Target Disc Mode from 2009 Mac mini to 2019 iMac

You should be able to connect the two machines directly with an Ethernet cable (if you do not have cabling already) and then enable file sharing on one machine, and locate that machine on the other so it shows up in Finder as a mounted disk.

Then you can just drag and drop the files.


Has Apple finally included APFS support for traditional hard drives in the latest update for macOS 10.13.1?

According to official documents and several online forums it has been confirmed that Apple is converting each and every internal HDDs into APFS File System, only when you upgrade to macOS Mojave.

APFS File System doesn't seems to create much problems in old macOS Devices with an internal HDD. So you should upgrade to the latest macOS version available i.e. macOS Mojave.


How does macOS implement symbolic link in Mojave on FAT32 filesystems?

The Minshall+French format is what macOS uses to store Unix symlinks on FAT and CIFS volumes. More details on the Minshall+French format can be found here:

https://wiki.samba.org/index.php/UNIX_Extensions

The Linux CIFS implementation provides a 'mfsymlinks' mount option (which is off by default) that supports the Minshall+French format.

I believe Docker for Windows also supports the Minshall+French format.


Actually you don't need to write it at all! Use Activator! You can add an activator event that runs whenever you start charging or stop charging.

Also there is Activator plugin that allows you to run a shell script on an Activator event.

EDIT

I don't have any of my jailbroken devices with me currently, but I can get you the name of the Activator plugin.


Vim 7.4 hybrid line numbers not working (installed via Homebrew)

It turns out the problem was not with Vim 7.4, Homebrew, Macs, or any combination of the 3. Just my brain. I was used to vi pointing to the vim that I want, but in my case vim points to the Homebrewed version and vi points to the version originally on my Mac, which was Vim 7.3. I usually use vi and vim interchangeably and that shot me in the foot here. I have vi aliased to the Homebrewed Vim now and everything is dandy.


Is there such thing as a SuperDrive enclosure?

Yes, I have this one.  I got it at Fry's in exchange for one by sabrent that didn't work with my mid-2010 superdrive. This new one works just fine with my removed superdrive on 10.6.4, even though the box says it's compatible with basically every version of windows but does not mention OS X.

The one caveat... it comes with a wall adapter for powering the driver rather than a second usb cable. However, I have a USB to male power cable. I plan to remove the power connector and swap it for the connector that is on the plug in adapter that came with the enclosure. The adapter just outputs 5V 2000mA, so I don't see any reason why a straight USB connection wouldn't work just fine.

Check out the MCE Optibay alternatives thread on macrumors.com:

http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=680228&page=40


How do I get my books on the iBook store?

There is a portal on iTunes Connect which allows you to publish your books. There is a bit of a writeup about the process here.


You also need to recover library files:

/Library/Application Support/iWork'09
/Library/Preferences/com.apple.iWork09.installer.plist
/Library/Preferences/com.apple.iWork09.plist

In my case, this was the minimum requirement to get Keynote starting again.

Additionally, you might want to recover user-specific files from your user directory:

~/Library/Application Support/iWork
~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.iWork.*


How do I get Messages on OS X to text to a phone number?

Check "Text Message forwarding" under phone Settings > Messages > Text. This must be on (and your iOS device and OS X machine must be on the same network) for text messaging from Messages on OS X to work.

(It's possible this was disabled disabled for his Mac after a reboot.)


Embedded video in pdf file doesn't work in Preview

By definition, either Acrobat or Adobe Reader would be considered standards for viewing a given PDF. Since your PDF does not display the embedded video in Preview, this would indicate a bug within Preview that needs to be reported to Apple.

In addition to decribing how you created the PDF, they'd need a copy of that PDF for testing.


The mac firewall must be disabled for this to work.

You can follow this guide if needed for NAT setup on the mac and verification of ubuntu settings.


OSX 10.6.8 internal mic does not register voice in PhotoBooth but registers in system preferences

I know this is a stupid question but it just caught me when I was looking into your problem. Are you sure you have output set to Internal Speakers not something else like an Airplay device?

When you set the "Sound Effect" do you get noise out of the speakers


efficient duplication of Time Machine backups to remote location

It is probably wiser to not backup the time machine backup, but instead make another backup of the computer directly.

The time machine format is a little finicky, as it uses a lot of tricks to save space while allowing to recover to many different dates, like reducing the amounts of dates one can go back to regularly. Even a minor corruption is likely to make it impossible to restore the backup of the backup to a functioning state. And that's exactly the situation you want the other backup for.

If instead you keep the backups separate, you have two completely different options to restore data if anything goes wrong, which should be useful in more situations.

Also, you can then use any encrypted backup solution you want.

Apart from that, here the official way to copy the time machine backup: https://support.apple.com/en-ie/HT202380

It suggests turning off time machine, then copying the backups.backupdb file to where you want it.

Note that this does not help with incremental changes, which is why I think it's not the best idea.

And here the closest to what you are looking for: https://www.berserkcomputers.co.uk/how-to-save-apple-time-machine-backups-to-cloud-services-like-onedrive/

In short, it suggests creating an encrypted image on your cloud drive with disk utility and then choose that as a backup destination.

Instead of copying the backup disk, just select two different disks, and time machine will use them alternatingly. This way, if one gets corrupted, the other should still work.

You can first copy the backup db to the image so that you keep the old backups, if you like. If your backup is already damaged, that will cause issues, though. If you have no likely need to restore an older version of your OS in the future, it's better to start a new backup, as the difference is mostly deleted files.


Will a crontab job wake OS X up from sleep?

cron doesn't execute while the computer is asleep. So cron can't wake your system.

See: https://superuser.com/a/14846/246895


Your best bet is to reset and restart the Dock. Note you will need to re-add any non-default icons (i.e. apps) that you've added to the Dock - so you may want to take a screenshot of your Dock as a reminder of what you had there. (Or start afresh and only add things as you actually use them).

To reset and restart the Dock, follow these steps:

Go to Finder
Press and hold the option key down
Now go to the Go menu
Select the Library option to open the User's Library folder. You can let go of the option key now.
Go to the Preferences folder (i.e. within the Library folder)
Find and move the com.apple.dock.plist file to the Trash
Now open Terminal (usually located in Applications > Utilities)
Enter this command killall -KILL Dock
Press enter

This should resolve the issue. As mentioned previously, you will need to re-add non-default apps back to the Dock.


Macbook is connected to wifi and tethering from iPhone. Which connection is it using?

The preferred connection is shown at the top of your list.  This doesn't mean that the iPhone USB connection will never be used; but, it makes it less likely.

You can control which connection will get precedence with the gear icon at the bottom of the list window you showed, and select "Set Service Order".


Which Macs support HDCP on their built-in / native displays?

Basically every modern mac with an embedded screen supports HDCP.

iTunes will play all copy protected HD content on all integrated displays (MacBooks and iMacs) but not on non HDCP displays.

This lets us deduct that the integrated displays are HDCP compliant or at least that Mac OS ignores the DHCP flag when playing protected HD content on the integrated screen.

Apparently you might get this strange error, which leads me to think that Mac OS simply bypasses the HDCP check when using integrated displays.


Chrome: Keyboard shortcut to go to Address Bar?

To switch quickly to the Address Bar use:

Mac/OS X:     ⌘+L
Win/Linux:     Ctrl+L


Yosemite auto creates multiple desktops (spaces) on main monitor

It has to do with the 'separate space' feature for external displays Apple introduced in OS X 10.10 Yosemite: If the setting "Displays have separate Spaces" in System Preferences -> Mission Control is activated (see https://support.apple.com/kb/PH18809?locale=en_US), every time you hook up a display a new space will be created for that display. After you pull the plug, OS X will not delete that created space, hence accumulating lots of spaces over time.

If you don't activate the option, you're external display will behave like before 10.10: only one menu bar on the main screen etc.


What advantage does clicking a menu separator have?

History.

In the original Macintosh's System Software in 1984, Apple decided that releasing the mouse button over a menu separator should dismiss the menu. This was probably because they viewed holding down the mouse button as a form of concentration; letting go of the button meant it should go away. Where the mouse was didn't matter. You could even be outside the menus entirely, but not pointing at anything particular on the screen.

Later, when Apple made menus click instead of hold, the behaviour was copied over. That was years ago, the the behaviour is still the same.

(It actually probably predates 1984; the Lisa probably did the same.)

I think this was absolutely the right behaviour for click-and-hold menus, but click-and-hold requires more coordination than click.


Solution to keep complete projects completely separate with same user and multiple displays on macOS?

If Apple’s native Mission Control doesn’t give you enough functionality, I can only suggest exploring professional apps.
Have a look at Workspaces. It groups your apps, folders, website links by project, is that close to what you’re looking for? Maybe you could use a combination of Workspaces (for grouping and easy access from Toolbar) and Mission Control (to separate into individual spaces)?
Workspaces is also also available to download through Setapp, which gives you access to multiple professional apps (it’s like Spotify of apps). I use it myself, sign up using my friends link and we both will get a free month! :)
On a personal note, I’m barely able to keep two apps open simultaneously (4GB CPU), so I’m slightly jealous of your situation ^^


Catalina Beta 5: Quicktime Audio Recording Not Working on 2018 Macbook Pros

There are new beta updates. Can you check them and see if the issue persists.


Cannot locate 173 GB backups on hard drive

Open the Terminal.app and type sudo du -k | awk '$1 > 500000' | sort -nr, this command will search for all Directories bigger than 500MB and sort them by size. So you should find the Location to your Backups.


Does macOS Mojave (10.14) support 32 - bit Apps?

Yes

As of macOS Mojave (10.14) beta 9, macOS Mojave DOES support 32 - bit applications. When opening these applications, you will see a dialog box with a similar message from High Sierra (see below) telling you that "This app will not work with future versions of macOS" but after clicking "Ok" the application will open.

For example, I attempted to open an old version of Firefox (3.16.14 from 2010) that is 32 - bit and got this message

After pressing "Ok" it opened

Sorry about Spanish, only version I could find.


What exactly is the purpose of TimeOut key in launchd plist?

Launchd just passes the TimeOut value to the job. This is different from ExitTimeOut, which is used by Launchd to send a KILL signal to the job. Your specific requirement should be implemented within your job.

From a post in June 2010 in the Darwin-Kernel mailing list:
Re: What is TimeOut ("idle time out") in launchd?

