Right now what I'm doing is emailing each photo to myself, that way I have the actual photo file in a non-locked-down format, and then syncing the iPhone to a new computer with 0 photos to clear the previous sync.

I find this restriction from Apple rather backwards logic and not very user friendly. Why lock down photos? They aren't copyrighted MP3 files or MP4 files, they are photos that I personally took, and the fact that I can just email them to myself to create new copies of the file shows that this security lock down isn't secure at all. Disappointed with the decision makers on this one.


It's a problem with the system files – try booting into Recovery Mode by restarting the computer and holding down Command + R.

After that, follow the steps to reinstall OS X. This article might help you.


Mac asking for username and password on starting up

Go to System Prefs -> Users & Groups and make sure the Display login window as: list of users is set as shown below in the Login Option tab on the bottom left.


What version of GDB version is included in your Xcode?

The version on my system (Mountain Lion, XCode 4.5 is:

GNU gdb 6.3.50-20050815 (Apple version gdb-1822) (Sun Aug  5 03:00:42 UTC 2012)

Basically, 6.3 is the last version covered by the GPLv2 license, everything past that is subject to GPLv3. Apple does not distribute any GPLv3 software, presumably as it would seriously hinder their patent lawsuits. (this is also why OSX or XCode no longer ship with Samba or GCC newer than 4.2)

By the way, the last version of XCode for Snow Leopard is 4.2, but as far as I know this is only available in the downloads section to iOS or Mac developer program subscribers.


Which office software to choose for university and day to day tasks?

Your Microsoft choices are listed here.

Main differences are, the online version and the fully installed on your hard drive.

Microsoft Office 365 (it is a online app), lower cost and 4 Years access.

Microsoft Office 2011 (on you hard drive)- no need to go to Internet.

Free app: Open Office, does almost everything Microsoft Office does.

I have the Office 2011 on my MacBook Air, it works like a charm (PowerPoint, Excel, Word), but stay away from the Outlook Email, and use the build in Apple Mail instead.


iTunes install error 45075 on Windows 8.1

I found a solution which is a variant on this advice, which suggests extracting the files and installing the components manually in a particular order.

Extract iTunes64Setup.exe (I used 7-zip)
Run AppleApplicationSupport64.msi
Run iTunes64.msi

Success! Now iTunes opens, and stays open.


How to prevent password reset using OS X installation disc?

Mac OS X (and now OS X) has always allowed the installation tools to reset administrator passwords.

Rather than locking the OS which can always be modified, you can either encrypt the OS image using File Vault or use a Firmware password to prevent other OS from booting. Many people use both tactics together for enhanced security.

Setting a Firmware password is straightforward, documented in the system help and can be done via the installation disk or Recovery Partition.


reorganize mail folders (not in V4 on Sierra)

I just solved my problem by:

turning off all Internet accounts (keeping them on other iCloud machines)
updating to Mojave
following the steps in https://appletoolbox.com/mail-not-working-after-macos-mojave-upgrade-how-to-fix/, which basically deletes several Mail-related files in ~/Library/Containers and ~/Library/Mail.

This allowed me to recover my mailboxes and also recover a lost synchronization in Notes between my Mac and iPhone.


Is there a shortcut key to bring up the Launch Pad on an older apple keyboard?

You could simply configure a shortcut of your liking for it in:

System Preferences > Keyboard > Keyboard Shortcuts > Launchpad & Dock


Can I select the architecture of a program from the command line?

You can use the arch program to select which architecture of a universal binary to run.

If you wanted to use the 32-bit version of the executable:

arch -arch i386 /usr/bin/bc

And if you wanted the 64-bit version of the executable:

arch -arch x86_64 /usr/bin/bc

Note this doesn't work with applications (folders that end in .app and have manifests and what not so OS X recognizes them as applications), just universal binaries. If you had a app with multiple architectures you'd want to use Launch Services to launch it with a specific architecture.


Battery diagnostic tool at Apple Genius Bars

It is real.
One of the Genius perform the diagnosis right in front of me. If memory serves, it goes like this:

With your iPhone, or whichever iDevice, connected to the Apple Store's wifi, "Apple Store", open Safari, and connect to URL "diagnosis.apple.com" (or diagnostics)
A page will show up, with a text entry bar for the Genius to enter a verification code.
The genius will pull up a page from his "Genius" iPod touch, (the one with bar code scanner), and possibly clicked a certain icon, which leads him to the verification code. I assume that the verification code is changing over time.
After entering the code into your device, there goes the diagnosis page.

In the brief moment he was looking at my iPhone, I was able to see the maximum capacity (by design) and the capacity left, which is 98% in my case. By this figure he will determine whether your iPhone's battery needs a replacement. If not, he will suggest that you restore the iPhone and the battery issue (if any) will likely go away.

I asked the Genius whether that's a secret page, he just calmly answered that it's just a tool for them to do the diagnosis.

So no, you cannot purchase it, as it is simply an internal webpage which requires Genius verification.

As a side note, informed by the same Genius, the easiest way to tell whether your battery/system has problem with battery life is to go to Settings - General - Usage in your device.

Look at the "Time Since Last Full Charge" section, it tells you how long the device has been used and how long it has been on standby. If the two figure are very close, e.g. 2 hours for usage and 2 hours 10 minutes for standby. But you clearly remember that you haven't been "using" the device for 2 hours, but only let in stay in sleep mode. This means that something running in the background is draining your power, and your device is never sleeping.

In this case, the Genius will suggest that you restore the iPhone (and restore from iCloud or iTunes if you wish) and the problem will most likely go away.

==============

Update

After visiting the Genius bar again, I saw a genius helping a customer on similar issue and I took a picture.

Instead of connecting to some normal URL in safari, a link in the format of "diags://#####" would be generated and visited by the device in question.


How to use iCloud calendar without having an Apple device

Unfortunately you can't add iCloud Calendar support to an Apple ID without turning it on via an iOS or Mac device.

You can borrow someone's Apple device and turn it on for the Apple ID in Settings > iCloud, on an iOS device or System Preferences > iCloud, on a Mac.

Once you have turned on "Calendars" for the device, you can immediately disable it and sign out of your boss' Apple ID, and your boss should be able to access iCloud Calendar from www.icloud.com.


Connecting headset to iPhone's iPod player

Sorry, but I don't think it will work. To send music over Bluetooth, the device needs to support the A2DP Bluetooth profile. Your headset (and most others not specifically intended for music) only supports the basic handsfree profile, so the iPhone can't send it music from the iPod app.


Switching applications with CMD+TAB launches an instance of the target app

Could it be that you are pressing Option at the same time?

There's a little known feature that can be used to open new windows in (some) apps from the macOS app switcher.

1.Cmd+Tab to the app of your choice
 2. Keep Cmd held
 3. Press and release Option
 4. Release Tab

https://lifehacker.com/384167/open-new-windows-via-command-tab


rEFInd is not working in macos high sierra 10.13.6 on 2018 MacBook Pro 13 inch even after proper installation

EDIT: You'll have to run the ./refind-install program in macOS after you've run csrutil disable in the Recovery OS. This will most likely solve any issues you have with installation.

Original answer: I think your problem is that you've tried to disable csrutil through a terminal in MacOS, which won't work. Try following the steps in this article to go into Recovery OS, run csrutil disable; reboot in the Terminal, and then try going through the normal refind install steps. It's your choice if you want to re-enable System Integrity Protection afterwards, but again you'll have to do it through Recovery OS.

Hopefully this advice was interesting and useful to you, and I wish you good luck.


Run apps/Display long texts on ipod nano?

I'll assume that by long text, you mean syncing notes or other text to be read on the iPod. The current generation iPod Nano doesn't contain a notes application, nor does it support apps. There was some news a while back that someone managed to do some hacking on it, but as of now, I haven't heard anything. The iPod Touch would do better for notes and apps than the iPod Nano.


Corrupted USB flash drive, cannot initialise or mount

You could likely get a 3rd party disk repair utility (Diskwarrior, etc.) but you might be throwing good $ after bad, especially considering the cost of thumb drives these days.

If you have access to a PC you could try formatting it on that. If that fails, toss it.

But really it sounds like the drive is toast.


By clicking on a unix executable, you run it with the exit argument.  If you scroll up to the top you will see something like this:

.../Development/adt-bundle-mac-x86_64-20140702/sdk/platform-tools/adb ; exit;

The way to run a shell tool is to open terminal (hit command+space and type Terminal then enter)
then something like:

cd /wherever/you/have installed/your sdk/platform-tools/
./adb shell

tip: start typing the directory name then hit tab for completion


You need to sync the voice memos via iTunes:


python version 2.7.8 can't run /usr/bin/easy_install. Try the alternative(s):

Okay.

Answer to number 1 is yes.

The fink developers recommend NOT removing the OSX versions of Python, simply because they are not terribly large files and may be necessary for certain OSX functions and programs.

And I want to have an additional version of at least python2.7 installed by fink, because it's a port tree that's designed to create a UNIX-like directory structure, which will hopefully make PostgreSQL and python play nicely together.

As far as question number 2, I'm not sure. I think this would work, but leaving the original OSX versions installed avoids the issue.

Question 3: yes. - see answer to question 1.

Making the fink version the one that runs via the terminal is a matter of:

make sure the directory containing the fink python binary precedes the OSX (or GUI-installed one) in the PATH, which can be done in users .profile or .bash_profile (located in directory ~/, the user's root) by either invoking the fink init script, . /sw/bin/init.sh, OR making sure that export PATH=/sw/bin:$PATH is included in the file AFTER any other line that exports a PATH with one of the other python paths at the beginning. For example, export PATH=/usr/bin:$PATH or export PATH=/usr/local/bin:$PATH.
Unless we want to invoke the python cli like python2.7, we'll need to make a symbolic link in the /sw/bin directory that points "python" to "python2.7", which is done by using sudo ln -s *source* *link*, which in this case looks like:

sudo ln -s /sw/bin/python2.7 /sw/bin/python

Not sure what the answer to question 4 is yet, but am seeing that any libraries that exist in /sw/bin are being called from there, as opposed to other installations. Good.

Got a copy of Learning UNIX for OS X Mountain Lion that looks quite promising.


Updating iphone 4s OS 5.1.1 to ANYTHING more current 6.1.1? 7.0?

can I just backup my files and hit update on my phone

Yes.

Pressing the Update button will cause a jailbroken iPhone to 'go wrong', usually resulting in a reboot loop. Pressing Update on a non-jailbroken iPhone is fine, even if it was previously jailbroken.

