One of our members suggested I post a link to Macworld’s 911 column. This has been an ongoing series where subscribers to the magazines ask common questions, and Macworld posts answers. The answers are well written, and (usually) very good. Here is a recent collection:
https://www.macworld.com/article/228117/your-top-questions-to-mac-911-and-some-answers.html
Sometimes the advertising gets in the way, but the writing is down to earth.
A tip: if you ever try to do something on your Mac or iPad or iPhone and can’t figure out how, back off a bit and try to think of the task more generically. In other words, don’t try and obsess over what you are trying to do at that particular moment but, rather, think of what other people might do with whatever tool you are using. Sometimes you may find that you are using the wrong tool, and another tool is a better choice. Or you might decide this is the right tool, but you are approaching the problem from the wrong perspective.
Such as: someone wrote to me a few weeks ago convinced that they had a virus. Their Mac wasn’t working, and everything was very slow. The answer was less scary and less intrusive: the hard disk was full. Not absolutely crammed, but too full to work reliably. (To even use a web browser, you need several gigabytes — sometimes tens of gigabytes — worth of free disk space). Copying stuff off to another drive freed up space, and the computer was faster and more reliable.
