Troubleshooting

iTunes 11 is the latest version of Apple's music player and management software, but if you have upgraded your iTunes installation to this latest version you may find that some of the statistics regarding your library are not being updated.

Whenever you play a song in iTunes, the program keeps track of the number of times the song has completed playing, how many times it is skipped, and when these events occurred. This information is stored in the library and used to help determine how to build automatic playlists from the songs you prefer, among other functions.

After upgrading … Read more

Apple's built-in Calendar application in OS X is a convenient calendaring tool to have; however, its default method of entering calendar dates may be a bit cumbersome by first appearances.

When you first enter an event in Calendar, you select the calendar you wish to use and then double-click the date on which to create the event. You can then title the event accordingly. By default this action creates an all-day event that will further need to be refined by editing it to adjust its time frame. While those who use Calendar may find this somewhat acceptable though a … Read more

MacFixIt Answers is a feature in which I answer Mac-related questions e-mailed in by our readers.

This week, readers wrote in with questions about managing custom services in OS X, RAM prices for MacBook systems falling dramatically over the past year, and resetting a forgotten administrator password without admin access and without an OS X installer or recovery disc. I welcome views from readers, so if you have any suggestions or alternative approaches to these problems, please post them in the comments!

Question: Managing custom services in OS X MacFixIt reader Francis asks:

As part of OS X, Apple provides a number of styled screensaver options for displaying photographs and images you have stored in your iTunes or Aperture libraries when you are not at your computer. These options are fun to use; however, they are quite limited in the settings they offer, as there are practically no options to customize them.

At most, you can set the screensaver to shuffle the slide order and choose a source for the photos, but you cannot change the duration of the transitions or perhaps, more importantly for some people, the time in which the screensaver … Read more

External hard drives are exceptionally useful for expanding storage capabilities for both backups and data management. While external hard drives are often sold in preconfigured packages by manufacturers, another popular option is to purchase an external hard-drive enclosure and then use any drive of your choice in it. This is beneficial because as your demands for storage increase, you can replace the enclosure's drive with a larger one.

These days, the availability of hard drives with 4TB of storage are enticing for people to swap into their existing enclosures; however, when doing so they may find that the system … Read more

One of the primary uses of computers is, of course, for media, whether you're watching movies, listening to music, playing a game, or running through a feature-packed slideshow. In the middle of the fun, it can be incrediby frustrating to get interrupted by a loud swoosh as you receive a new e-mail, or a speech alert telling you some other program needs attention.

To avoid such interruptions, of course you can quit the various applications like Mail and instant-messaging clients that may cause them, but this will not guarantee silence, as alerts can still crop up from other sources.… Read more

Besides installing an SSD to replace a mechanical hard drive, RAM upgrades are one of the more significant and beneficial upgrades you can do for a PC system. When it comes to Apple's systems, however, RAM upgrades from Apple itself have been insanely expensive, so my recommendation has always been, unless the RAM is soldered to the motherboard (as it is with the MacBook Air and Retina MacBook Pro), to purchase only the base amount of RAM and then upgrade it yourself later on.

Such was the case with my most recent Mac, a 17-inch 2011 MacBook Pro that … Read more

Apple has released three EFI firmware updates for some of its Mac systems that were released in 2012, which tackle a number of issues pertaining to sleep, Thunderbolt performance, and -- more relevantly to many users -- reliability of Wi-Fi connectivity.

The first update is a Wi-Fi update for all late 2012 Mac systems that improves compatibility with 5GHz-band Wi-Fi signals.

The update includes a new version of the AirPortBrcm4311.kext kernel extension. This update is specific for those running OS X 10.8.2 build 12C2034 (you can look this up by clicking the version number of OS X … Read more

OS X ships with a default configuration and set of settings adjustment options that should work for most people's needs; however, there are times when you might wish to adjust a hidden setting or two, or troubleshoot problems by adjusting settings, databases, caches, and other files that are buried in various system folders. There are numerous online resources that can help, but even if you are comfortable exploring these files, it's good to have a way of reversing any changes you make.

Granted, OS X includes the Time Machine backup service that should back up all system files … Read more