No Facetime login on 10.7.5?

[wkearney99]

I've checked DNS (on the Mac and the local router), automatic time settings, keychain (repair reports no errors) and /etc/hosts. The Mac software update says its up to date.

I've rebooted the Mac and the network router. Several times.

Facetime doesn't want to login on Grandma's Mac Mini running 10.7.5. It's a 'Mid 2007' MacMini2,1 model. Facetime shows version 1.1.1

It sees the camera just fine, I see a live local picture.

But if I try to login using her known-good username and password it errors out with:

"The server encountered an error processing registration. Please try again later."

I've tried using a different username/password and that also returns the same error.

I've successfully used that username/password to log into iTunes. I also successfully logged into that account using an iPad I have here. So it doesn't seem to be a problem with the account/password.

Is there something else that's preventing Facetime from working on 10.7.5?

Or did Apple 'upgrade' this into obsolescence? Iirc, 10.7.5 is the latest OS that will run on this box. She's 85 years old, lives four states away and this box serves her limited needs really quite well. Upgrading to new hardware is not realistic.

 

[CoastalOR]

It looks like you have tried most of the usual things.
Here are some links I checked and there may be something you haven't tried:
https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT208176
https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT203585
https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204408

The only thing that I noticed is that you did not mention resetting NVRAM.

Full Disclosure: I have not used Lion in a long time & I no longer have a Mac capable of running it. When I did have a 2011 MBP that shipped with Lion, I never tried/used FaceTime.

 

[wkearney99]

I hadn't mentioned, yes, OA-PR was reset.

The added challenge is apple has taken all the old Lion pages offline. AND didn't allow the web archive to cache them. So whatever answers, tips, leads or fixes that might have been there are gone.

The puzzling thing is this used to work. The wireless keyboard that was attached had it's battery go bad (Logitech Dinovo, nice keyboard. Battery is cheap to replace, but tedious to gain access to do it). The Mac sat powered-up but unused for several months and now it seems Facetime doesn't want to work anymore.

Curiously I'm seeing an error trying to load a web page in Safari. Surfing to www.nytimes.com reports an error. When I use Firefox it reports ssl_error_no_cypher_overlap. Chrome, however, brings it up just fine.

I'm wondering if there's not some other network transport voodoo going wrong.
[doublepost=1541879152][/doublepost]Let me ask this, what's the oldest model mac mini hardware that could be considered?

I get it, some gear gets "too old" to be reliably supported. If I have to punt on this I'd need to find a replacement and do not want to buy new. Nor do I feel like getting burned, again, with forced obsolescence.

 

[maverick28]

I've checked DNS (on the Mac and the local router), automatic time settings, keychain (repair reports no errors) and /etc/hosts. The Mac software update says its up to date.

I've rebooted the Mac and the network router. Several times.

Facetime doesn't want to login on Grandma's Mac Mini running 10.7.5. It's a 'Mid 2007' MacMini2,1 model. Facetime shows version 1.1.1

It sees the camera just fine, I see a live local picture.

But if I try to login using her known-good username and password it errors out with:

"The server encountered an error processing registration. Please try again later."

I've tried using a different username/password and that also returns the same error.

I've successfully used that username/password to log into iTunes. I also successfully logged into that account using an iPad I have here. So it doesn't seem to be a problem with the account/password.

Is there something else that's preventing Facetime from working on 10.7.5?

Or did Apple 'upgrade' this into obsolescence? Iirc, 10.7.5 is the latest OS that will run on this box. She's 85 years old, lives four states away and this box serves her limited needs really quite well. Upgrading to new hardware is not realistic.

Hi, you were really one of a very tiny amount of threads that were put out by people about Lion as late as in 2018. I'm glad I came across because I'm also running Lion as 1 of my OSes as indicated in my signature and am unable to connect to Facetime too since about the time of your original post. Here's my story.

I had the issue surfaced twice during the timeframe between late 2017 and late 2018. I ran only Lion back then. The 1st time the connection failure occurred due to the fact that I set 2-step verification (2-factor isn't available for pre-ElCapitan era OSes). I set it up while not using Facetime at all and later when I had the need, I couldn't log in. I removed 2-step and thus regained the access. However, in the course of 2018, I had to re-enable 2-step again and have been unable to connect from the fall onwards with the same error message that you have reported. That was the 2nd and final time.

