macos

Having a full system backup solution for any PC is a highly recommended setup, but a preferred setup is to have redundant backups either in the same location or better yet, in multiple locations. While Apple has offered its Time Machine service as a fairly robust backup solution for OS X users, the service has been limited to a single backup drive and did not support any redundancy options. In Mountain Lion this has changed and you can now use multiple drives with Time Machine for the same system.

In prior versions of OS X, users had to either use … Read more

The sidebar in the OS X Finder is a convenient way to store links to your commonly used folders, and to access available network servers and hard drives. By default the sidebar shows some folders from your home directory along with the Applications folder, and clicking through these should reveal their contents in the current Finder window; however, some people who have upgraded to Mountain Lion are noticing an apparent bug where clicking between these links does not show the appropriate change in contents.

For those with this problem, clicking on a specific link in the sidebar will show that … Read more

When Mail in OS X detects a problem with an e-mail message, it may attempt to recover the message in a special mailbox called "Recovered Messages"; however, sometimes this recovery process may hit a snag and result in multiples of the same message being recovered. This issue can sometimes result in other problems, including Mail not being able to get new mail, and also having the hard drive fill up and lead to slowdowns and other problems if the message has a large attachment associated with it.

The recovered message may be a previously sent message, or even … Read more

Apple's Notification Center in OS X Mountain Lion provides a quick way to get messages about various updates, such as new e-mails, calendar events, reminders, and system and application software updates from the App Store. However, regardless of its uses, Apple has somewhat imposed Notification Center on users by making it a persistent service that isn't easily disabled. Since the service does add yet more items to the menu bar and since it does in part directly conflict with current notification options like Growl, some people might wish to turn it off completely.

It is possible to disable … Read more

Notification Center is a new feature in OS X Mountain Lion that helps you keep all of your important alerts and notifications in one place. The claim of convenience can only be true if it's truly convenient to access and use. Luckily, there are a few different ways to access the tray of notifications hidden under your desktop. Let's take a look at four of them.

Menu bar

The most obvious way is by clicking on the Notification Center icon in the menu bar. You can click the icon to reveal and hide Notification Center. There's nothing … Read more

One useful addition to OS X that Apple included in version 10.7, aka Lion, was a network diagnostics tool for generating troubleshooting reports and monitoring network performance. The tool was fairly well-rounded and helpful for troubleshooting networking problems, and in OS X Mountain Lion Apple has enhanced it with additional options and features.

First off, while previously the tool was only available from directly in the /System/Library/CoreServices folder, it is now more conveniently available by holding the Option key, clicking the Wi-Fi menu, and selecting Open Wi-Fi Diagnostics.

When the utility opens, you will have two general … Read more

Apple's latest 2011-2012 MacBook Air and 2012 Retina MacBook Pro systems support a new power-saving mode called PowerNap, which allows the systems to perform a number of background tasks when in Sleep mode, thereby maintaining low power but preventing a flurry of synchronization and update activity when the system is woken up.

When activated, the system should go into Sleep mode as usual, but periodically you should see activity with an attached Time Machine drive, and also see received e-mail messages, updated contacts, iCloud content, and also be able to use Apple's Find My Mac remote access features. … Read more

A new setting added to OS X in Mountain Lion restores a classic Expose behavior for viewing all windows on the screen.

Apple's Missions Control feature in OS X is an evolution (or perhaps devolution, depending on your perspective) of the Expose and Spaces feature that was introduced in OS X 10.5 Leopard. While options for multiple desktops are great for organizing work, in some of Apple's decisions with the move to Mission Control it left out some of the simple approaches to Spaces that users became accustomed to.

One of these features is the ability to … Read more

A small number of Mac Pro owners who have upgraded to Mountain Lion are reporting an issue where the system seems to randomly log out, quitting all applications without any warnings and returning to the log-in screen.

While this may appear as if the system has restarted or even performed a standard log-out, the system is in fact experiencing a crash in a critical process called the Window Server that supports the current log-in session by managing the drawing and representation of windows on the screen. Crash logs that affected users have revealed show that the problem is rooted in … Read more