Troubleshooting Unresponsive Mice and Keyboards in Mac OS X

February 20, 2012

Problem: Your keyboard or mouse (or trackpad) won’t respond to the gentle taps of your fingers, leaving you powerless to interact with your beloved computer. Solution: Press your fingers even harder. When that doesn’t work, use this guide to get your mouse or keyboard up and working. While software troubleshooting is considered starting in step [...]

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Do I Need a Driver in Mac OS X?

February 19, 2012

You’ve got a problem: You’re ready to purchase the hottest new gadget for your Mac (or already have), but you’re wondering whether you can just plug it in and go or if you’ll need to install and configure some software. I’ve got a solution: Not too long ago, Mac users were the black sheep of [...]

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Troubleshoot a Mac OS X Mail.app that Won’t Open

December 23, 2011

You’ve run into a problem: the Mail icon bounces endlessly in the Dock (and the pointer may or may not change to a spinning beach ball), or it unexpectedly quits and presents you with a window indicating such. How can you solve this frustrating event? Perform the following steps—in order and one at a time—until [...]

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Working with Unknown File Extensions in Mac OS X

December 21, 2011

Two days ago, I posted an article that teaches you how to open a file that is unknown to use in Mac OS X. It describes how Mac OS X tries to figure out what kind of file you have, as well as how to use the Mac App Store to find applications that can [...]

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How to Open an Unknown File in Mac OS X

December 19, 2011

When you double click a file in Mac OS X, Finder tells you that there is no default application specified to open the file. When this happens, Finder does not open the file unless you tell it which application can read the file. How do you determine whether you have an application that can read [...]

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A Guide to Startup Key Combinations in Mac OS X

December 17, 2011

Your Mac has many secret abilities when you first turn your computer on, and you may have already discovered one or two of these, especially if you’ve ever had to troubleshoot startup problems. This article is a simple list of the startup commands I’ve used over the years. Hopefully it will serve as a quick [...]

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Manually Managing MTU Size in Mac OS X

December 15, 2011

MTU stands for “Maximum Transmission Unit.” Whenever you transmit and receive data in Mac OS X, the data is broken up into smaller pieces (called packets) and then reassembled on the other end of the connection. Think of it like a jigsaw puzzle: You go to the store to find a puzzle, and they come [...]

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