MacIssues

Dos and Donts for managing data on external hard drives

Your data is the most important aspect of your computer, and unfortunately we often don’t realize this until we’re faced with the possibility of having lost exceptionally valuable (if not priceless) work. This can happen as easily as a computer suddenly shutting off on you and no longer booting, or when you attach an external hard drive containing all of your files, only to find it will not mount…

How to manage inactivated e-mail accounts in OS X

When you start a new job or join a new group, club, service, or other organization, you may be given an e-mail account to use with that service. You then may set this account up in Mail so you can access it quickly from your iOS and Mac OS devices, in addition to any Web client your provider may use. However, if you are terminated or otherwise leave your organization then access to new e-mail may…

How to enable screen sharing services remotely in OS X

If you have any Mac that you would like to manage remotely, then you can enable Screen Sharing or Remote Management in the Sharing system preferences. However, if these become disabled or if you keep them disabled by default, then you will not be able to access your system. Nevertheless, if you have Remote Login enabled and can establish an SSH connection, then you can take a few steps to…

How to manage “No Backup for XX Days” warnings in OS X

While enterprise-level backup options may offer robust solutions for workgroups, Apple’s Time Machine service is a great backup option to use for a single machine since it preserves the OS configuration along with all user data and applications. However, if you have used several Time Machine drives over time, you may find OS X suddenly showing Notification Center warnings that there have been no…

Using the OS X crash reporter to diagnose a program failure

Whenever a program crashes in OS X, you are presented with a small window that indicates the program quit unexpectedly (Apple’s vernacular for “it crashed”). Whenever this happens, first choose the default option in this window to ignore the issue, and then try relaunching your program. However, if it occurs again then you may find some quick answers in the crash report that can be opened by…

How to present and record your iPhone or iPad on your Mac

Every now and then you may wish to display something from your iPhone or iPad on your Mac. This may be during a presentation, or just for kicks, but if you have content on your phone and while you can always use various sharing services to send content to people or even to your Mac for displaying, another very quick approach can be done if you simply have an available lightning cable. (more…)

How to address ‘Battery Not Charging’ errors for your Mac

When you plug your MacBook’s power adapter in and its light turns amber, your system’s battery should charge; however, there may be times when this does not occur, and upon clicking the Battery menu you will see a notice that says “Battery Not Charging.” Despite this, the system will work fine as long as the power is plugged in, but if you disconnect power then the battery will progressively…

How to manage file ‘in use’ or ‘locked’ errors in OS X

When a file is opened by a program, a filesystem lock is placed that prevents it from being accessed by another program. However, most programs in OS X will only truly “open” a file as a brief step in order to read its contents into memory. The file is then technically closed so it may be accessed elsewhere. Further interaction with the file will result in another quick “open” followed by the…

Four quick April Fools pranks for your Mac-loving friends

Happy April Fools day! If you have an inkling to participate in sly festivities on this day of pranks, you might consider looking no further than your friend or colleagues’ Macs. While you can post a fake note on a fridge, or lure a buddy to some humorous end, with only quick access to a friend’s Mac or iPhone you can have quite a fun time at his or her expense. (more…)

How to address input device freezes on your Mac

Your keyboard and mouse are the gateway to your computer, so if these stop working then you will find yourself somewhat hard-pressed to properly control your system. While for the most part an unresponsive input device is indicative of an issue with the device itself, there are times when a conflict with your Mac may be the reason for the problem. Either way, there are several steps you can take…

MacIssues site problems and status

To all readers, MacIssues has had some problems in the past few weeks that have been rather difficult to address. These have included incredibly slow loading times, and errors about inability to establish database connections that have cropped up when people load the pages. Today the site went completely down, and I had to do a full reset and restore. I am looking into what has caused the…

Can’t view a plist? Here’s what to do

The various plist files in OS X are structured settings files that are commonly used as preference files for the applications you run, but are also used for launch daemons and other system configuration settings. Generally you can modify the values of plists by opening them directly in a text editor; however, there are times when in attempting to open a plist you either get an error or just see…

Certificate expiration breaks older OS X installers

Replacement developer certificates Apple issued to fix security issues have caused signed packages created using the older replaced certificates to no longer be verifiable. This results in OS X assuming corruption in these files, and will not process them by default. One unfortunate side-effect of this is that older installers you may have collected for past versions of OS X will likely have been…

How to change video playback speed in QuickTime X

When Apple replaced its aging QuickTime Player 7 with the newer QuickTime X, it touted the change as a ground-up rebuild to supplant the band-aided framework that had kept QuickTime 7 going for so many years. QuickTime may now be better poised to handle future media types and implementations, but since its announcement QuickTime X has not really done much, and has left many without obvious…

Fix VIP mailboxes not showing all messages in Mail

The VIP mailbox in Apple’s Mail program should show messages from contacts that you flag as VIP; however, there are instances where messages from your designated VIPs will not show up, leaving this feature somewhat unreliable. This may happen after upgrading or updating OS X to anew version, and if its happening then the fix should be relatively straightforward. (more…)

Hot corners annoying you? Make them explicitly requested.

One of OS X’s notable features is its Hot Corners service, where by moving your mouse to a designated corner of your screen you can activate one of several designated tasks, including sleeping your system, preventing sleep, triggering Expose views, and more. These options undoubtedly have their benefits; however, there is also the problem where the default approach for assigning hot corners makes…

Overcome the OS X Dock getting stuck on a second monitor

If you have multiple monitors and are using OS X Yosemite or later, you will have Apple’s latest multi-screen implementations available for use, where unlike classic extended desktop setups, each screen can be treated as a separate space, or “virtual desktop”, upon which you are doing work and organizing your windows. (more…)