Facetime stopped working on my laptop sometime this year. I don’t know anyone far away with whom I actually want to chat, so I only use it when Junglemonkey goes out of town. She’s out for a few days and today the Badb came back from camp and of course we all want to see one another. Junglemonkey called my cell phone and complained that we weren’t answering Facetime and we were pigs. It turns out that my iPod’s application was working okay (but we didn’t hear it beeping, in the other room, in my purse, etc.) but my laptop’s app wasn’t. It never rang. I should know, I was sitting at my computer while it was failing to connect.
Eventually, I got it sorted out. It turns out that this is a thing – some unspecified change gets made to an obscure security file and suddenly Facetime and other messaging clients Just Don’t Work. Thanks, Apple.
My computer is new. The operating system is new. However, I’ve had a Mac laptop since 2003 and whenever I upgrade I migrate my user. Some of the files on my hard drive still date back to those early days. In this case, the problem file dated from 2006. Holy cow, 2006! That was two computers ago!