Any easy way to search for & replace characters in JPG file names in a folder?

Finder is not the tool for this job, but I've always done this sort of thing via Terminal.

To be safe, you should have a backup of your Mac since the mv command will rename everything it finds, and if more files match the "642*" pattern, they will get changed as well.

Here is a snippet of code to get to the folder, find the files starting with 642 and do the edit one by one in an automated fashion. (Obviously changing the path to the real location of your images):

cd "/path/to/your/images"
for i in 642*; do
    mv "$i" "${i/642/699}"
done

This will move all images matching the wildcard 642* (meaning it starts with 642 and the rest of the name can be anything), and moves them in order to rename the 642 to 699. It will overwrite any files that already have the destination file name, so be sure that they are files you don't want.
This assumes that you don't organize your images into subfolders too; change 642* to */642* if this isn't the case.


my ipod touch wont turn on? what do i do?

On my old iPod I took about 20 minutes until it booted again if the battery was fully drained.
How long did you wait while it was in the charger?


Can I install OS X 10.10 on a MBP Mid-2015 I buy today?

Interesting question.

Originally these models shipped with macOS Yosemite 10.10.3. However, my understanding is that current models ship with macOS El Capitan 10.11.2.1

Typically this would mean you can’t install a version of macOS earlier than the version it actually ships with and I suspect that would still be the case here.

However, I don’t recall seeing any firmware updates for this model, so it may be possible to do what you want manually (i.e. you wouldn’t be able to do it from Recovery Mode, you’d have to try booting from an external installer or try using Target Disk Mode).

My inclination would be to say it isn’t going to be possible, but in this rare case it may be.

Hopefully someone else who has tried this can chime in here and give you a more definitive answer. You could also contact Apple and see what they say.

1. Last time I checked (admittedly a few months ago - early this year so well after macOS High Sierra was released) these models were still shipping with 10.11.2. However, I am based in Australia and it could be just a case of how fast production batches are selling. I will check again in a couple of hours and update this answer as soon as I can.

[UPDATE]

I've just had confirmation that models being manufactured now ship directly from the factory with macOS High Sierra installed. My guess is getting one with El Capitan pre-installed is going to be a remote possibility at best, and even then that'd be based on whether your location has older stock.

So, installing an older version of macOS depends entirely on whether there's been a firmware update on that model. Unfortunately, some years back Apple started automatically including firmware updates (if/when required) within macOS updates/upgrades and I'm not aware of any current consolidated list of these updates, so it's not easy to check which devices had firmware updates and what those updates meant. Previously you could refer to this page.

In other words the only way to find out with 100% certainty is to try it, but I'd err on the side of caution and assume this won't be possible. I suppose you could ask Apple if you could return it within the return period on the basis that you can't install Yosemite, but they're likely to tell you up front that it's not going to be possible.

The only way to be 100% sure would be to purchase one of the original ones that hasn't been updated beyond Yosemite, although I suspect that won't be easy to find. You'd also be 99+% sure if you bought an original one that shipped with Yosemite but has since been upgraded. However, if you purchased one brand new today that ships with High Sierra, your odds drop to less than 50/50 in my opinion.


Are Quartz Compositions portable to Linux?

No.  Quartz Compositions only run on Mac OS 10.4 and up.

There's a third-party tool, Qtzweb, which can translate a small subset of Quartz Composer patches into JavaScript WebGL code, which you could run in a browser on Linux.


How can I modify an existing FAT partition without losing its data?

Disk Utility doesn't resize FAT or ExFAT partitions on the fly, so you will need to take that drive to a Windows or UNIX computer or use another tool to resize FAT.

If you only have Disk Utility, I would create a dmg of the FAT partition and save it to the main partition.

Then you could delete the FAT partition, resize the HFS partition and recreate the new FAT section to your preference.

At that point you would choose the restore tab to place the contents from the disk image (.dmg file) onto the properly sized, but empty FAT volume.


Make mac mail VIP lists include items I send

Currently there does not seem to be a way to include sent email in the VIP mailbox.

According to Apple's Mail User Guide – Show emails from VIP senders in Mail on Mac: "Any messages in the Inbox from  a VIP (even sent as part of a conversation) are displayed in a VIP mailbox." [emphasis added]

The conditions for Smart Mailboxes also only offer Sender is VIP and Sender is member of group.

However, you can create a new Smart Mailbox in the Mail app and add conditions of type Any recipient is equal to and manually add conditions with VIP email addresses to that Smart Mailbox. This way you could have a Smart Mailbox where mails you send to those recipients appear.

See also Apple's Mail User Guide – Use Smart Mailboxes in Mail on Mac


Combining multiple small DMGs into one large "virtual" DMG

If you are on Leopard (OS X 10.5 or above) you can do this by having one encrypted disk image containing all the files.

The dmg to create in DiskUtility is a sparsebundle. This creates one bundle that mounts as a disk to OSX but actually is a directory and all the files in it are of a much smaller size. In Finder select the sparsesbundle and then Show Package Contents.

I just created a sparsebundle of capacity 1TB and copyied a 400GB vieo file onto it. The structure of the bindle had many files none of which were above 9MB

The band size can be controlled see hdiutil. But I have not done or worked out how do do this.


If your Mac enters its full sleep state, then your network connections will be disconnected. Your Mac can not be connected to a network and be asleep at the same time.

You can avoid full sleep by setting your Computer Sleep to Never. Your MacBook will then sleep all the sub-systems possible when idle, but will remain awake enough to maintain a network connection.

PowerNap is not the same as full sleep. This is a special state controlled by Apple and, for now, available only to Apple's chosen processes.


Macbook pro 2009 update not taking effect

In the Updates section of the App Store, if the 10.10.3 update is fully downloaded, the "Update" button next to it should be replaced by a "Restart" button. Click it, then click "Restart" on the notification that'll come up in the upper right of the screen, and then a restart will happen and the update will be installed.


Can I use my hotspot on my phone for Airplay?

Yes.

Though info on the topic seems somewhat sparse, a few threads like this and this seem to indicate that using a hotspot works as a viable Wi-Fi network for AirPlay (as long as, of course, you connect both the iPhone and the computer to the hotspot.) However, if you've already got a Wi-Fi network, you'd probably be better off using that instead of a hotspot.

Since your PC doesn't support AirPlay off the bat, you'd need some sort of software like AirServer to make it a valid AirPlay device. From there, simply connect it to your TV and AirPlay from your phone to the PC.

However, if you do have an Apple TV, a feature called Peer-to-Peer AirPlay is available that will let you AirPlay from your iPhone to your Apple TV without a formal Wi-Fi network, circumventing the need to create a hotspot. Just turn on Bluetooth and Wi-Fi on both devices and it should work. Note, however, that AirServer doesn't support this, so you would need an Apple TV.


What is the source of air pollution data in the Weather app?

When I press the "The Weather Channel" logo a the bottom it takes me to a weather.com page that lists the air quality:

Then pressing on the "See Details" link shows the details about the air quality:


Copy extended attributes to new file (ffmpeg)

I needed this too—also after running FFmpeg!—so I wrote a shell script to do it. It’s not very quick, and it won’t work if any individual attribute contains more than about 128 KB of data. (Behind the scenes, it’s encoding each attribute value in hexadecimal to make sure that binary data is copied correctly.) It worked fine for my needs, though.

Save this to a file called copy_xattrs:

#!/usr/bin/env zsh

if [[ $# -ne 2 ]]; then
    print >&2 "usage: copy_xattrs SOURCE_FILE TARGET_FILE"
    exit 1
fi

set -e

IFS=$'\n' attr_names=($(xattr "$1"))
for attr in $attr_names; do
    value=$(xattr -p -x "$attr" "$1" | tr -d " \n")
    xattr -w -x "$attr" "$value" "$2"
done

Then run chmod u+x copy_xattrs to make it executable. Now you can run copy_xattrs source target to copy all of the extended attributes from the file source to the file target.


How in the world do you remove an action in iAd producer?


In 10.8 and later (but not in 10.7) there is a preference for the default view mode:

I don't know any way to change the default size or position of windows, but you can use an application like Slate, ShiftIt, or Moom to assign a keyboard shortcut for resizing a window to fill the right half of a screen.


Unable to boot Mac. Single user mode not working

did you do the single person commands?
did you type them correctly?

/sbin/mount -uw /
rm /var/db/.applesetupdone


Kernel Panic - Random Shutdown - Please Help

This has happened to me before. You should back up your computer to the drive and re-install OS X, because this behaviour from an Apple device occurs when some system files are missing/corrupted.


Running iPhone side by side with another iPhone

Literally, put the phones side by side & using 2 fingers simultaneously, tap the same part of each screen at the same time, using the working screen as the guide & simply tapping 'blind' onto exactly the same place on the other screen at the same time.

That way, hopefully, both will be in sync as you tap in the unlock code, then work towards being able to back it up.


Fixing an LED Home Cinema display caused whistling and a spark, is it salvageable?

caused whistling and a spark, is it salvageable?  Does the whistling and the spark mean that one of the two boards is fried?

This sounds like you shorted something to ground.  The whistling is most likely from a blown capacitor.  I've intentionally shorted them for demo purposes and some did in fact whistle.  While it could be a different component, my bet is a blown cap.

the logic board whistled, had a spark, and produced smoke for a few seconds

This is a classic case of "you let the magic smoke out."  In all seriousness, a spark and the sign/odor of smoke is a clear indication that you shorted something causing it to blow.
Now, there should be two boards - the power supply and the logic board.  It's entirely possible that the damage is to the logic board but the descriptors used point to the power supply.  Either way, without putting hands and eyes on it, we can only "best guess" it at this point.

It stayed in a slightly damp basement for one year: when I opened it apart, it had a bit of mold on the metal....although some of the metal on the power supply board had a layer of rust

Oh, oh.  This is a very good indicator that there are shorted connections.  Water may cause mold which in and of itself is easy to deal with, but moisture causes corrosion which is conductive.  Rust?  That too is conductive and should have at least been removed.
Can it be salvaged?
Technically yes.  But is it worth it?  I doubt it.
Logic boards and power supply boards can have components replaced quite easily. However, being that there is corrosion and rust with an unknown amount of time "infecting" the PCB; it's impossible to tell how much damage and how many layers are workable.
You may have to get replacements.  They are available on second hand markets like eBay.  (Apple no longer sells or supports these monitors).  However you're ultimately spending money and time on what amounts a 10 year old FHD monitor.  I have three in my garage right now (19 to 22") that I can't even give away.
This is probably something you want to sell as parts given the likely damage and the missing glass (which protects the LCD, prevents dust and contaminates from getting in, and enhances the colors).  There are simply too many better (new) monitors you can get for a few dollars more.


