Mac OS X Lion: The Missing Manual

Where to Get Troubleshooting Help

If the basic steps described in this appendix haven’t helped, the universe is crawling with additional help sources. In general, this is the part in any Mac book where you’re directed to Apple’s Support Web site, to various discussion forums, and so on—and, indeed, those help sources are listed below.

But the truth is, the mother of all troubleshooting resources isn’t any of those—it’s Google. You’ll find more answers faster using Google than you ever will using individual help sites. That’s because Google includes all those help sites in its search!

Suppose, for example, that you’ve just installed the 10.7.2 software update for Lion, and it’s mysteriously turned all your accounts (including your own) into Standard accounts. And without any Administrator account, you can’t install new programs, change network settings, add or edit other accounts, and so on.

You could go to one Web site after another, hunting for a fix, repeating your search—or you could just type lion 10.7.2 standard accounts into Google. You’ll get your answers after just a few more seconds of clicking and exploring the results.

Help Online

These Web sites contain nothing but troubleshooting discussions, tools, and help:

• Apple Discussion Groups (http://discussions.apple.com). The volume and quality of question-and-answer activity here dwarfs any other free source. If you’re polite and concise, you can post questions to the multitudes here and get more replies from them than you’ll know ...