Can I force my MacBook to only charge from the USB-C device I select? Or forbid it from charging from devices I know to be unreliable?

Has this issue been resolved?  I have a couple ideas on this, perhaps not useful for the original poster but maybe for someone that sees this same behavior.
First thing though is that this is very odd behavior.  Apple documentation shows that the MacBook should take power from the larger power supply regardless of which is plugged in first.  This behavior may show that there is some deeper hardware or software problem.  The need to track this down is subjective.  The need to get back to work is likely a priority and so resolving this is likely the highest concern for anyone in this position.
The quickest way to resolve this is to simply remove the power connection from one supply or the other.  This can mean just not connecting the 60 watt power supply and running off the 45 watt supply from the monitor.  The 60 watt supply was chosen for inclusion with the MacBook in order to allow for charging the battery even when under high CPU load.  Normal use is rarely going to need all this power, especially if you are using this MacBook while it sits on a desk for hours at time.  The best part about this solution is it costs nothing to implement.  The bad part is it does nothing to determine if there is a deeper issue causing this behavior, as well as does nothing to resolve it.  If this gets you back to work then that may be all that concerns you, and this may be all that needs to be done until the computer is retired.  Or, the display is retired.  Or, you are retired.
Breaking the power connection from the monitor can be done with a different cable.  It sounds like the monitor is connected with a common USB-C to USB-C cable.  Presumably the monitor has a DisplayPort and/or mini-DisplayPort input to supply DisplayPort video in addition to the USB-C port.  An adapter cable from USB-C to DisplayPort will keep the DisplayPort video connection but break the power connection.  If there is only USB-C for DisplayPort input then a USB-C to DisplayPort adapter with a DisplayPort to USB-C cable will also break the power connection and keep the video connection.
Another option which might be attractive because it can solve other problems along with this odd behavior is to get a USB-C dock.  The dock will connect to the MacBook by a single USB-C port and split out the video, power, and USB.  This means the MacBook will only take power from your power brick, the video will be split out to a DisplayPort port, and then USB for mouse, keyboard, and whatever else.  The connection to the display can then be by a much less expensive DisplayPort cable, assuming it has a DisplayPort port in addition to the USB-C port.  If there is no DisplayPort input then a DisplayPort to USB-C cable should be able to connect the monitor and still break the power supply connection to the MacBook.
Try running the MacBook on the display power, it costs nothing to try.  If that leaves you with the battery running low too often for your comfort then look into the other two options.  Which of the two works for you at the lowest cost will depend on the ports available on the display and what else needs to be connected to the computer.
I found this problem interesting, I would like to know how it was resolved.


How can I clear the JavaScript console in the Safari 6 developer tools?

Use Command-K (⌘+K) to clear Safari 6 Web Inspector console.


Can FileVault protect a macOS partition from a Ubuntu partition?

The are four types of Apple partitions that are commonly used:

Apple_HFS (MacOS Extended Journaled)
Apple_Boot (MacOS Extended Journaled used for Recovery)
Core Storage
APFS

These partition either can not be mount by Ubuntu are can be mounted as Read Only. So there is no danger of Ubuntu overwriting a macOS volume.

  Note: Most Linux (including Ubuntu) can write to non-encrypted Apple_HFS partitions if journaling is turned off. A macOS installation will always have journalling enabled by default.


What do the original files show up as in a media app such as VLC? Does this info match what Final Cut says about the ProRes copy? The video frame rate, audio sample rate, and other information should match exactly.  Then, your FCP sequence settings should be identical.

Another way to address small sync drifts is to razor-cut the audio and manually re-establish sync a few times on the project.


How do I update Ruby from the default version to 2.1.6 via terminal?

Since homebrew has moved on to ruby version 2.4.2 you might not have luck installing that far back a version.

I've not used RVM lately, since I'm happy with keeping up with the ruby version that's stable (and let home brew update things since I have no legacy projects needing 2.1), but give the following steps a shot. This will side load another version that's older than what Apple ships.

https://rvm.io

Once that's installed:

 rvm install 2.1.6
 rvm --default use 2.1.6


Can I install OSX 10.11 El Capitan on a 2016 MacBook Pro touch?

No you can't install El Capitan.

The firmware won't allow any version of macOS earlier than macOS Sierra 10.12.1 (16B2657) to be installed.

Also, for future reference, if this model ever needs a firmware update, it is possible that the earliest version of macOS you will be able to install in future will be a version later than macOS 10.12.1.


How can I make my computer believe a disk image is a hardware disk?

Aloha, counterbeing - I think we've worked together before!

I like the previous answer that creates a partition, but if that doesn't work for you, try this:

Create your Disk Image (I've used a sparse bundle disk image).
Mount the disk image
From the command line, enter the following:

sudo tmutil setdestination /Volumes/{mounted-image-name}

• Start Time Machine manually within the menu bar via "Back Up Now"

If all goes well, you should then back up to the image. It will need to be large enough to contain all of your backup data - or Time Machine will likely refuse to use it.


My mac laptop randomly plays music and won't stop

Are you wearing Apple EarPods/Earphones with an inline remote? If you press the center button on them anytime it will play a song from iTunes.


In most cases, your computer is just doing a checksum, to make sure the Apple Disk Image, .dmg, hasn't been corrupted due to a flakey network connection or hard drive, or from bit-rot, etc. This can let you know about a problem early on, so you don't waste time troubleshooting a bad copy of an app.

Developers also have the ability to codesign .dmg's (thanks @graham-miln), in which case, this signature will also be verified.


Macbook Pro Battery / Discrete Graphics Card Issues in 10.8.2

Yes, you can achieve that using certain EFI variable. I answered this other question with the full procedure to permanently disable discrete graphics card on startup.

Preventing your computer from switching to discrete graphics card will allow you to asses if that is the reason for your poor battery performance.


I've never heard of someone being refused AppleCare service at an Apple Retail store in Europe when the product was purchased in the US. Also, all 2012 mini Wi-Fi models are A1432 so you don't need to play a guessing game with LTE bands.

If you read the terms of the warranty, Apple is certainly in their rights to ask you to return the product to the country of sale for service since that is their standard practice. You are basically selecting the laws and customs that cover your warranty and perhaps giving up some rights since European law is different than US law in terms of consumer protection.

In reality, most countries that have Apple Retail presence have good coverage for US products whether you take it to a local authorized center or to Apple. You might have second thoughts if you lived somewhere where the local distributor expects to provide service to products it sold and not those you imported yourself.

As to the quotes - perhaps they were unfamiliar with WiFi bands and that Apple devices usually will reprogram the baseband for WiFi based on location and not point of purchase.


Fixed region screen capture on Mac OS X?

The free screen capture tools built into QuickTime and the OS will allow you to take full screen video capture as well as partial captures. You can then edit these down using preview and iMovie to crop and adjust them. This takes time, so there is room for some inexpensive apps that help you by pre-defining the capture area so you don't have to edit down a larger file or worry about being pixel perfect each time you make another capture using the mouse/trackpad.

I use Skitch for static images and used Screeny for video images until Mavericks came out. It doesn't work now, so ScreenFlow is my tool of choice if QuickTime doesn't cut it.

I'm hoping Screeny gets updated since it's lighter and simpler. Nothing will replace ScreenFlow for big projects due to it's post production workflow tools, but you might be well served by a less expensive option or even prefer simplicity over complexity if that's more important than a one time cost.

Skitch is currently free, Screeny is $15 and ScreenFlow $99 - all are available on the Mac App Store.


How do I remove notifications from certain websites not in my Chrome or Safari browsers?

Go to safari preferences and then in websites tab. Second last in the list is notifications. Edit whichever you want.

Might have similar for chrome. I don’t use it so don’t know.

In Firefox, searching settings for permissions gives me the option.


How to send an email to myself with Applescript or Terminal automatically when my Mac reboots?

The easiest way I know of to do this is add a line to your crontab with the following format:

@reboot /path/to/your/script

The script could have the mail command invoking the date command.


Is a Sparse Bundle image or Sparse Image better for many files 3 TB external hard drive 4TB?

It sounds like you are making a bootable image. In that case, you'll want to use one of these:

Carbon Copy Cloner
Super Duper

If those satisfy your needs, you can stop reading. If not, read on!

If you are simply storing a lot of Mac files and you want to do it using a Mac-native filesystem, you should use a sparse bundle. The man page for hdiutil helps explain this:

  As of Mac OS X 10.5, a more reliable, efficient, and scalable sparse
  format, UDSB (SPARSEBUNDLE), is recommended for persistent sparse
  images as long as a backing bundle (directory) is acceptable.

Take note of that "backing bundle" statement -- it means that the file system on which your sparse bundle is stored must support directories with a large number of files (those are the bands of the sparse bundle). Remember, you have external hard drive disk itself to format before you place the sparse bundle image onto that disk.

The man page also gives the (huge) max size for a sparse bundle:

  ..the maximum [size] for SPARSEBUNDLE is just under 8 exabytes (2^63 - 512
  bytes)

You can format the disk itself however you'd like, as long as the format supports the large number of files sparse bundles make in a single directory. Format your sparse bundle as HFS+ and then convert it to APFS in the future. The reason for this is there are still a few bugs in APFS, specifically regarding sparse bundles, cf. this well-explained bug report and video:

  I noticed that an APFS-formatted sparsebundle disk image volume showed
  ample free space, despite that the underlying disk was completely
  full.

(2019 update: macOS Mojave resolved the free space issue above. Using an APFS sparse bundle on Mojave and newer can be safely recommended).

You can use Disk Utility to create your sparse bundle. If you are doing a lot of deleting from the sparse bundle, periodically run this command to remove unused bands and reclaim the space:

hdiutil compact /path/name.sparsebundle

Note that hdiutil compact only removes completely unused bands. So, deleting 10GB of data from your sparsebundle may only result in, say, 6GB of bands deleted when you compact. Reducing band size generally will make compact operations free up more space.


How to forward iPhone messages to Macbook or iPod?

Your icloud should still work - meaning FaceTime should still be operational - for the rest you have to rely on your MacBook and iPod - iPhone with a new number is useless - or just use your US sim knowing that you will be charged long distance roaming etc.  I'm an expat a long time - we have our limits in communicating back home - stay with your MacBook. Safe and not sorry


Macbook pro default apps installed under different apple id?

Sure, delete the app in question from the Mac and empty trash.
Then open the App Store from the account (fast user switching type of account) you want to manage updates on that Mac. Sign in to the App Store if needed with the AppleID You prefer for your updates.
Get those apps tied to the correct AppleID.


