out of the box without configuring any options, uploads the screenshot to Imgur , opens a browser window of the uploaded screenshot (for easy access if you need to manipulate the image), copies the URL of the screenshot to your clipboard, and also stores a local copy of the image.

I actually created an AppleScript application, and included.. imgur-screenshot.sh into a script libraries folder in the application bundle…

on imgur_screenshot()
    set imgUR to (path to me as string) & "Contents:Resources:Script Libraries:imgur-screenshot.sh"
    set imgUR to imgUR as alias
    set imgUR to POSIX path of imgUR
    set imgUR to quoted form of imgUR
    do shell script imgUR
end imgur_screenshot

imgur_screenshot()

From here, with enhanced dictation enabled, I selected the new AppleScript application in Finder, and simply spoke the command “Make This Speakable”, and configured the newly created dictation command… now anytime I need to take a screenshot, I simply say “Upload Screenshot” which sets the whole process in motion


Does deleting a photo from iCloud on PC affect its copy on iPhone storage?

If the only copy on the phone is in Photo Stream or iCloud Photo Library then yes, if you delete it somewhere, it will be removed everywhere you are signed in to iCloud.

If you haven't subscribed to iCloud Photo Library, then you may still have the Camera Roll in the photos app, in this case the photo would remain in there, if it was taken on the iPhone originally.


Applescript to change desktop image on all monitors?

The previous answers look great, but I wanted to share a way I found to do this with much less code.

tell application "System Events"
    tell every desktop
        set picture to "path/to/picture.png"
    end tell
end tell

You could even condense it to one line:

tell application "System Events" to tell every desktop to set picture to "path/to/picture.png"


Using the built-in macOS modifier key options, fn can be remapped to another key, but no other key can be remapped to fn.
You can provide feedback to Apple at https://www.apple.com/feedback/macos.html.


How do I detect an iPhone user on my website?

Don't.

The only reasons to ever have a separate mobile site are cheapness and laziness.

The right approach is to have your visitors all get the same content; the only thing that should change how that content is styled—and doing that doesn't need a separate site, or even a special page.

If your next question is "Can iWeb do that?," the answer is that I doubt it, because iWeb just isn't meant to be a professional web development tool. If you're looking for an alternative, I recommend TextWrangler—it's both better and cheaper.

References:1

How to Make Your Website Mobile Today, InfoWorld, 20 September 2010
Mobilizing Your Web Site, Users Conference session at Macworld Expo 2011, 28 January 2011

1 Yes, they're both me.


How can I avoid permission-related failures when importing in Photos.app via AppleScript?

Based on this from an old Applescript Release Notes on sandboxing…

  When sending commands to a sandboxed application, such as TextEdit in OS X Mountain Lion, parameters that refer to files must be of an explicit file-like type and not a bare string, or the target application will not be able to access the file. For example, file "Macintosh HD:Users:me:sample.txt", POSIX file "/Users/me/sample.txt", or the result of choose file would all be acceptable, but the string "/Users/me/sample.txt" would not.

&

  Note: As mentioned under Compatibility above, sandboxed applications will not be able to access files referred to in commands using a string path. Any parameters or properties in your application that refer to files should be declared as type file, and not type text. Apple Event Manager will add sandbox extensions to events that have file-like parameters, but only if the parameter is of a recognized file-like type: typeAlias, typeFileURL, cFile, and so on. Without these extensions, the file will not be accessible from the target application’s sandbox, and the command will probably fail.

It would seem that the 'fix' is to use POSIX file to prevent the sandbox issue

After some hammering at how to make Applescript work with POISIX file of a list, I came up with this…

tweaked

set theList to {"/Volumes/Downloads/ScreenShot.png", "/Volumes/Downloads/ScreenShot2.png", "/Volumes/Downloads/ScreenShot3.png"}
set l to {}
repeat with f in theList
    set l to l & (POSIX file f)
end repeat
tell application "Photos" to import l

It ain't perfect, as every import is a new one, but it works.
Now works in one import.


Does Apple's license for OS X allow it to be virtualized on an HP PC?

Lion is the first Mac OS X to license some virtualization on the non-server OS.

From the 10.7 EULA:

(iii) to install, use and run up to two (2) additional copies or instances of the Apple Software within virtual operating system environments on each Mac Computer you own or control that is already running the Apple Software.

Notice the condition, though: it's only allowed on Mac hardware when running Lion as the host OS.  There are also provisions for installing it over Snow Leopard macs.

Running it on HP hardware would likely be a violation of the license as written. Check with your lawyer as always when the question of legality is involved since any license has to respect your local laws.


If it's not apparent, this is just a guess. But hopefully it gives you some leads.

First, here's what you can figure out just from the program name. If you run the command /bin/ls /usr/libexec | sort -f | egrep '.*d$' (this print all files in /usr/libexec ending in d), you'll find ftpd, hidd, networkd, systemstatsd, and a lot of programs ending in d. The "d" stands for "daemon", which basically means a helper process that always runs in the background. The sec very likely stands for "security". So secd is the "security daemon". Which makes sense because you said it looks like it works with keychain stuff.

What's the point of daemons? Some daemons stay running to either do some ongoing task. hidd ("human interface device daemon"), for example, is the process responsible for handling mouse/keyboard/trackpad input. Some other daemons do some common tasks that many other programs need. Apps can simply tell the daemon to do something instead of having code to do it themselves. So secd probably does something like this, but related to the keychain.

But what exactly? It looks like it doesn't actually handle normal use of the keychain, since I was still able to use the keychain after I disabled the secd LaunchAgent.

