Watch For This Apple Billing Email Scam

12/27/11 By Leave a Comment

Apple billing e-mail scam making the rounds

Last week we warned that people be aware of potential Christmas scams, especially those involving Apple’s products as the company has become exceptionally popular in the past few years.

Via MacFixIt – CNET Reviews.

Just a quick reminder here, ALWAYS question emails you receive which mention ANYTHING about billing status or other personal information, and NEVER, EVER, EVER click a link in one of those messages. If in doubt, as the article says, browse to the company website by typing the URL yourself and log into your account from there.

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Playing It Safe When Booting Up Mac OS X

12/21/11 By Leave a Comment

Mac OS X: What is Safe Boot, Safe Mode?

Safe Boot is a special way to start when troubleshooting. Safe Mode is the state Mac OS X is in after a Safe Boot. To perform a Safe Boot, hold the Shift key immediately after your Mac starts up.

Safe Mode can be useful for troubleshooting. However, certain Mac OS X features do not work in Safe Mode.

Via Apple Support.

Continuing our theme of troubleshooting boot issues, this Apple support article explains exactly what “Safe Boot” is, how to do it, and what OS X features won’t work when you’ve started up using this method.

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Troubleshooting Mac OS X Startup Issues

12/20/11 By Leave a Comment

Mac OS X: Gray screen appears during startup

Instead of seeing the Finder or the login window after startup, your computer may stop responding and the display may only show a persistent gray screen (you may also see an Apple logo, spinning gear, spinning globe, prohibitory sign, or a folder with a flashing question mark on it).

Via Apple Support

As a follow-up to my Intel Mac Start-up Sequence Reference post last week, here’s a good Apple Support article for troubleshooting issues if your Mac seems like it’s stuck at some point on the gray startup screen.

If you’re still running Mac OS X 10.3.9 or earlier, then you’ll want to check out this article instead.

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Automatically Get Rid of Those Used .zip Archives

12/16/11 By Leave a Comment

Get rid of .zip files once they’re expanded

Mac OS X makes opening .zip files simple: you double-click them, and the OS quickly unzips them. But one thing has always bugged me: After I unzip it, the original .zip file—for which I no longer have any use—is still there. I’d rather my Mac clean up the zipped versions of files automatically after I expand them, instead of leaving me with one more thing to get rid of.

(Via: Macworld)

I used to end up letting a bunch of zip archives pile up in my Downloads folder, sometimes taking up gigabytes of precious disk space. This handy trick helped me to clean up after myself once and for all.

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Intel Mac Start-up Sequence Reference

12/15/11 By Leave a Comment
OS X Gray Boot

Intel-based Mac: Startup sequence and error codes, symbols

The following is an overview of the startup sequence, error conditions, and behaviors for all Intel-based Macintosh systems. Note that some newer Macintosh models only use tones to indicate error conditions. See this article for more information.

Via Apple – Support – Most Recent.

Have you ever wondered exactly what’s going on when you turn on your Mac? Why does the Apple logo show up, and then the spinning gear? This Apple support article answers those questions, and gives some clues about what might be wrong if your computer doesn’t want to boot correctly.

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