How can I fix an Install Failed error while installing Lion?

I ended up bringing my Macbook Pro into the Apple store. The genius there attached the store's OS X Snow Leopard via USB, and booted from it, and ran the Repair Disk, which gave the same error of an invalid node structure. Since it was still under Apple Care, I got my hard drive replaced and was able to keep the old one.

With the new hard drive, it had Snow Leopard on it, and I simply upgraded it to Lion without a problem. I was able to attach the old hard drive via USB, and restore all my files.

Thanks everyone for their help. +1 to everyone.


AppleScript prints out keypresses, doesn't execute them

I've not used it inside a shellscript, only in 'pure' Applescript, but why not just

tell application "myApp" to activate

..it would prevent the randomness of which particular app was next in line.


I know this was from a while ago, but I had a similar issue and stumbled across this temporary fix. By default, Chrome launches with the wrong audio buffer rate. You can manually set it to the right one by launching Chrome through terminal, but that's a pain in the butt to do every time. So you can create a shortcut with automater to do it for you:

Open Automater
Choose "Application"
Search for "Run Shell Script"
Drag the "Run Shell Script" action into the place to the left
Paste the following into the Run Shell Script text box:

open /Applications/Google\ Chrome.app --args --audio-buffer-size=2048

Then just save that application, quit chrome, and open it to start chrome with the right buffer.

NOTE: I've noticed that this only works for a while. If you, for example, close your laptop and open it back up, the audio may not work correctly again. No idea why.


Disable trackpad feedback? Don't want any tactile/haptic feedback when clicking

I have a 12" Macbook (2015) and a Macbook Pro (2017), both running MacOS 10.13.6. The 12" gives me the option for "Silent Clicking" in Trackpad Preferences. The MBP, however, does not give me this option (and I wish it did). So, while it does seem to be capable of being switched off, there does seem to be some hardware-specific aspect to it. Silent mode is nice... wish they all did it.


Switch tab in Firefox with swipe left/swipe right gestures

Previous tab: Browser:PrevTab
Next tab: Browser:NextTab

Reference of available commands:

https://hg.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/file/tip/browser/base/content/browser-sets.inc


Opening a terminal window to a specific directory from a bash script

Here is a small script I knocked up :

#!/usr/bin/osascript
on run argv
  set dir to quoted form of (first item of argv)
  tell app "Terminal" to do script "cd " & dir
end run

If you save this and make it executable

chmod +x script_filename

and then run it

script_filename ~/Desktop

then it will open up a new terminal window and change to the directory in the argument.


"One-way synchronization" between Mail and Gmail?

You are describing an account set up with POP3.
To achieve that behavior follow this instructions:

First, set up POP in Gmail

On your computer, open Gmail.
In the top right, click Settings Settings.
Click Settings.
Click the Forwarding and POP/IMAP tab.
In the "POP Download" section, select Enable POP for all mail or Enable POP for mail that arrives from now on.
At the bottom of the page, click Save Changes.
Next, make changes on your email client
Go to your client, like Microsoft Outlook, and check these settings.

Incoming Mail (POP) Server: pop.gmail.com

Requires SSL: Yes

Port: 995

Outgoing Mail (SMTP) Server: smtp.gmail.com

Requires SSL: Yes

Requires TLS: Yes (if available)

Requires Authentication: Yes

Port for SSL: 465

Port for TLS/STARTTLS: 587

If you use Gmail with your work or school account, enter mail.domain.com, then select Port 110.

Server timeouts Greater than 1 minute (5 is recommended)
Full Name or Display Name   Your name
Account Name, User Name, or Email address   Your email address
Password    Your Gmail password

When adding your account choose "Other" instead of "Gmail" on Mail app.


Changing Notification Sound in Yosemite/El Capitan

Yosemite Instructions:

Convert the sound you want to use to .caf using afconvert:

afconvert -f caff -d LEI16@22050 input_file output.caf

Go to
/System/Library/PrivateFrameworks/ToneLibrary.framework/Versions/A/Resources/AlertTones/Modern

Since I wasn't sure just adding the new .caf file to this folder would work, I made a copy (backup) of sms_alert_note.caf and then replaced sms_alert_note.caf with the new file. Since it doesn't work at first (I think you have to somehow reload the framework), I restarted. After restarting the default "Note" sound was replaced by my own sound.

EDIT: El Capitan (dirty) solution (without disabling SIP)

First: prepare the .caf file as instructed above using afconvert.
Reboot your Mac into recovery mode (hold cmd+R while booting). Open the Terminal from the utilities menu and type diskutil list to get a list of the connected disks. Make a note of the name of the disk containing the boot volume

/dev/disk0 (internal, physical):
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      GUID_partition_scheme                        *1.0 TB     disk0
   1:                        EFI EFI                     209.7 MB   disk0s1
   2:          Apple_CoreStorage Macintosh HD           1.0 TB     disk0s2
   3:                 Apple_Boot Recovery HD             784.2 MB   disk0s3`

/dev/disk1 (internal, virtual):
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:                  Apple_HFS Macintosh HD          +1.0 TB     disk1
                                 Logical Volume on disk0s2
                                 8D6D5ACA-6AFF-4F53-9E61-2D83A2536501
                                 Unencrypted

In this case the boot disk is disk0 containing the boot volume "Macintosh HD. Now type diskutil mountDisk disk0 to mount the disk (replace disk0 with whatever your disk name actually was).

Your startup disk should now be mounted in /Volumes/Macintosh HD(or whatever your boot volume's name is), cd to that location: cd /Volumes/Macintosh\ HD and type chroot.

Now you have full access to your boot volume without having to deal with SIP.

Go to the folder where alert sounds are stored
    cd /System/Library/PrivateFrameworks/ToneLibrary.framework/Versions/A/Resources/AlertTones/Modern

Make a backup of the original sound you want to replace (I'm replacing the default 'note' sound)
    mv sms_alert_note.caf sms_alert_note.caf.bak
Copy the .caf file you created earlier to the folder:
    cp /path/to/new/notification.caf ./sms_alert_note.caf
(note: simply adding a new file won't work as it won't be recognized by Messages, you'll have to replace one of the existing files)

Reboot. You will now be able to use your custom sound by selecting the name of the notification you replaced in the AlertTones/Modern folder in Messages -> Preferences -> Message Received Sound. If you replaced sms_alert_note.caf this will be "Note (Default)".

I don't expect this to hold through system updates, but it might if the AlertTones folder is not modified.


How can I disable the "no backup in x days" from TimeMachine?

When you don't have the external hard drive hooked up, go System Preferences >> Time Machine, and switch it to OFF. You will still be able to perform backups, it just won't happen automatically.

In newer OS versions, you must uncheck the Back up automatically box and then right-click on the backup disk on the right side and select Stop using ‘Time Machine’ Backups.

This is the technique that I use, and I don't see notifications.


Will my data plan get erased if I reset my iPhone 6s

Resetting your iPhone will not impact the contract (data plan) you have with a carrier. You will loose all data stored on the phone itself though, so make sure you have a backup (or, if you store your data in the cloud, the login/password data for all your online accounts).


In Apple Mail, How can I delete a message without moving to the next one, causing the next one to be marked as read?

The easiest (albeit slightly lengthy) way to do this is to create a custom service, like so:

Create a new Automator Service. Have it take no input in Mail and put the following code into a "Run JavaScript" action:

mail = Application('Mail')
mail.includeStandardAdditions = true
for (i in mail.selection()) {
    mail.selection()[i].delete()
}

Save the service. Then go to System Preferences > Keyboard, select Shortcuts at the top, and select Services in the sidebar. Scroll to the bottom to where it says "General" and you should see your Service there. Assign it a keyboard shortcut. This shortcut (so long as it does not conflict with any existing shortcuts) will allow you to delete a selected Mail message without selecting the next conversation.


Automatically arrange icons on the Mac OS 10.6 desktop in groups

Once the desktop fills up, finder will tile and stack icons with a very small offset. I'd guess the algorithm had a bug or your .DS_Store file was corrupt and the system thought it had more icons to pile than it ended up with.

I dont know of a way to intentionally trigger the effect, but it would be nice to have four or five tidy stacks nice and deep rather than using the whole desktop.


Are KVM switches even needed anymore for MacBook Pros?

As special as we'd like to believe MacBook Pro computers are, they're still computers with industry standard connectivity like USB, video, etc.  What works for a PC laptop or desktop will work equally as well with a MacBook Air/Pro laptop and Mac desktop.

Do you need a KVM?  No.

Just get a quality monitor with multiple inputs and a keyboard/mouse combo with multiple connections.

You've already mentioned Logitech Flow which allows you to use a single mouse/keyboard across two different computers simultaneously (i.e. cut/copy in Windows and paste in macOS).

Though convenient, it's not the exact product you would need - it's actually something simpler:  multi-device connectivity.  The same Logitech products like the MX Series keyboard and mouse have the ability to pair up to 3 different devices.  A simple press of a button will switch connectivity from one computer to the next.

  Is there some sort of magic Wi-Fi / Bluetooth / Airplay device that can perform the same function.

If there was, you'd still need to switch it.  WiFi, Bluetooth and AirPlay aren't magic and give you features where none exist.  They just replace wires as a matter of convenience.  You don't suddenly get KVM capability because you can stream video without cables.

And...if you're looking at software, that means at least one computer must be booted at all times as it has to be the host.  If you're going to spend the money on software, you might as well get a hardware solution that's platform agnostic and much more reliable (i.e. the next version of macOS breaks it and requires an upgrade)

  Is there software that can perform the same functions?

I ran across FOSS solution for a software based KVM called Barrier. It works on macOS, Windows, FreeBSD, and Linux.  Binaries are available for both macOS and Windows.  It is also available via Homebew and available for FreeBSD as both a package and as a port per FreshPorts.

