Category Archives: Mac questions

Questions and answers specific to Apple machines and OSX

Q. What Memory and Drives fit my MacBook Air?

Apple MacBook Air machines feature Intel processors and an exceedingly thin Aluminum body. None of the MacBook Airs have internal optical drives, Apple sells an external USB Superdrive (make sure to check compatibility with your MacBook Air when buying a … Continue reading

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Q. My Macintosh is slow in all programs – what’s the problem?

There can be a variety of problems that can slow a machine down. If the performance is poor in only one program, the first approach would be to delete and reinstall that program.  For slowness across all programs and OSX, … Continue reading

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Q. I am being offered some used software for sale. Is this legitimate?

In most cases, used software can be sold if it is no longer needed – but there are some strict requirements for it to be legal.  The reason for this is that you don’t purchase software outright, you purchase a … Continue reading

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Q. My USB memory stick won’t let me save a 4.2 GB file?

You are finding that individual files larger than 3.99 GB are failing when you copy them to a USB memory stick (or a camera memory card, or an external hard drive). The simple answer is that the memory stick is … Continue reading

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Q. Someone knows my IP address and email. Can they hack my computer?

You don’t get hacked just because someone knows your IP address – you get hacked if your machine has malware on it or if you have left services open to the public or if someone has obtained the username and … Continue reading

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Q. I have a file on my Mac that won’t open the correct program

What type of file is it? Most files have a file name with a three or four letter extension which tells the machine what program it belongs to. For example, a .XLSX file is a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet file. This … Continue reading

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Q. How do I install a 3TB or larger hard drive?

The largest new desktop SATA hard drives on the market have capacities of 3 TB and 4 TB. This is great for storage, not so great for older machines because it goes beyond what SATA interfaces on older (mid 2011 … Continue reading

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Q. What memory fits my Apple Xserve server?

Model/ Identifier CPU/ Speed/ Screen/ Date/ Designation RAM Type & Speed Maximum RAM Hard Drive/ SSD XServe G4RackMac1,1 G4 1.0 GHz (4 RAM sockets Mid 2002, M8627LL/A ) DDR-266 DIMM 2 GB (4x512MB) 3.5″ PATA hard drive XServe G4/DPRackMac1,1 G4 1.0 … Continue reading

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Q. How do I install RAM in a Mac?

Memory in most Macintoshes is user-upgradeable. The bottom of this post has links to the Apple instructions for specific models.  Here are general instructions for installation on modern Macs. In machines with SODIMMs, there are two main ways to insert … Continue reading

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Q. How to set up a new external hard drive on a Mac?

A. When you plug in a new external hard drive to a Mac, it will either be formatted for Windows (in which case you may have trouble writing to it from the Mac) or it will be unformatted. An internal … Continue reading

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Q. What does it mean to clean a cache?

Your web browser caches (keeps local copies on your hard drive of) many of the pages and graphics it downloads as you are browsing the Web. This makes it faster to reload the same page when you return to it … Continue reading

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Q. What is a Retina Display?

“Retina” is Apple’s marketing name for a high resolution LCD display for smartphones (iPhone), tablets (iPad), media players (iPod Touch) and future products such as computer monitors and iMacs. What does “Retina” mean? The term Retina refers to the assumption … Continue reading

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Q. What are the most useful keyboard shortcuts?

Most computer programs have keyboard shortcuts – these are key combinations that substitute for commonly used commands – this avoids having to grab the mouse and taking the cursor up to the menus at the top of the screen.  Learning … Continue reading

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Q. What memory and hard drives fit my iBook G3/G4?

There are several models of iBook, the G3 models use PC66 or PC100 memory and the G4 models use DDR memory. Below is a list of all models. iBooks take 2.5″ IDE hard drives up to 120 GB in capacity. … Continue reading

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“Flashback”, Java trojans, “SabPub”, “LuckyCat” and “Tibet” Microsoft Office trojans target Mac OSX

Updated Apr 17 2012 April 17: Another Word Trojan Backdoor.OSX.SabPub.a aka “LuckyCat” has been described by Kapersky Labs, which is different malware code, assumed to be delivered in a similar way as “Tibet” through Word 2004/2008 documents or by targeted … Continue reading

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