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
If you frequently access a file server from a Mac it’s pretty helpful to map the network drive to your desktop. There’s two ways to do this, one method is just mapped for one time use and will reset after a reboot, and another method is a more permanent route that allows the mapped network … 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
Mac OS X includes Samba support by default, which allows for communication between OS X and Windows PC hardware. SMB is what enables simple Mac to Windows file sharing, but you can also go further and utilize the command line of OS X or Linux to remotely monitor, start, and stop services running on Windows … 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
In some situations, you may need to repair a Macs disk permissions but be unable to access the Disk Utility app, perhaps due to remote management or because of a problem with something in OS X. Fortunately there’s another method you can use to repair disk permissions in Mac OS X, accessible through the command … Read More
Anytime you are connected to a local area network (LAN) you’ll be assigned an IP address for that network, and often it’s important to know what this IP address is. There are two quick ways to get your LAN IP address in Mac OS X, one is more user friendly using the GUI, and the … Read More