  This specifies the idle exit timeout. If your daemon hasn't received a request in this amount of time, it should quit. Notably launchd does not implement this for you; it's up for you to implement the timeout in your daemon's main event loop.


iPad putting random spaces in customer number

The iPad doesn't do that, it's determined by the author of that site and how they treat a mobile device.  The iPad can't tell what kind of data field that is.  I recommend you contact NS&I and tell them about it.

Meanwhile, tap the Share button on the top-right and select `Request Desktop Site'.  The page should refresh and provide you the desktop version of the site instead of the mobile version.  See if that allows you to enter your customer number.  This site can help show you how to do that.


Is there a quicker way to pause Photos uploading to iCloud?

From playing about with opensnoop, what seems to happen when you click "Pause" is that Photos (by way of cloudphotosd) adds something like the following two lines to a file within your photo library called private/com.apple.cloudphotosd/CloudSync.noindex/State.plist

<key>pausedUntilDate</key>
<date>2015-04-30T23:57:01Z</date>

However just editing that file doesn't seem to be enough, because it also seems to do something with some other binary files, for example private/com.apple.cloudphotosd/CloudSync.noindex/Engine/statistics.bin. But given that they appear to be in a binary format it's a little bit more difficult trying to work out what Photos is doing.

Here is the full trace from me running opensnoop while clicking Pause in Photos' preferences window. Maybe someone else can fill out the rest of the picture.

  501    395 cloudphotosd  45 ~/Pictures/Photos Library.photoslibrary/private/com.apple.cloudphotosd/CloudSync.noindex/Engine/statistics.bin
  501    273 Finder        36 ~/Pictures/Photos Library.photoslibrary/private/com.apple.cloudphotosd/CloudSync.noindex/Engine
  501    273 Finder        36 ~/Pictures/Photos Library.photoslibrary/private/com.apple.cloudphotosd/CloudSync.noindex/Engine/statistics.bin
  501    273 Finder        36 ~/Pictures/Photos Library.photoslibrary/private/com.apple.cloudphotosd/CloudSync.noindex
  501    273 Finder        36 ~/Pictures/Photos Library.photoslibrary/private/com.apple.cloudphotosd/CloudSync.noindex/State.plist
  501    273 Finder        36 ~/Pictures/Photos Library.photoslibrary/private/com.apple.cloudphotosd/CloudSync.noindex/State.plist
  501    273 Finder        36 ~/Pictures/Photos Library.photoslibrary/private/com.apple.cloudphotosd/CloudSync.noindex/syncstatus.plist


Installing from .deb files in macOS Catalina

As far I know, a .deb file is a packaged software installer for Debian Linux (and its derivatives.)

If you want to install it, you're out of luck. I don't think there is anyway to install .deb packages on OS X.

However, we can unpack a .deb file on Mac OS X without installing it.

If you use Xcode, a utility called ar is installed. You can run the following command:

ar -x path/to/filename.deb

Alternatively, you could use Homebrew to install the dpkg utility which has many more options to work against .deb files.

dpkg -c path/to/filename.deb


How to create a spotlight search for all files inside a folder?

After some more research, it reminds me that finder's spotlight had boolean UI since OS X 10.5. You can filter for "not a folder"  for All My Files experience, or with a little bit more filter  for "all files".

It feels a bit hack-y though.


Unfortunately this black Finder highlight may be a Sierra bug rather than an advanced configuration setting.

See two related examples of Sierra Finder black highlighting being reported as a bug:

Why is my Finder highlight color becomes black?
Sierra finder text turning black over black


Does Exist any way to change battery of MBP 2012 13" with a bigger one?

Please please please don't go to eBay or some other website to purchase a battery that claims it has a larger capacity. I have had too much experience with bad batteries, lies, and incompatible products. My customers will come in with batteries from those places and they burnt out within a week or never worked to begin with.

If you battery is truly defective or has issues then an AASP can run a quick test, usually before they even check the unit into their system, and see how healthy the battery is and then if it is defective order you a new one. I do this each and every day because I like to show people their batteries health before carrying out a repair/replacement.


In Preview, how to set 'Rectangular Selection' as the default (NOT 'Text Selection'

This is not a "permanent" change, but it speeds up the inconvenience of needing to use the "Tools" menu, by adding a keyboard shortcut:

Here is the first option for something you can do:

CREATING A KEYBOARD SHORTCUT

Open System Preferences
Click "Keyboard"
Open the tab titled "Shortcuts"
Scroll down to the last item on the left-hand frame's list: "App Shortcuts"
Click on the "plus sign" [+]; a smaller window will pop-up, asking for three lines of information:

— Select "Preview" for the application

– For "Menu Title", you must type EXACTLY what appears in the "Tools" menu of Preview: for OS El Capitan (Mac OS 10.11), this is currently "Rectangular Selection" (don't include quotation marks)

— For "Keyboard Shortcut", use whatever combination you want, so long as it does not conflict with any other pre-existing or currently used shortcuts. As an arbitrary example, I use "Command+Shift+R". Invent whatever alternative you might like.

Just a SIDE-NOTE: if you repeatedly press your keyboard shortcut [which you define in step 5], I have found that Preview will switch back to the "Text Selection" tool [when it is available], which might be occasionally [rarely!] convenient... since, (like you), I too wish that Rectangular Selection were the default... (especially for cropping, etc.)

Here is a second option, involving a "built-in" keyboard shortcut, combined along with one mouse-click [instead of the two required if using the "Tools" menu]:

Press "Command+Shift+A" to make the sub-toolbar, "Markup Toolbar" appear or disappear; [note: this toolbar has the rectangular selection option on the left].
With sub-toolbar available [see step 1], click the 2nd item in from the left, to enable rectangular selection.

Hope that helps!...

Note that, for some reason, I have not always had success with the 1st Option [programming an app-specific shortcut using System Preferences] in certain versions of Mac OS or with particular apps -- even though the menu item might be spelled precisely and correctly as it appears. It was thus pleasantly surprising to find that this custom keyboard-shortcut option indeed works under El Capitan [OS 10.11], as of the time of writing this here.

Hope this helps others!


In a school library I have 30 iPads to set up for teachers to use in their classrooms.

Apple has a tool, Apple Configurator, designed to help manage multiple devices in exactly this kind of scenario.  I haven't personally used it, but it sound like what you need.


MacBook Pro 13 inch 2,6GHz versus 15 inch 2.0Ghz. Which CPU is better?

It's quite simple from my perspective - The 15 inch CPU is superior in all respects over the 13 inch CPU:

2.0GHz quad-core Intel Core i7 processor (Turbo Boost up to 3.2GHz) with 6MB shared L3 cache
2.6GHz dual-core Intel Core i5 processor (Turbo Boost up to 3.1GHz) with 3MB shared L3 cache

Turbo Boost engages for operations where only one core is active. Starting at a lower GHz saves energy and battery and as long as the CPU can boost to a faster top level than a competing CPU - you get the best of both worlds - fuel efficiency at idle and top speed when needed.

So, for a simple task where the computer is doing one thing only - you would expect the 13 inch to ramp one core up to 3.1 GHz whereas the 15 inch would ramp up to 3.2 GHz. Bigger is better for that task. Plus a larger L3 cache will make some switching between tasks more efficient on the 15 inch model.

Now, if you have video processing or a mixed workload where tons of compute is waiting for the CPU. You have two cores running at 2.66 or 5.32 GHz of theoretical throughput compared to 4 cores at 2.0 or 8.00 GHz of throughput. Again, no task scales perfectly, but even with 10% overhead, the quad core processor wins. It would have to be a bizarre benchmark to show the dual core i5 out perform the quad core i7 for any task that engages multiple cores.

If you want another opinion, I would recommend this nice article by Marco Arment on trying to calculate which Mac Pro CPU choice works for various budgets and tasks:

http://www.marco.org/2013/11/26/new-mac-pro-cpus

In it, he doesn't explain why he feels the 15 inch MacBook Pro is so far superior to the 13 inch MacBook Pro and simply states it as fact. I generally agree with that due experience and seeing benchmarks/reviews I trust. My feeling is the current 15 inch logic board and supporting components are faster and of better specifications than what is put into the 13 inch model. If you can swing the cost and live with (or prefer) the larger physical size, get the 15 inch model. It's an excellent workstation in a portable form factor. For many tasks it benchmarks as fast as an iMac and even the new Mac Pro.

Personal note: The base $1299 13 inch model is no slouch - I work from one almost exclusively the last year and I'm never really waiting for it in practice. If you need to pinch pennies on the CPU, I'd con side any of the retina 13 inch models if it means you can afford AppleCare, an external monitor plus backup drive(s) and whatever software you need to be productive. Rather than invest in tons of extra CPU cycles that you may not really use or need to work day in and day out.


Is it safe to delete "~/Library/iTunes/Mobile Backups"?

Yes, you are correct. The new location for iOS backups is:

~/Library/Application Support/MobileSync/Backup/

This Apple KB article was recently updated to reflect this change. Hope this helps.


What's the best server/client combo to remote into your Mac (10.6) from a windows machine?

You could try TeamViewer.

Like Logmein.com, it is a full software and one based one Mac OS X vnc.

By the way, it also works from an iPad or an iPhone or from a web browser under Windows.


About the only option is to have all the apps you want on iTunes and load them onto your iPhone as desired. Of course you can't have them all at the same time because of your memory limitations but you could change sets for vacation or work for instance.

Or you can buy an iPhone with more memory.

Those are the only options Apple leaves you.

Happy Day!


"Compress file" in Catalina sets wrong permissions on ZIP file

The Finder and Archive Utility are not broken; the change in permissions will be deliberate.

  It looks like something is broken in the Finder command an/or Archive Utility.app

Increasing Security

Apple's security engineers will likely argue that the new user only read write permissions, 0600, are correct and that zip is now wrong. Limiting default permissions is the direction macOS is heading.

Automator or AppleScript

Instead of fighting Apple, consider creating an Automator service or AppleScript to compress your files. You can then control the final permissions of the archive.


Can't install apps from App Store on iPhone with iOS 7

I would suggest trying the following options:

Press and hold the power button and the home button until the Apple logo appears. Once it restarts, try downloading.
Reset your router from which you are accessing your Wi-Fi.
If the issue persists, trying downloading apps from a different Wi-Fi network or cellular data.
If these fail, Reset Network Settings (Settings > General > Reset) and do steps 2 and 3.
If the issue still persists, Reset All Settings (Settings > General > Reset) and try again.
As a last resort, take your phone to an Apple Store.


