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Did i get a good deal?

C

cammykool

macrumors regular
Original poster
Sep 24, 2011
212
25
Anaheim, California
I just got a (pretty nicely speed from what i can tell) mid 2012 MBA

it is the BTO one with the i7 and 8gb of ram (yet still only the 120gb SSD)

Specs of the Air:
qNuBsIG.jpg


bVjrwqy.png


i traded it without a charger (fortunately i had one) for a HP Pavilion 14-ab166us

Specs of the HP:
CJFrl7f.png


the HP had a broad well i3 and 6gb of ram win10 and a 500gb mechanical HDD

(i guess I'm just trying to justify the trade to myself) what do you guys think?
 
Very nice, did you look at the 13" MBP retina models before buying the Air ? And what really was the deciding factor in going with the air?
 
Sorry but ...

First, why the heck would someone trade it in without a charger??
Second, why the heck would anyone trade in MBA for older and at least 2 times cheaper windows laptop, which happens to be piece of crap in all fairness?

On the other hand, that HP is not that bad, considering that its CPU is only a little (~20%) more than precisely 2 times slower...

But seriously, you either traded it with some not tech-savvy family member/friend and came here to brag about it, or you are in possession of a stolen Macbook.

None of these scenarios are noble unfortunately.
 
Last edited:
SusanK said:
Serial number is displayed on first post. Doubt it's stolen.
Click to expand...

How is the serial going to prove that it's not a stolen macbook air? All the serial does is it tells you the warranty and maybe the specs of the macbook. The serial never says if the macbook is stolen or not.
 
I called local PD and they said the SN was clean.

The guy who traded it to me said he doesn't like macs and for this air without a charger not knowing the status on it. So because i needed a Mac for work i took the chance and traded him. He thought it was some low end c2d or something. When i learned it was an i7 i asked the guy if he wanted to swap back. He said no. He likes Windows better.
 
cammykool said:
I called local PD and they said the SN was clean.

The guy who traded it to me said he doesn't like macs and for this air without a charger not knowing the status on it. So because i needed a Mac for work i took the chance and traded him. He thought it was some low end c2d or something. When i learned it was an i7 i asked the guy if he wanted to swap back. He said no. He likes Windows better.
Click to expand...

HAHA at least you took action but I'm afraid your local PD doesn't have all the stolen notebook serials that are stolen (I don't even think they have 5% of it). That sounded like a BS story that the guy made up.
 
cammykool said:
What can i do to check if it is stolen.
Click to expand...

There isn't a way to check if it's stolen or not. Unless the local PD has the serial number and it's not very likely that they do. You just have to use your best judgement.

From the given story, it sounded like your air is a stolen one though.
 
mountain said:
There isn't a way to check if it's stolen or not. Unless the local PD has the serial number and it's not very likely that they do. You just have to use your best judgement.

From the given story, it sounded like your air is a stolen one though.
Click to expand...
Well damn. What should be done about it then.
 
I don't really anything about that particular MBA, but what is it they say? "If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is"
 
SusanK said:
Disregard posters who insist that a computer is stolen without any supporting documentation of that opinion.
Click to expand...
I mean the machine wasn't wiped when j got it but he knew the laptops filevault password and admin password. So that seemed legit enough to me that he knew all of that stuff. And he stuck around to make sure i started the OSX reinstall as he didn't have the charger. Him knowing the credentials was enough for me at that time.
 
The worst part is that there is actually a easy solution for this to prevent questioning if something is stolen and even substantially reduce the stealing itself.

When macbook connects to internet after fresh OS X install, it simply needs to check if device with this particular S/N was recently tied to another iCloud account and if that account requested locking/wiping the macbook. If it did, then immediately issue hard lock and send a code for unlocking it as well as location of device to email of the rightful owner.

And you shouldn't be able to simultaneously tie the same device (SN) to multiple iCloud accounts in the first place.


The only problem with this for Apple,
less lost/stolen macs = less macs purchased. :)
 
Last edited:
SmOgER said:
The worst part is that there is actually a easy solution for this to prevent questioning if something is stolen and even substantially reduce the stealing itself.

When macbook connects to internet after fresh OS X install, it simply needs to check if device with this particular S/N was recently tied to another iCloud account and if that account requested locking/wiping the macbook. If it did, then immediately issue hard lock and send a code for unlocking it as well as location of device to email of the rightful owner.

And you shouldn't be able to simultaneously tie the same device (SN) to multiple iCloud accounts in the first place.


The only problem with this for Apple,
less lost/stolen macs = less macs purchased. :)
Click to expand...

Would this impact returned Macs? Also how would this work on Macs with more than one user account?

Thanks!
 
SusanK said:
Would this impact returned Macs? Also how would this work on Macs with more than one user account?

Thanks!
Click to expand...

You would simply remove device from your iCloud account before returning it.

As for the several user accounts - good point.
I guess one way to deal with this would be to set one iCloud account as main one (from which you could lock/wipe your device) and treat all the other ones as additional ones that still have all the options except for wiping/locking.
So this way you couldn't set another iCloud account as "main" one until you removed the old one and OS X got ''go ahead" response from Apple servers after checking S/N.

There could be many ways to go about this and to be frank most of them technically aren't complicated at all.

But since we do not work at Apple, that's only talk... o_O
 
Last edited:
SmOgER said:
You would simply remove device from your iCloud account before returning it.

As for the several user accounts - good point.
I guess one way to deal with this would be to set one iCloud account as main one (from which you could lock/wipe your device) and treat all the other ones as additional ones that still have all the options except for wiping/locking.
So this way you couldn't set another iCloud account as "main" one until you removed the old one and OS X got ''go ahead" response from Apple servers after checking S/N.

There could be many ways to go about this and to be frank most of them technically aren't complicated at all.

But since we do not work at Apple, that's only talk... o_O
Click to expand...

Thank you for the reply. Interesting ideas. I think removing iCloud is one of the instructions for selling or transferring a Mac. Don't really remember. I only did it once and followed the info I printed out from Apple's site.

Thanks again!
 
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