The database it uses (a simple sql database) is located in ~/Library/Application Support/Dock. That holds all your apps and their placement.

You could back up the file (or simply use TM) so that it can be restored at a later date.


I forgot my Encrypt Local Backup password. How can I start over?

From Apple Support:

Warning: If you encrypt an iPhone backup in iTunes and then forget your password, you will not be able to restore from backup and your data will be unrecoverable. If you forget the password, you can continue to back up and use the device, however you will not be able to restore the encrypted backup to any device without the password. You do not need to enter the password for your backup each time you back up or sync.

If you cannot remember the password and want to start again, you must perform a full software restore and when iTunes prompts you to select the backup from which to restore, choose set up as a new device.

I assume it applies also to iPad, and yeah that's a terrible inconvenience for you, but at least it's a definitive answer from the source.

http://support.apple.com/kb/HT4946?viewlocale=en_US&locale=en_US


How to make an AppleScript app open another one?

Let's say you have application XYZ.app and you want to open that from AppleScript, this would be the code:

tell application "XYZ"
    activate
end tell


start.command permission denied even after chmod

If you actually used chmod x+u filename then here is the results of a sample from Terminal:

$ echo 'echo Hello World!' > hello.command
$ ls -l hello.command
-rw-r--r--  1 user  staff  18 Aug  5 14:24 hello.command
$ chmod x+u hello.command
chmod: Invalid file mode: x+u
$ ./hello.command
-bash: ./hello.command: Permission denied
$ chmod +x hello.command
$ ls -l hello.command
-rwxr-xr-x  1 user  staff  18 Aug  5 14:24 hello.command
$ ./hello.command
Hello World!
$

It just needs to be: chmod +x filename

If you only want it executable for the User, then use: chmod u+x filename


Can I access iCloud Drive files from non-apple device?

CloudKit

Apple offers CloudKit, which achieves something very similar to what you are describing.

If you're able to write an application both for your Mac and iOS device, you can sync data and files across devices relatively easily. For example, CloudKit allows you to store files and data in a free database, process it however you want in your apps, then re-upload it to the database. All of this happens without any explicit authentication.

  The CloudKit framework provides interfaces for moving data between
  your app and your iCloud containers. You use CloudKit to take your
  app’s existing data and store it in the cloud so that the user can
  access it on multiple devices. You can also store data in a public
  area where all users can access it.

CloudKit | Apple Developer Documentation

Keep in mind that while CloudKit itself free and easy to use, there is a caveat; You have to have a paid Developer account, which costs $99 a year.

I would highly recommend you look into CloudKit and check out Apple's (outdated) CloudKit Quick Start guide to get a feel for how programming for it actually looks.

Access from Non-Apple Platforms

While CloudKit works best when used on an Apple device, it is certainly possible to interact with a CloudKit container with more platform agnostic methods.

The best solution may be to use CloudKit web services. This allows you to use either more traditional HTTP methods or JavaScript to interact with CloudKit data.

The part of CloudKit web services that has more up to date documentation is CloudKit JS, a JavaScript API for CloudKit.

Keep in mind that with either of these options, Apple says that, “You must have an existing CloudKit app and enable web services.” Details on how to setup CloudKit web service are in the linked CloudKit JS guide


Try downloading Chrome from the command line instead. This solution has the command to download Chrome AND install.

solutions outlined are:

Using Homebrew cask

brew install brew-cask
brew cask install google-chrome

Using wget command

wget https://dl.google.com/chrome/mac/stable/GGRO/googlechrome.dmg
open ~/Downloads/googlechrome.dmg
sudo cp -r /Volumes/Google\ Chrome/Google\ Chrome.app /Applications/

Alternatively, using your browser, you can go to the direct link HERE and the browser will download the file automatically.


Computer won't recognize phone; can't restore

Take it to the Apple store?

If it's just restoring the phone they shouldn't charge you anything. And after a clean restore you can then try to restore it again at home.


How to activate external display when Macbook display is dead

Pressing Command + F1 should enable mirroring of the internal display to the external monitor.

Once that is enabled you can go to System Preferences to tinker with more advanced stuff like resolution and refresh rate.


Download code needed for updating to macOS Sierra GM

You'll need to go to the Apple Developers download page and click on the Download button next to macOS 10.12 GM Seed.

If you already did so and signed into the app store to redeem your code then your redemption code should be visible underneath that line.


Is the flash storage firmware update 1.0 for my MBA installed? How can I verify it?

Firmware update and FileVault
A forum post suggests that Firmware updates require access to /System/... in addition to the EFI partition (disk0s1).
Since /System/... is located on the startup volume it is encrypted if you have FileVault 2 enabled - due to Full Disk Encryption.
If you search further down in /System/... you will find the Revision number mentioned in the Apple knowledge-base document for this Firmware updateTPVABBF0:
/System/Library/CoreServices/Firmware Updates/HardDriveUpdate3/HDFW/APPLE_SSD_TS128E TPVABBF0

However, this alone is not a guarantee that the Firmware update has been installed. Before I had successfully applied the update, the contents already looked like this:

How to install...
Since there is no way around the encryption, I disabled FileVault - applied the update - and re-enabled FileVault.
You will notice that the update is installing if you see a grey bar during the boot process above which is a standard hard drive icon.
After the update, all the folders in /System/Library/CoreServices/Firmware Updates/... as you can see in the picture are still present and the Boot ROM Version: MBA51.00EF.B02 and SMC Version (system): 2.5f7 have not changed either.
While the Mac App Store still has the red badge for "new updates" it does not offer anymore to install the firmware update. So, I guess the firmware update has been installed successfully...


Your MacBook Pro has indeed a 9.5mm SATA SuperDrive.


Start by looking for it in Trash. If not, than a Time Machine backup. If not, try recovering it using a recovery software. The backup folder generally contain many files with cryptic names like 0d0c1bdbcfa1d8f0cde357e7a4ab3db7783e26ff and it may not be easy to deduce the correct one out of them.


Sort output of tmutil compare by file size

I don't know exactly how sort -h is supposed to work since it mixes the B, K, M and G prefixes, but it was at least workable for me in Mojave:

cat tmutil-compare | grep "M  " | cut -c 3- | sort -h


HDCP with Mac Mini and an external monitor

@jaume was correct, you want to use an HDMI cable if possible.
More information about High-bandwidth Digital Content Protection (HDCP)


Would the Mac mini or Macbook Air have better sound hardware for speech recognition?

I believe I am correct in saying (without a Mini to cross check against) that they both (along with all the Mac lineup) use the integrated Intel HD audio chip, and as such there should be no real difference between the 2.

I would say that you limiting factor would be that the Mini does not have an integrated microphone, whereas the Air does, so you will need to bring your own mic.  Also, neither have separate mic input/audio output ports, and require you to use something like an iPhone headset (modified 3.5mm audio connector with both channels on the same connector), which may not provide the quality (or comfort) you need.

So, on the Mini, you will need to buy a headset in order to get mic input, and if you already have one you may need to replace it with a USB one or iPhone one.  On the Air you're good to go unless you are already a regular headset user, in which case you may beed to replace if it uses 2 discrete connectors for headphone/mic.


In iTunes 11, is it possible to show the genre of an album in Artist view?

Short answer: NO

Apple has custom view options screens for Artist, Albums, Genres views and therefore you cannot change the columns beyond what they allow. It seems it is only available in song and playlist view.

I am guessing the reason for this is that the artist view is meant to group and display a specific set of data. I would suspect in future versions they may introduce the ability to do this, however for the moment it is not possible.

Sidenote: The View Options screen has been drastically modified for the song view compared to the previous version.


Where does iMovie store movies before projects are finalized

I've found a copy in ./Music/iTunes/iTunes\ Media/Home\ Videos\my_project.m4v, although I cannot tell whether iMovie at some point placed it there.


Are there any good TouchID enabled banking apps

After a bunch of searching, decided to move my CapitalOne 360 to Discover Bank.  Only app I found, and they do everything I need so far (cash checks, bill pay, direct deposit).  App has TouchID :)

Still not clear why no other major financial institutions offer TouchID support - even USAA!


It's impossible to completely remove any notification for SMSes prior to iOS 5. The best you could do is choose 'None' as the SMS Tone, and hide message previews.

Since you unable to upgrade to iOS 5, you cannot change nor remove the SMS Message popup box. Under iOS 5 you could change it to the less intrusive banner, or remove any sort of on-screen notification at all.


Change the shortcut for Inserting a New Equation in MS Word for Mac

You could use the Keyboard to reassign
(i dont have my mac with me but this shows the idea)


Use MacBook Pro as second monitor for iMac?

You can not use your MacBook Pro as a second monitor for your iMac without additional software.

ScreenRecycler claims to allow you to expand your desktop across multiple computers.

As an alternative approach, Synergy (previously open source at synergy-foss.org) claims to lets you combine multiple computers into one. It will let you use both computers from a single keyboard and mouse.


Verizon contract fulfilled, yet no other carrier will touch my iPhone 4?

The iPhone 4 built for Verizon's network is a CDMA-only device that is not capable of operating on a GSM network that requires a SIM card, such as StraightTalk (which uses T-Mobile's network). That said, Page Plus operates on Verizon so there shouldn't be any impediment assuming you've had the phone unlocked already.

This thread indicates that Page Plus phone reps are hit-or-miss when it comes to allowing you to use an iPhone. About halfway down the page there are steps for doing so online, thereby avoiding the troublesome CSRs.

  Activate online. This costs $10.
  Wait (10) minutes, then dial *22890. This will program the iPhone 4 and takes about 30 seconds.
  Dial 611, "Welcome to PPC"
  Use any third party like Pinzoo or CallingMart to buy a calling package & Pin. PPC didn't let me use PayPal.


The content of /usr/bin and friends is updated with each release of macOS, but usually the versions shipped by Apple are significantly older than what's available on Linux. There are various reasons for this, in a lot of cases it's related to changes in the GPL. In case of crontab it may also play a role that the use of cron is deprecated, launchd should be used instead.

If you want to update Unix binaries yourself

Use Homebrew (https://brew.sh)
Compile from source yourself and install in /usr/local/bin


What happens if you uncheck iCloud for photos?

If you are using iCloud photos somewhere else all turning it off does is stops them from updating on your mac. Your photos won't get deleted immediately from iCloud if you turn it off and you only have it turned on o your mac, and they will stay on your mac.


This appears to be the enter key symbol:

⌤ is enter

Source


Is there a Terminal command to open a Mac menu bar item?

