One potential route by which an attacker can compromise your Mac is to modify a legitimate software package to contain malware. While this is difficult to do through official software distribution channels (e.g., the Mac App Store), it can be done through popular alternative approaches like peer-to-peer networking and third-party software distribution Web sites. Continue reading
Even if you are not a Terminal wizard, there are some fun tools and features of it that can be amusing. For instance, some online services are available for you to log into with Telnet and watch a text-based version of Star Wars, or you can play odd games that folks have coded into the “emacs” editor, among others. If you are ever sitting at your Mac and suddenly have the urge to print out a massive banner of a text phrase, then you can do that to. Continue reading
Accessing Recovery Mode in OS X may be necessary for restoring from a backup, and reinstalling OS X, among other low-level administrative tasks. In most cases, your Mac will have a local recovery partition based on the current OS X installation, that you can access; however, there may be instances where this will not work. For those who need to access Recovery Mode for a particular Mac, here are all of the way to go about doing this. Continue reading
Even though we have modern messaging technologies like Apple’s Messages that default to encrypted communications, we still primarily use e-mail, even for sensitive business transactions. If you have several partners that you would like to communicate privately with, then while you can resort to an encrypted collaboration platform, you can also do so via classic e-mail, with only a few steps taken for each person. Continue reading
Quite often you may have some task running on your Mac that you might wish to keep going while you step away from your system. However, you may wish to save some energy by turning off your display for a while. Of course if you sleep your Mac, then you will clearly interrupt your task, but there are other ways to shut off your monitor while keeping your Mac going. Continue reading
There are several ways to lock down your Mac, in order to prevent third-parties from either accessing your data, or using your system for purposes you do not intend. Since your Mac consists of several layers of hardware and software, each can be secured with a password; however, there are times when you may have forgotten your password. In these instances, you will likely be locked out; however, in most cases you should be able to recover your system. Continue reading
Whenever you upgrade OS X, you always chance an application or two not working with the new software changes. Hopefully problems are kept at a minimum, or are insignificant enough to not require any attention; however, there may be times when apps crash, hang, or show other odd behavior that directly impedes your ability to use them. In these cases, there are several general approaches you can do to fix the problem, before having to dive into specifics troubleshooting steps. Continue reading