Inspecting the LaunchAgent gives us a clue:

It looks like secd is responsible for syncing the keychain with iCloud?

So what should you do? Try one or more of these:

If you don't need iCloud keychain syncing, turn it off in iCloud preferences.
Use launchctl to disable secd if it doesn't seem to adversely affect anything.
If you need iCloud keychain syncing, see if you have a ton of keychain items, and remove the ones you don't need.
Perhaps rebuild your keychain (make a new keychain, move items you need into it, and move it over the older one), in case there are unnecessary artifacts left over in the old keychain.


Trying to install Snow Leopard from .cdr but nothing happens after reload

Burn the contents of the .cdr image back to a DVD. To do this, insert blank DVD-R or DVD-RW, launch Disk Utility (located in the folder Applications > Utilities) and press Cmd-B. Then select the .cdr file in the file selection dialog … That's the easiest way.

But if you have no Mac with DVD burner at hand, you will need to create a bootable USB flash drive (at least 8 GB capacity). You will have to use Disk Utility to first re-partition and format the flash drive with the 'GUID partition scheme' and the 'Mac OS X Extended (journaled)' format (HFS+, journaled). This makes the flash drive a bootable medium. Then use the Restore feature of Disk Utility to copy the contents of the .cdr image to the drive.

Alternatively, you can also buy the Snow Leopard DVD which Apple still sells  for $20.

See: Starting from an external USB storage device (Intel-based Macs)


Set image from iTunes Extras's gallery as desktop picture

The easiest way would be to take a screenshot of the image. This is accomplished by pressing Cmd-Shift-4 and selecting the outline of the rectangle that you want to capture with the mouse.


Which Remote Desktop works with Control Keys?

I would recommend RealVNC VNC Viewer.

It allows the capability to use all the keys on a real keyboard (command, control, option, etc.), even the function keys. Almost any remote deskop application out there uses VNC to handle the screen sharing. VNC Viewer works just fine with Apple Remote Desktop and Bonjour, Terminal, Xterm, and iTerm2 — just open port 5900.

*There's a free version, and a full version (normally $10 for iOS), although the full version is free at this very moment, so grab it while you can.


Don't wake up external hard disk when saving to internal one

possibilities.

A: Unmount the disk from the command line.

diskutil unmountDisk Lacie

would be the command to unmount a disk that has a file system named Lacie on it.
You can also refer to the device itself, but devices can vary from one mount to another.  unmountDisk will take any file system name as the object but will unmount all other file systems if the drive has more than one.

Then, when you want to do a backup,

 diskutil mount Lacie

You also need to disable spotlight from indexing this drive.


Apple powerbook G4 17" Trying to install Linux

I am pretty sure the Powerbooks don't boot from USB drives. You'll need to burn a CD.

I'm going to assume that you downloaded Ubuntu from the homepage at Ubuntu.com, which will give you ISOs for Intel (x86 and x64) processors. Since your computer has a PowerPC processor, you will need to download that ISO: Ubuntu's wiki for installing on PowerPC

Edit - Someone on the Ubuntu forums says you should be sure to download the livecd version and set arguments for loading the kernel:

  Be sure to down load the powerpc live disk. 8.04.1 will give you the least trouble with booting. On my Ibook I have to press the tab key as the first words come up as it begins to boot. This takes you to a screen with some options to load the kernel. The one that works for me is "linux-nosplash-powerpc".


Applescript to get track number of song from multi-cd album in iTunes?

Personally I do not have much of a need, if any, to automate iTunes with AppleScript. In the past I've found iTunes to be one of the more difficult apps to automate. Nonetheless, I took a look at your code, the AppleScript Dictionary for iTunes, a few web searches that basically yielded nothing noteworthy, and some failed programmatic attempts to easily get a list of discs and track count for each disc of an album.

I'll assume the kludge context in your question is because there is no easy direct way to programmatically ask an album for its disc count and track count per disc to do the math with, in a straight forward manner. So with that... here's my kludge, which was tested and works as desired on my iTunes Library:

tell application "iTunes"
    try

        set theCurrentTrackProperties to (properties of current track)

        if (disc number in theCurrentTrackProperties) is not greater than 1 then

            set theSongName to (name in theCurrentTrackProperties)
            set theTrackNumber to (track number in theCurrentTrackProperties)
            set theTrackCount to (track count in theCurrentTrackProperties)

            log theSongName & " (" & theTrackNumber & " of " & theTrackCount & ")"

        else

            set theSongName to (name in theCurrentTrackProperties)
            set theTrackNumber to (track number in theCurrentTrackProperties)
            set theTrackCount to (count of (every track whose album = (album in theCurrentTrackProperties)))

            set theDiscNumber to (disc number in theCurrentTrackProperties)
            set theAlbumsTracksProperties to (properties of every track whose album = (album in theCurrentTrackProperties))

            set theAlbumsDiscNumberTrackCountInfo to ""
            repeat with i from 1 to (count of theAlbumsTracksProperties)
                tell item i in theAlbumsTracksProperties
                    set theAlbumsDiscNumberTrackCountInfo to (theAlbumsDiscNumberTrackCountInfo & disc number & space & track count & linefeed)
                end tell
            end repeat
            tell current application
                set theAlbumsDiscNumberTrackCountInfo to (do shell script "sort -n -k1 -u <<<" & quoted form of theAlbumsDiscNumberTrackCountInfo & " | sed '/^$/d'")
                set theTracksPerDiscCount to ""
                repeat with i from 1 to (theDiscNumber - 1)
                    set theTracksPerDiscCount to (theTracksPerDiscCount + (word 2 of paragraph i in theAlbumsDiscNumberTrackCountInfo))
                end repeat
                set theTrackNumber to (theTrackNumber + theTracksPerDiscCount)
            end tell

            log theSongName & " (" & theTrackNumber & " of " & theTrackCount & ")"

        end if

    on error eStr number eNum
        display dialog eStr & " number " & eNum buttons {"OK"} default button 1 with icon caution
        return
    end try
end tell

The example AppleScript code, shown above, does the following:

Sets the properties of the current track to the variable theCurrentTrackProperties.
Checks to see if the value of the disc number property in the variable, theCurrentTrackProperties, is not greater than 1.
If the value of the disc number property is not greater than 1, it's straight forward processing and logs the desired information.
If the value of the disc number property is greater than 1, then the else branch preforms the kludge to do the math, and logs the desired information.