Mount and repair external hard drive with command line tools

Yeah, if Disk Utility is telling you it's time to backup and erase then it's not looking good. Perhaps other disk repair utilities can help? But you might just want to heed the warning and backup and erase.  :)

You can force unmount volumes but you can't force mount them. Using the command line, get the device name:

diskutil list

In my case, it's disk2:

diskutil mountDisk /dev/disk2

Or:

diskutil mount /dev/disk2s2

You can run a repair like in Disk Utility, in this case you'll want to include the slice number (disk2s2):

diskutil repairVolume /dev/disk2s2


Once backward conversion of encryption has started, can it be stopped?

It is not possible to stop the decryption of the drive while also using the drive.

You can unmount and possibly unplug the external drive, and the decryption will obviously stop.

However, as soon as you plug the drive in again and mount the file system, the decryption process will continue. You cannot ask the system to stop that.

Your options are either to a) let the decryption process finish, and then apply encryption again -- or b) backup the files off the drive, wipe the drive, create a new encrypted file system and copy back your files.

Option (b) usually takes just as long as option (a), but requires a lot more manuals steps. So I would recommend option (a).


How to do Control+Backspace on standard USB Keyboard?

The keyboard shortcut to delete the word to the left of the insertion point is, on a Mac keyboard:

OptionDelete

On a Windows keyboard use:
AltBackspace

I use both Windows and macOS on a regular basis and noticed that some keyboard shortcuts that use Control in Windows work with Option in macOS, for example:

Delete the word to the left/right of the insertion point:

Windows: ControlBackspace / ControlDelete
macOS:  OptionDelete / Optiondelete⌦

[On keyboards that don't have delete⌦ (Forward Delete) use FnDelete instead.]

Move the insertion point to the beginning/end of the previous word:

Windows: ControlLeft Arrow / ControlRight Arrow
macOS:  OptionLeft Arrow / OptionRight Arrow

Extend text selection to the beginning/end of the current word:

Windows: ShiftControlLeft Arrow / ShiftControlRight Arrow
macOS:  ShiftOptionLeft Arrow / ShiftOptionRight Arrow

Please refer to https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201236 for a complete list of keyboard shortcuts (scroll down to the Document shortcuts section for the juicy stuff).


How do I permanently disable Notification Center in Mavericks?

If you start Terminal, enter

sudo defaults write /System/Library/LaunchAgents/com.apple.notificationcenterui KeepAlive -bool False

and restart, this did the trick for me in Mavericks.


check if storage is available and if it is execute a backup routine with passwordphrase

Steps 1, 2 and 4 are relatively straightforward and can be performed using launchd (or cron) to call a script.

My solution involves some setup, taken from this blog post:

Open Keychain Access (⌘Space Keychain Access), click on Password, then + to create a new password. User restic for the Keychain Item Name and for the Account Name. Enter the password you intend to use in the Password field (i.e. enter the same password you used when you ran restic init). Finally, click Add to complete the set-up process.

launchd (or cron) job runs every 24 hours and simply calls a shell script restic-backup.sh
restic-backup.sh checks if /Volumes/usb-storage-name is mounted, and halts if it isn't. If the drive is mounted it then checks for the existence of the /Users/user/data directory, and halts if the directory doesn't exist (it can't backup a non-existent directory!) If the backup volume is mounted and the source directory exists it then moves on to step 3...
If the environment variable RESTIC_PASSWORD is set Restic will use its value instead of prompting for a password. restic-backup.sh will set RESTIC_PASSWORD using the security command and some ruby magic:

RESTIC_PASSWORD=$(security 2>&1 >/dev/null find-generic-password -ga restic |ruby -e 'print $1 if STDIN.gets =~ /^password: "(.*)"$/')

With RESTIC_PASSWORD set the script can now execute the backup:

restic -r /Volumes/usb-storage-name/restic-backups backup /Users/user/data

The launchd/cron job from step 1 should run every 24 hours, covering step 4 as well.

restic-backup.sh:

#!/bin/bash

# USER CONFIGURATION:
resticuser=restic
srcdir=/Users/user/data
backupvolume=/Volumes/usb-storage-name
backupdir=${backupvolume}/restic-backups

# Script vars:
longname=$0
shortname=$(/usr/bin/basename "${longname}")

printf '%s %s (%s) running...\n' "$(date -u "+%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S")" "${shortname}" "${longname}"

if [[ ! -d "${srcdir}" ]]; then
    printf '%s %s does NOT exist.' "$(date -u "+%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S")" "${srcdir}" >&2
    exit 1
else
    if [[ $(mount | grep "${backupvolume}") ]]; then
        # See: http://blog.macromates.com/2006/keychain-access-from-shell/
        # Parse output of 'security' and set RESTIC_PASSWORD:
        export RESTIC_PASSWORD=$(security 2>&1 >/dev/null find-generic-password -ga ${resticuser} |ruby -e 'print $1 if STDIN.gets =~ /^password: "(.*)"$/')
        # Run backup, capturing output in case of error:
        output=$(restic -r ${backupdir} backup "${srcdir}")
        error=$?
        if [[ "${error}" == "0" ]]; then
            printf '%s Restic backup completed successfully.\n' "$(date -u "+%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S")"
        else
            printf '%s Restic backup failed: error code: %s, error: %s\n' \
                    "$(date -u "+%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S")" "${error}" "${output}" >&2
        fi
    else
        printf '%s %s is NOT mounted.' "$(date -u "+%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S")" "${backupvolume}" >&2
        exit 1
    fi
fi

printf '%s %s ended.\n' "$(date -u "+%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S")" "${shortname}"


Is it possible to determine the date a photo (received via text message) was taken?

Cameras usually append EXIF information to photos they take. You may use EXIF Viewer(on Mac) or other softwares to view if there is EXIF.


I don't know why this changed, but right now instead of saving on my Desktop only it saves in iCloud/Desktop only

Hit cmd + shift + 5 > Options and change the screenshot save location. I cannot take a screenshot of a screenshot window, but it's easy.

  .. my iCloud/Desktop folder ..

You might have turned on iCloud for Desktop and Documents. Check in the System Preferences → iCloud options.  Turn it off, and all your documents will get downloaded to an iCloud Archive folder directly under Users/me/. Then you can move all those content to the original, local Desktop folder.

If you don't like it, just change the screenshot save folder to a non-iCloud synced folder.


It appears you simply received spam. This, in itself, does not mean that this person has been reading your text messages. In fact they might have simply sent a generic message to random numbers, and one of them happened to be yours.

So unless that spam text referred to things you’ve said in private conversations, the spammer is NOT reading your texts. You are safe to delete the spam message by swiping left from your list of messages and tapping Delete.

If you want to go the extra mile, long-press that spam message. When the menu appears, tap More… followed by the arrow in the bottom-right corner of your screen. Forward that message verbatim to 7726, which is the number for reporting spam texts in the US. Verizon will then ask you for the number that sent you the spam. Respond with it and they’ll take care of it.


Setting up Open Directory for already existing user accounts

This is my old note, that I did. I am writing here as this might help you. All instructions may not be accurate for the path as macOS has changed a lot. But I would suggest you give a try on one machine first. Please make a backup of everything or try on one idle machine.

Step 1: Steps 1 – 24 (Basic setup)

First, ensure that the local mac user account password matches the password for the AD account that you want to migrate to.
Log into the computer under any Admin account (or create a new admin account) other than the account that needs to be migrated.
Enable Root user from Open Directory Utility.
Add the computer in the domain and choose create mobile account.
Select the local user account that you want to migrate to an AD account and choose Delete (-).
At the Delete prompt, select option to 'Don't change the home folder (the home folder remains in the user folder). This will rename the user folder by adding '(Deleted)' at the end of the folder. Click 'Delete User'.
Log out of the computer.
At login screen, select Other and log into computer with AD account and if prompted, select the option for 'Create Mobile Account'. Skip any configuration prompts upon login.
Log Out of AD account and log back in as root.
Navigate to Users folder/new AD user folder and delete new AD user folder. Restart computer, log back in as root, and empty trash.
Rename the old user folder. Go to the user folder and delete the '(Deleted)' and any spaces from the folder name. The name of the user folder needs to match the AD username.
Select the User folder and choose Get info.
Unlock Permissions
Click + and add Network User and type in and select the correct AD user and click ok.
Set the user with Read, Write permissions. Select user, click gear and choose 'Make user owner'
Click + and add Network Groups and add 'Domain Users'
Set 'Domain Users' group permissions to be Read Only.
Delete 'Staff' group
Under the 'Name' column in the 'Sharing Permissions:' section, you will see an owner account listed and under the 'Name' column, it may read 'Fetching'. Select it and delete this entry.
Go to gear and select 'Apply to Enclosed Items'

Step 2: Steps 25-27 - Reset User folder Permissions and ACLs

Download Batchmod.
Open Batchmod and browse to the user's user folder.
Apply permissions EXACTLY as follows and make sure ALL options are checked (above image):

Now, in Batchmod, browse to the user's Public folder and select the Drop Box folder and apply the following permissions:

After all steps are complete and the user can log into their domain account successfully and see all their data, then log back into the local admin account you have been using and do the following:

Disable root (within directory utility)
Remove the user profile you used to test and confirm you could log into a domain account.
Open a terminal window and run dsconfigad -passinterval 0 (this supposedly helps the Mac to pick up password changes more accurately when mandatory password intervals hit.)
Make the newly migrated user a local admin if appropriate. (Hint: usually not appropriate.)

I recommend leaving the local admin account in place so you can get into the machine in the future if anything ever goes awry with the connection to the domain. It can happen.

Go through this also: http://www.walcott.com/blog/converting-a-local-mac-user-account-to-and-open-directory-server-mobile-account


Selectively force Siri to send SMS instead of iMessage

For SMS, tell Siri "Text Alice on mobile I'll be right there."

Alternatively, you can set up two different contacts for Alice, one for SMS and one for iMessage and then tell Siri which one to use be citing the different names.


That is currently not possible.

You can make it a feature request to Apple

here

http://www.apple.com/feedback/appletv.html

or here

http://www.apple.com/feedback/iphone.html

You can come up with your description but here is a draft:

*

  Feature request: I'd love it you could activate "private listening"
  with Apple TV. Pop headphones into your iPhone or iPad and listen to
  the audio from the Apple TV it's connected to without bothering other
  people in your living space.

