I re-installed macOS on my 13" M1 MBP today for the first time. Have had it about 2 years and figured what the heck, all my stuff is in icloud file wise anyway. So after erasing, it prompted for activation lock information. I entered my info and it activated and I was good to go. I decided for fun to restore my Time Machine backup since I have been using it for like 10 years and never saw how well it worked. I was impressed with how everything was literally the same like restoring an iPhone. (Makes me happy I use my Mac as my daily computer and my windows pc just for gaming) Anyway, this time I went for the real re-install as a clean install, and after erasing, it rebooted, got to activiation lock, it took a moment, then just said "Your Mac is activiated" with no input from me. Is there like a time limit to this activiation expiring or something? Imagine someone getting their macbook stolen on the same day they reinstall macOs and the thief can just bypass that and install mac os. I almost want to erase and try again out of sheer curioisty. Just not sure if someone else has experienced that before.
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Activation Lock Bug?
- Thread starter M3Stang
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My first thought...reinstalling modern macOS is a waste of time. The result will be identical to what you had prior–bit for bit identical. That's how macOS works because the system is read only.
My second thought...Apple knows what they are doing. Your machine was activated and verified prior to your reinstall. You entered an admin password to do the reinstall. So there is no reason to require it again after reinstall. No thief could can reinstall the OS without credentials.
My second thought...Apple knows what they are doing. Your machine was activated and verified prior to your reinstall. You entered an admin password to do the reinstall. So there is no reason to require it again after reinstall. No thief could can reinstall the OS without credentials.
Good point. I actually re-installed it because I did a Parallels Trial a while back and my applications were full of Windows apps from Parallels and it annoyed me. I could have gone one by one and removed stuff but figured a clean install was easier. I re-install windows on my gaming pc every 6 months just to keep it all fresh. I guess Mac OS does not really need that though normally.
There is an easier way to restore the machine to factory state. Use Erase all Content and Settings.
support.apple.com
Erase your Mac and reset it to factory settings - Apple Support
Use Erase All Content and Settings to quickly and securely erase all of your settings, data, and apps, while maintaining the operating system currently installed.
Activation lock on an Apple Silicon Mac works pretty much the same exact way that it does on iOS and iPadOS devices. If your Mac has "Find My" (and thusly Activation Lock) enabled and you wipe it, you will always be prompted to enter your Apple ID and password to activate it. You won't be prompted to do so, if you turn off "Find My" prior to wiping. In fact, if you ever have to check in an Apple Silicon Mac (or Intel Mac with the T2 Security Chip, for that matter), they require you to do this before giving it up.
Intel Macs with the T2 Security Chip are a bit wonkier. Activation Lock doesn't affect your ability to wipe the Mac. It ought to. And that was certainly how it was originally billed when the feature first launched on macOS Catalina. But that's not how it works in practice. On an Intel Mac with the T2 Security Chip, Activation Lock protects bridgeOS, the T2 Chip's operating system and not macOS. So, unless you remove "Find My" from within macOS, Activation Lock will still remain and largely go unnoticed until you next wipe or restore bridgeOS. The average Mac user won't have a need to DFU restore their T2 chip, so it's possible that one might wipe their T2-equipped Intel Mac as they had done for eons before, forget that "Find My" was enabled and then sell their Macs with Activation Lock still enabled. It's only one of the reasons why I largely hate dealing with T2 Macs and insist that I only do so to an absolute minimum.
There is an easier way to restore the machine to factory state. Use Erase all Content and Settings.
Erase your Mac and reset it to factory settings - Apple Support
Use Erase All Content and Settings to quickly and securely erase all of your settings, data, and apps, while maintaining the operating system currently installed.
The reason why this is easier is that, like in the iOS 15 and later iteration of this option, you are prompted to turn off "Find My Mac" which thusly turns off Activation Lock prior to wiping. It's also the case that doing this on either an Apple Silicon Mac or an Intel Mac with the T2 chip is the fastest method of a restore because it doesn't actually wipe the OS volume; just the data volume. The OS is only modifiable by Apple and only in the context of OS updates. "Erase all Content and Settings" just deletes the decryption keys and marks all the bits on that data volume as over-writeable.
Hey I’m trying to do a simple restore on my Mac Pro 7,1. The Apple website gave me the wrong instructions so I erased the Mac but then it won’t restore via Ethernet. I’ve connected my silicon MacBook Pro with configurator, however there is a padlock. What do I do?
You can't reinstall the operating system on an Intel Mac using configurator anyway. At this point you're probably stuck with trying to get the internet restore to work, if you haven't allowed boot from an external device before you erased the Mac.
What kind of restore are you trying to do? On a Mac Pro (2019), you can only restore the T2 chip via Configurator. You'll have to use Internet Recovery to otherwise reinstall macOS.
Do you have some sort of firewall or filtering on your network?
If you can’t get internet recovery to work, you’re likely at the point where you need to go to an Apple Store to get the OS reinstalled. The exception here would be if you at some point before erasing the computer went into the Startup Security Utility and allowed external booting. If you did that, you can make a USB installer on a different computer and use that to reinstall.