What the kludge does:

Sets some additional initial variables.

One for the value of the disc number property of the current track,theDiscNumber, is used to determine how many discs the track count is needed for.
Another to hold the properties of every track of every disc in the album, theAlbumsTracksProperties.

The value of the variable, theAlbumsTracksProperties, is processed in a repeat loop to which the output of is held in the variable theAlbumsDiscNumberTrackCountInfo.

The variable theAlbumsDiscNumberTrackCountInfo, is a list of the disc number and track count from every track in the album.

This list is then processed to remove all duplicate info, so as to have a singular entry for the track count of each disc number in the album.

The do shell script command uses sort and sed to process the list, the value of the variable theAlbumsDiscNumberTrackCountInfo.

sort -n -k1 -u <<<

-n compare according to string numerical value
-k1 start a key at POS1
-u without -c, output only the first of an equal run
<<< directs input from the command line, not a file

theAlbumsDiscNumberTrackCountInfo the list as command line input directed to sort
| sed '/^$/d'

| pipe the output of the sort command to sed
sed '/^$/d' delete blank lines
Because the value of the variable theAlbumsDiscNumberTrackCountInfo is a concatenation with a linefeed at the end of each repeat loop, it becomes the first line of output from the sort command and is removed with sed, so as not to have to account for the leading blank line later in the script. If it was left as a part of value of the variable theAlbumsDiscNumberTrackCountInfo, that's (re)set by the return of the do shell script command, then word 2 of paragraph i would have to be word 2 of paragraph (i + 1) in order to skip the leading blank line. So it makes more sense to remove it before it ends up as part of the final value of the variable theAlbumsDiscNumberTrackCountInfo.

With the variable, theAlbumsDiscNumberTrackCountInfo, now only containing a list of disk number with its corresponding track count, one line for each disc in the album, it's now easy to do the math, whether the album contains 2 discs or as many as 14 discs, or more.
The remaining AppleScript code, which includes another repeat loop, preforms the math necessary to add up the track count of each disc number preceding the disc number the current track is from, and adds them together, and then logs the desired information.

That said, if anyone knows an easy direct way to programmatically ask an album for its disc count and track count per disc to do the math with, in a straight forward manner to avoid a kludge, please post an answer.


There should be a small blue bar in the bottom of the URL field that indicates that a page is loading.

It should look like this:

I'm not aware of any loading indicator in the Status Bar. As far as I know, the status bar only display the link's full address when holding the pointer over a link (Apple Support Article).


Initially, the indexers have to process the entire disk so there are hours (days) to take one pass to index all files.

Steady, state the kernel and system indexes all files as they are written so newly created files and files copied in are basically indexed real time.

You can see this in action by having spotlight in finder search a nonsense string that doesn’t exist. Then open text edit and past that string into a file and save it to your desktop - watching the finder window update to show that file.


Where did this iCloud profile avatar come from?

I asked her (without giving away why) if she’s used this as a profile picture elsewhere and she told me it’s the pic on her YouTube profile. I added her Google  email address as a secondary email (for account recovery) when I created her iCloud account, so Apple must have scraped her Google account for a profile picture.


How do I format a disk partition from the command line on OS X?

diskutil list

In my case I wanted to format the parition as NTFS for installing Windows 7 on it. The last parameter is the partition 4 on first disk.

diskutil eraseVolume "Tuxera NTFS" my-ntfs disk0s4


Just in case anyone stumbles upon this question, I did figure it out:

sudo chflags -Rv nouchg

This command recursively strips finder file locks from a directory.


How to find if a USB has been plugged in on a certain date?

In Linux, there is a USB subsystem which creates system log events.

So it can tell you what was plugged into your PC. But it can’t in general tell whether it's a USB stick or something else connected to a PC, unless some files were changed. While USB sticks and SD cards are usually formatted as VFAT for compatibility, there’s no reason they can’t be formatted with a more powerful filesystem such as EXT3 or NTFS. In which case, if a USB stick was mounted read-write and not “noatime”, the file access timestamp would indicate if a file had been read, or if a directory had been accessed by a graphical desktop to create folder icons.

Since this is built-in to Linux and is part of the USB specification, it must be possible to get the same level of detail in other operating systems using an appropriate application.


Can't connect to SMB share after Sierra upgrade

Try connecting with cifs://x.x.x.x/MEDIA/
Worked for me!


How can I record the screen and the rear camera on an iPhone simultaneously?

In the absence of an app that allows overlaying screen recording and a rear camera recording simultaneously (odd why the app makers didn't provide an option to select the rear camera instead of just the front facing camera), here is a workaround I found.

Record the screen recording using the iOS screen recorder
Record the rear camera video using the iOS camera app
Download iMovie from the App Store and overlay the two recordings together (split, picture in picture etc).