To update a jailbroken device, removing the jailbreak…

Backup the device using either iTunes or iCloud.
Restore the device. You can use a previously-downloaded IPSW, or let iTunes download the latest one for you.
Restore from backup. When setting up your iPhone, choose to restore from backup and let iTunes/iCloud restore the backup.


Copy contents from one excel file to another using Applescript

Using "active sheet" is your problem. Your sheet is copying from the active sheet to the active sheet, which at the time you send the copy command, are the blank cells in A1:D5 of the new workbook it created.

Change the first 'Tell active sheet' section to:

tell workbook sourcefile to tell worksheet "Sheet1"
    tell used range
        set rc to count of rows
    end tell
    set src to range ("A1:D" & rc)
end tell

For sanity's sake, I would also change the second 'tell active sheet' to:

tell workbook targetfilename to tell worksheet 1
    set dst to range ("A1:D" & rc)
end tell

I made these changes and your script worked for me.


How do I prep a, temporary, root login before editing sudoers?

No backdoor is required, in fact really nothing (not even a backup) is required to edit the sudoers file. You can't get locked out of your machine.

A backup (sudo cp /etc/sudoers /etc/sudoers.bak) is more convenient though, because you can simply restore it with a one-liner.

Reasons:

sudoers is not required to authenticate a user at log-in
sudoers is not required to activate the root user with Directory Utility - only a working admin account. Authentication is done with the local OD services.
If you have a working Internet connection or a working local Recovery Mode (aka recovery partition) you can always restore the default sudoers file either from an online resource (e.g. pastebin or github) or as mentioned earlier: more convenient from a local backup file.
If you have a second Mac and some fitting cable you can always start the "broken" Mac in Target Disk Mode and transfer a working good sudoers file from the second Mac.

Tested in a Mojave VM by:

simply removing the sudoers file completely
editing sudoers with nano and commenting out the root and %admin line, changing ownership of sudoers to 501:staff and make it 777

Proof:


What hardware do I need to use a Kinect model 1414 with a Mac?

Based on the information provided here: http://blog.nelga.com/setup-microsoft-kinect-on-mac-os-x-10-9-mavericks/
no additional hardware is required. A lot of software is though. Good luck!


How do I delete all Podcasts at once in iTunes

In iTunes, go to the Podcasts library (View > Media Kind > Podcasts) and view as Classic List (View > View As > Classic List).

Your list of podcasts should then appear in the main window. Select All (Edit > Select All). Click on the 'Unsubscribe' button in the bottom right corner.

This doesn't delete the files, it unsubscribes you so that you stop getting updates and new files. You can keep files even after you unsubscribe. To delete all the files, select all the podcasts you want to obliterate and type 'delete'.

NB If some of the podcasts are no longer subscribed to, the button will be 'Subscribe'. If you deselect those podcasts (Command-click on any selected podcast to deselect it) then the button should change to 'Unsubscribe'. If you start at the top and use the down arrow key, you can go through the list and see which podcasts this would apply to.


Can I downgrade to Mavericks after installing Yosemite (beta/developer preview)?

To downgrade, boot into Internet Recovery with ⌥⌘R and select Reinstall OS X.

With regard to the original question for Yosemite Developer Previews, yes you can, but note that Yosemite DPs so far do seem to break most of the App Store. If you are still running an early Yosemite Developer Preview, you can downgrade using the Recovery HD (⌘R) as the Recovery HD was not upgraded. For later DPs, including GM and public beta, see above.


Why can't I transfer purchases from my jailbroken iPhone 3GS to iTunes?

If both iTunes and the iPhone are logged into the same iTunes account and you still can't sync the apps and you don't want to play with the iPhone too much (jailbreaking does weird things sometimes, seemingly irrelevant stuff can break things), you can just download the apps again in iTunes. All purchases can be re-downloaded for free.


Resolve internet address (IP) as running apps see them currently (vs. external name server)

It appears I made wrong assumptions about DNS caching. However, I was right on the /etc/hosts file, in that the host command ignores it, while apps running on the Mac do not ignore it by default.

So, I've made a very simple program that uses one of the Mac OS functions to resolve the host name into an IP address. This way, changes to the hosts file will be seen by this program, as they're seen by any other Mac app.

The program, including Xcode project, can be downloaded here.


Cannot download app from family sharing (app already downloaded)

Ok I found a solution, it's another iOS 8 bug. These are the steps to solve this:

  Launch the App Store on your iOS device.
  Select the "Featured" tab and scroll to the bottom.
  Tap on your Apple ID and select "Sign Out."
  Tap on "Sign In" and log in with your Apple ID.

Source


The iPhone couldn't be restored. An unknown error occurred (3194)

(Just so this question has an answer...)

Apple is no longer signing iOS v8.0.0 installations. You will need to restore to (as of this writing) 8.1.3 which is the latest version available. The HOSTS file settings are to ensure that iTunes can talk to the update server, which isn't the issue in your case.

You are basically attempting to downgrade the software on your iPhone (since the restore process installs the newest version, and you want to restore but then go back to iOS 8.0). You cannot downgrade iOS unless Apple is still signing the previous version, which usually only occurs for a very small window after a new update is released.


Can I schedule a periodic file permissions repair?

Go to the terminal and execute "crontab -e" to add a new crontab entry. Now there are numberous syntaxical ways you can accomplish what you want (read about it on wikipedia). The easiest one, however, will be to put

@monthly diskutil repairPermissions /

in it.

Note: You'll be using vi for editing. Press "i" to type, then after you've finished press ESC and type in ":wq" to save and quit.


mac mail "remove attachments" moves message, but doesn't remove attachments

You have a gmail account in your Apple mail.

Gmail has something called "All mail", where it automatically stores all mail.

When you enable that in the gmail Settings - Labels - Show in IMAP, it will show in your Apple Mail as "Archive" folder aka All Mail.

If you disable it it will no longer show in Apple Mail, but it will remain in Google gmail.


To reset your keyboard:

  Hold down the Shift and Option keys ('Alt' on some keyboards) and at the same time click on the Bluetooth icon in the menu bar. Once the menu is showing, release the keys. From the Bluetooth menu, choose Debug > Remove All Devices. Reboot your Mac, then setup your keyboard and/or mouse as normal.

http://davemeehan.com/technology/how-to-reset-an-apple-wireless-bluetooth-keyboard-mouse-or-trackpad


Is there some way to sync only Reminders to iCloud?

Yes you can. Just add your google account from System Preferences as usual. Then open iCal > Preferences > Accounts > iCloud and untick "Enable this account"


Is there a way to schedule an iOS app to open at specific times?

This isn't possible due to iOS restrictions.


I would try some standard troubleshooting first...

Reset the SMC

Shut down the computer.
Plug in the MagSafe or USB-C power adapter to a power source and to your computer.
On the built-in keyboard, press the (left side) Shift-Control-Option keys and the power button at the same time.
Release all the keys and the power button at the same time.
Press the power button to turn on the computer.

Reset the NVRAM

At the boot chimes, hold  Cmd ⌘   Opt ⌥   P   R
Keep holding all 4 keys until you hear the chimes again, then release

Start in Safe Mode

Start or restart your Mac.
Immediately after you hear the startup sound, press and hold the Shift key.
Release the Shift key when you see the Apple logo appear on the screen.

Apply the latest Combo Update - currently 10.11.2
you can always find the latest updates at https://support.apple.com/downloads/


Link to a note in Apple Notes, from another note

Adding an additional method to Seamus'excellent answer from above… this one keeps you entirely in the Mac app:

In the Mac app, go to the note that you want to reference ("Donuts I've Eaten") and click the Add people to this note button in the Notes toolbar.

In the dialog box that pops up, choose Copy Link and then Share. The Share button may be disabled as soon as you click Copy Link. You must then enter at least one contact (an email address or a phone number)  in the Add: field. Note that the contact must be different from the current iCloud user on your Mac, otherwise Share will be again disabled. This step also makes the piece of note permanently sharable until you remove the share. You can always come back to the note and copy link from what's behind the Add people to this note button.

The note's unique URL is now copied to your clipboard. It should look something like this "https://www.icloud.com/notes/0-QF4Bf9jmhfersTKH16_2_kA#Donus_Ive_Eaten"
You can paste that URL into the note that you want to have the reference in. But, even better, highlight the words that you want to become the clickable text, type Command+k to bring up the "Link Destination" box and paste it in there.

In this method, the note is technically shared now. But since it's not shared with anyone else, it will just serve as a quick link/reference for your other notes. It's a bit of a hassle, but it seems to work.

I should also mention that the first time I tried this, I think I was forced to add an email address in the "Add:" box before I could click Share… but in subsequent trials, this was unnecessary. So I'm not sure if it was a first time only kind of thing, or if I just goofed.


Mac book air Admin account slower than fresh brand new user account — I have tried a lot to fix

"Do you have any other ideas or is it reformat and rebuild time? I haven’t done a fresh install in 10 years and really want to avoid
this."

If the problem does not appear in a brand new user account, then there is absolutely no need to erase the disk and reinstall the OS. The OS works fine: only the user account is affected.
Some may suggest packing up and moving to a new user account. The trouble is that if you keep doing this every time you come up with a user-account problem, you'll have a succession of different user accounts, which may cause problems with backups, file ownership attributions, etc. And you'll be none the wiser.
The cause is something in the user's Library folder. It could be third-party software that's set to launch at startup, so test by disabling ALL of that. Don't leave any 'necessary' stuff.
You've deleted the entire user Preference folder, which is overkill. I would test whether things improve after you remove the folder, and then restore it if they don't. Move on to the next folder.


Why are Apple Watch activity rings moving on by themselves?

Could be another app recording a workout automatically.
Check the Health app or the Workouts tab in the app you screenshotted, to see if you have any apps registering additional workouts in the background.


Transferring Photos Library from macOS Sierra Public Beta to macOS Sierra

It's not possible to open a library from a newer version of Photos using an older version of Photos. Photos will inform you of the version discrepancy when selecting the library. If you receive this message, you need to either use a backup of the library made prior to updating Photos, or update Photos to match or be later than the library.


Can AppleScript automatically press a key for me in an application?

You could repeat key code commands until the frontmost application changes:

delay 1
activate application "TextEdit"
tell application "System Events"
    repeat while (path to frontmost application) is (path to application "TextEdit")
        repeat 3 times
            key code 123
            delay 0.3
        end repeat
        repeat 3 times
            key code 124
            delay 0.3
        end repeat
    end repeat
end tell

Shorter delays (including 0.2 seconds) made it difficult to stop the script. I had to hold ⌥⇧⌘⎋ to force quit TextEdit.

