Have you ever noticed that some very high resolution images are downsampled when viewed on the iPad 3 in Safari? With certain image file types, high resolution pictures that are larger than 1700×1400 or so will be shrunk down and not display at any greater resolution within Safari, not even sizing up to the native … Read More
It’s a good idea to check the hard drive health of a Mac as part of a periodic maintenance routine. Doing this is extremely easy with Disk Utility, and we’ll cover exactly how to verify hard disks, how to repair them, and what to do if you encounter any issues or errors in the process. … Read More
Running out of iCloud backup capacity happens quick whether you have a single iPhone or a handful of iOS devices. You’ll know this has happened because you get a friendly popup informing you of “Not Enough Storage” and that the automatic backup can not occur as a result. So what to do? There’s really two … Read More
Troubleshooting computer problems is never particularly fun, and with so many potential third party add-ons, plugins, extensions, scripts, and whatever else is buried into OS X, how are you supposed to find everything to help determine what’s causing an issue? You need Consultant’s Canary, because whether you’re troubleshooting your own Mac or someone else’s, it’s … Read More
Certain Wi-Fi networks require clients to use static IP addresses or manual DHCP information in order for a device to connect properly to that network. Adjusting the iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch to use a static IP address or manual DHCP settings is easy in iOS, here’s how you can do it with any version … Read More
iOS updates can come with some unexpected surprises regarding battery life and iOS 5.1.1 isn’t much different. While there are a fair amount of reports of positive battery improvements not all of us were so lucky, the battery life on my iPad 3 absolutely tanked after updating to iOS 5.1.1. After rebooting several times and … Read More
Many Mac users have an external hard disk for Time Machine backups or other media storage purposes, and if you leave it connected to the Mac all the time you’ve probably noticed an annoying side effect: the drive will spin down when it’s not in use, only to be spun up again unnecessarily at random … Read More
The OS X task management tool Activity Monitor includes an excellent and little known feature that lets you see precisely what files, ports, and IP’s are being interacted with by any single process or application. Here is how to use it: Launch Activity Monitor, found in /Applications/Utilities/ Double-click on the process or application name you … Read More
Each time you connect an iPhone, iPad, or iPod to a computer, iTunes launches and immediately begins to automatically sync all content between the iOS device and the connected computer. If you’re annoyed with the auto-syncing aspect of iTunes, or you just want to disable it on an auxiliary Mac or Windows computer, here is … Read More
Does your Mac feel like it takes forever to boot up when you turn it on? Does your Mac seemingly take forever to reboot? If your Mac is feeling sluggish when booting or starting up Mac OS X it’s probably a result of a few things. This walkthrough will address how to speed up reboot … Read More
For those dual booting between OS X Mountain Lion and OS X Lion, or any other two versions of OS X for that matter, there comes a time when you inevitably want to remove one of the operating systems. For this walkthrough we’ll assume the boot partition you want to delete is one of the … Read More
Many iPad, iPhone, and iPod touch users are annoyed with a constant message asking to “Verify iCloud Password: iCloud Backup requires that you verify your password.”, the popup dialog shows up randomly but most often when unlocking a device after periods of inactivity. Clicking OK and entering the password makes it go away for the … Read More
Don’t freak out if you or someone you know accidentally deleted an app from an iPhone or iPad, because they can be easily redownloaded and restored at anytime through either of these simple processes.
Running out of disk space is no fun and Mac users with smaller drives need to be particularly aware of available disk space. The Mac OS X Finder Search feature can be used to find large files but if you’re really serious about managing disk space and tracking down unnecessary large files and folders, you … Read More
The “Other” capacity in iTunes is supposed to estimate the size of system software, contacts, Messages data, and things that are not listed elsewhere in the labeled capacities list of storage on an iOS device. Sometimes other data will become mislabeled or misappropriated to the “Other” category, and suddenly it’s reported as being much larger … Read More
Need to refresh the App Store or iTunes Store from a computer? To quickly refresh the App Store on Mac OS X, just hit Command+R at any screen in the iTunes, iOS App Store, or Mac App Store, and the page will reload with whatever new data awaits, whether it’s a revised Top Charts listing … Read More
If your new iPad 3 has poor wi-fi reception, you’re not alone. After getting a shiny new iPad 3rd gen, I immediately noticed it wasn’t registering any bars of wireless reception, and wi-fi was strangely slow regardless of the network I joined or the distance to the router. It must be defective and I should … Read More
If you have an older Mac that feels slow and sluggish from time to time, follow these simple tips to regain some long lost speed. We’re going to keep it simple with real tips that will speed up a Mac that are not overly complex or complicated. Nothing here is too technical or time consuming … Read More
