I have 3 Mac questions / problems / issues that have come up this week and I haven’t had luck with quick searches.
You may have your own questions, too! Or maybe you have more time than I do at the moment?
One.
I got a notice on Sunday that a new iPhone had been added to my account. (Actually, I got that notice on all my laptops, iPads, etc.) Except I didn’t add a phone and I didn’t turn on either of my old phones. Any thoughts?
Two.
Yesterday, less than a day later, my MacBook Air suddenly started chiming on the quarter hours. I did not install anything or change anything.
*solved by Another Scott! “Thanks, I think I found the culprit. It’s an e-card with a Christmas theme containing a solitaire game I like to play. I don’t know why the chimes suddenly started after months of using the app, but quitting it and restarting seems to have fixed it. Thanks for your help!”
Three.
I think I must make some unconscious movement on my laptop with my left hand – that causes a list of emojis to come up. But I have tried all sorts of shit, FN, cal, option and command combinations, and I can’t bring it up on demand. A quick google makes it sound like it’s something that just happens, for no reason? But that makes no sense, and it’s always when I’m moving my thumb or something, probably soothing myself while reading all the bad news. :-) A colleague that I was on a bunch of University committees with one day told me that he knew I wasn’t impressed by the candidate we were interviewing because I was rubbing my hand on the soft scarf I was wearing – he said it was the same self-soothing that his baby did with his blankie when he got tired.
*solved by Earl! “oh, and cmd-ctrl-space makes the emoji picker come up if your cursor is in any type of textbox.”
Open thread.
Comrade Scott – NO KINGS – Denver, CO
lowtechcyclist
Since it’s an open thread, I’ll just mention that this is the 53rd anniversary of the Watergate break-in.
Jackie
Did you contact your phone service? That would have been my immediate reaction.
Baud
I’ve been back on Blue Sky after a hiatus of several months, and it seems somewhat blander and I see fewer jackal posts. I’m wondering if I ended up on a block list or if it’s just the evolution of the site.
Earl
Apple is, broadly speaking, incompetent at software. icloud is jank garbage (eg for a while, I had 2 live passwords for the same account). It’s not out of the realm of possibility they were just apple-ing. That said, it could also be the start of an account takeover attack.
I’d go here: account.apple.com/account/manage/section/devices
and make absolutely sure you recognize everything there.
WaterGirl
@lowtechcyclist: Wow, that’s amazing. How is that possible???
MattF
The first page of the settings app on any of your iDevices (Mac, iPhone, iPad) has a list of all the specific devices logged in to your Apple account. Check to see if there’s anything unfamiliar there.
@Earl It’s fair to say that this stuff has gotten too complicated, but it does generally work.
Earl
oh, and cmd-ctrl-space makes the emoji picker come up if your cursor is in any type of textbox.
WaterGirl
@Jackie: What do you mean by “your phone service”? I have an iPhone, but it was not recently added.
Do you mean Did I call Apple?
WaterGirl
@Earl: I did look at my devices yesterday, and I saw my current iPhone and my two old iPhones, but no other iPhones.
WaterGirl
@Earl: That’s it! I was trying various combinations, just not when I was in a text box. Thank you!
Scout211
To your Apple ID account or your data plan with your phone service? Check both of your accounts to see what has been added. You Apple account will list all the devices on your account and your phone service will list all your phones that are on your account.
My guess is that your new Mac was just registering a phone (your phone) and hadn’t yet registered your iPhone as connected to your account I get this message occasionally, especially after an Mac OS update or an iOS update. If I’m unsure, I check my Apple account to make sure only my devices are listed.
ColoradoGuy
I would second what Earl said above. Check your Apple account immediately to check for suspicious devices. Kill off (unregister) anything you don’t recognize, and tighten up login procedures on your Apple account. Your password may be compromised, and if you don’t have a password manager, get one and create a bunch of new passwords for all your accounts.