Here is a video tutorial I found on YouTube which explains how to combine/overlay two recordings/videos using iMovie on iOS.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D_qx75zTjr0

I'm not marking this as the answer as this is not my ideal scenario, it would have been nice to have an app do it, but it's a workaround for now.


unable to pair my 2014 Muse headband to my 2015 macbook pro

This means that your Mac has remembered you connecting to it before but it is currently not in range. Try restarting the device or bringing it closer.

The Bluetooth is working as connect appears on the other device.


Is it possible to pre-install apps on an iPad?

Contact your local Apple Store and ask to speak to one of their Business Consultants (each store has one.)  If you are buying bulk quantities of iPods Apple used to offer digital etching of your company logo on the back as well as the ability to preload it with promotional content (e.g. videos), I am not sure if they are doing this with Apps on the iPad but it is worth a shot and the Business Consultant is the person who would know or have the resources to find out.


How to add a quick-launch icon in my Dock for a program I've downloaded?

You can use AppleScript to make a .app file for this (That is the only file type that can go in the left side of the dock). It is in /Applications/Utilities/AppleScript Editor and when you make a new file you can put in do shell script "/Applications/apache-jmeter-2.11/bin/jmeter". I do this all the time for shell scripts, so I can access them easily. Then you can save and choose "app" near the bottom of the Save sheet. This will create an app file that you can put in, say, the folder above bin which can be dragged into the Dock.

tell app "Terminal"
    activate
    do script "/Applications/apache-jmeter-2.11/bin/jmeter"
end

is what you will need if jmeter writes to the terminal.


I found the solution, right after posting...

Go to Safari → Preferences → Advanced → Show Full Website URL


Create a .pkg file from a .dmg in order to be used for auto-install ( Casper Composer )

Try http://resources.jamfsoftware.com/documents/products/documentation/Composer-9.7-User-Guide.pdf page 12:

Composer allows you to rebuild an existing package (PKG, DMG, or MPKG) by converting it to a package source. After converting it to a package source, you can make changes to its contents and save a new copy of the package.

Open Composer and authenticate locally.
Drag the package you want to convert from the Finder to the sidebar in Composer.
The package appears under the Packages heading.
Select the package and click Convert to Source.
When the conversion is complete, a new package source is listed in the sidebar under the Sources
heading.


Why does a "SAMSUNG_Android" network service keep appearing?

This looks like someone near you has a Samsung Android device with the ability to create a personal WiFi hotspot.

Your computer WiFi is able to detect this so will add it to your list of available networks. You might try disabling the prompt to join new networks if you don't want your Mac polling for open and closed hotspots and cluttering up your network connection profile if you cannot isolate or control for the source of this hotspot.


About this Mac shows wrong graphics on Macbook pro 15" late 2011

You could try using gfxCardStatus which will show you in your menu bar which chipset is currently active and let you specify one or the other.
Current MacBook Pros dynamically switch between their two different graphics chipsets depending upon system load and currently active application; for example, the tech specs page of the current MacBook Pro lists the following:

Intel HD Graphics 4000
NVIDIA GeForce GT 650M with 1GB of GDDR5
memory and automatic graphics switching


Tool to monitor home network traffic & stats?

You could put a hub on the outgoing port (ensuring all packets are visible) and hook a Mac up along with the modem and router WAN connection.

Your mac could then run Wireshark to perform deep packet inspection and analysis on all the traffic for as long as you care to collect the statistics.


The simple solution

Create a new admin account, then use it to delete your personal account(s).

When you delete a user, you have the option of performing a "secure erase" on their home directory:

Assuming you haven't stored any personal files outside of your home directory, this will do the trick.

The paranoid solution

If you want to be really thorough, the only way to ensure that none of your personal data remains is to securely wipe the drive. You can do this from Disk Utility by clicking "Security Options" on the "Erase" tab:

After that, reinstall your applications. None of your personal data will remain.


iPad remote management, but not on apples DEP

Check out What's new in DEP from WWDC17. All devices can now be enrolled into DEP regardless of purchase source. Apple Configurator will allow you to provision any device for DEP however these device will be put into a 30 day trial period where the device will display a warning on the lock screen and can be un enrolled at any time.


Help me reset the terminal after sudo command mistake

In step 2 you copied the original hosts file to a backup location at ~/Documents/hosts-backup (i.e. in your documents folder).

All you should need to do is rename that file to hosts and then copy it to /private/etc/hosts (overwriting the edited file) to undo any damage that you may have done.

However if you only got to Step 3 you may not even have edited the file yet - in which case a reboot should be sufficient.


Continuous Scrolling Through Desktops on Lion

Alas, this feature was removed along with some others when apple moved from Expose/Spaces to Mission Control.


Stop process from preventing sleep on OS X

There are dozens of things that can prevent sleep built into macOS, and third party software can also disable sleep.

The first troubleshooting step is to run this command in Terminal:

pmset -g assertions

That will list the reasons your Mac is not currently asleep. Normally running on battery power you should get:

Assertion status system-wide:
   BackgroundTask                 0
   ApplePushServiceTask           0
   UserIsActive                   1
   PreventUserIdleDisplaySleep    0
   PreventSystemSleep             0
   ExternalMedia                  0
   PreventUserIdleSystemSleep     0
   NetworkClientActive            0

[further details removed for brevity]

Which means the only reason your mac isn't sleeping is due to user activity on the mouse/keyboard.

If you see something else (like PreventUserIdleSystemSleep) then your mac probably won't sleep at all and you should read the other details provided by pmset -g assertions to investigate further.


My answer to the question: What is the modern way to do port-forwarding on El Capitan? (forward port 80 to 8080) is still valid.

You have several frictions/misconfigurations in your setup though:

There is no need to establish an additional network address (i.e. 10.0.0.1) for lo0 if you don't have a second http/https host.
A redirection:

rdr pass on lo0 inet proto tcp from any to 10.0.0.1 port = 80 -> 127.0.0.1 port 3000

will only redirect a request for 10.0.0.1:80 to 127.0.0.1:3000.

A request for localhost:80 (which translates to 127.0.0.1:80 and not to 10.0.0.1:80) won't be redirected because there is no appropriate rdr ... line and you will get a connection error.
Even adding the line 10.0.0.1    localhost to /etc/hosts will not salvage your problem because localhost seems to be hard coded to 127.0.0.1.

To get your redirection working unload pf.conf with sudo pfctl -d. Then check your anchor and pf.conf:

rdr pass log (all) on lo0 inet proto tcp from any to any port 80 -> 127.0.0.1 port 3000
rdr pass log (all) on lo0 inet proto tcp from any to any port 443 -> 127.0.0.1 port 7000

and

...
scrub-anchor "com.apple/*"
nat-anchor "com.apple/*"
rdr-anchor "com.apple/*"
rdr-anchor "myorganization"
dummynet-anchor "com.apple/*"
anchor "com.apple/*"
load anchor "com.apple" from "/etc/pf.anchors/com.apple"
load anchor "myorganization" from "/etc/pf.anchors/myorganization"

Then parse/check myorganization  with sudo pfctl -vnf /etc/pf.anchors/myorganization and load pf.conf with sudo pfctl -evf /etc/pf.conf.

In some rare cases you may have to add an additional line:

::1     127.0.0.1

to your /etc/hosts file. This doesn't seem logical though and may apply to older Sierra versions only. I haven't been able to confirm this.


Terminal Command

Alternatively, if you like Terminal commands (for scripting or BetterTouchTool gestures), you can set scroll bars to always be shown with the following command:

defaults write -g AppleShowScrollBars -string Always

To reset this, you can use the following command:

defaults write -g AppleShowScrollBars -string WhenScrolling

You may have to restart the app (or Finder: killall -HUP Finder) for the change to take effect.

Per App Setting

As well as being set globally, these Terminal commands can be used to change the scroll bars specifically per app.

defaults write com.apple.Terminal AppleShowScrollBars -string Always

Replace com.apple.Terminal with the bundle identifier of the app that you want to change.


What version of Mac Mini supports Leopard 10.5.8?

Yes Leopard supports all Intel and all PowerPC based machines over a minimum CPU speed and the original Power PC minus are in that ranges. Apple doc

Snow Leopard (10.6) only supports Intel based machines


To solve the problem you state, Dropbox would allow you to upload all the photos from two devices to one account (or two accounts) and then set up folder actions on a Mac to combine, import and delete the photos from the dropbox storage.

There isn't any "mix these two" photostreams function in iPhoto or Aperture and the web interface doesn't have any functionality to match that as well.

There is a way to push photos (manually) to a shared photo stream, and then both of you would see the same content in that stream, but it's designed for one person to push - not for several to collaborate and publish together.

The pragmatic solution is to set a calendar reminder once a month for both of you to export the pictures. I let iPhoto automatically import all pictures from my Photo Stream and it conveniently makes a November 2012 Photo Stream event and I export those original photos to my archive drive that sits on a shelf other than when it's time to archive. Rather than archiving (or perhaps in addition to), you would then do the steps needed to export and import the batch of photos into the library you chose to contain both pictures.

This both isn't automatic and also means that photos will be potentially duplicated if the library holding the merged content is different than the library that received the stream from iCloud.


Homebrew breaks with gcc out-of-date after Lion OSX install

Until all the kinks get worked out, you'll want to track 10.7 and Xcode 4.x issues at https://github.com/mxcl/homebrew/issues

In this case, be sure you actively manage your $PATH variable to keep your preferred versions of redundant apps first in the expansion.

Always hard coding full paths is tedious, but lack of it causes these bumps when new binaries show up in your path unexpectedly.


Tell your Mac Gatekeeper, you are the Boss and responsible for your actions and decisions.

Open the Terminal app from the /Applications/Utilities/ folder and then enter the following command syntax:

sudo spctl --master-disable

Hit return and authenticate with an admin password

That should now allow you to download and install non Apple apps, by selecting it in the System Pref > Security


Is there a way to run Safari 5 or 6 on Mavericks?

You already know the answer based on the link you provided.

  Safari is Integral part of OS X.

  That is way you can not run other versions on Mavericks for example.

  The link you provided clearly shows the compatibility.

Quote:
 Will not work, per Multi-Safari website: "Safari normally uses the Web Kit framework found inside Mac OS X to render web pages and execute javascript. This means that if you preserve an old version of Safari to run it on a newer version of Mac OS, it will use the newer Web Kit found in the system and you will get the same results as with the newer version. Thus, you would normally need a separate installation of Mac OS X for each version of Safari you want to test a website into." –  php_on_rails May 7 at 15:27

The solution is to have appropriate OS installed (you can have multiple OS installed) as explained here.


Before iOS 7 this was not possible or feasible since iTunes would restore an image of the OS that would be free from any locking. Now there is Activation Lock which neatly pre-empts any attempt to remove the Find My iPhone feature of iCloud. Effectively, with Find my iPhone, your device is effectively locked to your Apple ID.

For iOS 7 and later - enable Find My iPhone to prevent anyone else from erasing or using the device.

  If my iOS 6 or less iPhone is stolen, can I remotely brick the thing, so resale value drops to zero?

No.

The best you can do is to wipe the data from the device with an app like Find My iPhone from Apple or the open source Prey application. The device will no longer contain your applications or personal data, but it will still function normally and the thief could then initialize it for their own use.