–– To add more confusion, I once stumbled onto a very generic article claiming that in order to connect to FT and iMessage one must generate app-specific passwords which is expected to be a requirement for 3rd party apps but not Apple's own apps. I remember after doing that I was able to sign in to FaceTime in Lion. No support document mentions this idiosyncrasy. ––

I then kept to the beaten track, however removing 2-step didn't cure the issue this time. I tried every solution to no avail. Trying to log in with these app-specific passwords brought nothing either. Honestly, the recommendation to zap PRAM and SMC feels most inadequate or outright dumb: this is a server-side issue which tinkering with your hardware and software locally has no effect on. Apple documentation is very vague about Mac support, it's more detailed regarding iOS: it reads that in order to make audio-calls you have to run 10.9.2 or newer. I urge you to feel the subtle nuisance of that wording: "audio-calls" is not the same as "video-calls" and the latter used to be the bare bones of an early Facetime. No document mentions the minimal sysreqs for video-calls. Every Apple retail person was telling me that you simply need a Mac with Snow Leopard or later. Their Twitter support stated that you need 10.9.2 and later, however, I'm ready to stake my life on the assumption that they're just a bunch of lazybones that didn't put efforts in any more exhausting research than having read that same document. I have filed feedback about this support article requiring to update it, still no progress. Facetime does work in Mavericks, though, and there I was able to sign in not with my AppleID password but with the same app-specific passwords I mentioned earlier. Theoretically, it has to work in Lion with the latest security updates (which were applied), but it doesn't.


P.S. Oh, and BTW, they still sell Facetime for Snow Leopard on AppStore (last updated in April 2014).

P.P.S If you don't mind buying a cheap used Mac capable of running Mavericks or any later macOS then your grandma will be doing just fine.

 

[kyjaotkb]

Hi guys, I snagged a battered old Macbook on freecycle a few months ago. Now that I have time on my hands, I was wondering if this issue had been solved? My Macbook now works well and is ully updated and dual boting to Lion and Snow Leo. It is a late 2006 Core2 Duo and only goes up to Lion. I haven't been successful in connecting to Facetime via either Snow Leo or Lion. Apple's website isn't very helpful either. https://support.apple.com/en-gb/HT208176. It says Lion is the minimum. Thanks!

 

[maverick28]

Hi guys, I snagged a battered old Macbook on freecycle a few months ago. Now that I have time on my hands, I was wondering if this issue had been solved? My Macbook now works well and is ully updated and dual boting to Lion and Snow Leo. It is a late 2006 Core2 Duo and only goes up to Lion. I haven't been successful in connecting to Facetime via either Snow Leo or Lion. Apple's website isn't very helpful either. https://support.apple.com/en-gb/HT208176. It says Lion is the minimum. Thanks!

Hi, kyjaotkb

Regarding Apple support documents I noticed a very annoying trend not to update them properly and thus, they often don't reflect the current status. This is outrageous and irresponsible. Back to FaceTime, even though that doc states the minimum is Lion, in fact it's Mavericks (more specifically, 10.9.2) but to find the actual information you have to be illuminated by the Higher Wisdom Ghosts to look into an article about iCloud minimum requirements at https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204230.
Here it explicitly says, you need either Mavericks or iOS 6 but even considering the latter you can't use iOS 6 on all compatible iDevices except those that can't update to iOS 7. There was even a class-action lawsuite filed in 2014 against Apple for rendering FT non-operational for those who wanted to stay on iOS 6. So, in practice you have to use iOS7+ but the interesting thing is that my mother wasn't able to make calls from her iPhone 4S with iOS 7.1.2 until she bought XS last year. Apple's requirements articles are worse than a mess, it's a brazen mockery.

If you're keen on using Lion I'd suggest installing Viber which is still available for 10.7.5 and works. It has all the functionality of FaceTime (audio-, video-calls, group chats, conference calls, files attachments) and incomparably larger user base that lets you make free calls to anyone from any device to any device. On top of that, you don't have to create an account and depend on it, your phone number is enough. Here's a link to the downloads page where the versions for macOS from 10.7 onwards are available (scroll to the bottom) https://www.viber.com/en/download/

 

[kyjaotkb]

Thank you so much, this is greatly appreciated!

 

[Sunday723]

I hadn't mentioned, yes, OA-PR was reset.

The added challenge is apple has taken all the old Lion pages offline. AND didn't allow the web archive to cache them. So whatever answers, tips, leads or fixes that might have been there are gone.

The puzzling thing is this used to work. The wireless keyboard that was attached had it's battery go bad (Logitech Dinovo, nice keyboard. Battery is cheap to replace, but tedious to gain access to do it). The Mac sat powered-up but unused for several months and now it seems Facetime doesn't want to work anymore.

Curiously I'm seeing an error trying to load a web page in Safari. Surfing to www.nytimes.com reports an error. When I use Firefox it reports ssl_error_no_cypher_overlap. Chrome, however, brings it up just fine.

I'm wondering if there's not some other network transport voodoo going wrong.
[doublepost=1541879152][/doublepost]Let me ask this, what's the oldest model mac mini hardware that could be considered?

I get it, some gear gets "too old" to be reliably supported. If I have to punt on this I'd need to find a replacement and do not want to buy new. Nor do I feel like getting burned, again, with forced obsolescence.

Hi! I was wondering if you were able to fix the Facetime issue I was trying to set up an old Macbook as a security camera and I got the same problem with Facetime... thanks!

 

[maverick28]

Hi! I was wondering if you were able to fix the Facetime issue I was trying to set up an old Macbook as a security camera and I got the same problem with Facetime... thanks!

Please, see the post #6. There's a link to the FaceTime requirements as laid by Apple reflecting the current state. FaceTime requirements are now part of iCloud system requirements.