Jackie
@WaterGirl: Yes. Call Apple, or AT&T or Verizon… wherever you have your iPhone account.
Scout211
If someone hasn’t already posted:
Scout211
Verizon, AT&T, etc. If you have an online account for your phone plan, it will list all the devices you pay for. If you don’t have an online account, call customer service.
jackmac
Just speculation here (from a longtime Mac user). Did you do an operating system update recently and maybe something happened with that? My Mac just told me there is a macOS Sequoia 15.5 update available but I haven’t performed the update yet.
Again, speculation, but the the iPhone issue may have something to do with your phone registered with your iCloud account AND/OR your phone looking for a friendly Mac in your name. Please note that there is also a iPhone OS operating system demanding attention (at least on my iPhone).
As for the clock chiming every quarter hour, that has me stumped because there is no audio control under Clock System Settings for that. Are you using Widgets? There’s a clock Widget that might be the culprit.
Sorry, I don’t have specific answers but maybe these might point you in the right direction.
WaterGirl
@Scout211: I don’t have an Options.
WaterGirl
@jackmac: I checked all that yesterday, and checked again just now.
I do not have a clock widget. It’s bizarre.
Scout211
@WaterGirl: I just checked my desktop Mac. It does have a different configuration than what I posted. I couldn’t find “clock” anywhere at first.
I did a spotlight search for “clock” and the app came up. The top toolbar on the application listed “alarms.” You should be able to delete the alarm there. I hope.
Also, too, the clock is listed in Applications.
Chetan Murthy
Water girl, I will just chime in with everybody else who says this is a serious matter that you should not ignore. I’m not a Mac user, I can’t go further than that, but if I got such an alert on my Google account, and I hadn’t used a new device (or a reinstalled device) to access my Google account I would immediately think it was an attack.
WaterGirl
@Scout211: I found the clock app using spotlight when you first mentioned it. No alarm is set in the clock app. Crazy.
WaterGirl
@Chetan Murthy: Yeah, the iPhone being added followed by the chiming is suspicious.
I appreciate all the suggestions..
I was hoping not to have to call Apple because I’m super busy, but I guess I will have to call them tomorrow.
wmd
I second the advice to check what devices are associated with your Apple ID.
And the iCloud is janky. When I was working for Apple Software Engineering I filed bugs weekly (engineers are issued Apple paid phones to test iOS prior to release to customers) – probably 1/5 were iCloud related.
I disagree on Apple not being able to do software though. The testing and release process is on par with what I saw at Sun, and much better than what passed for software engineering at Intel.
Chetan Murthy
WG, how did you receive the notification? Was it by email? IM? Do you have the notification message? If you do, can you look to see if there is some numeric identifier for the device that was added? Then you could compare it to the devices in that list for your account.
Also, I assume it was added to your Apple account?
Last, if it was sent via email, may be worth checking that the message is actually genuine. Some people here know how to do such checks, or at least, his to detect obvious forgeries. I’d be happy to give it a try.
Another Scott
Maybe this will help the phantom quarter hour chime?
Maybe?
Good luck!
Best wishes,
Scott.
WaterGirl
@Chetan Murthy: All my devices got the system message about a new iPhone being added.
not an email.
WaterGirl
@Another Scott: Thank you!
Your comment prompted me to look at my open apps in the dock.
Somehow the Jacquie Lawson 2021 Advent calendar was open! I just closed the app, and I wlil bet good money that that was the chiming culprit!
WaterGirl
Only the master of the new iPhone device added remains!
I knew I could count on you guys. :-)
Scout211
@WaterGirl:
Chetan Murthy
@WaterGirl: I’m hyper paranoid. So please take that into account in what I write below.
First, on that account page, does it list any sort of time when each device was added? Perhaps in some”advanced” page? That might tell you something
If I could not deduce how this happened, I might delete my iPhones (all of them) from my account and then re- add them. I might even go to the length of doing factory reset on each phone. Bc I’m paranoid.