Since all that's required is a single click to the menu bar icon in order to open the app, AppleScript can achieve this very easily using GUI scripting, which requires the right accessibility permissions to be granted to whichever program you'll use to execute the AppleScript (e.g. Script Editor, Automator, Terminal, etc..).

So, first, grant the appropriate permissions via System Preferences.  This screenshot is from MacOS 10.13:

After this is done, open up Script Editor and run this script.  I don't have Quick Calendar View myself, but the principles for most menu bar apps are the same, so this will hopefully obtain a list of application names that have icons sitting in your menu bar:

    tell application "System Events" to get the name of ¬
        every process whose class of menu bar 2 is menu bar

"Quick View Calendar" or something appropriately similar ought to appear in the list that is returned by running that command.  This is the name that I've used in the following snippet, which is what actually does what you need, namely to issue a mouse click to the menu bar icon and open the application.  If the name is something different, you can change that yourself:

    tell application "System Events" to tell process "Quick View Calendar" to ¬
        click menu bar item 1 of menu bar 2

You can paste this code into a Run AppleScript action in Automator (again, provided Automator has been granted accessibility permissions), which will then become part of your workflow in creating the service you want to create.

Your original request was to run a command from Terminal to perform this action, so you can simply open up Terminal (again, accessibility permissions!), and type this:

    osascript \
        -e 'tell application "System Events" to ¬' \
        -e 'tell process "Quick View Calendar" to ¬' \
        -e 'click menu bar item 1 of menu bar 2'

If you run into any problems, let me know.


WELL, HOLY CRAP.

I did some digging around in the manual pages for the diskutil command-line utility.  My volume was a CoreStorage Logical Volume, so I got some info on it:

$ diskutil cs list
CoreStorage logical volume groups (1 found)
|
+-- Logical Volume Group C8C10399-E3E0-4B52-A9EE-2F15AE56E992
    =========================================================
    Name:         Macintosh HD
    Status:       Online
    Size:         155701956608 B (155.7 GB)
    Free Space:   18960384 B (19.0 MB)
    |
    +-< Physical Volume 297002AD-AB9E-47CC-B31B-5B7C21BE0F7A
    |   ----------------------------------------------------
    |   Index:    0
    |   Disk:     disk0s2
    |   Status:   Online
    |   Size:     155701956608 B (155.7 GB)
    |
    +-> Logical Volume Family F134B1FE-CEC6-49F3-86E9-DF67D8530FF5
        ----------------------------------------------------------
        Encryption Type:         None
        |
        +-> Logical Volume F85FD6EB-0CF7-400E-960B-22572D96B498
            ---------------------------------------------------
            Disk:                  disk1
            Status:                Online
            Size (Total):          155330674688 B (155.3 GB)
            Revertible:            Yes (no decryption required)
            LV Name:               Macintosh HD
            Volume Name:           Macintosh HD
            Content Hint:          Apple_HFS

Then I held my breath and ran a resizeStack command, which makes everything very easy:

$ diskutil cs resizeStack F85FD6EB-0CF7-400E-960B-22572D96B498 0
The Core Storage Logical Volume UUID is F85FD6EB-0CF7-400E-960B-22572D96B498
Started CoreStorage operation
Checking prerequisites for resizing Logical-Physical volume stack
Growing Logical-Physical volume stack
Verifying file system
Volume could not be unmounted
Using live mode
Performing fsck_hfs -fn -l -x /dev/rdisk1
Performing live verification
Checking Journaled HFS Plus volume
Checking extents overflow file
Checking catalog file
Checking multi-linked files
Checking catalog hierarchy
Checking extended attributes file
Checking volume bitmap
Checking volume information
The volume Macintosh HD appears to be OK
File system check exit code is 0
Restoring the original state found as mounted
Growing Core Storage Physical Volume from 155,701,956,608 to 499,248,103,424 bytes
Copying booter
Growing disk partition
Modifying partition map
Growing Core Storage data structures
Resizing Core Storage Physical Volume structures
Resized Core Storage Physical Volume to 499,248,103,424 bytes
Growing Logical Volume
Resizing Core Storage Logical Volume structures
Resized Core Storage Logical Volume to 498,876,821,504 bytes
Growing file system
Finished CoreStorage operation

Didn't even need sudo!  Which is kind of strange!

Anyway, after this, my disk is now in fact a 500 GB disk:

This is like those dreams where you discover extra rooms in your house that you didn't know you had.


Pixelmator filters can now be found in the Effects browser -- see this thread for more information.


Where are OS X document versions stored? Are they secure?

Versions are stored on the same physical / logical volume as the original.
This Q&A has all the technical details, but in short, look in the root user owned folder /.DocumentRevisions-V100 on each volume. If you create a disk image, the user that mounts the disk image normally owns the /Volumes/whatever/.DocumentRevisions-V100 directory where changes to documents on that volume are stored.

Do OS X Lion's Versions and Resume features store the cached data for encrypted .sparsebundle images in a secure way?

So - if that volume is FileVault encrypted (or a secure disk image) then the version is as secure as the original.

When you copy a file by attaching it, you only send the current saved copy - not any previous versions - so then again - it's only as secure (or not) as the medium into which you send that file.

So - versions doesn't do any additional encryption and it's really up to each application to decide whether it enables or disables versions and whether the data it writes is also obfuscated / encrypted - but the presence of versions neither adds nor subtracts security to a system.


softwareupdate prints No new software available. on stderr, not on stdout, so it will never get assigned to check. The quick fix is to run

check=$(softwareupdate -l 2>&1)

This will redirect stderr (file descriptor 2) to stdout (file descriptor 1).

Also your if statement is wrong, the [ is a command, not just syntax. So you can simply run

if fgrep "No new software" <<< $check; then

for this.

But if you don't need the value of $check later on you can put all this in one line and just run

if softwareupdate -l 2>&1 | fgrep -q "No new software"; then


Why doesn't the iOS status-bar network activity indicator show all activity?

Bear in mind that the visibility of Network Activity Indicator is managed by the App's Developer and not the System detecting a connection.

That being said, there are numerous reasons for this behaviours you're experiencing. Perhaps the Apps were coded to react differently to different actions, or they wrongly hide the Network Activity Indicator despite the fact a connection is being made.


Why Apple Reminder app on iPhone 7 / iOS 13.3.1 does not have hourly repeat option?

Had the same problem with an iPhone 11 Pro, so it's definitely not the age of the phone.  Could reliably follow the instructions from this answer on an older Xs, but Hourly would just refuse to show up on the 11 Pro.
Then I noticed that the summary page on the 11 Pro (tap < Lists in upper-left from any list) had a link Upgrade right around the heading My Lists (sorry, didn't think of taking a snapshot), and tapping it asked for a confirmation (the upgrade is irreversible & breaks compatibility with other devices sharing the same lists using older software--see this Apple Support page), and then voila!, Hourly magically appears in the list of base periods on the Repeat screen.


How to Sync Messages from iPhone to Other Devices (iOS 11.4, macOS 10.13.5)?

My goodness!  200GB!?  Unless you have chosen to put a gargantuan amount of data in your iCloud account, I'd recommend paying $.99 a month for 50GB and seeing if that isn't sufficient.  I have 50GB and have used only 13.4GB so far:  photos & videos, Mail, documents, backups, and Messages.


Can I move apps to home NAS and run its from NAS in my MBP 2017?

Yes and no.

Can you technically do it?  Yes, you can.  You can mount a volume on a NAS device in the same way you would an external storage device and offload your data and applications there.  They would even run from that volume.

Would you want to? No.

First, just comparing USB 3 with Ethernet, you're opting for a connection that's 1/5 that of USB 3 (Ethernet = 1Gbp/s; USB3 = 5Gbp/s).  Then, if you're intending to run this over 4G LTE, you'd be going from 5Gbp/s to 50Mbps - 1/10th the speed.  This is not practical in any sense.

Get a high quality external USB drive for supplemental storage and keep it with you; it's cheaper and more practical.


preventing ssh command from opening xquartz on every session

Solved by myself. XQuartz installation added a custom configuration for ssh in etc/ssh_config. I have just removed ForwardX11 yes and ssh won't open XQuartz anymore.


Is there any way to make the confirmation dialog stop appearing when clearing history in Safari?

You could try the "Reset Safari" under Safari settings. Its right below Private Browsing (at least on my computer). you can uncheck everything but clear history. I tried it, and wasn't asked if i was sure I want to clear history.
My source


Does NVRAM, PRAM or SMC have anything to do with the red light on a Riser lighting up but then not lighting up after a reseat and riser switch?

As you may know, the Non-Volatile RAM (NVRAM) and System Management Controller (SMC) have totally different purposes.

In terms of the red light you're referring to:

resetting the NVRAM will have absolutely no bearing on this whatsoever
resetting the SMC could have an influence, but probably not in the way you're asking about.

At its core the SMC is responsible for power management and controlling the thermal environment of your Mac. Typically this covers things like interpreting and responding to various sensors, battery charging, sleep/wake/hibernation, the power button and restarts/shutdowns, LED indicators, and so on.

Since the red light needs a power source, as do RAM chips to operate, it's quite possible that resetting the SMC could have an impact on the light:

directly in terms of its own power source
indirectly because the associated RAM isn't getting the power it needs and therefore triggers ECC errors which triggers the red light.

However, despite the above explanation, in most cases a red light indicates nothing more than the fact the RAM isn't seated properly. Removing and reseating the riser(s) will usually rectify this problem. While it may seem unlikely that this was the problem in your case, it actually doesn't take much for this to occur (e.g. the computer is moved, bumped, etc).


Looking in the console log is the first place to look for launchd errors to debug the process.

I use Lingon to look into the actual launchd configuration files - it automates finding the files and editing the plist files.

You can look in your (now hidden) ~/Library/LaunchAgents  directory to make sure the items are enabled.

Lastly ( or perhaps firstly ) try deleting all the items from the account pane, reboot and add them back to see if that helps.


How to Record Both Mic Audio and Speakers while using headset

I've seen many questions like this. The simple solution is Soundflower. You can download it for free at http://cycling74.com/products/soundflower/. As to where you're recording, you would need to select the Soundflower (2ch) or Soundflower (16ch) as your input.

Input 1 = your microphone's audio/your babbling
Input 2 = your speakers' output


Why I'm getting this message: "Interface cannot be used (error 229)"

I found a solution: You need to download the ACS ACR122U Drivers for Mac OS X 10.x.

Here the download page and the direct link for PC/SC Driver Installer 1.1.0 (Mac 10.5, Mac 10.6, Mac 10.7, Mac 10.8, Mac 10.9, Mac 10.10) (2014-09-17 306KB).