*


Is it possible to use Apple Push Notification Service only for local network?

Disabling the internet connection for this service would prevent you from receiving any notifications which use the Apple Push service. Restricting it to your local network would have the same effect as preventing it from connecting at all, since there is no local APN server.


How to safely rid a Macbook Pro's power port of chocolate?

If it's a magsafe port us a cotton swab or soft bristle tooth brush. See https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT203207.


Remove some photos (or videos) from iPhoto without deleting from Flickr

Found an answer here:

https://support.apple.com/kb/PH2432?locale=en_US

Very simple actually, just remove the Facebook and Flickr accounts in preferences and then delete away!


When I drag a pix from Photos to the desktop, why doesn't it stay where I dropped it?

It seems you have some kind of auto arrange enabled. Right-click on the desktop and disable Sort By / Arrange By.


What is the data corruption risk of force shutting down a running Mac?

The journaled file system practically eliminates the chances that the filesystem itself will be in an inconsistent state after the next reboot.  But "consistent" is not the same as "correct".

Before journaling, the filesystem structures themselves could become damaged which could lead to more corruption occurring after the next boot.  So journaling limits the damage to whatever files were being written at the time of the crash.

If a file was being written at the time of a crash, the odds of its contents being incorrect are about 100%.  Exactly what manner of incorrectness would depend on exactly how it was being written at the time.

If data was simply being appended, then the last few blocks will probably be truncated off when the journal is replayed.  But if bits of data were being modified throughout the file (such as in a database store), its likely to be in a very inconsistent state.  Applications which write files in that way sometimes have their own consistency checks for that purpose.

But most files in a typical OS X system get written sequentially.  In fact, many programs write a temporary file and don't move it in to replace the old version until the new version has been committed to disk.  This ensures that even a forced shutdown in the middle of writing a file only loses the new version, but preserves the old one.

Bottom line: something bad will happen to any data being written at the time of a crash, but how bad depends on the application.


The terminal does not behave the way that you expect because it is made to emulate the behavior of a DEC VT100 terminal. Computer terminals — such as the VT100 — did not have a mouse, so any actions that is triggered by the mouse is bolted on as an afterthought. Most terminal emulators default to a set of keybindings that are similar to those of Emacs (a text editor), but this layer (provided by GNU Readline) does not provide mechanisms for selecting text and whatever else you are describing.

It is up to the terminal emulator (for example, Terminal.app or iTerm2) to define what events are triggered upon mouse clicks and text selection. For example, hitting Option ⌥, followed by a mouse click somewhere in your current prompt will place your cursor at that position. If you select a piece of text and hit backspace Delete ⌦, only a single character at your current cursor position will be deleted because the terminal that is being emulated does not have the notion of text selection by itself.


Seems like you could use the SU command to switch to another user in Terminal. Once you've switched to the admin user you can use sudo commands coupled with the admin account's password.

For example, when I'm at one of my end user's Macs and I need to run something with elevated privileges (chown for example) without logging out and into the admin account (ladmin) I would use something like this (in bold):

Mr-Rabbits-Mac:~ notadminuser$ su ladmin

This will prompt for the ladmin account's password, once entered you will see a bash command prompt.  From here I can run any sudo commands desired, entering ladmin's password as needed...

bash-3.2$ sudo chown user2 /some/folder

This will run the chown command using the now logged in ladmin user, prompting for the ladmin account's password.  Once finished you can type exit to return to your logged in user's prompt.

Screenshot of similar process, only using sudo to run the ls command (just for example).


What version of iOS are you running? Live filters was added on iOS 7. If you haven't updated your iPhone to the latest (or, now, second-to-latest) major version of iOS, the "live" filters will not be available.
You can check your iOS version by going into Settings > General > Software Update. But, be wary of updating to iOS 8 (which is now the version available to be upgraded to) many (though not all) iPhone 4s users have had issues with iOS 8.


An app in iPhone shows in the list of apps sharing documents (list below), but it does not show in the general list (list above)

The apps not showing were purchased under a different Apple ID. I had to logout from the current ID in iTunes, and login with the other ID. Then I could Transfer purchases (which included those other apps).


MacBook backlight turns off when brightness is set at 100%

The issue is caused by a burnt out soldering attaching a cable to an iron bar component situated in the lowest part of the screen. It is part of the module named 612-0035-a. It is the LCD inverter. It is not user solderable with standard equipment.

There's no need to buy an entire screen to fix this, just a new LCD inverter. To prevent same damage from happening again, it is recommended to brace from power surges.


How to set up "localhost" document root as Mac's "Sites" folder with MAMP PRO 4?

The localhost root folder to "~/Sites" is now allowed (from MAMP v4.3):


New iTerm2 Window Here option open two tabs

There is open issue iterm2 opens two window or two tabs when launched from services where possible workarounds are described (also root cause of the problem as well).
From productivity point (if you end in shell anyway) you could consider switching to console based file manager (like vifm, ranger, nnn, Midnight Commander etc). You will get productivity boost from relying on keyboard only. There is also command-line fuzzy-finder fzf which could be handy.


remove music from my device in Itunes only

iTunes on the computer is the 'Master' device.

Anything you discard from there will be removed from your iPhone the next time you sync it.
- unless it is purchased through the iTunes Store, allowing you to re-download directly to the iPhone at a later date.


New Terminal At Folder service in El Capitan doesn't use my Terminal profile settings

After launching Terminal.app the active profile of the shell  window is determined by the settings chosen in: Preferences > General > On startup open...

The profile of the next Terminal window opened or the one launched by Services -> New Terminal at Folder uses a default profile which can be configured here: Preferences > Profiles > Text: choose a profile in the left pane and hit the default button at the bottom.


Change smb://new-host-4.workgroup to smb://whatiwant.workgroup

Did you try the local hostname setting in Sharing preferences? It's found by clicking the Edit... button in Sharing preferences.

If that doesn't work, check that the DHCP Client ID isn't set. Some DHCP servers will use it to assign a hostname.

You can find it from the Advanced section of Network Preferences, under the TCP/IP section. Make sure that you have the proper network interface you use selected when you click the Advanced button.


Why are Photo Stream process running, but photos only loads when iPhoto is opened?

This is primarily targeted towards Shared Photostreams. When someone streams a picture you will get notified (via Notification Center) that a new picture/comment (or like on your photo) has been posted. As a result this process must run all the time.

iPhoto only loads/displays the photos for you to see.

If you desire to disable it, you can go to open System Preferences -> iCloud -> Disable Photo Stream.


How to move iCloud photos from one country to another?

A simple approach would be to use Shared Albums. Create a shared album for the source Apple ID and share it with the destination Apple ID.

On the destination, export the photos to save a local copy. Once exported, you can unshare/delete the shared album at source end.


Yes. They're called "Bluetooth Extenders." I have never used one so I can't offer specific advice, but I did look into them once for a similar problem.

Here's the one I planned on buying. Note that I never did so this is not a recommendation, just a suggestion: http://www.amazon.com/Miccus-Home-RTX-Bluetooth-Transmitter/dp/B00713RSE0


wifi and hdmi problems on OS X yosemite (macbook pro 15-inch retina, late 2013)

At least the wifi issue should have been fixed (but it wasn't) with the latest update:


I've got a very similar name in my Finder sidebar as well.

It's an HP product (mine's a printer) that is on your local network that has been setup to be accessible over the network. It disappears when the printer is not powered on.

As "smoooosher" said, its name is identical to the MAC address of the device.


MacBook Pro WiFi much slower than Ethernet and other devices

WiFi by it's nature is generally going to be slower then most any wired network. Not only do you share the bandwidth with everything else attached to that WiFi access point, but you can also get slowed down by your relative position in relation to the antennas and what is between you and the antennas (Walls, steel, sheet-rock, whole buildings, etc.)

First it would be helpful to know what the make and model of the WiFi hardware is that you are connecting to, where you are in relation to the device and what is between you and the device.

Also you may want to try a different access point. Possibly at work, a friend's house, a local coffee shop or other public location with WiFi.

With WiFi there are a lot of variables and before you go looking into problems with your Mac (possible but less likely than other things) you need to see if the problem exists connecting to other access points or even if just moving closer to your current one solves it.

Additionally I would be tempted to look in both /Library/Preferences and ~/Library/Preferences for any network/WiFi related preference file. Delete them and reboot. Then set up your networks again: you might have a damaged prefs file.


How do I migrate my Keychain's "Local Items" to a new Mac?

I just managed to get my keys to my new mac (this only works if you still have access to the old Mac and can boot it up):

(on the old mac) Remove your current user's password
Create a new keychain (without a password)
Copy all keys in "Local Items" to your new keychain
Copy the keychain to the new mac
(on the new mac) Remove your current user's password
Add the new keychain file
Copy all keys in the new keychain to "Local Items"
Delete the new keychain
Don't forget to set a password again after that

It's a bit annoying as you have to click "Allow" for EACH item in the keychain but well, it's the only thing I found that works.


Lightroom: I did save to catalog and I lost my changes; can I restore my changes?

I'm not sure what "save to catalog" does.  In fact I couldn't even find the command anywhere within Lightroom 4. I always import batches of photos directly into LR straight from an SD card. This automatically adds them to the catalog and saves the raw file in a separate directory.

The catalog is just a database which contains all the edits you do to a photo.  Any changes you make while editing in the develop module are saved the instant you make them.  You can also save the changes as XMP data which is written directly to the raw file so if your catalog ever becomes corrupt your edit data is saved.  There is an option to automatically save xmp data or you can do it manually on a photo by photo basis.

If you use Time Machine or another backup system you should be able to go back and restore to any saved point.


MacOS Dark Mode toggles back to Light Mode

I resolved this issue. Turns out I have an app installed that changes the color temperature of my screen (flux). This app seems to be toggling Dark mode back to light mode because it detects its day time. I turned the App off and this solved the problem.

Edit:
Turns out the Flux option Color Effect --> OS X Dark Theme at sunset was the root cause. I toggled this off and now I am using flux and Dark mode!


Make the Stock Widget display percentage change

Sorry, the answer is no, you cannot.

The only configuration available for the Stocks Notification Centre widget is Enabled/Disabled.

