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Tell HN: Full macOS reinstall because Apple ID
Hello! Just wanted to share what just happened to me, maybe some Apple SWE here can take a look at this. I recently changed my macbook and created a new Apple ID for the new machine. For work, I like to have a unique ID and not reuse old ones. The problem is that, today, after 2 days of "use" (the first time the laptop is charged is to reinstall everything), Apple decided without notification that my account should be blocked for "security reasons".
I tried to reset my password, but they blocked the whole account, it seems to me that they even deleted the account from the database as they could not locate the ID of other information (name, mail, etc.). Coming from another OS, one can imagine that you can swap two IDs and continue, but ... NO! Here you need to provide a password to log out, but since my account has been deleted, I don't have any password. Also, one can imagine that a +2000$ machine designed for "professional" users can actually recover from these types of errors using magic links or text messages. They wanted me to wait for an appointment with the service. Just to reset an account!!
Why did I reinstall all? Every 30 seconds, a message appears asking me to check the ID.
TL;DR: Adult human crying.
- Nginx487 5y ago
- gus_massa 5y agoIt's probably not deleted, just marked as blocked. I didn't heard too many horror stories about Apple, so you many be lucky. With other big companies "deleted" and "blocked forever" means "blocked untill you make a big enough mess". Try posting in tweeter. Do you have an screenshot and a photo of the bricked macbook? It adds a lot of realism to the complain. Anecdote time: My wife bought a new Android phone and gave me her older phone. After a factory reset, the old phone asked for her gmail account before I could add my gmail account. It's a nice anti thief feature, but it surprised me a lot!!! (What happens if you want to sell a used phone?)
- Oxodao 5y agoThere is no issue to sell a used phone as long as the original owner removes ALL Google account BEFORE doing the factory reset. In that case you won't be asked to log in. Yet this is still safe as you need your unlock code to remove an account, even if the phone is already unlocked
- zinekeller 5y agoThe problem stems from users just pressing the "reset" button without removing their accounts first. I think that Microsoft's approach here (Refresh your PC without affecting your files, Remove everything and reinstall Windows) is better, because it tells you what exactly will happen. On "Remove everything and reinstall Windows", it'll ask you if you're simply resetting it for yourself or if you're selling or disposing that computer (the difference here for almost all computers is a zeroing disk wipe).
- adabaed 5y agoBlame the designer not the user.
- aspenmayer 5y agoThis is resolved on iOS by turning off Find My before doing factory reset. On macOS devices, you need to remove it from your device list on iCloud.com after factory reset, as well as turning off Find My, if applicable.
- aspenmayer 5y ago> Yet this is still safe as you need your unlock code to remove an account, even if the phone is already unlocked The word “unlocked” in the context of phones usually implies the lack of a carrier lock on the device as originally manufactured and sold. It is not precisely correct to refer to phones originally locked to a carrier as unlocked when offering them for sale without disclosing any original carrier lock, as there are differences in supported frequency bands depending on the jurisdiction the phone was sold in that may make it incompatible with some carriers, whereas “factory unlocked” phones of the same model are usually world band phones and support all common carrier frequencies. To recap: it’s fine to refer to phones which have had an unlock code applied to them as unlocked. To differentiate phones which came unlocked when originally manufactured, this second group of phones is referred to as “factory unlocked.” Sorry to be pendantic, and this isn’t directed at OP. Most of this is inside baseball and is only important when buying or selling phones secondhand, in order to make sure the new owner is able to use their phone on a different carrier than the prior owner. - All of the above is separate to anti-theft locks which are supported by Android and iOS devices, which must be removed before sale in order for the new owner to associate the device with their own personal Google or Apple account, respectively.
- aspenmayer 5y agoLogin with the original Apple ID you had on the device on iCloud.com and check if the device is still associated with that Apple ID. If so, leave it for now. Then setup a support contact session with that same Apple ID with Apple at support.apple.com, and tell them to help with your secondary account issue. Once support says it’s okay, remove the device from the original Apple ID; it’ll automatically get added to your second work one when you login during OOBE. After support clears up any issues with the second account, reinstall macOS on the device with Internet Recovery.[0] [0] https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204904 https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204904
- adabaed 5y agoThe computer is brand new. No previus ID used.