You have to install it even if the installer is not properly signed.

It will install the useful driver in: /usr/libexec/SmartCardServices/drivers/ifd-acsccid.bundle

Now you are able to use the card reader.
If you want to test it out, I made a simple project here.


Deleting Time Machine backups can take a very long time, since they can contain hundreds of thousands of files. Moving the files to the trash can take a long time, emptying the trash can take a long time, and using command line "rm" commands can take a long time. By long time I mean tens of hours.

Usually the fasted way to remove such numbers of files is to use Disk Utility to erase and/or reformat and/or repartition the drive. Copy anything you don't want lost off of the drive, reformat it, and start the TM process again.


You can restore your device to remove the restrictions passcode. This will delete the contents of the device, but you can restore a backup afterwards.

Connect the device to iTunes, choose your device and click Restore. This will erase and restore your device. Once this process is complete, you can set up the device as a new device or choose to restore from an iTunes or iCloud backup.


Based on personal experience, the 08 Mac Pro is well worth squeezing that last bit of life out of.

It will take 64GB RAM, as 8 x 16 - even though Apple say it will only take 8GB sticks. Best source, other than OWC [which I think is US only] is eBay. There are specialists who sell old Mac parts & RAM; & mostly list with specific models items will run on. DDR2 is not cheap, though. I think I paid 300 quid for 16GB last year.

It's possible to add an SSD in one of the optical bays - without losing any existing drives in the main bays.
You will need a 2.5" > 5.25" mounting bracket, a PATA > SATA power cable & an SATA data cable [straight ends] maybe 9" long [don't get the shortest one, it won't reach]
The power you get from the optical bay itself.
The SATA connection comes from 2 'hidden' extra connectors - on the motherboard, behind the main fan assembly, which you can route behind the optical bay as you refit it.

Clone your existing boot drive with something like Carbon Copy Cloner & away you go.

The speed increase from the SSD alone is astonishing.


How can I run a script automatically when changing Location?

Not specifically that I know of... but there are apps that can be aware of your location and load different profiles based on that location and/or run other actions.

Have a look at MarcoPolo (http://www.symonds.id.au/marcopolo/) and Sidekick (http://oomphalot.com/sidekick/).  MarcoPolo may not be up-to-date with the latest versions of OS X.. Sidekick looks a bit flashier so probably is more up-to-date but may not be free.  But hopefully one of them does the trick for you!


Cannot share internet from MacBook to iPhone via usb cable; option not available

In MacOS Catalina, the internet sharing settings for iOS devices are located under the content Caching section.

I've verified that it works with MacOS Catalina 10.15.4 on a 2018 Macbook Pro and an iPhone 7 Plus running iOS 13.4.1

The network is sharing wifi from my macbook, with the iPhone's cellular, wifi and bluetooth disabled. Safari was able to load up multiple pages.

*note it may take a few minutes to set the cache up before pages load on your iPhone

Also note that when content caching is on, the internet sharing service is disabled as is controlled by content caching

To read more from apple, view their guide


Why is my macbook pro non-retina slow to sleep (15-20 s) despite no sleepimage?

The XLab website says that this 15 sec delay is likely something Apple has added for Mac's that support PowerNap. DarkWake is assumed to be an internal name for PowerNap, and is referenced on a Patent.

For more, please visit the article on Xlab:

http://www.thexlab.com/faqs/mavericks_post_install.html#Delay_before_sleep


Accessing temporarily Another User's directories by entering his User ID and Password in Mac

There are several options:

First, set up a shared folder on your account (or both if you need both way) so that every file you'll copy there will be visible from your friend account.
You already have a public folder which can accomplish this.
Next, you can enable fast user switch from Preferences > Users & Groups > Login Options. Doing so, you'll have login controls in the right side of the menu bar. You just need to login, copy the files in the public folder and logout.

Even faster, open the Terminal (Applications > Utility > Terminal), and type

su YourUsername

it will ask for password. Enter it, and you will be logged on the shell with your account. From here, browse the folders and find the files you need (cd foldername to enter a folder, cp filesource filedestination to copy). Then logout with exit. Example:

Mac:~ Jack$ su epistrephein
Password:
bash-3.2$ cd Downloads
bash-3.2$ cp picture6.jpg ~/Public/picture6.jpg
bash-3.2$ exit
Mac:~ Jack$


I went to the Seagate site and found an updated driver (at least I assume it is updated - it is unclear).

The NTFS now mounts.


Changing to manual IP causes no internet connection

This worked for me. Although confusing because the UI for the IP configuration wasn't reflecting properly. I had to check my internet's ip using google to confirm that my internet was in fact changing.

route delete default
route add default 192.168.1.1


A lot of functionality, like login items, extensions/kexts, LaunchAgents or other Helpers can be packed into the application bundle these days.

If you look closely at the content of the Spotify.app, by right- or control clicking it and selecting "Show Package Contents", you'll find a "Library" folder enclosed in the Content's folder.  Within it there is a LoginItems folder, containing the login item.
    /Applications/Spotify.app/Contents/Library/LoginItems/StartUpHelper.app/Contents/MacOS/StartUpHelper

This "StartUpHelper" will launch Spotify at login.  This seems to be the application's default behaviour.

You wrote:

  Otherwise it would start for every new user added to the system.

I certainly have seen Spotify auto-launch on a user created after it had been installed, logging out of the user that created the new account and setting up the new user account from the login screen (alternatively two restarts were needed for Spotify to launch at login in the new user account). Only when Spotify got installed after the user was created, did it not launch at login.

A test in an attempt to explain, why some users will not see the auto-launch of Spotify at login:

I created and set up a new user before Spotify was installed on a different user account and, after Spotify was installed (again in a different user account), tried several logouts/logins and restarts to make sure it didn’t auto-launch at login for this new user. I also noted the user’s DARWIN USER DIRECTORY running the following command...
getconf DARWIN_USER_DIR

I also had a user for whom Spotify auto-launched at login every single time.  Again I noted the user’s DARWIN USER DIRECTORY.
Logged into this last mentioned user I quit Spotify and deleted...com.apple.LaunchServices-231-v2.csstore ...from the Darwin User Directory. Then I copied the same file from the other user’s Darwin User Directory (for whom Spotify didn’t auto-launch at login) over to this user’s directory (in Finder, to make sure the file’s owner would also change).

Then I logged out and rebooted several times into the user, for whom Spotify did auto-launch, but the behaviour stopped and Spotify refrained from launching.

PS. For further in depth information on login items within an application bundle, I’d suggest signing up for a free Developer account and getting acquainted with (some of) the documentation on application design (you don't have to sign up though, just to read the documentation).


How can I pass something like "--yes" to brew in order for it to avoid asking for confirmations?

There does not appear to be such a "--yes" parameter, nor something similar for the brew command.
You can consider doing something simple like running the following command:
yes | brew <...>

However be aware that this will answer "y" to everything automatically.


In the end I used NSTimer to automate my code.

Rather then using the applescript to launch the app periodically, I have the app run constantly and use NSTimer within my app to fire a specific method from time to time.

[NSTimer scheduledTimerWithTimeInterval:2.0
    target:self
    selector:@selector(targetMethod:)
    userInfo:nil
    repeats:NO];

This way the app is never killed and does not have to be restarted.


How to access Google Hangouts chat on Mobile Safari?

Go to gmail.com in mobile Safari.
Hold the refresh button, and choose Request Desktop Site.

It will look exactly the same, but it actually did something.
Go up to the URL and delete everything after https://mail.google.com/.

The chat windows will be really small and barely usable, but you can at least read messages and probably send them too.

If you do things in a different order or try to use the button at the bottom of the screen to toggle between standard and basic HTML, you'll either end up going back to the mobile site, or you'll end up with the following error:

  You have been redirected to the basic HTML version because this browser is not supported. To use standard view please upgrade to a supported browser.

Ignore that message and try opening up a new tab and trying that same process above.


Distributing an app for all company iPads

Please see the following links from stackoverflow.com:

iOS installing apps without app store
iPhone app without AppStore
Private iPhone App, without App Store?


QuickTime Player

Open the video in QuickTime Player, resize the player, then select View → Float on Top.
QuickTime Player hides all of the UI when you move your mouse outside of the window.


Has Unix Parameter Name SystemAudioVolume Been Changed to SystemAudioVolume DB in El Capitan?

Firstly, the sudo nvram SystemAudioVolume=%00 (or the same command with different values at end) never allowed users to actually change the startup chime sound. In earlier versions of Mac OS X it did allow users to change the volume, and therefore they could mute the startup chime, but this did not change the sound.

The closest thing to changing the sound is a hack that allowed users to mute the startup chime and then add another sound that occurred upon logging in to your user account - but of course this is not a startup sound, just a sound that plays when you log into your user account.

As for whether SystemAudioVolume has been replaced with SystemAudioVolumeDB, the answer is no. In fact, as you have seen from running sudo nvram -p, these two parameters have totally different values.

Summary

No, the Unix parameter SystemAudioVolume has not been replaced by SystemAudioVolume DB in El Capitan
The Unix parameter SystemAudioVolume has never been used to change the startup chime sound - only to change the volume level
The startup chime sound cannot be changed

Further reading

These related questions may interest you:

Disable OS X startup sound
How can I silence the startup chime on El Capitan?


Can't install php56-mcrypt with homebrew

With recent changes in brew (deprecation of homebrew/php) you now install php with mcrypt with the following.

brew install php@5.6 -with-mcrypt=mcrypt

You may have to uninstall previous installs of php


Unable to manage or delete songs from my iPod Shuffle

The latest macOS doesn’t have iTunes.

Here’s a guide to get you started on the recent changes.

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT210200 - What happened to iTunes?


Can I use my iPhone 2G with Bell Canada?

It is not compatible.

Bell's new network (shared with Telus) is a 3G HSPA overlay (on top of their existing CDMA network) which the iPhone 2G does not support.


