Can I Repurpose a Corporate Macbook?

[JohnnyRod]

My wife has the opportunity to purchase an old Macbook from her company (a large employer) at a very good price. The company has a deal with Apple to provide thousands of Macbooks to employees. These come loaded with software, including system configurations, that are specific to the company, and which exercise a level of security and corporate-specific controls and functions which would make it non-viable as a personal machine. Will wiping it to "factory settings" and then building it up turn it into a standard Mac, or is it possible that the reset files on the hard drive have been modified such that it would retain its corporate-specific flavor? If so, can one get a dvd which can then be used to reset the machine to generic factory standards? I don't want to buy it, no matter how good a deal, if it's forever going to act like its corporate version. Thanks !

 

[Slartibart]

if the Macbook is registered and administered with a MDM by the company, they have to remove the device from their DEP first. Otherwise it will call home to Apple and check ownership and it will check in with the registered MDM profile every reboot or installation.

 

[JohnnyRod]

if the Macbook is registered and administered with a MDM by the company, they have to remove the device from their DEP first. Otherwise it will call home to Apple and check ownership and it will check in with the registered MDM profile every reboot or installation.

The company support for its Macs is so spurious and chaotic that we wouldn't know how to go about finding a person to actually do this (if it IS registered and administered with a MDM by the company). If that's the case and it's going to cause a problem in the ongoing use of the device, we'll probably pass. Is there any way around that? Or is the actual serial number itself somehow tied to the MDM? Is there a way to see if the Mac is administered that way in the machine itself?

It's a great deal that I'd hate to pass up, but we only have another week or so to decide whether we want to buy it. The reason it's even available to be purchased is because the company is so bad about administering and maintaining its Macs (most employees get a Windows PC, and one has to explicitly request a Mac which then has to be approved). So, in summary:

1. Can we look to see if the Mac is administered with an MDM?
2. If it is, is there a way around that that doesn't involve having to find someone in another part of the country who knows what they're doing and is willing to do it?
3. If it isn't administered with an MDM, can we then assume that we can just reset it to generic factory settings ?

Thanks so much!

 

[Slartibart]

if you open the device profiles on the Mac you should see something like this:

should tell you mostly what you are allowed to do or not. Still the device can be restricted by the company at any moment in the future remotely and there is nothing you‘ll can do about it.
It is slightly strange that, if the company has thousands of Macbook in Apple’s MDM deployed, it is difficult to find an admin who can remove a device from the DEP.

 

[JohnnyRod]

if you open the device profiles on the Mac you should see something like this:

View attachment 1876025

should tell you mostly what you are allowed to do or not. Still the device can be restricted by the company at any moment in the future remotely and there is nothing you‘ll can do about it.
It is slightly strange that, if the company has thousands of Macbook in Apple’s MDM deployed, it is difficult to find an admin who can remove a device from the DEP.

I agree. My calculations were based on tens of thousands of employees, each of whom has a company-provided computer, and my assumption that at least 5% of them had Macs, but that’s complete conjecture on my part.

When an employee gets a PC, it’s fully loaded and everything works, but if you’d requested and been approved for a Mac, like my wife was, they don’t tell you that you’re responsible for downloading and installing all their proprietary and required software. Everything works smoothly on their PC’s, but everything requires hunting down a Mac IT person to provide the right files, sites, codes etc for the Mac. Now that my wife is eligible for a new machine, she’s just gonna go with the pc, but we have a chance to buy her old Macbook Pro. It’s a pain for her to find the right person to do something that they regularly do. I can’t imagine how hard it would be to find the right person to do something they almost never do. So, if it’s not MDM’ed, we’ll buy it, but if it is, back it goes.

 

[DeltaMac]

One simple check is to take a look in the System Preferences. (You would need to boot the MBPro up to see that...)
Do you see a "Profiles" or a "Profiles & Device Management" pane?
If neither of those exist in System Preferences, then it's much less likely that the MacBook Pro is under management.
Maybe this article will give you more asssurance about that...

https://www.imobie.com/iphone-unlocker/how-to-delete-an-mdm-profile-on-mac.htm

But, if the Profiles don't exist, then your next step should be erasing the drive, then reinstalling whatever version of macOS is supported by the MacBook Pro. There's lots of threads that offer tips on doing that, how to download macOS, how to create a bootable installer, etc.

 

[Fishrrman]

OP wrote:
"The company support for its Macs is so spurious and chaotic that we wouldn't know how to go about finding a person to actually do this (if it IS registered and administered with a MDM by the company). If that's the case and it's going to cause a problem in the ongoing use of the device, we'll probably pass. "

Don't waste your time on one of these.
If you can't get the company control software removed from it, it's NEVER going to work right.

Buy a new one, or an Apple-refurbished one when it becomes available.
It could save you a lot of trouble.

Choose wisely.