How To Spot Malware (And Remove It) If You’re Infected With MacDefender [How-To]

At this point, you probably know all about the Mac Defender thats doing the rounds. According to AppleCare Support reps, it’s exploding on Macs all across the country… but if you call Apple, they won’t lift a finger to help you remove it.

So how can you tell if you’re infected by MacDefender? Luckily, it’s pretty easy to spot it on your system… and even easier to remove it, if you know how.

Read the rest of this post »

How To Deal With Crashed Apps [100 Tips #51]

It’s true: sometimes Macs do crash. More often than not, though, crashes will be limited to a single application, rather than the entire system.

You’ll know an app has crashed because it simply stops doing anything. Clicking on controls has no effect, scrolling gets you nowhere; the app simply doesn’t respond to your usual commands. So what do you do next?

First, don’t panic. OS X is designed to keep crashes under control. Even if an application has crashed, in most cases you’ll still be able to carry on just fine with work you’re doing in other applications. All you have to worry about is the one that’s crashed, and any unsaved work you had inside it.

Read the rest of this post »

How-To Fix Your Automator iTunes Workflows

When we posted on Friday that iTunes 10 had killed off old Automator workflows, it had all the hallmarks of a bug… and as it turns out, a but it is.

As it turns out, the problem is caused because Automator detects iTunes 10 as being a lower version number than iTunes 9, because Automator apparently sorts version numbers alphabetically instead of numerically.

As it turns out, the fix isn’t entirely onerous: simply open up the info.plist inside the packages of your non-functioning workflows and manually change the version number. If you absolutely can’t live without your iTunes Automator workflows until Apple managed to issue a Software Update, here’s your stop gap solution.