Apple have a new System Font in El Capitan and all of their other products starting 2015: it’s called San Francisco. It’s very similar to their previous font Helvetica Neue, but apparently San Francisco is better for your eyes (not to mention the fact that Helvetica Neue isn’t owned by Apple, and obviously we can’t … Read more
On a recent chat with Apple support, the representative suggested I reset my PRAM. From what I understand this will clear BIOS like values that may cause a Mac to malfunction. It only takes a second to do – here’s how: Press CMD+OPTION+P+R, then start the system. You’ll need three hands or a portable keyboard … Read more
Hold down SHIFT during normal boot, until the loading bar appears. It will take longer than usual to start the system. Some services are not available. Safe Mode will clear several caches and verify the startup disks. From the command line, or on remote systems, boot into Safe Mode using this: sudo nvram boot-args=”-x” When … Read more
When you’re trying to open any of the Adobe CS5 or CS6 applications in Yosemite, you’ve likely encountered a friendly message such as this: This happens because CS5 and CS6 applications were relying on Java 6, and the current version at the time of writing is Java 8. I’m not an expert on Java, but … Read more
It’s easy to remote control your Mac, no matter if it’s hosted in a data centre far away, or if it sits in your bookshelf across the room. But when you do, you’ll notice that the screen resolution is often not what you’d expect on the monitor you control your Mac from. This is a bit … Read more
root is the most powerful user in Linux and UNIX systems, from which OS X is derived. The root user can read, write and delete every file on the system and – when placed in the wrong hands – destroy the entire system in a flash. Even power users on a Mac have very little … Read more
A new “improvement” in Yosemite is the progress bar that comes up when you start your machine. What you Mac does under the hood hasn’t really changed from Mavericks, but the progress bar implies that a long running operating is happening the background. It can look grey with a black background, or dark grey with … Read more
Every Mac has an integrated hardware test called – not surprisingly – Apple Hardware Test. When you get a new device, or if you’ve recently upgraded your memory, it’s worth checking if everything is working as expected. Otherwise you may encounter weirdo bugs sometimes down the line. To start the test, simply shutdown your Mac, … Read more
