Safe to Wipe my MacBook Air Myself?

[x Tame Impala]

My girlfriend's mom was nice enough to give me her practically brand new MacBook Air. She has her phone, photos, contacts, email, etc...all on the laptop still so there's obviously a privacy issue. I want to wipe the laptop completely and have an appointment this week at an Apple store to get it done. But I saw I can apparently just wipe it myself.

Has anyone done this before? If I can skip the pain in the ass of going down to an Apple store and do it myself then I'd just prefer that. Is it safe? I plan on using this laptop a lot for coding work and don't want to screw anything up.

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[SniperHF]

If she'll log into it for you and disable the cloud authentication protection stuff those usually have these days, you'll be fine to wipe it yourself.

Sorry not good on the particulars on Macs, but last time I wiped one it still held on to the credentials from the previous user due to the iCloud. But since it's someone you know they should be able to log in for you if that's required.

 

[aleshemsky83]

Yeah, you can't just factory reset an apple device with all the iCloud stuff logged in. It's theft protection. Prett sure even the apple store can't help you with that. At least, that's how it is with iPads and iPhones, might be different with MacOS.

 

[SniperHF]

Also I would probably try and have the original account relinquish control of the device before you wipe it instead of after. (there's usually an option in there somewhere, but I don't know where google can probably help)

Prett sure even the apple store can't help you with that

It's doable (without the account) with some linux commands the laptops, which is what I had to do. But it's a pain in the ass.