Since a very full hard drive can produce unwanted and erratic behaviors on a Mac, I typically recommend keeping at least 10% of your hard drive’s capacity available. In other words, you want your internal storage to be less than 90% full. Determining the fullness of your Mac’s hard drive is not as easy as … Read more
Years ago I wrote an article about cleaning your Mac or iPhone screen. Given concerns about COVID-19 and the flu, it’s useful to point out that Apple provides cleaning guidelines for all of your Apple products. In particular, Apple appears to have recently updated their article with guidance on how to disinfect your Apple products. … Read more
Have you ever had your Mac or iPhone recalled by Apple? Fortunately, this is a rare event. I believe I have personally bought about 10 Macs over the past 35 years and 4 iPhones over the past 12 years. One of my Macs and one of my iPhones needed to be repaired under an Apple recall. … Read more
Would you like to make sure that your Mac is not configured to automatically install updates to the Mac operating system (macOS)? If so, follow the instructions for the version of macOS installed on your Mac. To determine which version you have installed, please click on the Apple menu, in the upper left corner, of … Read more
Is your Mac’s internal storage nearly full? If so, you may have seen an error message indicating that your startup disk is nearly full. I typically use OmniDiskSweeper to free up storage space on a Mac. One of the easiest techniques I use to free up some storage space is to remove backups of iPhones … Read more
Did you know that there are thousands of invisible files on your Mac? Have you ever needed to locate or delete one of these invisible files? Here are a couple of ways to be able to access the invisible files and folders on your Mac. A cautionary note, Apple makes these files invisible for a … Read more
Do you want to schedule a Genius Bar appointment to talk with Apple about repairing your Mac or iPhone? Over the past few years, Apple has made it harder to schedule a Genius Bar appointment. There may be a good reason for this, such as Apple has learned that many issues that customers bring to … Read more
Does your Mac need more memory? If you’re not sure of the difference between memory and storage please review my article about this. Briefly, a computer’s memory is a computer’s working space. The computer temporarily stores open files and open applications in memory. If your Mac doesn’t have enough memory then its performance can be … Read more
A kernel panic refers to a very specific type of computer freeze. A variety of things can cause kernel panics. Below is a description of how your Mac behaves when it experiences a kernel panic so you can recognize it if this happens to you.
Read moreIn most situations, I tend to recommend that you buy Apple’s extended hardware warranty, called AppleCare. Apple enhanced AppleCare in 2017 so I think it’s an even more compelling option.
Read moreDoes your Mac fail to find files that you know exist when you search for them? Or, does Apple Mail or Outlook fail to find email messages when you search for them? If so, this problem could be caused by a corrupt Spotlight index. Spotlight is the name of Apple’s search capabilities built into the Mac … Read more
Would you like your Mac’s Trash to automatically delete files after they’ve been in the Trash for 30 days? If so, Apple recently added this feature to macOS Sierra (aka OS X 10.12). If you’re using an older version of OS X, the only alternative option is to create an AppleScript and schedule it to run … Read more
To prevent your iPhone from accumulating gigabytes of text messages, I recommend that you configure it to delete messages after 1 year. Text messages are typically quite small so they won’t consume much space, but the photos and videos that are attached can gobble up space. If you’d like to save some of these attachments … Read more
Has your Mac suddenly become slow or started having trouble doing the usual daily tasks? If so, you might have some accidentally installed app that isn’t helpful to your Mac. Not all of these apps are malicious, but for the sake of simplicity, I’ll call them malware here. Malware behavior ranges anywhere from giving annoying pop … Read more
Have you ever noticed that the “Other” storage section on your iPhone or iPad is quite large? Have you ever wondered what comprises this “Other” category? When you connect your iPhone or iPad to your Mac, you’ll see a bar like the one pictured. This bar depicts the primary storage categories and shows their relative … Read more
Restarting fixes a variety of problems. It’s true! You might have heard the adage, When in doubt, restart or if you’ve ever called for computer support you’ve likely been asked Have you tried restarting yet? I know I ask my clients this question almost daily. If you’re having a problem with a device, please restart it. … Read more
This Tech Tip is a cautionary tale. As a general rule, I recommend that you avoid installing apps that claim to tune-up or optimize your Mac. Last week, I worked on two Macs whose performance was negatively impacted by MacKeeper, MacBooster and TuneUpMyMac. A third Mac’s web browsing had been hijacked by Conduit Search. It’s not clear … Read more
One of the most common questions I hear from clients is, “Why is my Mac slow?” This seemingly simple question can have an array of possible causes. Below are a few things you can easily check. One of these could help you identify, or maybe resolve, the cause of your Mac’s slowness.
Read moreDeleting or removing an application from a Mac can be both deceptively simple and surprisingly complex. Many applications can be deleted by simply dragging them to the Trash. However, this method will often leave small, related files tucked into various folders on the Mac. Thus, it is useful to know about some other ways to … Read more
When Apple releases a major update to the Mac operating system, called macOS, or the operating system used on iPhones, iPads and iPod Touches, called iOS, clients often ask me when or if they should install these updates.
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