text:
How to find users not in *any* groups in WGM?
In Workgroup Manager (Mountain Lion, but really any version), how can you get it to show all users who do not belong to a group?
Can't use the "by Group ID" thing in the Advanced Search, because that's just trying to match actual groups against your search term, not users who belong to groups.
Any ideas?
Thanks!

AFAIK, every user has a primary group.  I can't think of a way to create or modify a user so that this is not true...  Unix doesn't allow it.  Do you mean to look for users which aren't in any group except for the primary group?

Fair enough, yes — I'd forgotten about the primary group, as it goes completely unused in my context. So yeah, not in anything except that. :)

(I've got hundreds of users, and almost all are in classroom groups, but I know there are a handful who have left the school and should be deleted. Just don't have any way of identifying which users they are.)

WGM is not going to be of much help.  You're going to need to dive into dsmemberutil and the dscl command lines.  This superuser post has some good material: http://superuser.com/questions/279891/list-all-members-of-a-group-mac-os-x


text:
How do you use an existing AppleID on iOS App Store without providing a credit card number?
I already have an Apple ID, made at Apple.com. Now, when I want to access the App Store from my iPad, I am told that I have to review my information. On the credit card page, I am not presented with a "None" option, even though I am in the United States.
What can I do to proceed without entering this information?

You can't use an existing Apple ID and then enroll it into the store.
The "none" option only exists for new accounts as a one-time (or limited count) event for that device thanks to scammers and people that manipulate app store ratings with factory reviews and paid downloads.
You can usually make a brand new Apple ID following these steps:
https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204034
It's generally a bigger pain to have two Apple ID, so I would encourage you to not set up a new ID just to avoid the temporary delay of getting a legitimate address and card for temporary use.
Once you have your account verified, you can use store credit for just about everything on the store.

You need to do the following when at the Credit Card page

Click on Paypal
Click on 'To redeem a code, click here'

From this new workflow, you will be able to get to the same page with the 'None' option

This doesn't seem to be a valid option.

what worked for me was to choose Paypal as payment type, then cancel when asked to login to Paypal. After that "None" option was available. (might have to change country to US temporarily) See http://apple.stackexchange.com/a/139634/44901

This only works once you are past the point where the iOS app store asks for a billing address and credit card.

It probably also depends on the country. The Dutch store also has an option for 'Clickandbuy' as another alternative.

go to your account in iTunes and then sign out, still beeing signed out, "purchase" a free app in iTunes youll then be promted to sign in, do so and then head over to your account and billing information the "none" option has now have appeared, choose it and save your information. and you are all done...
IF that doesnt work try this check your purchase history for any unpaid bills, rather outstanding balance. Take care of that and the None option should appear.
apples description

Nope, tried that already.

thats really weird, i did it less then an hour before i saw your post and it worked great, try this check your purchase history for any unpaid bills, rather outstanding balance.
Take care of that and the None option should appear.

this is a completely new account.

hmmm, bit of a puzzle, here is apples description on how it SHOULD work
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT2534

I'm guessing since Apple's steps involve creating the Apple ID during the download free app process, it's not possible to proceed with an "existing" Apple ID without entering a credit card.

Go to apple store, for example look for Youtube app, which is free app, you will be prompted to sign in, create new account under icloude, follow the on screen instruction, on account and billing screen, choose the "none" option,and submit the form you are done. so easy and straight forward.

This doesn't work for an existing AppleID - it only works if you make up a new AppleID and only for a limited few accounts (3 currently)

source: Stack Exchange

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

sort: votes


text:
How can I send the current working directory from bash to Terminal?
I set up a very nice custom bash prompt in .bash_profile, but I noticed that I've now lost the ability for new tabs to open in the same directory, and the ability to see the current working directory's icon in the titlebar.
How can I get that back?
I've made some progress in the direction by adding "\e]2;\w\a" to $PS1, but that displays the full path in the titlebar, not just the name of the working directory. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

Did you change PROMPT_COMMAND? The default PROMPT_COMMAND is defined in /etc/bashrc:
# Tell the terminal about the working directory at each prompt.
if [ "$TERM_PROGRAM" == "Apple_Terminal" ] && [ -z "$INSIDE_EMACS" ]; then
    update_terminal_cwd() {
        # Identify the directory using a "file:" scheme URL,
        # including the host name to disambiguate local vs.
        # remote connections. Percent-escape spaces.
        local SEARCH=' '
        local REPLACE='%20'
        local PWD_URL="file://$HOSTNAME${PWD//$SEARCH/$REPLACE}"
        printf '\e]7;%s\a' "$PWD_URL"
    }
    PROMPT_COMMAND="update_terminal_cwd; $PROMPT_COMMAND"
fi

Yeah... I overrode PROMPT_COMMAND to track the time it took the last command to execute. This function did the trick. Thanks!

Note: Don't just copy this code into your startup script. This code is installed in the system and you should continue using whatever's installed, because it gets updated over time. In particular, this code was significantly overhauled in OS X 10.11 El Capitan to work with all pathnames (the above version doesn't handle non-ASCII characters). When customizing PROMPT_COMMAND append your commands to it like this: PROMPT_COMMAND="${PROMPT_COMMAND:+$PROMPT_COMMAND; }your_code_here"

all_licenses: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/


text:
Reset iPhone 3GS with broken power button and touch screen
I've got a broken 3GS and both the power button and touch screen are broken and there's a passcode I forgot on it.
It's also no longer synced with iTunes.
So basically I want to get this thing in recovery mode but how?
Can't reset it with iTunes.
Can't power it off to get it in recovery mode.
How can I shut off the device (preferably with voice commands or USB)
It's not jailbroken so no SSH either.
I've also got an iPod Touch (4th generation) and was wondering if I could steal the power button and/or screen from that, even if it's just to format it.

This happened to me too.  My son forgot his password, and he didn't want his iPhone anymore, but I wanted to erase the device before selling/recycling it.
The broken power button (also called the "sleep/wake" button) makes this difficult - normally you'd hold down the power & home buttons simultaneously while connected to iTunes via USB, all the way through a power cycle, through the apple logo's appearance, until it shows you the Recovery Mode screen as shown here: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201412
Without a working power button, a variation is necessary.  What I did was use the Assistive Touch feature, which my son had already turned on months before, since the power button wasn't working.  Plug the device into a computer with iTunes loaded.  Hold down the "Lock Screen" button (in the "Device" submenu) for a few seconds until the power-off slider is shown.  Then, while holding down the Home button, slide the power-off slider to the right - keep holding the Home button for a long time, through the device powering off, through the Apple logo, and until the Recovery Mode screen appears.
Now follow the prompts in iTunes on the computer, and the device should reset as normal.

Here's an idea. Take a magnet, and touch the screen with it. By any luck, the magnet will the trigger the system to erase all the memory, and you can reset it up. But if it doesnt work (because its just an idea and I never tried it), go to an Apple specialist. You may wanna recycle it and probably update it to a better phone, such as the iphone 5s and 5c that is coming out, unless you're collecting old iphones. But still this is an idea and I hope it works and helps for you.

So you've never tried this. But have you even heard of an instance where this actually worked?  Where did you get the idea?


text:
How do I export my iPhone Messages to a PDF file?
Is there any app that will allow you to export your iPhone text messages to a PDF file while keeping all the conversation threads intact?

Phoneview will retrieve your messages and export them to PDF, XML, or text.  (It also does a lot more, pulling files off your phone, letting you dig into application storage, archiving voice mail, etc.)
They offer a 7-day trial to see if it will work for you.
I'm not aware of any way to do this with the stock software.


text:
Setting iCal Calendar defaults
I have a calendar with birthdays in them and I'd like to set the repeat to "Every year" -- unfortunately setting each manually seems quite painful. Would there be an easier way to accomplish this?
Im on an OSX 10.8.

You could add the birthdays to your Contacts, then you'll see each birthday every year automatically.


text:
to run latest emacs in terminal by typing "emacs"
Question:
Because I use emacs-live, I used homebrew to install emacs-24.3. Now everytime I want to launch emacs of version 24.3 in terminal, I have to type "emacs-24.3" --- if I just type "emacs", it launches the original updated emacs came with Mac OS.
how can I configure these so that I only need to type "emacs" and launch the one installed by homebrew?
I use emacs in terminal, so the workaround that installing GUI version of emacs is not the solution what I am looking for. I use OSX Lion.
Note:
Solved the issue by reading this post! the point was to restart my terminal after doing what you guys suggested...
For future visitors I will just post full procedure for solving this issue.
Solution:

Add following line in .bash_profile: PATH="/usr/local/bin:$PATH" as this post explained.
Close the terminal and restart again. If you don't restart, you will be stuck as I did :-)

You need to alter your PATH to put /usr/local/bin on the front - which is a duplicate

@Mark I did put /usr/local/bin on top of the rests, but it doesn't fix the problem -- typing emacs won't invoke the one installed by brew. Also followed instruction in your link but doesn't fix the problem as well...

→ Seven: please insert the output of echo ${PATH} so as to understand why this question already dealt with (  http://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/49389/amending-path-so-that-usr-local-bin-is-ahead-of-usr-bin ) doesn't help you correctly.

@Mark Just figured out I didn't restart my terminal! If you can post what you suggested in comment, I want to accept your post as answer :-)

@danielAzuelos Thanks Daniel, I just realized that I didn't restart my terminal looool!!

→ Seven: you don't have to. Every modification of .bash_profile must be followed by:
another window opened (to check your shell is  still working) and . ~/.bash_profile to load it in your actual shell.

@danielAzuelos replace the and in the last sentence with an or

→ Mark: this is an and because, the 1st trick is to ensure that the ~/.bash_profile is error proof, the 2nd trick is to use it now that one knows it is OK. Perhaps should I put it in bold ;). In fact it isn't an and but an &&.


text:
Is there a log of auto-updated apps?
iOS 7 has a new auto-update apps feature.  When it's enabled, you don't have to manually go into the App Store app and download updates for your installed apps.  However, I want to be able to find out what apps have been updated recently, and the App Store app just has a 'all your apps are updated' message on the Update tab.
Is there a log somewhere that lists recently-updated apps?

The App Store should show a list of apps in the Update tab that have been updated, with details such as when it was updated, the changelog and a button to open the app.

