Cycling UK Forum

Summat strange going on with our iMac.

It sits in the corner of the living room and it's used as the main computer as well as a DVD player and music player. We watch movies from YouTube too, and many movies we have recorded. We listen to on-line radio much of the time on it.
The sound output is via the USB into a Bluetooth transmitter to wireless speakers, plus a take-off to some wired speakers.

All was perfect until Thursday evening.

Live on-line radio works. DVD's work. Recorded Movies work. Youtube works.
What doesn't work is BBC iPlayer radio. There is no sound at all.

Put BBC iPlayer radio on either of our MacBooks, and it's fine. It's also fine on the iPad.
It just isn't on the iMac.

It was ok. We listened to Hancock's Half Hour, then later wanted to listen to the Archers repeat, but it would't work. Maybe only 20mins later and hasn't worked since.

Any ideas?
Wot's goin' on?

Have you made the mistake and upgraded to the latest OS release ? If you have you have only got yourself to blame as Apple seem to introduce more and more bugs into each software update (and remove functionality). They are not the company they once were and quality/reliability has taken a big hit.

Ian

A quick Google fails to bring up a single hit where the Sierra OS has been a problem with iPlayer, so that is a very interesting assumption

I would be interested in seeing the evidence behind the claim

Good question.
No, we haven't done nowt.

The two MacBookAirs and the iMac are at 10.10.5 Yosemite.
Even that was a step too far, because all of a sudden, we couldn't open any of our AppleWorks files or any of our Pages documents.
I re-loaded the previous iWork that we had bought some years ago.

As I said, we listened to Hancock, and then twenty minutes later wanted to listen to the Archers. Silence.
We'd done nothing. Just came in from the kitchen listening to Hancock, then sat down in the living room to listen to the Archers. We have the wireless speakers in the kitchen, and the main wired ones in the living room. Silence on both systems.
Nowt.

MacBooks continue to work, and so does the iPad. Meanwhile, I've plugged up the iPad to the sound system so we can listen to the Archers Omnibus later, then the Sunday evening episode live.

Remember, there's nothing wrong with the sound. We can still play music, listen to live radio, and watch and listen to YouTube. Dunno about iPlayer TV as we don't have a TV licence. I suppose I could try ITV catchup.

PS:
Just tried ITV dot com and found Friday's episode of Coronation Street. Gosh, they still have the same intro music!
Any road up, you can see that it worked fine.

Tried again with BBC iPlayer radio, and nothing. Dilch. Nowt.

Remember, it still works on the MacBooks and the iPad.

.

gaz wrote:Have you tried turning it off and on again?

What, the BBC? Might be a good idea

gaz wrote:Have you tried turning it off and on again? :wink:

Apple don't get you to do that. With Apple you do a complete backup, do a factory reset, wait several hours, do a complete restore and then put up with exactly the same problems you had before, except now you are a few days older with nothing to show for that "lost time".

At least with Windows a switch off and on again only takes a few minutes.

These days Apple are living of a past reputation for reliability, something their quality has allowed to slip away.

Ian

I've tried a restart. Also repaired disk permissions. Tried another restart.

I just thought I'd better check other things.

........................... minutes later .........................

I deleted ALL history and ALL website data off Safari.

It now works!
Must've been a stuck cookie or summat.

I have to say, although I sorted it myself, just going through this with you lot and putting the symptoms down in black and white, allowed me to see things properly.

Thanks Mick. This is one of those times when 'sharing your pain' can reduce the future pain of others.

Psamathe wrote:

gaz wrote:Have you tried turning it off and on again?

Apple don't get you to do that. With Apple you do a complete backup, do a factory reset, wait several hours, do a complete restore and then put up with exactly the same problems you had before, except now you are a few days older with nothing to show for that "lost time".

At least with Windows a switch off and on again only takes a few minutes.

These days Apple are living of a past reputation for reliability, something their quality has allowed to slip away.

Wut? I don't know if that was tongue in cheek or not but it's quite possible to shut down a mac and restart it without all that.

Glad it's been resolved with a simple cookie clear.

Feek wrote:

Psamathe wrote:

gaz wrote:Have you tried turning it off and on again? :wink:

Apple don't get you to do that. With Apple you do a complete backup, do a factory reset, wait several hours, do a complete restore and then put up with exactly the same problems you had before, except now you are a few days older with nothing to show for that "lost time".

At least with Windows a switch off and on again only takes a few minutes.

These days Apple are living of a past reputation for reliability, something their quality has allowed to slip away.

Wut? I don't know if that was tongue in cheek or not but it's quite possible to shut down a mac and restart it without all that.

Glad it's been resolved with a simple cookie clear.

Not when you are dealing with Apple support trying to find out why your device is no longer working adequately after one of their bug introduction releases (they call then "the biggest software update ever" - but they should be giving new features NOT new bugs).

I spent from 17:00 yesterday until 23:00 (with an hour off for supper) dealing with Apple support whilst they did remote diagnostics, tried to collect info, etc. on a device that worked perfectly until new OS release and immediately stopped working adequately. But we discovered nothing and I had to spend hours trying reloading the device. And they refuse to allow a OS downgrade (because the new release is "so good" - even if it does not work adequately!)

Ian

With respect Ian, that's not quite the same as what you said.

But that aside, out of interest, what mac do you have and what's the problem?

And also, you can revert back to a previous version of OS X but it would involve a rebuild from scratch. If you don't have access to any of the previous two OS installers and want one of them, let me know. I've kept the original installers for 10.10 (Yosemite) and 10.11 (El Capitan) along with the most recent combo updates so could host them somewhere for you to download and push to a USB stick to reinstall.

Feek wrote:With respect Ian, that's not quite the same as what you said.

But that aside, out of interest, what mac do you have and what's the problem?

And also, you can revert back to a previous version of OS X but it would involve a rebuild from scratch. If you don't have access to any of the previous two OS installers and want one of them, let me know. I've kept the original installers for 10.10 (Yosemite) and 10.11 (El Capitan) along with the most recent combo updates so could host them somewhere for you to download and push to a USB stick to reinstall.

The problems the other day were with iOS. With macOS getting Apple to resolve bugs is a real nightmare as they always blame other stuff you have installed. So, e.g. macOS has introduced some bad bugs in their Bluetooth drivers (mainly when resuming from sleep) - but getting Apple to accept those issues when you have any software "they don't like" installed (even though totally unrelated) is just not worth the effort. I've already learnt that Apple take a lot of convincing about even over 100% reproducible bugs e.g. I found a bug in their WiFi drivers where if you had a Wi-Fi password on WPA2 longer than a certain length the drivers would crash and fail to connect 1st attempt but would be fine 2nd attempt; shorten the password and it works fine; lengthen it and problem comes back and I learnt over that how much effort is involved in convincing Apple their 110% perfect software has any bugs in it.

I've never bothered to check but I am a registered Apple Developer so should be able to download old Mac OS versions for testing.

Ian