Reading Time: 4 minutesBasic troubleshooting has become a lost art it seems. What used to be the first things people tried when running into computer trouble is now an “oh, wait, I should try this!” step after all else has failed. Looking to get people back into the art of troubleshooting, I decided to start a series, aptly named: “Troubleshooting”. This is Part 1 of… unknown. I’ll keep adding parts until I run out of ideas. New parts may come out at any…
Reading Time: 3 minutesWell to be more precise, it’s the 2021 68K & PPC Challenge now. The rules and more info can be found on the Mac Yak website here but it’s quite simple (and always has been): Use your eligible Mac as your daily driver for a week, as much as possible. Mac, Macintosh or Apple Clone only. Mac OS, Linux, your call. No virtualization or emulation of an OS. People are already sharing what their setup is going to be on…
Reading Time: < 1 minuteHello generous donor! This is an early access post for my latest video; Reviewing the CPB CP300 repair heat plate. More and more of my clients are asking me if I work on iPhones and iPads, mostly glass replacements for physical damage. I’ve been happily staying away from phone and tablet repairs for a few years now but if there is a demand, I should get back into it. Since I last worked on phones and tablets, the hardware has…
Reading Time: 5 minutesEarlier today, Karen Haslam wrote an article for Macworld UK titled “Don’t bother trying to update to Big Sur if you have a 128GB Mac“. If you haven’t read it yet, do that first if you want, so you’ll know what I’m referencing in this article. I have several objections about the statements made in Karen’s article and will cover some of them but there is a larger takeaway I want to give you as well. Let’s dive in. In…
Reading Time: 7 minutesPart of a conversation between me and my neighbor this week: Me: “Sounds like the drive is failing, have you checked the S.M.A.R.T. Status?” Him: “What’s that?” Being a geek and neck deep in various tech projects every day for the last two decades it’s sometimes easy to forget there are people out there that may have never heard of something I take for granted. Sure, readers of this blog are probably pretty in touch with their inner geek but…
Reading Time: 3 minutesYes, you’ve heard me say this plenty of times if you know me. I keep repeating it because it’s THAT important! Today I was going through my ridiculously, insanely large stash of backup discs to check for disc rot (we’re talking optical media here) and data integrity. This is something I try to do twice a year but usually end up doing just once a year because it takes up a few days time. What does this process entail? •…
Reading Time: 6 minutesMy apologies, sometimes I take certain information for granted. When I see people on Facebook and other forums ask “what’s the difference between 4,1 and 5,1 Mac Pro?” or “Can I use a 4,1 CPU tray in a 5,1 Mac Pro” I think to myself ‘this is common knowledge, isn’t it?’. No, it’s not. Even in 2020 (and years to come), there will be plenty of people that first get started on upgrading an older Mac Pro or maybe even…
Reading Time: 2 minutesWhile rummaging through old Apple Resource CD’s I found a really cool poster from Apple (pdf). Unfortunately the image is looking absolutely terrible! Here’s a screenshot of the original PDF and a detail 100% zoom shot: And at 100%: The text is crisp but the image is garbage! And this is on Apple’s official, original, marketing materials CD from 1999! So I started restoring it. I have some high quality photography from other sales and marketing discs and found the…
Reading Time: 4 minutesIn January 2018 I made the switch to a vertical mouse. I was not suffering from carpal tunnel or other issues but did feel a strain on my lower arm after long computer sessions. There is plenty of information out there explaining how a vertical mouse is better for you so I won’t bore you with all of that. It’s a much more natural position for your arm as this image illustrates perfectly: Poor spelling aside, this about sums it…
Reading Time: 4 minutesThe world is losing it’s marbles with the corona virus going around so a lot of us find ourselves isolated at home. While this is certainly a good time to clean your home, I want to talk a bit about things you can do that you’ve probably been putting off (Mac related). Test your backups You use Time Machine, Carbon Copy Cloner, ChronoSync and/or other ways to back up your data. This is great but do you know if those…