Hard to recommend the 10.5.5 update just yet. There seem to be some installation issues. Half of the machines at Boyceworld took the installation without incident and are working fine. The other half took forever to restart after the install, then went to a blue screen, then turned themselves off. After restarting a few times... Continue Reading →
How to Erase an iPhone (or iPad)
Looking to pass your old iPhone (or iPad) down to your sister, your cat, or maybe your sister's cat? You'll need to erase it before you do, and it's easy when you know how. Here's how. First, make a copy of everything that's on the iPhone (or iPad), just in case. If you have a... Continue Reading →
iPhone 3.0 software– go get it
If you buy a new iPhone you get the latest iPhone system software (iPhone OS 3.0) and that software lets you do some pretty cool things: Cut, copy, and pasteLandscape keyboard for email, text messages, etc.Spotlight search of email, address book, etc.Voice memos... and lots more. The neat thing is, you can put the new... Continue Reading →
Another Time Machine Backup Success Story
One of my customers has a Mac Pro tower, and the hard drive went bad last week. A replacement drive was only $60, and it was even bigger and faster than the one that died. Of course the new drive was blank... but we had a Time Machine backup so we restored from that and... Continue Reading →
Scammers Everywhere, and They Know Where You Live
UPDATE: check out this great ScamWarners site. This post in particular exposes many of the common scams. I was in Round Rock, Texas last weekend and while there I used my MacBook to bring up the Los Angeles Times website. I noticed a couple of ads that mentioned a "Round Rock Mom" and wouldn't have... Continue Reading →
Mac OS X 10.11.3 update: don’t do it
I’m seeing a lot of problems with Apple's 10.11.3 update. If you’ve already installed the 10.11.3 update and everything seems fine, consider yourself lucky; if you haven’t installed it, play it safe and don’t install it. I've never seen a more problematic update. UPDATE: the 10.11.4 update is out and I've seen zero problems with... Continue Reading →
Please please please back up your Macs
Another hard drive bit the dust this week. This one was in a three year old MacBook. Fortunately, the machine had been backed up regularly using Time Machine. When the hard drive died we replaced it with a new one, started up from a Snow Leopard DVD, connected the backup drive, and copied everything from... Continue Reading →
The Daily Tip: Automate ebay Searches with SearchDome
Automate ebay Searches with SearchDomeebay is great, but if the thing you're looking for isn't available the first time you search for it you're going to have to come back and search for it again. That's a bit of trouble, and half the time you forget to do it anyway. So you either put up... Continue Reading →
VIDEO Tip: Safari Bookmarks
Back by popular demand, it's VIDEO. A picture is worth a thousand words, so a movie should be worth even more. Let's test that theory out.A couple of weeks ago we had a contest about Safari Bookmarks and cool ways to make them. Nine-year old Zach won it with the first tip in this video.... Continue Reading →
How to Use iPhoto to Fix a Bad Photo (Episode 2)
Episode 2 of a three-part series on using iPhoto on a Mac to fix bad photos. This installment: fixing pictures that are washed out. Click the image below to watch my video tutorial.