Troubleshooting Articles on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog

Take Control of Maintaining, Troubleshooting your Mac

by Steven Sande (May 25th, 2009)

Author Joe Kissell has been informing and entertaining Mac users for years through his books, TidBITS columns and Macworld articles. He's recently finished a pair of books for the Take Control ebook series that will help you learn how to keep your Mac running at its most efficient pace, as well as ...

TUAW Tip: Fixing syncing between iPhone and iPhoto '08

by Mike Schramm (Mar 11th, 2009)

This is a pretty selfish tip, because this issue has happened to me personally a few different times, and despite my many searches around the 'net, I've never found a quick, simple solution. So here you go: my suffering can be your gain. Basically, iPhoto '08 and the iPhone don't always play nice ...

Turn off Airplane Mode before updating your iPhone firmware

by Victor Agreda, Jr. (Jan 31st, 2009)

I finally updated my iPhone to 2.2.1 today, and after a reboot I got the screen that says it needs to verify or authenticate the SIM card. Unfortunately, that failed because, while I do have a SIM card in there, I do not have AT&T service -- and I had the cell radio turned off. My iPhone is ...

Friday Favorite: Mac HelpMate

by Steven Sande (Dec 26th, 2008)

I'll open this Friday Favorite with a caveat -- Mac HelpMate is not an app that just anyone is going to want to license. However, if you're a Mac consultant and/or do system support for many Mac users, this is an application you should consider. Mac HelpMate is the brainchild of Dean Shavit, an ...

MacBook Pro tip: resetting SMC saved my day

by Mel Martin (Dec 14th, 2008)

Here's a timely tip if the battery on your Intel based Mac laptop seems to be operating at less than optimum performance. The other day I took my MacBook Pro off the charger and was surprised to see only an hour and 40 minutes of run time, even though the battery was fully charged and only a few ...

"Utility of last resort" AppleJack updated for Leopard compatibility

by Michael Rose (Sep 2nd, 2008)

You may sincerely wish never to need it, but if you run into a situation where your Mac refuses to boot fully to the Finder and you don't have any boot-capable utilities to tackle the problem, Kristofer Widholm's AppleJack is probably your best friend in the trenches. The single-user-mode tool is ...

Leopard Graphics Update does a de-rez on external displays

by Michael Rose (Feb 20th, 2008)

Imagine the scary, Sarkian voice of David Warner intoning "You will be subject to immediate de-resolution" and you'll know how a cluster of Leopard-using laptop owners (including yours truly) are feeling after getting bitten by a problem in the Leopard Graphics Update. You can see the rundown over ...

Confirmed: iTunes 7.6 needed for some successful 1.1.3 upgrades

by Erica Sadun (Jan 16th, 2008)

A heads-up for those who are struggling to get iPhones updated: If you've tried upgrading your iPhone or iPod touch to 1.1.3 and are getting mysterious errors that keep you from finishing the upgrade or restore process, make sure you're already running iTunes 7.6. I'm hearing reports from various ...

Help with USB problems

by Mat Lu (Aug 26th, 2007)

I have found that strange USB problems creep up occasionally, often with no obvious cause (see, for instance, this week's Ask TUAW comments). I myself have a USB hard drive that sometimes just randomly disappears from my desktop and I have heard quite a few other folks report similar problems. Well ...

iPhone Troubleshooting: How to Restart, quit frozen apps and Reset iPhone

by David Chartier (Jul 18th, 2007)

I'm starting to think there is some sort of bad luck attached to my iTunes Store account, as tonight I experienced the third iTunes Store song that completely locked up an iPod - only this time it was my iPhone. While listening to 'Again with the Subtleties' from the Yppah album You Are Beautiful At ...

Does your iPhone have dead or stuck pixels?

by Erica Sadun (Jul 11th, 2007)

Dr. Macenstein suggests that now is the time to act. He writes (and he is a he, right--it's not a Frau Doctor Macenstein?) that Apple Store Genius say there's currently no official stuck pixel policy for iPhones (while there are official policies in place for monitors and laptops). If your iPhone ...

Zinio offers fix for QuickTime + Flash quirk in their magazines

by David Chartier (Oct 12th, 2006)

Zinio, if you aren't familiar, offers magazines in digital format (yes, with DRM), many of them with rich media like embedded movies right in the pages, for Mac and PC. They have quite a selection and they've been around for a few years now, but apparently their latest version (released around the ...

Apple issues support doc for wonky AirPort performance on Intel Macs

by David Chartier (Oct 3rd, 2006)

Sketchy AirPort performance has been bugging me for weeks, probably over a month now, and I've been going through all forms of troubleshooting with my AirPort Express trying to squash the issue, but to no avail. My MacBook and iMac drop their Wi-Fi connection seemingly at random, sometimes right in ...

Mac Pro EFI Firmware Update 1.0

by David Chartier (Sep 20th, 2006)

Apple has issued an EFI Firmware Update 1.0 which "fixes several Boot Camp and start up issues on Mac Pro computers." We've been hearing about these problems for a little while now, so here's hoping this 1.8MB update can let Mac Pro + XP owners sleep a little better at night. The updater requires ...

Test your MacBook for random shutdowns

by David Chartier (Aug 28th, 2006)

Some MacBook owners around the web are reporting a 'random shutdown' issue, where the machine will - as you might guess - seemingly shutdown at random; either during work or patiently idling for your next command. If you haven't experienced this issue yourself yet but are still concerned about it, ...