I finally got my first batch of post-iOS 7 upgrade app updates, and I see this on my iPhone now.

There is a blue dot next to the app name for any app that has been updated, or downloaded, and has not been started since that update/download.  This allows you to keep track of what is updating.  I'm sure on a jailbroken machine (when a jailbreak is available) you can list IPAs by modified date to get a list you could then use for some other purpose.


text:
How do I correct the iOS7 photo app's location guess?
iOS7 organizes photos into automatic groups. It labels each group with a location. It often chooses the wrong location.
For example if you're at the supermarket it might say "Anytown Post Office" if there happens to be a post office near by
How do I correct it with the correct location? In the example above I want the group labeled "Supermarket" instead of "Post Office"

You can edit this in iPhoto on your mac, but only on the local copy not the Photo Stream copy. On the iPhone you'd want to get a metadata editor app such as EXIF-fi ($.99)


text:
OSX Mountain Lion - Remove shadows from Uncover Gesture
I have a quick question. When utilizing the uncover window gesture (IE. move 3 fingers apart) to reveal the desktop there is a shadow which boarders the screen.
I would like to know is there a way I can remove this shadow from appearing with an app or a script?
Personally without the shadow I believe the desktop provides a more elegant appearance.

The purpose of the shadows is to show that you are temporarily pushing the content to the edges to "clear some space" over your desktop, presumably where you will then copy or rename a file or perform some other short action with one of your Desktop items.  It's existence signifies that you have plenty of windows open and ready to return to their previous on screen location at a gesture.
If you removed it, then it would look no different from a normal desktop with all apps minimised, or say a fresh desktop space within Mission Control, and how then would you be able to distinguish between the 2?
Obviously the above isn't necessarily an answer to your question (my answer would be "There is no supported method of doing this nor am I aware of any defaults write style .plist edit that would hack it), but perhaps understanding the purpose of them more will enable you to put up with them better.

Yes, This does not answer my question


text:
Certificate error when using Chrome for iOS with company CA
I am using an iPad with Google Chrome installed to access the internet. I have downloaded and installed the Netbox Blue certificate authority from their website. I can currently access https:// websites using Safari however I cannot access these sites using the Chrome app. I am not getting any certificate errors while using Safari.
Is there a particular way you need to add certificate authorities to the Chrome app, or is this an issue with my connection?

There is no way to add Certificate Authorities to Chrome.app on iOS. The only way to manage them is in Settings > General > Profiles.
It seems like this is an issue with Chrome.app that's not resolved yet. See Chrome for iOS ignores trusted root CA certificate. You may get additional help by posting to the Google Chrome Forum (linked before).

Sorry for the late reply, but the easiest way to get this fixed that I have found is to remove all profiles by going into Settings > General > Profiles and removing all of the profiles that you don't know...
Hopefully it helps! :)


text:
How can I import photos not in the camera roll from iPad to mac?
The photos in my iPad is synced from iPhoto in my mac, so they are not in the camera roll. But unfortunately I formatted my drive so the iPhoto library in my mac is gone. Now all the photo is in my iPad, but it seems no convenient way to get them out. I hope I can keep all the file name correct.

I think this answer may also help you. I use the same product... http://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/31235/can-i-transfer-photos-that-are-not-in-my-iphones-camera-roll-to-my-computer?rq=1

I would love to. But it seems that I cannot accept a comment since it's not an "answer"?

No worries, glad it helped


text:
MacBook Pro: Some keys not working (correctly) anymore
On my brother's MacBook Pro, suddenly the Enter, right shift, and right alt keys do not work properly anymore. It works with an external keyboard, though. PRAM/SMC reset did not help. Strangely, at least the shift and alt keys seem to at least work mechanically: When I press shift and a key, both inputs are completely ignored. When I press e.g. shift/alt/a, the correct special character is printed. So at least shift/alt seem to work, but only in some circumstances.
Any ideas on how to solve this?

How old is the MBP, and any accidental spills?

The MPB is from April 2011, and according to my brother no spills have ocurred.

Get a dusk can, a pressure can in computer store. Then blast all dirt that might sit under the keys.

We already removed the keys from the keyboard and cleaned the area underneath, but it was not dirty/dusty.

I could not know that since you did not mention in your question. It would be helpful to name your repair efforts.Like did you unplug and plug the keyboard cable?

Does it work as virtual keyboard ? on the screen keyboard?

Working correctly with an external keyboard is a good indicator that the internal keyboard is damaged and needs repair or replacement.

I would not be so harsh with a 2011 keyboard.

@buscar It's just that I have seen users report this problem dozens of times, and when an external keyboard works right, damage to the internal one is almost always the answer, regardless of age or absence of spills, etc.  Sometimes they go bad electrically for no obvious reason.


text:
Automatically sync select folders between two Macs over LAN
I'm working on two Macs, an iMac and a MacBook, both under OS X 10.8.5. There are several GB of data that I need on both computers. I have used Dropbox and ownCloud, but I don't see why I need to transfer the files over the internet when I have a cable that connects both computers directly over my local network.
What I want is a solution that automatically syncs selected folders between these two computers, similar to a Cloud service, but directly, without the Cloud.
I have no idea how to run rsync and don't want to learn it, so the solutions shouldn't be more complicated than installing Dropbox. It would be nice if the solution was open source and free, but that is not a must.

Update [2014-05-19]:
I'm under OS 10.9 by now, and I use ChronoSync to sync my computers. I wrote an AppleScript that mounts one computer from the other, opens a ChronoSync file, and then unmounts the volume again when syncing is complete. I saved this AppleScript as an app and put it in my Dock. So now all I have to do is plug in the USB cable into my laptop, have both computers running, and click the app symbol in the Dock.
The only problem I have is with ChronoSync sometimes showing an error on .DS_Store files. I'm unable to exclude this file type or file name, although theoretically ChronoSync offers the option to do this. It's not a real problem, though, as I told ChronoSync not to stop syncing on errors, and as yet I haven't had any problems with those files.
I may look into iBackup, soon.

Update [2015-04-13]
It's been two years now and I still happily run my AppleScript. I accidentally stumbled upon this question yesterday, and realized that I never shared the code of my script. So here it is. Open the AppleScript-Editor, insert this code, and save as an application.
mount volume "afp://YOUR_USERNAME:YOUR_PASSWORD@192.168.2.50:548/YOUR_USER_FOLDER"

tell application "ChronoSync"
    activate
    open alias "Macintosh HD:Users:YOUR_USER_FOLDER:PATH:TO:SYNC_FILE.csyn"
    tell document 1 to Synchronize

    -- wait until syncronization is finished
    repeat while syncStatus of document 1 is not 0
    end repeat

    tell document 1 to save
    tell document 1 to close

    quit
end tell

tell application "Finder"
    eject disk "YOUR_USER_FOLDER"
end tell

Notes:

Replace CAPITAL_LETTER_PHRASES with your information. Take care that you don't accidentally delete the colons (":") between them.
Use the correct IP address for your "remote" computer.
I pass my username and password in the afp-URL. If I remember correctly this will cause your password to be written to your log files. This is not an issue for me, because the computer that runs this script is not connected to the internet. If you worry about security, you might want to delete that part and fill in your password each time in the prompt that comes up. I don't remember, if that breaks the script.
Remember to allow "File Sharing" under the "Sharing" settings in the System Preferences of the computer you want to connect to (in my case my laptop; the above script runs on my desktop computer at home). I deleted all the predefined "Shared Folders" and "Users" there. I always deactivate File Sharing after syncing, because otherwise someone else on the same WLAN might access my computer.

I still have to look into iBackup, lol.

That is a tough set of requirements and specifications to meet.

Hmm, not wanting to learn rsync does make it a little difficult. You might have to get someone to setup an rsync daemon that runs automatically in the background for you. It wouldn't be too hard or time consuming for someone with programming experience.

This has been playing on the back of my mind. I am going to make a sudo-app (script wrapped in a native Mac app) that will do this. Might take me a week or so to get a stable release version. But I'm determined to do it.

Dropbox will sync over a LAN as well as into the cloud

BitTorrent Sync does exactly what you want. It syncs over LAN by creating a "secret code" between the synced folders. You have the option to view your files on an iOS device through their free app. It's free and supports multiple platforms.
This is quoted from their website:

Sync and Share - Sync unlimited files between your own devices, or share a folder with friends and family to automatically sync anything.
Private and Secure - File transfers are encrypted. Your information is never stored on a server in the cloud and your data is protected by private keys.
Bigger is Better - BitTorrent Sync is specifically designed to handle large files, so feel free to sync original, high quality, uncompressed files.

I have been using it for couple months now. It's pretty much set it up and forget it.

I use iBackup for this. It is actually a GUI for rsync, so it is very efficient at syncing.
It's not quite as simple as DropBox, but it is quite straightforward.
It is free for personal use.

I had a look at this app myself just then. Pretty good. But I think the OP wants something like a daemon: a solution that automatically syncs...

You can set a schedule within the app, so out of the box it can run daily. If more frequent than that, you'd need to use Automator or other scheduling app.

Actually with "automatically" I just meant two-way syncing of new, edited and deleted files. My computers aren't always on, nor connected, so scheduled syncing wouldn't work for me. Sorry for the unclear choice of word. I want to look at iBackup soon.

Can anyone confirm whether iBackup works on later versions of macOS? Latest mentioned on the website is 10.10.

I have 3 iMacs, 3 Mac notebooks and two PCs. Keeping files in sync on each computer was so much trouble. So, I came up with my own idea. I bought Apple Time Capsule hard drive and connected to my LAN. Then I put all my files on this drive.
Now I can access all files from all 6 different computers and I don't even have to use any hard drive space on any computers. Works beautifully, including watching stored movies on any of my computers from my Time Capsule. I even access files from PCs too.
Only drawback is that if you lose the file, you cannot get it back. But, I have two time capsules. The second one I use as backup and I back it up manually once a month.

This is a good idea if your computers are stationary or your hard drive is light and small enough to travel with you.


text:
iPad USB flash drive file transfer
Can I use a 30 pin to USB adapter to connect a USB flash drive to an iPad and transfer arbitrary files back and forth?
please address specifically:

Can ANY file be transferred? Not just Image or Music files?
This can be done WITHOUT any modification (jail-breaking)

Please provide references to adapter device specifications and references from reliable sources addressing the above specific points.

