Troubleshooting

If you are having issues streaming videos via AirPlay to your Apple TV and none of the other fixes have worked, I might have a solution for you.

For the past few months, I have struggled with an issue that would prevent both my iMac and MacBook Pro from going to sleep or activating the screen saver. The fact that the display on neither of my two Macs would turn off after a set time drove me nuts, but the worst thing was … Read more

If you use Apple’s two-factor authentication (2FA), you may have noticed that macOS and iOS sometimes show you a strange location when signing in using your Apple ID from a new device or browser. In my case, the location alert dialog always shows Wallingford, CT instead of Atlanta, GA. So I did some research to find … Read more

I purchased my new Apple Watch Series 3 with LTE on launch day, but couldn’t activate LTE on it because of an authentication error. After ten days of back and forth with T-Mobile support, I figured out a solution. In this article, I will tell you how to fix the activation error and enable LTE … Read more

A bug in MailButler, a popular Apple Mail plugin, results in an empty subject line when replying to individual emails. The problem seems to affect only Exchange accounts, and there is currently no fix available. The good news is, there is a workaround. I am a huge fan of MailButler and have been using the … Read more

iPhone 7 soft-reset: Hold the LOCK and VOLUME DOWN button until you see the Apple logo. Then release the two buttons and let the iPhone boot up.

Be careful when deleting photos or videos on your iPhone/iPad or Mac if you use iCloud Photo Library. Doing so may permanently remove the deleted photos for all of your synced devices!

Are you trying to unlock your iPhone because of the pesky iCloud activation lock? Continue reading for tips on how to quickly remove the activation lock.

macOS (previously known as OS X) is an excellent operating system that usually requires few reboots and only rarely needs to be reinstalled. But as with any complex software system, you will occasionally run into an issue that warrants reinstallation. That’s especially true if you installed a beta version of macOS. In this post, I’ll … Read more

Apple’s Photo app for Mac has a problem with importing/exporting video files. More specifically, imported videos may have an incorrect date (timestamp) if those videos were previously exported from another Photos library. Instead of showing the date and time the video was recorded, Photos shows the import date/time. As a result, the imported videos are … Read more

Since OS X 10.11 El Capitan was released to developers about a year ago, I have had intermittent problems when using my beloved Plantronics headset* with FaceTime and other VoIP applications. In this post I’ll talk about a bug that makes FaceTime ignore a selected output device when using Wi-Fi calling. FaceTime Calls On newer … Read more

Streaming movies from iTunes to Apple TV should be a pleasant experience if you have a decent internet connection. But often Apple TV takes forever to load movies from iTunes. When buffering and long load times get in the way, the experience becomes frustrating. Apple TV streaming issues can have various root causes. In this … Read more

A bug in OS X El Capitan causes issues with Apple’s new Magic Trackpad 2. As a result of these Magic Trackpad issues, OS X intermittently doesn’t register clicks. While I was battling Bluetooth connectivity issues with Apple’s Wireless Keyboard and Magic Trackpad, I thought the problem might be hardware-related. When Apple released the new Magic Keyboard and Magic … Read more

Many users have reported that Microsoft Outlook for Mac keeps asking for the password of their Office 365 account. Thanks to readers of my blog, we have finally fixed the issue for most users. For others, we have at least a temporary workaround until Microsoft provides a fix. Outlook: Mail could not be received at this time … Read more

In this post, I’ll explain how to fix the pesky Calendar can’t save event X to Exchange Server issue with Apple’s Calendar in OS X or macOS. The issue occurs when the Mac Calendar won’t sync with Exchange and then refuses to accept the calendar data on the server. Calendar and Exchange Apple’s Calendar (prev. … Read more

Spam filters are a necessary evil and it’s annoying when they don’t work as expected. Apple offers junk mail filtering in Apple Mail as well as via iCloud.com. Unfortunately those two filters are not related to each other and thus can cause troubles and frustration. Apple Mail’s Junk Mail Filter Apple Mail has a built-in spam filter … Read more