"PKDownloadError error 8" upon Catalina update

I have been pulling my hair out with the same problem over the past few days, and have isolated the PKDownloadError error 8 issue - I was able to solve this via 2 methods:

use my iPhone's hotspot as the wifi for the update (note: this is
slower AND may be very expensive depending on your cellphone plan)
change the DNS settings on my home router to OpenDNS
(https://use.opendns.com/), allowing me to use my home internet
(faster & cheaper)


transfering iphone data to another computer

Apple has an article called iPhone and iPod touch: About backups that has information about what and where iTunes stores things. These folders are portable and you can move them from mac to mac, PC to mac. I have had no issues when using different versions of iTunes - especially if the "receiving" computer is as new or newer than the "sending" computer. If you can update both before the transfer, that would probably be ideal.

iTunes places the backup files in the following places:

Mac: ~/Library/Application Support/MobileSync/Backup/
Windows XP: \Documents and Settings\(username)\Application Data\Apple Computer\MobileSync\Backup\
Windows Vista and Windows 7: \Users\(username)\AppData\Roaming\Apple Computer\MobileSync\Backup\

After the transfer completes, the backups should show up in iTunes and you can restore your phone form it. Do read the article iTunes: How to move your music to a new computer if you are not certain


While it would be best to always use the same brand and part number for all your memory, this can not alway be done. You have to also consider that even if you this, there is no guarantee the chips were made during the same fabrication run or that they were even made by the same manufacturer. All you can hope for this that the chips were tested to insure they meet the brands published specifications.

The best advice would be to add memory in pairs and to buy the pairs together in the same memory kit. Otherwise, make sure the store has a good return policy (just in case).

Your computer uses PC2-12800 DDR3 memory.

Buying the Apple brand is probably the most expensive way to go. On line stores such as Micro Center sell Mac memory from the brands Crucial, Centon, Kingston and Patriot. The Patriot 2x8GB kit sells for $60 US.


Where are the Terminal settings stored on OS X?

The preferences appear to be at: ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.Terminal.plist

See also this question on SO and another question on SU that focus on exporting the settings from one Mac and moving them to another.

https://stackoverflow.com/questions/8350065/
http://superuser.com/questions/204686/

For older macOS, you can edit the file directly but on newer OS (with newer being 10.9 and later) you will want to use the defaults command to write the values to the persistent database (which may or may not flush back changes to the filesystem) rather than editing the file.

defaults read com.apple.Terminal

Or to write the secure keyboard entry function (as one easy example):

defaults write com.apple.Terminal SecureKeyboardEntry 1


Time estimate to location in Today's view?

I presume you are referring to the following section:

To enable, you need to go to Settings → Privacy → Location Services → System Services and turn Frequent Locations on. Then go to Settings → Notification Center and turn Next Destination on.


How to rotate photos sent in whatsapp in iPhone 6s

To rotate a photo on an iPhone and share it with Whatsapp:

Go into the Photos app
Navigate to the photo you'd like to rotate & share
Once viewing the photo in full screen, if the toolbar and navigation bar are not showing, tap the center of the screen
Hit the Edit button on the top-right (note: if you're running the iOS 10 Beta, you'll need to hit the slider button on the bottom toolbar)
Hit the crop & rotate button (should be on the bottom left)
Press the rotate button (should be towards the bottom on the left) until the picture is rotated correctly
Hit the yellow Done button
Press the share/export button (should be in the bottom-left again)
If you don't see Whatsapp in the list of apps you can share the photo to, scroll all the way to the end of the app list to the more button, hit the more button, and turn Whatsapp on.
Exit out of the More menu and hit Whatsapp, at which point you can share your correctly rotated photo to Whatsapp.

Let me know if this helps!


Does Skype/Google Voice use 3G or wifi on my iPhone?

Skype and Google Voice act very differently in the way that calls are received on your phone.  Skype is VOIP (Voice Over IP) software, and all calls made using Skype will use your data plan when you're not in a WiFi area.  However, if you have Skype Call Forwarding configured to forward to your iPhone you will be charged per minute just like a regular cell phone call.

Google Voice, on the other hand, will forward calls placed to your Google Voice phone number to your iPhone if you have that option selected.  Inversely, calls made via Google Voice will be placed through your Google Voice phone number.  The end result being, you're making a phone call using your phone's data plan.

If you're concerned about using your cell phone minutes, and are on AT&T you can optionally enable the A-List service for a small monthly fee.  If you add your Google Voice number to your A-List, all calls made to and from that number will not be deducted from your regular cell phone plan.


How to set up App Shortcuts for Music.app in Catalina?

I have just verified this feature actually does still work but you aren't using it properly, there is no need for the -> syntax, I am unsure where this comes from but I have never seen that used.

The correct way to create this shortcut is as shown below:

Open System Preferences.app
Navigate to 'Keyboard'
Select 'Shortcuts'
Choose 'App Shortcuts'
Add a shortcut using the + button.
Choose the app 'Music'
Set the menu title to the text name of the menu title 'as Songs' ignoring where in the menu bar it is.
Set a shortcut by clicking the field, then pressing the keys.
Finalise by clicking 'Add'.

You can verify this has worked as the shortcut will be shown in the menu

How it should look:

  Note: It is not possible to distinguish between identically named menu items in the same application.


How to enable multiple spellchecker dictionaries in Chrome?

Edit > Spelling and Grammar > Show Spelling and Grammar


iPod Touch 5 vs iPhone 5s sound output (Line Out)

That is very weird; do you have a European version?  The output power on those is heavily limited. That is the only explanation.

I have both the iPhone 5s and the iPod touch five and they have the exact same output voltages and voltage drop when headphones are connected. The output power is the same, I have heard from a few sources that the distortion levels on the 5s is better but they definitely have the same output level. Be sure to verify that the equalizer is disabled and sound check is off


How to mark some columns as ignored for calculations Numbers?

In practice, you could sum each column and then sum just the the sum row.

That way, you can delete the sum of the column to be skipped when needed and it should be clear about which of the columns is ignored.

A more general solution will be tricky since it's programming in conditional values or conditional functions that are much harder to maintain, debug and be confident your math is correct as you use the tool over time.


What is the layout of a real Apple supplied fusion drive?

Ars Technica did an article on how to roll your own Fusion Drive and one that details the layout of an Apple installed Fusion drive from a Mac Mini.

From that article:

LeeHs-Mac-mini:~ leeh$ diskutil list
/dev/disk0
#: TYPE NAME SIZE IDENTIFIER
0: GUID_partition_scheme *121.3 GB disk0
1: EFI 209.7 MB disk0s1
2: Apple_CoreStorage 121.0 GB disk0s2
3: Apple_Boot Boot OS X 134.2 MB disk0s3
/dev/disk1
#: TYPE NAME SIZE IDENTIFIER
0: GUID_partition_scheme *1.0 TB disk1
1: EFI 209.7 MB disk1s1
2: Apple_CoreStorage 999.3 GB disk1s2
3: Apple_Boot Recovery HD 650.0 MB disk1s3
/dev/disk2
#: TYPE NAME SIZE IDENTIFIER
0: Apple_HFS Macintosh HD *1.1 TB disk2

LeeHs-Mac-mini:~ leeh$ diskutil cs list
    CoreStorage logical volume groups (1 found)
    |
    +-- Logical Volume Group 31CBA650-4ABC-4DA6-AA73-6D96B36693E2
        =====================================================
        Name:         Macintosh HD
        Size:         1120333979648 B (1.1 TB)
        Free Space:   0 B (0 B)
        |
        +-< Physical Volume F4A50F9C-841D-4C6D-AFC4-6A10560E0717
        |   ----------------------------------------------------
        |   Index:    0
        |   Disk:     disk0s2
        |   Status:   Online
        |   Size:     120988852224 B (121.0 GB)
        |
        +-< Physical Volume C86789FD-1978-453A-BCA7-81DC05AA66C7
        |   ----------------------------------------------------
        |   Index:    1
        |   Disk:     disk1s2
        |   Status:   Online
        |   Size:     999345127424 B (999.3 GB)
        |
        +-> Logical Volume Family AA92FDF8-F962-4DE3-AC2F-1B6ABF22AA22
            ------------------------------------------------------
            Encryption Status:       Unlocked
            Encryption Type:         None
            Conversion Status:       NoConversion
            Conversion Direction:    -none-
            Has Encrypted Extents:   No
            Fully Secure:            No
            Passphrase Required:     No
            |
            +-> Logical Volume B97C9558-14FC-4BFC-B413-AFB292BD29F0
                -----------------------------------------------
                Disk:               disk2
                Status:             Online
                Size (Total):       1115853029376 B (1.1 TB)
                Size (Converted):   -none-
                Revertible:         No
                LV Name:            Macintosh HD
                Volume Name:        Macintosh HD
                Content Hint:       Apple_HFS

As you can see, the recovery partition is "outside" the Core Storage volume which gets mounted by the OS and functions as "the Fusion Drive". The Fusion Drive is comprised of one standard partition from each disk, rather than using the full drive and storing the configuration data out of or in-band by hiding it. Everything we know so far about standard Fusion Drives is pretty straightforward and transparent.


How to quit iPhoto in the middle of importing photos

On Spotlight search start typing "Activity Monitor", click on it. The on activity monitor find Photos, click on it once, then at the top left you will see an X icon, click on it and choose force quit..


Automatic WiFi sync to iTunes not working

I had a problem with AUTOMATIC wifi sync not working. Wifi sync worked when initiated from my iphone, but there was no automatic sync.

The fix I found was to:

Ensure "Enable Wifi sync" in checked in the iPhone summary page of iTunes
Ensure "Open iTunes when this iPhone is connected" is checked in the iPhone summary page of iTunes
Ensure that "Prevent iPods, iPhones and iPads from syncing automatically" is not checked in the Preferences - Devices settings of iTunes.

I was missing step 2. Once I checked this box, I gained automatic wifi sync every time my iPhone was connected to external power within range of my wifi network.


BootChamp no longer works on El Capitan, what's the fastest way to boot into Windows?

You could maybe try to disable System Integrity Protection that came with El Captain. If you want to do so (at your own risk) see Disable System Integrity Protection (rootless).

It's actually what they say on the link you've given :

  I believe this is from changes related to the new “rootless” or System Integrity Protection feature of El Capitan (more info). Whether it’s a bug or a feature is impossible to tell at this point. If it’s a bug, then that means Apple should be fixing it in a future point release, for example 10.11.1. If it’s a feature, they need to update their bless tool and remove the featureset entirely.

The rootless or System Integrity Protection is designed to deny app to edit system related files. The way that BootChamp works it that it uses the command bless to change the current booting disk. This doesn't work anymore with rootless enabled. Other softwares like Refind doesn't work anymore thanks to rootless. System Integrity Protection is there to prevent applications from damaging your computer. It's relatively safe to disable it, but make sure you know what apps are getting executed on your mac.


How do I remove old computers from my iCloud?

You can log into your account on iCloud.com, select Settings and disconnect from all browsers from there. It might also be advisable to change the password of your iCloud account (and enable two factor authentication at the same time).


Old iPhone 4S won't accept my Apple ID when trying to reset it for a trade-in. Why?

