> I am extremely sick of of MacOS recovery right now
What issues did you encounter? Shouldn't recreating the disk with Disk Utility remove all traces of the old MacOS install, or did you encounter issues with Find My Mac?
What issues did you encounter? Shouldn't recreating the disk with Disk Utility remove all traces of the old MacOS install, or did you encounter issues with Find My Mac?
- unlocking the laptop (knowing an existing password, Apple ID or firmware password). Probably 3 in 10 laptops are non-trivial. I have 5 laptops with unknown firmware passwords that I am planning on removing the SPI flash on to wipe out the password (just for funsies... seems like an interesting challenge!)
- upgrading to Catalina via USB installation image. If the OS image is jumping several versions (or actually being downgraded from a security patch release), here be dragons. Typically the USB installer pulls down another installer via Wi-Fi and then has to perform a random "this disk needs an upgrade" routine which 50% of the time results in bad thing happening and I'd be left with the flashing question mark. Then its time to start over again.
- After installing and setting up Catalina (so I can smoke test the functionality), I'd wipe the disk and reinstall from USB one last time so it was fresh. Randomly, the re-install would fail in a mysterious way and I'd have to go around a third time.
Weird. I had the opposite problem.
Mid 2012 Macbook, couldn't get El Capitan to install at all, but installing directly to Catalina from the USB worked first try.
One I encounter a lot is that if the recovery mode wants to install El Capitan, it can't unless you change the date in terminal, and then fight the internet/installation to get the install done before NTP screws it up.
It's not a particularly hard problem to work around, just an example of something that can pop up while in mac's recovery mode.