News
News Categories

PSA: Hold off on that El Capitan update if you use FaceTime and iMessage

By Marcus Wong - on 24 Mar 2016, 1:48pm

PSA: Hold off on that El Capitan update if you use FaceTime and iMessage

 

If you’re a heavy FaceTime or iMessage user you might want to hold off on that OS X update for now, as Mac owners have started reporting that an authentication issue is preventing them from using either service. 

The issue presents itself after updating to the latest version of OS X, with most users receiving pop-up error messages saying "Could not sign in to iMessage" and "An error occurred during authentication." Another group of users don’t even get error messages. iMessage seems to be sending user ID information to Apple’s servers, but that hangs without timing out.

AppleInsider suspects that the bug might trace back to Apple’s iMessage and FaceTime control services, as iCloud logins seem to be unaffected. Reports of multiple errors within the same physical area suggest a faulty node that might be affecting a geographical subset of users, but the likely case is a server side issue as at least one user has reported that the problems persist even after downgrading to OS X 10.10 Yosemite. 

That doesn’t explain why not all users are affected though, as logging in to iCloud on other devices (iPads,iPhones) seems to be largely unaffected. Users have tried toggling two-factor authentication on and off, changing passwords, reinstalling the update and even performing fresh installs, but no reliable fix has yet been reported. 

Apparently Apple Support is aware of the issue and is already working on a fix, but no official statement has been released. So for now, if iMessage and FaceTime is crucial to your daily activities we’d recommend laying off the update.

Sources: Apple Insider, 9to5Mac

 

Join HWZ's Telegram channel here and catch all the latest tech news!
Our articles may contain affiliate links. If you buy through these links, we may earn a small commission.