Troubleshooting

The MagSafe power adapter is brilliant, using magnets to secure a connection between a MacBook and the AC power charger, it not only breaks away quickly to help prevent mishaps, but it also quickly snaps on to provide power to the Mac. It usually works flawlessly, but on some rare occasions, the MagSafe adapter is … Read More

Web browsers generally work fine on the Mac, but every once in a while Safari in OS X will misbehave in some way or another. The most common of these issues encountered are typically things like random pages inexplicably being inaccessible or displaying oddly, stale cache being delivered (in normal person terms, that means an … Read More

Having recently went through the process of updating a handful of Macs to the latest versions of Mac OS X as part of a gifting tech support campaign, several Macs developed an odd flickering display problem that was only visible when an external monitor was connected to the Mac. On an 11″ MacBook Air, the … Read More

Just about every Mac comes with a front-facing camera these days, referred to usually as the FaceTime camera, and on older machines was called iSight. Nearly all of the time, this camera works flawlessly and you’ll never have any problems with it, but a frustrating error can appear from time to time that makes many … Read More

A fair amount of users have been experiencing persistent Bluetooth connectivity problems since updating their iPhones, iPads, and iPod touches to iOS 7. Though some of the issues relate to hardware like an external keyboard, speakers, or a headset, many of the most frustrating problems pertain to Bluetooth connectivity with cars and iOS devices. This … Read More

Many iOS users have noticed that wallpapers behave a bit differently from how they did in the past on iPhone and iPads. No, we’re not talking about how they impact the overall appearance and usability of the devices, we’re focusing on the automatic resizing of images used as wallpapers, which can lead to zoomed in, … Read More

A fair amount of Mac users running OS X Mavericks have discovered a peculiar slow speed issue when attempting to use various actions found in the File menu, including the Open, Save, and Export dialog boxes. The problem manifests as an intensely slow lag when trying to use the Open or Save dialog windows, where … Read More

All portable Macs in the MacBook Pro and Air lineup have backlit keyboards these days, which not only makes it easier to type in dim lighting, but let’s face it, it also looks really fancy too. Because the backlighting uses very low power LED to illuminate, there isn’t much of any hit to battery life … Read More

It seems that an “Unable to Verify Update” error message arrives at random for some users with just about every single iOS software update, perhaps unsurprisingly, the problem has resurfaced for some when trying to download and install the recent 9.3, 7.0.4, and various other iOS updates. The error seems to be exclusive to using … Read More

Finder is the file manager in OS X, and it’s actually one of the oldest components of the Mac operating system, having been around since the earliest days of Mac OS. Despite it’s long history, many users who have upgraded to OS X Mavericks have discovered some peculiar behavior with Finder, where it can become … Read More

Most iPhone users have trouble-free use of their device whether it’s on a cellular connection or wi-fi, but wireless connectivity issues do occur from time to time. These type of problems can manifest in a variety of ways; sometimes the Wi-Fi on and off toggle switch is grey and unusable (sometimes resolved by simply quitting … Read More

Personal Hotspot lets you share a devices cellular data connection with other devices or computers by turning a device into a wi-fi router, and it’s easily one of the better features of the iPhone and cellular iPad models (and Android phones for that matter). The iOS Personal Hotspot usually functions without a hitch, but sometimes … Read More

The iTunes Store updates frequently to display new apps, music, movies, TV shows, and the free app of the week, and typically you can see the new stuff by just clicking around in iTunes to visit the various stores and media content areas. But sometimes the iTunes Store may display stale content, particularly if the … Read More

Some users have noticed that certain older iPhone and iPad models feel slower after updating to iOS 7. We’ve offered a variety of tips to speed things up, but one persistent issue that has we’ve been contacted about regards the mysterious keyboard lag and typing delay that seems to only apply to older devices, where … Read More

iTunes Radio is a really great streaming music service from Apple accessible with iTunes on the desktop and iOS for the mobile world. But a peculiar bug is impacting some iOS devices where the Radio button disappears entirely at random from the iOS Music app for many iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch users. This obviously … Read More

configd is a system configuration daemon that runs behind Mac OS X, most users will never notice or see the core OS X process running in the background of their Macs. With that said, configd can sometimes act up and cause unusual CPU spikes and fan activity making your Mac sound like a wind tunnel. … Read More

Hard drive failures are never fun but they are a fact of computing life whether you use a Mac or PC. Sometimes drives can truck along for many years before going bad, and other times you wind up with a drive that goes kaput after just a few months of normal use. Regardless of when … Read More

Some iOS and iPadOS users have reported problems activating iMessage and FaceTime on their freshly updated iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch devices. Some of the initial activation errors were probably due to immense simultaneous demand being placed on Apple servers, but since some people are still experiencing this problem after the initial iOS update release … Read More