Q: mavericks laptop can't talk to iPad FaceTime

Can you call anyone successfully?

Make a Facetime Audio with both devices and see if the problem persists.

Do you have one Apple ID on your iPhone and another on the iPad? In your Mac Facetime app click the right arrow on the contact to see if the camera icon appear on both devices under the ID, because you can be reached to the iPhone number too.

Please read this whole message before doing anything.

This procedure is a diagnostic test. It won’t solve your problem. Don’t be disappointed when you find that nothing has changed after you complete it.

The purpose of this test is to determine whether the problem is localized to your user account. Enable guest logins* and log in as Guest. Don't use the Safari-only “Guest User” login created by “Find My Mac.”

While logged in as Guest, you won’t have access to any of your documents or settings. Applications will behave as if you were running them for the first time. Don’t be alarmed by this behavior; it’s normal. If you need any passwords or other personal data in order to complete the test, memorize, print, or write them down before you begin.

Test while logged in as Guest. Same problem?

After testing, log out of the guest account and, in your own account, disable it if you wish. Any files you created in the guest account will be deleted automatically when you log out of it.

*Note: If you’ve activated “Find My Mac” or FileVault in OS X 10.7 or later, then you can’t enable the Guest account. The "Guest User" login created by "Find My Mac" is not the same. Create a new account in which to test, and delete it, including its home folder, after testing.

Please sign out of FaceTime in your user account, then sign back in and test. If there's no change, see below.

Back up all data.

Quit FaceTime if it’s running. Force quit if necessary. Relaunch it and test after each of the following steps. If the problem isn't resolved, quit again and go on to the next step.

Step 1

Make sure you know the ID and password you use with FaceTime. Launch the Keychain Access application in any of the following ways:

☞ Enter the first few letters of its name into a Spotlight search. Select it in the results (it should be at the top.)

☞ In the Finder, select Go ▹ Utilities from the menu bar, or press the key combination shift-command-U. The application is in the folder that opens.

☞ Open LaunchPad. Click Utilities, then Keychain Access in the icon grid.

Use the search box in the toolbar of the Keychain Access window to find and delete all items with "facetime" or "com.apple.idms" in the name. Log out and log back in.

Step 2

Hold down the option key and select

          Go ▹ Library

from the Finder menu bar. Move the following items from the Library folder to the Trash (some may not exist):

          Containers/com.apple.FaceTime

          Containers/com.apple.soagent

          IdentityServices

Leave the Library folder open. Log out and log back in.

Step 3

In the Preferences subfolder, there may be several files having names that begin with any of the following strings:

          com.apple.facetime.bag.plist

          com.apple.FaceTime.plist

          com.apple.ids

          com.apple.imservice.FaceTime

          com.apple.imservice.ids.FaceTime

Move them all to the Desktop. There may also be a file with the name "com.apple.imagent.plist". Move that to the Trash.

Also in the Preferences folder, there's a subfolder named "ByHost". Open it and do the same thing.

Log out and log back in. Test again. This time FaceTime should perform normally, but your settings will be lost. You may be able to put back some of the files you moved to the Desktop in this step. Relaunch and test after each one. Eventually you should find one or more that causes FaceTime to malfunction. Delete those files and recreate whatever settings they contained.

If the issue is still not resolved, quit FaceTime again and put all the items you moved to the Desktop back where they were. You don’t need to replace the items you moved to the Trash. Stop here and post your results.

If you later decide that you don’t like the results of Steps 2 and 3, you can undo them completely by quitting FaceTime and restoring the items you deleted in those steps from your backup.