This moved left only once:

delay 1
tell application "System Events"
    key down (character id 28)
    delay 5
    key up (character id 28)
end tell

left: 123 / 28
right: 124 / 29
down: 125 / 31
up: 126 / 30


How do I show the "Up Next" queue on the iOS 11 Podcasts app?

The iPhone SE doesn't have 3D Touch so there is definitely a different step for you. If you go to the Now Playing screen, swipe up and you'll see the Up Next section. To add next podcasts, you'll need to tap on the menu button from the episodes detail view and then select Play Next. That should now show on your up next screen on Now Playing.

http://www.iphonehacks.com/2017/09/how-to-use-ios-11-podcasts-app-iphone-ipad.html

https://support.apple.com/en-ph/HT201859


Without using iTunes, you can go to Settings > General > Reset, and click reset/erase all content and settings:

It's iOS 7, but it's the same for every version.

If you do it this way, it will prompt you for both your password and restrictions passcode several times.


There can be security flaws that result from the careless use of /tmp; malicious local users may be able to delete arbitrary files or possibly even run arbitrary code under your user account, depending on how bad the /tmp flaw is. A solution that remains within the char sun_path[104] limit on unix domain sockets (see /usr/include/sys/un.h for the definition) is to create a temporary directory and use that for MPI:

$ mktemp -d /tmp/mpi-XXXXXXXX
/tmp/mpi-zUN9SQo6

which leaves 86 characters for the socket file to use (104 minus one for the trailing NUL minus 17).

Depending on where and when you set TMPDIR other programs could easily be messed up, notably tmux or screen that then may not then be able to locate their control socket. If possible, scope the custom TMPDIR setting as close to the MPI calls as possible, e.g. with a shell function or alias along the lines of

alias mpi4py='TMPDIR=$(mktemp -d /tmp/mpi-XXXXXXXX) mpi4py'

This would create a unique temporary directory for each invocation; the directories in /tmp are pruned automatically. If a shared or more persistent directory is needed /var/tmp is typically more suitable

$ mkdir /var/tmp/mympi

and be sure to confirm the directory did not already exist in the event a far too clever local attacker has already created that directory (unlikely, but this is why mktemp -d was created). Then, in your shell profile the alias might look something like

alias mpi4py='TMPDIR=/var/tmp/mympi mpi4py'

This form is again more suitable if there is shared state necessary between different MPI command invocations.


What would I lose from switching from iPhone 4+ e-reader to dumbphone+iPad

It seems to me that you would spend less money overall if you just kept the iPhone and got a wifi-only iPad rather than switching phones and plans (not including that nasty early termination fee on the iPhone contracts). That is what I have now and I really like it.

But, to answer your question specifically, even taking into consideration the iOS 4 release for iPad later this year, you will be missing, at minimum, all of the camera-related functionality of the iPhone, but then there is visual voicemail and easy (and cheap) email. That's a lot to give up all things considered.


Deleting password from Keychain in terminal

You may first try to find the credentials (or better the blob):

security find-internet-password -l "github.com"  /Users/user_name/Library/Keychains/login.keychain

Then delete them with:

security delete-internet-password -l "github.com"  /Users/user_name/Library/Keychains/login.keychain

If you have several github.com items you have to repeat this. Create a backup of your login.keychain (or better the whole Keychain folder) before proceeding.


How to factory reset a MacBook Pro 2011 with a messed up GPU

There are apparently quite some options left now.

Boot into SafeMode. Hold shift key on StartUp
You will get unaccelerated display but the drivers for the GPU are not loaded and you should have still full access to the disk. Delete to your heart's content.
Take out the drive and mount it into an external case. Attach it to another Mac and do with it what you like to do.
Circumvent the discrete GPU by using this procedure This will give you an internal dsiplay with graphics acceleration from the Intel GPU. Remove all the stuff you like in that now resurrected MacBook Pro.
Create a USB-installer and boot from that thing. The installer should not use the discrete GPU and gives you the option to wipe/format the drive. That would be the true "factory reset".


Will I able to share my internet connection using my MBP's airport if I am connected to the internet through an external USB Wireless adapter?

Yes - Macs have internet sharing where you can use one device to get internet and share it from another.

Most people in a cabin situation set up an AirPort to let all the devices talk and then you would share from the USB to the physical ethernet port. The router would get to the internet from the ethernet and everyone can join the WiFi and share whether or not the USB modem is dialed.

You would set the service order to have the USB modem be the highest connection in the network pane.

What you ask is also possible - just share from USB to WiFi and the Mac will create a wireless network the other devices can join.


Use the Terminal and this command:

defaults write com.apple.LaunchServices LSQuarantine -bool NO

That will disable warnings completely after you restart the system. To reverse it, run it again with "YES" instead of "NO".

Or you can create a custom listing of safe files with the method described here:

Custom assessment file for downloaded files


Only first-party menu bar apps can be ⌘-dragged off the menu bar. To remove third-party menu bar apps, you should refer to the specific app settings. For Malwarebytes, you can turn off the menu bar app from Malwarebytes preferences → Hide application icon. To properly uninstall Malwarebytes if you no longer want the software, open Malwarebytes, and go to "help" > "uninstall Malwarebytes".


I see thousands of these in my Console log

This could happen for a number of reasons, one of those could be that you unplugged a FireWire drive while spotlight was indexing it. You may have to reset spotlight indexes to stop the error appearing if this has happened. You can do so with the Terminal command below.

sudo mdutil -E /

Spotlight will need to reindex all your drives which will take some time, allow it to finish indexing each drive before unplugging it and that may solve the problem

See the link below for an article from someone with a similar issue who solved it performing the steps above

http://www.mb.com.ph/articles/209838/the-case-missing-firewire-port


Okay, Apple had made it so that you have to change your region in Language and Region Preferences in Settings to Vietnam. Also, you need to add the regional language as well to see the holidays of that region, but you don't need to make it the primary language. View here for more information.

There isn't a link for apple's calendar subscription, so the easiest is to just use another calendar for Vietnamese holidays: Vietnamese Calendar.

Hope this helps ;D


Well, there are some tricks in OS X Lion and above.

Since OS X Lion you can use any window edge for resizing.

If you hold down the option key, you can also resize a window by expanding or decreasing opposite sides of a window at the same time.

If you hold down the shift key while you expand or contract a window, the window will maintain its original aspect ratio.

Also you can combine option and shift.

If you want keyboard shortcuts (not built-in there) you can use 3rd party software like http://www.macupdate.com/info.php/id/26411/mercurymover.


Why do some files on iCloud suddenly force me to download again?

This is the correct situation if your Mac has Optimize Mac Storage enabled in the iCloud preference pane.

If your storage is under light pressure, I don't find recently used documents being released from local storage much if at all, but if you are running with a very close to full drive, the system may be removing the local copy before you like.

Above is an SSD under light pressure - lots of space for local backups, iCloud data to remain cached and space to add new files. Below is iCloud showing nearly 200 GB of data so if all of that were on my MacBook - my pressure would be constrained / close to full.

There's nothing sudden about this, though in my experience. Most people I assist with this are more bothered by the large amount of data that could be "purged" and isn't but I get your not wanting to re-download and wait for files.


can i use migration assistant to migrate files to a secondary drive?

Not easily can you let migration assistant handle that task. Instead I would migrate everything but the user accounts to the new drive. Then do some reading on options and mechanics:

http://mattgemmell.com/using-os-x-with-an-ssd-plus-hdd-setup/
Optimize macbook pro for internal SSD+HDD drives
One mac, Two or more storage devices - how to divide things?

My guess is putting the user folders on the second drive is the easiest for you and best result. Start by making one admin account with the same short name as your preferred main account on the old Mac.

It will make /Users/whatever on the boot drive. Then you can copy all of users from the migration donor Mac to the large new drive. Use rsync or something that can run several passes or resume a broken transfer if you can, or be patient with finder if you can’t.

At the end, you’ll use advanced settings in the user preference pane to point the home folder(s) for each account needed to the second drive home folder.


How to remove 'phantom' iCloud account from Apple Mail

The list of accounts is stored in the property list located at:

~/Library/Mail/V2/MailData/Accounts.plist

The account data itself is stored in ~/Library/Mail/V2/<account-type>-<email-address>.
This entire folder can be deleted for the account you wish to remove.


This link shows how to do it using Terminal. The Terminal command that opens Chrome using the Safari user agent string:

open /Applications/Google\ Chrome.app   --args -user-agent="Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; Intel Mac OS X 10_5_3; en-us) AppleWebKit/525.19 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/3.2.1 Safari/525.19"

I tested this, and it works with the current version of Chrome. You can find various User-Agent strings here.


How do I determine the negotiated link speed for a network connection in Big Sur?

my suggestion (albeit very ugly) is to use the airport utility thats hidden in /System/Library/PrivateFrameworks/Apple80211.framework/Versions/Current/Resources, if you use 'airport -I' it will give you the max rate which I think is equivalent to the link speed. Hope that helps.


How can I rename a song in iTunes with a keyboard shortcut?

fn + return works while navigating with the up and down keys.
Edit the song, then press return again to submit changes.

For the other columns just press tab to reach the desired column.


Can't run launchctl agent in Catalina. Is this a permissions problem?

How do I get this to work?

Your plist file looks good except I have found it’s more reliable to have your actual commands in an executable script and call that rather than call the commands directly from the plist.
(For future readers in case comments are deleted)
The StartCalendarInterval can get confusing at times...
<key>StartCalendarInterval</key>
  <dict>
    <key>Minute</key>
    <integer>1</integer>
  </dict>

This runs the command on the first minute of every hour (i.e. 12:01, 1:01, 2:01, and so on).  It’s not “every 1 minute.” For more details, see launchd plist format for running a command at a specific time on a weekday

What is it with this permissions thing? Is it safe to give those apps "Full Disk Access". Should I turn SIP off and on again? (What does that do anyway?)

Catalina has instituted a new security model in which applications or processes need to be granted rights to different resources.  It has nothing to do with your rights per se, but rights of the resource. For instance, you might not want your Firefox to have rights outside it’s normal work folders.  On the past, an attacker might exploit some flaw and gain access to other directories snd drop off malicious code. Now, if the app doesn’t have rights to accessed the volume, it won’t be able to access it regardless whether of your rights
SIP is merely a set of protected folders. what makes it special is that it cannot be disabled while the file system is mounted which is why you need to reboot in Recovery/Single User mode to disable it.  Rogue software can’t overwrite system files even if the user is root.


For a single script, it is no possible to create a unique icon that's sits near the clock such as the wifi icon for example. There may be unique AppleScript plugins that enable this, but I'm not aware of any.

If you need one icon from which you can run a bunch of different scripts, there are tools like FastScripts that enable this. OS X also enables application-specific scripts to show up in a special icon on the menu bar that only shows for that app. Not sure that still works in El Capitan, as I haven't used this functionality for a while.

I run a tool called Keyboard Maestro which lets me trigger scripts in a variety of different ways, one of them being the menu bar icon.


How can I download free apps without registering an Apple ID?

This is by design. Apple requires you to set up an account even for free purchases (except podcasts).

In the past, you could set up a free account in iCloud and get away with not entering information, but now the security is getting beefed up.

You may be asked for three security questions and to re-verify your account periodically. The passwords are now more strict in needing a mix of case and numbers where you used to be able to choose a simpler password for your Apple ID.

There are cases where the device is not working properly and you keep getting this verification error, but in the case you describe it is now mandatory to enter more information when setting up your account initially.


How can I copy RAW photos with metadata from Mac Photos app to an external hard drive?

Use the Disk Utility application to create a sparse bundle on you external drive. You can then mount this as a Mac OS Extended (Journaled) volume for storage of your RAW photos. The metadata will then stay with your RAW photos. If needed, you can even use the Disk Utility application to increase or decrease the size of the sparse bundle image.

Instructions to create the sparse bundle are as follows.

Open the Disk Utility application.
From the menu bar, select File->New Image->Blank Image....
Input your requirements in the window. Below is an example. The size is the maximum size that the sparse bundle can grow to be. Initially, this example sparse bundle only takes 247.1 MB of space on the external MS-DOS (FAT) formatted volume named MYFAT.
Select the Save button.

  Note: A sparse bundle is a folder containing many small files.

Instructions to resize the sparse bundle are as follows.

  Note: You will need to eject the sparse bundle before resizing.

Open the Disk Utility application.
From the menu bar, select Images->Resize...
Select the sparse bundle folder. I my case this would be named My RAW Pics.sparsebundle.
Enter a new size. In my case, I chose to double the maximum size to 200 GB, as shown below.
Select the Resize button.

A final note regarding the use of other image files.

You can also create a image as a dmg file. The difference here is that volume size is limited by the maximum file size of the format used by your external drive. Also, dmg file occupies space on your external drive equal to the size of the stored Mac OS Extended (Journaled) volume. A sparse bundle grows to occupy space on the external drive as needed.

You can also create a sparse image file. Like a dmg file, a sparse image file volume size is limited by the maximum file size of the format used by your external drive. Like a sparse bundle, a sparse image grows to occupy space on the external drive as needed. Again, a sparse file image is a single file, where as a sparse bundle image is a folder containing many small files.


How can I search the iPad only apps/games on iTunes?

Click the iTunes Store button in the top right corner of iTunes (11.0 and above)

Click the App Store Button in the middle of the screen and then iPad.

Click the iPad list that appears on the right and then select what apps you would like to see that are exclusively on the iPad.

Note: Some iPad apps that you may see are also available on the iPhone, but that does not mean they are not also native iPad apps. When you click on a certain app, most of them display "This app is designed for both iPhone and iPad." (see below for pictures). If it does not say that, the app is only for iPad, not iPhone (For instance, the app Things for iPad).  Therefore, the apps that are shown here are native iPad apps.

Update:
While the solution and the steps above detail which apps are iPad only, this solution can take a long time and is not extremely efficient. Therefore, this website details iPad exclusive apps that are on sale. The contents of the website are updated several times throughout the day.


How to connect an iPad 3 to 27" Apple Cinema Display (Mini DisplayPort)

You'll need 2 different adapters :

iPad 3 => Dock to HDMI adapter => HMDI to mini displayport => Cinema Display.


Bash Ctrl-A Returns to Start of Line but Doesn't Display Properly

Add \[ and \] around the colour codes to enable bash to calculate the line length correctly. Something like this:

PS1=\n \[\e[1;95m\] \u@\h \[\e[0;32m\]\w \[\e[1;30m\] $(__git_ps1 " (%s)" ) \n \[\e[1;95m\] \@ \n $ \[\e[0;30m\]

(This answer is taken from @Mark's comment on the question.)


There's no way to make that change directly in the Home app.  This issue was mentioned during the iOS13 beta testing and wasn't changed.

Some people have reported that as of iOS 13.1.3 you give a command to Siri and it will set the correct temp.  I'm in the US, thus don't use celsius, so I can't confirm this is correct.  You didn't mention which specific iOS 13 version you were using.

Apple's 13.1.3 release notes don't specifically call this out.  It's not unusual for Apple to fix things and not put them into the release notes.


Here's a copy of /usr/bin/as from OS X 10.9.4.

With regard to how you'd actually get it back, you might be able to extract it from the install media if you have it or by reinstalling the OS. See How can I get back a system file after deleting it from my Mac?


How to set a default application to open a file in mac?

I don't know why the existing two methods are not working - they both should.

Alternatively try RCDefaultApp which as far as I'm aware still works in Catalina. [I can only test up to Mojave.]

I added this manually using the + button & it actually suggested TextEdit itself. I'd suggest also checking 'Override file creator' & see if that might help.


Is there a list of Apple TV 4th gen screen saver images?

The fourth generation Apple TV screen saver is composed of QuickTime movie files. You can see the JSON file that Apple TV loads them from at the following URL.

http://a1.phobos.apple.com/us/r1000/000/Features/atv/AutumnResources/videos/entries.json

There are versions of the screen saver for Mac and Windows, not developed by Apple, which you can download at the below links.

https://github.com/JohnCoates/Aerial/releases/

https://github.com/cDima/Aerial/releases/


Sudden drop in gaming performance (FPS) on a mid-2010 iMac

I had this and fixed it!

Basically something was overheating.  It would freeze as it hit the overheat temperature and then resolve once the temperature dropped about 5 degrees celsius.

So I downloaded some random fan speed app (link below), cranked it up to full speed and haven't had a problem since!

http://www.eidac.de/


Can I use a Verizon iPad 3rd Generation WiFi Only?

Yes, you will be able to use the iPad without a Verizon SIM card through your WiFi network. However, it appears that there is a problem where the iPad keeps notifying you that there is no SIM card.

I would advise getting one without cellular data as you don't plan on using it anyway. Those iPads are probably cheaper and will not have the previously described problem.


Sync iTunes library with Dropbox without letting iTunes organize the folders and files

You can put your entire iTunes library (not just the music files) into the Dropbox and create iTunes aliases in your ~/Music folder on both computers, as long as the paths are identical. This means you need to use the same user name on both machines. Ie., /Users/Username/Music/iTunes/iTunes Music. Then, when you add music to iTunes on one machine, when the library syncs over Dropbox, the music will be present on the other machine.


Downloaded app won't open because it is from an unidentified developer

I would appear that for some reason the developer of Photo Express is not registered with Apple as an identified developer.

To get it to install you will need to go to System Preferences and change the default setting for application downloads...

System Prefs-> Security And Privacy -> and select Allow apps downloaded from Anywhere.

Remember to set the value back to Mac App Store and identified developers afterwards.


Should I have to pay for Garage Band if I bought my iMac with OS X 10.8?

Garageband used to be free. There was also a $4.99 in-app purchase to get extras. However, Apple changed it to make Garageband $4.99 and not charge for the extras.


Cannot open graph .gcx file saved by Grapher

Apple's grapher does not save and reopen correctly files without real equation (with the sign equal)
Another problem is with upgrading the os, and the security : sometimes you have to allow (with "open anyway" box in the security preference panel) the system to load a file previously created.


iMac 5K Bootcamp Black Screen when playing

By the sounds of it your iMac is overhheating.

A temperature of 110° is too much so your graphics card stops processing for some time in order to prevent any lasting damage to it. As it is only your GPU restarting and throttling, your applications are still open.

As the iMac is an all-in-one, some airflow and heat capacity drawbacks have to be taken.

In order to prevent this from happening you could do the following:

decrease the graphics settings
open your iMac and clean the air intakes and outlets to improve ariflow

But remember. The iMac was not designed for gaming on windows, so your experience will never be perfect. Drivers that have been tinkered with might work but should not be considered reliable.


Laptop drops wifi when moving from one WAP to another one, with same SSID

i have had this exact issue with 2 SSID's with the same name.  i believe airport uses some kind of UUID for each AP, and gets confused wehn it see 1 ssid with two different id's.  you can do it with cisco (etc) gear where the ap's are part of a managed network.  but i never got it to work well when there were 2 with the same name.

you could try deleting both from the known networks and try to clear out some of the old info.


How to re-enable missing Disclosure arrows?

Weird little things like this can almost always be resolved by relaunching Finder. There's a number of different ways to do this, but I usually ctrl⌥-click the Finder icon and select "Relaunch".
When that doesn't work, the next step is to turn the computer off and on again. Basic, I know, but there's a reason they're always mentioned.
Some musings from a former Apple employee on why restarting is effective: https://techreflect.net/2018/04/20/why-does-rebooting-fix-everything/


External disk reports incorrect amount of free space after doing clean up via terminal. DiskUtility's Repair temporarily fixes it, but why?

To back up a little for others, in the future.

How to get a report of remaining storage.

Via Terminal, type df -h and you’ll get a human-readable summary by volume in columns marked Used, Avail, and Capacity (as a percentage). (The Gi or Ti refers to gibibytes and tebibytes, base 2 units for a billion and trillion bytes instead of the base 10 gigabytes and terabytes.)

If these don’t agree, it’s likely a Spotlight error. Apple relies on Spotlight to mark and calculate remaining storage. You can delete the Spotlight index and rebuild it by following these steps:

Open the Spotlight preference pane.
Click the Privacy tab.
Drag the startup volume into the Privacy window.
Click OK at the warning, and the Spotlight index is deleted.
Select your startup volume in the privacy list, and click the - (minus) button.

That restarts indexing. This should reset your storage.


Menu with categories like MATE/Cinnamon Desktop Enviroment

While it does not pop UP from the bottom of the screen (rather it sits in the menu bar, top-right side of the screen) XMenu works VERY well:

http://www.devontechnologies.com/products/freeware.html

(scroll down to the bottom of that screen to find the download link)

It's freeware and has been working great for me for a few years. It is completely customizable, quick and uses few system resources.