No, you can't do this without jailbreaking.
http://www.pocketables.com/2013/02/accessory-review-apple-lightning-to-usb-camera-adapter-for-ipad.html
No, you cannot transfer any arbitrary files.  you cannot transfer documents, txt, source, etc; you can only transfer images and videos.

Can you rename the arbitrary files to have an image file extension? I know this works to fool Gmail into sending executable files. Perhaps it works here too.

<www.youtube.com/watch?v=m5f1VmjjczQ> video shows how use an alternate extension to transfer arbitrary files from USB to iPad.  but you cannot transfer files from the iPad to the USB drive using this method.

Well, it's good to have solid reasons for not owning any Apple products. If you can call that ownership...

@Passerby these articles and the separation of the SD and USB components doesn't seem to offer any additional capabilites.  see the question, please.


text:
How to make Apple Mail automatic forward (with rule) keep html format?
I use the Mail application (v 5.3) under Mac OSX 10.7
I have created a rule to automate mail forwarding to my team, based on the sender email address.
It works, BUT the forwarded messages are in plain text: Mail seems to lose the html formatting. Images are kept as attachments, and are displayed at the end of the mail.
That looks unprofessional, and it is really annoying when messages contains links, which people now have to copy/paste to open (and I know nobody will).
The recipients all use different mail systems: Mac, Windows or Linux, with a local client or through an webmail such as gmail. The problem really comes from Mail.app, not from the readers' client.
If I forward a mail myself (ie: not using a "rule"), the formatting is preserved, and everybody can read a well formatted mail.
There are very few options in the Mail preferences that seem able to make any change.
In the "composing" tab:

"message format" is "rich text"
under "responding" section, I have tried to check "Use the same message format as the original message" (without any effect for my concern)
in the same section, "when quoting text in forwards:" -> any of the two options has no effect on my problem.

I have, of course, googled the question. If I found some topics (like https://discussions.apple.com/thread/1455763?start=0&tstart=0), I found no solution.
Until recently, I've had a Mac OSX 10.5 system, and I had the same problem. But I thought it was an old and unresolved bug, nobody wanting to work on such a specific and outdated problem. Now my system is almost up to date, I really wonder: is it a bug, or a configuration error?


text:
Your iPhone could not be activated because the activation server is temporarily unavailable
My iPhone 5 that has been running iOS 7 since beta 1 suddenly wants to be activated.  When locked, it shows me my wallpaper. After sliding to unlock, it asks for my passcode. When I enter it, it takes me straight to the 'Activate iPhone' page - like it wants to be set up.
The text on the page:

This iPhone is currently linked to an Apple ID (e**@icloud.com). Sign in with the Apple ID that was used to set up this iPhone.

After I input the correct credentials and press Next in the top right corner, the title of the page changes to 'Activating...', then changes back to how it was before.
About 15 seconds later, it transitions to a 'Could not activate iPhone' page:

Your iPhone could not be activated because the activation server is temporarily unavailable. Try connecting your iPhone to iTunes to activate it, or try again in a couple of minutes.
If this problem persists, contact Apple Support at apple.com/support

Has anyone encountered this problem before? Is there a solution to it?

The two major causes of this are:

Network related - change the network used to connect
iOS related - something is amiss with the code signing / provisioning

The most likely cause of software is a beta. Apple disables the iOS betas soon after the release happens. If you never manually installed the official release, this can happen. If not, consider backing up your device after checking a couple networks and reinstalling.
If you need to get a beta off, do the following to fix it:

Hold the Power and Home buttons until the phone reboots and you see the Apple logo.
Release the Power button but keep holding the Home button.
Release the Home button when you see the iTunes logo and the connector below it.

Do this while connected to iTunes. Click Restore. Hopefully you have a recent back-up.
Note: It is a large update and will take a while. Apple servers are currently getting slammed.

Nope, I'm on current version.

Mine was current as well, according to iTunes and my iPhone. It was actually wrong. Anyone who had iOS7 beta and did not manually download the 7.02 firmware through the dev center will experience this issue.

This seems to happen every year to developers that don't wipe their test devices and start with a fresh install after the release date.

I expected there to be an update after the official release, and checked this several times. But it's probably my fault for not reading the wipe-instruction in the 1000-page developer agreement contract.

I have done some research after experiencing the same issue (iPhone 4), however there has been mixed reviews.
What Apple suggests:
This Apple thread on troubleshooting activation issues gives you a couple of options to try:

Restart the iPhone
Try another means of reaching the activation server (over wi-fi or connecting to iTunes)
Restore iOS software - but see my first point under "What I have tried," which leads me to try the next point,
Perform a recovery-mode restore (factory reset)

EDIT

Some people have reported that if you wait long enough and keep trying to activate, it will eventually go through.
Other people have reported that you need to download the latest version of iOS (7.0.2) - namely from the Apple iOS Dev Center. Note that you need an Apple Developer account to see both these links.

What I have tried:
This Apple support thread says you need to restore the phone to a previous backup, from a fresh factory reset. When connecting my iPhone 4 to iTunes, I get this message:

I've tried to update my iPhone (it was up to date, but just in case as I put the first beta .IPA on this phone), but I get this message:

I've tried to restore my iPhone by clicking on the Restore iPhone button, but I get this message instead:

What I am going to try (which will work if you have a backup) is to factory reset the iPhone and restore to a previous backup (see point 4 in the first section).
Some people say to keep retrying as Apple's servers are currently being hammered with requests. It may be worth to wait an hour or so to see if the activation lets you through after a while (if Apple's servers are really the issue).

I found a tip for you. Try to activate your device via Wi-Fi. Just connect to the Wi-Fi (Don't connect to iTunes) and start the activation steps.
Source: http://www.unlockboot.com/2015/10/fix-iphone-activation-error-after.html

I followed the instructions to perform a recovery-restore mode here and it updated to iOS 7.0.2 for me. http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1808
This article also talked about recovery mode and explained what happened:
http://mn-ml.co/?p=7081

Okay everyone, this is what it is. In order to get access to the iOS 7 beta, developers often sell "slots" on their developer accounts and allow people to get the beta for a fee, usually about 5 dollars. Naturally, Apple doesn't like this. They decided to crack down on this. They just now deactivated all iPhones running the iOS 7 beta, and the only way to reactivate them is to reactivate them using a developer account. If you were one of the people that paid for a slot, your only option is to restore. However, you can only restore if you place your phone in restore mode by doing the following:
Hold the Power and Home buttons until the phone reboots and you see the Apple logo.
Release the Power button but keep holding the Home button
Release the Home button when you see the iTunes logo and the connector below it.
Plug phone into computer and restore through iTunes.

Also, you cannot backup your phone while it is in this deactivated state.
Unfortunately for me, I have two Apple ID's. One is a developer account and the other is not. My phone is registered under the non-developer account. So there is no way for me to unlock my phone. I've been on hold with Apple support for the past 2 hours.

HERE IS SOMETHING YOU CAN TRY! I never downloaded ios 7.0.2 SO if you are a developer, log in to the account and download the new IPSW for the 7.0.2. Open iTunes, hold ctrl and alt and click check for update. Select the IPSW and let it install... its worth a shot!

I just had the same issue with having to 'activate' my iphone. I followed the steps here and it restored my i5 for me > http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1808

I don't have the dev problem, and it was an iPad, but after following these and many, many other support pages and Discussion suggestions, including fooling with hosts file ...the step that immediately worked was: Use a different computer.
Went right through.

I had this problem and I was afraid that I had lost some of my data. However I found a neat little way of doing this.

Download the 7.0.2 ipsw (Link)
Connect to your iPhone via USB to your computer
Hold alt and press the update button in iTunes
Select the downloaded IPSW
Wait until your phone is updated
Activate again

It worked for me, but as a little safety I downloaded ifunbox, and transferred my photos.
Good luck.

You can try to activate it via WiFi. Just insert the original sim card, Connect to WiFi, Then follow the steps to activate your device. If still not work - try to restore & update the device via iTunes.


text:
Prevent mounting of a specific volume when connecting an external drive
I've got an external drive with 3 volumes on it.
All of them are mounted upon connecting the external drive to my Mac.
I want one of these 3 volumes to not be mounted when I connect it.
Is that somehow possible?

You can flag a question as duplicate by clicking on the flag link (below the tags) and indicating the reason. I've done it for this one.

I did it as well.


text:
Syncing my iMac and Macbook Pro - All Data and Files
If I'm wanting to sync my iMac and my MacBook Pro so that I don't have to connect it every time or back it up through time machine what would be the best way? I want a true sync. So If I save something on the iMac it populates on the MacBook Pro and vice versa.
Would that be through a cloud structured database? Or is there a better way?
Thanks in advance of course!

There are a bunch of ways that you can do this.  I've got a way using Unison that I use, but to help people answer: Do you want to sync just your data?  Do you want to sync apps?  What about preferences? How much data do you want to keep in sync? (e.g. If you want to sync a few gigs of documents, something like Dropbox is great, but syncing 200GB of docs and preferences would not work well)

Yes, I could have been more clear. I'm looking to sync every single thing. Preferences, docs, apps, desktop background...you name it, I'm looking to sync it. I'm wanting them to stay identical so I don't have to keep doing the same thing twice.


text:
OS X change Admin user to Standard user with command line
I would love to send a Unix command through ARD that will change a OS X admin user to a standard user. The only thing I found close is
sudo dscl . -delete /Groups/admin GroupMembership USERNAME

which does remove the user from the list of admins, but they are still listed as an admin in the user preference panel, and can still use their account to authenticate for admin privileges.

This belongs on AskDifferent (not one of the migration flag options).

Just fought this battle, you can drop the dscl line and use the following;
Type the command
:
sudo dseditgroup -o edit -d UserName -t user admin

Where UserName is their actual AD username.
Berry

I have done the below command, it is working fine
sudo dseditgroup -o edit -d UserName -t user admin

How does this improve or differ from the other answer?

all_licenses: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/


text:
What features of Mavericks are beneficial to you?
This question serves to share and collect the enhancements that make a large difference to how you use your Mac.
Please post one feature per answer. Please also check to see if your answer has already been posted - duplicate answers will be deleted. To search answers for this question use inquestion:this (directly from the question page) in addition to your search terms in the search box in the upper right hand corner of this page.
The best answers will not only list a feature, but provide details on how to configure that feature, and provide an image of how to use the feature to be more efficient or effective with Mavericks.