Sign into wifi and then try again! Had this problem for forever and the idea of turning on my wifi to verify my apple ID popped into my head and it worked! Best of luck.


Space isn't increasing after deleting files on external hdd mac os trash is empty

Launch the terminal / command line, and replacing 'VolumeName' with the name of your drive type:

sudo rm -R /Volumes/volumeName/.Trashes

Each drive has its own hidden .Trash folder, and each user has a folder in that folder. The above will delete all trash folders on that specific drive.


Unexpected Apple ID password prompt - Which App is causing this?

Perhaps this snippet from this help page at Appigo will provide a clue:

  iCloud is different from the other synchronization services supported by Todo in that Todo does not actively control when synchronization takes place. When you make changes to your tasks Todo flags its data as having changed; iCloud watches for this flag and synchronizes as needed. In short, while Todo can inform iCloud that it needs to be synchronized, it cannot start or control an active synchronization.

I think that ToDo needs you to manually login to iCloud, which uses your Apple ID for authentication, to sync because the saved password is incorrect. Perhaps you need to reconfirm the login credentials within the ToDo app so it syncs correctly.


Determine xcode command line tools version

Finding the CLI version number depends on the combination of which particular OS and which particular CLI Tools are installed. One of these should work:

On Yosemite & Mavericks:

pkgutil --pkg-info=com.apple.pkg.CLTools_Executables

on Mountain Lion:

pkgutil --pkg-info=com.apple.pkg.DeveloperToolsCLI


Change the sleep icon in login window (loginwindow.app)

I believe that this can be changed in /System/Library/PrivateFrameworks/LoginUIKit.framework/Versions/Current/Frameworks/LoginUICore.framework/Resources/, I’ll post if it works when I change it there

I got the correct location from here


How do I rebuild the music library on my iphone?

Most probably the music library on your phone got confused.

Remove the music from your phone and re-add it by

either removing it manually (if you are managing manually)
or unchecking music syncing in iTunes

Then sync once to clear the iPhone music library, add your music again and re-sync to relead.

If that doesn't work, backup your phone, restore to defaults, restore the backup, sync the phone. That will completely clear any cached data on the phone and allow it to sync "fresh" to iTunes.


AppleScript : Execute JavaScript on every Safari Tab/Window

Using the Ask Question button that's in the upper right hand corner of the page, like in this question, and having multiple windows each with multiple tabs to a Ask Different web page, as well as some non-related pages...
The following example AppleScript code clicks the Ask Question button on every page having the button. It doesn't matter what window or tab has focus, the button on all that have it gets clicked.
Example AppleScript code:
tell application "Safari" to tell tabs of windows to ¬
    do JavaScript "document.getElementsByClassName('ws-nowrap s-btn s-btn__primary')[0].click();"


Not getting OS X El Capitan Public Beta updates

Go to System Preferences → App Store and ensure ‘your computer is set to receive beta updates’.


How to restore a stolen iPhone 5 after being found?

If you backed up your iPhone using iTunes (stored on your computer) or iCloud (stored in iCloud), restore from backup.

When your iPhone has sufficient charge to turn on, you probably see the "Hello" screen.  The following Apple Support article describes how to restore your iPhone from iTunes backup or iCloud backup:    https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204686


When playing a song, tap on the Miniplayer (the bar above the Music app button selections, it shows your song title and artist, etc., it changes per song) to bring up the full song player. Once you are in the full song view, you will have access to the shuffle and repeat buttons.


Touch Bar Media Play/Pause button controls Safari, not iTunes

BeardedSpice, solved this for me. It was intended to allow the media keys to control services in Chrome, but it also can lock the media keys to iTunes.


How do I include my own zone file in /etc/com.apple.named.proxy.conf

You need to add to the file /etc/hosts - this is read by the DNS server before it goes to any other source.

You will need to add a line

192.168.2.1   machine alias1 alias2 alias3

Obviously replace "machine" and the other items with the correct values.


Sluggish mouse cursor with 28" 4K display

Any scaling that is not exactly half of full resolution will introduce strain on the GPU and cause sluggishness. So on a 4K monitor your choices are either 1080p or 4K. I find neither acceptable. If you want 1440p (looks the best imho) you have to purchase a less crisp 1440p monitor or drop the big dollars for a 5K monitor and then run it at crisp retina 1440p which is exactly half of 5K and will not strain the GPU.


Share books and bookmarks between all devices

Using iBooks with iCloud makes this very easy.

Make sure you have an active iCloud account and are signed in on both macOS and iOS.
Open iBooks (if asked enable iCloud for iBooks).
Select File > Add to library, and add any external .epub or .pdf files
iBooks will automatically sync them to other iOS/macOS devices, including notes and bookmarks.

If you have a seperate iCloud and AppStore Apple ID. Go into iBooks preferences and check "Sync: Sync bookmarks, highlights and collections across devices", you might get a warning to change Apple ID's. Change it to your AppStore Apple ID. Even though your using iCloud to sync, it still needs the other ID.


Can I install both High Sierra and Mavericks on my Mac?

You do not have to use APFS to run High Sierra. Although, I believe if your internal drive is  a SSD, then the High Sierra installer will try to convert the existing El Capitan partition and El Capitan Recovery partition to a APFS container partition.

Upgrading El Capitan to High Sierra should not effect Mavericks.

  Note: Mojava (macOS 10.14) will be released on September 24, 2018


From man nl:

BUGS
     Input lines are limited to LINE_MAX (2048) bytes in length.

To fix, you can either patch the source yourself (might need some work) or get the source for the Linux version (which is probably available on any GNU server).


Numbers for macOS: how to update a column of entries

You can do it by adding an extra column and using a formula in this column. Press = key on the keyboard to open the formula window and enter the formula:

Then press the green button and copy paste the formula in other cells:

You can copy and paste the data into the original column afterwards (but use "Edit" - "Paste Formula Results" command this time).


Can I block only the Facetime calls from a specific person, not calls or texts?

You can't. Unfortunately, you can only block them from all three or none at all. This may change with future iOS updates, but for now, there is no way.


Using an app purchased on home Apple ID on Mac using a work Apple ID

At minimum, you need to consult with your boss. Together you should decide if you should contact you employer's lawyers, Apple's legal department or both.  If you do not follow the rules, you put yourself and your employer at risk. I found the following quote on the macOS appstore:

  You can install apps on every Mac authorized for your personal use

https://www.apple.com/ca/osx/apps/app-store/

Read the legalese:
https://www.apple.com/legal/

You could contact apple legal.
https://www.apple.com/legal/contact/

You would need to logout from your work ID on your work computer and log back in with your personal ID.  You would download and install the software.  You would log out of your personal Apple ID then log back into your corporate Apple ID. To get updates, you would log out, log in and log out.


Can I reset firmware password via Find My Mac?

No. A device technician is needed to unlock firmware. Start with online AppleCare and they can go over your options. Find My Mac just handles user account passwords.


What file comparison tool can I use under OS X?

This is an aggregation of the answers posted on SO's deleted clone, Graphical diff for Mac OS X. It includes links to each product, and the current price since last edit in USD.

Note that any links to SO will only be visible to users who can view deleted content, which requires either moderator privileges or 10k reputation on that site.

Sourcegear's DiffMerge, shareware
Joachim Eibl's KDiff3, free
Black Pixel's Kaleidoscope, $69.99
Bare Bones Software's TextWrangler, free
Araxis's Merge, $129 + $29/year
Deltopia's DeltaWalker, $39.95/$75.95
Kai Willadsen's Meld, free
Weipin Xia's DiffFork, $26
Biscade's RoaringDiff, free
tkdiff, free

There were some other suggestions, which were not diff tools in their own right, which I will list below:

It (Beyond Compare) runs well in Wine, but I miss the shell integration. - Danyal Aytekin, May 11 '12, 13:01
Eclipse also has a fairly decent comparison mechanism. - JeeBee, Oct 9 '08, 12:45
P4Merge that comes with Perforce is pretty good and comes for free with perforce client. Both terminal and GUI version. - amok, Jul 7 '10, 23:19
I had to use Vim because most of diffs mentioned here do not understand UTF-8. - user184880, Oct 6 '09, 9:56

That about wraps up that thread's merge into this one, as covered here.


Is my iPhone 4 dock connector broken because it says accessory not supported

Your cable isn't registering as a certified Apple cable.

Time to replace it - or perhaps just clean the contacts.

Edit:
ohhh... dock, not cable. Then more chance it's dirty contacts; but the dock may be failing.


How can I test my LAN speed between Mac and Apple TV?

How to Measure

The place to monitor the speeds of course is your Mac. The easy built-in network speeds monitor is in Activity Monitor at the bottom of the main window. Alternatives include MenuMeters or iStat Menus which put the speeds right up in the menu bar.

How to test

This depends on which version of the Apple TV you have. With version three and earlier (the common black one), there's no local storage so you won't have much luck testing the upper limits. With the Apple TV 4, you'd need to jailbreak it to be able to directly copy media onto the drive (very strange). Just streaming won't test the limits of your network as most streaming will be in easy territory of 500 kb/sec, although you could try streaming an original MP4 from a DSLR to see if that chokes your network (and at what speed watching the transfer rates in either Activity Monitor, MenuMeters or iStat Menus).

It's fairly easy to figure out what your speeds will be. Any recent Mac (last six years) has 1000 BaseT (aka gigabit) ethernet (if it has ethernet at all, the USB to Ethernet adapter is just 100 BaseT). Hence the bottleneck will be your router. Real world speeds of 100 BaseT are 4.5 to 6 MB/sec. I recently upgraded my own router from 100 BaseT to 1000 BaseT (my old gigabit router had failed about a year ago) and had my internal transfer speeds jump from 6 MB/sec to 30 MB/sec. On the other hand, my computers on the powerline technology I use in part of the house to cut down on the ethernet cables along walls only tested at 4 MB/sec (even though it's theoretical maximum should have been closer to 40 MB/sec).

You won't be able test your wired internal network speeds with your iPhone as the connection is wireless. If you only want to check wireless connection, you can try copying some large files into your Saved Photos folder on your iPhone.

For your wired ethernet testing, I'd suggest having a friend bring over a 1000 BaseT laptop to do your wired ethernet testing. His laptop, a second short ethernet cable and some simple file transfers will do the trick. Testing with network storage devices (NAS) is not recommended as most of them are considerably slower than listed (there are exceptions).


Did the calculator widget break in Lion?

I wrote a fix for this bug. Check my article for details.


