A bootable Mac OS X thumb drive comes in handy when you need to troubleshoot OS issues for yourself, your family, or your friends. It’s also extremely useful for keeping your basic setup consistent ...

Now that Apple has released OS X 10.9 Mavericks, you might want to consider creating a USB install drive for clean installs and future use. Ed Rhee Ed Rhee, a freelance writer based in the San ...

OS X 10.8 is only available online, but you can create your own standalone install drive for it if needed. Topher Kessler MacFixIt Editor Topher, an avid Mac user for the past 15 years, has been a ...

When Apple released OS X 10.7 two years ago, it stopped selling operating system DVDs in its stores, stopped shipping recovery disks with new Macs, and switched to downloadable installers for OS X ...

On June 15, Samsung and Acer will release the first consumer-oriented Chrome OS laptops, or Chromebooks as Google likes to call them. Both hardware- and software-wise ...

Forbes contributors publish independent expert analyses and insights. I write about hardware and software YOU need to know about. This article is more than 10 years old. Time to answer a reader's ...

I recently loaded OS X Mavericks on an old (2007) 20" iMac, and to check that everything was fine I ran the machine through the full Setup Assistant -- setting up a user with my name in the process.

About nine months ago, I acquired a 13-inch MacBook Air. At that point, the first Ultrabooks had been announced but were not yet shipping. Even so, I might have waited, except that the Ultrabooks I’d ...

Apple has finally implemented a maps app in the OS X platform, and it seems to have been worth the wait. After being noticeably missing from the system, Maps (and iBooks) are helping achieve a greater ...

It was 2009 when Apple last released a new operating system on physical media. Things have proceeded remarkably smoothly since version 10.7 switched to download-only installers, but there are still ...