  For apps like Apple's Find My Phone, how feasible is it for a thief to remove the apps?

Without wiping the device? Hard to impossible. And that's the whole point of these applications: to keep your data safe and the cost of losing the hardware. You're essentially cleaning it for them and getting it ready for their use or resale. But you're ensuring that they can't gain access to your personal data, your PayPal account, your bank accounts and anything else you might have your phone connected to.

In the UK, cell phone carriers will blacklist phones that are reported stolen so they can't be used on the network again. The bigger UK carriers do it. Not sure how common a practice it is in North America, or if carriers here are willing to do it all.


OS python scripts will use the default as the scripts look for /usr/bin/python not the one on the path.

If you want python at the command prompt to use 2.6 I would remove /Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.7/bin/ from the path.

To get the bare 2.7 python you will need to use the full path.

If virtualenv is not installed for 2.7 you need easy_install - which should be in /Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.7/bin /Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.7/bin/easy_install virtualenv(if that is not there you should add distribute or setuptools.)

To create a 2/7 vitualenv run /Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.7/bin/python virtualenv.py ENV then running ENV/bin/python gives you the 2.7 version - as would running the activate script to add the virtualenv python to the from of your path for the rest of the Terminal session.


Seagate External Hard Drive locked, can only read not write

Seagate provides an OEM-version of Paragon's Microsoft NTFS for Mac. The software is availbale at: Paragon Driver for macOS (10.10 and above). Direct link: NTFS_for_Mac

The installer build date is Sep 12, 2019. The installer's info.plist indicates compatibility:

MACOSX_MAX_VERSION 10.15

After downloading and installing it (and probably rebooting your Mac), you should have normal access to the NTFS volume again.

This OEM-version only works for Seagate drives!


Safari not able to reproduce 8k video from youtube

With Chrome you can play it. It looks like Safari is not compatible with 8k.


This is how you do it: Capturing streaming video in OSX Lion.
It's basically the same method as in the post you referred to, with the difference being that you access the file through the activity window in Safari instead of navigating to the temp file in Finder.


Update 200 multiple devices with the same specs at the same time?

One option would be to update the iOS directly on the iPod Touch (if you haven't disabled that option), otherwise you can speed up the process by connecting multiple devices to your Mac at once and update them in one go.

This can be done with multiple USB-Lightning cables plugged directly in to the computer, or by using USB hubs. A more expensive solution would be to buy a dedicated syncing/charging-station. These types of products often allow you to lock multiple iOS devices inside a cage or similar, and have them all easily charge and/or connected to a single Mac for syncing/updating. They come in various sizes for holding for example 4 devices, 16 devices, etc.


after waking from sleep native screen in clamshell mode wakes up and takes dock

The first things I'd try are to reset both the NVRAM and SMC in that order. Before following the steps below, ensure you have no external hardware connected (so, unplug your external display) and make sure you use the built-in keyboard.

Reset the NVRAM

Older Macs had what's called Parameter RAM (PRAM), newer Macs use Non-Volatile Random-Access Memory (NVRAM). Here’s how to reset the NVRAM on your particular MBP:

Shut down your machine. Yes, a full shut down, not just logging out.
Press the power button and then press the commandoptionpr keys. You have to make sure you press these keys before the gray screen appears or it won’t work.
Hold those keys down until your Mac reboots again and you here the startup chime.
Let go of the keys and let your Mac reboot normally.

Note: When you log back in you may need to readjust some of your system preferences (e.g. speaker volume, screen resolution, startup disk selection, time zone information, etc).

Reset the SMC

To reset the SMC on your particular MBP, follow these steps:

Shut down your computer
Keep the MagSafe adapter (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.

After resetting both the NVRAM and SMC, use your computer to determine if the issue still persists.


You want Doug's AppleScripts for iTunes. Simply download the scripts and put them in:

~/Library/iTunes/Scripts

Note: You'll likely have to create the folder. From there, you'll see the scripts pop in the iTunes menu.

His scripts cover everything from modifying play count to find and replace specific words in a song's given field.


how do I change the F3 and F4 to copy and paste?

Open System Preferences->Keyboard. Disable F3 first:

Then add an application keyboard shortcut:

Make sure that the text matches the menu item exactly ("Copy" in your case).

PS: Repeat for Paste/F4


The size of the photos will depend on the camera and the size of the images. I have photos on my Mac that run from a few hundred kB to around 4 MB. My backup folder for my Photos has more than 2000 photos and takes up 2.5 GB but I have no movies. I would check the difference in the size of the cameras in the 2 phones. They are probably the same but I don't recall. A 12 MP camera will take images that require more size than a 5 MP camera.

That being said, while 32 GB is probably fine for you, I would opt for the 64 GB option. You never know what your interests will be in the future, and you can't increase the size of your memory on an iPhone. You may decide you like to make movies with your iPhone which takes up much more space (think 30 images per sec for a 10-sec movie) or you decide you want to edit your photos or movies which could mean downloading apps. The 64 GB option allows your iPhone content to grow in more areas. This is just my opinion.


As a workaround, Safari does what I need with some differences.


Track last known location of iPad mini (2) without "Find My Phone"

If you have not set up any tracking service, then you will not be able to track the device. The device does not save its location history to the cloud without such a service being set up.

If your iPad had a SIM card, you can able to talk to the provider who may be able to tell you where the device is — not as accurate as GPS but will give you an idea of the country at the very least.

You're not going to be able to 'block' the iPad either since you haven't activated Find my iPhone, but the SIM card provider can block the SIM card.


