You’re sometimes advised to shut your Mac down, wait a while, and start it up again, instead of restarting it. Are they different, and if so when should you use them?
troubleshooting
Distinguish between panics, freezes, app crashes, and unresponsive apps, as they have different causes, are investigated differently, and have different solutions.
Catch up on your reading with selected articles from the past year, covering hardware, firmware and Recovery, troubleshooting and updates.
Five test questions put to Google’s AI-enhanced search. Answers analysed to understand its weaknesses rather than strengths. And why every answer is a bit random.
Instead of logging out and back in, it’s possible to relaunch Spotlight from the Finder, as demonstrated here with the aid of the log. And it might be useful too.
When Spotlight can’t find the files you expect it to, it could be that they weren’t indexed, or that Spotlight’s search has failed to find their index entries. Here’s how to tell those apart and work out what went wrong.
What happens when you can’t solve a problem, so you get a log extract and ask Claude to diagnose it for you? Here’s a full worked example.
First we repaired disk permissions, until SIP made that impossible. Then we reset user permissions until Apple withdrew that advice. Next we ran repairHomePermissions in Recovery. Should you still use that?
You’ve tried entering your password, but it doesn’t work. Should you try guessing? As that imposes increasing waiting times of up to 8 hours, maybe not. Try this instead.
Why is that app slow to launch, unable to update itself, generally behaving erratically, and often crashes? Could it be stuck in app translocation? Here’s how to tell, and how to fix it.
The Eclectic Light Company 