My MBA keeps speaking to me!

[grgarside]

Hello.

My  MacBook Air keeps saying to me "Your mac is on reserve battery power" (or something like that) regardless of whether it's plugged in or on battery power with loads left.

Very confused. There doesn't seem to be any pattern (ie every 2 hours) - it just does it when it feels like.

Have tried a reboot - no change.
The only way I've found of stopping it is muting the whole mac - which isn't a complete solution, especially if I want to listen to music or watch a video.
Any help would be really appreciated, because it's driving me MAD!

Thanks.

 

[stoconnell]

Hello.

My  MacBook Air keeps saying to me "Your mac is on reserve battery power" (or something like that) regardless of whether it's plugged in or on battery power with loads left.

Very confused. There doesn't seem to be any pattern (ie every 2 hours) - it just does it when it feels like.

Have tried a reboot - no change.
The only way I've found of stopping it is muting the whole mac - which isn't a complete solution, especially if I want to listen to music or watch a video.
Any help would be really appreciated, because it's driving me MAD!

Thanks.

Sounds almost like you have the "Voice Over" functionality in Universal Acces enabled.

 

[grgarside]

Sounds almost like you have the "Voice Over" functionality in Universal Acces enabled.

Had a look in System Preferences and Voice Over is not on.

 

[stoconnell]

Hmmm....

Under the Speech option in System Preferences, it looks like you can enable audible alerts for certain events in the "Text to Speech" tab. Perhaps this has been abled for power management.

 

[grgarside]

Still not getting anywhere.

Hmmm....

Under the Speech option in System Preferences, it looks like you can enable audible alerts for certain events in the "Text to Speech" tab. Perhaps this has been abled for power management.

All of the checkboxes are unchecked.

Thanks for your help by the way!

 

[MartiNZ]

Time to try to shut it down and see if it says "I wouldn't do that if I were you, Dave".

More seriously, the only other thing I can think of is maybe you have it set under Date & Time to announce the time on the hour and something got corrupted with the speech thingie.

 

[stoconnell]

This thread reminded me of the say command. Too much fun .. or maybe I am just in a post bracket announcement euphoria.

Back on topic.. have you installed any add in utilities around power management which might have a preference for giving an audio alert. I agree this would drive me nutso (I disable all sound effects on my machines).

Good luck with hunting down the root cause.

 

[grgarside]

Time to try to shut it down and see if it says "I wouldn't do that if I were you, Dave".

More seriously, the only other thing I can think of is maybe you have it set under Date & Time to announce the time on the hour and something got corrupted with the speech thingie.

Had another look in System Preferences, but no, nothing is checked.
I don't think I've ever had it checked.

This thread reminded me of the say command. Too much fun .. or maybe I am just in a post bracket announcement euphoria.

Back on topic.. have you installed any add in utilities around power management which might have a preference for giving an audio alert. I agree this would drive me nutso (I disable all sound effects on my machines).

Good luck with hunting down the root cause.

I don't think I have any power management utilities. (Well, I can't find any in Applications or Utilities.)


Thanks for everyone's help!

 

[Spock]

I would make sure that remote desktop client is not running and that you have a firewall up, somebody could be messing with you...

 

[bcrguy]

why not try checking all of the boxes people told u to make sure arent checked, reboot, uncheck all boxes again, reboot.. see of that does anything..

 

[electrolux76]

I know its probably a long shot, but Spock might be on to something, I'm an Admin in an all Mac lab and I will totally mess with my student employees sometimes by pushing out a unix command which would make the remote computer say whatever I typed. Are you always on the same network when this happens?

Also if you want to try it yourself, type the word "say" into terminal followed by a space and whatever you want the computer to say, then hit enter.

 

[grgarside]

I would make sure that remote desktop client is not running and that you have a firewall up, somebody could be messing with you...

I don't have any remote desktop client software, the screen sharing thing in the Sharing pane in System Preferences is not on, and I have the firewall turned on.

why not try checking all of the boxes people told u to make sure arent checked, reboot, uncheck all boxes again, reboot.. see of that does anything..

Tried that.

I know its probably a long shot, but Spock might be on to something, I'm an Admin in an all Mac lab and I will totally mess with my student employees sometimes by pushing out a unix command which would make the remote computer say whatever I typed. Are you always on the same network when this happens?

Also if you want to try it yourself, type the word "say" into terminal followed by a space and whatever you want the computer to say, then hit enter.

How could they get this to connect to my computer without my password?