iOS 9 may be exciting with new features and refinements, but running beta software on a primary iPhone or iPad is rarely recommended, as the experience is less than optimal at the moment. For those who installed iOS 9 beta only to discover it’s current state is a bit of a buggy battery drain, the … Read More
Steam offers many great games for Mac users to enjoy, but if you’re a casual gamer you may not be too excited about having the Steam client open itself automatically when logging in or starting up Mac OS X. Fortunately, if Steam opening itself bothers you, it’s very easy to stop this behavior and only … Read More
A bug with text rendering in iOS allows a specifically arranged text message to crash the Messages app on iPhone and iPad and then reboot the device. When the device has booted back again, the Messages app becomes unavailable as it crashes immediately upon launch, which has caused some users to think the problem is … Read More
The Mac Photos app works well for most users, but occasionally a variety of hiccups can be encountered when interacting with photo libraries, ranging from crashes, to hanging on Photos app launch, a failed import, thumbnails missing from an image library, pictures missing from a library that was imported, or even a completely empty Photos … Read More
A somewhat strange error message can occur at random on iOS, typically for iPhone users, that states “Unable to Download Item. Please try again later” with a “Done” and “Retry” button options. The thing that makes this error message strange is that it appears at random and not after the user has attempted to download … Read More
If you’ve ever printed anything from a computer, you’ve inevitably wound up trying to print something that you soon discovered wasn’t needed. Regardless, rather than letting the print job continue and waste ink and paper, the best thing to do is cancel the printers print job or jobs. There are a few ways to cancel … Read More
Some users who have updated to new versions of OS X with Photos app have discovered that Photos app does not meet their needs, and thus would like to continue using iPhoto on the Mac. This is possible, at least for the time being, but there can be some hiccups in getting iPhoto running again … Read More
Rarely, Mac users may encounter a random error message which appears somewhat disconcerting, with an OS X pop-up message saying “Unapproved caller. SecurityAgent may only be invoked by Apple software.” This message can appear at random when using certain apps, or after logging in or a reboot, and is sometimes followed by crashing and other … Read More
Some Mac users may occasionally run into issues with Finder, discovering that Finder will misbehave wildly, sometimes becoming very slow and unresponsive, crashing, or using inordinately high CPU. Given that Finder is a critical component of the Mac and nearly all Mac OS users rely on it for file system navigation, Finder trouble can be … Read More
The Mac received a great many changes with OS X Yosemite along with a notable visual redesign, but some of those changes and various transparent effects may be taking a toll on some users Mac performance with errant WindowServer behavior. This is typically demonstrated with the WindowServer process spiking into heavy CPU use for seemingly … Read More
Whether testing performance of an application, Mac OS X animations, or just out of general curiosity, you can measure the refresh rate in Frames Per Second of onscreen actions and animations on the Mac by using a free developer tool from Apple called Quartz Debug. Part of the Graphics Tools package of Xcode, Quartz Debug … Read More
Now that the Mac windows green maximize button defaults to sending apps and windows into Full Screen Mode, a notably sized cohort of MacOS and Mac OS X users who perhaps didn’t know this behavior changed until accidentally finding out, are left confused with the following question; “how do I get out of full screen … Read More
Many users have a love or hate relationship with iTunes, which is required to sync an iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch to a Mac or PC (presumably an Apple Watch too). When iTunes syncing works as intended, that’s fantastic, but sometimes things don’t work out that way. iTunes 12 in particular appears to have some … Read More
Some users who have updated to iOS 8.2 have discovered the Safari web browser no longer works as it should on their iPhone or iPad. There seems to be a few variations of Safari issues with iOS 8.2, but typically the problems manifest as an inability for Safari to launch or stay open, Safari becoming … Read More
Using FileVault full disk encryption is one of the better ways to protect your Mac and personal documents from prying eyes and password resets, but if you’re troubleshooting a Mac with FileVault, either your own or someone else’s, it’s kind of annoying to have another layer of passwords necessary to enter before you’ll be able … Read More
A notable amount of Mac users have discovered that a random Mac OS X password popup window can appear from iCloud, FaceTime, or Messages, any of each asking for the respective iCloud password. The random password request is very non-specific and just has the logo, “iCloud Password – Please enter your password for email@address” with … Read More
Rarely, an iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch will become completely unresponsive and errant, leading to what amounts to a frozen device that just won’t do anything. The most obvious indicator of this is when something on screen just cease up completely and the touch screen becomes unresponsive to all input, and clicking on any of … Read More
A few Mac users that update to Mac OS X discover their sound and audio output has ceased to work, leading to a completely mute Mac that does not respond to the volume keys. Fortunately, the mysterious missing sound output issue is incredibly simple to fix, and there is nothing actually wrong with the Mac.