It’s actually really cool software that allows you to arrange your setup graphically so that you can “move” your mouse across the screen “barrier” and onto the next computer (i.e your Windows machine is to the left of your Mac).  It also allows you to assign a keyboard shortcut to select a different computer to control.

It’s only limitation is that it doesn’t switch the monitor as a traditional KVM would.  You still need to either have individual monitors for each computer (not a problem if using laptops) or a monitor with multiple inputs.  There’s an excellent YouTube video showing how it works with a Windows machine and a Raspberry Pi.


Can I view local/unix mail (`mail` in the Terminal) in Mail.app?

Brutal solution: set up postfix to handle outgoing mail, and create a ~/.forward file forwarding all mail to your "real" mail account. Not for the faint of heart but, then again, neither is running cron jobs. :)


Command, tab, and mouse click not working, rest of keyboard and mouse movement still works

This is a puzzler and at first I was thinking, "wonky keyboard or keyboard controller."

But before I go blaming hardware it would be best to see if the issue is related to software.

Most, if not all, keyboard customizations are done on a user by user basis and if they are not set in System Preferences they would be set by something that ran at login or startup.

Restart your Mac while holding the ⇧ Shift key. When you see the Apple logo you can release the key. Startup may take a lot longer. If that fixes the issue there is something installed that is causing the issue. If nothing changes...
Create another user. Log in as that user. Still have the problem? Hopefully not. If not then there is something in your user profile messing with your keyboard. You can start deleting/moving/etc. preference files and the like, but I would be inclined to just migrate your files to the new profile and delete the old one.

Neither one of these worked? Add your results to your original question and we will take another stab at it.


El Capitan losing bluetooth mouse and pan connection after sleep

I have come across many cases of various Microsoft Bluetooth mouse users having issues, so as a minimum some of their Bluetooth mouse products appear to be very fussy.

However, one thing I have seen that does work in some cases is to make sure it's the first Bluetooth device paired to your computer.

In a nutshell you need to reset both the macOS Bluetooth Device List and Bluetooth Controller. However, this will reset all connected Bluetooth devices, including a keyboard and mouse.

In other words, this will remove all existing pairing information for Bluetooth devices, so each will need to be reconnected.
I have some steps you can follow, but I strongly suggest you read all of the steps first before commencing (or perhaps print out the instructions / view them on another device).

Before starting, ensure you have the Bluetooth icon showing in the menu bar. If it is not there, open System Preferences > Bluetooth and enable the option Show Bluetooth in Menu Bar.

Also, since you're trying to resolve an issue with a Bluetooth mouse,  you will need to use another mouse to follow these steps:

Hold down both the Shift and Option keys 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
Hold down both the Shift and Option keys again and at the same time click on the Bluetooth icon in the menu bar.
From the Bluetooth menu,  choose Debug > Reset the Bluetooth Module
Shutdown your Mac
Ensure your Microsoft sculpt touch mouse is fully powered off
Restart your Mac
On your Mac, click on the Bluetooth icon in the menu bar (obviously with a USB mouse)
Select the Set Up Bluetooth Device option
On the mouse, press the power button down and keep it down for at least 5 secs. From memory a blue light should start blinking
Once the Setup Assistant finds the mouse, select it from the list and click on “Continue”.
Now pair your mouse
If you have any other Bluetooth devices, you can go ahead and pair them now (or you can do it later). However, the point is to pair the Microsoft sculpt touch mouse first before any other Bluetooth devices!

Let me know how you go.


How do I re-center Spotlight search bar (Mac)?

Click and hold the Spotlight icon on the menu bar, until the Spotlight window has returned to its original location.


You should put your device into DFU Mode.
Here are the steps:

Plug your device into the computer

Press and hold both the power and home buttons until the screen goes black then release the power button still holding down the home button.

The screen should stay black and your device should popup in iTunes saying it needs to be restored.

Click restore and confirm any prompts that popup.

Let iTunes restore your device and do not unplug your device.

Once you're finished it should take you to setup and when activating enter your iCloud details when asked.


Running AppleScript without activating the window

For Me adding:

tell application "System Events" to tell process "Messages" to set visible to false

AFTER end tell, worked like a charm


Unable to use Gmail on Safari for Windows

As shown on this Wikipedia page, Safari for Windows has not updated in over two years. There is much speculation as to why, but in terms of the Web, a browser that is over two years old is ancient.

Gmail likely requires features that are not available in Safari v5.1.7. Therefore you will need to use an alternate browser, such as Chrome or Firefox.


Number of cpus and cores in macbook pro?

The simplest way is to launch Activity Monitor - in Applications/Utilities

Then hit  Cmd ⌘   3  which will open the CPU History.
Then you just count the stripes ;-)
It counts virtual cores, so includes HT [Hyper-threading] cores.


Installing OSX Yosemite on completely empty drive

Yes, the option boot is independent of any OS present on the disk. You can always alt-boot, even booting off an external disk or network disk if there isn't any disk present in the computer at all.


iCloud requests fail with timeout after a few minutes of connectivity

Maybe it is an DNS problem.
Could you check if the resolution of host p29-quota.icloud.com works with your DNS server?

admin:~$ host p29-quota.icloud.com
p29-quota.icloud.com is an alias for p29-quota.fe.apple-dns.net.
p29-quota.fe.apple-dns.net has address 17.248.147.21
p29-quota.fe.apple-dns.net has address 17.248.147.19

If not try a differnet DNS server like google: 8.8.8.8


KeyRemap4MacBook worked with my trackball:

<item>
<name>test</name>
<identifier>private.test</identifier>
<autogen>__PointingButtonToKey__ PointingButton::BUTTON4, KeyCode::VK_CONSUMERKEY_VOLUME_UP, ModifierFlag::OPTION_L | ModifierFlag::SHIFT_L</autogen>
<autogen>__PointingButtonToKey__ PointingButton::BUTTON5, KeyCode::VK_CONSUMERKEY_VOLUME_DOWN, ModifierFlag::OPTION_L | ModifierFlag::SHIFT_L</autogen>
</item>

See the source for the key code values and predefined settings.


Log out of the old account in Settings → iTunes & App Store, then log in with the new account.


It was a bug that crept in with Hazel 3.1 ... Confirmed from Mr Noodle at Hazel.  Works fine from 3.1.1 to current 3.1.1 now.

Just thought I'd complete the thread


Is there a way to lock the volume & brightness on iPad/iOS 10 from getting changed by a child?

For brightness, you can go in Settings > Control Center and change if you want access to Control Center on the lock screen or within apps, it will always be available on the home screen, AFAIK.

To prevent him from changing the volume, change the volume to what you always want it to be and go to Settings > General > Restrictions and tap Enable Restrictions, then set a Restrictions passcode (something different than the normal passcode). Go to Volume Limit and check Don't Allow Changes.


How can I share Apple Remote Desktop's list of machines to other computers?

I believe you can do this with automator.  You can have an automator script pull your list of ARD computers, (I suppose you could do this from the remote task server as well,) and then execute various functions after that list is pulled in.

You can also of course execute AppleScripts (and therefore shell scripts,) through Automator as well, so this should be all you need.

In short: Yes!


Nervous Cursor on 2013 MacBook Pro 15" Retina

Does it jump around randomly everywhere, both desktop and applications, or is it only when you type? Mine jumped around everywhere several times, but every time it stopped after I cleaned the trackpad thoroughly. Also dust can get trapped at the border, so push down and clean as good as you can (beware of using too much water of course).


No, that's not possible on macOS - and it's not possible on other operating systems either.

Essentially if the user has administrative access, can install their own programs, and they're able to read the file (which is necessary in order to use it with Parallels Desktop) - they'll also be able to copy the file.

However you can do other things to get nearer to the goals that end-users will be able to (a) run your virtual desktop and (b) not copy your image file.

A common way of doing this is to run the virtual machine image on a server, and only allow access over a remote desktop protocol to use the programs on the image. This is often accomplished using Citrix or various solutions from other vendors such as VMware or Microsoft.

Another option you have is to limit the computers physically. For example some companies "glue" USB ports and similar to ensure that users cannot easily plugin external drives. You can do that with USB-C and Thunderbolt ports as well, but you'll also have to think in copying over the network. If you have to disable WiFi and other networking options as well, you'll probably end up with unusable computers.


How do I rearrange the order of Spotlight categories?

Apple removed this feature in El Capitan. I searched deeper in spotlight's plist file:

~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.Spotlight.plist

But I can't find any way to re order the entries in this version of OS X.

Further Reading:

[Help] Reorder results in Spotlight searches
5 Great New Spotlight Search Tricks in OS X El Capitan


macOS Sierra 10.12: Configure firewall for a single port (3690)

If you are using Sierra's Application Firewall you can't restrict it to a single port.

To allow incoming traffic for a specific binary, open System Preferences > Security & Privacy > Firewall > Firewall Options and either hit the plus button and choose the binary or drop the binary from a Finder window.

In my example below I have chosen the X11 binary in /Applications/Utilities/XQuartz.app/Contents/MacOS/

You can the check additional apps added by executing:

sudo /usr/libexec/ApplicationFirewall/socketfilterfw --listapps

After adding Xcode, anything starting with svn in /usr/bin/ and /Applications/Xcode.app/Contents/Developer/usr/bin/ and starting /usr/bin/svnserve I was asked once to allow incoming traffic for svnserve (I don't know which of both svnserve executables) and it worked from remote. After removing everything and repeating the same steps it failed again.

The log file at /var/log stays empty and the other logs don't reveal anything related to blocked incoming connections.

I recommend to enable ssh and create a ssh:svn-tunnel. Link: Subversion through a tunnel

As an alternative install Murus - a GUI for pf. If you don't activate it with an email and a serial number it will run as the free Murus Lite.

Open the app and choose a strategy. E.g. Novice > Predefined Firewall Configuration Presets > Almost all services blocked. Then activate the selected Murus preset and start pf.

Hit the library button. In the services library panel hit the gear

and add a new custom service SVN:

In the groups library hit the gear and add new custom group

Hit the loupe, enter a group name, add an appropriate interface, hit the plus button and add an IP or network.

Drag the SVN service to the main windows (Managed inbound services) and configure it:

If you have additional services like SSH running, add them also. Start or restart pf if necessary. Now - protected by pf - you may dissable the application firewall.


What version of MacFUSE have you installed? MacFUSE is no longer maintained and has been replaced by Fuse for macOS.

The latest version is 3.5.4 and it's compatible with Mac OS X 10.5 and above and works on both PowerPC and Intel Macs.

If you require MacFUSE for your system, then there is a MacFuse google group that may be helpful, although I'm not sure how current it is since the onset of Fuse for macOS.


How can I fix Error: -69877: Couldn't open device after interrupted formatting process?

For anyone else who ends up on this question after searching online, be sure that you confirm that your SD card is not mounted as read-only! There is a physical tab that you may need to move:


When EarPods with microphone are attached, does iPhone use internal or external mic?

If earphone are attached, your input audio will be the earphone mic. The difference between the both depends of the quality of your earphone...


Disable Force Touch from terminal using Bash or AppleScript

Credit:Control haptic engine and force touch from terminal
@bmike

  Apple hasn't released an API for that, so the answer until someone
  reverse engineers it (or Apple releases an API) is no.

  The best you can do today is read force touch but not influence the
  haptic feedback or modify that.

  https://developer.apple.com/osx/force-touch/


Every single iPhone backup has disappeared - from PC and from iCloud

I don't have a great answer - but this is fairly serious so I'm going to start an answer and hope someone else edits or answers if they can spot something I haven't.

On the computer, the only "red flag" would be if you wiped the phone of all content and settings, named it exactly the same name as it was before (which could be iPhone) and then backed up again and overwrote the backup with the actual data. iTunes tries hard to prevent this and spawn off a date-protected backup when it detects this, but I've seen this check fail and people lose backups from time to time. The remedy here is to restore the PC from a backup that has whatever MobileSync folder is the most recent.

On iCloud - you also shouldn't be able to overwrite a "full" backup with an empty one. Also, iCloud explicitly keeps several versions of the backups going back in roughly day intervals. It also normally stores backups for different devices without collisions or overwriting another backup.

The good news on iCloud is you can always get help from Apple at http://www.apple.com/support/icloud/ and from retail stores. New devices or ones covered by Apple Care also have phone or web support in most countries. All new Apple products have a 90 day window of set up help. Hopefully one of these can step in and assist. Not only does Apple get a data point where their tools let you down (and exactly what circumstances this happened) - they also see many people in this situation and will hopefully waste a minimum of your time getting this sorted.


Make folder private so other users can't access

There are a few different ways. Depending on your level of comfort with debugging permission errors, here they are ranked in terms of increasing risk. I'm not going to suggest you backup because you do that already, right?

Whenever you create a new folder, secondary-click on it and "Get Info", then remove read/execute permissions for other users and groups. That should give them the "denied" icon.

Make the above modification for your home directory, unless you have folders that you do want to give access to other users to.

Set a umask as described in Apple's KB HT2202 for user applications:

Create the file /etc/launchd-user.conf with the contents "umask nnn". Do not include the quotation marks and replace nnn with the desired umask value, such as 077.
This will set the user's umask for all applications they launch, such as Finder, TextEdit, or Final Cut Pro, and control the permissions set on new files created by any of these applications.

Note that this will affect all files and folders you create from that point on and may be difficult to debug. As per @Kent's comment below, this will affect all users of the computer, not just your own. You may also need to logout or reboot the computer.

In all of these cases, you may see errors from some applications unable to access some files/folders. It can be argued that these are poorly-designed applications, but if you need to use them you may have to relax the permissions. 1 may be the safest and easiest to revert when/as needed.


You won't be charged again. I have done this before in a similar situation, and it works fine. However, if the device gets restored or if the songs get deleted, you will have to sign in again to redownload them onto the device, which can be a pain.


MacOS command-line security updates: equivalent for apt-get update all

Yes, security updates show up as recommended updates but softwareupdate -r at least on Mojave is invalid.  Note softwareupdate will not install updates for things from the App Store.

If you run softwareupdate -l on a system that is due security updates you can see them prefixed with a * character in the --list output which means they are recommended and will be processed by the -r option.

This is from a system untouched for a month - as you can see there is a recommended Safari update and a recommended Security update that requires a restart.

Last login: Mon Dec  2 19:21:08 on ttys000
A1398% softwareupdate -l
Software Update Tool

Finding available software
Software Update found the following new or updated software:
   * Security Update -10.14.6
    Security Update  (10.14.6), 1531842K [recommended] [restart]
   * Safari13.0.4MojaveAuto-13.0.4
    Safari (13.0.4), 67332K [recommended]
A1398%

You may either list all available updates with -l (which is closest to sudo apt-get update in that it doesn't download or install packages), download with -d or download and install them with -i.  The -r switch on its own is not accepted.

To download and install recommended updates use softwareupdate -i -r.  From man softwareupdate :

 -i | --install
             Each update specified by args is downloaded and installed.  args can be one of the
             following:

            -r | --recommended
                         All updates that are recommended for your system. These are prefixed
                         with a * character in the --list output.

A1398% softwareupdate -i -r
Software Update Tool

Finding available software

Downloaded Security Update
Downloaded Safari
Installing Security Update , Safari
Done with Safari
Done.

You have installed one or more updates that requires that you restart your computer.
Please restart immediately.
To automate the restart process with softwareupdate(8), use --restart.
A1398%

In this case the security update required a restart and this was advised.  The -R (capital) or --restart option can automate this but you would want to check user session status before forcing a restart and potentially losing session state/unsaved changes/etc.  Passing --restart requires root privilege so the command in this case would be sudo softwareupdate -irR

Optionally you can download and not install recommended software using softwareupdate -d -r

 -d | --download
             Each update specified by args is downloaded but not installed. The values of args
             are the same as for the --install command.

A1398% softwareupdate -d -r
Software Update Tool

Finding available software

Downloaded Security Update
Downloaded Safari
Done.
A1398%

If you wanted all instead of recommended you would replace -r with -a.

             -a | --all  All updates that are applicable to your system, including those non-
                         recommended ones, which are prefixed with a - character in the --list
                         output. (Non-recommended updates are uncommon in any case.)

Note that sudo on Mojave is required only for the --restart option but this rather old man page indicates that it was also required for installation in the past.

-i
--install
   Each update specified by args is downloaded, unarchived, and
   installed.  This command requires root.


Why does it say I'm using more data than I am on my IPad?

I think it may be that it may be that your looking at the iCloud storage not the iPad storage (you probably haven't uploaded very much).


turn off find my iphone without apple ID password

This question will likely get put on hold as a dup soon, but the best answer is really one I gave to another question.

I had forgotten about the iPad being logged in to the same account and did not turn off findMyiPhone on it before changing the appleId.

What worked for me finally, I found here apple's KB.

Log out of iMessage on the iPad, and the log back into iMessage making sure to use the NEW appleId email address. Next go to settings and turn off FindMyiPhone, you will be prompted for a password and the old appleid will still be displayed in the request, use the password for new appleid that you just used to log in iMessage, and it will turn off find my iphone.

Once find my iPhone is off, you can log out the account completely, and update the email address.

Edit to add: re-reading the question... you might just need to know about https://iforgot.apple.com


How to secure Mac laptop while it is running processes such as wget, or some local node.js apps?

The "Lock Screen" feature is your friend:

all of your processes will continue to run, but your password will be needed to access anything.
Command+Control+Q if you need to dash off quickly.


How to make iTunes video window float on top?

Yes, there is an option under Preferences -> Advanced Preferences, under the separator saying 'Keep movie window on top of all other windows'.

The window may look slightly different than this (I found this example online), but the wording is still the same.


Need to update Make on Catalina, other brew related answers are out of date

GNU "make" has been installed as "gmake".
If you need to use it as "make", you can add a "gnubin" directory
to your PATH from your bashrc like:

 PATH="$(brew --prefix)/opt/make/libexec/gnubin:$PATH"


Will my late 2012 macbook pro - 2.6 i7, 750gb HD, 16gb ram be fast enough for Yosemite?

That Mac should have zero issues running Mavericks, Yosemite or (when it comes out) El Cap. it's a fast system with gobs of RAM and a nice big drive.

The sluggishness could be from a variety of sources but if you want to go ahead with a backup, wipe and restore that would be a good way to continue with your troubleshooting.


No Video Output on Second Screen During Startup?

The 'one screen at boot' is pretty standard behaviour, afaik. I see it on all the Mac Pros here.

Which screen that ought to be is dependant on which is set as Primary in System Prefs > Displays > Arrangement - it's the one with the menu bar, which can be dragged to another display to set Primary.

That it still displays the same behaviour with one screen switched off is because it still recognises it as being attached. When you detach it completely, then basically you get an "Oops, Primary is missing, let's find one we can use temporarily."


How do I locate applications that drain my battery on a MacBook Pro?

The Activity Monitor template in Instruments shows average CPU use over time:

You can also use top -o time or Activity Monitor to sort processes by CPU time.

CPU time doesn't always correlate with CPU use though. It's reset when a process exits, so the list won't include old mdworker processes or applications that have been quit manually.


How do I create a browsable index of my External Hard Disks?

Virtual Volumes View

VVV is an application that catalogs the content of removable volumes like CD and DVD disks for off-line searching. Folders and files can also be arranged in a single, virtual file system. Each folder of this virtual file system can contain files from many disks so you can arrange your data in a simple and logical way.

VVV also stores metadata information from audio files: author, title, album and so on. Most audio formats are supported.

It is possible to share the same catalog, stored in a network server, among Windows, Linux and OSX computers. The network server is simply a computer running a database server program. Click here for more info.

Features

VVV is available for Windows, Linux and for OS X (Intel only). You can exchange catalogs between Windows, Linux and OS X computers, and you can connect Windows, Linux and OS X computers to the same (Windows, Linux or OS X) server.

VVV is very fast, even with very large catalogs. Data are stored in a relational database, designed to handle millions of rows, so retrieving your information will always be a quick task.

