MP All Models iCloud works on two boot drives but not Yosemite drive

[croft-uk]

Apologies if this has come up before, but it's got me completely confused. At the moment I have three boot drives in my mid 2010: macOS 10.15.4, 10.13.6 and 10.10. The only reason I've got the 10.10 drive loaded is it's exhibiting some very strange behaviour in a 2008 Mac Pro, and I'm trying to eliminate every variable.

Specifically, when I try to log onto my iCloud account under 10.10, it produces the alert that either my ID or password are invalid – even if I cut & paste them from the same doc that works perfectly on every other Apple device and OS I have. But then I get an alert on my phone to say someone is trying to access my account, so I select Allow. I then get a validation code on my phone that I can't use because there is no field on the Mac Pro where I can enter it.

This is actually the second Yosemite boot drive I've had in the 2008 Mac Pro. The previous one does something similar, but even more bizarrely, it sends multiple validation codes to my iPhone, my wife's iPhone and our landline! How can that possibly be?

Obviously, I know how to set up an iCloud account on a device under normal circumstances, but this was has got me beat. Any ideas, please?

 

[chrfr]

But then I get an alert on my phone to say someone is trying to access my account, so I select Allow. I then get a validation code on my phone that I can't use because there is no field on the Mac Pro where I can enter it.

You have to enter that 6 digit code in the password field, after typing your password.
So, if the code is 123456, and your password is password, you'd enter password123456 in the password field.

 

[mattspace]

Apologies if this has come up before, but it's got me completely confused. At the moment I have three boot drives in my mid 2010: macOS 10.15.4, 10.13.6 and 10.10. The only reason I've got the 10.10 drive loaded is it's exhibiting some very strange behaviour in a 2008 Mac Pro, and I'm trying to eliminate every variable.

Specifically, when I try to log onto my iCloud account under 10.10, it produces the alert that either my ID or password are invalid – even if I cut & paste them from the same doc that works perfectly on every other Apple device and OS I have. But then I get an alert on my phone to say someone is trying to access my account, so I select Allow. I then get a validation code on my phone that I can't use because there is no field on the Mac Pro where I can enter it.

This is actually the second Yosemite boot drive I've had in the 2008 Mac Pro. The previous one does something similar, but even more bizarrely, it sends multiple validation codes to my iPhone, my wife's iPhone and our landline! How can that possibly be?

Obviously, I know how to set up an iCloud account on a device under normal circumstances, but this was has got me beat. Any ideas, please?

Test this - see if you can load www.icloud.com in Safari on Yosemite. If you get an error message that it can't connect, you're probably suffering an issue that began to manifest in High Sierra and earlier a few days ago - Apple has updated something in the security certificate for setup.icloud.com which breaks connection for older macOS versions.

I've documented it (and the link to the solution which fixes it, at least until May when the certificate expires, hopefully to be replaced, in less than 10 seconds) here:

Restoring iCloud Sync / Account Access / Safari access to iCloud.com

Hi Folks, If anyone is currently experiencing issues connecting to iCloud.com in Safari 13, or can't get to their iCloud account details in the iCloud Prefpane, or is finding apps haven't been syncing in the last ~24 hours, Apple appears to have made a change to their server infrastructure tha...

forums.macrumors.com

I haven't tried it in my Yosemite system, but you might have missed it happening in 10.13, as it's a silent failure, unless you're actually doing a lot of iCloud-heavy stuff. Again, you can test it with safari, or with the iCloud Prefpane - if it's logged in, it will fail when you try to get the account details.

 

[MarkC426]

Does this document help....

System requirements for iCloud - Apple Support (JO)

These are the recommended system requirements and minimum system requirements for iCloud.

support.apple.com

 

[croft-uk]

Does this document help....

System requirements for iCloud - Apple Support (JO)

These are the recommended system requirements and minimum system requirements for iCloud.

support.apple.com

It would do, and I thank you for reminding me of this document's existence. However, Apple's claim that the recommended system requirement for iCloud on a Mac is "macOS Monterey 12" smacks of planned obsolescence. I don't even own a machine that runs that OS, but I've never had a problem until I came to fix a friend's machine that can't run anything later than 10.10.

 

[croft-uk]

You have to enter that 6 digit code in the password field, after typing your password.
So, if the code is 123456, and your password is password, you'd enter password123456 in the password field.

I've documented it (and the link to the solution which fixes it, at least until May when the certificate expires, hopefully to be replaced, in less than 10 seconds) here:

These two answers, used in combination, seem to have solved the problem for now. Thank you both.

 

[mattspace]

Does this document help....

System requirements for iCloud - Apple Support (JO)

These are the recommended system requirements and minimum system requirements for iCloud.

support.apple.com

Yup, everything effected by the current problems is shown as supported under the "minimum" requirements.