[THIS IS LONG. But believe me, it felt even longer while I was experiencing it.]
I got a panicked call from a longtime friend who was impressed by my Mac skills when we were colleagues 30 years ago. For background, he has been retired, is in his mid-70s, and recently suffered a stroke that left him with some aphasia. That means he can’t always connect words or descriptions with the physical objects or images they describe.
My friend was paying bills and organizing general household tasks on an M1 Pro MacBook Pro, which is now the couple’s sole Mac. In a move that turned out to be unrelated, he had just gotten off the phone with an iOS App Store representative, trying to cancel an unwanted subscription to an app that promised to “make printing easier from an iPhone.” He had misunderstood that the subscription was $9.99 per week and his spouse helped him clarify the implications. The App Store rep told him they would cancel the sub, and asked him to look for a confirming email.
Because my friend retrieves his email through the Firefox browser, he immediately turned there—and was greeted with the message “Your computer does not appear to be connected to the Internet.”
During the first panicked call, I spent over 2 hours with him trying to troubleshoot without any way to see what he was seeing, and spending long intervals waiting for him to figure out things like where the “option key” is and how it works. (I mention that only to explain the 2 hours.) At the end of our time, it was clear that everything seemed to be in order, he had a working Internet connection because Messages and his iPhone were connecting fine, but neither Firefox nor Safari could connect to the Web. I suggested he talk with Apple, and we wrapped it up for the day.
The next morning his spouse texted me to let me know Apple hadn’t been able to help because my friend couldn’t get to his email, and there was some question about whether he had opened a malicious message in the course of troubleshooting. I agreed to another round of troubleshooting, provided both of them were on the call so she could interpret my instructions to him.
We spent another 2 hours, during which I reset his email password (I’m his ISP) and scanned his email box for suspicious messages. The only thing that was unusual was a series of 11 identical messages from Apple informing him that they were trying to help. In the meantime, Apple had encouraged him to remove Firefox and work with Safari, on the misguided theory that not using Safari was blocking him from his email. My friend has used Firefox since the mid-1990s, with System 7, and he tends to stick with what he knows, so that was a bit of a wrench for him.
I helped him log in to his email using Safari on iPhone (which worked!), so we knew that it was not a problem with his network connection or other machines on that connection.
We set up a separate user account on his computer to rule out anything particular to his everyday account. Same result, and a lot of time wading past the onboarding process for MacOS Sequoia.
But again, at the end of this time, we were no closer to getting Safari on Mac to display a Web page.
I wrote up a troubleshooting report, texted it to them, and recommended they call Apple again explaining what had already been tried and what seemed to be ruled out.
Last evening, they texted back to say: “UPDATE: Removing Norton fixed the issue! Apple Advisor said Norton will often block internet access.”
Norton. Utilities.
My software-conservative friend installed Norton Utilities on his mid-1990s PowerBook, and had subscribed faithfully ever since. Even when we transitioned to OS X at the turn of the century, he continued using it long past the time when most Mac users had outgrown the need. It was such an integral part of his computer ecosystem that he hadn’t bothered mentioning it. He thought he was protecting his computer, until the day his computer was “protected” from him.
I am relieved for my friends, and am left with the question: Does the Mac version of Norton Utilities do anything useful in 2026? Maybe it does, and maybe I’ve overlooked a big fan base…
But my bigger concern is a reminder that troubleshooting a Mac may involve remembering things we’d forgotten. And I do hope this is helpful to others in my position.
