Mac OS X

A few people who have installed the latest version of iTunes (version 10.0.1) have found that their remote speakers are no longer working. This reflects similar reports that came out when people upgraded from iTunes 9.2.1 to the initial release of iTunes 10.

The problem may be hard to pinpoint, but so far people have had success in turning off the system firewall or reinstalling the program; however, removing relevant preference files may also help.

Toggle or turn off firewallTo turn off the firewall, in OS X 10.5 Leopard go to the Security system preferences … Read more

Microsoft announced today it will be taking preorders for Microsoft Office 2011 for Mac. Microsoft says this major update will bring the Mac version of its office suite almost on par with the Windows version of the product. With significantly better cross-platform compatibility, several added new features, and some impressive interface elements exclusive to the Mac version, Office 2011 for Mac might be the best in its class.

Over the past couple of weeks, we had the chance to check out the entire suite--including Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and Outlook--and we think there's plenty to be excited about. New and … Read more

This week, Brian talks Verizon iPhone rumors, new Apple TVs being ready to ship, using your iPhone as a wallet, and how to quickly and easily add album artwork to all the songs in your iTunes Library. Also covered this week, Apple updates iWork for iPad, Steve Jobs is rich, and a cool keyboard case for iPad.

On an iOS device? View the Apple Byte… Read more

Our utilities update report is a list of updates for Mac utilities that have been released in the past week. Though a utility can be any tool that helps you perform a routine task (including image manipulation and synchronization), our focus in this column is to bring you those tools that help in troubleshooting Mac hardware and software problems.

Maintenance

Having at least one cache cleaning utility on your system is always recommended, for running general maintenance or other cleaning routines. Snow Leopard Cache Cleaner ($9.99) is one of the tried-and-true utilities for removing temporary and cache files on … Read more

The latest update to iTunes 10 fixed a few known bugs with the initial release, but as expected Apple did not change the gray color scheme of the icons in the sidebar. We hope it will in the future, but for now the program will, by default, still come with the faded gray look in the sidebar.

For the initial release, people tackled this problem by editing the iTunes.rsrc file in the application package and adding their own custom color schemes to the program.

Despite having color in the sidebar again, people wondered if updating the program in the … Read more

The latest version of iTunes seems to have done away with a feature that many people have come to use regularly: the Genius sidebar. Instead of a Genius sidebar with options for finding new songs based on the ones in your library, there is now a Ping sidebar that gives you access to the social network's ratings and purchasing options.

This may be useful for Ping users, but the Genius sidebar was used by many to quickly find new song and artist recommendations and may be frustrated by its absence. The only Genius feature still remaining in the iTunes … Read more

Putting your Mac in Sleep mode is a good way to restore the system to its last state so you can continue your work where you left off; however, it does not come without a few potential drawbacks. One of them is that even though OS X is designed to be run continually without needing to restart, sometimes going for a period without refreshing the system with a restart can result in a few periodic pauses and slowdowns.

Not only can small slowdowns occur, but when the system wakes from sleep all the processes are brought back into memory at … Read more

Many times in running their Macs people will install various drivers and system enhancements to customize their Mac experience. These can be anything from a device driver to a haxie for enabling hidden OS X features. While these may work when running your system, there are times when updates to system software can break their function or cause other unexpected behavior. Usually these issues are not bad, but periodically people may update and wonder why they are suddenly getting errors or hangs.

One possibility for this is if your third-party drivers are not being properly updated along with OS updates. … Read more

One drawback to having multiple users on OS X is there is no easy way to limit the amount of disk space used by that user. If a user has write access to a file system, then they can fill the drive until there is no space left for others. For the most part this just takes some chatting with the other members of a household or workplace, but to avoid confrontations you can set up the system in various ways to limit a user's disk space use.

Partitions

If you know exactly how many people will be using … Read more