When writing up bug reports for this column, I prefer to have guaranteed solutions to offer. However, a few problems are so frustrating and mysterious that I’ll cover them even without a known reliable fix. That’s the situation today.
A few weeks ago, I sent several SMS text messages to a friend via the Messages app on my iPhone 5. They went unanswered. I eventually learned that he had never received the messages. Not only that, he had sent me a couple of messages during the same time period that I never received. When we finally sat down together to figure out what was going on, we confirmed the obvious: we could neither send nor receive text messages between our two smartphones.
Here’s where things gets weirder. My friend is the only person I cannot text. Ditto in reverse for my friend. Not only that, we have been exchanging texts for years without any difficulty. It’s only in the past few weeks that we’ve had this difficulty. He is using the same smartphone (not an iPhone) and same carrier he’s had for the past two years. The only apparent change that might be linked to when the symptom first popped up was on my end: I upgraded to an iPhone 5 and iOS 6 around the time the texts started to fail (although I can’t confirm that the failures began immediately after the upgrade).
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 Will Dawes would like to have a foot in two worlds. He writes:
I have an iMac that’s a couple of years old on which I run Mac OS X Snow Leopard. I’ve stuck with Snow Leopard because I need to run a couple of old PowerPC applications on it that don’t work under Lion or Mountain Lion. But now I find myself in a position where I also need to run Mountain Lion for a job I’m working on. Is there a way to run each on a single Mac?
Yes, at least two ways. The first is to purchase an external hard drive, format it for your Mac, and install Mountain Lion on it. When you need to swap between operating systems, simply launch System Preferences, select the Startup Disk preference, and choose the disk that contains the operating system you need.
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 Dwayne Ahern has a question about the strength of his Wi-Fi network. He writes:
I have an AirPort Extreme Base Station in my home office, and I’m not sure I’ve positioned it in the best place for good reception around the house. As I walk around with my MacBook Air, I see the Wi-Fi fan in the menu bar drop a bit in some places, but that seems like a pretty rough estimate. Is there a way I can get a better idea of how strong the signal is?
Apple tends to underplay any admission of bugs in its software. It doesn’t even like to use the word “bug.” Rather, it refers to fixing “issues.” For example, in its support article on OS X Mountain Lion v10.8.2 Update Apple notes that “an issue in which Keychain may not be accessible” has been resolved. As in this case, such admissions typically do not get posted until after Apple has released the update that fixes the bug.
However, as I initially covered back in 2008, a scrutiny of Apple’s support articles can reveal information about bugs that Apple is currently working to resolve. You’ll know you found one of these bug reports if the article concludes with the sentence “This document will be updated as more information becomes available.” These articles provide Apple’s current recommended work-around for the unresolved bug; the promised “more information” will likely be a future update that eradicates the problem altogether.
After a brief search, I found two recent examples of these type of articles.
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 Clark Ross finds his past has overgrown his present. He writes:
I use Time Machine to back up my Mac but the hard drive I use for my backups has run out of space. I plan to purchase a larger hard drive, but how do I safely move my backup from the old one to the new drive?
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 Walt Bischoff and his spouse—like all good couples—would like to share more of their lives with one another. He writes:
My wife and I have separate Apple IDs and would like to share contacts via iCloud. How should we set up iCloud to achieve this? Right now we never seem to be able to access all of our contacts.
I can offer a couple of solutions. We’ll start with iCloud.
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 Aiden Andrews is planning to venture out but would like some of his most important files available to him. He writes:
I’m planning to be away from my home office for a couple of weeks but will take my MacBook Pro and iPad with me so I can work while traveling. What’s the best way for me to best arrange things so I have access to my files and can share them between my computer and iPad?
With the prevalence of cloud storage and mobile devices lots of people are interested in the most efficient ways to share their work. There is no one right answer but I can sketch out some of your options.