VVV can show the content of your disks in three different views:

The first is the physical view, click here for a Windows screenshot. This view shows the content of each disk, you can navigate in the folders structure and see the files contained in each folder.
The second is the virtual view, click here for a Linux screenshot. In this view everything is organized as a single virtual file system. You can create folders and you can assign physical volumes or folders to each virtual folder. You can assign the same file to more than one virtual folder, and each virtual folder can contain files that are stored in different disks. The virtual view is a powerful tool that will let you organize your data in a logical way: it will save you a lot of searches.
The third is the search view, click here for a Windows screenshot. In this view you can search the catalog looking for files that meet your specification.

http://vvvapp.sourceforge.net/


The root user password has to be set by you and they could be the same if you choose so, but it is not advisable to do that.

From the Apple menu choose System Preferences.
From the View menu choose Users & Groups.
Click the lock and authenticate as an administrator account.
Click Login Options.
Click the "Edit" or "Join" button at the bottom right.
Click the "Open Directory Utility" button.
Click the lock in the Directory Utility window.
Enter an administrator account name and password, then click OK.
Choose Enable Root User from the Edit menu.
Enter the root password you wish to use in both the Password and Verify fields, then click OK.


Deleted all users with "dscl . -delete /Users"

Indeed, that should work.

Reinstall using the Recovery HD, then create a new user account with a unique name using the Setup Assistant. Once booted, you can open Users & Groups from System Preferences and create your original user again. Providing you use the same short name, this should prompt you to associate the existing home folder to the new user account.

However, you can't be too careful, and making a backup would always be wise. If you have OS X installed on an external drive (or are willing to install it on an external drive), you can boot into that and use that to obtain the files. Alternatively, you can boot into Single User Mode, mount another drive (mount /dev/disk1s1 /Volumes/externaldisk) and copy the files over.


How to remove cached network information from Apple device?

You have to release the IP address, not just renew it.  This is because your DCHP client is going to attempt to request the lease it had previously so long as it hasn't expired.  You have to force the client to ask for a new lease.

$ sudo ipconfig set <interface> BOOTP
$ sudo ipconfig set <interface> DHCP

Additionally, you can use the networksetup command

$ networksetup -setdhcp <networkservice>
$ networksetup -setbootp <networkservice>

You would get the networkservice by issuing the command:

$ networksetup -listallnetworkservices

Of course, you could also do this in Network Preferences


Restore deleted sidebar icons after moving user folder to another drive

This worked for me:

Go to your Finder Go menu hold the option key and choose Library. Then go to the Preferences folder and trash these files:

com.apple.finder.plist
com.apple.sidebarlists.plist

Then restart (You will have to reset a some finder prefs the way you like them).


Apple Watch will not activate: Pair→Update→Pair→Update→etc

Watch refused to turn off for the purpose of reboot.  But doing a hard reboot of both iPhone and Watch changed the behavior.  There were still some things that shouldn't have happened, but eventually I got past them all.


Mavericks and Yosemite marks mails in multiple accounts as read

Strictly speaking, You have read it.

I've noticed recently that if I get duplicate emails to 2 accounts, Mail is actually appearing to merge them into one email [at a user-level anyway, idk about behind the scenes]

I know of no way round this, so maybe try using Flags instead of the 'read' indicator. More work, but more reliable.


How do I create a profile in Apple Configurator 2?

This is actually in the menu, just not the toolbar. File > New Profile


How to disable Photos.app launching every time a device is connected

You can use following command to

defaults -currentHost write com.apple.ImageCapture disableHotPlug -bool YES

Source


How can I bookmark the left page of a PDF in Preview?

I do not know how to do that with Bookmarks, but I use a work around till Apple does something.

Instead of bookmarks I use Highlights and Notes (alt+cmd+4)

Then I place a Note on appropriate page (left or right) or anywhere.

The advantage is I can make comments in the note.

Example:


How does the "Copy" button work for iPad photos?

The Copy function copies the photo onto the clipboard. You can then paste it into other apps, say Mail, by tapping and holding until a contextual menu appears that says "Paste". If you're on a web page, you can tap and hold an image and select "Save Image" to save it to your camera roll. But you can't use the Copy function to "paste" it into your camera roll.


Yes, using the mute switch for a moment, then put it back to non-muted mode. The volume did used to work, and will still silence calls, but I haven't tried on other alerts of late.

Could be a bug, or issue with your phone. I will try it next time mine goes off, and report back.


How can I move the Downloads toolbar button in Safari 5.1 and newer on OS X?

Drag the other controls around it; as long as you don’t grab the Downloads button itself this will work.


Separate user accounts are for that purpose. If you really have to use a shared account then do it but create additional one just for your Mail app.


Is a 10.8 Time Machine backup restorable under 10.7

Yes, though there are caveats. I decide to try it and see; I reformatted my hard disk, installed Lion, then used Migration Assistant to restore the two user accounts. Until this point everything works perfectly, but there were two major unrelated problems to downgrading: 1) is a user account login bug with Lion that requires use of the passwordreset utility for the root account, and 2) Using Migration Assistant to migrate applications was a mistake, since many vital apps such as Safari and Mail won't work under Lion, and require many steps to reinstall properly.


Disable all Mac system keyboard shortcuts whilst using nano

Seems the conflict would most of the time be a Meta keybinding where Meta = CMD key on a Mac. The Nano website has a keybinding section of documentation here. You may need to configure a .nanorc and redefine those keybindings that conflict with macOS.
https://www.nano-editor.org/dist/latest/nano.html#Rebinding-Keys
The macOS Terminal under the Profile -> Keyboard has a checkbox for Use Option as Meta key.  Seems to work for the nano meta keys.  This is per Profile in Terminal.


CardDav / CalDav not syncing existing entries

I was having a similar problem, at least with Gmail contacts using CardDav. The problem is that CardDav puts your newly synced contacts in a separate "group" on your iphone than your current contacts. (You can check that by hitting "groups" in the upper left of your contacts and seeing what's listed there.) So for new contacts, yes, it will sync both ways, but not necessarily for old ones that were solely on your phone.

A couple of things to start with:
1. When you make a new contact on your iphone, does it properly sync with your gmail contacts online? (I think you say that it does, but I'm just checking.) If not, go to Settings->Mail, Contacts, Calendars->Default Account (the one under the Contacts section) and choose Google).

Had you ever synced with gmail contacts in the past? Are the contacts that were in your iphone different from the ones in gmail, or are there duplicates?

Because CardDav does not touch the existing iphone contacts, there's no good way to get those to be in gmail. The only way I've found to do this is for each contact, choose "share" and email it to yourself. When you get the email on your phone, add it to your contacts. Then, assuming Google is the default (see #1 above), it'll put it in the right place and then all syncing will work as it should.

I agree that this is convoluted, but it's the best I can come up with after days of searching and messing around. I had previously synced with Gmail contacts using iTunes (no longer supported, as far as I can tell), so once I set up CardDav it downloaded all of my existing contacts, creating two of everything, but it at least knew enough to link them so they only show up once.

You'll have to specify exactly what the problem is with syncing calendars with CalDav. That's something I've actually had better luck with.


Understanding work-spaces on macOS - Why does it not save Applications and Positions

There has never been any provision in Spaces for one app to be on more than one Space. It's simply outside the design spec.
You can pin an app to a Space but you cannot pin a window to a Space. Quit & relaunch & the windows will all fold into the same Space.
Window sizes should be remembered, but not if they wouldn't fit the display they opened on.
Sleeping the Mac should work, but will be dependant on whether the external display stays 'visible' to the Mac at wake. On Mac Pros here, desktops with multiple external displays, this works just fine. idk how well laptops handle this. Sometimes forcing the display to wake before the Mac succeeds in maintaining the connection.
One additional point - Macs don't really need shutting down or restarting all that frequently. Mine generally get rebooted for OS updates etc, the rest of the time they are awake or asleep. Maybe once a month or so, if I feel things might be getting a little sluggish, I will reboot. I've had Mac that ran a decade with little more than this. One never even slept, it was up 24/7/365 for 10 years with the occasional reboot for updates or a shutdown twice a year for a good clean.


Is it possible to an individual developer to invite another developer to manage apps on iTunes Connect?

Only Company / Organization accounts can add additional developers to its team. As stated under the Enrollment Selection page, in the Individual account section:

Individual Development Only
You are the only one allowed access to program resources.


What are the recovery options from an encrypted Time Machine?

As far as I know, both can be answered with yes. Of course, you'll need the password you used encrypting the backup.

Accessing individual files would work by clicking the Time Machine symbol in the menubar while holding alt and selecting something like "Search other backup volumes" (I'm from Germany so I don't know what it says exactly). Then you should search the backup like any other after you've entered the password.

When you use migration on another Mac, everything should be copied (except for some machine specific files maybe).


Just for the record. I've managed to increase the size of my APFS volume using GParted and Disk Utility (from macOS Catalina).

Create a GParted USB drive and boot from it
Use GParted to move the APFS partition/container around so that the free space appears directly AFTER the APFS partition.
Boot into Mac Recovery mode and open Disk Utility
Click the drop-down in the top left and enable "Show All Devices"
Select your SSD (top entry)
Click "Partition"
Somewhat unintuitive, but now select the "Free Space" area and click the "-" button below. This will "remove" the free space and enlarge the APFS container to fill it.
Confirm the dialog and the resizing should start.
Done.


Connect to Mac Mini without sharing the screen

Using other software, RealVNC, should fix your problem.

Download RealVNC. You only need a personal license, which is free.
Enable Remote Management. Go into System Preferences > Sharing > Remote Management.
Configure RealVNC. It can be set up pretty much however you'd like.
Connect to your computer. This will land you on the login page for your mac, and will only share a screen with it if logged in as the current user.


Sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but native support of FLAC in Mavericks is near non-existent.

Your best bet would be to just convert your FLAC to ALAC, or Apple Lossless Audio Codec.

You can download the free utility XLD, or X Lossless Decoder, to convert.

Download XLD from its homepage here:  http://tmkk.undo.jp/xld/index_e.html


VLC keeps freezing on Mac OS X El Capitan

You do not have the latest version of VLC for OS X, at the present time, the latest version of VLC for OS X is 2.2.2, so you might want to try it and see if the issue persists.

In clicking VLC > Check for Update..., note as shown in the image below it says:

  More than 100 fixes for issues reported for 2.2.1.
  Full support of Mac OS X 10.11 El Capitan.

Note: If Check for Update... doesn't work then click the link above to download the vlc-2.2.2.dmg file and manually install it after deleting the existing application bundle.


Does Java come pre-installed on Mac OS X 10.7/10.8 and beyond?

Apple did stop shipping Java as of 10.7 and higher. Neither the JDK nor the JRE come preinstalled. However, the first time you need a JRE, Mac OS X will offer to download and install it for you (via the Software Update mechanism).

Similarly, javac is stubbed in a base OS X install and will trigger the install process.

Note that the Apple JRE/JDK is Java 1.6—if you need 1.7 or 1.8, you'll need to get it yourself from Oracle.


I suggest you to use the DaisyDisk application (a free trial is also available).

This app help you to find out how you are using the space available and so you can identify what is occupying a large amount of space in your HD.


Email account deleted and 2.69 GB still showing up

Have you checked your Drafts folder? The email draft with the video attachment should be there. Try to delete that specific email draft.


Accidentally ejected External drive while downloading file, now having problems reading

More than likely, the drive is failing.

There are several symptoms that point to this (downloading of the Torrent is just coincidental, not causal):

The drive "accidentally" ejected.  By itself, this is not an indication of a failure as it could have been any number of factors that caused the drive to eject; from a power failure to user error.  However, in addition to the other symptoms, it lends credibility to the theory.
The drive works for about 10 minutes then hangs the system.  Good drives don't hang your system.  Additionally, if you system is fully functional (no hangs) until after you plug in the questionable drive, it's a good bet that the drive is the issue.

As a test, try a different external drive.  If the problem goes away, you've (through the process of elimination) identified the issue.
It's a Seagate.  (IMO) Seagate drives are some of the most unreliable devices in IT.   Based on reviewing tech support reports for our departments activities, a vast majority of the hard drive failures were Seagate.

Though, that is my personal experience, it appears I'm not the only one judging by this PC World article from 2016:  Seagate slapped with a class action lawsuit over hard drive failure rates

Data Protection/Recovery

Your best bet right now is to focus on data protection and recovery.  I have personally used Disk Drill for both diagnostics and recovery and it has worked extremely well.

Additionally, you should

Make an image of the drive and work off that:

sudo dd if=/dev/rdiskX of=~/Desktop/external_drive.img bs=1M

Stop using the external drive for daily use until you can recover the data.

Personally, I recommend Western Digital Passport drives.  I have one that I have been using a daily Time Machine back up drives for over 4 years with no issues.  In comparision, I had a Seagate that was given to me I was using to back up my Synology NAS, died about 18 months in; even free, they're (Seagates) not worth the trouble.


External drive does not mount after plug off without eject

SOLVED. Had this problem today. OLD external drive, had its own power source, plugged into a surge protector. I hit the power button on the surge protector when I was unplugging something else, and the drive was turned off while in use. I turned it back on and it sounded normal, but my computer wasn't recognizing it, and Disk Utility wouldn't load when it was plugged in. I tried restarting with and without the disk,  mounting, unmounting, all of the above recommendations.

"unmount" led to "the disk is already unmounted or has a partitioning scheme...."

"mount" and "eject" said the attempt timed out.

"mountDisk" said it was successfully mounted, but I still couldn't access it, and "unmountDisk" would be successful as well, but no luck to "mount" or "mountDisk" afterwards.

I finally found the order that worked.

diskutil unmountDisk /dev/disk2
diskutil eject /dev/disk2

then I just plugged it back in to my computer and we were golden.
Thanks for all your help everyone.


Annoying shrill outgoing Facetime ring tone

No, this is not possible without switching output device to another connected device which is muted, such as a bluetooth speaker or car stereo, or jailbreaking to delete the audio file from the filesystem.


Simple answer: no.

Long answer: it only works with Apple's own apps as well as apps downloaded from the official App Store.


Are you prepared to change VPN provider?
Private Internet Access (PIA) has a 'split tunnel' feature.  The settings have a preference pane to enable and configure split tunnel.  Here is how it should look to send just Transmission traffic via the VPN.

My own experience with PIA's split tunnel is that it has been difficult to implement for macOS 11 but is now working reliably.  I had system hangs with the first beta versions of PIA for macOS 11.  I have used PIA's split tunnel the other way round - sending most traffic via the VPN and just specific apps bypassing the VPN.


How do I set the Mail app's default font running under Mavericks?

Open Mail Preferences and then the Font setting.

You have 2 settings.

Set the Font for the List view and set the font for the message body.

When you click Select and new widow will open showing the font choices.

This will change your mail display.


There is no need for dedicated file renaming software to do such relatively simple batch renaming operations – Automator will allow you to create services that do what you want.

Your first task (removing a numerical prefix followed by an underscore form file names) can be solved like this:

create an Automator service (choose “Service” when prompted what kind of workflow to create by Automator). Set it to take “Files or folders” as input.
add a “Filter Finder Items” action and set it to filter on the condition “none” match “kind is Folder”  to make sure you have only files.
Add a “Run Shell Script” action and make sure it runs /bin/bash and takes its input “as arguments”. Insert the following code:

shopt -s extglob
for f in "$@"; do
    fpath="${f%/*}"
    fname="${f##*/}"
    mv "$f" "$fpath"/"${fname/#+([[:digit:]])_/}"
done

– see the Bash Reference Manual’s chapter on Pattern Matching for an explanation of how this works (recommended reading for this kind of operation anyway :)).
save to the default location as “Remove Prefix”.

– you will now have a “Remove Prefix” in the Service menu of Finder (and the context menu of files and folders) which will rename files so a numerical prefix followed by an underscore is stripped from the file name.

The second task (prefixing the files with a selectable string) is even easier to achieve, using a Standard Automator action:

create an Automator Service as in the steps 1 and 2 above.
add a “Rename Finder Items” action. Set it to “Add Text”, enter a default prefix in the text box (if you like), set the string to be applied “before the name”. Select “Options” in the bottom row of the action and tick “Display this action when running” (disclaimer: I’m on a German system – all translations approximative).
save to the default location as “Add Prefix”.

– when you run the service on one or more files, you will see the following dialog:

(or rather, its equivalent in your system language), where you can edit the prefix you want to use before applying it.

Happy renaming with OS X’ on-board abilities :).


Activate used Verizon iPhone 6 without sim?

If the phone is carrier locked, your best bet is to establish service with Verizon and get it unlocked. It's probably unlocked though so you might have luck putting any carrier's valid SIM into the phone. The SIM doesn't necessarily even need to be active - just that it once was valid and used.

Basically a Verizon sim will get you past the screen, possibly others as well initially.


One correct method seems to be:

system_profiler SPAirPortDataType | awk '/PHY Mode:/ { print $3 ; exit }'

The awk script (between ' ) means:

on first expression 'PHY Mode:', print the third field and exit the script.


How to connect a mini DisplayPort Windows PC with a Thunderbolt iMac

This is not possible using Apple's hardware and OS.  As per Apple's kbase:

  You need the following to use Target Display Mode:

  A Mac notebook or desktop with a Mini DisplayPort or Thunderbolt port. If your Mac has Thunderbolt 3 (USB-C) ports, you can connect it using the Apple Thunderbolt 3 (USB-C) to Thunderbolt 2 Adapter.

  A Thunderbolt cable or a Mini DisplayPort to Mini DisplayPort cable

  A supported iMac with OS X v10.6.1 or later

  See the list below for iMac models that support Target Display Mode, the type of cable you need to connect that model of iMac, and the kind of port you need on your other Mac.

A software solution, such as AirDisplay or Spacedesk, will be your best bet.

You might also be happier removing in to the PC from the Mac as that typically is faster response times than pushing the PC screen to the Mac. Microsoft RD app is quite good running on Mac OS.


Can Apple give an option to check cellular data usage for every bill cycle?

As an addendum to bmike's answer, this may be entirely provider-dependant.
On O2 UK, I have no option to view my usage per bill cycle, only since last manual reset. My provider has an app to view usage [& many other provider options].
The Euro-equivalent to 'Cellular', Mobile Data show the overall usage since last reset, plus a long list of usage per app below.
It is not tied to the provider's billing cycle at all.
I do, btw, have my provider's profile correctly installed; this is not a configuration error. The blue 'Network Provider Services' links through to their home page, for those who don't have their app.


It sounds like your Mac is starting up in 'Verbose Mode'.

This shouldn't normally happen, unless you hold down the required key combination, or unless your Mac's NVRAM has been set to always start verbose.

Try resetting the PRAM to clear the boot arguments.

If that doesn't work, try the following Terminal command:

sudo nvram boot-args=""

(Assuming you don't have a need for any other custom nvram parameters.)


Will EarPods work with my 2010 Macbook Pro?

I have a mid-2010 Macbook Pro, i can use my EarPods with it.

When plugging it in, try to give it a good push, i notice mine needs a a bit of force for it to click into the port.


How can I view blue "replace" suggestions in Preview?

It doesn't seem to work. I used Adobe Reader DC, it's free.


I use a program called 1Password for secure encryption of files (and other data) and it almost does what you ask.

On my Mac client - it can attach arbitrary files to any entry and securely encrypt them before they get stored into Dropbox, but that isn't the primary purpose of the tool. It has an iOS client that can see files attached in this manner, but not really open them, send them to other programs and it also doesn't let you file things.

So - what you ask is clearly something that could be programmed, but isn't something where there are several well-known solutions and people will just propose several. In fact, there may not be a single solution that uses Dropbox despite how popular and prevalent it has become.

I would suggest you consider Box.net which seeks to be a more enterprise secure version of Dropbox - especially if no-one else has a better suggestion than mine for securing your files before they hit Dropbox.


Is it possible to install MacOS Sierra or El Capitan on an external hard drive and boot it from a PC?

For what you want - Xcode - a used Mac mini or used laptop with a broken screen that you screen share/ssh in to seems far better than trying to dual boot and mess with hackintosh.

You can usually sell a used MacMini for almost what you paid for it, so the cost for three months of getting started is the interest on $400 expense. Used laptops that work and have broken screens or batteries that hold no charge are more in the $85 to $200 range.

It is possible to boot OS X on generic hardware, but this site isn't the place to ask that specifically - but solving your broader problem of developing Xcode and running a PC primarily is certainly worth a quality answer here with options.


