3

I bought a new mac and want to sell my old one. It came with Snow Leopard but I upgraded a few times since I bought it. I have deauthorized, reformatted and reinstalled OS X on my mac following the instructions here:

http://support.apple.com/kb/ht5189

When I reinstalled, it installed Mountain Lion (not Snow Leopard) and asked me for my iTunes account to verify that I purchased Mountain Lion. I used Command-Q to quit after the install, so it is at the factory default welcome screen at the moment.

My question: if I sell it, is my iTunes account tied to the computer now since it asked for that during installation? And if so, is it possible to return it to an identity-free state to sell?

Improve this question

2 Answers 2

Reset to default
1

I just saw this article this morning that might be helpful: How to Prepare a MacBook Pro For Sale that was Upgraded to Mavericks by Scott Williams

Improve this answer
2
  • 1
    Answers on Ask Different need to be more than just a link. It's okay to include a link, but please summarize or excerpt it in the answer. The idea is to make the answer stand alone
    – nohillside ♦
    Commented Jan 15, 2014 at 15:40
  • It seems Scott, at that link, reinstalled Snow Leopard from the CD. And says "The catch though is that the new user needs to have an Apple ID that has already "purchased" Mavericks for the install to continue." implying (but not confirming) that the apple id provided will persist as the new users apple id.
    – Craig Celeste
    Commented Jan 15, 2014 at 16:17
1

As to whether the Apple ID persists on the reinstalled drive using the approach I did: I don't know.

A better way is probably to install Mavericks from a USB thumb drive, described here:

http://forums.macrumors.com/showpost.php?p=18081307&postcount=3

sudo /Applications/Install\ OS\ X\ Mavericks.app/Contents/Resources/createinstallmedia --volume /Volumes/Untitled --applicationpath /Applications/Install\ OS\ X\ Mavericks.app --nointeraction

Assuming "Install OS X Mavericks.app" is in your Applications folder and your thumbdrive is called "Untitled".

Improve this answer
1
  • Yes - using an install media like this severs the store link and you can even set up the device without needing to join WiFi and have leakage of passwords in that instance.
    – bmike ♦
    Commented Oct 30, 2015 at 14:58

You must log in to answer this question.

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged .