Troubleshooting

A new potentially dangerous Java security vulnerability has been discovered that could allow malicious code to run on a Java-enabled computer, be it a Mac or Windows PC. Most Mac users will be safe from the vulnerability because OS X Mountain Lion does not include Java by default, and OS X Lion includes an older … Read More

One of the best ways to kid-proof (and generally fool proof) an iPhone or iPad is to turn off in-app purchases. That’s great for the iOS world, but for the desktop you can do something similar by disabling access to the iTunes Store completely, this will prevent unintended purchases of apps, music, movies, books, or … Read More

Battery life on portable Macs running Mountain Lion improved slightly with the OS X 10.8.1 update, but still generally underperforms the same Macs running Lion. Since updating to OS X 10.8.1 from 10.8, we have conducted several unscientific tests on a variety of different Macs and found there is a minor improvement to battery life … Read More

You’ll often hear Mac users reference their machines by a model and the build year (for example, Mac Mini 2010, or MacBook Pro 2016), or by a timeline within the year it was released (iMac mid-2011 model). Sure some Mac users just have an amazing memory for this stuff, but everyone else can retrieve the … Read More

Did you know you can quit multiple running apps at the same time on an iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch? Thanks to multitouch support, you can actually quit as many apps as you can get your fingers on (literally). Here’s what to do on any iOS device running versions 6 or prior:

Whether you’re troubleshooting app crashes, beta testing an app, or you just want to help an iOS developer out after you’ve discovered a particular bug, you can retrieve crash reports from any app on an iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch device once it has been synced to a computer. Finding crash report data for iOS … Read More

Safari 6 changed the longstanding behavior of the Delete key, which used to navigate back a page when pressed but now does nothing. Instead, navigating web pages forward and backward is done through Command [ and Command ]. If you’d like to return the back-a-page navigation behavior to the Delete key within Safari, you can … Read More

OS X Mountain Lion has been a painless upgrade for most users, but there are a fair amount of people experiencing some unusual wireless connectivity problems and issues. Mainly, the wi-fi connection seems to drop at random, or the Mac simply won’t stay connected to a wireless network for long. Sometimes it automatically reconnects and … Read More

Autocorrect in iOS is pretty smart and usually gets things right, it also learns your habits and frequently typed words and will start autocorrecting what you type to the words you have used in the past. This can be a blessing and a curse, because if you accidentally corrected a word to a wrong one … Read More

Mac OS X defaults to preventing applications from unidentified developers or sources from being launched. You’ll discover the message in Mac OS when you try to launch a Mac app that didn’t come from a verified source or from the Mac App Store, and you’ll get an alert dialog that says “[App name] can’t be … Read More

After you’ve upgraded to OS X Mountain Lion on the primary Mac you bought it from, the installer app deletes itself from your /Applications/ folder. This makes sense for those who only own a single Mac, but if you plan on installing OS X Mountain Lion on multiple Macs or just want to create an … Read More

Though you can usually fix stuck app downloads by double-tapping the stuck icon, that doesn’t work with things downloaded from iTunes like podcasts, music, audio books, and video. If you find yourself forever waiting for a stuck media download from iTunes, the solution is very simple: Launch iTunes and then tap on “Downloads” Find the … Read More

Mac OS X can sometimes throw permissions errors when trying to delete files or empty the Trash. The most common variations of the errors are usually “Operation cannot be completed because the item “File” is in use” or “because the file is locked”, sometimes you can get around this by just quitting open applications or … Read More

Have you ever wanted to show a list of the entire download history of a Mac? Maybe you know you downloaded a file but you can’t quite pinpoint where you got it from and the “Get Info” trick didn’t work. Or maybe you are trying to track down a file that has been placed on … Read More

On the rare occasion that you go to put a Mac to sleep and, well, it won’t sleep, there’s an easy to way to find out what the holdup is. Though this is a somewhat technical approach, it should give a good starting point to anyone who’s confused as to why something like automatic sleep … Read More

If you updated or downloaded an app from the iOS App Store on the iPhone and iPad, or an app from the Mac App Stores recently and it crashes immediately on launch, there’s a fairly easy solution that should be able to resolve the crashing app issue; you should delete the app and re-download it … Read More

DS_Store files are hidden system files that reside within almost every folder of Mac OS X, they contain folder-specific information and settings, like what view to use, icon size, and other metadata pertaining to their directory. Though ds_store files are invisible to the average user, if you’re sharing with a Windows PC or have hidden … Read More

Double tapping the spacebar on an iPhone or iPad inserts a period at the end of a sentence and starts another, a helpful shortcut feature that can really improve typing on the virtual keyboards of iOS, but not everyone likes the double-space to type a period behavior. If you don’t want the iPhone or iPad … Read More