Other apps that provide Stocks reporting may have been updated to provide more configurable notifications, however the stock (sic) app does not.


df /path/to/file | sed -n 2p | cut -d ' ' -f 1

will give you the device the file is on. To combine this directly with diskutil info use

diskutil info $(df /path/to/file | sed -n 2p | cut -d ' ' -f 1)


Unexpected question 'enter PIN for "Kryptonite iOS"' while doing git pull after updating to MacOS Catalina 10.15.4

This is what I found so far.

When terminal is asking for "Kryptonite iOS" it is actually asking for Bitbucket 2FA one time password. I tested.

How I fixed:

Go to Bitbucket -> profile -> Atlassian Account.
Logout, log back in. (Yeah, this was necessary.)
Change password. (Old password didn't work for some reason.)
In git repo switch from SSH to HTTP origin. git remote set-url origin https://you@bitbucket.org/org/project.git (This will stop asking the above question, but will start asking for the new password.)

Hope this will help someone.


Will older versions of iLife (like 06 or 08 or 09) run on Lion

iLife '08 is running fine on my OSX 10.7 computer.

Most non-PowerPC apps will run fine in Lion, so I expect all the versions you mention will be fine.


Can't start Mac in recovery mode - only get folder with question mark instead

This is pretty easy - the folder with a question mark means no bootable volume is connected to the computer despite what disk used to be the startup disk was in the past.

You'll want to connect to a WiFi or wired network and try booting to internet recovery or bring a known good bootable OS to this machine so you can boot to disk utility and see if the internal drive needs first aid or a wipe and erase.

  To manually start up from macOS Recovery over the Internet, hold down Option-Command-R or Shift-Option-Command-R at startup.

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201314

Barring that, you'll need to seek hardware service if you don't have internet boot or a way to bring a bootable OS to this Mac.

The only one thing to try is resetting the NVRAM one time. Hold Command - Option - P - R at boot and make sure you hear the startup chime twice before letting go.

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204063

All the other commands won't help get you past the folder with a question mark.


How to replace hard drive without reinstalling the whole system?

Have you considered cloning your current hard drive? With a utility like Carbon Copy Cloner (which you can use for free for 30 days, I think), and an external interface for your new hard drive (USB, Firewire, etc.), you can clone--i.e. make a bit-for-bit copy of your operating system and installed programs--the drive that's currently in your computer. Then, when you install the new hard drive, the computer should see it as the boot disk and everything should pick up exactly where you left off--just with a lot more storage.


When were custom sounds for e-mail notification alerts introduced in iOS?

Nope, this is all new. Before iOS 5 you could only set the ringer's sound to a custom one. If you ask me, it's about time!


What command combo at terminal will output a list of directories with human-readable sizes?

In order to see a list of folders with sizes you can use the du command.

To make the sizes human readable use the -h option

To make sum the size of child folders use the -s option (may take some time to run depending on the contents).

du -hs *

Here is an (uninteresting) example of the output.

   0B   Desktop
 632K   Documents
 356K   Downloads
  76M   Library
   0B   Movies
   0B   Music
 4.0K   Pictures
   0B   Public
  40K   Sites


Go to applications/fontbook and do File > Restore Standard Fonts and restart.


iPod Touch will charge from computer USB, but not from AC outlet

It sounds to me like your AC to USB charger is having a problem with heat.

It charges for a while (while heating up) then it stops.

If you let it cool down for a while I assume it continues charging.

In any case, I would suggest replacing it.


Is it possible to purchase the OEM USB sync cable?

Yes - look for Apple USB to dock connector in the store.

It also comes with most chargers and dock accessories if you want a bundle.


Clicking on external link opens a tab in wrong Chrome window

Links are opened in the newest window, so the solution would be to open your media Window and move it to the TV first, then open another window for other things on your main display.

EDIT: When it comes to preference, I too wish there was a way to change this behavior. Opening in the most recently focused window makes sense to me.


Connecting App Store release app to Xcode

You can access the device logs using Console. In Console.app, connected iOS devices appear in the sidebar and selecting a device brings up the system log in real time.

To use Xcode to attach to the process, choose Debug → ‘Attach to Process by PID or Name’ and enter the name of the app. See Attach debugger to iOS app after launch on Stack Overflow.


Is it possible to share a keyboard physically connected to a Windows 7 PC with an iPad 2?

The JUC400 Wormhole switch will do this.  There are a number of other solutions mentioned at How can a keyboard be shared with an iPad?.


A MacOS app to backup All Photos in iCloud to External Drive

You could do it in the Photos apps. If you launch it holding the option key, and choose to create a new library on the external drive. Then change the preferences to download all photos. It will take a while but that will download a full version of the library to the external. Then quit, safely remove the backup drive. Open again and choose the old local library, and quickly change the preference back to "optimize". It's a bit of a process but it should work.


iPod songs all show as -0.00 seconds long

I've had issues with an iPod nano showing most songs with incorrect durations, though in my case they were shown as much longer than the song actually was.

My guess is it was caused by encoding the MP3s in a program not called "iTunes".  They played great everywhere, but the song length never looked right in iTunes on my Mac, either.  I guess Apple's MP3/ID3 decoder is stricter than my encoder was.

If you were using some other program to encode them, you could try re-encoding them in iTunes.


Can't upgrade to Catalina - only Catalina Beta is available

You don’t have to erase your current OS to make a new Catalina volume and install it cleanly.

How much space do I need to make a bootable Catalina volume on my Mojave Mac?

Once you get the version you want installed, you can migrate over the data or not as you please.

This saves you from having to erase first to test the install / get ready to erase the old OS that’s stuck in beta land.


Stickies!

The OS X version of this app that's been on Macs since System 7.5 has the ability to float, and become semitransparent.

Technically it's a rich-text notetaking app rather than a plaintext editor, but it might satisfy your use case.

Another option (quite the polar opposite of Stickies) would be to use an editor within Terminal, and use TotalTerminal to display it in "visor" mode.

Finally, it looks like there was an open-source project that added these kinds of window management features to any app of your choosing called Afloat. The original project hasn't been updated in 3 years, but one of the forks might be functional on the current iteration of OS X.


There are a number of methods an app can use to uniquely identify a device or user.

Transitory (persistent whilst app is installed)

Unique identifier generated by the app and saved in a property list or other equivalent storage in the app sandbox's Library or Documents folder.
Hashed login or equivalent to determine user.
CFUUID (https://developer.apple.com/library/ios/documentation/CoreFoundation/Reference/CFUUIDRef/index.html)
identifierForVendor (https://developer.apple.com/library/ios/documentation/UIKit/Reference/UIDevice_Class/index.html#//apple_ref/occ/instp/UIDevice/identifierForVendor)

Permanent

MAC address of device (not recommended by Apple for these purposes).
Advertising Identifier (can be reset in Settings; https://developer.apple.com/LIBRARY/ios/documentation/AdSupport/Reference/ASIdentifierManager_Ref/index.html#//apple_ref/occ/instp/ASIdentifierManager/advertisingIdentifier).

Deprecated

UDID (http://www.theverge.com/2013/3/21/4133288/apple-to-finally-stop-accepting-apps-that-use-outdated-udid-device-identifier-may-1st)


Is macOS known to completely crash due to a bad boot drive?

It's not really clear what you mean by completely crash or crash the whole OS, but yes a bad hard drive can cause a crash/freeze.

In your case there's a few things you can still try:

Try a new cable
Reset the NVRAM
Try booting into Safe Mode

Obviously I don't need to explain how to try a new cable, so I've included steps below for resting the NVRAM and booting into Safe Mode.

Resetting the NVRAM

Follow these steps:

Shut down your machine. Yes, a full shut down, not just logging out.
Press the power button and then press the commandoptionpr keys. You have to make sure you press these keys before the gray screen appears or it won’t work.
Hold those keys down until your Mac reboots again (i.e. a 2nd time) and you here the startup chime.
Let go of the keys and let your Mac reboot normally.

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

Boot into Safe Mode

Follow these steps to boot your Mac into Safe Mode:

Fully shut down your Mac
Restart your Mac
Immediately press the Shift key and keep it down
Let go of the Shift key when you see the login window (NOTE: If you have FileVault enabled you may need to log in twice).
Take a note of what happens (i.e. could you boot your Mac okay, does it still crash?)
Exit Safe Mode by restarting your Mac as normal
Test your Mac again to see if it still crashes

Once you've booted into Safe Mode, let me know how you went and we'll go from there.

If by any chance you find your Mac doesn't crash while in Safe Mode, but it does crash when booted normally again, then we know the problem is basically software related and we can troubleshoot that further.


How can I break a persistent association between .xcodeproj files and Xcode 4.2 beta?

Use RCDefaultApp prefpane. You can get it from http://www.rubicode.com/Software/RCDefaultApp/

Open it, select UTIs and scroll down to com.apple.xcode.project.

On the right you can change which filetype is associated to which application or disable the association completely.

Edit: another alternative is Magic Launch, which allows the same kind of file association overrides.

Open it, drag an Xcode project file into the pane on the left, set the Default Application on the right to the appropriate version of Xcode.


Just to make this into an actual answer…
It seems very likely, after your last comment which I edited into the question body for you, that you have a stuck key which is auto-repeating as you are trying to type.
I think you may need a repair shop.


Why doesn't tar recognize .iso files, even though the documentation says it should?

Chances are that it is not a pure ISO image so tar may not recognize it. I have tested tar on some random ISO images and it could handle them all, so it's likely specific to that particular image. Note that hdiutil can create non-ISO CDR images so you would have to explicitly tell it to use the ISO format (note that the ISO format is somewhat restrictive, so many CDs use a different format either in addition to ISO or instead of it).


use Command+R For Internet Recovery To the version you were using and Command + Shift + R for internet recovery (to The latest version). When you will go to internet recovery a disk utility option will be there and u can configure , format your hdd there and install new os


How can I upgrade my jailbroken and unlocked iPhone 3GS to 4.2?

There is nothing special to upgrading when jailbroken or not. You must use the official upgrade path which means losing unlock and jailbreak, and then re-jailbreak and re-unlock if you want and if it is possible with the new firmware. So...

Plug it in
Follow the prompts in iTunes


You have a race condition and the outcome of it is non-deterministic.

They desktops get created in the order the programs are full-screened. So first desktop goes to the first application that tells the OS it wants to be full screen and so on. Apparently, when you resume your applications after a restart, they resume windowed and tell the OS that they should be full screen as they where before you shut down. The order in which they tell this to the OS is non-deterministic on every boot. They tell the OS, when they tell the OS, and in no particular order. So your full screen applications appear in random order every time you boot.