- aspenmayer 5y agoThen you have fewer steps to complete. I must have misread your OP; I apologize. Having a working personal Apple ID should help facilitate reaching Apple Support quicker, but you don’t need a working Apple ID to use the support site, or to receive support over the phone or in person at an Apple Store. Even quicker still may be using the iOS Apple Support app if you have an iOS device handy. Doesn’t even have to be yours, you could borrow a friend’s. In my experience, setting an appointment on the support site is very quick and easy with callbacks under a minute being normal for me. https://apps.apple.com/us/app/apple-support/id1130498044 https://apps.apple.com/us/app/apple-support/id1130498044
- adabaed 5y agoThe question is why I need to spent my time going to apple support for resetting a simple account. This is 2022. Authenticator apps, sms, magic links. Why I need to call them, or even ask for an appointment. They just blocked my account for no reason. If this seems reasonable to any of you... I feel I stole my own computer!
- 5y ago
- jevoten 5y agoCan someone explain for those of us less familiar with Apple - can a Macbook not be used without a valid Apple ID, that Apple can revoke at any time?
- bobbylarrybobby 5y agoYou can use one without an Apple ID. I think the issue here is that once OP logged in, the computer recognized that an Apple ID was associated with the computer, but there was no way to remove it without the password, which was impossible because the account had been deleted
- mattl 5y agoYou don’t need an Apple ID to use a Mac. However downloading apps from the App Store requires one. You can also log into the OS with an Apple ID but also not required.
- aspenmayer 5y agoYou can also use a local non-Apple ID account to login, and selectively login to only the Apple services and apps you need or want, including App Store.
- sturza 5y agoYou can set it up without an Apple ID.
- blondin 5y agoi doubt it. i recently walked a friend through setting up a their MacBook Air M1. and, like you said, i told them to skip setting an Apple ID. that it was not necessary. but the first setup doesn't allow you to skip. or didn't make it obvious how to do so. (dark pattern?) i suppose one could use keyboard shortcuts, or install in safe mode, etc... but for the regular users won't be able to skip that step.
- 5y ago
- eole666 5y ago
- adabaed 5y agoIt's a tool and tools doesn't private me of freedom.
- pietrovismara 5y agoExcept when your tool stops working as intended because the company that sold it to you still has more power over it than you do and suddenly you can't work to sustain yourself with the tool you paid for.
- adabaed 5y agoI'm still free to use other tool. I'm not in jail for using an Apple product. My freedom, my real freedom, is equal. You know who are privating you for freedom. And is not a fruit company.
- pietrovismara 5y agoYeah, it's the system that the "fruit company" (it really is a powerful multinational corporation, you make it sound harmless) lays its foundations upon that privates me of my freedom.
- sschueller 5y agoYes they do. If you no longer have the ability to talk to whom you want because the chat app is locked down or you can't drive to that part of town because your Tesla forbids you. You lost your freedom.
- wutbrodo 5y agoI agree broadly with the sentiment, but this isn't very helpful to OP.
- drglitch 5y agoThis reads like a machine that has DEP enabled and getting locked remotely ;) On a more serious note, I ran macs on multiple occasions without an AppleID - it presents maybe one nag a month, usually when you accidentally open “Messages”. Microsoft, sadly, has also been increasingly more annoying with pushing online accounts on people’s machines lately.
- hdjjhhvvhga 5y agoA regular reminder about the gradual but steady shift from open computing to devices that you think you own but in fact it feels closer to renting, and the manufacturer has more and more tight control over it.
- pshirshov 5y agoOh, that's nothing new. In 2017 one of my colleagues got his account banned afterehe moved to a different country, he tried to talk with Apple over phone and ask why, they told him "you know why". He didn't know though. edit: Just to clarify, I'm sure that it was a false-positive and Apple mishandled the situation in the worst manner possible. Don't trust Apple your money and data.
- ARandomerDude 5y agoWhat country? Are we taking Iran or Canada?
- pshirshov 5y agoFrom Poland to Ireland.
- csomar 5y agoIreland... that's quite similar to "Iranland". That must be the problem.
- pshirshov 5y agoNot funny when you lose your music and software worth several hundred euros.
- aaaaaaaaaaab 5y ago>when you lose your It was never yours. Buy music from Bandcamp and save it on your hard drive. That is yours.
- gruez 5y ago>Buy music from Bandcamp and save it on your hard drive. That is yours but itunes music is DRM-free as well?
- anaisbetts 5y agoIt's a new machine, and it doesn't work. What do you do when you buy something and it breaks? Return it and ask for another one.
- egberts1 5y ago
- maxwell86 5y agoNah. Your work data is on the laptop, clock the hours it is locked, and calculate the maximum potential damage. Sue via your consumer association. Apple can lock you out of your laptop, but if that causes damages to your well-being, your business, etc. you can sue. They can write whatever they want on their T&C, that doesn't make it enforceable.
- CameronNemo 5y agoApple can also make it absolute hell to use any of their products. I wouldn't pick a fight with a 3 trillion dollar corporation.
