Troubleshooting

It’s unclear why, but the Mac App Store is running a lot slower in OS X Lion for some users, including myself. By slow I mean you’ll encounter nearly constant beachballs as you click from app to app, with the absolute worst offender being the main category sections. I’m assuming there is an underlying bug … Read More

If you’ve found yourself stuck in Chromes full screen mode, you’re not alone. Chrome has it’s benefits, like syncing and the native omnibar, but unfortunately Chrome does not play well with Full Screen Mode under Mac OS X Lion – at all. You are free to click the full screen button to get in, but … Read More

Xcode 4.1 was made available as a free download through the Mac App Store for OS X Lion owners, but many users are encountering a strange error when they go to install the development suite; an error message pops up saying that XCode can’t be installed while iTunes is running telling you that “In order … Read More

Updating to Mac OS X Lion for the vast majority of users is a painless experience and everything works great. But for others there can be trouble, there are various user reports in our comments and around the web on Apple’s Support forums and elsewhere, that suggest that wireless networking in OS X Lion is … Read More

Your Mac will automatically restart itself if it freezes, thanks to a new feature in OS X Mountain Lion and Mac OS X Lion. Tucked away in “Energy Saver”, the auto-restart ability is an option that can be disabled if for whatever reason you don’t want your Mac to basically fix itself in the event … Read More

Need to know exactly when your Mac was last booted, put to sleep, or woke from sleep? You can get precise information about boot and sleep times directly from the command line, which can be invaluable for anything from troubleshooting various Mac problems to scheduling scripts, or even for your own forensic purposes to determine … Read More

If you just got a RAM upgrade and you want to test the memory, or if you just want a great free addition to a Mac troubleshooting toolbox, download Rember now.

We’ve received a fair share of comments and emails about Mac OS X Lion making some Macs seem sluggish, running hotter than usual, and causing the machines fans to run at full speed. This sounded concerning, but after I went about installing Lion DP4 myself and looked into this a bit further I’m here to … Read More

One of our readers sent in this screenshot with a funny looking error code they got when trying to redeem a promo code on the App Store. It’s a sloppy error, spilling over the allocated space and dumping some object name or something onto the user. The error seen is “MZFreeProductCode.ClientCannotRedeemIosApp_explanation” and the assumption is … Read More

While some web ads are unobtrusive, others are really annoying. If you’re tired of seeing web ads, you can install adblock extensions in every major web browser and never see another ad again. Obligatory notice: blocking ads prevents web publishers from supporting themselves, ad revenue is what pays the bills for websites like this one … Read More

If you have recently upgraded your Mac RAM, or if you are experiencing strange system crashes, it’s a good idea to test your memory modules integrity using a free tool called memtest. Essentially, memtest is a utility designed to stress test RAM for errors. Without getting overly technical in the explanation, memtest works by writing … Read More

If you’re in IT, or just fixing Grandmas Mac, it’s not too uncommon to get a machine where you don’t have the admin users password. If you find yourself in this situation, you can easily change the Admin password, or any other users, simply by booting into Mac OS X‘s command line Single User Mode. … Read More

After a bit of use, my MacBook Air 11.6″ started to exhibit a strange behavior, it refused to wake from sleep. I’d open the MacBook Air, hit every key imaginable, and the Mac just stayed asleep, nothing would get it to turn on. If you’re interested in this you’re probably affected too so before I … Read More

If you’re trying to access the Mac App Store and you are getting the “Cannot Connect to App Store” error, you can typically resolve the issue with a few simple troubleshooting steps. This article will walk through some simple solutions to reconnect to the Mac App Store.

Booting a Mac with Verbose Mode can be a helpful troubleshooting trick for some obscure situations where users are trying to determine what is going wrong with a Mac during the system boot process. Just as it sounds, verbose mode is verbose, meaning it lists everything going on behind the scenes, and you’ll watch as … Read More

LetterBox is a very popular plugin for Mac OS X Mail.app that gives you a nice widescreen interface. Unfortunately it seems like every other Mac OS X system update screws up LetterBox compatibility, and 10.6.7 is no different. Thankfully the LetterBox developer is quick to react, and a fixed version for Mac OS X 10.6.7 … Read More

Many iPhone owners are reporting yet another Daylight Savings Time bug, this time some iPhone clocks chose to ‘fall back’ an hour rather than “springing forward” like they are supposed to. The bug has affected iPhone users on a wide variety of networks, including Verizon, AT&T, and Rogers, and there doesn’t seem to be any … Read More

Some of us who have downloaded iOS 4.3 and updated their iPhones and iPads have run into a strange syncing error that vaguely states “The required file cannot be found.” If this has happened to you, you’re not alone, and thankfully there’s a fix of sorts. Fix “required file cannot be found” iOS 4.3 syncing … Read More