As always - questions about site norms and governance are best asked on [meta] since the comments here became dominated with what's on or off-topic here or on other sites. Meta allows a more careful discussion of the problems and merits of wiki questions - both in general and in specific here. Cheers and thanks for your assistance.

The overhaul of the virtual memory system makes it clear that memory pressure is the primary factor to track and not how many free pages, inactive pages or overall virtual memory is allocated.

The bottom panel is invaluable for diagnosing a slow machine and knowing whether to rule out memory contention as a cause of the slowness. After running your Mac for a week, you should reach a nice steady state like shown above and can know if adding more RAM or adjusting the programs you run will affect performance.

And, best of all, this feature renders moot all the angst and confusion about inactive memory on OS X. Boom!

Even more it compresses the memory - so I have 1G of swap files rather than 8-10G, or is that a separate entry

@mark I have never had swap storage issues so I can't say how well it will reduce swap allocations but the signs are promising so far.

It has improved mine so far

750MB for the kernel?!!!

@sds I know - here's more details on the memory allocation. That 650-800 MB for the kernel seems to be a very stable estimate on what we'll see on Mavericks and newish Intel CPU. http://cl.ly/S5NO

@sds video memory for onboard integrated graphics is marked as used by kernel as well. That used memory has to be attributed somewhere...

@EugeneBujak: r u sure video memory is included there?

I would encourage either Eugene or SDS to explicitly ask what is included in kernel_task as a stand-alone question. We can't really answer a question posed in a comment.

@bmike: What is included under kernel_task in Activity Monitor?

@sds, kernel takes 9GB for me http://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/106697/insanely-high-kernel-ram-usage-over-9gb-in-mavericks

@sds 1.8GB here

With a text field active, Control ⌃ + Command ⌘ + Space opens a characters panel including Emojis.

Does not work in MS Word :(

Very few things work in MS Word - I think they use a custom text engine or something.

A panel opens even without a text field selected (in Finder for example), so it should be possible to drag and drop a character that way.

It is not just emoji, but a quicker better way to search for any unicode character like: , ÷, ∪, or Δ

While I agree it is a nice feature, they should have sticked with the old shortcut Cmd + Shift + T. In fact, it was the first thing I changed on Mavericks.

Good thing we have such quick access to the recycle symbols.

The energy consumption view that collects 8 hours of history and graphs the charge level in your battery as well as showing each process that drained measurable amounts of energy is going to make squeezing extra productivity out of one charge much easier.

Not only will developers (I'm looking at you Dropbox) know that they have to be better stewards of battery life, it makes it easy to see which apps support App Nap and even that a program that is quit now was responsible for using energy in the past 8 hours. This tool provides actionable information for users to better manage their experience when away from wall power on a portable Mac.
This detail is quite hidden inside Activity Monitor, but Apple does expose the biggest users of energy in the menu bar for apps using significant energy.

What is AppNap exactly ?

Secret Wallpapers
OS X ships with a bunch of really cool sample photos that are not normally available for use as desktop backgrounds.
Previously in OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion, these were located at:
/System/Library/Frameworks/ScreenSaver.Framework/Versions/A/Resources/Default Collections/

In OS X 10.9 Mavericks, they’re now located at
/Library/Screen Savers/Default Collections/

Here's how to get them:

from Finder, use the menu Go → Go to Folder… (or hit ⌘⇧G) and paste in: /Library/Screen Savers/Default Collections/

You should see 4 folders, and inside them you’ll find lots of really cool Wallpapers:

Note a slight change to the Mountain Lion address: /System/Library/Frameworks/ScreenSaver.framework/Versions/A/Resources/Default Collections/

Bring Your Home Folder's Library Back with One Checkbox in Mavericks:
Apple decided to hide the Library from its users in recent OS X updates, but in Mavericks you can now change that with a simple checkbox.
In the past you had to enter a Terminal command with every little system update:
chflags nohidden ~/Library

With OS X Mavericks, you can just navigate to your home folder, press Command+J to bring up the folder settings, and check the box next to "Show Library Folder" instead.

Great answer - we have a more targeted question covering this aspect over there -> http://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/106645/how-do-i-tell-finder-to-always-show-my-library-folder-on-mavericks

Put your computer to sleep quickly
If you're using OSX Mavericks on a MacBook, tapping the power key briefly immediately puts your computer to sleep—a simple tweak that makes saving energy even easier.  For the usual shutdown dialog, just keep holding for three seconds, or press control+power.
As always, you can put just the display to sleep by pressing control+shift+eject or control+shift+power, depending on your model.

I've always used a hot-corner for that, and I think I still prefer it that way.

@Elliott Good thinking.

Not shutting the computer down when someone just taps the power button is going to make life with a cheeky 3-year-old easier! :-)

It's control + shutdown button for the dialog, 3 second hold is immediate shutdown.

not only turns off the display, but also locks the computer.

ctrl+shift+eject since (at least) 10.6

As pointed out by Filip, ctrl+shift+eject has been around for years. I don't think many users know this shortcut though. Most people are just bad at shortcuts.

and Airs don't have an eject key

Ctrl+shift+power instead of eject works for MacBook Air (at least on a Mid-2012)

ctrl + shift + eject(or power where no eject key) turns off the display - power key sleeps the Mac.

ooooooooh, is THAT what's going on now when I hit the power button?  Very confusing change if you're expecting the shutdown dialog box.

Using multiple desktops on multiple displays is finally usable. Now I can switch desktops on my left hand monitor while the right hand monitor doesn't change.

Can you elaborate on how this has changed from Mountain Lion?

Put a Safari window on both displays. Cover them both with Finder windows. Now, on the left monitor, bring the Safari window to the foreground... pre-Mavericks, it would bring Safari to the foreground on both monitors. Maybe that's not what he's describing, but if it is I too find this a boon to my productivity.

I wouldn't exactly call this an under documented feature. It is one of the 'tent pole' features of Mavericks.

You are right that it's not under-documented. But the question originally asked "What are your favourite features in Mavericks?". It has since been significantly rephrased, thus pulling the rug out from underneath my answer.

I was looking forward to this feature, but actually find it doesn't work how I'd like it to at all. I expected each display would get its own row of workspaces, but it doesn't -- instead you keep the same number of workspaces all the time, divided between whatever displays are being used. One very annoying negative of this is that you can no longer drag a window off the edge of a display onto the neighbouring workspace any more, when using multiple displays.

@scottishwildcat - Yeah, that only works if the workspace you're dragging the window to is a desktop (as opposed to a full-screened app).

@scottishwildcat, I currently have Finder Safari and the desktop open on my main screen, And I'm just a desktop and another Safari window open on my external screen. So I don't understand what you mean by needing the same number of workspaces all the time. Also I can drag windows between desktops,  but obviously not from a desktop. And can drag tabs from a full screen Safari onto a desktop on another screen. Perhaps you haven't ticked the box "displays have separate screens" in mission control preferences?

I have that preference checked, and now I can no longer drag windows to other workspaces on the same display, without using Mission Control. This is annoying and I don't really understand why it's no longer possible.

As to the other point, hard to explain in a comment, but I was just surprised that when adding new workspaces on an external display, they didn't disappear again when I disconnected that display. So the external display doesn't have its 'own' workspaces as such, it just borrows from the main pool when connected. Which is a bit confusing, since when using a single display, that pool is conceptually arranged as a single row, but when you connect an external one, it suddenly splits into two rows with not necessarily the same number of workspaces in each.

The whole feature is kinda buggy at the moment o.O

The battery menu in the top bar now shows apps using high amounts of energy - nice for killing energy-hogs:

I'ma swipe your picture for my answer on Activity Monitor... I hope you like the source code I used to edit my post.

Move Dashboard in Mission Control
You can now drag to rearrange the Dashboard to move it between your desktop spaces and full screen apps. It can even be dragged to alternative monitors, providing that "Displays have separate Spaces" is enabled in System Preferences → Mission Control.

You can move Desktop 1, too. In Mountain Lion, you could only move Desktop 2 and up.

How did you make the GIF like that? That's clever!

@DanijelJ With LICEcap :)

Mac App Store Notifications Now Include Multiple "Later" Options
You can choose from a handful of times in the future to remind you about pending updates from the Mac App Store.

Credit to this reddit.com/r/mac post.

Battery Life
It's hard to beat getting an additional hour of use on a battery charge. I've been getting at least that much more use before having to plug in my 2012 MacBook Air. My experience matches up well with Apple's claim during the announcement keynote where the 13 inch Air from 2013 with Haswell benchmarked with another hour to an hour and a half of battery life just by installing Mavericks.

Is this really a new / undocumented feature? Do you know if there's any connection to the battery monitoring that Undo points out?

@shog9 This is the net effect of many fundamental hidden under the hood features of Mavericks. I'm not yet sure which of the alphabet soup of features announced publicly today make this possible. This most certainly is part of the monitoring now in place to report energy use that both Undo and I have reported on this thread.

I don't believe that this is a valid answer. Linking a comparison between it an Win8 doesn't show us anything about what's improved since 10.8. Give us a list of features of what's caused this improvement.

Somebody is putting words in my mouth, and the answer is confusing. All I was trying to say is that the biggest immediate improvement since going to 10.9 is the improved battery life on my 2012 11" MBA. That is a fantastic feature. Getting better performance from my hardware by just upgrading some software is pretty amazing.

Could list; iTunes HD Playback Efficiency, Safari Power Saver, App Nap in more detail than is included from http://www.apple.com/osx/advanced-technologies/

This is not un(der)-document at all! They stressed this out a lot. :P

This question didn't state under documented when I posted my answer. I was about favorite Mavericks features.

