"Unable to verify account name or password" on adding me.com account to mac
Hey folks,
Odd thing here.
I'm unable to add my me.com account to my M1 Macbook air running Monterey (I haven't upgraded to Ventura yet as this is a production machine and I usually wait until the .1 release of a new macOS on production machines).
I've owned this machine for about a year now and never managed to set up the me.com account on it.
The account works fine on other devices (two older macs and a few recent iPhones up to the iPhone 12), but upon adding it to Apple Mail on the M1 Macbook Air it throws an error: "Unable to verify account name or password". To be clear: I am using the right password; I've verified this endlessly.
A quick search on these forums brings up a solution: enter the account details, cancel out of the error and note that the password field is now empty. Enter the password and TAB out of the password field instead of clicking the button. Apparently this circumvents a known bug.
This, however, assumes that you have the account on your mac. And here lies the problem: this account isn't on my machine so I can't get to that screen. The screen you get when entering a new account is a different one and the "TAB" workaround doesn't appear to work there.
I've done a few things already, all fruitless of course:
- I tried to be smart and entered the account manually (by going through the automated me.com setup, then removing the lines "Automatically set up for iOS and Mac OS X" in the incoming and outgoing servers and replacing them with the mobileMe server of ye'old) which does bring up the right screen mentioned in the workaround, but the error prevails.
- I deleted all the references to the me.com account from iCloud Key Chain and the local keychain cache on the mac in question.
- I've set up and removed the me.com account from the accounts preference pane in System Preferences.
I'm stuck. Sure, I can access the me.com account on pretty much every other Apple device in my house, but not on the one that counts (my M1 MacBook Air).
Does anyone have a solution?
Cheers,
Erwin
MacBook Air 13″, macOS 12.6