New Macbook. Some quesitons...

March 20, 2021 6:43 AM

I bought the new Macbook Air M1. It has the latest operating system on it. It keeps doing two things that infuriate me: When I put a CD in the external drive, it starts randomly playing music from my music library; it asks me repeatedly to sign in to the iTunes Store and no amount of doing so pleases it. Help?

1. So the Music app has an option for what to do when a CD is inserted. I've chosen "Import CD and Eject." It does do those things, but not before choosing some random song from my music library and playing it. How can I make this not happen?

2. The App store tells me I have apps that need updating. Today, it was Highland. I click update and it asks me to log into the iTunes Store and fills my old Apple ID that I changed when I bought this computer. I change the ID to my current one and give the password. It does not reject these things but also doesn't update the app. I click Update again and the pattern repeats.

Googling gives me answers from years ago that are no longer relevant.

The weird thing is that I initially bought one of these laptops two weeks ago and did not have these problems, but I loved the computer so much I sent it back and replaced it with the maxed out version. Both computers had the same Apple ID, and OS and are behaving differently. Why?

Bonus question: When I type URLs into Chrome, it starts to autofill them with URLs I've visited before. One of my most visited sites changed its TLD from .to to .ca. How can I go in and alter the autofill thing to stop using .to and switch to .ca or to at least delete the .to option so that the .ca automatically becomes the autofill option?

posted by dobbs to Computers & Internet (9 answers total)

If you transferred settings over from your old laptop this would include things such as autofilling urls.

As for the AppleID thing, any apps that transferred over to your new laptop from the old one were presumably bought under the AppleID you were using on that laptop. The App Store has no way of knowing what you did with your Apple ID. It only knows that an app purchased under your older Apple ID needs to be updated. That means logging into the older Apple ID for verification, etc. I am unaware of any way to transfer app registrations from one Apple ID to another. Is there any particular reason you changed Apple IDs?
posted by slkinsey at 7:23 AM on March 20, 2021 [2 favorites]

To tag on to slkinsey, you don't "change" Apple IDs, you create new ones. The old one is still out there and is perfectly valid. It is annoying that Apple has no way to consolidate them, but there you are.
posted by adamrice at 7:45 AM on March 20, 2021

On the subject of safari's url autocomplete: safari uses both bookmarks and browsing history to give you suggestions so:

1. Delete/edit any and all bookmarks with the ld TLD
2. Delete history items with the old TLD
   1. From the History menu in the safari menu bar choose 'Show All History'
   2. use the search field to find all items with the old TLD
   3. select all items and delete them
   4. let safari or spotlight or whatever actually does the reindexing have an hour or two and it should stop giving you the 'old' suggestions

posted by mce at 7:51 AM on March 20, 2021 [1 favorite]

Have you checked for autoplay settings in iTunes in general?

Regarding the AppleID, as far as apple is concerned you are using someone else's computer. (The other person is also you). You probably need to either use your old apple id ("get permission from the computer owner") or start the computer over with your new apple id.
posted by Lady Li at 8:12 AM on March 20, 2021

There are settings in System Preferences that you can change to set what happens when you insert a CD. See this Apple support page. The default is probably to open Music; you can just set it to ignore the disc. (You can still interact with it in Music/etc if you want to - that'll just tell it not to actually do anything when you first put the disc in.)

Chrome URL autocomplete suggestions can be deleted.
posted by mrg at 8:14 AM on March 20, 2021

Response by poster: To tag on to slkinsey, you don't "change" Apple IDs, you create new ones.

Apple seems to disagree with you. I followed their instructions here.

Have you checked for autoplay settings in iTunes in general?

I thought iTunes doesn't exist anymore. It certainly isn't on this computer and no such app exists on the App store.


There are settings in System Preferences that you can change to set what happens when you insert a CD.

Thanks. I wasn't aware of this setting. I changed it to "Ignore," but the problem still persists.

Chrome URL autocomplete suggestions can be deleted.

This worked. Thanks.
posted by dobbs at 8:31 AM on March 20, 2021 [1 favorite]

dobbs: "Apple seems to disagree with you. I followed their instructions here."

Huh, that's changed since I last messed around with it. I learned something new today.
posted by adamrice at 9:53 AM on March 20, 2021

I don't know the answer to your questions, but I'd like to point out that you can make an appointment with the Genius Bar at your local Apple store. I've done this a few times, and those people are really knowledgeable and helpful. Actually, now that I look at that link, I think they're not doing in-person consultations anymore, but you can still get remote help.

As a side-note, I have never understood the widespread belief that Apple products are easy to use. As far as I'm concerned, it's a myth. I've encountered more baffling, irritating problems with Apple devices than with any other platform (well, Linux might be worse).
posted by JD Sockinger at 11:01 AM on March 20, 2021 [2 favorites]

This post has what seems like a good list of suggestions for what to try, ultimately logging out completely of iCloud I’m everything, restarting, and logging back in. I’d try the process outlined here before the Genius Bar.
posted by fabius at 7:49 AM on March 21, 2021 [1 favorite]