The synclient program is a command line tool for accessing Synaptics driver options in Linux, so that's only relevant if you're on a Linux system with a Synaptics touchpad.

On my Mac, I had this problem when using a Magic Mouse to access a Linux desktop remotely via NoMachine/NX. The Magic Mouse has no "button", but instead has a trackpad like surface that can register clicks, taps, swipes, etc. I use a third party tool called MagicPrefs for it (the key use in this context is to enable a "middle button click" effect for Linux), and I found that if I choose "Configure Scrolling" in MagicPrefs, and then disable ALL scrolling behaviors (1/2/3 finger) I no longer can trigger those "MEvent" alerts in MATLAB.

NOTE: disabling all scrolling disables the mousewheel-like scroll, and it turns out only disabling the horizontal/diagonal scrolling seems to be required to avoid the MATLAB issue.


How to get my Mac (High Sierra) to recognize custom Quartz filters I created to reduce file size?

I have had success on macOS High Sierra 10.13.4 with putting Quartz filters in a Filters folder within my user's Library folder:

/Users/my_user_name/Library/Filters/

in other words:

Macintosh HD > Users > my_user_name > Library > Filters

However, your Library folder is normally hidden. An easy way to navigate to it is to click on the Go menu in Finder and while the menu is down hold the Option key. Library will then appear in the list. Once you open it you can create the Filters folder which probably doesn't exist, and put your filters there.

For reference, the filters I am using are those that Josh Carr posted to GitHub.


Where can I find the installed package path via brew

Use the following to show the installation path of a package:

brew info hping

Example output:

pcre: stable 8.35 (bottled)
http://www.pcre.org/
/usr/local/Cellar/pcre/8.35 (146 files, 5.8M) *
  Poured from bottle
From: https://github.com/Homebrew/homebrew/blob/master/Library/Formula/pcre.rb
==> Options
--universal
    Build a universal binary


I've run into this with some forms, it's not always clear why (although in your case the DRM seems the likely culprit). The workaround for me has always been filling it out as normal, then using the print to PDF functionality (File → Print → PDF → Save as PDF). Certainly not the easiest, and it means you can't re-edit in some situations. But it's still better than dealing with Acrobat.

Alternatively, you could buy PDFPen, which is a pretty fool-proof way of dealing with any PDF form you can find.


https://github.com/Homebrew/homebrew-cask/issues/50413

The solution was described as going to:
/usr/local/Caskroom/CASKNAME/.metadata/CASKVERSION/WEIRDIDENTIFIER/Casks/CASKNAME.rb

And then from there I can remove the line that attempts to remove the login item. Then it uninstalls successfully and I can manually remove the login item.


Is there a way to sync Google reminders with the Mac ones

There is a cool implementation of Google Calendars for Mac. See this project: https://github.com/sfirrin/Clean-Google-Calendar


Do the update to 10.11.2 first and see if that helps.


Can I access internal microphone input level via Terminal?

Using command line tools you can do the following:

Install brew
Update and doctor brew
Install portaudio, ffmpeg and all dependencies with brew

brew install portaudio
brew install ffmpeg

Install pip by downloading get-pip.py (direct link) and executing

sudo python ~/Downloads/get-pip.py

Install soundmeter

sudo pip install soundmeter

Run soundmeter. To get help use the -h switch:

soundmeter -h
optional arguments:
  -h, --help            show this help message and exit
  -c, --collect         collect RMS values to determine thresholds
  -s SECONDS, --seconds SECONDS
                        time in seconds to run the meter (default forever)
  -a {stop,exec-stop,exec}, --action {stop,exec-stop,exec}
                        triggered action
  -t [+|-]THRESHOLD [NUM ...], --trigger [+|-]THRESHOLD [NUM ...]
                        trigger condition (threshold RMS and number of times)
  -e SCRIPT, --exec SCRIPT
                        shell script to execute upon trigger
  -d, --daemonize       run the meter in the background
  --log [LOGFILE]       log the meter (default to ~/.soundmeter/log)
  -v, --verbose         verbose mode
  --segment SECONDS     audio segment length recorded in seconds (defaults to
                        0.5)

Simply running soundmeter will output an RMS value. After defining a threshold you can trigger a shell script action (which may itself trigger an AppleScript script)  with the -e switch.

Entering soundmeter --segment 0.1 --log watching online TV (climate change and coffee farming in Colombia - the end of Arabica beans) will show something like:

2017-01-25 18:16:02,289 24
2017-01-25 18:16:02,665 24
2017-01-25 18:16:03,037 31
2017-01-25 18:16:03,399 3
2017-01-25 18:16:03,769 15
2017-01-25 18:16:04,142 11
2017-01-25 18:16:04,524 9
2017-01-25 18:16:04,891 7
2017-01-25 18:16:05,257 7
2017-01-25 18:16:05,632 0
2017-01-25 18:16:06,001 7
2017-01-25 18:16:06,384 0
2017-01-25 18:16:06,745 2
2017-01-25 18:16:07,113 10
2017-01-25 18:16:07,491 14
2017-01-25 18:16:07,860 6
2017-01-25 18:16:08,223 0
2017-01-25 18:16:08,609 13
2017-01-25 18:16:08,973 16
2017-01-25 18:16:09,347 7
2017-01-25 18:16:09,720 26
2017-01-25 18:16:10,091 1
2017-01-25 18:16:10,464 38 ← an Arabica bean died here
2017-01-25 18:16:10,835 13
2017-01-25 18:16:11,204 Stopped

Just to confirm: that's the microphone input level and not the sound level of the TV stream because the above installation runs in a VM guest and the TV stream on the hosting Mac - tested but not logged with some clapping which will increase the RMS to values above 200!

To send a message after a triggering event do the following - change <user_name> to your OS X short username and <telephone_number> to an appropriate telephone number below:

Create a dir and change to it:

mkdir ~/.soundmeter
cd ~/.soundmeter

Create an AppleScript:

nano sendMessage.applescript

with the content:

on run {targetBuddyPhone, targetMessage}
    tell application "Messages"
        set targetService to 1st service whose service type = iMessage
        set targetBuddy to buddy targetBuddyPhone of targetService
        send targetMessage to targetBuddy
    end tell
end run

Create a shell script:

nano sendMessage.sh

with the content:

#!/bin/bash

osascript /Users/<user_name>/.soundmeter/sendMessage.applescript <telephone_number> "Another Arabica bean died"

and change the permissions:

chmod 755 sendMessage.sh

Now start soundmeter with a command like this:

soundmeter -t +38 -a exec -e /Users/<user_name>/.soundmeter/sendMessage.sh

This should send a message to your (iPhone) telephone number. Please note that you can't send an iMessage to yourself. Sending it to an alias may work. Other similar (Apple)scripts are available here: How to send an imessage text with applescript, only in provided service?


What does `System Preferences.app` sync to iCloud?

It is syncing your system preferences. The reason you did not see anything happen is that your former system was running El Capitan. The new sync feature only works with Sierra.

So if you had a Sierra Mac and then bought a new Sierra Mac and signed in on iCloud, you could sync over your system preferences from the old Mac.


What is the best backup strategy for macbook pro laptop?

The Basics: Time Machine

Time Machine is Apple's backup solution, included in OS X. An external drive is required. It backs up changed files every hour, and stores as many "snapshots" as it can hold. After the initial full backup, it only stores changes to files, which makes things more efficient, and allows for more granular snapshots. In addition to being able to do a full system restore, you can selectively restore older versions of specific files, which is handy in case you delete or make changes you didn't mean to.

Using Time Machine on OS X 10.7 and later also enables "local snapshots", which keeps snapshots of changed files on your main drive when you don't have your backup drive attached, provided there's sufficient space. Obviously this doesn't help if you have a drive failure, but in the case of accidental deletions, etc. it can be helpful.

For more information, Apple's Mac 101: Time Machine article is a good starting point.

Online Backup

If you're on the go a lot, you may want to consider an online backup service. BackBlaze is a popular one, but there's also CrashPlan, Mozy and several others.

The advantages are not needing an external drive, and having an off-site backup to recover from in the event of something nasty happening to your house. The downside is the monthly cost (I believe BackBlaze is a flat fee, others have differing schemes based on how much data you back up), as well as the time required to back up over the internet. These services only back up data that has changed, so after the initial full backup, things will get faster, but depending on your connection, it could be a bit problematic (particularly if you're travelling — most hotel Wi-Fi I've used isn't exactly speedy).

SuperDuper

SuperDuper is a longstanding Mac favourite. It will make a complete clone of your drive to an external drive, which is then bootable and usable exactly like your internal drive. It also has a "smart update" feature, where after the initial clone, it only updates the backup with changed data, to minimize how long backups take. SuperDuper is the best way to get up and running again after a hard drive crash — you can boot off your backup drive right away and you'll your full system.

Dropbox

I'm listing this separately from the other online backup systems because it's not really a full backup, but it's definitely worth using. It's simply a folder that syncs to the Dropbox servers and wherever else you install your Dropbox client. Some limited storage of old versions of files is also included. 2GB is provided free, you can pay if you need more. The best use of Dropbox would be for your current working files. It won't store everything, but if you use it for the files you most often need, or those that you're using lately, you'll have up to date backups from whenever you have an internet connection.

Wrap Up

You'll have to do think about what exact setup suits your needs best. Ideally, a robust backup system would include at least two or three of these options in combination, so that you have multiple fallbacks. For example, you could do a daily or weekly SuperDuper backup, and then use Dropbox or Time Machine to restore the files you've been working on since your most recent backup. Adding in an online backup service for off-site redundancy will give you some added protection in the event your local backups are lost or destroyed.


my mac pro with OS x.11.6 goes to sleep even with the energy saver set
  to never

With OS X 11.6 the Caffeinate command in Terminal should work and keep it awake.

Open Terminal in Utility Folder and type Caffeinate.

If you want to investigate what is putting it to sleep, open the Console in Utility folder and look at the lines before it goes to sleep (or post it in you post).


Mac Mail - Account already exists error when adding gmail

Yes - this can be caused by three things. iCloud being messed up (and trying to sync your internet accounts) and corruption on the Mail settings and corruption in general in your user settings.

To troubleshoot this:

A. Write down your add/remove procedure and don't deviate from it. My guess is it should be:

Quit Mail and make sure it doesn't launch when you log in
Remove the account from system prefs
Reboot
Add the account in - optionally test something other than mail first like a bogus calendar entry to check the account and google servers.
Test Mail by enabling the account and then finally launching Mail

B. Set up a brand new user account - with no iCloud and no Apple ID. Try adding the mail account there from System Preferences - Internet Accounts Preference Pane

If that doesn't work - your gmail is messed up or you need to reinstall the Mac from scratch (i.e. something is really wrong with the OS - this would be my last resort - make sure Gmail settings are clear at that point before backing up and wiping the Mac)

C. Sign out of iCloud on your Mac with your normal account.

Get a good backup before you delete content on the Mac. You will want to delete anything that's synced to iCloud to let the system clear out data that depends on iCloud. If you're paranoid, export data like Contacts and Calendar to a stand alone export/backup before you take this step. Then repeat the remove/add procedure.

D. Go to the logs. You'll need to run sysdiagnose Mail and then get into Console app and perhaps Log Connection Activity by opening the Mail Connection Doctor and checking that option.


A more efficient way to manage photos/videos between computer and iPhone

When importing new photos and videos from my iPhone, I always click to delete them on my iPhone, so the master copy moves to the iPhoto library.
The only photos & vides I keep on my iPhone are those I explicitely synch to it: I use a smart album of last 12 (or whatever) months plus whatever hand picked photos and albums I want.

This works of course because I use a Mac. Since you tagged your question "Windows" and you speak of "My Computer" icons, I suppose you're on a PC and this answer will not be very useful to you. But I am still posting it in hope that it maybe inspires you to find a solution that works for you.


MacBook Pro (Retina, 13-inch, Early 2015) Dual External Monitor Performance

I had this exact same question, and found the answer on Apple's discussion forums:

  A final update - I got my hands on two Dell P2715Q's which support 3840x2160@60Hz over SST. I'm happy to report the new 13" RMBP happily drives both displays at their native resolutions with 60Hz refresh in single stream mode (the default).

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/6868583


The "Disk Not Ejected Properly" notification will not go away on Mojave?

The notification being there covering the screen and won't go away can be really troublesome.
It can be solved by moving the mouse to a "blank screen" hot corner. (set it up first).  And then when you wake the Mac, that notification can be dismissed.
So this is a solution, and would save Apple $27 / hour to hire a contractor to fix this bug for a day.


Stuck at OS X Utilities while clean installing Yosemite

This sounds like the install you created is faulty somehow, possibly either a bad file copy or a bad flash drive.

Things to try, in order:

Rebuild the install drive using the same method you used before, but on a new drive.
Use the built-in recovery options (hold cmd R) to do the install. Then, upgrade to the latest version of OS X. By upgrading to the newer OSX, your recovery partition will be set to do a clean upgrade of El Capitan if you have to do it again.
If that doesn't work (say your recovery partition is trashed), there's the Internet Recovery option, which will actually reinstall the OS your mac shipped with.


How to make iCloud stop syncing documents without erasing from Mac?

The wording of the warning is misleading. If you turn off this syncing, the files will not be gone or deleted, but they will not be on your ~/Desktop or in your ~/Documents folders. They will be in your "iCloud Drive" folder, which is a folder on your computer that is synced to iCloud, but is still available on your computer. To get things "back to normal" you will just have to move the files from the "iCloud Drive" folder back to the ~/Desktop and ~/Documents folders.
Here is how to clean things up:
First go to Apple menu -> "System Preferences" -> iCloud
In iCloud preferences you should click the "Options" button beside the item "iCloud Drive" and if the "Desktop & Documents Folders" item is selected, then that is probably what is causing you to be using so much space on Apple's computers. If you uncheck this box, you can recover a lot of space from your iCloud storage, but it will take a few more steps for it to be "back to normal":
Go to Apple Menu > System Preferences > iCloud > iCloud Drive > "Options" and UNcheck the "Desktop & Documents Folders" checkbox. You’ll get a pop-up warning you that these files will only be stored in iCloud Drive if you disable Desktop and Documents syncing. Go ahead and click “Turn Off”.  Files on your desktop and in your Documents folder will seem to be removed but they are still within the "iCloud Drive" folder on your computer, which will automatically open after you click “Turn Off”, so these files aren’t actually disappearing and getting deleted, but are simply in iCloud Drive exclusively.
Next, open up the iCloud Drive folder on your Mac and you’ll see two folders called “Desktop” and “Documents”. If you cannot find the "iCloud Drive" folder (it is likely listed in a Finder window's "sidebar" which can be displayed using the Finder menu item "View" -> "Show Sidebar" if the sidebar is hidden), you can have access to it by going to the Finder menu item "Finder" -> "Preferences" -> "Sidebar" and makeing sure the "iCloud Drive" item is checked. Alternatively you can use the Finder menu item "Go" -> "iCloud Drive" to open this folder.
The folder "iCloud Drive" is where your files are. You can now move the contents of "iCloud Drive"/Desktop and "iCloud Drive"/Documents back to your ~/Desktop and your ~/Documents folders.
You can leave the now empty “Desktop” and “Documents” folders in "iCloud Drive". If you delete them, they might get recreated automagically, so don't be surprised.
The following website has some pictures of the windows as well as some of the text I copied above:
http://www.howtogeek.com/273629/how-to-restore-your-desktop-and-documents-after-disabling-icloud-sync-in-macos-sierra/
Here is another reference about the issues:
http://www.macworld.com/article/3098804/data-center-cloud/how-to-use-icloud-drive-s-new-desktop-and-documents-access-in-macos-sierra.html


"Natively" add emails to Mail by PHP pipe script

You can do what you ask, but it requires a Mailbox > Rebuild operation. That asks Mail to scan the ~/Library/Mail directory you found and rebuild its email header database from the files it finds there. I doubt you'd find that acceptable.

I'm afraid Gerry's comment above is the right way to go about this: set up a test email account somewhere, use one of the many PHP-to-SMTP methods you can find online, and point Apple Mail at that email account.

Perhaps the simplest, most Apple-like way to achieve that end is with OS X Server. It gives you a configuration UI for the Postfix SMTP mail server built into OS X. Setup through the Server GUI is about as easy as you can hope for. You can create a private user account, and be assured that your test emails won't ever even leave the machine. As cheap as OS X Server is these days, it's pretty much a no-brainer.

If you absolutely have to do this for no cost, you can configure Postfix by hand. The configuration GUI you get with OS X Server is helpful, but not strictly necessary.


Can the new 2019 16-inch Macbook Pro support 8K resolution?

You cannot just assume that an 8K display can be supported just because it supports 4 x 4k displays - it doesn't work that way, I'm afraid.

As far as I know, no 8k monitors with a single cable solution exists today. That would require DisplayPort 2.0, which is coming with monitors next year.

So yes, at the moment 8k resolution through one cable is impossible.


What is this symbol? ⎋ (it is listed as menu shortcut)

To be concise: the symbol you're asking about, the circle with the arrow escaping from it (that's the way I remember what it means), is the Apple way of saying 'The ESC Key'.

So the menu item ⌥⌘⎋
is option+command+esc pressed simultaneously.


How can I view the root directory along with all its subdirectories in Finder?

Navigate to / (e.g. use ⌘+⇧+G.)
Then, in list view hold ⌥ while clicking the triangle. This will show all subdirectories of a certain folder.

By default, you'll don't see hidden files/directories. To show hidden files type the following commands in the Terminal.app:

defaults write com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles TRUE
killall Finder

You can use the value FALSE in the defaults write command to unto this action.


How to force a Time Machine deep traversal?

Setting the Time Machine destination to nothing and then re-setting it to the same location as before forces a deep traversal for me. You could try rebooting between the changing of the destination and the re-adding it to increase the chance of a deep traversal being triggered.

Worst case, we could muck about in single user mode to destroy the fseventsd directory at a safe time when the system is not counting on it to be correct, so you have forced a new database that won't match. You could presumably delete this from the TM side, but I would remove the boot copy as marginally safer and less prone to destroying data you need or messing up your backup.

If you're inclined to use the command line / terminal, I'd start with tmutil compare before you even thing about forcing a deep traversal. It explicitly compares things as they exist now to the last snapshot and you can force things by specifying a specific external snapshot if you are worried about a local snapshot being compared.


How to take music from cassette tapes to iPod

For step 3, I'd recommend Rogue Amoeba's Audio Hijack Pro which has the ability to break up the incoming audio into tracks for you and import it directly into iTunes.
But otherwise, you've got to do pretty much exactly what you planned to do.


Turn off encrypted backup on iPhone that has a profile without removing profiles

When you have a profile that enforces encryption of backups, you really only have three options:

Live with the encrypted backups and do nothing.
Get someone to remove the profile (or wipe the device along with the profile and start over being careful to not allow profiles that force you into encrypted backups).
Somehow exploit a bug or flaw in the security of iOS and bypass this lock. I would expect you to pay big money or have some assistance from NSA-like organization to accomplish this last item unless someone publishes a weakness in iOS that we could take advantage of to bypass the security your iPhone has configured.

As it stands, you will likely have to remove the profile to bypass the restriction that iOS has on not doing a backup in the manner you wish.


You can only download it at all if you have it in your Purchase History on the App Store, & even then you'd get 10.9.5

Other than that, you'd need to find a friend who archives OS versions meticulously.
If you can get hold of 10.9.anything, you can then use the combo updater to 10.9.4 from Apple.


Using magic-trackpad for simple play/pause interface for movies or music

Not sure of the level of ability, but you could try the

Voice Control http://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201936

or the

AssistiveTouch http://support.apple.com/en-us/HT202658


I've solved this by making sure there were no updates left. Basically after the first "cycle of updates" after a clean install, new updates are silently "unlocked". You need to run all updates. One of them fixes the problem.


Can iTunes Genius (or song metadata) be improved so songs without a match can use the feature?

The way I understand it, Genius not only uses your mp3's metatags to organize Genius information, but also gets a lot of information from what people put in their playlists. This makes sense, as the point of Genius is to automatically put together a list of song that go together, without having to do it manually.

I read an article about this once, where a guy had Genius create a playlist for him, and he couldn't figure out for the life of him what the songs had in common. They were from all different years, genres, etc., even including spoken word. Finally, he realized that the tracks all had one thing in common -- they were Canadian. Of course, this isn't the most intelligent behaviour as tracks that are Canadian are not necessarily those you would like to listen to in succession. But of course, it would not be uncommon for people to create a "Canadian" playlist for other reasons than listening to it as a collection, and that's why Genius thought they might go together. The Genius feature slowly loses its charm as the track progresses from Celine Dion to a CBC Radio archive to (heaven forbid) Justin Bieber.