As of OS X 10.7.2, you can quickly re-order your desktops by bringing up Mission Control and then dragging the windows shown along the top of the screen in to the order you desire. Pre-10.7.2 you have to un-full screen all your applications and then re-full screen them in the order you want them to appear.


After update, background turned black, the dock is missing

On rare occasions, I have had to go nuclear and clean out specific preference files:

rm ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.finder.plist

One might argue that you should back it up first. In that light, I suggest simply moving it out of the way and force-quitting Finder.

cd ~/Library/Preferences
mv com.apple.finder.plist com.apple.finder.plist-orig


I found the solution:

My Apps -> Click on on the app -> Pricing

Choose the Price Tier and dates and Save.
The status of the app immediately changes from Pending Contract to Ready for Sale.

Still not clear why I had to redo it.


Xcode will not launch correctly; works correctly with another account on the same machine

It doesn't explain the root cause, but I did get the app to run, by creating a new account and starting the app under that account.


Where do I update Google account details in iOS13?

I think you're mistaking work accounts with Google ones. This is my work mail setup and my Gmail and Outlook look the way yours do. They don't offer explicit password fields in settings AFAIK. They use web interfaces as overlays, at the time of login.

As in macOS Mojave's mail too, there is no password field, Google is now using Safari.

So if you have changed the password of your Google account, it should automatically notify you and ask for password. But if you want to trigger it manually, try toggling off and on the mail  switch from the list.

For a drastic approach(if it's a big mailbox), Deleting it and adding it back will allow you to change the password.


Will Apple replace the battery on an iPhone 5s?

Although discontinued in March 2016, iPhone 5s is still supported for service and parts replacement by Apple (as of this writing).

Check with your local authorised service centre for availability.


Why do I get "double greater/less thans" instead of double quotes in Word?

This probably happens because Word uses language settings for a language that uses “chevrons” (double angle quotation marks) as quotation marks, such as French. By default, Word auto-corrects Ascii quotation marks (") to language-specific marks, e.g. to “smart” curly quotes for English. The fix is to change the language setting (click on the language indicator for this). It won’t change the quotes already entered, so you need to fix them separately.

By default, Word uses language guessing: it tries to infer the language of text from the text itself. It sometimes guesses wrong. I don’t see why this would have happened here, as the text looks like normal English. But maybe the language setting was originally e.g. French and language guessing was off?

It’s odd that Word uses «gains», because by French rules, the quotation marks should be separated from the word with fine spaces. The Windows versions of Word therefore insert normal spaces: « gains ». This isn’t quite correct, as the spaces should be fine, narrower, and maybe the Mac version therefore doesn’t introduce the spaces. Or maybe it is applying the rules of some language that uses chevrons without spaces.


How to permanently change TTL on macOS Catalina?

The classic method with /etc/sysctl.conf still works for macOS Catalina, but only after disabling SIP since El Capitan.


Lion hangs on boot with empty progress bar and then switches off

One more thing to try:  Boot in Safe mode holding the Shift key at the startup sound.  If the internal drive is bad (failed drive or borked OS), this won't work.

If you have an external drive as a full bootable backup (and I hope you do), connect it a power it up. Then try booting the Mac holding the Option key, and select the external drive.

If you have another Mac, connect the sick Mac to it and boot the sick Mac in Target mode (hold the "t" at startup sound).

If either works, copy all critical data to the drive you are booted in.

I agree that there is at least one hardware failure involved.


Why can I not use xdg-open and gnome-open in Mac?

If you're trying to open an image file like a .png, .jpg, etc. from Terminal in OS X, you can use open filename.png where filename.png is the actual pathname of the target image file. By default, it will open in Preview.

In Terminal, type man open and press enter to read the BSD General Commands Manual for the open command.

OS X is not Linux and Linux specific commands like xdg-open and gnome-open do not exist in OS X unless they've been ported by managers like Homebrew and you have installed using one of the managers like Homebrew or installed from source code by yourself, that is if you can satisfy the dependancies involved too (which is what Homebrew does for the command it ports).


Can I connect two Mac Pro to one monitor?

No, you cannot physically connect both Mac Pro's to the same Apple Thunderbolt Display. However, you might look in to a KVM switch which lets one display connect to multiple computers.

However, you could connect one Mac Pro to the display, and use Remote Desktop software on that Mac Pro to display the screen from the other Mac Pro.


How do I sync contacts between 2 iCloud accounts with iOS 8?

Found this on a forum today.  Suppose a husband and wife want to share contacts.  In Settings > iCloud, the husband adds his account.  In it, he must sync contacts; he can also sync whatever else he wants.

In Settings > iCloud, the wife adds her account.  In it, she cannot sync contacts, but she can sync whatever else she wants.  In Settings > Mail, Contacts, Calendars, she adds her husband's account. In it, the only thing she syncs is contacts.

That's it.


How can I go back to Mountain Lion from Mavericks

Looking on google would have avoid this question. As Macworld UK described it, here are the steps :

Get a copy of Mountain Lion
Download the recovery Disk Assistant
Create a recovery install Disk
Restart in Recovery Mode
Erase your Main HD.
Install a fresh OS.

BUT :

IMHO, your computer should be fast enough to handle Mavericks. The problem isn't probably the system itself. You should look at the Activity Monitor to see if there are some anomalies (high memory pressure, high CPU% etc.)


5K Display (only one) and MacBook Pro mid-2015 DG Radeon 370x

Per the technical specifications, your MacBook will support a maximum resolution of 3840x2160 which is technically UHD 4K (16:9)

Can you connect a 5K display?

Yes, but it will show at the 4K resolution if you use one Thunderbolt cable.  If you use two, you can drive a 5K and the display must support MST (Multi Stream Transport).  In this scenario, only one external display is supported.

See Using 4K displays, 5K displays, and Ultra HD TVs with your Mac for more details.

Bottom line: you can only display up to the maximum that your source can push.  In other words, you can drive two monitors at 4K or one at 5K


Dual SIM: How to choose phone number when replying to SMS message in Messages

I’ve been exploring this and it seems its still not possible.
A few possibly helpful notes/workarounds:

Clicking on the number at the top, and selecting “info,” text will be displayed that says “Using Primary/Secondary for this conversation.” That at least tells you which number is being used, but its not clickable or changeable.
There is a workaround for changing which number you iMessage from (does not apply to SMS/MMS texts): Go to Settings > Messages > Send & Receive. Uncheck the number you are currently iMessaging from to disable it in the “You can receive iMessages and reply from” list, and check the number you would like to iMessage from under “Start new conversations from.” Go back to Messages, and send a message to the contact/conversation you would like to switch numbers on. The first may go through as an SMS from your switched number, but after that iMessage should be re-enabled. After you’ve sent one iMessage on a thread from the correct number you would like to use, go back to Settings > Messages > Send & Receive and re-enable all lines as you would like them. Conversations will continue to use the last number you set. Repeat this unfriendly process whenever you need.
I don’t know of any workaround for SMS/MMS other than deleting the entire conversation history. If you delete the entire history with that contact, it will show up as a new conversation, and you can choose which number to initiate that conversation from.
Hopefully Apple makes this easier soon


You need first something to capture the input, which can then be routed to an output.
Launch Quicktime Player, elect New Audio Recording & next to the red dot, select your input.
Turn up the volume slider underneath.
This should then route to your outputs, allowing playback. You don't even need to start the recording.
There will be latency, maybe as much as half a second.


Regarding option number 1, the Apple Stores do not do hard drive upgrades.  You will need to take it to an authorized 3rd party or if it is a recent model MacBook Pro i would recommend just doing it yourself.  It is fairly easy and iFixit has a step by step guide on their site http://www.ifixit.com/Browse/Mac.  A 500gb hard drive should be relatively inexpensive on newegg.com or amazon.com, and i would also recommend going with a 7200rpm.

I upgraded my late 2009 13" MacBook Pro to a 320gb 7200rpm Western Digital drive from newegg and have been pretty happy with the performance.

For option number 2, all you have to do is drag the tv show out of itunes and on to another drive.  Once it is transfered you can delete it from itunes.  Keep in mind that you probably want to keep a back up of the drive you transfer the shows to or else if that drive fails you have lost the content.


How does Watch determine distance walked if Location Services are off?

The Apple Watch Series 3 and later comes with a built-in GPS chip. It uses a combination of GPS readings and arm movement which can be detected with the help of built-in accelerometer and give you an estimate of number of steps and distance walked.

Allowing the movement of the arm on which you are wearing the watch can lead the watch to give more accurate readings.

Apple also recommends you calibrate the watch to obtain better readings. Refer to this Apple Support document, Calibrating your Apple Watch for improved Workout and Activity accuracy to learn more.

A related discussion on Apple Community Forum post, How does apple watch count steps?, sheds some more light on what calibration does to improve the readings:

  Calibrating your watch can improve the accuracy of estimations made by Activity app and Workout app. Calibration teaches your Apple Watch how your arm movements relate to your stride lengths at different speeds when you are walking and/or running. It does this - during outdoor walks and/or outdoor runs recorded via the Workout app - by comparing data from the accelerometer with GPS (Location Services) data.


Only show local media files in iTunes in El Capitan

You have to turn off Apple Music in the General settings of the iTunes app. Press Command , and uncheck the box.


We observed this issue at some schools running 10.11 where entire labs would get the "restricted" attribute mistakenly set on /private/tmp. If that's the issue, you can fix it by doing the following:

Reboot the computer and then hold down Command-R after the chime.
Choose "Terminal" from the Utilities menu.
Run csrutil disable
Restart the computer again.
Open Terminal and run the following commands:

sudo chmod 1777 /tmp;
sudo chflags -R norestricted /private/tmp/;

Re-enable System Integrity Protection by rebooting the computer, holding down Command-R, choosing Utilities > Terminal, and running csrutil enable
Reboot the computer a final time.


If you're trying to send an ↑ to the terminal, I've been able to accomplish this using the Send Text with "vim" Special Chars option and then using the escape sequence \u000d[A. For example, I'm using it to clear the console and repeat the last command, so the full sequence I'm sending is:
clear\u000d\u001b[A\u001b[A\u000d

This first writes clear to the console and then submits with Enter as \u000d. Then, ↑ is sent twice to get the command submitted before the last clear command, and Enter is sent again to submit the retrieved command.
Hope this helps you. Cheers!


