Do you need to store many Terabytes (TB) of data or does your business operate a server that needs to be available to your staff at all times? If so, you might want to understand the basics of RAID. A RAID is a group of hard drives working in tandem to give you increased storage capacity or to reduce the likelihood of your data being unavailable to your staff. Drive Savers has an excellent article that includes a 4 minute video that provides a nice introduction to RAID.
Securely Erase Your Mac’s Mechanical Hard Drive With OS X 10.11 (Yosemite) Or Higher
Are you retiring an older Mac that has a mechanical, spinning hard drive in it? If your Mac is running OS X 10.11 or newer then continue reading this article. Below are instructions on how you can securely erase the Mac’s hard drive before you donate your Mac or sell it.
13-inch MacBook Pro Solid-State Drive Service Program
Do you have a 13-inch MacBook Pro that you bought between June 2017-June 2018? If so, please see if your Mac is affected by Apple’s service program which they introduced in November 2018.
Apple has determined that a limited number of 128GB and 256GB solid-state drives (SSD) used in 13-inch MacBook Pro (non Touch Bar) units have an issue that may result in data loss and failure of the drive. 13-inch MacBook Pro units with affected drives were sold between June 2017 and June 2018. Read More
How To Fix Outlook’s Search Feature On A Mac
Do you use Microsoft Outlook 2011, Outlook 2016, or newer, on a Mac? If your copy of Outlook has lost its ability to find emails, here are some suggestions on how to fix Outlook’s search function. Microsoft has written a thorough article outlining all possible causes and fixes when Outlook’s search function stops working. This is great, but I think this article might overwhelm the typical person since it is quite dense and a bit technical. In my experience, the most common cause is a corrupt Spotlight search index. Read More
An Extension Cord For Your Mac Laptop With USB-C Power Adapter
Do you own a Mac laptop with USB-C ports? If so, it came with a USB-C power adapter. Did you notice that Apple no longer includes an extension cord with this USB-C power adapter? If so, you might be interested in Ten 1 Design’s Stella, which is a well designed extension cord. Read More
If You’ve Forgotten The Password For Your Encrypted iPhone Backup
Do you backup your iPhone to your Mac? I recommend that you manually backup your iPhone to your Mac, every few weeks, even if you already backup your iPhone automatically to iCloud. When you backup your iPhone to your Mac you have the choice to encrypt the backup or not. The advantage of encrypting your iPhone backup is that the backup will include information not stored in an unencrypted backup such as email account passwords, wi-fi settings and health data. There are 2 significant disadvantages of forgetting the password used to encrypt your iPhone backup. First, you cannot restore that backup onto your iPhone. Second, it was very difficult to work-around the forgotten backup and create a new backup of your iPhone on your Mac. Finally, starting with iOS 11, Apple introduced an easy way to work-around a forgotten iPhone backup encryption password. Read More
How To Download Older Versions Of The Mac operating system (macOS)
Have you noticed that once Apple releases a new version of the Mac operating system (macOS) that previous versions vanish from the App Store? Have you ever needed to reinstall one of these older versions of the Mac operating system (macOS)? It can be challenging to do this since Apple does not make older versions readily available unless you saved your own copy of the installer for the older version. I recently learned that some older versions are still available on the App Store. Read More
USB-C Adapters For Your New MacBook Pro Or MacBook Air
Have you bought a new Mac laptop that comes with USB-C ports on it? If so, you will likely need to buy one or more adapters in order to connect device too it. It’s not uncommon to need to connect any of the following types of devices to one’s Mac: an iPhone, a USB flash drive, a USB printer, an SD card from a camera, an external monitor or projector, maybe even an ethernet cable. Here are a few USB-C adapters that I commonly recommend. Read More
Unable To Sign-Out Of iCloud
Have you ever gone to your Mac’s iCloud System Preferences and clicked the Sign-Out button and then had your Mac fail to properly sign-out of iCloud? Typically, signing out of iCloud is a straight-forward process, but in rare occassions, I’ve encountered difficulty. If you’re having this problem, try one of these options that have worked for me. Apple introduced the iCloud System Preference pane in OS X Lion, version 10.7.5. Before that it was called MobileMe.
Option 1
- Make sure you’re signed in to your Mac using a User account that has administrative privileges. (Explaining how to do this is outside the scope of this article.)
- Go to /Applications/Utilities and double-click Terminal to open it. (Before you use Terminal, please make sure you have a full backup of your Mac. Issuing commands in Terminal improperly can have very adverse effects on your Mac.)
- Type this command: defaults delete MobileMeAccounts
- Press the Return (aka Enter) key and type your user account password if prompted.
- Now, see if you can sign out of iCloud successfully. Go to the Apple menu, select System Preferences and click on the iCloud button. Click on the Sign Out button.
Option 1 is based on information provided at BenCoding.com
https://bencoding.com/2017/02/12/forcing-icloud-logout-on-your-mac
Option 2 – Warning: Deleting these files mentioned below will cause every account you have setup in the Internet Accounts System Prefernces pane to be deleted. Thus, you would need to re-add any other accounts, if you want them.
If you know how to access the invisible Library folder in your User Account then delete the following files:
~/Library/Preferences/MobileMeAccounts.plist and the contents of ~/Library/Accounts
Click on the Apple menu and select Log Out
After your Mac has logged you out of your account, you’ll be taken to the Login screen. Select your account and login again.
Now see if you can sign out of iCloud successfully. Go to the Apple menu, select System Preferences and click on the iCloud button. Click on the Sign Out button.
Free, Online Audio Recorder And Video Converter
Have you ever needed to record your voice or make a video recording of yourself? Have you ever needed to convert an audio or video file from one format to another? A company named 123apps LLC offers free and easy to use online tools. If you’re concerned about privacy, please review their privacy policy. I used the audio recorder recently to record some new messages for my voicemail system. My voicemail system required .mp3 files. QuickTime Player can make audio recordings, but it produces .m4a files. I could convert the .m4a file to .mp3 format using the online audio converter, but it was quicker to use the online voice recorder since it produces .mp3 files. Read More