Apple Club

"Why won't it just work?" Every autumn, a new macOS arrives. Half looking forward to it, half bracing for trouble, I upgrade, get stuck, dig around, and fix it. I have been writing down that cycle since the days of Mojave.

What you will find here is not expert commentary. It is a record of what actually went wrong for one person working alone, and how I got out of it — an external drive icon that refused to change back, a Time Machine display behaving oddly, a mouse pad replaced after ten years. If someone stuck at the same spot lands here from a search and gets moving again a little sooner, it was worth writing.

Every autumn, I volunteer to go first

When a new macOS arrives, I install it instead of waiting to see what happens. Mojave, Catalina, Big Sur, Monterey, Sonoma, Sequoia, and now Tahoe. The years it went smoothly and the years it did not are both written down here, unedited.

Small snags deserve small answers

An external drive icon that will not change back. A Time Machine display that alone looks wrong. These are dead ends with nobody obvious to ask, so I work them out for myself and write them down for whoever stops at the same spot next.