- Vaslo 5y agoAre there examples of this?
- sneak 5y agoDon't ever put an Apple ID into a Mac. The only thing you lose is iCloud (mostly not e2e encrypted, so a privacy nightmare) and the App Store. Macs can still install non-App Store software, though, so you don't actually need an Apple ID on them. You're just asking for paternalistic, Apple-knows-best trouble. Apple's cloud services are mostly garbage, anyway.
- adabaed 5y agoI've learned that today!
- PragmaticPulp 5y agoYou’re confusing two separate things: The OP used an Apple account to log into the Mac itself. That’s different than using your Apple ID to login to iCloud or the App Store.
- znpy 5y agoAnd you're paying good money in hardware, developer fees and app store fees for this. I just can't understand how people actively choose to endure into this situation.
- adabaed 5y agoMarket economy.
- whitepoplar 5y agoBecause apart from this, MacOS is an excellent operating system that "just works" for most people, and Apple's hardware is excellent.
- mlindner 5y agoI'm confused by this. You don't use your Apple ID to log into your computer. There is no Apple ID used to log into your computer.
- dev_tty01 5y agoNo, you can opt to login with your AppleID instead of a machine specific password. I never would, but that is an option.
- mlindner 5y agoOh really, they must have added that recently. But I didn't even see it as an option when I bought this M1 mac. It must have been buried somewhere.
- dev_tty01 5y agoYeah, I don't remember when it was added and I think the interface to that option has changed over time. There is also an option (SysPref->Users) to authenticate a Mac password change with your AppleID. Different option but the net effect is the same.
- dbg31415 5y agoAmerican who moved to Australia for work... Apple account was frozen, just totally bricked my $5k MBP. It only started working again once I got back to the US. For 3 weeks I had to use a pen and paper notebook and a borrowed shitty plastic-y Dell junk-book. Fucking Apple, they won't help in these situations. They have some sort of security flag that gets tripped... and when you are one of the false positives they won't do anything to help you.
- mlindner 5y agoNew machine in what way? You bought from a retailer or apple? Was it perhaps a re-sold but brand new stolen device?
- adabaed 5y agoNew from Apple store.
- evercast 5y ago@OP Since the machine is new, I wonder if you talked to Apple support on the phone? Did they tell you to visit the service in person? Also, out of curiosity, how can you have multiple personal/professional Apple IDs? AFAIK you need to provide a separate phone number for each. It is not very easy to create multiple ones.
- adabaed 5y agoLet's suppose they banned the account cause the information is already in use. No problem with that, but don't let me create the account in first place! And of course don't allow a user use it as main ID on a device if you know you ask a password for logging out. And as I said, calling for resetting a password? 2022 and a trillion dollar company.
- evercast 5y agoWell….. it should be clear by now that this is not just about “resetting a password”. The instructions at https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204106 https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204106 provide quite a lot of options to follow, with the support call being last resort. Bugs happen, so why not tell them and let them help you first?
- causality0 5y agoThis is why I absolutely refuse to have anything but a local account on my primary desktop. My computer belongs to me, not some sociopathic megacorp in California.
- tailspin2019 5y ago…. or Redmond.
- sersi 5y agoPSA do not opt to login with your apple ID, it's an option when setting up the computer, you should never ever accept it. There's no reason to ever accept logging in with a non-local account (same for Windows but Microsoft is much more persistent in forcing this whereas at least it's relatively easy to not enable it on macs)
- parentheses 5y agoi don’t agree. the conveniences afforded by using my apple id for text messages and phone calls while i’m on my work computer is invaluable. on the other hand the windows id doesn’t ever get me anything of value. caveat: my thumbs hate the tiny keyboard so maybe i am particularly sensitive to this annoyance
- cachvico 5y agoI think the implication is that it's Ok to sign in to iCloud after the installation (and enable all the iCloud sync services). But the login account should be local only.
- microtherion 5y agoTo the best of my knowledge, it does not make a difference whether you sign in on initial setup or afterward. The difficulties OP was describing, I think, are tied to activating the "Find my Mac" option in iCloud. Once you activate that, you cannot simply log out from iCloud without providing your password. Being able to do so would rather defeat the purpose of "Find my Mac" as a theft prevention mechanism. So if you don't want the issues described, don't opt into "Find my Mac" (Personally, I'm quite fond of the option, but YMMV).
- tw04 5y ago>i don’t agree. the conveniences afforded by using my apple id for text messages and phone calls while i’m on my work computer is invaluable. You don't need to login to the laptop with your Apple ID to do that, you just need to put your account into messenger.
