Roland Wadddilove

Spotlight is a useful tool for finding apps, documents and other files on your Apple Mac’s disk drive and it is even better in OS X Yosemite, but sometimes problems occur. One is where Spotlight only gives web results and Spotlight does not index the disk drive. These indexing problems can be fixed and Spotlight restored to full health.

Go to the Mac App Store, go to Categories, select Utilities and among the free and paid apps are several memory cleaners. They are very popular apps, but do you really need a memory cleaner? What does it do?

Do you know the answer to these questions off the top of your head: How many days are there until the end of the month? Your next holiday? Your birthday or anniversary? Even if you are good with dates, these questions are hard to answer. Would you like to know?

Preview has had the ability to capture your signature and insert it into documents for some time. You could sign your name on paper, then hold it up to the camera and it would scan it in. Now in the OS X Yosemite version of Preview, you can sign your name on the trackpad. It is an interesting alternative and one that is worth experimenting with. Let's see how to add a signature.

There is still a belief that Apple Macs do not get malware, but this simply is not true. OK, viruses are rare, but adware is common. Improve Safari security and privacy with these tips.

If you are still undecided about upgrading OS X your Apple Mac to the new Yosemite, one feature that might change your mind is the ability to send and receive text messages from the desktop without touching your phone. This is a great new feature that makes texting a lot easier. There is just one caveat, you must have an iPhone with iOS 8 and the new iPhone 6 is perfect for the job.

After installing a new version of OS X, there are always lots of essential tasks to perform to get it running exactly the way you prefer. OS X Yosemite for the Apple Mac comes with predefined settings that are mostly OK, but everyone has their own preferences and it takes a few tweaks here and there to get the Mac just the way you like it. Here are some of the changes I made to Yosemite after installing it.

OS X Yosemite is here and it is in the Mac App Store. Just fire up the App Store from the Dock and you can download it free of charge and upgrade your Mac. Before you do though, take a minute to consider your options. Is it best to upgrade or should you perform a clean install? How do you actually carry out a clean install from the download in the App Store?

Disk drives come in a variety of sizes and some Apple Macs have quite small drives. If you have an SSD (solid state disk), it is likely to have quite a limited capacity for storing files. Older Macs have small disk drives, even if they are traditional mechanical models. Anyone that has a small disk drive, or even a big disk with lots of files, will need to keep an eye on the space used and the remaining free space.

Start an Apple Mac and when you get to the desktop, that’s Finder. It is more than the desktop though and it enables you to open windows to explore the disk contents. A finder window has a toolbar at the top that contains some useful functions and a sidebar on the left with folders and views. There are two ways to make Finder windows more useful and you can customise both the sidebar and the toolbar.

Over the past couple of days my email inbox has been filling up with messages from Apple. These express concern that my account has been used to buy items on the iTunes Store or App Store from a device that has not previously been connected to my account. Basically, someone has hacked into my account and is using it to buy stuff. Or have they?

Do you use Launchpad on the Apple Mac? If the answer is No or Rarely, perhaps you just haven’t set it up right. It is a useful tool and a quick way to access the applications you need.

Two things should happen when certain events occur, such as a calendar appointment, instant message or a new email.

One is that the event should be added to Notification Center and the other is a pop-up notification in the top right corner of the screen. Unfortunately, this does not happen for some people with the Mail app on the Apple Mac. Why?

How many times have you quickly typed in an email message and clicked the Send button only to realise too late that there was a typing slip in the message? Sometimes you don’t realise until you receive a reply and can see that there is a typo in the quoted text.

There is a teeny tiny bug in OS X and iOS that more than a few people have come across and it is related to iCloud. Everything can be running smoothly on your Apple Mac, iPhone or iPad when suddenly you are asked to enter your iCloud password to log in. People with Macs, iPads and iPhones have all suffered from this, but there is a solution.

Advertisers are always looking for better ways to sell you even more stuff than they did previously and one way in which they do this is to track your activities in an attempt to see what you are interested in. iTunes does this on the Apple Mac and the question is, do you want iTunes tracking your activities?

The latest Apple Mac news from the last week.

Mac Pro Security Lock adapter

There are many email scams and people are constantly working on ways to fool you into revealing your bank details, login details to online services and so on. You need to be aware of the dangers and how to avoid them. Here is a typical email that tried to fool me into revealing my Apple ID - the username and password used to log into Apple services like iTunes. You might get a similar one, so take a look and learn how to spot the fakes.

Apple provides 5GB of online storage space for you to use for free. How much are you using? You might be surprised at the amount and even when you think you are not using any, you could be using several gigabytes and be near your free space limit. Here’s how to check your iCloud storage and why you are using so much space.

If you need a cheap, small, light MacBook that will run all day on its battery, the 11-inch model costs just US $899 (UK £749) and is a bargain and there is nothing to compare. It is a different story with the 13-inch model though and there is an alternative to consider.