Finder messages are now Notification Center alerts
Prior to Mavericks, alerts from Finder would show up as a modal window, however they now show as a Notification Center alert, such as below:

Disable App Nap on a per app basis in OS X Mavericks:
You may or may not know that one of the more discreet features in OSX Mavericks will be App Nap.
Apps will enter App Nap when they’re completely hidden from view by other apps and when they aren’t actively working. This is a great way to reduce your running apps from killing your Mac’s battery life.
Also, you may want certain apps to never enter App Nap. This could be true for apps that are important to you but sometimes perform long non-interactive tasks.
To prevent apps from entering App Nap, go to Finder -> Applications -> right click on the app you want -> click on Get Info -> and look for the option that says “Prevent App Nap” right under the copyright section, as shown on the picture below:

Please note that said option won’t be there for apps that don’t support App Nap.

Don't all Cocoa apps support App Nap by default?

@Mark I believe that's what they said at WWDC - all Cocoa apps support it out of the box, but there are some API calls that can be implemented so your app knows about it..

Show Desktop using Trackpad now follows motion
Using the Show Desktop gesture, the motion of the windows now follows the motion of your fingers on the trackpad. No longer is it a set speed, you can move the windows at the exact speed of your fingers, and even pull them back half way through to cancel the motion.

I think this is probably my least favorite feature (that I've noticed so far).  It's the same for 5-finger swipe to launch pad, and a quick swipe is no longer smooth, it stutters before deciding on going to the launch pad or fading out of it.

Pure toy, usability disaster. The animation of hiding the windows serves no real purpose, it should be as brief as possible.

One of the best features. I enables you to have a quick look on your desktop without also doing the oposite gestures afterwards.

Gatekeeper shows most recent app in System Preferences
After Gatekeeper blocks an app, going to the relevant option in System Preferences shows the app name and a button that allows you to open the app.

This means it is no longer required for new users to know that clicking Open from the right-click menu will bypass Gatekeeper.

It still requires them to know about and be able to find the Gatekeeper security settings though. I’m ready to bet that almost all casual users won’t be able to run non-App-Store applications because of that.

Open PSDs directly in Safari
You can now preview PSD files (Photoshop Documents) directly in Safari without actually opening Preview, or even downloading the PSD to your Downloads folder.

I am not sure what you mean by "without downloading" but QuickLook works for PSDs in 10.8 too

@beroe Clearly OP means a PSD file online.

@beroe The quote was taken out of vital context: "downloading the PSD to your Downloads folder". …and yes, whilst QL has worked for PSDs, now they will display in Safari.

AirPlay display:
The Apple TV makes it easy to see on your TV the media content that is on your Mac, such as to stream videos or photos.
In OS X Mountain Lion, you could also mirror your Desktop to the Apple TV, such as for presentations.
OS X Mavericks takes that to the next step, treating the Apple TV as just another monitor, so you can extend your desktop onto an Apple TV-connected TV or projector.

How well does this actually work?   I've struggled getting any usability from this...  http://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/106264/airplay-quality-issue-from-macbook-pro

Enhanced Dictation
Enhanced Dictation allows offline use and continuous dictation with live feedback.
Great for those without Internet connections and those not wanting to have their dictation processed outside of their network.

I've been using this quite a bit...  mostly because I enjoy the live feedback.

When I checked out this panel, I found Use Enhanced Dictation was already checked, but I didn't recall it downloading the offline data.  Clicking Off then On started the download… apparently.

Apparently it is checked by default, but it doesn't actually download the data until the first time you use dictation.

The Use Enhanced Dictation was not checked after I upgraded from Mac OS X 10.8. I also had dictation disabled in Mac OS X 10.8. The settings being upgraded may influence the initial state in Mac OS X 10.9.

ColorSync Utility: New Calculator
This little known included application continues to improve with a new colour Calculator.

Not new to Mavericks but certainly hidden, ColorSync continues to provide interactive 3D colour space visualisation for profiles.

WHOA, that is super cool!

Color calculator isn't new; it's been there since 10.7 at least.

Thanks @kirb. Mavericks is the first time I have actively noticed the calculator. Have they changed anything in ColorSync Utility for this update?

@GrahamMiln, just compared side-by-side with 10.8; only change I could see was the new dropdown and checkbox at the bottom of the calculator.

Improved Multiple Screen Support
It is pretty awesome having a menu bar on each screen and being able to full screen apps on a per screen basis. I never used full screen mode before since I always had the linen background on my other screen.

I was looking forward to this feature, but actually find it doesn't work how I'd like it to at all. I expected each display would get its own row of workspaces, but it doesn't -- instead you keep the same number of workspaces all the time, divided between whatever displays are being used. One very annoying negative of this is that you can no longer drag a window off the edge of a display onto the neighbouring workspace any more, when using multiple displays.

@scottishwildcat I may misunderstand your description but taken literally it’s the opposite of true: that’s exactly what Mavericks provides: each display has its own row of spaces now, and you can absolutely drag windows between spaces and screens, both when using multiple windows and when not.

@KonradRudolph Maybe I didn't describe what I expected very well (and it's probably not worth trying to explain again here), but I definitely can't just drag windows onto neighbouring workspaces on the same display any more, I have to use Mission Control for that now. I can only drag windows between displays.

@scottishwildcat Ah, now I see what you want. Yes, you indeed need Mission Control for that. Pity, but the old way of dragging between spaces was quite sluggish anyway.

I didn't even know you could do that, but I think thats worth losing to have a different set of Spaces for each screen.

@scottishwildcat You can still use Control → and Control ←, even while dragging, to switch spaces.

@JPP Doesn't work for me... aside from the fact Ctrl and arrow keys are on opposite sides of my MBP keyboard so I wouldn't have any hands left to drag anything if I had to do that, as soon as I start dragging, my 'switch workspace' shortcuts (which luckily I redefined to Cmd+Alt+arrow many years ago) stop working.

@Jonathan I don't understand why we need to lose it all, though. I can't see any reason it shouldn't still work with the new model.

@scottishwildcat Did you check the Missing Control shortcuts in the Keyboard pref pane?

@scottishwildcat, because when you drag a window to the edge of the screen should it go to the external monitor or to the next space of the current monitor? Most people will expect it to go to the other monitor.

@Jonathan I have my monitors arranged vertically, and OS X knows that because I had to tell it, so that shouldn't be an issue in my case at least.

Driving directions for iOS:
OS X Mavericks adopts iOS's Maps app. That by itself is not a huge deal, even though it's nice to have an alternative to Google's Web-based maps. But what's cool is the ability to get driving directions and send them to your iPhone or other iOS 7-based device. They show up in the iOS Maps app, ready for you to follow while driving or walking, and they remain in your bookmarked directions for access later if needed.

How does it transfer these? I would have originally thought AirDrop, but AirDrop on OS X is not compatible with AirDrop on iOS. Bluetooth? Some iCloud magic?

New Safari setting to power off plugins when inactive to save battery life as featured in this Ars Technica article.
I have high expectations that this will stop the issues occurring when my girlfriend has 15 tabs with flash players open in the background while working in other programs.

But will it stop the issues when the girlfriend has 15 tabs with flash players open in the background... in Firefox?

@Michael No. In that case you will have to change to a newer version of girlfriend that supports Safari.

Easily Identify New Apps:
If you use Launchpad, any new apps you download will sparkle to denote their newness.
Once you acknowledge them, or they've sat there neglected for awhile, the sparkles will disappear.

Move Dock Between Monitors
The Dock starts on your main monitor, but if you put your cursor in another monitor, go to the bottom of the screen, and then keep moving down, the Dock will pop up (and disappear from wherever it was previously).  This is really nice if your "main" monitor isn't actually.
The motion has to be pretty straight down and surprisingly long - it's a bit finicky.

This is applicable only if your dock is at the bottom (I have it on the left).

@rm-rf True; if you use the left/right options it is locked to the left/right side of the left-/right-most monitor.

@AaronDufour How do you disable this feature?

@AlexejMagura I haven't found a way to disable it.  Feel free to add it if you find one.

Disable Notification Center on the Lock Screen:

Notification Center doesn't see a whole lot of improvement this time around, but the update does mess with your settings a little bit. If you're not a fan of getting a million notifications, you're going to want to pop into System Preferences > Notifications and take a look at the new options. The big one to check is "Show notifications on lock screen."
If you don't want your emails or anything else showing when you're computer is locked, uncheck this box.

If you want nothing, you have to uncheck the box for each separate application? That's a pain… why can't it be a global setting?!

Responsive scrolling
In Mountain Lion and earlier, any window content that doesn't fit in the current frame of the window (like a long webpage) isn't drawn until scrolled into view. In Mavericks, this offscreen content is "pre-rendered" during idle time, which results in vastly improved scrolling performance (especially noticeable with complex documents or webpages).

In general, though, I've found the scrolling performance, at least in Safari, significantly more sluggish (Macbook Air 11" 2012). Was trying to see if someone had a trick for disabling Timer Coalescing to see if that was the culprit.

Zoom pictures in QuickLook
You can now zoom pictures in QuickLook using the default zoom gestures: Pinch In & Pinch Out, as well as panning with two fingers.

Pressing alt works as well

@Agos Pressing alt has worked since forever afaik…

Debug menus have been updated
The debug menus have been updated for various apps.
Below is the debug menu for App Store and Contacts:

To activate the menus, run the following commands (and restart the apps):
defaults write com.apple.appstore ShowDebugMenu -bool true
defaults write com.apple.AddressBook ABShowDebugMenu -bool true

Replace true with false to remove.

How to activate these menus?

@hashier See Terminal commands in edit.

Do you now a defaults that activates this on ALL application? Or do you know any more applications where I can activate it?

@hashier Unfortunately, the key is slightly different for each app, so the -g (global) flag doesn't work… Many of Apple's apps include a debug menu, including Safari (different from the Develop menu), Disk Utility, Calendar, and many more. I seem to remember a list of apps and their relevant defaults key required to enable it, however I can't find it at the moment. Once I find it I'll edit the post and ping you - until then, Google [app name] debug menu to see if/what the command is for enabling the menu for each app. Don't forget this works for some 3rd-party apps too :)

In Safari there's an option in the preferences to enable the Debug menu.

