Category: Tips and Tricks

If you’ve ever filled your iPhone to capacity, you may have suddenly noticed a gray section of stored data titled “Other” in iTunes. What could this mysterious data be? Well, there could be a couple things that could be contributing to it, but the most likely culprits are your apps. More specifically, one culprit: iMessage.…

All cables have the potential to fail due to something called strain relief. Essentially, the joint where the cable meets the connector can separate and fray after being pulled at sharp angles and twisting constantly. There have been a couple techniques in cable manufacturing that help prevent this outcome. The most common, which can be…

The other day, I had a customer come into the store who was having issues emptying her trash. We tried all the normal prompts, did PRAM resets, and nothing would work. Using Terminal, there is a quick and easy way to empty the trash if you ever hit hangups while doing so. Just navigate to…

Food + your computer is not a good combination. Looking at computers coming into the tech department covered in crumbs with splattered food covering the display and keyboard, we think to ourselves, “it was only a matter of time.” We get machines in here that have had milk, tea, water, beer, wine, and food spilled…

Originally written by Matt K. and featured in Tech Tails #777. The vast majority of insert/eject problems on Apple laptops are related to how users pick up their machines. It sounds ridiculous, and some people even take offense when I offer a tutorial on how to handle their machines, but if you squash the optical…

Some issues on your Mac can be resolved by reinstalling the operating system. In the past, all Mac desktops and portables came with a dedicated recovery disc for that machine, but Macs shipping with 10.7 (OS X Lion) or later do not come with recovery discs. These newer machines have the recovery files on a…

It’s useful to know, as a Mountain Lion user, what private data specific applications are accessing, and how to set/reset that. This can be achieved in the Security & Privacy preference pane within System Preferences, but changes can also be made within Terminal. Using the tccutil command, the user can reset all access to different…

Built in to iOS 5+ and OS 10.7 and later is the ability to use iCloud. iCloud lets you back up and sync contacts, email, photos, and a host of other data. Not everyone needs all of these features, but everyone is advised to take advantage of the security features, “Find my iPhone” and “Find…

iCloud seems to be all the rage these days for Apple users, and deservingly so. iCloud will store your content as well as let you access your music, photos calendars, contacts, documents and more from any of your iOS and Mac devices. I remember the good ol’ days back in college when I would write…

After some time of owning any type of computer, you might begin to collect large amounts of files. Just like in real life, it is important to regularly do some spring cleaning with your machine in order to keep things running smoothly. In computer life, when you run out of space, you run the risk…