Chris has covered technology and media since the latter days of the Reagan Administration. In addition to his journalistic endeavors, he's a professional musician in the San Francisco Bay Area. More by Christopher Breen
Reader Simon Hansen finds his Mac slow to do his bidding. He writes:
My Mac has been running very slowly lately and I wanted to see how much faster it would be if I disabled its startup items. But when I try to start up in Safe Mode, it shows the progress bar, but that bar never fills up and my Mac doesn’t boot. What’s going on?
For the benefit of readers who are unfamiliar with Safe Mode (also known as Safe Boot mode), let’s back up and explain how to access Safe Mode and exactly what it is.
Chris has covered technology and media since the latter days of the Reagan Administration. In addition to his journalistic endeavors, he's a professional musician in the San Francisco Bay Area. More by Christopher Breen
Macworld forum visitor lobsta43 has a question that follows up on my recent Mac 101 column regarding Parental Controls. The crustacean writes:
I use Parental Controls with my grandkids and it works well. The problem is that when they walk away from the Mac the clock keeps ticking on their time limit. Is there some way for them to stop the clock?
Yes. When you’ve configured a time limit based on the amount of time that the Mac can be used over the course of a day (from half-an-hour to eight hours) the clock can be stopped by logging out of the controlled account. So, simply instruct the grandkids to choose Log Out from the Apple menu when they want to go off and do something else. The Mac will switch to the login screen and the ticking timer stops.
Chris has covered technology and media since the latter days of the Reagan Administration. In addition to his journalistic endeavors, he's a professional musician in the San Francisco Bay Area. More by Christopher Breen
Reader Tim Kisanuki is a bit late to the party and is unsure what to expect when he arrives. He writes:
I’ve been running Snow Leopard on my iMac since it was released. I’m finally ready to upgrade to Mountain Lion. Before I do, can you tell me about any serious problems or odd behaviors I might encounter?
I recently moved one of my Macs that remained on Snow Leopard to Mountain Lion so the experience is fresh in my mind. The few things that popped out at me soon after I restarted with my freshly installed version of the Mac OS include:
Chris has covered technology and media since the latter days of the Reagan Administration. In addition to his journalistic endeavors, he's a professional musician in the San Francisco Bay Area. More by Christopher Breen
Reader Elsa Pederson finds her Mac mysteriously out of memory. She writes:
Today I saw a message I’d never seen before. It indicated that my Mac had run out of application memory. In order to keep working I had to force quit some of my open applications. Is there a way I could have known which application was causing the problem?
Yes. In some cases, the misbehaving application will appear in red, followed by the words “Not Responding.” This strongly hints that this application has gone on a RAM binge and has consumed so much of the stuff that it can no longer move. One way to tell if that’s the problem application is to force quit a different application. If the once-red application starts responding again, it tells you it’s now happy because it has more RAM to chew on.
One of the best benefits of using iCloud is Safari syncing because it syncs all of your Safari bookmarks across all your Mac and iOS devices. As if that wasn’t enough, if you’re running Mountain Lion and iOS 6, each synced device can view and open Safari tabs from any other device.
For me, the only downside of this feature is that it doesn’t always work. I’ve especially had problems getting my MacBook Pro (13-inch Retina display) to sync with changes I make on my Mac Pro. I am not alone. If you search Apple Support Communities, you find at least a half-dozen threads describing the same general issue.
If this happens to you, my first recommendation is to quit and relaunch Safari. If that has no effect, log into your iCloud account (at www.icloud.com) from Safari. Doing so may jog iCloud into taking the appropriate syncing action. If there is still no success, restart your Mac.
Chris has covered technology and media since the latter days of the Reagan Administration. In addition to his journalistic endeavors, he's a professional musician in the San Francisco Bay Area. More by Christopher Breen
Reader Susan Malloy has lost some important email and can’t seem to retrieve it. She writes:
I use Microsoft Outlook 2011 as my email client. I was recently searching for an invoice emailed to me so that I could add it to an expense report. I know Outlook once had it but when I search within Outlook the message doesn't appear. Oddly enough, when I perform a Finder search, the message is there. Yet I can’t open it. What can I do?
First, take a deep breath. (And, if you swing that way, a stiff drink, as this one’s a brain buster.) Here’s what happened:
Chris has covered technology and media since the latter days of the Reagan Administration. In addition to his journalistic endeavors, he's a professional musician in the San Francisco Bay Area. More by Christopher Breen
Reader Steven Pollock seeks a digital copy of a movie he recently purchased. He writes:
I read Macworld’s story about how to rip DVDs with HandBrake and I’m having a problem. I’d like to rip a DVD that I recently purchased so that I can view it on my iPad. But when HandBrake starts scanning it, it crashes. I’ve tried it multiple times and I’m not having any luck. Is there a trick to it?
There is. But before we get into it, run your eyes over the boilerplate text that we include with these kinds of articles:
