FaceTime has no "Calls from iPhone checkbox.

Thanks sberman -

The answer to your 1st question is yes, my iMac is enabled as an other device, as is my iPad, from which I can make and take calls.

The answer to your 2nd question is yes, my wife and I are both on the same plan at Verizon, which is why this is so frustrating.

I was reading one of the "More Like This" links below, someone else had this problem and it apparently went away with a reboot. I tried that. It didn't work.

Thanks for the reply.

Well, how about this question. If I switch from Verizon to AT&T, will Apple magically give me "Calls from iPhone" checkbox back in FaceTime preferences?

Wow, I'm having flashbacks to the reasons I switched from Microsoft to Apple in the first place....

Clearly there is something going on between Apple and Verizon, because I have in the past used this feature on my iMac, with my current phone. And now Apple no longer supports Verizon and has taken my "Calls from iPhone" button away.

One of the differences between my phone and my wife's phone is that her SIM card is not locked. (Sim-free). She bought her phone through Verizon. My phone's SIM card is locked. I bought my iPhone from Apple.

When I called Verizon to get mine unlocked, something that the providers are now required by law to do, the guy helping me came back on with his supervisor, and told me pretty much verbatim: We don't lock our SIM cards, so you'll have to call Apple. (Not even going to waste my time trying that). I could try one of the dozens of WEB sites out there that charge for this service, but I have no idea whether or not that $40 would solve my problem. It would allow me to move to AT&T, but I like the customer service at Verizon (except for today), my wife is happy with Verizon, and she won't jump with me. The moral of this story: I'll never buy another phone through iTunes.

Apple giveth, and Apple taketh away. And I give up.

Actually, this is the solution.

I created a new user account on my iMac, and logged into the iCloud and FaceTime, and behold, the Calls From iPhone checkbox was available in FaceTime, and I could make and answer calls to my iPhone from my iMac. Hmmm. Not a Verizon issue after all.

First, I tried all of the solutions I could find to other people's problems with FaceTime. Logged off iCloud on all of my devices, restarted everything, logged in and out of FaceTime dozens of times... Nothing worked.

Time to get out the ole White Hat. After hours and hours of comparing .plist files in ~/Library/Preferences, (thanks for plutil -p) I noticed the the "unique ID" (not the actual plist item name) of my dummy account was different than in my normal account. Hmm. SO I wound up deleting all of the com.apple.ids* files from my account, and copied com.apple.ids* from the dummy account into my account, and then used the chown command line utility to make them mine. Restarted my iMac.

When I logged in again, I got a dialog box telling me that there was a problem with my iCould account. All it wanted was for me to enter my password again, oh, okay.

And behold, FaceTime now has the "Calls From iPhone" checkbox, and I can make and answer calls via my iMac again.

Clearly, something got screwed up in those .plist files, and now my Mac appears twice on my phone under Settings / Phone / Calls on Other Devices. I can live with that, as long as I can get take calls while I'm in my basement office.

Gee. I haven't had to do so much hacking since I wrote code professionally for those Windows platforms. Even with the occaisonal glitches, (what happened to all of my email signatures?), switching to a Mac was smartest thing my wife and I have ever done for our business.