Does iTunes Home Sharing transfer in-app purchases?

Firstly, you must bear in mind that each In-App Purchase is uniquely associated with an Apple ID and that there are different In-App Purchase types:

Consumable - You need to purchase these items every time you want them, and you can't download them again for free.
Non-Consumable - You purchase these items one time, and you can transfer them to multiple devices authorized with the same iTunes Store account.
Non-renewing Subscriptions - You can purchase these items again after the subscription period ends.
Auto-Renewable Subscriptions - You can purchase these items with different renewal periods.

There are, therefore, differences in the way the availability of the product is handled.

As stated on Apple's iTunes Store: About In-App Purchases:

  You can't sync or transfer non-renewing subscriptions and consumable In-App Purchase to another iOS device or Mac. You can transfer non-consumable In-App Purchases and auto-renewable subscriptions to another iOS device or Mac authorized with your iTunes Store account. For example, if you transfer a game from an iPhone to an iPod touch, only the game levels will sync, and the extra ammo and experience points won't transfer.


I was curious about this myself and started by looking in Activity Monitor, found that "launchd" was the service that kicked off the Yahoo Contacts Sync.  After some googl'ing I found out that custom scripts for launchd get executed from the ~(user)/Library/LaunchAgents folder.  In there, you'll find the culprit -- at least, I did.  Now I dunno if I should simply delete them (since I don't care about syncing contacts, I don't use the Mail.app) or if I can just disable it by tweaking the plist file.  Hope that helps!

EDIT: I discovered that going into the AddressBook.app preferences and unchecking the accounts listed caused the plist files to be removed.  If you check them again, they reappear.  Works for me!  :)


App Store email varies from Apple ID, where can this be set up on iPad Pro

When setting up your iPad, there's a button on the Apple ID login page to log in with separate iCloud and iTunes Apple IDs.

If you didn't press this link, you can retroactively change your iTunes & App Stores Apple ID in Settings:

Go to Settings, tap your name at the top of the list, then choose iTunes & App Stores.
Choose the Apple ID displayed at the top, then Sign Out.
Sign in with the Apple ID you wish to use.


How to change just the Dock hide duration?

You can change two values for the Dock when it comes to the animation speed:

autohide-delay

# Dock autohide delay set to 0 seconds, the default should be around 1.0
defaults write com.apple.dock autohide-delay -float 0

autohide-time-modifier

# Dock animation duration to show/hide the Dock
defaults write com.apple.dock autohide-time-modifier -float 0

Set the first value to 0 and the second to 1.0 in order to achieve your result. It's not possible, however, to set separate durations for the hide delay and the show delay.


How do you correct when Facebook picks the wrong contact?

There is an easier option. Go to the contact that has been merged. Click edit. Click the minus icon next to the Facebook card at the bottom of the contact. The two cards will spring apart and you will have two contacts. Hit save.


According to 9to5mac:

  Details of the file format were tweeted by Daniel Matte after
  speaking with an iPhone product manager, and are consistent with a
  brief description in Apple’s iOS Developer Library.

The docs don't go into details, but it seems like it's just a set of files:

  The data of a Live Photo is exported as a set of files in a
  PHAssetResource object. The set of files must be preserved as a unit
  when you upload them to a server.

It's a bit disappointing, because they doesn't sound very interoperable or convenient.


Apache not running correctly after upgrading to High Sierra

Take a look at your hosts file, you should have entries in there for your localhost and local configuration. The hosts file is in /etc, so the best way to open it is by using Terminal and this (read-only) command:

open -a TextEdit /etc/hosts

You should see an one or all of these for localhost there like:

127.0.0.1   localhost
::1         localhost
fe80::1%lo0 localhost

127.0.0.1 is your machine (aka localhost).

You can add other IP addresses from your local network to route domain names to a local development folder to the hosts file. For example, mine has custom entries from old projects like:

10.0.10.111     teambox.dongguk.ac.kr

To make changes to the hosts file, you'll need to use:

sudo open -a TextEdit /etc/hosts

Enter your user account password when prompted.

Here is a full article on making edits to your hosts file: The Mac Hosts File: How to Modify /etc/hosts in OS X with TextEdit


How can I use Family Sharing for purchased apps?

Contact Apple store support. You’ll want them to verify thing s before you try removing and re-adding after they sort out any issues with your or with her account.

I would add payment for her, it won’t get charged once you re-add her and it will help make her account verified in Apple’s eyesore a different account.


time-machine: selective file restore - I just want a few things from a TM backup that was made of another MacBook

When you click the time machine icon in the menu bar, hold the option key. The menu will change to "Browse other time machine backups", and you should be able to access the old machine's backup in that manner.


How to make post-Lion Finders find special directory . and ..?

If you simply want to go 'up' in Finder, you can use the keyboard shortcut ⌘↑.

This is the equivalent of cd .. which is what you would achieve by 'going' to the .. folder. Alternatively, you can select Go → Enclosing folder from the menu bar. A custom keyboard shortcut can be assigned to this menu item using App Shortcuts.


Question about network (Are these results of arp a normal?)

Those IP’s are fine.

the 225 address are usually broadcast addresses (Class E)
Three are Class D IPs and is reserved for Multicast.  They're not even valid IPs for network nodes.

They are perfectly safe and pose no threat.


How to embed url in new Mail from Mac OS Lion

Yes, this is possible.

First write the text for the link - then right click on the text, and select "Link->Add Link" - enter the URL, and click "OK" - and you have what you want.


In Messages 7.0.1 on the Mac, is it possible to delete specific messages in a chat session?