Mounting Samba shares under /Volumes without GUI fluff

The following is what I use to mount Samba shares via launchd:

/usr/bin/osascript -e "try" -e "mount volume \"smb://guest@${host}\"" -e "end try"

Using osascript's mount means any keychain access needed is done "automagically", there's no progress indicator or Finder window, and the command waits for the mount to be available before proceeding (try it with && echo -n "Done."; mount appended to the end of the above command to test this).


Login user when connecting via ssh on MacOS

Short term, you will probably have to limit the logged in users to one or two since Mac OS doesn't implement a terminal services model of many remote users. Not only does your setup likely violate the explicit terms relating to Remote Desktop functionality in the software license (assuming your company didn't negotiate a custom license agreement with Apple), many subsystems, tuning parameters and scripts are designed for one primary user at a time.

Long term, you'll probably choose to re-architect your build toolset to set up some mix of:

a continuous integration server that builds without GUI
Apple's server.app and leverage Xcode server service to handle logging in to the GUI so you don't need to script and automate the local windowed session for the shared build account
multiple Mac for each developer so they can build locally instead of remotely.

TLDR; the system wasn't designed for 5 remote users - you'll experience oddities and issues if you run that way for long


Does the iPhone X use facial recognition hardware?

Both. The iPhone X's True Depth Camera uses hardware unique to the X, specifically an infrared camera, an IR flood illuminator, and a dot projector to measure the depth of your face. The regular FaceTime camera is used for color information and iOS software handles facial recognition, but not concerning the "fingerprint" of your face for Face ID - facial detection works in realtime on all current iPhones and facial recognition exists in the photos app via software.

The True Depth camera does all the heavy lifting for Face ID. Additionally, Face ID works in the dark because of the IR camera, flood illuminator, and dot projector. Without this hardware, the regular FaceTime camera could be fooled by a sheet of paper with a person's face on it.


Those entries are examples that can be used as templates in user defined configurations.

See the same examples at:

http://www.opensource.apple.com/source/uucp/uucp-11/configs/sys

You can see those examples in the same way as the phone prefix +555 in the movies. It there to show somebody using a phone, but the fake number/name cant be called. Placing an example with a ficticious hostname allows to have a template.


brew services start php70 with unix domain socket - without sudo?

The command (sudo) brew services start php70 (or better (sudo) brew services start homebrew/php/php70) copies a special plist to a distinctive folder and launches and starts it as a launch agent or daemon.

Without the sudo prefix it's copied to the $USER's LaunchAgents folder (~/Library/LaunchAgents/) and started with $USER rights.

With the sudo prefix, the plist is copied to /Library/LaunchDaemons and started with root rights. It will launch several processes (one parent root php70-fpm and several child _www php-fpm processes).

Only the latter will and can create a UNIX socket file with the owner _www.

This is the expected behavior.


Demo account for Sign in with Apple for App Store Review?

Apple can use their accounts for Apple sign in.
If you didn’t rely exclusively on Apple for app identity, you would want to provide an account of your issuance so you can see what the testers hit. Not giving them an account makes you miss getting feedback. (imo)
As you stated, you can’t issue an AppleID to testers, they must do that themselves.


I use Itsycal by Mowglii (I'm not affiliated with the company or software).  It's free, open source, and allows you to format the displayed date/time many different ways.


How do I setup 1Password on a second machine to use a shared Agile Keychain file in Dropbox?

I had this exact problem over and over, with some help from Agile I found the answer here: http://help.agile.ws/1Password3/configure_dropbox_on_mac.html
Here is the important part:

To configure 1Password on your other Macs, first setup Dropbox, then
make sure you have the latest version of 1Password installed and
running.
Locate your 1Password.agilekeychain file in your Dropbox
folder. If it has a green check mark badge indicating that the sync is
complete, double click it,
and 1Password will confirm that you want to
use this new location. Important If it shows the blue syncing badge
rather than the green check mark badge, wait until the badge is a
green check mark before opening the file. Failure to do so could
result in data corruption.


Free Space after merging Partitons on Macintosh HD

In order to add free space to the Apple_CoreStorage partition, a significant amount of free space must resize immediately after the Apple_Boot partition. Based on the error message you posted, this appears to be not true. If the free space resides above the Apple_CoreStorage partition, then this space can not be added to the Apple_CoreStorage partition.
You can determine where the free space exists by entering the command given below.
sudo gpt -r show /dev/disk0

This command can be entered while booted to El Capitan, because SIP under this version of OS X allows reading from /dev/disk0, but not writing.
From the table published in the Wikipedia article GUID Partition Table, one can determine a type of partition based on the GUID. From the command sudo gpt -r show /dev/disk0 output, one can determine the partitions with indices 1, 2, and 3 are types EFI System partition, Apple Core Storage Container, and Apple Boot partition, respectively. The 30,617,650 sectors of free space can be converted to bytes by multiplying by 4096 bytes per sector, which is 125.4 GB. Since this free space is above the  Apple_CoreStorage partition, the space can not be merged into the Apple_CoreStorage partition.
Unless your are an expert, the safest solution is to backup your data to an external drive, erase the internal drive, reinstall OS X and restore your data from backup. One possible alternative is given below. This alternative has not been tested.

Boot to Big Sur recovery or from a Big Sur installer and enter the command below.
diskutil addPartition disk0s1 JHFS+ NewVolume 0

Install El Capitan or newer to the new partition.

Copy you data to the new installation or use the Migration Assistant.

Erase to free space the old Apple_CoreStorage and Apple_Boot partitions.

Merge the free space into the new partition.


What would happen if I force installed a Linux driver into Mac OS X?

What would happen if I were to force the Intel drivers for the Linux
  kernel into Mac OS X? Would it work? Would there be severe instability
  or data loss? Is it even possible?

At best? 100% nothing. At worst? Crash your whole system and make it unusable or even unbootable.

While Mac OS X and Linux are both different “flavors” of Unix, you can’t just grab parts from one OS and just install it into the other OS and expect them to work.

That said, if there is source code for the driver somewhere, you could potentially compile them for Mac OS X using the Xcode suite of development tools.

But that is one big if. The reality is compiling Linux application source code on a Mac OS X system from a Linux system is a crapshoot. Sometimes it works and you get to use nice Linux tools on a Mac OS X system. But sometimes it just won’t work. And that is at the application level. On the driver level it’s even less plausible or doable; and even if it was doable it would be difficult to do that at best.

That said, there seems to have been an open source effort to compile Linux Intel drivers for Mac OS X as seen here. But note that the versions of Mac OS X referred to are Mac OS X 10.4 and 10.5; nothing more modern.


Two iTunes installs pointing at the same NAS share

My solution for that is having only one computer managing the library. First it was a PC running iTunes for Windows. Then, I moved to Ubuntu and started using Banshee for both managing the library and keeping my iPod updated. Finally, I have a Mac Book Pro and I have moved back to iTunes.

The Linux server, running both Samba and Netatalk, acts also as a mediacenter (with XBMC) that shares music also over uPNP, so I can access and play music from virtually any network device, even from the Internet.

In the past I've tried other schemas involving iTunes and network filesystems and it always turned into a headache.


I have found these articles:

http://macdrug.com/free-ntfs-read-and-write-solutions-in-mac-os-x-el-capitan-or-older/

http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/write-ntfs-drives-el-capitan-free/

(pretty much identical)

If you want to reformat the external HDD I guess that the native Apple filesystem would be the most reliable choice, unless you have to use it with other devices... in this case I think FAT32 could be quite "universal".


Tap on the three dots on the bottom right corner, it will pop-up a menu;

Tap on the title bar on the top of the menu (in this example, the bar that says "Dam That River" and has the Album title and artwork.
This will bring you to a second screen, with some of the tracks, more albums from the same artist.

Tap on "Show complete album"


Can't a Macbook Pro work properly on integrated GPU only?

Just moving kext files won't disable your discrete graphics card, it will just make it work in a very basic mode.

You can achieve that modifying certain EFI variable. I answered this other question with the full procedure to permanently disable discrete graphics card on startup and have a fully functional machine.


Automatically typing a password into terminal

You did not mention what tool you are using to effect the change of passphrase, but from a shell command line, hdiutil probably makes the most sense.

Its chpass subcommand will let you change the passphrase of an encrypted disk image. It can be told to read the old and new passphrases from stdin. However, it requires that the passphrases be presented in a “NUL terminated” format, which is difficult to accomplish when typing them directly. You can use the printf command to create the required format though:

printf '%s\0' '01d Pa55w0rD' 'n3w p4ssWoRd' |
  hdiutil chpass /path/to/encrypted.dmg -oldstdinpass -newstdinpass

The passphrases should be given in the same order as the -oldstdinpass and -newstdinpass parameters (in the example above, the -oldstdinpass parameter and the old passphrase itself come first in their respective contexts).

Note: If you are in a multi-user environment there is a chance that another user could spot your passphrases by watching the list of processes and their associated command lines (e.g. the printf command and its argument (thus your passphrases) might show up in the output of ps -ef). This is less likely if you are using a shell where printf is a built into the shell itself (e.g. ksh, bash, zsh do not require using a separate process for the external printf command).


Remove duplicate menu bar icons in macOS Sierra

Drat... shortly after I posted this I found a way to kill off the SystemUIServer which was just the kick it needed.

killall -KILL SystemUIServer

PS: I searched before I posted originally. :)


How can I dismiss the App Store banner in Notification Center without taking an action?

To dismiss the notification temporarily:

Click and hold the banner and flick it to the right to put that notification in Notification Center. If you are using a Trackpad, You can hover over the alert and use two fingers to flick it to the left.

The notification will still remain in the Notification Center until you update.

Unfortunately, there is currently no way to dismiss the notification permanently.


Earthed (Grounded) Stubby Plug for MacBook AC Adapter

I have only just discovered this problem with a 2017 MacBook Pro. I get a tingling feeling from the MacBook and realised that the earth part of the apple UK 13 amp plug is a dummy (not connected with the circular locking spur on the charger unit) but I noticed on my early MacBook Air that there was an earth connector on the apple plug and so I swapped it and now I do not have the tingling problem. I do have it on the Air with the new "improved" apple plug.


iPod Touch (4gen) camera: video same resolution as still camera?