Why might I do reset? You said that you got those system messages on all your devices. Let’s assume that your laptops are not compromised: then something got into your Apple account to get that notification broadcast. I’d I could not figure out what, them is assume that all devices are compromised, bc that’s a safe assumption to make
Sorry if this sounds hyper paranoid. I’m not a security professional, so I try to use rules that are foolproof. Reinstall-when-unsure is such a rule.
WaterGirl
@Scout211: Scott just figured that one out a minute ago, it’s the Jacquie Lawson 2021 Christmas calendar that had somehow opened – Miss Willow does like to walk across the keyboard while it’s in my lap.
WaterGirl
@Chetan Murthy: When I add a new phone or an iPad, I get notified on all my Apple devices. So that part is normal, assuming that something new was added. But the only phones in my device list are my current phone and my two older phones.
Grover Gardner
I had the iPhone thing happen a couple of months ago. The suggestions made about checking devices and your carrier account are good. It turned out to be a glitch with iCloud, I think. You can also google the issue and see some experiences and solutions.
Chetan Murthy
@Chetan Murthy: one thing also: I don’t know how factory reset works on iPhones, only on Android. There is always the possibility that a factory reset might brick and old iPhone. I know that on Android if I reset, the apps that are reinstalled can be newer versions than what was there before; so it might be worth keeping that in mind if you end up doing a factory reset. Certainly I would only do it one phone at a time.
Chetan Murthy
@WaterGirl: at a minimum, change the password on your Apple account. And I mean, like, right away.
Ruckus
I’ve been an Apple fanboy for decades.
First Apple product was an Apple computer bought in the 1970s. An Apple II. No not a IIe, before that. I’ve had numerous Apple computers and phones since and have been more than reasonably happy with all of them. Actually did some extensive tooling work for them in the way back. I’ve had and used other computers over the decades for work, but for my personal stuff they’ve been it. And I’ve never been dissatisfied about any of them. My phones over the last 30 years have all been Apple.
RSA
I have no advice, but I will offer a complaint:
Back in the day, when you acquired a complex computer system, it might have come with a shelf full of manuals explaining how to use the software. That was fine, but it was also recognized that it was a pain in the ass to have to look everything up. Interface designers started to think about concepts like affordances and discoverability, so that you could more easily find the functions you needed on your own.
But it’s gone too far. Every time a new operating system interface is released, end user tech magazines publish articles with titles like “Ten new secret tricks to improve your productivity.” Ugh. I can see how the practice evolved, historically, but people should be able to rely on software companies to explain their shit rather than having to ask third parties.
WaterGirl
@RSA: I hear you.
MattF
@RSA: I recall, back in the day, that the original IBM PC came with a technical manual that included the assembly language listing of the system BIOS. Which was quite edifying.
Marc
I’ve worked on user interfaces for a couple of operating systems and a number of CAD tools. The main problem is that you can never create the perfect interface, as growth in new functionality never quite follows whatever path was intended at first. One makes some choices, sometimes out of expediency, and 2 releases later you realize there was a better way, but it’s too late to change it now. In the end, you end up with hundreds of possible user interaction choices, and often few have the big picture of how they all work. Then, updated documentation tends to highlight new capabilities and pays less attention to how they interact with the older ones, and you end up needing books and articles to explain which 10 of the now 500 commands are actually useful. :)
Mr. Bemused Senior
Yes indeed. It included circuit schematics too
Marc
@Mr. Bemused Senior: Pretty much every computer (desktops to mainframes) I used prior to the IBM PC came with binders full of schematics and the operating system source code (mostly in assembly language), in addition to the shelf full of manuals, as those manuals were sometimes rather aspirational. Some problems could only be solved by looking at the OS or schematics and see how it ended up being done. Things were a lot simpler back then
IBM, Apple, and Microsoft fixed that, you are now stuck with what you get, good luck figuring some things out.
knally
Have I just commented to see if that cmd-ctrl-space works?
😀
Yes, yes I have.