Mac owners unable to log in to Messages, FaceTime after OS X 10.11.4 El Capitan update
A number of Mac owners are experiencing issues with iMessage and FaceTime logins after upgrading to the latest version of OS X 10.11.4 El Capitan released Monday, with evidence suggesting a bug in the apps' account activation system.
Messages error pop-up via Apple Support Communities member "traffsh0w."
Mac owners have taken to Apple's Support Communities forum to report (1, 2, 3, 4) an apparent Messages and FaceTime authentication issue in OS X 10.11.4 El Capitan that prevents users from using either service. AppleInsider has also received multiple reports detailing identical problems. OS X 10.11.4 was released on Monday with various feature additions and improvements.
The issue presents itself after installing the latest version of OS X, with most users reporting a pop-up error dialogues reading, "Could not sign in to iMessage" and "An error occurred during authentication." In other cases, the iMessage setup window seems to send user ID information to Apple's servers, but hangs without timing out.
Since iCloud logins appear unaffected by the bug, the problem might trace back to Apple's iMessage and FaceTime control services. Reports of multiple errors within a single household or business deployment suggest a faulty node might be impacting a geographical subset of users. Circumstantial evidence supports the theory of a server-side issue, as at least one Mac owner saw login trouble persist after downgrading to OS X 10.10 Yosemite.
The percentage of Macs affected by the issue is unknown, though reports are coming in from both users of older model hardware and customers who just purchased their computer.
As for an effective workaround, users have attempted generating app-specific passwords, toggling two-factor authentication on and off, reinstalling the update and performing fresh installs, but a reliable alternative has yet to be discovered.
Some forum members who contacted Apple Support said representatives are aware of the problem and note Apple engineers are working on a fix. AppleInsider reached out for clarification on the matter and will update this article when an answer is received.
El Capitan's login issues come one day after iPad owners reported difficulty installing iOS 9.3 on older hardware. As with Messages and FaceTime on Mac, the issue on iPad appears during the account activation stage. However, the iPad bug prevents iOS from installing altogether, leaving some tablets unusable unless a system restore is performed through iTunes.
Messages error pop-up via Apple Support Communities member "traffsh0w."
Mac owners have taken to Apple's Support Communities forum to report (1, 2, 3, 4) an apparent Messages and FaceTime authentication issue in OS X 10.11.4 El Capitan that prevents users from using either service. AppleInsider has also received multiple reports detailing identical problems. OS X 10.11.4 was released on Monday with various feature additions and improvements.
The issue presents itself after installing the latest version of OS X, with most users reporting a pop-up error dialogues reading, "Could not sign in to iMessage" and "An error occurred during authentication." In other cases, the iMessage setup window seems to send user ID information to Apple's servers, but hangs without timing out.
Since iCloud logins appear unaffected by the bug, the problem might trace back to Apple's iMessage and FaceTime control services. Reports of multiple errors within a single household or business deployment suggest a faulty node might be impacting a geographical subset of users. Circumstantial evidence supports the theory of a server-side issue, as at least one Mac owner saw login trouble persist after downgrading to OS X 10.10 Yosemite.
The percentage of Macs affected by the issue is unknown, though reports are coming in from both users of older model hardware and customers who just purchased their computer.
As for an effective workaround, users have attempted generating app-specific passwords, toggling two-factor authentication on and off, reinstalling the update and performing fresh installs, but a reliable alternative has yet to be discovered.
Some forum members who contacted Apple Support said representatives are aware of the problem and note Apple engineers are working on a fix. AppleInsider reached out for clarification on the matter and will update this article when an answer is received.
El Capitan's login issues come one day after iPad owners reported difficulty installing iOS 9.3 on older hardware. As with Messages and FaceTime on Mac, the issue on iPad appears during the account activation stage. However, the iPad bug prevents iOS from installing altogether, leaving some tablets unusable unless a system restore is performed through iTunes.
Comments
Not for me. I still live in the good old days. I have not been affected by a single one of these so-called bugs. I have an iMac 14,2 (late 2013), an iPhone 6, an Apple TV 4, and an Watch. All upgraded to the latest software from two days ago. All upgrades went perfectly without issues. All hardware and software is working fine as it did before the upgrades. There are NO issues. I think you live in a different world than the vast majority of users.
That’s because it’s not pervasive at all. What evidence can you present that it is? Counting views on the Apple discussion forums? Counting Google “hits”? All of which are useless indicators of the “pervasiveness” of an issue. With every release of an upgrade we see a flurry of reports of various glitches. These reports come from anonymous users with an unknown skill level and unknown states of stability for their installations.
No company is perfect and no software is either, but I feel sorry for anyone who honestly believes El Capitan has more bugs than Leopard. Or Tiger. Or Mac OS 8 & 8.5.
Software always has, and always will have, bugs. An OS is enormously complicated with millions of lines of code. It's a miracle it works at all.
Well yes, yes there is. Communications, the internet mostly as well as other other traditional media, everything has more media coverage simply because there's more media and whether it's really worth reporting or not. Actually, 'more reporting' has been my boiler plate answer for these 'age old' questions for decades. Where and how would you have learned about bugs or other issues back in the good old days of only 3 TV channels and 2 newspapers, the very next day of a release ?
And there you have it.
If your using an old .mac.com on the end of the email try using .me.com instead as it allowed me to log straight in and no further problems.
icloud.com may also work as yet untested by me
it looks like .mac.com is no longer being accepted as a viable login.
hope this helps
But I have had a fair number of problems more recently. On both Mac OS and iOS, I've had a number of updates that completely failed and I went through a bit of hell to get things back working again. I don't really trust Apple's QC anymore, so I generally wait a few weeks before upgrading to see if other people are experiencing major problems.
Some of the bugs are minor, but weird. After one of the recent OS updates, the color of the waveforms in Garage Band changed. How does that even happen?