Recovery Articles on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog

AT&T planning new option to hinder stolen iPhones (Updated)

by Dave Caolo (Jul 6th, 2012)

According to The Verge, AT&T is set to launch a new service meant to thwart cellphone thieves. The company will allow customers to shut down voice, data and SMS on stolen devices. AT&T has reportedly issued information to employees on how the service will work. Customers will be required ...

Dear Aunt TUAW: Should I mess with my recovery partition?

by Erica Sadun (Feb 16th, 2012)

Dear aunt tuaw, I'm hoping you can tell me how to perform a non-destructive reclaim of the recovery partition space. I'm on Mac OS X Lion and wish to simply reclaim that odd 700 MB without jeopardising my main partition. Your loving nephew, Oscar Dear Oscar, Auntie is sorry, but this sounds to her ...

Emulate Lion's Versions in Microsoft Word

by TJ Luoma (Sep 25th, 2011)

Microsoft Word does not support Lion's "Versions" feature yet, but there's no reason to panic. There are a few options that you can use to cobble together a work- around until the Mac BU team updates the Office suite. Also worth mentioning: although I am focusing on Microsoft Word, the same ...

Build your own Lion install USB thumb drive for cheap

by Erica Sadun (Aug 11th, 2011)

Why pay Apple $69.99 when you can build your own Lion install drive for the App Store purchase price of $29.99 -- plus the cost of an inexpensive thumb drive. Here's how to create a full install on a drive, not just the recovery disk that we recently posted about. You'll need a copy of the OS X ...

Lion: Diving into your Recovery partition

by Erica Sadun (Jul 21st, 2011)

I spent a good deal of the afternoon diving in where no sane person really wants to spend a lot of time -- in my Lion recovery partition. It's not hard to get there, and it's quite a curious place when you do. [For those commenters wondering about the use of photos rather than screenshots to ...

Lion Recovery restores Mac system software without drives (Updated)

by Erica Sadun (Jul 20th, 2011)

Today, Apple introduced Lion Recovery as part of its OS X Lion distribution. Built into Lion, Recovery allows you to get your Mac back up and running after a catastrophic failure. By holding down Command-R during startup, Lion automatically boots from its recovery partition rather than its ...

How To: Add contact information to your Mac's login screen

by TJ Luoma (Sep 23rd, 2010)

If you believe in the kindness of strangers, this tip might be for you. Most laptop users fear that their computer will be lost or stolen. Assuming that the right sort of person finds your laptop, however, they might be willing to return it to its rightful owner, if they knew how to contact you. It ...

Six things I learned from losing my iPhone 3G

by Steven Sande (May 5th, 2009)

A couple of weeks ago, I was on a two-day business trip to Kansas City. As usual, the moment my plane landed I turned on my iPhone and gave my wife call to let her know that I had made it to my destination safely. I told her I'd text her as I got my rental car, and then call when I got to my hotel. ...

Data recovery: The option of last resort

by Robert Palmer (Jan 22nd, 2009)

There is no shortage of stories here on TUAW (and elsewhere) that extol the benefits of backing up your data. Apple even makes it ridiculously easy to do so -- with Mac OS X 10.5, Time Machine, a blank drive, and some spare time, you're set. Nevertheless, despite your best efforts, there are ...

Wired: 'iPhone takes screenshots of everything you do'

by Robert Palmer (Sep 11th, 2008)

On your iPhone or your iPod touch, when you press the Home button, there's a nice little animation that takes you back to the home screen. To create that animation, your iPhone takes a screenshot of whatever it is you're doing, and uses it for the transition. Sounds innocent, right? Not so much, ...

TUAW Tip: What to do when a disk goes bad

by Robert Palmer (Jun 25th, 2008)

We've all been there. The external disk you bought three or four years ago, which has been working great so far, starts to click. And it's not a good click ... it's the kind of click that gives you the spinning beach ball of death. Poopie. Sounds like it's time to get the data off that disk, and ...