Troubleshooting

I’ve gotten in the habit of immediately putting my MacBook Air to sleep by shutting the lid, by far the easiest method if you’re on the go. Typically this works without a hitch, but today the Air didn’t sleep when shut. Because the MacBook Air has no moving hard drive or sleep light, I didn’t … Read More

Forgetting a user account password can be a major frustration for Mac users, but fortunately there are a some simple and secure ways to recover and reset a lost password on any Mac. One of the best ways to handle this situation and reset a lost password is to use an Apple ID, which allows … Read More

If you make any customizations to Mission Control, or if you encounter obvious problems with how Desktops and apps are handled and assigned, you can restart Mission Control without having to reboot the entire Mac.

If you’re recording video chat or just troubleshooting problems with iChat, knowing the frame rate and other video statistics can be helpful information. From the Video menu, pull down to “Connection Doctor”, then select the “Statistics” option from the pull-down menu to see the window shown up top. The group under “Local” is your own … Read More

Traveling abroad can quickly become frustrating when you attempt a search on Google.com and discover you are redirected to the local countries variant of Google, with the local language and all. This language redirect can happen when using a VPN or proxy as well. While this is convenient for things like local search and Maps, … Read More

If you signed up for iTunes Match and you’re seeing some peculiar icons in your music library alongside track names, don’t miss this chart put together by Apple that explains what each icon means, helping you troubleshoot the problem. The icons include: Cloud with a slash through it – ineligible for iTunes Match X’ed out … Read More

After you’ve made the transition to iCloud from MobileMe, the option to remove the old and now obsolete MobileMe menu bar icon disappears. It’s easy to get rid of though, as Tony R shows us in this tip he sent in: Hold down the Command key and click and hold on the old MobileMe icon, … Read More

In modern versions of Mac OS X, repairing permissions from the Disk Utility app doesn’t repair the users file permissions, oddly this has to be done separately on a per-user basis. If you’re running into problems with Spotlight not finding documents or folders, or if you’re having other issues that can usually be fixed with … Read More

If your iPad or iPhone is running slow after updating to iOS 5 you’re not alone, for many the update has made their device feel sluggish, with taps taking longer to register, stalls between swipes, and just a general noticeable decrease in performance. This seems to effect all iOS devices too, indicating it’s not necessarily … Read More

Over-the-Air (OTA) updates are one of the better refinements to iOS as part of the whole “post-PC” thing, they bring delta software updates directly to your devices, making for quicker updates and using less bandwidth (a delta update means only the differences between the iOS versions are sent, preventing a much larger package from being … Read More

We’ve published a variety of fixes for wireless connections dropping in Lion, and even a keepalive script that helps many users maintain a connection in some of the stubborn cases, but some Mac OS X Lion users continue to have problems with their internet connection failing. After diagnosing another MacBook with wireless stability problems post-Lion, … Read More

We’ve received quite a few questions about the iPhone’s clock and if it will update automatically for Daylight Savings Time, the answer is: Yes, the iPhone automatically changes time to be correct with your time zone. So does the iPad, iPod touch, and Mac OS X. You do not need to change the time manually, … Read More

Google Chrome has a built-in Task Manager tool that lets you kill individual tabs, windows, plugins, and even extensions. This is extraordinarily helpful if you encounter a page that gets tied up, beach balls, or can’t be closed due to any number of errors. For those of us who live centered around the web, this … Read More

If you’re trying to update iOS to the latest version on an iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch and you get an error in iTunes saying: The iOS Device “Device Name” could not be updated. This device isn’t eligible for the requested build. You’re most likely encountering one the following problems: either you are using an … Read More

If you have a newer MacBook Air you should pay attention. Some of the MacBook Airs are shipping with Samsung displays, and some are shipping with LG displays, both are quality displays, but the LG’s default color profile is lighter and a bit flat. Most users probably won’t notice this, but if you sit a … Read More

We’ve covered a handful of tips to increase battery life in iOS 5 and even for the new iPhone 4S, but nonetheless the complaints about battery drain are still piling up. The culprit for the 4S is almost always Location Services, and all you need to do is disable a few things: Tap on “Settings” … Read More

Despite the relative ease of updating to iOS 5 through iTunes either directly or by IPSW, some users are still reporting problems. In some cases this is user caused (error 3194 is easy to fix as is error 3200 & 3002), but if you’re continuing to have issues it could be related to a firewall … Read More

Back on the topic of iOS disk usage, we have several solutions to that persistently annoying “Other” space you see in iTunes, which sometimes can take up huge amounts of space that are seemingly impossible to recover. We will show you exactly how to get your “Other” space back from an iPhone, iPad, or iPod … Read More