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Launch and Use Any Mac OS X App When Booted from OS X Lion Recovery HD Drive

Aug 22, 2011 - 7 Comments
Launch Terminal from the Recovery Disk in Mac OS X Lion

Whether you made a Lion recovery drive with Apple’s Lion Recovery Disk Assistant Tool and you’re booting from that or you’re just relying on the Recovery HD partition, this technique works.

Fix MacBook Pro 2010 Crashes, Kernel Panics, & Black Screens in OS X 10.7 Lion

Aug 9, 2011 - 104 Comments

A fair amount of MacBook Pro 2010 (and some 2011) users are reporting stability issues with their NVIDIA 330M equipped Macs and Mac OS X 10.7 Lion, with problems including kernel panics, random system crashes, blank or black screens, inability to wake from sleep, external displays not working, and assorted other headaches. The Macs most … Read More

Lion Recovery Disk Assistant Tool Makes External Lion Boot Recovery Drives

Aug 8, 2011 - 22 Comments
Lion Recovery Disk Assistant

Apple has released Lion Recovery Disk Assistant, a small utility that provides the ability to create an external bootable recovery drive for Mac OS X 10.7 Lion. This should quell some of the complaints from users who didn’t want to make a Lion USB install drive or boot DVD, or who were otherwise unsatisfied with … Read More

Mac Wi-Fi Dropping? Use a Simple Keepalive Bash Script to Maintain Wireless Connection

Aug 8, 2011 - 49 Comments
Get WiFi Router IP Address in Mac OS X

Many users who upgraded to Mac OS X Lion discovered that their Wi-Fi connections were dropping periodically for no apparent reason. We published a reasonably thorough walkthrough with tips on fixing OS X Lion’s wireless dropping issues and that’s a recommended starting point because most tips are easy and less complicated, but among those was … Read More

Fix a Slow Mac App Store

Aug 7, 2011 - 23 Comments
Oh no, not the beachball

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

Stuck in Chrome Full Screen? Exit Chromes Full Screen Mode in Mac OS X Lion

Aug 6, 2011 - 11 Comments
Exit full screen mode in Chrome under OS X Lion

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

Re-Download Mac OS X Lion from the App Store

Aug 2, 2011 - 104 Comments
re-download Mac OS X Lion from the App Store

Need to redownload Mac OS X Lion from the Mac App Store? If you plan on making an install drive but you already upgraded to Lion, you’ll need to redownload the Installer so that you can extract the DMG file. This is the sure fire way to do it, in short, hold the Option key … Read More

Can’t Install XCode 4.1 Because of iTunes? The Fix is to Kill iTunesHelper

Aug 2, 2011 - 28 Comments

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

WiFi Dropping in OS X Lion? Here are Some Wireless Troubleshooting Solutions

Jul 22, 2011 - 165 Comments
Fixes for OS X Lion wifi dropping

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

Automatically Restart Your Mac if it Freezes in OS X Lion

Jul 19, 2011 - 24 Comments
Automatically restart Mac if freezes

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

Get Exact Boot, Sleep, and Wake Times from the Command Line

Jul 14, 2011 - 7 Comments

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

Deleting the Mac OS X 10.7 Lion “Recovery HD” Partition

Jun 30, 2011 - 43 Comments
diskutil list

If you want to remove the Mac OS X 10.7 Lion “Recovery HD” partition, you’ll need to do a little bit of work because it’s a hidden partition. Hidden means it’s not just a matter of using your dual boot to go into 10.6 and then deleting it with Disk Utility. Quick side note for … Read More

Move Steam Games & Save Files to a New Hard Drive

Jun 18, 2011 - 8 Comments
Authorize a new computer with Steam to transfer saved game files

Have a Steam game library along with some save game files? Maybe you’d like to move those games and the gaming library to another hard drive or even another computer? Did you just get a new Mac? Maybe you upgraded your hard drive and went with a clean Mac OS X install, but you want … Read More

Mac Running Hot, Slow, & Fans Blazing After Installing OS X Lion? Here’s Why

Jun 9, 2011 - 39 Comments
Mac running hot because of MDS & mdworker

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

Fix the App Store “MZFreeProductCode .ClientCannotRedeemIosApp_explanation” Promo Code Redemption Error

Jun 6, 2011 - Leave a Comment
Mac App Store promo code redemption error

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

Ad Blockers for Chrome, Firefox, and Safari

May 10, 2011 - 19 Comments
Block Ads in Firefox, Chrome, and Safari

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

MemTest for Mac OS X Tests your RAM

May 3, 2011 - 55 Comments
MemTest for Mac

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

Show What Apps & Processes Are Using an Internet Connection via Command Line in Mac OS X

Apr 29, 2011 - 3 Comments
Mac Wi-Fi Tool

Much like you can monitor Mac OS X filesystem usage through the command line, you can also discover what apps and individual processes are currently using your Macs internet connection. This is a really handy trick if you know your bandwidth is being used by something, or if you’re just trying to track down what … Read More

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