I found out how to do it: single click on the message/picture you want to delete so that it is highlighted. Then, right-click and you will be given the option to "Forward...", "Copy", or "Delete..." the message. Click "Delete...".

Note: Doing so will ONLY delete that message from Messages on your Mac. If you want to delete the same message on any particular iOS device (iPhone, iPod Touch, iPad), you have to delete it on each device individually.


Mac Mail reducing image size making it unreadable to the recipient

Ok - I figured this out, there are actually a number of options:

If you are using inline images, when you add an image, there is actually a drop down menu just below the from address which states "image size", use that to size the image accordingly.
If you switch off inline images:

defaults write com.apple.mail DisableInlineAttachmentViewing -bool YES

This will send the image in the current size.

Well, there we go!


There is no item in `Login Items`, but why I boot my Mac, there still has a few software launch automatically?

There are a group of special files that manage the opening and running of programs at launch and in the background. These files are known as Launch Agents and Daemons. Often times, third party software makes system  modifications that installs these files as a part of the software package. The software doesn't always appear in the "Login Items" list. Additionally, the "login items" list doesn't actually disable automatic launching of programs but just gives you the option to hide it.

Without knowing the specific software, the best way to solve your issue is to look within the software's preferences. Often times, there is an option available to disable "Automatically open at Login," or something similar.

If you cannot find an option within the program, then look to the developers website for possible instructions. Or, simply googling the issue - "how to disable [name of software] from automatic launching" will provide you with a solution.

Alternatively, you can manually disable launch agents and daemons by changing the keys within them, but I don't recommend doing this. As I said, most software provides you with the option.

There are a few programs that scan your system and show you which launch items are actually enabled and running. Etrecheck is a great example that I recommend downloading and running.


How to completely remove Fuse for Mac OS X NTFS-3G

I don't think this is a problem.

The pkgutil command is just telling you that the fuse_wait package has been installed on your Mac. If this is the only result from that command then it means the other fuse packages have been uninstalled, and since the fuse_wait installer only replaces one file in the fuse install that file has likely been removed from your Mac.

Also if you are running the kextstat | grep fuse command from the linked answer and getting no results then it further confirms that fuse is no longer running as part of your Mac.


how might one spoof geographic location on a desktop Mac

Is this site web based? Or app based?

If this is a web based service one idea that might work is to change your user agent in your web browser. For example, in Safari there is Develop menu that you can activate via the Advanced tab under Preferences:

Once activated, go to to the Develop menu and choose the User Agent option. There is a nice preset list of common user agents. So in this case just change it to one of the mobile device options like Safari iOS7 — iPhone:

Now with that done, go to the site in question, login & see how the site reacts. Mind you this is simply a brainstorming idea of a tact to spoof a mobile device. For all you—or we—know the site in question does server based geolocation based on IP address or just reacts differently from a real mobile device. And if that is the case, chance are you are out of luck.

But the choice of how/when geolocation data is added to a site is really based on the site owner’s preference in most cases and not controllable by end user interaction.


Check out Evernote. There are Windows, Mac, iPhone, and web versions, and all your notes are synchronized to all your devices. You can even take pictures, include them in notes, and then search any text that was in the pictures.


Why does Pages constantly freeze on a particular pages document

It seems that the new picture caused the problem..
After removing the picture, everything is back to normal...


How can I find my saved Instagram web password in Terminal?

The name you need to pass to security find-internet-password is the name shown in Keychain Access, either from the Name column of the entry or the title shown at the top of the Keychain Access window when the entry is selected.

You can also search through the keychain directly by running

security dump-keychain | grep -i instagram

PS: In my case the result was

$ security dump-keychain | grep -i instagram
    0x00000007 <blob>=0xx...xxx  "instagram.com (Passwords\302\240not\302\240saved)"
    "srvr"<blob>="instagram.com"

with some Unicode characters mingled into the Name field (which explains why find-internet-password wasn't able to find a match).


You're receiving push notifications from specific websites. Here's how to block them in Chrome, from Google's support page.

  Allow or block notifications from all sites

  Open Chrome.
  In the upper right corner of the browser window, click the Chrome menu Chrome menu.
  Click Settings > Show advanced settings.
  In the "Privacy" section, click Content settings.
  In the dialog that appears, go to "Notifications" and choose one of the following:

  Allow all sites to show notifications: You’ll automatically see notifications from all websites.
  Ask when a site wants to show notifications: You’ll get an alert from Chrome whenever a site wants to show you notifications. This is the default setting.
  Do not allow any site to show notifications: You won’t see any notifications from websites.
  You can also block any sites, apps, and extensions that already have permission to send you notifications. Just click Manage exceptions.

  Turn off notifications from some sites

  At the top of your screen in the menu bar, click the notification icon [which looks like a bell].
  Click the gear icon.
  Uncheck any website, extension or app you don’t want to receive notifications from.


Get current app from two instances with same name by Apple Script

It's not possible to get the right instance of the frontmost application because these two instances have the same path and the same bundle identifier, the application will always be the first open instance.

You must use the frontmost process, like this:

tell application "System Events"
    tell (first process whose frontmost is true) to tell front window to if exists then
        set position to {0, 0}
        set size to {dtw, dth}
    end if
end tell


On the computer

Open iTunes
Turn on Home Sharing in the Advanced menu
Keep iTunes running

On the iDevice

Open Preferences
Open Music Preferences
Enter same AppleID for Home Sharing as in iTunes (note, you may have to re-enter the account if it appears already to be there. This both verifies the stored password is correct and re-registers the iOS device with your account's Home Sharing)

To Use

Start the Music app in the iPad
Tap on 'More' at the bottom right

Tap on 'Shared' to see a list of shares music libraries