Tag: Mac OS X

Mac OS X Mavericks Breaks SMB Network Shares

Well, my wife and I had a rude surprise today when her MacBook Air would no longer connect to our Windows Home Server. The operating system on the MacBook Air had been upgraded to Mac OS X 10.9 (AKA Mavericks) a while ago but this problem seemed to only manifest itself earlier this week. The …

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Excel Spreadsheet Dates Out by Four Years

This might be a bit of an obscure issue but one worth keeping in mind. If you work with Microsoft Excel under both Mac OS X and Windows then you may find an issue with date values changing by themselves when you open them on the other platform (i.e. opening a spreadsheet creating in Mac …

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Incoming Gadget – Google Chromecast

Another short and sweet update. I missed out on the initial release but I have placed an order for Google’s new Chromecast product. In a nutshell, it’s a dongle that you plug into your television in a spare USB socket for power as well as an HDMI socket to send video and audio to the …

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Twitter for Mac OS X Finally Receives an Update

Another quick update. If you’ve been using Twitter for Mac OS X you may have been wondering where the updates have been for the official client. In particular, the lack of Retina display support may have been discouraging people from using the official client. Anyway, the latest version of the official Twitter client is now …

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How to Increase and Decrease Volume by Quarter Steps in Mac OS X

Up until Mac OS X Lion you could use a handy shortcut to increase and decrease the system volume by quarter steps by doing the following: Option + Shift + Volume Up to increase volume by a quarter step, Option + Shift + Volume Down to decrease volume by a quarter step. But what if you are …

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Getting Internet Sharing to Work on Mountain Lion

My wife is over in Denmark by herself at the moment but wanted to share her in room internet connection (a cabled Ethernet connection) to her other devices over Wi-Fi. She had recently upgraded her MacBook Air to Mountain Lion (Mac OS X 10.8) but had used internet sharing on that computer in the past on …

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LogMeIn Hangs or Refuses to Refresh Screen

On odd occasion, I need to connect to one of my home computers to get a file, kick off a download or one of those random things that need doing. I have used LogMeIn for a while for this very purpose across my Windows PCs, MacBook Pro and also my iPad to make sure I …

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Upgrades Aren’t Always Painless

Just a quick update for today. With the impending release of Windows 8 it’s a good time to remind people that upgrades (be it hardware or software) aren’t always seamless or painless. Whilst there isn’t an expected problem with people upgrading to Windows 8 from Windows 7 or even Windows Vista you should always prepare …

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Check Your Java For Explotability

A quick tip tonight for people with Java installed on their computers. Generally, there are three principles regarding the safe usage of computer software: If you weren’t looking for it then don’t install it on your device, If you do need the software then always keep it up to date, If you no longer need …

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Slow or Infinitely Long Shutdowns on Mac OS X

Just thought I’d share a potential solution for a problem that I faced today. The copy of Windows 7 on my MacBook Pro had never been activated and given that I hadn’t used it in ages I thought I’d wipe it and replace the Windows installations on the laptop with the Windows 8 Consumer Preview. …

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