Journal

Preparing Your Mac For Resale

Update: Since posting this article I've had a few emails - I'd like to clarify that this does work with Adobe apps such as Photoshop (although you must be careful about the licensing issues!). Thanks to those who who sent me pleasant emails and to RedAntArmy who spread the word over at MacRumours.

I recently sold my first gen Macbook Pro and thought I'd share a few tricks that hopefully gave the buyer a pleasant experience. I figured it would be best to start with a full reinstall of OS X 10.5 Leopard. This solves two problems: All my personal data is removed, and there is no unnecessary bloat left for the new user. You could stop there, however wouldn't it be nice if all the software was up to date yet the user still got to see the intro movie and setup their own account? To do this we just create our own temporary account, install and update any software, then remove the temporary account and remove the Setup Assistant flag file so that the intro movie is played and the Setup Assistant is presented to the user when the computer is next booted. Simple.

After the fresh installation, boot up the computer and setup a demo account in Setup Assistant. Make sure you remember the short username you used. Once completed, install updates by running Software Update from the Apple () menu. At this point I also upgraded iLife. After this, restart the system in Single User Mode by holding down Command-S (⌘-S). You'll be presented with a full screen terminal in which you should type the following commands: Start with a disk check and mount it in write mode:

/sbin/fsck -y
/sbin/mount -uw

We can then delete our temporary account with the following, replacing [username] with the short username you used earlier:

rm -R /Users/[username]/
rm /var/db/dslocal/nodes/Default/users/[username].plist

And reset Setup Assistant:

rm /var/db/.AppleSetupDone

You can then shutdown the mac with:

shutdown -h now

... and you're done. Another thing you can do is ship the mac in it's original packaging, which not only ensures it gets to the buyer safely but also adds to the user experience because Apple's packaging is always so pleasant.

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