11. Troubleshooting

With Apple’s emphasis on making the Mac easy to use, it’s easy to forget that under the crisp colors and soft drop shadows lies a complex bed of code that runs the show. No software is ever perfect, and although Apple has focused on improving performance and stability in Lion, bugs and other issues are sure to crop up.

This chapter is an introduction to troubleshooting problems, offering some general advice to help you locate and solve issues that might arise. I also provide specifics about repairing disk directory corruption, dealing with applications that frequently crash or refuse to operate, and working through network and connectivity issues.