Troubleshooting

You may notice an excessive amount of disk activity and high CPU utilization from a process called “find” that runs randomly in Mac OS X. This process has been a cause of concern by some users because of it’s behavior, but this is not spyware and the process should not cause worry. If you see … Read More

Some users are reporting that their song and media library has disappeared after downloading iOS 4.2.1 and installing the update. You’ll know you’re effected because instead of your typical iPod music library loading in the iPod app, you’ll get a message that says “No Content” and telling you to download music from iTunes. Fix the … Read More

You may have noticed that some Mac models display 3.75GB of RAM in the Activity Monitor when they have 4GB of RAM installed, but why is this? The answer is simple: your Mac has a GPU that uses shared memory. This means that your graphics card borrows some of the systems memory and uses it … Read More

Some users report variations of a “Network Connection Timed Out” error when trying to update their iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch to a newer version of iOS or even when attempting to connect to the iTunes Store. Errors include but are not limited to: “There is a problem downloading the software” “Network Connection Timed Out” … Read More

Resetting your PRAM (or NVRAM) is a common troubleshooting technique when a Mac is misbehaving. We’ll cover how to reset PRAM on any Mac, as well as providing some additional information about PRAM and what it is to better help you understand when and why you’d want to reset it.

If you bought an iPhone app and it didn’t work on your device due to technical failures or limitations, or perhaps the app purchase was made in error by a child or someone else using your device, you may be eligible for a refund from Apple. Apple will selectively refund app purchases, though it’s not … Read More

Update 2: LetterBox for Mac OS X 10.6.7 has been released and it resolves the latest incompatibilities. If you’d rather fix the plugin yourself, follow the instructions below but use these two UUID’s instead: 9049EF7D-5873-4F54-A447-51D722009310 1C58722D-AFBD-464E-81BB-0E05C108BE06 Thanks to Vincent for providing the UUID’s in the comments! Update: A new version of Letterbox for Mac OS … Read More

Wondering what to do about a dead pixel or stuck pixel on an Apple device? Apple’s internal policy on dead and stuck pixels has been revealed. Titled “Acceptable numbers of pixel anomalies”, the internal document explains Apple’s policy on what they call pixel anomalies and how they handle repairs or replacements.

Adobe Creative Suite (CS) will automatically connect to the internet and attempt to initiate connections with Adobe Online Services and Service Update, this will happen regardless of you disabling the updates within the Adobe preferences for some reason. If you want to turn off the ability for Adobe CS to access the online services, kuler … Read More

AirPort Base Station Agent runs in the background of Mac OS X whether or not you use an AirPort Base Station. It’s a part of Mac OS X, and as the name implies it handles Airport Base Station connections as well as connections to Time Capsule. If you use either of these Apple products you’ll … Read More

If you’ve downloaded something from Adobe recently you may have unintentionally installed Akamai Download Manager. Akamai is a helpful content delivery network (at least for the web), but for whatever reason the Akamai Download Manager that is used and packaged with Adobe software often goes haywire on a Mac with usage spikes and random internet … Read More

AppleJack is a really handy troubleshooting utility for Mac that works even if you can’t load the Mac OS X GUI. Running in Single User Mode, it’s a simple menu-based tool to run a series of tests and repairs on the Mac OS. With AppleJack you can easily: * Repair Disk * Repair Disk Permissions … Read More

Who doesn’t love free software? MacScan is a full service anti-spyware detection tool for Mac OS X and for a short time is available entirely for free, so you need to jump on this one quick. For a limited time only (just today: 9/20) you can download this anti-spyware tool for FREE. Get the free … Read More

This is a rather strange error message which you may see in Mac OS X, you’ll get the notification “Another device on the network is using your computer’s IP address” and then you’ll lose internet access with the dialog box telling you to try connecting again later. No thanks, we need internet access now! So … Read More

For whatever reason since updating to iOS 4.0 Pandora has been misbehaving on both my iPhone and iPod touch. If you haven’t run into this basically what happens is a few songs will play normally before they start to skip and stutter, for some songs it almost sounds like it’s part of the song, but … Read More

If you have MP3’s that are skipping, sounding weird, or that a media player like iTunes won’t open, sometimes you just need to run them through an MP3 validator app to check and repair the files. A great free MP3 checker is called MP3 Scan+Repair, it’s got an easy drag and drop interface that will … Read More

I recently encountered a strange bug where iTunes refused to add a song to it’s playlist and wouldn’t play the original source MP3 file either. Interestingly enough, the mp3 file played fine with Quick Look and even was able to play within the Finder preview, but no matter what I did I could not add … Read More

Many new Mac users are coming from the Windows world where they would access the Task Manager to end tasks and stop errant processes. The Mac has it’s own Task Manager but it goes by another name: Activity Monitor. Activity Monitor functions in a very similar way to how Task Manager does in Windows, letting … Read More