Mac

Stay up-to-date on the latest Mac news, and tutorials. Get expert tips and tricks to optimize your Mac’s performance and learn about the latest Apple products and software updates. Discover the best Mac apps and accessories to enhance your user experience.

How to start up your Mac in Apple Diagnostics or Apple Hardware Test mode

Christian Zibreg ∙ Updated October 17, 2024

Apple gives you a number of options if you need to troubleshoot software and hardware issues that might be plaguing your Mac. If you cannot determine the root cause of your problem by isolating issues in macOS, your first port of call should be macOS' built-in recovery tools.

But that may not be necessarily enough and Recovery Mode may be unable to help you get your Mac back to working order.

As the last option, you can boot your Mac in a hardware diagnostics mode, which on newer Macs is called Apple Diagnostics or Apple Hardware Test on older models. In this tutorial, we'll show you how to enter Apple Diagnostics or Apple Hardware Test mode to identify the potential source of a hardware issue.

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OS X El Capitan 10.11.4 beta 6 now available

Christian Zibreg ∙ March 7, 2016

In addition to releasing new betas of the forthcoming iOS 9.3 and watchOS 2.2 software updates, Apple on Monday seeded a sixth beta of OS X El Capitan 10.11.4 (build number 15E61b) to members of the Apple Developer and Apple Beta Software program.

The new beta is available through the Updates tab in the Mac App Store on Macs with a prior El Capitan beta installed while a standalone installer will appear shortly on Apple's portal for developers.

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How Apple secures its products and services

Anthony Bouchard ∙ March 7, 2016

Apple's security and privacy features that come standard on every iOS device, such as end-to-end encryption and Activation Lock, are getting all the talk around the internet as of late as the Apple vs. FBI case continues to escalate.

What can be learned from this case is not only does Apple want to protect your privacy, but the a large number of American people also want to have their privacy. The FBI, on the other hand, wants a quick way to get into any iPhone they deem "suspicious" so long as they can get a court order to search it.

So just how secure is your Apple data, and what protection standards does Apple have in place for you? That's just what we're going to talk about in this piece.

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A look at the Incipio Asher MacBook Pro carry sleeve

Anthony Bouchard ∙ Updated October 16, 2018

As I'm always on the go, I needed a way to safely take my 15-inch MacBook Pro with Retina display all around with me without fearing that it could get damaged from drops or scuffs, and I turned to Incipio for those needs.

The Incipio Asher sleeve, which can be had off of Amazon for $30, is perfect for the on-the-go MacBook Pro user, as it provides excellent padding protection and additional stowaway room for the AC adapter and some small MacBook accessories.

In this review, we'll talk about some of the features of the Incipio Asher sleeve, as well as its pros and cons.

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What you need to know about the KeRanger ransomware found in the Transmission app

Anthony Bouchard ∙ March 6, 2016

Users of the popular open-source Transmission BitTorrent client for OS X were in for quite a surprise this weekend when it was discovered that certain installers for version 2.90 of the application were found to bundle unwanted ransomware with the installation, which is a type of malware that restricts file access across the system to cause trouble for the user.

Dubbed KeRanger by security research firm Palo Alto Networks, the malicious software will try to encrypt the user's system files in such a way as to tamper with the user's access to their Mac and then force the user to pay money to get their access back.

The makers of the Transmission app are now pushing immediate mandatory app updates to remove the ransomware and fix the problem for those that may have been affected, and it's recommended for all users, but how do you know if you're affected?

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10 useful keyboard shortcuts for the Preview app

Anthony Bouchard ∙ Updated August 22, 2022
Preview app keyboard shortcuts for Mac

The Preview app comes pre-installed on all Macs and is more useful than a lot of people give it credit for. It's not only used for opening different file types that reside on your Mac but it can also be used to edit those files and extract images from apps.

Regardless, most of you probably use just your mouse or trackpad to get things done in the Preview app. In this piece, we'll show you 10 ways you can use your keyboard to quickly perform actions in Preview by way of these useful individual keyboard shortcuts.

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Give your Retina Mac’s screen more real estate with scaling options

Anthony Bouchard ∙ Updated March 12, 2018

Macs that comes with retina displays allow the user to configure their own resolution scaling options.

These scaling options can be taken advantage of to give your Mac more screen space and gives you the illusion that your screen is bigger than it really is. With that in mind, you can run more windows side-by-side and be more productive.

In this tutorial, we'll be showing you how you can create more space on your screen for additional windows on your Retina display Mac – this includes the new MacBook, some MacBook Pro models, and even some iMac models.

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