Lion not responding to mouse clicks over VNC

This is a very popular issue. VNC server is not the only thing that has problem working with Lion.

I think the problem stems from the fact that; Lion can handle multiple user connections. So to make it work, you need to logout of your Mac first then try connecting remotely. More information in this forum..

http://forums.macrumors.com/archive/index.php/t-1193137.html


Mailto links on websites open iTerm instead of Mail

You can set the default Mail application, via Mail.app Preferences.

It is underneath the "General" settings, as "Default email reader".

Even if Mail.app appears to be already selected it might be worth a shot to select something else, then go back to Mail.app in order to clear the cobwebs.


Apple script fail on copying attachment from Outlook

The parameter error is arising because one of the parameters you're sending to the save command is erroneous.  The f parameter is the attachment to be saved—this is fine.
The problem is the second parameter, which you've stated is a POSIX file path (one composed of forward slashes, e.g. /Users/hitzg/Desktop/some_file.txt).
However, the variable saveAsName is derived from saveToFolder, which gets its file path from the choose folder command.  This command returns an HFS path (one composed of colons, e.g. Macintosh HD:Users:hitzg:Desktop:some_file.txt).
So the fix is simply to decide which type of file path format you're going to go with, and stick to it.  You can EITHER use posix paths, and change this line of the script (shortened for readability) from this:
set saveToFolder to (choose folder) as string

to this:
set saveToFolder to POSIX path of (choose folder)

OR use HFS paths, and change this line of the script:
save f in POSIX file saveAsName

to this:
save f in file saveAsName

That fixes your parameter error, but I haven't tested the rest of your script to see how it performs.  Reading through it, there aren't any glaring errors, so I don't anticipate any other major issues.

ADDENDUM
I'd like to offer a few edits to your original script that I believe streamlines the code whilst making it more efficient and performant.  Your existing script is excellent, however with strategic use of the AppleScript whose filter, we can eliminate the first of the repeat loops, whilst improving the performance of the second.
set saveToFolder to (choose folder) as text

tell application "Microsoft Outlook"
    set srcFolder to mail folder "Inbox" of exchange account "FOO"

    set selectedMessages to a reference to (messages of srcFolder whose ¬
        class of attachments contains attachment and ¬
        "From: First Last <scanner@some.some>" is in headers)

    set attFiles to a reference to attachments of selectedMessages
    set [n, m] to [count selectedMessages, count attFiles]

    repeat with f in the attFiles
        set savePath to saveToFolder & name of f
        save f in file savePath
    end repeat
end tell

display alert "" & m & " attachments were saved" message ¬
    "These belonged to " & n & " messages" as ¬
    informational buttons {"OK"} default button 1

The key element of this version of the script is the implementation of the whose filter here:
    set selectedMessages to a reference to (messages of srcFolder whose ¬
        class of attachments contains attachment and ¬
        "From: First Last <scanner@some.some>" is in headers)

Instead of searching through all the messages in your inbox for messages sent from a particular sender, then grabbing the attachments, the filter's first criterion instantly picks out only the messages in your inbox that have attachments; messages without attachments are superfluous to our needs, so we don't even need to consider them.  The second criterion specifies that emails should come from a specific person, although the address of sender unfortunately can't be incorporated into the filter, so instead I've utilised the message headers to make sure it contains the appropriate "From: ..." string.
To format this string, simply obtain the headers property for one message from the specific sender, and skim through it until you come across a few lines that look like this:
From: First Last <scanner@some.some>
Subject: Hello World!
Thread-Topic: Hello Again
Thread-Index: AdQD5jaiEJ7GiUlKRYeD5LaN3BaSpA==
Date: Thu, 14 Jun 2018 13:22:53 +0000
Message-ID: <B64BBE7A4C13095094C6A44D85FA3FDB5085651F@ABCD-mail.somemailbox.foo.com>

It'll be roughly in the middle of the header text.  Then just make sure your filter text matches the "From:" line (copy-n-paste), as this will almost certainly be the same throughout all emails from that sender, unless they changed their first and last names at any point (which may, of course, be absent).
A slightly looser filter if you are concerned that the first and last names could have changed over time, would simply be to filter the headers to see if they contain just the email address "scanner@some.some".  Since you'll only be searching your inbox, it's reasonable to assume that any occurrence of that email address in an inbox message header means that email either originated from that address or was Cc'd to that address as well as you:
    set selectedMessages to a reference to (messages of srcFolder whose ¬
        class of attachments contains attachment and ¬
        "<scanner@some.some>" is in the headers)

The rest of the script is more-or-less the same, with the fix for the parameter error implemented.
Having tested the script on my system, it worked as expected and performed very efficiently.  The bottlenecking in speed for me was having to download each attachment in order to save it, so there was a data transfer consideration when running in against my Exchange mail folder.
When running it against a local mail folder with attachments already downloaded, the saving of attachments was virtually instantaneous.


Recover GoodReader data after iOS 7 upgrade?

This is not exactly answering to my own questions. But for those who knows programming, there is a way to get away with it. For me, I wanted to restore all photos I put in my GoodReader.

I get into the backup directory. Used the bash command:

ls * | xargs file {} | grep image\ data > /Desktop/backup.txt

to list all files and it was printed like this (the first few rows):

2:0006c6f73a741907373e2eabcb3763bebf17bdc8: PNG image data, 25 x 15, 8-bit/color RGBA, non-interlaced
3:000bb4a992491782ef65642e1298244242883c66: JPEG image data, EXIF standard 2.21
4:001c384e486a787bb376cee192ee763858e00274: JPEG image data, EXIF standard 2.21

Then I am using Python to rename those files back to Jpeg or PNG files. There are not the same names as they were originally but this has been good enough. There is a Manifest.mbdb file in the same backup directory. I didn't have much time digging into it but this file looks like to contain information which one can use to restore all information.


A white line sticks on the top of on my MacBook Pro 15 inch 2016's screen

I had a problem vaguely like that that turned out to be in one case an icon and in another case an oddly placed window.

Try this. Open a Finder window and look at the contents of your desktop in list view. Compare that to the icons that show up on the desktop if there is seemingly one or more icons in list view of the Desktop folder that may be the cluprit. Delete it or move it elsewhere.

Close or hide all windows on the desktop. Tap Command w. See if the line disappears.

Quit out of all open applications, ALL of them. Tap Command Tab. Is there anything in the list besides Finder?

Change your desktop background to an Apple supplied picture, and try a solid color (one light, one dark) see if the line vanishes. It might be a part of your desktop background, though that is less likely if it shows up in other apps.

Boot the Mac in safe mode. If the line disappears it is something that you installed that runs automatically and puts that line there. Start removing startup items.


1 pint varies by country and Spotlight clearly does not use language settings to determine the correct value for 1 pint. It is 473 ml in USA and a few other countries.  See Wikipedia.  In Australia it is 570 ml, in the UK 568 ml, in India 330 ml and the list goes on.
I have submitted a Feedback Report to Apple FB9020879 and will report in comments what response (if any) that I get.
US measurements derive from usage in Britain before the War of Independence. The units were defined in 1707.  Britain changed some definitions in 1824 to the current Imperial units whilst the USA kept to the earlier system.  A bit like spelling changes where Britain has changed since 1776 but the USA has remained more consistent with older usage.
Just to make it harder for Apple, here in Australia, a pint glass of beer is 570 ml, except in South Australia where it is 425 ml.
I trust you don't consider this history too irrelevant in a technical forum, but @CaptainProg has referred to his interest in brewing.


Is there any GUI application that runs on both Mac OS X 10.0 Cheetah and macOS 10.13.4 High Sierra?

According to Wikipedia, Cheetah was shipped with AppleScript. So if you can have a Mac running Snow Leopard, according to comments of this question (and not the answer, it's strange), it seems that an AppleScript saved as app give a universal app (PowerPC G4 and above, or Intel). I haven't tested, but perhaps if you save this AppleScript:

display dialog "hello"

as app on the Snow Leopard's AppleScript Editor, it will run under Cheetah and High Sierra.

This AppleScript app is very simple, and display "hello" in a window, with a "OK" button. So this is a very simple GUI application.


Can I swap an LCD between different laptop generations?

No the parts are not compatible nor are the cabling and mount points.

See http://ifixit.com for take apart manuals and possibly repair parts for your broken LCD on the MacBook Pro.


MacBook Pro Lion Recovery Cannot Reinstall

Most of the problems seem to be coming from having the wrong date (and possibly not having internet access).

You might as well zap the PRAM. If you have problems, see here.  Then be sure you are connected to both power and internet when you reboot.  If necessary, set the clock manually.

The issue with the screen, well, it depends on how hard you're pressing and which model MacBook you're using, but it is not necessarily unusual.

UPDATE: I've been reminded that one cause of computer slowness is a failing hard drive.  Sadly, despite S.M.A.R.T status reporting, it's very hard to be sure if a drive is failing until it has completely failed.  See if you can boot off an external drive and compare the performance.


Can I disable Safari's pinch-to-zoom tab switcher?

This is currently not possible. Apple does not provide a way to turn this off.

Note that if your swiping is begun whilst still zoomed slightly, the tab switcher is not invoked. See this animation:

This is a pretty large GIF — it'll take a while to load and be smooth.


I don't think that will be a problem, but you may initially need to hold the Alt key while booting and choose the Startup drive. If it still won't boot, reset PRAM with holding altcmdPR while booting.


corrupted files, fail checksum but , disk and FS checks with disk utility

I treat all Input/output (IO) errors as 5 alarm situations. When I see IO in the console log, I save all work, quit all apps and then get a full backup. The filesystem is designed to keep the filesystem intact which means when a file has a problem, the file gets truncated and deleted. Your data loses, the filesystem gets healed. Seeing an IO error bubble up to the application layer is either:

no big deal - you have some corrupt files
a huge deal - you have limited time to back up files that aren’t already backed up

Then once I have a backup - I do watch a day or so for IO errors and delete the files that are affected. If I see the IO errors spread, I do an erase installation and keep monitoring.

