{"id":27726,"date":"2019-12-30T15:24:33","date_gmt":"2019-12-30T20:24:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/?p=27726"},"modified":"2020-01-01T09:28:04","modified_gmt":"2020-01-01T14:28:04","slug":"erase-mac-doesnt","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/2019\/12\/30\/erase-mac-doesnt\/","title":{"rendered":"&ldquo;Erase Mac&rdquo; Doesn&rsquo;t?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/eclecticlight.co\/2019\/12\/30\/erase-mac-doesnt\/\">Howard Oakley<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote cite=\"https:\/\/eclecticlight.co\/2019\/12\/30\/erase-mac-doesnt\/\"><p>What does the terse phrase Erase Mac mean? If you think that it means completely erase your Mac, then I&rsquo;m with you. But that apparently isn&rsquo;t what Apple means, at least not when it comes to the Find My service and Activation Lock.<\/p><p>[&#8230;]<\/p><p>But hang on: according to another <a href=\"https:\/\/support.apple.com\/en-gb\/HT204756\">support note<\/a>, &lsquo;Erase your Mac&rsquo; is one of the features of Find My, which allows you to delete everything on your lost or stolen Mac.<\/p><p>[&#8230;]<\/p><p>Just to make this clear, let&rsquo;s establish what Apple means by the following terms:<\/p><ul><li><em>erase file<\/em> &#x2013; <a href=\"https:\/\/support.apple.com\/\/guide\/mac-help\/mchlp1093\/mac\">delete<\/a> a file completely<\/li><li><em>erase volume\/disk<\/em> &#x2013; <a href=\"https:\/\/support.apple.com\/HT208496\">delete<\/a> the entire contents of that volume\/disk<\/li><li><em>erase Mac<\/em> &#x2013; maybe (or maybe not) delete some Apple Pay data on that Mac.<\/li><\/ul><\/blockquote>\n<p>This is so confusing:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>It <em>used to<\/em> erase the Mac, which is why I never felt comfortable enabling the Find My Mac feature. I don&rsquo;t want someone who breaks into my iCloud account to be able to wipe my Mac.<\/li>\n<li>Is this now changed for all Macs with Catalina or only those with a T2 and Activation Lock?<\/li>\n<li>Why? Is there a benefit or is this a bug?<\/li>\n<li>If a Mac is stolen, you&rsquo;d probably want to remote wipe it to at least protect your data. But it sounds like doing that will turn <em>off<\/em> Activation Lock, which is probably the opposite of what you want.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n<p>See also: <a href=\"https:\/\/www.ifixit.com\/News\/apples-activation-lock-will-make-it-very-difficult-to-refurbish-macs\">Apple&rsquo;s Activation Lock Will Make It Very Difficult to Refurbish Macs<\/a> (<a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/iFixit\/status\/1201535187886247937\">tweet<\/a>).<\/p>\n\n<p>Previously:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/2017\/01\/31\/activation-lock-status-checker-removed\/\">Activation Lock Status Checker Removed<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/2012\/08\/04\/find-my-mac-and-remote-wipe\/\">Find My Mac and Remote Wipe<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n<p>Update (2019-12-31): I now think there are documentation issues and a bug but that Erase Mac is <em>intended<\/em> to erase the Mac. Please see the <a href=\"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/2019\/12\/30\/erase-mac-doesnt\/#comment-3141775\">comments below<\/a> and <a href=\"https:\/\/eclecticlight.co\/2019\/12\/30\/erase-mac-doesnt\/#comment-43097\">here<\/a>.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Howard Oakley: What does the terse phrase Erase Mac mean? If you think that it means completely erase your Mac, then I&rsquo;m with you. But that apparently isn&rsquo;t what Apple means, at least not when it comes to the Find My service and Activation Lock.[&#8230;]But hang on: according to another support note, &lsquo;Erase your Mac&rsquo; [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"apple_news_api_created_at":"2019-12-30T20:24:36Z","apple_news_api_id":"09478a75-1d9d-4f69-b455-48a30ba5c536","apple_news_api_modified_at":"2020-01-01T14:28:08Z","apple_news_api_revision":"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAQ==","apple_news_api_share_url":"https:\/\/apple.news\/ACUeKdR2dT2m0VUijC6XFNg","apple_news_coverimage":0,"apple_news_coverimage_caption":"","apple_news_is_hidden":false,"apple_news_is_paid":false,"apple_news_is_preview":false,"apple_news_is_sponsored":false,"apple_news_maturity_rating":"","apple_news_metadata":"\"\"","apple_news_pullquote":"","apple_news_pullquote_position":"","apple_news_slug":"","apple_news_sections":"\"\"","apple_news_suppress_video_url":false,"apple_news_use_image_component":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[1908,1607,164,1821,1353,30,1666],"class_list":["post-27726","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-technology","tag-activation-lock","tag-apple-t2","tag-documentation","tag-find-my","tag-find-my-mac","tag-mac","tag-macos-10-15"],"apple_news_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27726","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=27726"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27726\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":27742,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27726\/revisions\/27742"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=27726"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=27726"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=27726"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}