@Martin There's an option to enable the Develop menu, which is substantially different to the Debug menu :)

@grgarside damn, I must stop reading this late at night… ;)

iCloud Keychain stores and syncs Secure Notes across Macs.
The new iCloud Keychain stores website usernames and passwords, credit card numbers and Wi-Fi network information and keeps the data up to date across all of a person's Apple devices, including the iPhone and iPad.
It also stores and syncs Secure Notes across Macs, like this:

Notification Center appears on current monitor
In a multi-monitor setup, Notification Center now appears on the monitor where your cursor is currently located. This is a nice improvement if you invoke it while you're working on a secondary monitor: it appears on the monitor you're looking at, rather than the primary.

Extra points if someone can find a trick to disable that.  I like all my notifications and crap to be on the other monitor so I have one for pure work.

You can now sort your documents in Finder even when you have the grouping feature turned on. (For example you group the download folder by filetype and files inside the group are sorted by name)

Now you can see which all apps are using your location. And you will also a new Privacy tab in Security & Privacy in System Preferences :

Safari tells you when a tab crashed
Whilst Safari has always been able to restart crashed tabs, now it tells you when it's done so:

Now that is both cool and useful to have.

Full screen finder:

Pretty simple, but really nice.

still no two finger swipe for back and forward though :(

… and apparently no hotkeys for switching between tabs? I thought the whole point of tabs here was that they behave exactly as in Safari …

@KonradRudolph cmd + shift + { works for me

@fuadksd So it does. I could have sworn that Safari has a different combination. Still kind of annoying that there’s no agreed-on standard, so that all other application use different keys (in particular Firefox, Chrome, Opera using ⌘+⌥+arrow keys (EDIT: I just realise that they also support Safari’s style).

It supports both cmd + {|} and ctrl + shift + tab. Those are supported by safari, and I think, they're like, Cocoa standards.

ctrl + tab works, however it doesn't in Safari? +1 for same shortcuts in all apps!

ctrl + tab works in Safari

Using Speakable Items and Automator To Command Your Mac By Voice:
The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) uses an automator script and the new "Speakable Items" option in Mavericks to achieve this:
System Preferences > Accessibility > Speakable Items to launch apps.
When it's set up, you simply hit a key on your keyboard, speak a phrase, and that launches the apps you choose.
Their example is a simple "Good morning" to start your day.
There is a list of preprogrammed things you can say to command your Mac as well.
They have a video tutorial which takes you through the various steps.

Messages (iMessages) can be created quickly in Notification Center

Fairly certain that System Preferences has had some visual tweaks, including larger text and icons. There's a new iCloud icon too.
Edit: As per comments, the category titles have been removed.

They removed the category titles from each section, too.

LinkedIn and few others are now supported in Internet Accounts :

Automatically Installs Updates
My favorite feature is the ability to have updates install automatically in the background just like they do in iOS 7.

Charging state of an iPad is notified to the user
Because of insufficient current on some Macs, especially older ones or because of USB multipliers, iPads can't get charged or they only get charged when their screen is idle.
Of course, Mavericks can't fix this situation, it's basically an electrical problem but it seems that Apple now made it a little bit more manageable by notifying the user through a Notification Center message if their iPad is not being charged when plugged to their Mac.

I had no idea that some Macs could charge iPads - charging works with Retina Macbook Pro late 2013.

Finder Tabs
Safari Style

Command + T opens a new tab (as it does in Safari)
Right click (or control + click) a file or folder within a finder window > "open in Tab"
Control + Tab to cycle through each
Bunch of open Finder windows?  Window > "Merge all Windows" to neatly arrange into one Finder window with tabs.

Activity Monitor tells you what pages a Safari process has open
If you mouseover any Safari subprocess in Activity Monitor you can see what pages are loaded in the process in the tooltip.

The Mail.app for Mavericks supports exporting emails now as PDF files, which is useful. Although if attempting to export multiple emails as PDF, it will simply generate multiple PDF's rather than appending one large PDF file.

Disable Mavericks Spelling Autocorrection:
If you get frustrated when OS X 10.9 attempts to autocorrect the multiple technology words that it doesn’t recognize. You should be able to disable the autocorrection feature either globally or on a per application basis.
In theory you should be able to disable it globally or disable it only in certain applications. I have not found that the global disable actually seems to turn off the corrections in all applications though. this is most probably a bug that will be fixed in future Mavericks updates.  It is helpful to disable it only in specific applications anyway.
Disable Spelling Autocorrection in all Applications:

Select Keyboards under System Preferences.
Under the Text tab uncheck correct spelling automatically.

Disable Autocorrection for a Specific Application:

Open the Apple application that you want autocorrection disabled.
Right-click (or ctrl-click) into any text field. From the context menu that appears, under Spelling and Grammar uncheck Correct Spelling Automatically.

Remember that various applications can handle spelling correction in multiple different ways. Many applications will maintain the consistency of OS X and have this option available when right-clicking (ctrl-clicking) a text field. Disabling autocorrection in Chrome, for example, is handled this way.
Other applications such as Firefox may require you hunting through the Preferences to disable the autocorrection feature.

Messages now has a color setting called auto, which will color the messages of the person you're talking to in the way that they color their own messages.

This has existed for ages, right? I'm sure I used that back in Snow Leopard, and possibly before?… (At least with iChat)

Oh yup, you're right, I just checked my mountain lion machine. Maybe it just defaulted to that setting when I upgraded and I never noticed.  So then it's just a cool under-documented feature of OSX hahah

Show Twitter feed in Safari's Sidebar
Update: It's not the complete feed, just messages with URLs embedded in them.
Being able to see your twitter feed in a Safari Sidebar is pretty cool, and definitely under documented.

Add your Twitter credentials to the "Internet Accounts" panel of "System Preferences."
Click on the "open book" icon in the new Safari bookmark bar.
Select "Shared Links" or use the keyboard shortcut ^⌘3 to toggle "Shared Links".

I believe that this is all that I did to be able to see my twitter feed in the safari sidebar.

iCloud Sync:
Automator and AppleScript Editor, both apps have been updated with iCloud compatibility. AppleScripts that you've created or Automator workflows can now be moved into the cloud and synced to all of your Macs that are running OS X Mavericks.
It's useful if you're creating and updating scripts or workflows that need to be deployed to a handful of Macs automatically.

This not exactly a useful feature, Java seems to be not installed by default and when you try to check java version in terminal, it takes you to the download page. Run this in terminal : java -version

as a feature, I find this quickest way to install Java :P

This was also the case in Lion and Mountain Lion, I believe.

Isn't it unsafe to install Java or something ?

Hidden Dock won’t appear in fullscreen apps:
You may find that the Dock won’t show up from the bottom or right/left side (depending on where you put it) when apps are in fullscreen, and when you fast-move the cursor to where your Dock is hidden or when you pause right there and let the cursor hover. No Dock.
Here’s the trick:
You need to move the cursor very slowly. That’s all you need to do. If you move it too fast to the edge of your screen, the Dock won’t show up.

Side dock has new UI
It now looks like this (I really like the light that indicates which apps are open, it's a lot more clearer than the bottom dock):

Event reminders based on travel time
When you create an event in Calendar, you can specify a location. If the address is recognized, it'll insert a map right in the event details (and even give you the current weather conditions!).
But it goes even further. Calendar can also determine your current location, so you can tell it to calculate the travel time to the event based on where you currently are. If you do, that gives you a new alert option: "when I need to leave."
This is so much better than the old fixed-time options (1 hour before, 30 minutes before, etc.) because it's dynamic based on where you are and how far you need to drive.

Did someone noticed that the Remove from Dock option on the Trash icon's context menu in the Dock is gone. I clicked that a couple of times accidentally and then had to bring it back in Mountain Lion.

iBooks (for Mac) stinks (can't edit any metadata, kinda flakey about syncing with my iPad, you now have to interact with two programs to manage your books, etc.), but if you were unfortunate enough to have it suck all of your books out of iTunes and into its universe before you knew what was going on then here are a couple of tips.
To delete a book or PDF select the book and hit the Delete key.  (There was something in iTunes that worked in that same non-intuitive way, wasn't there?)
To reduce the the flakiness of the sync I had to double-home-button-kill iBooks on my iPad, then try syncing again.  It helped.
If out of habit you drag a PDF into iTunes it will be gladly accepted, but you won't be able to see it anymore, because the Books category is gone and there's no Library category anymore.  It will show up as Music and you can delete it from there.
UPDATE: 9:30pm: NOW there's a "Delete" item showing up when you right-click on a book in the popup menu.  That hasn't been there all day.  Have no idea what made it start showing up.  This program needs some work.  It should have been iBooks beta.

This might work better as a stand-alone question where you state the issues you have and how you have tried to solve them.


text:
Stop Mavericks opening Safari in whichever screen I happen to be in?
I have a hotkey on my mouse that opens Safari, and since Mavericks, it'll open it in whichever monitor currently has focus (or the non-greyed-out menu bar).
I want it to always open in the same spot on one display, like it did with Mountain Lion. Is there a way I can have that happen?

This is highly doubtful to me, but you might want to search your Apple Script library to see if anything is related to multiple displays. Maybe also the Automator builtins. There is at least 90% chance that the answer is no I guess.

Apple opens a door, and they close a window. Or move it. Nice.


text:
Keep iCloud from syncing tags across machines?
I recently upgraded to OS X 10.9 (Yay!), and I've been playing with Tags. After I installed it on a second machine, though, I noticed that all my tags were synced across (just the list of tags, not the actual documents).
The problem with this is that I'd like to have a different set of tags on each machine. Is there a way to do this?

Apart from the obvious "use different iCloud accounts" solution?

Yes, I'd really like to try to keep all my family devices on one main account. I have a spare to play with, if you have a clever solution.

There seems to be no setting for selective tag syncing through iCloud. Any tag that is either created, deleted, enabled, or disabled is automatically synced to all computers on that iCloud account.


text:
Make folders opened by external apps open in a new finder tab rather than a window
I have the setting "open folders in new tabs" (instead of new windows) in finder turned on but this does not seem to influence what my other apps do when they open a folder. Launchbar and a shell script I run from emacs still opens folders in small finder windows. How can I make folders opened from external apps all appear in one tabbed finder window?
Edit: Bmike in the comment is right that this could probably be done via an applescript. Something like this:

You have some script that gives you the path of the folder you want to open.
You pass this as a variable to an applescript.
This applescript saves the pathname as a variable
It activates finder or opens a particular folder with finder.
It sends the keystroke command + t to open a new tab (or does the same with a command to finder).
It sends the keystroke command + shift + g to finder opening the go to folder with path x menu/window.
It writes (systemevents) or pastes it (set clipboard to the variable that is the path of the folder) into this menu/window.
Click enter. The folder is opened.