SSD are a bit different than HDD so I’ve only seen one SSD ever throw an actual IO error since the controller almost always intercepts and corrects these with checksum. In my experience, 100% of issues are just bit rot, crash and app failures - not that the SSD is starting to show signs of failure. I’ve never had warning of an SSD failing - they just go. Also, the SSD Apple delivers are way, way, way more reliable than the HDD Apple delivered. Erase install is basically a cure-all, get out of jail free card for me in the last 10 years managing Macs. Only when a system can’t install and run a blank OS do I think hardware needs diagnosis and repair.

Back to you, if you don’t have a full backup you trust, please do that now with haste. Next, read up on how to erase. All signs you have indicate your hardware is fine and you might not even find any IO errors in the console app (or using log stream). Since you know exactly how to summon that error - watch the log as you poke at these broken files trying to read / open / checksum them.

Your instincts to test are perfect - the disk and hardware are almost certainly OK - just may only need to wipe the filesystem and restore good files on to a clean OS when the system can’t self heal itself. The SSD controller maps multiple chained storage cells with data, so TRIM and bad blocks are more about keeping a substantial portion of the space free so that “bad blocks” don’t get hard mapped out like hard drives needed. My understanding is perhaps 10% of the drive can go bad and you won’t lose a block or capacity as far as the operating system is concerned.


Upgrade to mountain lion from dual-boot ubuntu configuration

Basically, I ran into the issue discussed on the apple message board.  One of the partitions had been altered (probably by rEFIt), and I had to "fix it".  I'll list the steps I went through while troubleshooting.  I guess it goes without saying you should have good backups before you do this.  Not an issue for me.

I'm running a MBA 2011, one internal disk, 6 partitions on it in total.
I repaired the disk with disk utility, reboot (not sure that this did anything).
I tried to use fdisk -u /dev/disk0, reboot (not sure that this did anything).
I tried an article about resizing a partition with disk utility, it didn't work.  Some error about wrong partition type, even though it was an HFS+ partition.
I installed gptfdisk -- installed using brew brew install gptfdisk.  I'm sure you can get it another way.

once installed, you run with sudo gdisk /dev/disk0
find your "Recovery Partition", for me that was partition 3 i <CR> 3 <CR>
Change the type t <CR> 3 <CR> to Apple Boot
Write the table w <CR>
Reboot

Upon reboot I could successfully upgrade to mountain lion

To get Ubuntu back booting I had to do a combination of fixing up the MBR, and re-installing grub to /dev/disk0 (/dev/sda in ubuntu) which should be familiar to most people.  For my case (Macbook air 4-2), I had to follow ubuntu's instructions (skipping things associated with installing the OS of course), especially the part about the bios_grub partition.  This must be something that was done for me in the past, since this is the first I remember seeing it.


This is quite a workaround to go through and unfortunately involves paying for a software (unless you're aware of free alternatives)  but thought I'd throw it out there while looking for more details:

Using a program like Keyboard Maestro, you can record a Macro that will be the result of a string/hotkey.

I recorded as follows:

Hit record
Pressed and held option key.
Clicked on Wifi menubar
Stopped recording.

I then set up the trigger to be a hotkey (like CMD+,) or a string like wifio. Both worked. Detailed Wifi menu was opened and waited for my choice.


Samsung Easy document Scanner won't communicate with scanner on OS X Catalina 10.15

That is because Easy Document Creator uses several apps underneath and not all are 64-bit, as required by Catalina.

One of them is Select Scanner.app (in /Applications/Samsung/Samsung Easy Document Creator.app/Contents/Resources/Select Scanner.app), which is 32-bit for Intel and PowerPC (!).

The other one, with the same problem, is ICCUpdater.

There's nothing you can do; only bug HP to publish updated version.

Meanwhile, to be able to scan at all, use Image Capture or Preview (File, Import...). Just make sure that the scanned file is OK, the Apple drivers seem to be broken too; for example, I cannot scan in color into PDF, the resulting PDF is broken (Samsung M2070w). B/W PDF is fine, so is color JPG.


Running script from BBEdit/TextWrangler gives "tput: No value for $TERM and no -T specified"

The solution is to enclose any use of tput in .bash_profile within a test for interactive shell, i.e.:

if [[ $- == *i* ]]; then
  #tput command
  #tput command
  #tput command
  #etc
fi


Importing/Exporting Preview Signatures on OS X 10.10 (Yosemite)

It's a little too obvious now.  The image data is recorded as the password entry in KeyChain.  So, to copy a signature, create a signature on your new Mac by camera or touchpad.  Then:

Find the desired "Signature Annotation Privacy" entry in KeyChain on your old Mac.
Right-Click and "Copy Password to Clipboard"
Paste the text (base64 is all printable) into a text file
Copy the text file to your new Mac
Find the new "Signature Annotation Privacy" entry on your new Mac
Highlight and delete the Password field from that entry
Copy the contents of the text file to your clipboard
Paste the contents into the password field
Save Changes


Getting "Call using iphone failed" on incoming calls

I noticed that I only had the problem when my iPhone was near my MacBook pro. It turned out that the problem had to do with the Handoff featured introduced in iOS 8 and OS X Yosemite.

When I turned off Handoff and Facetime integration on my iphone, the problem went away. Here are a couple of threads with more details on how to deal with this:

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/6538204?start=0&tstart=0 (final post in thread)

And here's a possible fix that I haven't tried:

http://www.imore.com/continuity-fix


/System is protected by SIP (System Integrity Protection), which prevents writes made there.

It can be disabled, but you might be better off seeing if you can make modifications some other way, e.g. creating a duplicate screensaver effect that is saved to /Library.

Catalina is already doubling-down on system alterations by placing the system on a read-only volume, so any changes you make will be short-lived.


How can I copy 10GB files onto a 64GB USB drive?

You need to use Disk Utility and format it as HFS+. FAT doesn't support files larger that 4GB (I think).
Go to Disk Utility and select the drive. Then erase it and select the format as Mac OS Extended (Journaled). You can name it whatever you'd like.


How do I open multiple instances of an app?

Because OSX is just unix, you can use a terminal to run the original binary that's stored in the *.app directory. A la

/Applications/TextEdit.app/Contents/MacOS/TextEdit &

Keep in mind some applications use databases to store their data which may cause conflicts or loss of data.

If you don't want to use the terminal, then you can make a shortcut icon that runs this command using the built in Automater app


The 'option' key at startup will give you the option of selecting another startup disk. The problem may be that your USB stick is not considered a valid startup option.


While it has many more features than this, something like xScope sounds great for this.

Some main features:

mirroring
getting on screen dimensions
rulers
guides
frames
crosshair


Editing a system preferences .plist file (not user preferences .plist file)

defaults can also work on plist files specified on the command line, so you can use
sudo defaults write /Library/Preferences/om.xyz.app.plist key value


How can I screen share/VNC to a Linux system (Ubuntu 16.04) from my MAC (10.11)?

You don't even need to download any VNC client, as a basic one is built-in.

Finder -> Go -> Connect to Server.

Then in the address bar vnc://<your server ip or hostname>. Something like:

I hope it will help,
Jarek


Command to list available webcam/video devices?


Gmail account in Mail on SnowLeopard: how well does it work?


How can I mass organize more than 40 apps on my iPhone?

To the best of my knowledge, no. However Apple still has the last version of iTunes with App Management still available for download, here.

You can download and replace your current (newer version) with this one, though you may (not sure, though I would...) have to delete your newer version before installing this.


How to reset a magsafe charger that doesn't charge macbook pro's battery?

Sounds like you got a sticking ground pin.

Just plug it out when connecting to the laptop horizontally (with more force) and stick it back it horizontally as well. Usually this is due to you removing the plug by lifting it (feels gentle but actually bad) rather than yanking it.


AppleScript - how to search a list for items containing numbers

This doesn't seem like a terribly efficient way to do it, but I think that's an AppleScript issue rather than my lack of creativity (I might be wrong):

    set mylist to {"table", "s01e01", "nam", "aces", "linear", "20160430", "01", "textless", "3840x2160", "000011", "jpg"}

    repeat with str in mylist
        set str to the contents of str

        repeat with i from 0 to 9
            if str contains i then
                set end of mylist to str
                exit repeat
            end if
        end repeat

        set mylist to the rest of mylist
    end repeat

    return mylist

You could do it much more gracefully using a bit of shell script:

    set mylist to {"table", "s01e01", "nam", "aces", "linear", "20160430", "01", "textless", "3840x2160", "000011", "jpg"}

    set the text item delimiters to space

    do shell script "grep -o '\\S*\\d\\S*' <<< " & the quoted form of (mylist as text)

    return the paragraphs of the result

EDIT: I spoke a little too soon about my (lack of creativity), as I just came up with this slightly slicker method of doing it with AppleScript.  In theory, it should be faster than the first method too:

    set mylist to {"table", "s01e01", "nam", "aces", "linear", "20160430", "01", "textless", "3840x2160", "000011", "jpg"}

    set the text item delimiters to {0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9}

    repeat with str in mylist
        set str to the contents of str as text

        if str ≠ the text items of str as text then ¬
            set the end of mylist to str

        set mylist to the rest of mylist
    end repeat

    return mylist


Is it good practice to use OS X with a Standard user, and have a separate Admin account?

Yes, the less your user can do, the less it can break. You can easily choose a short admin user name and use an easy to type password for doing admin things.

It really depends on your threat model and how expensive tech-support is for you and your organization and whether you have data that's worth protecting. You can surely run admin users and use something like Time Machine combined with periodic off-site or off-line backups so that if you should lose data or have a system compromise, you can plan for how long it will take to restore your system to before it was changed.

Your permissions and planning seem prudent and I don't see any downside to your set up.


Using iCloud with iPhoto without upgrading to iPhoto 9

As outlined in this question, a workaround does exist, but it's ugly.

You'd need to run a virtual machine running Windows (I'm not sure if you could do it with Wine, or if you'd need an actual copy of MS Windows (which is much more expensive than $16). You then download iCloud Control Panel from Apple and install it on your virtual machine. Then, you can use it to send photos to iCloud.

So yes, it can be done. But you're likely better off spending the $16.


How do I add more categories to Mac OS X Finder's sidebar?

It's not possible to add more categories (see picture). There are:

Favorites:

For any subdirectory of the root directory
You can add custom links to folders (not files) via drag and drop
custom searches

Shared:

Local Network, Servers, Back to my Mac, Time Capsule,...

Devices:

Harddrives (internal/external), other storage media like CDs, devices like iPhones

However,

there is a workaround which allows to add separators and changing icons.

Download the icons here. Related forum posts.