How do I monitor the Airport base station currently used for wifi?

timothymh's solution is definitely the simplest if you just need to know occasionally, and is built-in, but if you need something more advanced (e.g. monitoring), then the following may be useful:

iStumbler (free), though I'd recommend the latest beta if you're on a recent version of OS X
KisMAC (free)
inSSIDer (about $5)

From the screenshots, inSSIDer actively displays which network you're currently connected to, but otherwise all three show lots of details of all networks your card can pick up, including channels, signal strength and BSSIDs.

If your aim is to test the coverage of wifi access points, you will probably find more benefit from something like NetSpot (free). This lets you map the signal strength as a 'heat map' in your home/office/etc, effectively letting you see where each/any access point is available from, where you will/won't get access, and how strong the signal will be.

Edit:
To monitor AP switching, using the terminal, it is possible to watch the system logs:

tail -F /var/log/system.log | grep BSSID

Or simply use the console: Applications > Utilities > Console. In the filter write BSSID and you will see when your computer switches across BSSIDs.


Viewing the HDD activity of active processes

How about this answer on another SE site?

https://superuser.com/questions/89266/whats-causing-all-the-disk-activity-on-os-x

  From man iotop:

  iotop tracks disk I/O by process, and prints a summary report that is refreshed every interval.

  This is measuring disk events that have made it past system caches.

  Since this uses DTrace, only the root user or users with the dtrace_kernel privilege can run this command.

  This may not be precisely what you want - but it's a ksh script which wraps around dtrace, so you should be able to figure out how to make dtrace do what you need, if iotop doesn't handle it by default.

  However, something like iotop -C 5 12 should give you something to start with: it will output 12 samples, each 5 seconds long.


Start brew-installed applications from terminal

Add the following to your ~/.bash_profile:

export PATH=/usr/local/bin:$PATH

This prepends /usr/local/bin to your existing $PATH.


Getting all versions of a file from a Time Machine backup

If you are a bit familiar with the terminal, it is quite easy.
Open the terminal and cd to the location of your backups on your backup hard drive.
Then, you copy all versions of the folder you are interested in into a new folder with rsync.

I'm making up an example where you want to copy all versions of the folder /Users/peter/Documents/thesis/ into a new folder ~/all_my_versions that is located in your home folder.

You will have to adapt the paths to your system, e.g. by replacing Macintosh\ HD with the name of your harddrive.

# create new folder
mkdir ~/all_my_versions/
# change directory to your backups
cd /Volumes/Backup_HD/Backups.backupdb/My_MacBook_Pro/
# run for loop to copy all folders into newly created directory
for F in *
 do
  rsync -avz $F/Macintosh\ HD/Users/peter/Documents/thesis ~/all_my_versions/$F
 done

In the end, the folder ~/all_my_versions will contain several subfolders, whose names are the backup dates and times:

2015-10-19-113849/
2015-10-28-111812/
2015-11-04-104802/


Is it possible to connect a MacBook Pro 2011 to the LG UltraFine 5K display using a Thunderbolt 3 to Thunderbolt 2 adapter?

No, your 2011 MacBook Pro supports a maximum resolution of 2560 x 1600 on an external display. So even if you get the cable situation sorted you will not be able to use the display on full 5K resolution.

Source:
MacBook Pro (13-inch, Early 2011) - Technical Specifications


random "broken" alias from Keynote presentation

HUGE UPDATE: Turns out that i found a UI bug with the handoff between MacOS and iCloud; since i dont use iCloud my device couldnt sync the documents up into the cloud and that was causing broken permissions. It took a while for the engineering team to figure it out, but if its just barebones for the Mac(no iCloud synced/erased hard-drive) it reproduced the issue


You can not recover 300 GB of free space because the small 104.9 MB EFI partition is between the APFS container and this free space. The command below will remove the EFI partition and add the 104.9 MB to the 300 GB of free space that already exists.

diskutil eraseVolume free none disk1s3

The next command will expand the APFS container to occupy the free space.

diskutil apfs resizeContainer disk1s2 0

If you still feel the "Macintosh HD" volume (disk2s1) is occupying to much space, you may want to ask a new question to address this problem.


Deleted usr/lib/libxml2.2.dylib -- computer won't start

If you still have the Snow Leopard Installation DVD you should be able to solve the issue by booting from DVD and then open Terminal to copy the missing file from your desktop (which will be in /Volumes/however-your-disk-is-called/Users/Dash/Desktop) back into the correct location (/Volumes/however-your-disk-is-called/usr/lib/).


How to see a history of "define" words which I used?

No, there's no way to see which words you have looked up previously in the dictionary using the "Define" shortcut in various apps.


Should I block incoming connections from "netbiosd"?

netbiosd is responsible for interacting with NetBIOS networks. NetBIOS is Microsoft's networking service.

If you block incoming netbiosd connections then you will not be able to share drives over netbios which is the simplest way to share data to Windows machines.

If you generally block incoming connections as a precaution the you should block anything until you actually need it, that is until something breaks. So yes block netbiosd to begin with.


Would I be able to access myUser.dmg that created with Disk Utility after re-installing OS X?

Your problem will not be mounting or accessing the .dmg file, as you can always set any drive except your current boot drive to 'Ignore Ownership' from Get Info on that partition.

Where I foresee difficulty is in re-integrating that extracted folder into your new OS. I'm not too sure the system will let you simply overwrite a lot of the data in your new User folder.

I'm sure the ideal solution would be to do it the recognised way, using a Time Machine backup.


How can I open port 80 so a non-root process can bind to it?

This is difficult to do by design, and unless you have root access to your machine none of the following will work as they require root to setup the changes.  Once changed, though, userspace programs will have access without having root.
There are two common ways to accomplish this, and which you choose will depend on why you're trying to work around the restriction:
Point port 80 to another port, such as 8080
By reconfiguring your machine to pass all port 80 traffic to port 8080, or any port of your choosing, then you can allow user space servers to receive root privilege ports in the area they are given access to.
The process is straightforward:

Step 1: View current firewall rules.
sudo ipfw show

Step 2: Add port forwarding rule (80 to 8080)
sudo ipfw add 100 fwd 127.0.0.1,8080 tcp from any to any 80 in

If you want to remove your firewall rules run:
sudo ipfw flush

(source)
This is a temporary change, and will revert once you reboot, or flush as indicated int he last line.
You can make the change permanent, or you could add the command as a startup line prior to starting your server, which is probably safer from the standpoint of security.
Use Authbind
Authbind was designed specifically to allow one program access to lower level ports without giving it full root access.
There is a MacOSX port:
https://github.com/Castaglia/MacOSX-authbind
It may still be limited to IPv4 traffic, though, so you may have to do some additional investigation to find if it meets your needs


Running Windows 7 from SD card on a Macbook Air

One question posted at Ask Different deals with running Windows from a external drive. While the questions deals with Windows 10, the answer seems to indicate a BIOS boot method is used. Therefore, the answer might be adapted to work with Windows 7. Below is a link to this question.

Is it possible to use Boot Camp with Windows 10 from an external HDD?

In your case, the problem really is not whether you can get the software to work, but rather the hardware media you are choosing. For a while now, Microsoft has had the ability to run Windows from a flash drive. This is referred to as Windows To Go. If you read the link, you will realize this requires the use of special flash drives design to endure the large amount of reads/writes required by the Windows operating system. A normal SD card probably would not survive long under such conditions.


After interrupting an iPhone update, can I avoid connecting to iTunes?

Depending on the state of the update it may not be possible to restore. Hold Power and Home until the device reboots. If the device reboots back to the Connect to iTunes screen, then you will have to connect to iTunes and follow the instructions.


Custom app distribution through Apple Business Manager

All apps on the general App Store are also available on Apple Business Manager, you upload to the App Store or test flight. If that works, you’re done - congratulations selling your app to businesses.
When you set pricing, you can optionally choose educational or volume pricing that is different than the general store.
Then, your customers use Apple Business or Volume Purchase Program to buy your apps.

https://developer.apple.com/support/volume-purchase-and-custom-apps/

Read the portion about private apps if that’s your end goal.

From the App Store Connect Homepage, click My Apps, and select your app from the list.
Under Pricing and Availability, go to the Distribution for Business and Education section.
Select “Available on the App Store, for volume purchasing on Apple Business Manager, and for volume purchasing at a reduced price on Apple School Manager”.

Again, you just upload the apps, then set pricing and discounts when the app is approved for sale but before you make it generally available. The people buying have to sign up for VPP or ABM and then tell you their ID for private label apps. Or ask your prospective clients to do this one thing:

Provide your developer with either the Organization ID from Apple Business Manager or the Managed Apple ID of your administrator.

Your is you in this case and you would set custom pricing and availability for their account.


How do i restart sshd in OSX Lion?

You probably know this already, but I'll say to be complete: if you kill sshd processes you'll terminate active SSH sessions to the machine. The sshd daemon provides ssh access to your machine. It handles incoming ssh connections. Not outbound connections.

If sshd is really what you mean then...

Before you restart it, try sending it a SIGHUP signal so it re-reads all of its configuration. You can do that with

ps -ef | grep sshd | awk {'print $2'} | sudo xargs kill -HUP

If you really want to kill all the sshd process on the machine:

ps -ef | grep sshd | awk {'print $2'} | sudo xargs kill -KILL

But try this stuff below first!

All that being said: if you're looking for keys for outbound sessions from the machine to be refreshed, killing sshd processes won't help you. What you really want to do is to add the new keys to the ssh-agent process with ssh-add -- that is usually sufficient to get new keys to be known to the agent.

The ssh-agent process handles all keyfile-based authentication for you. It's started automatically by Lion for each logged in user and it even integrates with Keychain.

If your new keyfile is ~/.ssh/bitbucket you would add it like so:

ssh-add ~/.ssh/bitbucket

Now the key would be available to new ssh sessions initiated from the terminal. No need to kill or restart anything.


iMessage Freezes/Hangs when sending screen shots

I had similar problem just recently. Here is what I did.

follow this to fix the problem

~/Library/Preferences

delete com.apple.ichat.plist


No, there isn't. And if there was an emulator, it probably wouldn't be fast enough for games (unless it was the equivalent of Rosetta).


Do I need a router with Mac and these firewall settings?

You only need a router if you want to "route" a network connection to more than 1 device.