I want the same.

I have the same problem, question on Super User: http://superuser.com/questions/688439/open-new-finder-tab-when-using-open-in-the-terminal

It seems like this is is under the application's settings, not just Finder's.

Can you share the shell script or launchbar details? It might be possible to embed an AppleScript call in them to tell finder to open a new tab.

launchbar just opens stuff automatically, in shell scripts I use the open command https://developer.apple.com/librarY/mac/documentation/Darwin/Reference/ManPages/man1/open.1.html, to open via emacs in dired I use this script http://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/106131/make-folders-opened-by-external-apps-open-in-a-new-finder-tab-rather-than-a-wind?noredirect=1#comment144612_106131

I guess you're right that as long as you have the path you can open via an applescript, you need the folder path as a variable and could then do activate finder, cmd t, cmnd shift g, then paste/write the folder path in the go to folder command that appears, then then send return

I did this, not sure if it will answer it for you.
Finder Preferences > General > check "open folders in tabs instead of new windows"

Thanks for the idea. I got the applescript finished.
Put the following in your ~/.bashrc or ~/.zshrc
# open the current folder in Finder's tab
function oft() {
    # if no arguments are given, we use the current folder
    oft_absolute_path=$(cd ${1:-.}; pwd)

    # execute the applescirpt
    osascript 2>/dev/null <<EOF

        # Finder returns a path with trailing slash
        # But PWD doesn't have one, so we add one for it
        set new_tab_path to "$oft_absolute_path" & "/"

        tell application "Finder"
            activate

            if not (exists window 1) then
                make new Finder window
            end if

            try
                set finder_path to POSIX path of (target of window 1 as alias)
            on error
                # the finder's window doesn't contain any folders
                set target of front window to (new_tab_path as POSIX file)
                return
            end try
        end tell

        if new_tab_path = finder_path then
            # the finder's tab is already there
            return
        end if

        # open new tab in Finder
        tell application "System Events" to keystroke "t" using command down

        # set the Finder's path
        tell application "Finder"
            set target of front window to (new_tab_path as POSIX file)
        end tell

        return
    EOF
    # clear the tempory veriable
    unset oft_absolute_path
}

In terminal, type
oft .

to open the current folder in Finder's new tab.
The bash script is used for retrieving the absolute path, which I found difficult to do in appplescript.
UPDATE
I have made a more extensive (and complicated) version which will open the same tab for the same folder. Get it here


text:
Bypass Mavericks Setup Assistant
I just upgraded my system from Mountain Lion to Mavericks.  When my system restarted, the Setup Assistant ran.
The Setup Assistant is asking me to configure things on my system that are already configured — location, internet connection, etc.  Plus, it is forcing me to create a new user account, but my user account from Mountain Lion still exists (evidenced by the fact that when I try to enter my previous user name, Setup Assistant informs me that username is taken and won't let me continue).
Seeing as how my system is already configured, I'd like to skip the Setup Assistant.
How do I do that?

you could try force quit ctrl + alt + esc

I just went ahead and deleted the newly created account afterwards. Apple probably wants to make sure that you have a usable admin account by creating a new one.

It may be possible for you to bypass the Setup Assistant by creating a file at /var/db/.AppleSetupDone. This can be done by: booting up into single user mode.
The following command will mount the boot drive as read/write device, create the .AppleSetupDone file, and restart your computer
mount -uw / && touch /var/db/.AppleSetupDone && reboot

If your user account is actually intact, you will be able to login to the computer, and everything will be normal. However, in some of these situations, it's possible that your user account doesn't actually exist (unlikely based on the fact that you can't recreate it), or that your password hash is not a supported one (or is missing).
If you cannot login normally after disabling the Setup Assistant, you can re-enable it by removing the file that you created above. This can be accomplished by booting back into single user mode, and performing the following command:
mount -uw / && rm /var/db/.AppleSetupDone && reboot

Once you've restarted, create a differently named user account (Admin?), and use that account to survey the scene. With the newly created user, make sure that you see an existing account for your previous user in System Preferences. If the user exists, it may help to reset the password for that user (to re-create the hash), and then attempt to login.


text:
Mac Mini does not recognize USB Keyboard at start up
I am using a Quickfire Stealth mechanical USB Keyboard for my Mac Mini. I am having an issue that each time I boot the computer, I have to plug it out from the USB port and plug it back in for the Mac Mini to recognize it.
Anyone has an idea what could be the cause for this weird behavior?

Mid 2010, Processor  2.4 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo, Memory  8 GB 1067 MHz DDR3, Graphics  NVIDIA GeForce 320M 256 MB, Software  OS X 10.9


text:
/opt insufficient permissions
After updating Mountain Lion to Mavericks xQuartz and MacPorts throws errors about insufficient permissions. (xQuartz and MacPorts are the latest version)
I noticed:
$ sudo mkdir /opt/tmp
mkdir: /opt/tmp: Permission denied

I am on Administrator Account.
sudo port install htop
Error: Insufficient privileges to write to MacPorts install prefix.

I can't even uninstall MacPorts with the command from here
%% sudo rm -rf \
/opt/local \
/Applications/DarwinPorts \
/Applications/MacPorts \
/Library/LaunchDaemons/org.macports.* \
/Library/Receipts/DarwinPorts*.pkg \
/Library/Receipts/MacPorts*.pkg \
/Library/StartupItems/DarwinPortsStartup \
/Library/Tcl/darwinports1.0 \
/Library/Tcl/macports1.0 \
~/.macports

What do ls -l /opt' and  ls -l /opt/local' show. And did you follow the macports OS upgrade instructions

drwxr-xr-x@
Yes, I followed them.

And the user and groups i.e. the full output and for both directories

drwxr-xr-x    3 root  wheel   102 25 Okt 17:12 opt
drwxr-xr-x   11 root  admin   374 27 Okt 14:26 local

See the duplicate, where I added another possible reason for this (one that happened to me).


text:
Symbolic links, why doesn't this work:
me$ ln -s ~/x/y/ ~/Desktop/
ln: /Users/me/Desktop//: File exists

Why does this attempt at creating a symbolic link to ~/x/yon the Desktop now work? The only way I can seem to get something like a symbolic link is this way:
ln -s * ~/Desktop/

I'm confused, this was really simple in Ubuntu.

Alternatively, you can do
ln -s ~/x/y ~/Desktop/

(note there's no slash '/' character after ~/x/y/).
I think the error message is not the most informative, but I understand it as that if you're putting a trailing slash, you're referring to the content of your directory (in this case ~/x/y), but if you omit it, you're referring to the directory itself.

Of course this one doesn't. You've done ln -s ~/Desktop/symlink ~/Desktop/ which makes a symlink onto itself (there already is a ~/Desktop/symlink file in there, you can't link it to itself). If you do ln -s ~/tmp/symlink ~/Desktop/ it should work.

Hmm, now it lets me make the symlink, but the symlink shows the default file icon (instead of the folder icon) and attempting to open the symlink shows an error…

what type is the file that you're trying to make a link to? I've followed your initial sequence: mkdir -p ~/x/y; ln -s ~/x/y ~/Desktop/ and all was created as expected, with a symlink Directory icon named y on my desktop. I can double-click that directory and it opens fine. Also, when I do ls -la ~/Desktop/y I get lrwxr-xr-x  1 me  staff  15 27 Oct 20:47 /Users/me/Desktop/y@ -> /Users/me/x/y in response. Can you show exactly the steps you've taken (ideally a full text capture of your terminal window)?

Again, can you paste in the commands and their output exactly as you've typed them? Difficult to tell without seeing them.

Here's my Terminal output. Getting the same error as @Tor when attempting to open symlink.

Hmm... I'll be honest with you. I've done the exact same thing on my system (OSX 10.9) and it works perfectly... beats me!

Yeah, for me the problem was with an empty folder. But the folder with content worked fine. The latter is my "use case" so it's fine.

ln -s ~/x/y/ ~/Desktop/ attempts to symlink ~/Desktop/ to ~/x/y/, which does not appear to be what you wanted, and is indeed not possible since ~/Desktop exists (as the error states).
To create a symlink to ~/x/y/ inside ~/Desktop/, you need to give it a name like so:
ln -s ~/x/y/ ~/Desktop/mysymlink

This creates a symlink mysymlink on your desktop that links to ~/x/y/.


text:
How to use spotlight for system commands such as shutdown?
I want to type in Spotlight commands such as shutdown, reboot, suspend or lock and make it execute it, just like Alfred does.
How to make this possible with Spotlight?

So the answer is not possible with spotlight itself? I don' t want to install alfred.

You could save scripts for the commands as applications in AppleScript Editor. For example use tell application "System Events" to shut down to shut down, tell application "loginwindow" to «event aevtrlgo» to log out, or do shell script "/System/Library/CoreServices/Menu\\ Extras/User.menu/Contents/Resources/CGSession -suspend" to lock the screen.

Are you opposed to using the built in keyboard shortcuts?


text:
Inserting a file in microsoft word 2011
I want to insert/embed a file in the Word Document. If i go to, Insert -> File and then select the file, it inserts the text present in that file. But i want to display it as only an icon.
If i got to Insert -> Object -> From File -> Check the Display as Icon -> Select the file, it displays an error, "The sever application, source file or item cannot be found. Make sure that application is properly installed, and that it has not been deleted, moved or renamed".
How do I make it work? Is it possible?

If you use Insert->Object, Word tries to insert the file as an OLE object. This only works if Word knows how to handle the type of file you are inserting. The error message seems to indicate that Word doesn't know this.
What kind of file is it? Do you have an application on your system that can open this file?
Also note that this link will only work on the computer you're working on now. When you transfer the Word document to another computer, the link will break.

The file i'm trying to insert is an html file. I also tried inserting .zip, .txt files also. Same error. I have done this before on Windows platform without any problem.

