Personal Hotspot lets you share a devices cellular data connection with other devices or computers by turning a device into a wi-fi router, and it’s easily one of the better features of the iPhone and cellular iPad models (and Android phones for that matter). The iOS Personal Hotspot usually functions without a hitch, but sometimes … Read More
The iTunes Store updates frequently to display new apps, music, movies, TV shows, and the free app of the week, and typically you can see the new stuff by just clicking around in iTunes to visit the various stores and media content areas. But sometimes the iTunes Store may display stale content, particularly if the … Read More
Some users have noticed that certain older iPhone and iPad models feel slower after updating to iOS 7. We’ve offered a variety of tips to speed things up, but one persistent issue that has we’ve been contacted about regards the mysterious keyboard lag and typing delay that seems to only apply to older devices, where … Read More
Having a Macs serial number is important for when you’re ordering AppleCare extended warranties, checking on the status of your current warranty or repairs, or even when just contacting tech support whether it’s Apple or another third party support solution through the phone. Because you’ll likely need a Macs serial number at some point in … Read More
iTunes Radio is a really great streaming music service from Apple accessible with iTunes on the desktop and iOS for the mobile world. But a peculiar bug is impacting some iOS devices where the Radio button disappears entirely at random from the iOS Music app for many iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch users. This obviously … Read More
configd is a system configuration daemon that runs behind Mac OS X, most users will never notice or see the core OS X process running in the background of their Macs. With that said, configd can sometimes act up and cause unusual CPU spikes and fan activity making your Mac sound like a wind tunnel. … Read More
Hard drive failures are never fun but they are a fact of computing life whether you use a Mac or PC. Sometimes drives can truck along for many years before going bad, and other times you wind up with a drive that goes kaput after just a few months of normal use. Regardless of when … Read More
Some iOS and iPadOS users have reported problems activating iMessage and FaceTime on their freshly updated iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch devices. Some of the initial activation errors were probably due to immense simultaneous demand being placed on Apple servers, but since some people are still experiencing this problem after the initial iOS update release … Read More
Ever had a window get lost partially off screen in Mac OS X, where the window titlebars and close/minimize/maximize buttons are no longer accessible? Typically this looks something like the following screen shot: There a variety of potential causes and even random situations for windows to move offscreen like that, but it often happens with … Read More
Despite Time Machine being a remarkable solution for easy backups, a peculiar issue can arise for some Time Machine users that causes the Mac OS X Trash to not be able to empty when the backup drive is connected to the Mac. This will usually manifest itself as the following; a user attempts to empty … Read More
Using Disk Utility through Recovery Mode is the preferred and primary tool for repairing disks on the Mac platform, but if Disk Utility is either unavailable or not able to repair a drive, then Single User Mode and the command line tool fsck should be your next choice.
The Mail app bundled with Mac OS X is an excellent email client, but if you have a giant mailbox that has been in use for a long time you may encounter some peculiar problems with sluggishness, message content issues, and searching irregularities. Usually these issues are of distinct types; search errors where some messages … Read More
If you find yourself in a situation where the power button (the topmost hardware button) on your iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch is unresponsive, stuck, or no longer functioning, you can make due by using the Assistive Touch features of iOS. Intended as an Accessibility feature, Assistive Touch allows you to summon a virtual power … Read More
Most iOS users encounter “Other” for the first time when they connect their iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch to a computer, where they’ll find it listed in the little iTunes usage bar graph. With everything else so well labeled, Other can be a bit of a mystery, particularly when it takes up a ton of … Read More
In an unusual and fairly rare situation, the Mac cursor can randomly disappear from OS X. More accurately, the cursor itself becomes invisible, because you can still click around on the screen but without being able to see what the mouse or trackpad is focused on. This seems to happen out of the blue, and … Read More
Every once in a while an iOS device or app will get stuck in the wrong orientation, unresponsive to rotating the device and it either stays in portrait or horizontal mode, despite every effort to rotate the device any which direction. Though this seems to happen more often on the iPad than the iPhone or … Read More
iOS is obviously going in the direction of not needing iTunes at all, but in the meantime you still need to sync an iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch to copy over music libraries, videos, media, perform local backups, apps, and more. Typically iTunes will sync with an iOS device without incident, but sometimes things go … Read More
Though most iPhone owners know what which model they have, not everyone does, and sometimes you’ll come across an iPhone and have no idea what it is. This is usually because some iPhone models share the same enclosure, and because of that it can be very hard to differentiate them just by a first glance. … Read More
