Category: 756: Working Around a Failed Optical Drive, Masking and Cascading Failures, Spaces and Jiggly Icons

Di asks, “I’d love a rambling about Spaces. Is it possible to have multiple desktops for one app?” Well, Di, Spaces is an aspect of the Mac OS that enables you to have multiple desktops for organizational purposes. We had a technician here who was a multi-monitor addict and had a hard time adjusting to…

Many people don’t realize their optical drive has failed until they need to install a new piece of software or are having their computer “evaluated for trade-in”:http://www.smalldog.com/tradein. After all, more and more software titles are moving towards download-only, and the App Store is evidence that this trend is only gaining momentum. As with fans and…

One of the challenges of troubleshooting is that the same symptoms can have multiple causes. Another is that failing components can cover up or mimic symptoms of other failing components. This is often called masking. We had a MacBook Pro come into the shop that, when powered on, got to the grey screen; the apple…

Happy Tuesday, Well, last week’s updates to the MacBook Pro line were certainly significant. Huge speed increases are always welcome, particularly when there’s little to no effect on battery life. The big news to me is the completely new I/O port, formerly code named Light Peak, called Thunderbolt in its final implementation. At 10GB/sec it…