If you only want to have 1 device connected to your network then you don't need a router. If you add another network-enabled device (TV, printer, another computer, etc), then you will need a router to share & control the network traffic.


iPod app of my iPhone connecting to internet

The iPod app is contacting iTunes server to get some encrypted keys. Three of them actually, respectively called "signature", "certs" and "bag". All of them are part of an xml (plist) file located at http://ax.init.itunes.apple.com/bag.xml?ix=2.

There's no POST data, just some cookies and HTTP headers giving information about the device and the context. These informations are part of many request made to Apple servers by iOS.

I have no idea what this "bag" can be nor what it's used for.

Details

Here's the request headers :

User-Agent : iTunes-iPhone/4.3.4 (4; 32GB)
Accept-Language : fr;q=1.0,en;q=1.0[...]
X-Apple-Store-Front : [cut]
X-Apple-Connection-Type : WiFi
X-Apple-Cuid : [cut]
X-Apple-Software-Cuid : [cut]
X-Dsid : [cut]
X-Apple-Client-Application : MediaPlayer
X-Apple-Client-Versions : iBooks/1.3

The cookies names :

mz_at1
s_vi
dssid2
mz_pc
mz_at0
ds01_a
Pod
s_vnum_us
s_vnum_befr
mz_if
mz_pt
a
s_vnum_fr
s_cvp35b

And the XML scheme :

<!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple Computer//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN" "http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd">
<plist version="1.0">
    <dict>
        <key>signature</key>
        <data>[encrypted string]</data>
        <key>certs</key>
        <array>
            <data>[encrypted string]</data>
        </array>
        <key>bag</key>
        <data>[VERY long encrypted string]</data>
    </dict>
</plist>

The "certs" part seems to be constant, even with a standard browser and none of the special HTTP headers or cookies.

(I don't want to publish too many details as I don't know what they contain about me or my Apple ID.)


AppleScript to perform actions to text in new TextEdit document

This is what I've written based on what was posted as the sample. First I set the filename and the file path of the document to create:

set filename to "test.txt"
set filePath to path to desktop

I wrote a display dialog that prompts a linefeed with a timeout and vague validation:

try
    set enteredText to (display dialog "What is your text?" default answer linefeed with title scriptTitle giving up after 40)
    if button returned of result = "" or gave up of result = true then error number -128
    set enteredText to text returned of enteredText
on error
    return display notification "Script cancelled" with title scriptTitle
end try

After the entry of text I then tell TextEdit to manipulate the text based on what you've supplied and save it to a file on the desktop:

tell application "TextEdit"
    activate
    set theDoc to make new document with properties {text:enteredText}
    tell theDoc
        set the color of every word to {65535, 0, 0}
        set size to 29
        try
            set font of theDoc to "Comic Sans MS"
        on error
            set font of theDoc to "Times"
        end try
        save in file ((filePath as text) & filename)
    end tell
end tell

The script's entire code:

use AppleScript version "2.4" -- Yosemite (10.10) or later
use scripting additions

(*
    Date: 18-12-20
    Developer: r2d2
    Purpose: prompt for text, manipulate in TextEdit and save to file.
    Version: 1.1
    Name: textedit_experiment.scpt
*)

set filename to "test.txt"
set filePath to path to desktop
set scriptTitle to "r2d2 TextEdit script"

try
    set enteredText to (display dialog "What is your text?" default answer linefeed with title scriptTitle giving up after 40)
    if button returned of result = "" or gave up of result = true then error number -128
    set enteredText to text returned of enteredText
on error
    return display notification "Script cancelled" with title scriptTitle
end try

tell application "TextEdit"
    activate
    set theDoc to make new document with properties {text:enteredText}
    tell theDoc
        set the color of every word to {65535, 0, 0}
        set size to 29
        try
            set font of theDoc to "Comic Sans MS"
        on error
            set font of theDoc to "Times"
        end try
        save in file ((filePath as text) & filename)
    end tell
end tell
return display notification "Script COMPLETED" with title scriptTitle

The script as it is is a base and there are far other forms of validation and improvements that can be made such as file existence, text returned testing or dialog testing but I wanted to answer the question.

Edit:

Code for the TextEdit tell modified to include closure of the document, text passed is hard coded as foobar:

tell application "TextEdit"
    activate
    set theDoc to make new document with properties {text:"foobar"}

    tell theDoc
        set the color of every word to {65535, 0, 0}
        set size to 29
        try
            set font of theDoc to "Comic Sans MS"
        on error
            set font of theDoc to "Times"
        end try
        save in file ((filePath as text) & filename)
    end tell

    set theDoc to front window
    try
        close theDoc
    on error
        display notification "Didn't close document"
    end try
end tell

Screenshot of dialog:

Screenshots of the above hard coded tell block and re-opened RTF file:

Code modified to take passed text to dialog and RTF opened:


Why is it taking so long to upload photos to icloud from iPhone/iPad?

If you want it right now, why not plug the phone into the Mac & use Image Capture, in the Applications folder - which is the importer 'behind' Photos.app.

You can also set it to auto-launch any capable app, including itself, when a device is connected [or do nothing] & set exactly where your imports should be saved. You can also dictate whether it should auto-delete from the device afterwards, or alternatively you can manually delete any selected pictures.


It sounds like the fall may have damaged the fan. That would account for the heat and the noise. It's also possible the heatsink got slightly dislodged, which would also cause heat issues (although likely more severe).

In any event, unless it's clearly an unrelated problem (like a firmware or software bug), this damage is almost certainly not covered by Apple's warranty, as it's the result of an accident, not a part failure. However, from time to time Apple has been known to waive the repair charges on incidents that fall outside warranty coverage, although it seems to be on a case by case basis, and only with a bit of luck.


Late 2008 Apple Aluminium MacBook complete reinstall

If you have a spare 8GB (or bigger) USB drive (or an external hard drive, or even an unused partition on your internal hard drive), you can download the Yosemite installer from the App Store and use it to create a bootable Yosemite installer. Here are Apple's detailed instructions for doing so.


fw0 is the FireWire network interface. It's benign.

stf0 is an IPv6 to IPv4 tunnel interface. It's a bridge connection that exists to help us transition from IPv4 to the IPv6 standard. It's benign. You can read more about it here if you like: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/6to4

gif0 is a generic tunnel interface. It's used to tunnel IPv4 traffic to an IPv6 network and back. It's benign. You can read more about it here: http://www.gsp.com/cgi-bin/man.cgi?section=4&topic=gif


In general you are confusing several things.

XQuartz is a set of libraries to allow X11 applications to be compiled and run on OSX. It is based on the X11 sources from X.org the changes were originally done by Apple.

Quartz is the set of technologies that are in the OSX Core Graphics that deal with 2d from wikipedia

  Quartz is often synonymous with Core Graphics

Thus Quartz is so called as it provides the X11 libraries that work by calling Quartz provided APIs

In the macports variants.conf what you are saying is don't use X11 (i.e. XQuartz) but use Apple's graphics directly and not via X11 so not calling any X.org code


Your partition map and your file system are two different things; kind of like the difference between a car and it's driver.  In your case, the "car" may be fine, but the "driver" is impaired, so you're not going anywhere (likewise, if the car is totaled, it's unlikely the driver is also fairing poorly).

File systems get corrupted for any number of reasons.  You can easily fix this with a reinstall of macOS; from Time Machine is the best method.
It's possible that your SSD is failing.  In that case, you can replace it with another and have your MBA back up and running.

Finally, running Disk Utility "regularly" doesn't do anything to prevent failures like this.  It's a much better practice to regularly do backups.


Disable shrinking spaces bar in El Capitan

I made a utility for accomplishing this very thing. If you don't mind that it injects code into the Dock and requires disabling one part of System Integrity Protection, then give it a whirl:

https://github.com/briankendall/forceFullDesktopBar

That github page includes a release and installation instructions.


If I'm an Apple iOS developer, can I do iOS upgrades, downgrades within the registered devices?

No, being enrolled within the Apple Developer's Program does not provide you with any kind of special downgrade possibilities.

In the other hand, being a Developer grants you the ability to upgrade to the newest yet-to-be-released version of iOS.

So, being the iPad 2 eligible for iOS 6, you won't be able to upgrade it to iOS 5.1.1 instead, enrolled as a Developer or not.


In Numbers, how can I determine the default formatting of cells in rows that have just been added to a sheet?

I found the following tutorial at Apple that has the answer to my own question: The default table styles are always taken from the table style list that you choose from the panel on the bottom-left corner of the screen.

The solution to my problem is to use the Create New Table Style command under the Format menu and adding a brand new table style. As long as this new style remains selected, it is the one that the table will keep as a whole.

I have tried this at home and it works as advertised.


Apparently yes, you can do it. iFixit is selling a compatible screen for ~99$ and this screen is compatible for the both (Pro / Unibody).

Screen :

https://www.ifixit.com/MacBook-Parts/13-Inch-Unibody-LCD-Panel/IF163-024

Fix tutorial :

https://fr.ifixit.com/Guide/MacBook+Unibody+Model+A1342+LCD+Replacement/2988


Install Mac OS X Lion from newly installed SDD in Mac Book Pro A1260 (2008 model)

You can

Get a copy of lion from the app store on another Mac and follow this guide

http://lifehacker.com/5823096/how-to-burn-your-own-lion-install-dvd-or-flash-drive?popular=true

You can clean install from the USB / dvd worked fine here


How to change title font color/style/etc for all Powerpoint slides?

It sounds like the other people who worked on the presentation did not use a template to begin with, or deleted the slide title text, and used a standard text field instead.

Here’s a slide that looks like it has a Title box, a text field, and bullet text field. But that’s not the case.

To see if the slide theme and type are correctly applied for the slide.

Go to the Layout menu from the Home tab.
Verify the slide type and theme being used
Reset the layout to default settings.

If the slide changes after doing this (as my example below has) but the text that you thought was the title text box doesn’t change, then the person who created the slide didn’t use the proper format to begin with. You will have to manually change the text of the title field, and delete their fake title box. The Master Slide can only change the fields that are part of the original template. Text fields added outside the master slide template or after the initial slide type was selected will only receive base text formatting for the presentation.


Your screenshots say that you have almost ran out of free space. This make your phone tell you you're out of free space. It's not a 100% exact message, it's a message you get when you have used ~99% of your space. This is correct behaviour.