What happens when you open the html file from the Finder?

It opens in Firefox.

Firefox has to be OLE-aware for this to work. I haven't found a definitive answer to whether it is, though.


text:
How do I give accessibility permission to my AppleScript and System Events in Mavericks?
I've got this old AppleScript that uses a mouseclick function:
activate application "Safari"
tell application "System Events"
    tell process "Safari"
        click at {424, 699}
    end tell
end tell

It no longer works, probably due to a change in how the accessibility permissions works in Mavericks. You need to give permissions on an app by app basis. Unfortunately, SystemEvents.app is not in the list of apps to give permissions. How can I make it appear? Is there another solution that does not depend on downloading utilities from third-parties?
This is the error message I get:
error "System Events got an error: Can’t make {424, 699} into type list." number -1700 from {424, 699} to list

Your problem is independent of the accessibility permission.
Replace your click line with something like click window 1 and it will ask you to allow or deny access to the accessibility features.
There is a problem with click at and I don't know what it is.
Edit : My conclusion after some tests : click at is broken.
The release note of AppleScript updated with the release of Mavericks does not state some kind of removal of this feature. Some that might be a bug.
I submitted a bug report to Apple.
Edit : The issue has been fixed on Yosemite, click at works well again !

I did not get that result, when I ran a command containing "click window 1". Could you show me how you inserted "click window 1" into an applescript command? And I need to click a specific place in the window, how do I add location to click window 1? (If that's possible.)

activate application "Safari" set coor to {200, 200} tell application "System Events"  tell process "Safari"   click window 1  end tell end tell try also running it from terminal with osascript

Thanks for posting the bug! I suspect you might be right about it being a bug as I used a script with that action (literally) thousands of times. :)


text:
Scan from dock?
If I want to scan, I need to open system preferences, click "Printers/Scanners", and select the scanner, to open the application. I'd like to click on an icon in the dock to open it. How to?

With the scanner application running, right-click in the Dock and select "Options->Keep in Dock".


text:
Activate iPhone with any sim?
I have bought an unlocked iPhone 5s (I believe it's model A1530) from the Apple Store Australia, can I use any sim to activate this phone?
Could I even use my partners and then put it back in his phone once it's activated?
I only want to use the phone over wifi for now.

I realize it's ironic to suggest you call for help without an activated phone, but did you consider calling Apple at their pre-sales number 133-622 if you're not clear about the activation steps or requirements?

All I'm wanting to know is if I can use any sim to activate the phone with until I receive my sim in month or so.

(Sorry keep pressing enter) it is a factory apple unlocked phone so will work on a variety of carriers. I'm just wondering if I can borrow a friends sim for instance for the activation phase. I then plan to use the phone over wifi until I receive my sim.

If your phone is factory unlocked, I believe you can activate it for use without any sim card in the slot. I'd answer that, but I'd hate to give you unconfirmed information as I've not seen a truly unlocked 5s yet here in the US. You would perhaps have to clear the other phone number from your phone, but once activated and without SIM, it would function well in WiFi mode.

If the device is unlocked you can borrow a sim to activate the device. One thing to keep in mind though is you may want to skip setting up iCloud until after you remove the borrowed sim card.
After you've ejected the sim go into Settings > Phone > My number. Either clear the number out (which will be the number of your borrowed sim) or type in your actual phone number. The reason being is iCloud (specifically, iMessage) will want to tie the phone number from the borrowed sim to your iMessage account. It could potentially end up with you receiving iMessages intended for the person you borrowed the sim from.

When you borrow a sim card from somebody to active your phone it will say Type in your Icloud you type in their icloud if not icloud it may so aol it will not affect their sim card or phone. After that go to setting and delted their icloud and make yours.


text:
How to reset default sidebar favourites icons in Finder?
I broke my Mac Mini, trying set some permissions on some folders for web-development, but somehow ended up removing permissions from everything.
I managed to restore permissions, but have had a few issues since, namely the folder icons on the sidebar in Finder are not reflecting the icons they should be.
The desktop also seems slow to refresh when saving a file to it. They don't appear until I do another action.
Is this something I can fix in Terminal or elsewhere to restore everything back to how it was? Will I have to resort to reinstalling Mavericks?
Alternatively, will restoring from my Time Machine have an impact on things like these folder icons.

edit:
folder permissions when running ls -le as per answer below
 drwxrwxrwx@ 16 username  staff    544  5 Nov 21:33 Github
 -rw-r--r--@  1 username  staff      0  4 Nov 02:01 Icon?
 drwxr-xr-x@ 72 username  staff   2448  4 Nov 01:55 Library
 drwx---r-x@ 20 username  staff    680  4 Nov 01:44 Movies
 drwx---rw-@  9 username  staff    306  4 Nov 01:54 Music
 drwx---rw-@  8 username  staff    272  4 Nov 01:45 Pictures

etc..

furthermore: I've created a new admin user, it also has the same issue.

this kept cropping up now and again for some reason. latest update to OSX fixed it.

I still think this bug is bizarre.  Took me three months on and off to fix it on my mac.

How did you restore permissions? Manually, or did you use the "Repair" feature in Disk Utilities?
Restoring from a Time Machine backup from before things went bad should work.
One thing you might try before restoring is to delete the Finder preferences. ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.finder.plist then relaunch the Finder (Hold Option while selecting the Finder icon in the dock). The preference file will be regenerated with the system defaults.

I used the repair feature. this might be an issue, I don't have the  com.apple.finder.plist file.

If you don't have a com.apple.finder.plist preference file, then things are certainly "not good" what did you do to your permissions?

basically it looks like i removed my rights to access every folder/file under Home downwards.

being and idiot, found the file. deleted it. restarted finder. no change.

From the terminal could you let me know what you get when you type ls -le This should reveal ACLs which could be messed up or missing. One final trick, try dragging one of the folders directly to the sidebar, see what that does.

answered question in my answer above.

dragging folder to bar replaces the existing folder with the same. no icon change. removing folder before adding folder back in makes no difference either

You probably restored your preferences (not permissions) by deleting com.apple.finder.plist, right? You'll also want to take out one more file, which handles the sidebar, then reboot:
rm -rf ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.sidebarlists.plist
It probably wouldn't hurt to Verify Permissions via Disk Utility either (since you mentioned them).

tried this, but made difference. thanks though

reinstalled mavericks over the top and has cleared everything up.
having deleted the plist files in the other answers beforehand.
thanks

actually after later restarts and updates, problem has reappeared.

I had the same problem as you and it was because I had ACL's on my files in /home.  If you have that problem  (0: group:everyone deny write) go http://backdrift.org/fixing-mac-osx-file-permissions-and-acls-from-the-command-line.

you should put this as an answer @danger14 so i can upvote it

I had the same problem as you and it was because I had ACL's on my files in /home. If you have that problem (0: group:everyone deny write)
More info at http://backdrift.org/fixing-mac-osx-file-permissions-and-acls-from-the-command-line
If permissions is not your issue, I've discovered an alternate solution which I posted here.
Is it possible to change the Finder sidebar icons

/home/? That's a bit odd for a Mac, would have expected it to be /Users/.


text:
Migrate Mac to Mac with external iTunes & iPhoto
I've got an iMac with 2 external hard drives.
One 1.5TB external hard drive for iTunes and iPhoto (750GB combined) and one 3TB external hard drive for Time Machine backups.
I want to migrate everything to my new MacBook Pro which has 512GB storage.
How can I do this? Migrate assistant won't work because there is not enough storage on my MacBook.
Or can I just plug the external hard drives into my MacBook and select them as my iTunes & iPhoto library?

Yes, you just plugin your external hard drives and start iTunes and iPhoto with the option key hold to select your library


text:
Does iCloud backup only backup non-deleted pictures?
I have deleted some photos on my iPad (both from camera roll and photo stream) and I never want them to be found. I heard that you can use "iCloud backup" to restore your stuff in case your iPad crashes or whatever. If at some point I were to backup my iPad, would those    pictures still be found even though I have deleted them? If so, how can they be gotten  rid of forever? I know this probably sounds very strange, but it would be nice to know just in case of emergency.

The pictures won't return as long as you did a backup after you deleted them from your device.


text:
OS X Desktop PSD?
I'm looking for an editable PSD of the default OS X desktop so I can use it for app screenshots for the Mac App Store.
P.S. I don't want to take a screenshot of my own desktop. I specifically want the default OS X desktop that you see when you get a new Mac.

I've never seen anything like this. Why? I imagine it's as easy to get as making a new account, logging in, snapping a screen, and then upping it to Dropbox, Cloudapp, Droplr, whatever. Would take you 30 seconds to do. Once done, delete the new user. This is an utterly lazy question, hence my downvote.

@cksum Why don't you post this as an answer? Creating a new user account might not be obvious for people coming to OS X from single user systems.

@cksum It's not laziness. The thought simply didn't occur to me before. Thanks.

I have created a layered PSD of the default desktop, at Best for Retina resolution.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/tpfxuxpty6p21i1/desktop.psd

Each component of the desktop (Dock, Menu Bar, etc) is a separate layer which can be edited individually.
For instance, parts of the Dock can be shown/hidden:

@MachOSX If you mean did I get this from Dribbble, no, I made this myself. If you mean I should put this on Dribbble, I don't have an invite :(


text:
cdto (to open a terminal) does not work in Mavericks
I've just switched to the Mavericks operating system in my Mac. I used to utilize a quite nice app called "cdto" that serves to open a terminal at the current directory where Finder is. The point is that now "cdto" does not seem to work with Mavericks.
Before I used to utilize "OpenTerminalHere" but it is now obsolete.
Anyone with the same problem and any solution?

Please download the latest version at :
https://github.com/jbtule/cdto/releases
Note: on Marvericks, you need to hold down the Command Key to drag the cdto.app into the toolbar.

I haven't had any issues with it since upgrading to Mavericks. What version are you using and what happens when you open it?
The latest, 2.5 (signed for Gatekeeper compatibility), appears to work. You can download it here: https://code.google.com/p/cdto/downloads/detail?name=cdto_2.5_sign.zip

I think I was doing something wrong.
It is necessary to hold on the command key before dragging the app to the Finder toolbar.
Thanks for the help.