Backstory:
Yesterday at a sad event (after the funeral) I got handed a laptop, a MacBook Pro with the words, “we have no idea what to do with it, you take it”. I got a feeling they just wanted it off their hands.
I AM a nerd and love computers, but I have never in my life been involved in the mac environment and to be honest, I have no interest either. After all, I left windows for a reason.
So, here I have a Mac, no idea of login.
I have found I can factory reset the computer, boot it and run the install script, but to be honest, I’d rather not use apple at all, I would just like to boot straight into asahi.
I have read it could be doable but not recommended, and I also can not find a tutorial how to do it without using IOS.
So I guess my question is, can I do this or do I HAVE to create an apple account?
Unless the original user disabled activation lock (unlikely), no. It’s a brick unless you know their Apple credentials, and a process to go through Apple to reset these credentials in the event of a death is non-existent (a few people have done it, but only because they were able to publish their plight on a big news outlet that caught the ire of Tim Cook, or pay a lawyer lots of $$ to deal with the proof Apple needed, which would only be worth it if the Mac contained valuable documents).
If, the original user “did” disable activation lock, you can connect the Mac to another Mac and perform a DFU restore to reinstall the operating system from Apple via an Internet connection (but if activation lock is enabled, it will not complete without the previous user’s Apple credentials).
Oh, I had no idea, I have not even started it yet.
I see, eh… Ok, I had really no idea I just wanted to ask before starting anything, it did not even cross my mind THAT would be a problem.
I thought I could just factory reset, like on any other piece of hardware…
I guess it goes to the e-waste section then. Or is there really nothing to do here?
Kinda pisses me off if I have to throw it away, it’s most likely working perfectly.
How is that even legal…
This might be valid still not sure haven’t touched apple products years
Press and hold the Command and R keys together and press the power button. This should initiate the MacOS Utilities window. Format the hard drive. Go to the Utilities window, select the “Disk Utility” option, select the hard drive, and click on the “Erase” button.
That is the one I have seen, and was going to do.
But they ALL mention “log out from icloud” and a bunch of stuff to do while logged in, so it seems even if I do that (I will try later) it will ask for a login or smthn.
I think the “spare part” route is what will happen. Fkn sux…
This is not correct. The method you have provided is only applicable for Intel-based Macs. For Apple Silicon Macs on the other hand, you would shut down the Mac, hold down the power button until “loading startup options” appears, and then enter the recovery mode.
But yeah, if the Mac is still logged into iCloud, there’s not much to do.
Factory reset requires going through Activation before the machine is usable. This happens automatically during DFU restore iff the device is not Activation Locked.
Seriously, if it’s locked (from the user perspective: if Find My Mac is enabled) then it’s a brick and there is nothing anyone but Apple can do about it. You’d have to break the entire security of the boot process to do that and Apple arguably have the most secure consumer devices today. People get big bug bounties for ways to do that.
products years