It's a bit crazy, but on the 4th gen iPod touch the video is actually higher resolution than the still pictures:

Cameras, photos, and video

Video recording, HD (720p) up to 30 frames per second with audio; still photos (960 x 720) with back camera

720p video is 1280x720, whereas the photos taken are only 960x720.


Where can I download the Darwin 12.2.0 source code?

I found it. Actually, the Darwin kernel is named xnu. The complete kernel name, version included, for Mac OS X 10.8.2 is xnu-2050.18.24.

It can be downloaded here: http://www.opensource.apple.com/tarballs/xnu/xnu-2050.18.24.tar.gz.

Source code can be browsed online here: http://www.opensource.apple.com/source/xnu/xnu-2050.18.24/


How to simultaneously access IPv4 devices on 2 different 10/24 networks when using 2 active VPN connections?

Routing issue

The issue here is that both VPN connection profiles are in a 10 network, which officially comes with a /8 a.k.a. 255.0.0.0 a.k.a. 0xff000000 netmask. So when establishing both VPN connections at once, you end up with only one destination in the routing table for the 10-network. And that routing entry will route all 10.x.x.x traffic to the first established ppp connection, except for the local and remote IP addresses in the second ppp connection.

$ netstat -nr -f inet
Routing tables

Internet:
Destination        Gateway            Flags        Refs      Use   Netif Expire
default            192.168.0.1        UGSc           10        0     en0
default            10.0.1.1           UGScI           0        0    ppp0
default            10.0.0.1           UGScI           0        0    ppp1
10                 ppp0               USc             1        0    ppp0
10.0.0.1           10.0.0.12          UHr             2        0    ppp1
10.0.1.1           10.0.1.200         UHr             1        0    ppp0

Routing solution

The fix is to manually extend the routing table with the desired entries. There is no need to remove the 10 entry, only add new route entries. As long as the newly added route entries address a smaller subnet the entry will have preference. Read this as: when the subnet has a higher /X number. For example /24 is higher then /8 so a 10/24 entry will have preference over a 10/8 routing entry. Basically add a new routing entry after having established the second VPN connection, like: $ sudo /sbin/route -n add -net 10.0.2.0/24 -interface ppp1

Automation solution

It is cumbersome and can introduce mistakes when having to enter the route manually after having established the secondary VPN connection. Luckily there is a solution built-into the ppp daemon using if-up, as you can read in $ man pppd. Every time a ppp (VPN) connection is establish that uses IPv4 addressing, a script (/etc/ppp/if-up) is called where you can execute your custom rules/commands a.k.a. hooks.

The script below is extensively commented and should be self explanatory.

Your Mac might not have this script ($ ls /etc/ppp). In that case create it ($ sudo touch /etc/ppp/ip-up) with executable permissions ($ sudo chmod +x /etc/ppp/ip-up).

#!/bin/sh
#
# This script is run by the pppd after the link is established.
# It should be used to add routes, set IP address, etc.
#
# Tested with Mavericks (Mac OS X 10.9)
#
# This script is called with the following arguments:
# Arg   Name            Example
# $0    Script full location    /etc/ppp/ip-up
# $1    Interface name      ppp0
# $2    TTY device      <blank>
# $3    Speed           0
# $4    Local IP address    10.0.0.200
# $5    Remote IP address   10.0.0.1
# $6    LAN gateway     192.168.0.1
# source for $1-$6 is $ man -P 'less -p "    /etc/ppp/ip-up"' pppd

# ppp.log for non english systems do still have an english timestamp
export LC_TIME="C";

# Note: there is no static assignment for ppp0 to PPTP and ppp1 to L2TP
#       therefore $1 isn't useful to differentiate VPN networks

# To debug, uncomment the line below
#echo "$(date +%c) : \$5=$5" >> /var/log/ppp.log

# Add your routing table corrections here
# note: 2>&1 will redirect errors to the standard output
case "$5" in
10.0.0.1) OUT=$(exec /sbin/route -n add -net 10.0.0.0/24 -interface "$1" 2>&1) ;;
10.0.1.1) OUT=$(exec /sbin/route -n add -net 10.0.1.0/24 -interface "$1" 2>&1) ;;
esac

# If standard output is not empty, log it prepended by a timestamp
[ ! -z "$OUT" ] && echo "$(date +%c) : $OUT" >>/var/log/ppp.log

# There is automatic route removal on ppp disconnect.
# So no need to manually remove the above route(s) in /etc/ppp/ip-down

With thanks for the idea from jalbrecht2000 at http://hints.macworld.com/article.php?story=20030906232648318


How do I a record a video on iPhone with the screen off?

Yes, it is possible.

This method works with at least iOS 9.

  Make sure your iPhone is locked
  Press the lock key on the top of your iPhone to brighten it, without unlocking it completely
  Slide the bottom right camera icon half way up, and don’t let go. Keep your finger in this way
  Slide the camera modes to video, again keeping your finger on the camera slider mode still half way up
  Tap the big red record button in the bottom middle of the screen; again, keeping your finger still on the camera slider mode still half
  way up. Don’t worry if it doesn’t show the recording happening.
  Double press the home button three times,
  Keep your finger still half way on the slider, until the iPhone automatically turns off its screen. This will take about 10 seconds
  regardless of what settings you’ve kept in the auto lock feature
  That’s it. With the screen off, your iPhone is recording a video.
  To end the recording and save the video, simply unlock the iPhone

Source: https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/277209


Does a Big Sur 11.x Update kill genuine Apple SSDs in MacBook Pro 13" Early 2015?

No. We have that update on several Macs identical to yours. You may have a hardware failure, but it’s not the OS that’s causing it. The OS is hobbled by it no other than needing the next write to succeed, there’s no code in the OS that intentionally breaks storage.
As it has been for two decades of Mac OS support, coincidence is more likely than cause, here. It stinks when we get a failure, so no amount of experience lessens that disappointment. Worse, it shakes our confidence when we confront how little we can do in the face of hardware failure.

When you run an upgrade, you change the boot process substantially. This is precisely when you discover hardware isn’t up to snuff and pre-existing storage failures become critical. (This is also the time when minor  storage corruptions turn into data loss.)

Separating causality from correlation is super tricky outside a repair shop where you have access to known good parts, can reconnect cables, run advanced diagnostics and see trends due to hundreds of repairs a week.
Your next step is to contact Apple for a service estimate. They may just offer a service program and underwrite the cost of the repair. Worst case, you have a second look at your triage and know one cost for repair.
In the mean time, you can try erasing it from several OS, but be sure you keep good backups if you “revive” this Mac.
p.s. this sort of error is precisely how many of our SSD bite the dust. We gladly pay for repairs on 2015 and newer gear as they run great with new SSD or logic boards, even on Big Sur.


Can I use an iPad charger with my iPhone 4?

The iPhone simply won't draw as much through the charger as the iPad would. Certainly shouldn't cause a problem at all (and my money's where my mouth is because we just have the iPad charger plugged in these days, using it for our iPad as well as our 2 iPhone 4s - we've been doing this for about 5-6 weeks now without any obvious ill-effects).


Disable repeated "You don't have permission to use the application" dialog boxes

You can disable the startup items entirely, so they don't attempt to run at login.

System Preferences → Users & Groups → (Kid's account) → Login Items

Select the applications that are denied, then click the minus sign to remove them from the boot process.

See also: http://www.maclife.com/article/howtos/how_remove_startup_items_os_x


Printing to a Cups Server without using the local CUPS doesn't work since OS X Lion

The release notes for CUPS 1.5 mention that

  CUPS no longer supports the old ~/.cupsrc or ~/.lpoptions files from
  CUPS 1.1.x. The ~/.cups/client.conf and ~/.cups/lpoptions files that
  were introduced in CUPS 1.2 must now be used.

Have you tried putting the line

ServerName print-server

into ~/.cups/client.conf?


Open the Terminal application and type (or copy and paste) the following command and hit ENTER. This will remove the steamclean job and should stop those popup messages.

  launchctl remove com.valvesoftware.steamclean

You may also want to run the following command to check for other Steam related launchd jobs.

  launchctl list | grep steam

On my own Mac there is another called "com.valvesoftware.steam.ipctool" that you may also want to remove.


How do I stop a monthly charge of $5.04 from APL*ITUNES I don't want?

As it is a monthly charge and the same charge every month it is probably a subscription

To view and cancel your subscriptions on a Mac:

  Open iTunes on your Mac.
  Go to the Store section of your Music library.
  Click on the Accounts link in the right column.
  Sign in, if necessary
  Scroll down to the Settings header and click  Manage next to
  Subscriptions.

(source)


Quick way to preview all pages in a PDF file

Preview also has something called a "Contact Sheet" (similar to the contact sheets one printed for photos on a film).

Open the PDF in Preview and either press cmdoption6, or go to the "View" menu and select "Contact Sheet".

Then zoom in or out to taste.


Can the Location Services tell me where my iPhone was this morning?

If location services are enabled, your iPhone maintains a log of Significant Locations. You can find them under Settings app → Privacy → Location Services → System Services → Significant Locations. Check for History section. Tapping on History will list the locations recorded by your iPhone.

You also have the option to view and delete the individually recorded location data.

If you are concerned about your privacy, you can also choose to clear the location data any time. This data is sensitive and handled very carefully by Apple. It is not shared with 3rd party apps, is encrypted and cannot be read by Apple.


I'm afraid that you won't be able to use it, as for using the Computer Version you need to have previously registered your email on the smartphone version. This is stated on the login screen of the Computer Version.

As a side note, Settings is grayed out because you have no account to configure.


Is it possible to stream an RTSP feed to an iPhone?

IP Vision is an expensive app. There are several free apps that will stream RTSP on iPhone. I use Aceplayer, but it doesn't seem to be very stable. It may not be the app - I haven't had time to thoroughly test it yet.

There are at least dozen more, so search the app store for RTSP and try out what works for you.


100GB+ of hidden space I can't delete or purge

Try OmniDiskSweeper which shows in a column-view:

Largest folders will sort to the top.

I often will run it via

sudo /Applications/OmniDiskSweeper.app/Contents/MacOS/OmniDiskSweeper 2>/dev/null

Also: make sure that it gets “Full Disk Access” as shown here:


How can I see the sleep time(s) of my mac for a specific date?

Found the answer in this so question:how to find out the start time of last sleep

Luckily the date I had in mind wasn't too long ago so I was able to use

pmset -g log|grep -e " Sleep  " -e " Wake  "