Troubleshooting

FaceTime makes video chat and audio calls easier than ever, or at least, it does when FaceTime works. While FaceTime used to be one of the most reliable ways to initiate a video conversation between any Macs, iPhones, or iPads, sometimes it just doesn’t work. More recently, a bug has been identified that has completely … Read More

Many of us who bought an iPhone 5 early in the release cycle have since discovered that our power buttons have either stopped working entirely, or no longer register some clicks / taps. While the assumption has been that it’s a result of wear and tear, Apple has now acknowledged that a malfunctioning power button … Read More

A fair amount of Mac users have encountered an issue where their Mac will immediately disconnect from wi-fi networks after waking from sleep, forcing users to rejoin a wireless network constantly. This is obviously pretty frustrating, but it’s usually easily remedied with a few adjustments to the Network Preferences in OS X. If your Mac … Read More

Spilling water or another liquid onto a one to two thousand dollar plus MacBook Air or MacBook Pro is a horrible feeling, but before you completely panic, you can take a few proactive steps which may help to preserve the Mac or your data. There is never a guarantee that the Mac will be saved … Read More

The hosts file is included on every computer and used by Mac OS to map IP addresses to host names. Because users may choose to adjust, change, or otherwise edit the hosts file for a variety of reasons, it can be easily subjected to user error, leading to a variety of undesirable network problems ranging … Read More

If you ever need to identify what model number an iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch is, typically the easiest thing to do is just flip the device over and look on the lower back panel. Alongside the trampstamp of regulatory details, FCC ID, IC, and the various symbols, you’ll find the devices model number. But … Read More

You may have noticed that some iOS apps will turn dark as if they’re being launched and simultaneously rename themselves as “Cleaning…”, seemingly out of the blue and at random. This is demonstrated happening with the attached iPhone screenshot, showing the Instagram app going through the process. So the big question for many users is, … Read More

Time Machine is by far the simplest way to keep regular and reliable backups of a Mac, and usually the automatic backups start and finish without any incident. On some rare occasions though, Time Machine may get stuck* on the “Preparing Backup” stage for an inordinately long amount of time, causing a backup to never … Read More

Typically when an external display is connected to a Mac, it will automatically be detected and start working instantly, with the Mac either extending the desktop or mirroring the screen over to the newly attached display output. Sometimes that doesn’t happen however, and when a secondary screen is not detected automatically by the Mac, you’ll … Read More

While Safari usually works just fine for browsing the web, there are times you may encounter a persistent error message about verifying the identity of a particular website. The precise error message may read something like this, and appear on almost any site, where “URL” is a variety of domains: “Safari can’t verify the identity … Read More

Every time you connect an iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch to a new computer, you’ll get a “Trust This Computer?” alert dialog popping up. If you’ve updated iTunes or reset an iOS device to factory settings, sometimes you’ll even see this Trust dialog box on a computer you’ve already chosen to trust from that device. … Read More

If you’re attempting to upgrade or restore an iPhone, iPad, iPod touch, or Apple TV by way of iTunes and you encounter an Error 17 alert, you’re probably experiencing an issue with the computer connecting to Apple’s servers. This can be caused by a variety of things and users may see it either when trying … Read More

Now that more users have updated to iOS 7.1, a continuing (yet fairly small) stream of complaints have surfaced about battery life for some iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch users that have moved to the latest version of iOS. Battery issues are reported with some degree of regularity with a subset of users with just … Read More

OS X provides a great way to quickly find what app is using battery power from a drop-down menu on portable Macs, but you’re usually left with a single option to address the battery hog, and that is quitting the app. But it’s not always necessary to quit out of the entire app in question, … Read More

Some iPad Air owners have been impacted by a persistent crashing issue, where either the entire device crashes and reboots, or, more commonly, where the Safari browser crashes and randomly quits. The Safari crashing issue is often repeatable by pointing Safari at several Javascript heavy web pages with numerous tabs open, or by opening a … Read More

Considering that so much of the functionality of iOS is dependent on the internet, it’s pretty frustrating if you can’t join a wireless network because of a mystery “Unable to join the network [name]” error popping up on an iPad, iPhone, or iPod touch. You may encounter this alert trying to join a wifi network … Read More

The systemstats process is used to retrieve information about system statistics and power usage, and though it usually runs unnoticed in the background, the systemstatsd and systemstats processes have been known to randomly go haywire in OS X, eating up 100%-300% or more CPU while slowing down a Mac.

Some iPhone and iPad users, myself included, have experienced an unusual level of battery drain after updating devices to iOS 7.0.6. This is typically accompanied by an iPhone (or other device) feeling abnormally warm to the touch.