In this post I’ll explain how iCloud Mail Aliases influence the way the Calendar app handles invitations on iOS. The other day my wife and her good friend Yeni were planning weekend activities for the kids and invited each other to certain events using Apple’s iOS Calendar app on their iPhones. Some of the invitations … Read more

In this post, I’ll describe a quick and dirty way to move contacts from the famous “On My iPhone” account to iCloud. On My iPhone I’m sure you have seen those dummy accounts called “On My iPhone” or “On My Mac” when working with Contacts, Notes or Calendars. Or maybe, you have wondered why some … Read more

AT&T has finally started rolling out its Wi-Fi Calling feature after having received the waiver from the FCC. Unfortunately some users get an error message saying: We can’t turn on Wi-Fi Calling for your account. Think this message is a mistake? Ask the person who can make account changes to call us. The number is … Read more

Many users have reported Mac Bluetooth issues that cause connected devices to behave erratically. These problems resulted in my Wireless Keyboard, Magic Trackpad and Mouse not working correct fly (i.e., erratic cursor movement) and disconnecting frequently.  In this post, I describe the steps I took to troubleshoot the Bluetooth issues I have had on my Retina 5K iMac … Read more

Up until macOS 10.12 Sierra iCloud Photo Library poorly managed available resources while synchronizing its database. More specifically, the Photos app would consume all available bandwidth, rendering your internet connection unusable. The result is a terrible synchronization performance. Apple has considerably improved its iCloud Photo Library since it became available as part of OS X 10.10 … Read more

If you are unable to empty the trash on your Mac, no matter what you try, don’t worry, there is an easy and bulletproof solution. Causes of a corrupted trash There are a variety of reasons that could render macOS unable to empty the trash. In my case, I had to forcefully delete Time Machine … Read more

My MacBook Pro is equipped with a 1TB Solid State Disk (SSD), which I figured would offer plenty of space for months to come. When I decided to migrate from Aperture to the new Photos app, I took a close look at my storage requirements, knowing that my photos alone could take up ~400GB of … Read more

A potential bug in early versions of iOS 8 and OS X 10.10 causes the appearance of fake missed FaceTime call notifications. I noticed that first when missed call notifications from my colleague Anne Marie appeared on my iPhone. Upon returning the call, she told me that she never called. I was puzzled but didn’t think … Read more

Synchronizing keyboard shortcuts (text replacements) on iOS and macOS used to be incredibly unreliable. Often, deleted shortcuts kept coming back, thanks to a buggy and deprecated API called iCloud Core Data. Apple has mostly fixed those issues in recent updates to its operating systems. A few years ago, I started using keyboard shortcuts (text replacements) … Read more

Maintaining regular backups of your most important data is critical because, without it, you will suffer a data loss at some point. So in this article, I will share Mac tips about how to backup sensitive data to prevent data loss using a layered approach. Shop mentioned products LaCie 5big RAID (Amazon*) Corning optical Thunderbolt cable … Read more

Under certain circumstances, the space bar, used for playback in Final Cut Pro X stops working. If you have experienced that issue, don’t worry as there is a simple solution. I use Final Cut Pro X (FCPX) for all my video editing and management, but I’m still relatively new to the product and have a … Read more

A bug in OS X 10.9 Mavericks causes the operating system to become unresponsive. In many cases, an error dialog appears claiming that your system has run out of application memory. A few days ago I noticed that my Mac Mini locked up and became unresponsive. So I power-cycled it but didn’t want to spend … Read more

A bug in Apple Mail causes affected mail accounts to lose the outgoing mail server (SMTP) information. You can trigger the problem by making changes to the outgoing mail server configuration in Mail –> Preferences. Fortunately, there is usually no need to make changes to the outgoing mail server configuration after setting up an email … Read more