- 5y ago
- young_unixer 5y ago
- Juliate 5y agoApple on one hand does sell iCloud (and all that sync between devices that goes with it) along with its hardware. And on the other hand, only manages to handle accounts issues like we were still in the 90's. That is, brutally locking people out of their own systems (sometimes for explainable reasons, which should still be resolvable) without any possible discussion or recourse. The only thing you can do is go at an Apple Store or call Apple support on the phone, only to spend hours and hours with them carefully following their scripts, sometimes escalating the issue to a more senior one, all of them sorry in the end that they can't fix it, and asking you to still note them well, because the issue is not on their side but on Apple's procedure wall. Which makes the first selling point ("all my life sync'd across my devices") moot at best, adversary at worst. The senior population is especially vulnerable to account hijacking and loss of their account, and then, their data, and then their devices (at least, they can recover their devices with the help of someone else, but most of their data is lost). And/or something is definitely rotten in the account reset/recovery procedures.
- adabaed 5y agoUpdate: Finally I reinstalled everything without the ID and is working just fine, I'll use my personal Apple ID to download Xcode and I'm never going to create a new one again.. Thank you so much for your comments!
- rsync 5y agoWait, you need an apple ID to download xcode ? I thought there was a quick, scriptable command-line method of downloading xcode: xcode-select --install
- andrewmcwatters 5y agoIt used to be that you could download Xcode outside of the App Store, or without an Apple ID, but it seems that they have changed this.
- piperswe 5y agoxcode-select only installs the command-line tools, not the full IDE.
- yepthatsreality 5y agoMaybe consider not buying Apple again since their products refuse to allow you to live your lifestyle of separating work and personal life.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- tokamak-teapot 5y agoThey do. I have an Apple ID for work and one for non-work.
- adabaed 5y agoFinal update: I feel like a complete idiot. As @tobiasbischoff said, a simple user swap could resolve all of this.. I hope tomorrow I can recover my lost IQ from today! ahhahaha. PD: Apple, fix this anyway please.
- petemc_ 5y agoI had a Ship of Theseus moment after getting my laptop repaired by Apple. They pretty much had to replace everything except for the bottom case, so when I went to sign in with my apple id I got a message saying "we have sent a message to your other device". But there was no other device. Took over a month to resolve and I also kept getting the annoying pop up message asking me to check the ID.
- throwoutway 5y agoHow did you resolve it?
- glacials 5y agoAnother problem Apple engineers can be blind to -- only having one Apple device.
- KiDD 5y agoThe issue here is you keep creating AppleIDs. You should have only one or two and use them on your respective personal and work devices. With 2FA you really need to have more than one trusted device or you can easily lose access and have to go through the account recovery process which can take a while.
- throwoutway 5y agoI somehow lost access to an AppleID. I dont even know how. I have the password, it's saved in a Password Manager, and an old Mac is still logged in. But the new Mac would not accept my authentication (I do not recall the specific error message). I gave up and created a new one, but lost all my old purchases.
- heisenbit 5y agoRelated AppleID nightmare. FIL forgot his password & recovery questions and when migrating his iPhone to a new one I did an encryped backup/restore and it resulted in the new iPhone also getting that broken AppleID. Unfortunately find my iPhone was active on the old one and now the new was was unusable and also could not be reset. Panic... Finally recovered on some old backup his password but without the second factor it was impossible to get full control of the account. So I disabled FindMyIPhone, wiped the phone and set up a new AppleId and restored from a not encrypted backup. Everything worked for a while until the old apps needed updating (Whatsapp...) and the iPhone asked for the password for the Apple Store. Now the new password did not work. Took us ages to figure out that it was asking for the old appleid password - iOS remembers with which account an app was bought but it does not tell you what AppleID it asks the password for when trying to update.
- jollybean 5y agoLeave them an invoice for reimbursing them for your time wasted etc.. We need to normalize this. Every time they pull some shenanigan on you - invoice them.
- ___q 5y agoIt took two weeks for my Apple ID email reset email to arrive. Since then I've learned to never use it for anything. I'm sorry for your loss.
- tobiasbischoff 5y agoLol, WTF. "Full macOS reinstall because of dude has no idea how to use a computer" You can always just boot into single user and create a new local admin account, a matter of minutes.
- adabaed 5y agoTrue.. I feel like a complete idiot now, thanks hahahaha. WTF I was thinking holy sh*t
- ixacto 5y agoHad to deal with the bug where macOS does not login even with the correct password even on reinstall last year on several M1 macs. Frustrating to say the least! Apple should not be able to control logon/pw of local system at all, especially if they can’t get it right!
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]