Google Chrome: Error 11 after setting Automatic Updates

Just found this How To Fix Chrome Update Error 11 On A Mac

  Open Finder. In the top menu, select Go > Go to Folder
  Enter either of the locations below. If the first location doesn’t come up, try the other:
  /Library/Google/GoogleSoftwareUpdate/GoogleSoftwareUpdate.bundle/Contents/Resources/
  ~/Library/Google/GoogleSoftwareUpdate/GoogleSoftwareUpdate.bundle/Contents/Resources/
  Double click the file called CheckForUpdatesNow.command – the Mac Terminal window will open and execute the command
  Wait until you see the message “[Process completed]”
  Close the Terminal window
  Refresh your Chrome ‘About’ page – the update should complete without showing the error

And it really worked for me


Try going to Settings > Messages > Send & Receive. Under the "You can be reached by iMessage at" header, make sure your contact info is listed and checked i.e. the contact info at which your friends are trying to reach you.

I think this is what Tetsujin was suggesting in the comments.


Lion and later: Stop auto launching iTunes on Bluetooth headset connect?

I'm on a MBP with osx 10.9.2. Disabling iTunes in "CD and DVD" preferences does not help. Just renaming iTunes to something else does not work.

The service "Remote Control Daemon", rdc, is responsible for delivering commands to (for example) iTunes. Use this script, iTunesPatch. This script modifies the actual binary for rdc to inhibit the command it sends to start iTunes, which means that all other functions of rdc still works as expected.


Cannot download anything in Mojave from factory

Apple offers 90 days of complimentary support and setup assistance so you qualify for free online / phone support to make amends. You've clearly got something that's not even close to happy, so this isn't the on boarding experience that was designed (clearly)

If it were me, I would just boot to recovery and erase and start the setup over. That takes about 15 minutes plus however long it takes to re-download the installer. It's often much harder to determine what went wrong and if you have a new machine, a fresh start will let you know right away if it was just some things that didn't get set up, a poor image of the OS or a very rare case of something not right. Getting Apple involved sooner if you're not sure how to erase would be my winning move if I wasn't super comfortable with recovery mode.

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204904
Reinstall Mac OS X Mountain Lion before selling a Mac
Trying to reinstall OS Sierra
Can I install an older OS X over a newer OS X without restoring from backup?


How do I get Automator to process images using ImageMagick in a command script?

I would just do the whole thing at the command line as a shell script instead of using Automator to launch it. Put #!/bin/bash as the first line, and run it as

myscript.sh image*.png

where image*.png is your set of image files that you are apparently selecting in Automator?

If you need to run it on all files in a folder, that can be done too.

You can also test your script in automator using echo ${f%.*} instead of the commands themselves.


Can the macOS Notification Center be made wider?

I don't think this is possible on macOS. I looked for how developers deal with notification lengths and I found this: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/6307748/what-is-the-maximum-length-of-a-push-notification-alert-text

The discussion mostly seems to imply that developers don't have any control over how the notifications are displayed, but rather just standards they have to conform to. Hope that helps!


Can iMac 5 (Retina 5k, 27-inch, Late 2014) be downgraded if it comes factory-installed with Yosemite?

It is impossible to downgrade this Mac to anything less than Yosemite - the hardware forbids it. You have proved this in practice by getting the No Boot sign.

As for Pro Tools: from the Avid site: Note: Pro Tools 10.x and earlier (including Pro Tools Express) will not be tested/qualified with Yosemite (or Mavericks).

You will have to upgrade your Pro Tools to version 11 if you want to use Yosemite.


Is it possible to stream audio via AVB between two Macintoshes?

You need an avb switch, like the one from motu or presonus.


iCloud Synching Scrambles Safari Bookmarks

This sounds like a Safari issue, not an iCloud or Bookmarks issue, to verify that, lets reset Safari back to scratch. This wont delete any bookmarks. You may want to clear the history too.

How to fully reset Safari on your Mac

  Remove Safari’s configuration folder:

  Open the Go menu in the OS X Finder
  Hold the Option key and choose the Library option that appears
  Move the “Safari” folder in here to your desktop

  Remove Safari’s window state:

  Open the Library > Saved Application State folder
  Locate the “com.apple.Safari.savedState” folder
  Move this folder to the trash

  Remove Safari’s application caches:

  Open the Library > Caches folder
  Locate all folders that begin with “com.apple.Safari”
  Move these folders to the trash.

  Remove Safari Cookies configurations:

  Open the Library > Cookies folder
  Remove the file called “com.apple.Safari.SafeBrowsing.binarycookies”

  Remove Safari’s preferences:

  Open the Library > Preferences folder
  Remove any file that begins with “com.apple.Safari”

  Remove user plug-ins:

  Go to the Library > Internet Plug-Ins folder
  Move all items from this folder to your Desktop (or elsewhere)

  Remove global plug-ins:

  Go to the Macintosh HD > Library > Internet plug-ins folder
  Move all items out of this folder except the following plug-ins:

  *

Default Browser.plugin
iPhotoPhotocast.plugin
Quartz Composer.webplugin
QuickTime Plugin.plugin

  *

That may help with the issue you are having via Safari and not your bookmarks.


OS X saves unique wallpaper settings on a per-device (per-monitor) basis. The wallpaper setting you make when using only your laptop, vs. the wallpaper setting when you run the laptop in "Clamshell mode", vs. the wallpaper setting when you run with the lid open and external monitor connected, all have different wallpaper settings.

The solution to this problem is quite simply to run your computer in dual-monitor mode as you've listed, and configure your wallpaper settings. Now those specific settings will be remembered when you are running the same external monitor and built-in laptop screen configuration. Changes to this multi-monitor mode will not affect the other monitor configurations.


Keep MacBook Pro awake in a clamshell mode + HDMI switcher setup

You can use caffeinate from the terminal.app.

Just open the terminal.app and type caffeinate

Without arguments it just stays awake until you ctr+C at the terminal. There are more arguments you can use in order to prevent different system components from sleeping.


How do I get my windows (UK Layout) keyboard to work on Mac?

To change the modifier keys, go to System Preferences → Keyboard → Keyboard and choose Modifier Keys….

To map the keys to the correct places, go to System Preferences → Keyboard → Input Sources, click the + and choose British PC.
To ensure that your keyboard is identified correctly, go to System Preferences → Keyboard → Change Keyboard Type and follow the instructions to allow OS X to identify the keyboard.


Where to configure Time Machine quota when backing up to Mac Server

There was a Time Machine quota setting in macOS Server. Maybe the quota is still set even after the UI has been removed?

Maybe this URL helps:

http://movq.us/2017/04/09/time-machine-quotas/

If I understand this correctly, the quota is set in a hidden plist file in the root of the Time Machine share.

The Time Machine quota setting in "normal" macOS is in the Sharing preferences.
Right-clicking a shared folder has an "Advanced Options…" dialog.

There is also a local Time Machine quota setting but I don't know if this is "forwarded" to network shares, probably not.

https://www.defaults-write.com/setup-a-size-limit-for-time-machine-backup-volumes/

You can check the local quota (if set) via

defaults read /Library/Preferences/com.apple.TimeMachine MaxSize


That solution provided by dosdude1 is a combined package of software and hardware. The software part is of course reversible, and the hardware part of course not. Not easily at least.

With that hardware solution you will also have to take an extra step, as it will disable brightness control. That makes the hardware solution less desirable for a working MacBook.
If the MacBook will eventually fail, then that solution by dosdude1 is the second best option overall, right after replacing the chip itself with a working one from a line of known-good production.

As long as the machine does work, I'd say leave it at that. Do not disable the dGPU preemptively.

Preventive mesasures to prolong its life would be to increase the fan speed and other measures to increase cooling. That would include not using Thunderbolt and especially not an external monitor. You may also use gfxCardStatus to avoid switching to the dGPU as far as possible.

If you insist on preemptively just disabling the dGPU you may also want to look at this option: GPU problem - Boot Hangs on Grey Screen


Contact Apple support. We had a similar issue on our family account recently and needed their help to assist. Nothing we were willing to try got the gift balance back in to the rotation.

It's supposed to charge the balance for most but not all purchases and my guess is a subscription or something that went to the card got the balance set aside.


How do I run VNC (any flavour) from the iPhone (Jailbroken/not jailbroken)

Check out Mocha VNC. The lite version is free.


I cannot reach my ATV3 anymore after update MBA (late 2010) to 10.9

Have you made sure that your Apple TV (ATV) has the latest firmware?

Do you have another Mac you can try to connect to the ATV?

If you have another Mac then you could also try running AirServer (they offer a 7 day free trial) on it and see if the Air can AirPlay to it.

You need a little more information about exactly what is going on before you can really find a solution.


Is there any way to see the last location with find my iphone before it was wiped?

No, this is not possible. You are not able to see the last location of a device, only the current location, and since you've removed the device you can't obtain any location information.


You have to click the icon in the upper right of the area that showcases the songs and then double click the first song in the list.

See How do I resume the iTunes queue from when I last quit?

In the case of this picture, I must double click on "Pilotwings 'Liftoff (Get High)'"


How to recover trashed GUID partition table?

Because the GUID Partition Table was erased, there is no way to turn back. That GUID partition table is the last reference to data unless you can do some hardcore forensic data recovery.

Data recovery software that you can get rely on the GUID PT to never have been erased to locate data.


Zooming in Google Chrome using the mouse wheel?

You can pinch to zoom, which will simulate Command ⌘+
and Command ⌘-

You can also try the extension, which was mentioned by in Danijel's answer.

Otherwise, you can hold down Control ^ and the screen will zoom in and out. It ends up looking like this though (which I don't think you want):


Fastest way to enabling screen mirroring on Sierra with the touch strip

Just for reference here.

Another thing that I tried, and which (depending on your touch-bar configuration) could be even faster than the Command-Decrease Brightness shortcut is a menu-bar app called Display Menu:

https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/display-menu/id549083868?mt=12


Have her go to Settings.app > Store - if your account is signed in, sign out. She can then sign in to her own account. Any apps you've downloaded using that account will still prompt for that account's password when they need updating, though.


Is it possible to burn a MacOS application on a disk?

Yes, this is possible. Your MacBook Pro's built-in optical drive is a "Super Drive" and capable of writing to at least CD-R and DVD-R disks.

Buy writable CDs and DVDs and insert them into your Mac. macOS's Finder includes the ability to write to these disks.

See How to Burn Files to a DVD / CD on Mac OS for detailed instructions:

  Create a new folder on the desktop (or elsewhere) and place the files you want to burn to the disc inside that folder
  Select the folder you just created containing the files you wish to burn to the DVD / CD
  With the folder selected, pull down the “File” menu and choose “Burn ‘Folder’ to Disc…”
  You’ll be presented with a “Burn Disc” window, when you see this, insert the blank DVD or CD disc into the drive
  Insert a blank disc to burn files to
  Label the disc you want to burn accordingly, and optionally choose a burn speed, then click on “Burn” to start the process


MS Remote Desktop - drives not mapping - broken by Sierra update 10.12.2?

It's always got to be worth trying the new v8.2 version, currently in beta. I've been using it myself for quite some time & it's a lot better than the current release v8.0 in many respects.

MS Technet blog: Remote Desktop Client Preview for Mac supports multiple monitors and more

Download: https://rink.hockeyapp.net/apps/5e0c144289a51fca2d3bfa39ce7f2b06/

Highlights -

  Multiple monitor support

  The preview app now supports the ability to use multiple monitors in
  your remote session. You can enable multiple monitors for a desktop
  connection from the additional options.

  Copy and Paste files

  In addition to supporting copy/paste of text and images, the preview
  app now supports copy/paste of files so that you can transfer files
  into and out of the remote session using both Command X/C/V and CTRL
  X/C/V.

  Updates to the keyboard

  We’ve changed how the Beta app keyboard works to behave exactly like
  the Remote Desktop client store app. The Beta app initially used a new
  implementation of the keyboard; however, many of you reported that
  this new keyboard introduced several issues with typing into apps like
  the Hyper-v console and typing certain language characters. The Beta
  app will continue to support both Command X/C/V and Ctrl X/C/V to copy
  and paste between the local desktop and remote session. Use the Beta
  app Help->Report an issue option to share your feedback about the
  keyboard. Learn more about how the keyboard works in a remote session.


How to install S/MIME certificate on iOS 10.2

I would recommend CAcert which is a recognised free certificate provider.

You need to use Apple Configurator 2 tool to package your s/mime root certificate and personal certificate into a .mobileconfig otherwise iOS won't trust the certs.


Can I use two additional Apple Thunderbolt Displays at 60 Hz with my MacBook Pro Mid 2014?

According to Everymac

  This model supports a simultaneous maximum resolution up to 2560x1600 on two external displays via Thunderbolt. Alternately, it can support a single display up to 2560x1600 via Thunderbolt and a single 1080p display at up to 60 Hz, 3840x2160 at 30 Hz, or 4096x2160 at 24 Hz via HDMI.

…so I'd say 'yes'.


Is there an audio player with waveform seekbar?

Its more of an audio editor than a player, so might not be exactly what you want, but Fission from Rogue Amoeba is an excellent tool that displays the waveform of the loaded audio file. You can zoom in and out of portions of the audio and drag the play point to wherever you wish.


Where can I find dashboard widgets on OS Catalina?

Dashboard nor Widgets are available in macOS 10.15 Catalina. Since Widgets are not available I don't think the question of how to place them in the video is possible.


It looks like a Boxer - Workspace ONE app from VMware.


unable to cancel the notification of wireless network

Force restart the device by pressing and holding the home button  and the sleep/wake button until the screen is black, then let go. When the phone restarts, open settings and go to the Wi-Fi one and disable "Ask to Join Networks".


This solved it without having to dig into the plist: http://www.dummies.com/how-to/content/how-to-enable-email-invitations-in-lions-ical-serv.html


Are there any differences between MacPro4,1 2009 and MacPro5,1 2010 besides firmware?

The Mactracker app (for Mac and iOS) is a great resource for questions like this. You can check out all the specs for yourself side by side, but the more significant differences are:

4,1:

Processor:          Intel Xeon 3500 or 5500 series ("Bloomfield, Gainestown")
Graphics Card:      NVIDIA GeForce GT 120 or ATI Radeon HD 4870
Graphics Memory:    512 MB GDDR3 (GeForce GT 120) or 512 MB GDDR5
                    (Radeon HD 4870)
Display Connection: 1 - Mini DisplayPort and 1 - dual-link DVI

5,1:

Processor:          Intel Xeon W3530, W3565, W3680, E5620,
                    X5650, or X5670 ("Bloomfield, Westmere,
                    Gulftown")
Graphics Card:      ATI Radeon HD 5770 or ATI Radeon HD 5870
Graphics Memory:    1 GB GDDR5
Display Connection: 2 - Mini DisplayPort and 1 - dual-link DVI


How to get all tunes downloaded to my iPhone from the cloud?

If your songs are stored in icloud there are two ways you can able to restore.

Restore Music from iCloud with iTunes
Restore Music from iCloud Directly on Your Device.

Try using AnyTrans .. It's the best option to manage your iCloud backups. Besides this, it also supports transfer iOS contents to anywhere you like.


Fans go wild when screensaver is active - MacBook Pro 2017

My fanspeed also was incredibly high when on OSX stock screensaver. Some virus scans and resetting of the MacBooks PRAM and VRAM later, I did a check and graphed the cpu usage. It was indeed the screensaver process which kept cpu at 100%.
It was set to a transition of pictures in a folder. Apparently the fade and float effect is too much for the mac. Switch to a blank screen with a clock shown. Fan speed went down to non audible since then and CPU is as low as can be during screensaver now.


Replacing hard disk with SSD or increasing RAM in MacBook Pro

It depends on how much RAM you're using. Use something like iStat Menus or MenuMeters to keep an eye on your RAM usage.

If you're constantly near or over 4 GB RAM used (wired+active), more RAM will be the better option. (You can also tell this by seeing how much swap space you use; if it's over some nominal value like 64-128 MB get more RAM.)

If, on the other hand, you never even get close to 4 GB of RAM usage, get the SSD. Or, get more RAM anyway and use the excess as a ramdisk, which will be way, way faster than an SSD.


Missing 0 key when change input source from ABC to Hungarian

Hungary (and the rest of Europe) uses the ISO keyboard, which has one extra key compared to the US Qwerty keyboard.  As a result, some characters may go missing or be misplaced when you try to use European layouts with the US keyboard.
Hungarian Qwerty has the zero at Option `.  Hungarian (which is qwertz) seems to have it at Control Option Zero. (Mac's don't normally use Control for characters like this, so it may not work in all apps.)
You can also create a custom layout, or set up a text shortcut in system preferences > keyboard > text > replace with.
ABC Extended has zero in the normal place and can make all the Hungarian special characters via option dead keys.
https://sites.psu.edu/symbolcodes/mac/codemacext/


Where is the MacBook Air (13") Mid 2012 fan exhaust?

It should be directly in the back, toward the bottom (across almost the entire machine). Look for the black plastic strip across the back.


Is it possible to send notification to Apple Watch but show alert on iPhone?

If you want a solution specifically for the messages app, you could use the messages app complication on the watch. This shows you the number of unread messages you have. Although this is not completely ideal (you can't read the messages without marking them as unread), it does the job of 'notifying' you on your watch while allowing you to have alerts on your iPhone.


Where can I see all the learned/ignored spelling in Pages 5.5?

Your custom words spelling are stored in this plain-text file:
~/Library/Spelling/LocalDictionary

You can view it from your terminal using:
cat ~/Library/Spelling/LocalDictionary

Or open in a text editor of your choice by using its Open menu item then:

Press Cmd+Shift+G to open the Go to folder dialogue
Paste ~/Library/Spelling/LocalDictionary into the box
Press enter


Show hidden files in Finder. Then you can either fix the problem in TextEdit, or simply remove/rename the file. There is no default ~/.profile on Mac OS X, only a global /etc/profile (and you may also have a ~/.bash_profile).


How can I show the "Dimension" column in Finder?

When in icon view, you can use "Show item info" under view options just as user6124 described.

  Yes, but this is not the 'column' view. Thanks, but I knew this already. – Nimbuz (comment)

Column view, however, prefers to show as much of the current file tree path as possible at the price of extra info. You can enable the preview column from view options to show a preview of the selected image along with some basic information (including pixel dimensions) in the rightmost column.

The preview column only shows the info for the selected file (just one).

In list and cover flow views you can add more info columns to the list by right–clicking the list's titlebar and choose the extra data you want to see:

NOTE: The list of extra columns is relative to the folder's location. In order to get the dimensions available, the folder in question has to reside somewhere under ~/Pictures/. (Under ~/Music/ you could choose e.g. artist or album and under ~/Movies/ you could choose length or codecs and so on…)


Spoofing a serial number on a MacBook Pro

AFAIK, there is no way to clear a serial intentionally or by accident. The only way to get a blank system serial number is when the logic board is replaced. Replacement MLB only comes with a part serial number but it does not have a system serial number. I assume that you took your laptop to have it repaired?

When a new logic board is replaced by Apple or an Apple Certified Service Provider, the logic board needs to be serialized after the repair. Normally an ACMT doing the repair will run basic MRI test after the repair which will then be identified as a blank board thus allowing the ACMT to add a serial number to the board prior to running the test.

You can go back to the repair shop and they will most likely correct the sloppy error of forgetting to add the serial number. If that option is not available then you can try going to the closest Apple store but the only way they will help you is if Apple or an Apple store branch did the repair or an ACSP/ACMT did the repair.


What is the keyboard combination for the ⌘ symbol?

As the other answers mention, by default there is no easy way to enter this symbol. You could use a text substitution as well (none of the other answers so far mentioned that), but that’s another imperfect solution.

If you need this (or any other Unicode glyph) frequently and want to be able to type it on your keyboard, your best bet is to create a custom keyboard layout. That way, you can assign a keyboard shortcut of your choosing to the ⌘ symbol.

Using my custom QWERTY layout, for example, I can use ⌥+Shift+C to enter ⌘.


What file systems does Apple use in iPhones?

According to iOS Forensic Analysis, the main filesystem is HFSX.

HSFX
All Apple mobile devices use HFSX as the file system. HFSX is a variation of HFS+ with one major difference. HFSX is case sensitive.

HFSX is reported by Apple as Mac OS Extended (Journaled, Case-Sensitive).
There are two main partitions of HFSX: the OS and the user data. Prior to these partitions is the usual MBR partition (around 100 MB).

SSHing into my jailbroken iOS 6 device seems to support this, since I can create case-sensitive directories. Creating the following directories was no problem:
$ mkdir test
$ mkdir Test
$ mkdir TEST


Using AppleScript to launch specific tabs in System Preferences panes

The following works for me under macOS Sierra:

tell application "System Preferences"
    activate
    set current pane to pane id "com.apple.preference.keyboard"
    delay 1
    tell application "System Events"
        click radio button "Dictation" of tab group 1 of window "Keyboard" of application process "System Preferences"
    end tell
end tell