The apps that run on your Mac or iPhone/iPad.
A few weeks ago Apple released an update which addresses the bash security vulnerability found in OS X during the last week of September 2014. The security vulnerability was nicknamed shellshock or the bash bug and reportedly affects all versions of OS X as well as many versions of Linux and Unix released over the past … Read more
When you reset or change your email account password, you have to enter the new password in two places in your email account configurations in Mail. The first place is in the incoming mail settings. The second place is in the outgoing (SMTP) mail settings. Locating these outgoing settings is not obvious, so I’m frequently asked how … Read more
I use iText Express as my everyday word processor. I know that Microsoft Word is the defacto standard and Apple’s Pages is a common alternative. I own both and use Pages when I want to easily mix text and graphics to create a newsletter or flyer, but I find that iText Express meets my everyday writing … Read more
Do you have thousands of email messages in your Inbox or Sent folder? If so, read on to learn how this can cause problems as well as better ways to organize your messages. Recently, I’ve had a string of users who have been negatively impacted since they’ve had over 10,000 messages in either their Inbox or Sent mail … Read more
Did your new Mac come without a built-in CD/DVD drive? If you have an older Mac you can use a feature called Remote Disk to share the older Mac’s CD/DVD drive with your newer Mac. Here are instructions on how to set up that feature:
Read moreI’m able to provide remote support for my clients. In order to remotely connect to a Mac, it needs to be on and awake. Here are instructions on how to configure your Mac to never sleep. The instructions vary based on the processor in your Mac. To determine the processor, follow steps 1 and 2 below.
Read moreThis 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
Have you ever wanted to delete or forward an individual text message from your iPhone or iPad? Here are some simple instructions:
Read moreDoes your Mac get stuck during the startup process? If so, then you might want to try Safe Boot to see if you can get your Mac to startup successfully. Safe Boot is the process of making your Mac start up with a bare minimum of system software. It also forces an inspection of the hard drive.
Read moreIf you use an iCloud email account, here are instructions on how to set up an email auto-reply message. An iCloud email account ends in either mac.com, me.com, or icloud.com. An auto-reply can be helpful if you’re going to be traveling or otherwise not able to reply to email in a timely manner.
Read moreDo you use Apple’s Mail application? Would you like to quickly locate a reply email message you sent? Imagine you received a message in your Inbox and that you replied to it. After you send the reply, Mail inserts a curved, leftward-pointing arrow, as depicted in the image below.
Read moreMost of us tend to simultaneously keep many applications open. Consequently, we sometimes get lost or overwhelmed by having too many windows open. Would you like to quickly hide all windows so you can see your Desktop? Here are two ways to accomplish this:
Read moreDo you type the same information into email messages or Word documents? If so, you would benefit from using a text expander. Text expanders let you create abbreviations then whenever the abbreviation is typed it inserts a word, phrase, sentence or paragraph that you designated. For example, you could create the abbreviation ‘addr. When you type ‘addr … Read more
Apple Mail lets you assign one or more signatures to each of your email accounts. This flexibility is great, but the user interface to make this happen is not intuitive. It’s easy to do, but it’s much easier to be shown how to do it the first time. Here are instructions for creating signatures in Mail … Read more
DuckDuckGo is a search engine that is much less well-known than Google, but you should check it out. As the title of this article indicates, DuckDuckGo is a privacy-friendly alternative to Google.
Read moreHere are some tips on how to easily create and manage bullet lists in Apple’s Mail application.
Read moreWould you like to know more about the strength of your Mac’s wireless (Wi-Fi) connection? If so, hold down the Option key and click on the Wi-Fi menu located near the clock in the upper right corner of your Mac’s screen. You’ll notice that additional details about your currently selected wireless network are displayed. I should … Read more
Have you ever noticed that the Messages app on your iPhone or iPad doesn’t automatically display a time stamp for each and every message? I know that there are times when I’ve really wanted to know exactly when a message was sent. As it turns out, you can easily view the time stamp for every … Read more
Have you ever wanted to permanently save a voicemail message that you received on your iPhone? Or maybe a text message or iMessage? While all of these messages are backed up to your Mac when you sync your iPhone, Apple doesn’t provide an easy way to view or extract these messages. Instead, you’ll need to … Read more
Do you frequently want to email either a web page’s contents or its address? If so, here are two methods to do this using Safari version 6. Visit a web page, then go to the File menu and select Share, then Email This Page. (In older versions of Safari you do not have to first select … Read more