MacZapped and MacFixed

Jeez. What ELSE do they NOT tell us about the Wonder That Is iCloud? So far we know…

• You must upgrade your operating system to access it.
• The new OS has some significant advantages, but it drops some useful tools, such as the option to “bounce” mail from unwelcome pests.
• “Store Your Documents in the Cloud”…uh, no. Not if your document ends in  .doc, .docx, .xls, .xlsx, .ppt, or .pptx. Not a chance.
• And (here’s a beaut’), your universal password to access your Mac Mail (which now resides in iCloud), your iCloud whatever, and the admin functions of your computer will, without warning, be disabled. You will no longer be able to get into your mail account. Or anything else Applish.
• When, after much frantic searching around various Apple forums, you discover that hundreds of others have encountered this and found (often after several days) that the trick was to change your password, when, I say, you go to the Apple site to change your password, you are told that an e-mail confirmation will be sent to your Mac Mail account before you can do the change.

Uh huh. To get into your mail, you have to change your password; to change your password, you have to get into your mail.

Isn’t that cute?

And how hard would it have been for the “Genius” and the pricey “One-on-One” guy to have simply told me that I had to invent a new password before I walked out of the store with all their expensive new gear? This password zap takes a while…first I found I couldn’t access my e-mail from the campus computer, where I have to get to it from a Web application. Didn’t have time to fool with it, so let it go. Now at 5:29 in the morning, lo! I can’t get into my e-mail through the proprietary software, either! Nor can I get into any other Mac app. Good morning to you, too!

Nice timing. The online course started yesterday, and the two e-mail addresses to which students are sending messages as we speak were set to forward to my Mac account. Flew around disabling the forward functions; then posted an announcement telling students to resend anything they might have sent between 11 p.m. and 5:30 a.m. (you’d be surprised: that’s when a lot of them are doing their online courses); tried to make a One-on-One appointment but was rejected because my password was invalid; soared into a high rage.

Finally calmed down enough to do some more exploring, and then came across a portal that allowed me to enter just my username and, without providing a password (!!!!), let me change my password.

That’s reassuring, hm?

Well, security aside (WHO would ever hack Apple, after all?), I was mighty relieved to find it. At least it reactivated access to MacMail.

We’re told access is no longer very reliable. Quite a few people on the Apple forums reported that the system goes up and down. Apparently if Apple’s servers are getting a lot of traffic, you can get the “password doesn’t work” message. I don’t know if this is true, but just in case, I’m not re-forwarding my Google accounts.

So now instead of spending time dorking with just one e-mail account, I get to access and answer mail in three of them. Oh…make that four; I forgot to unforward the Copyeditor’s Desk account. No, wait, make that five! I forgot to unforward the Bluehost account.

grump!

😡