Hello everyone. My friend asked me to install Windows on his new Mac Air. He was OK with swiping the mac os and reinstalling everything from scratch. His Air was already linked to his apple id and had "activation lock". To remove it, i asked him to remove this laptop from devices list in "Find my iphone" area of his icloud account. I erased the disk hoping to go through internet recovery as i've done many tiems before, but here i was stuck in a loop: mac starts the internet recovery (spinning globe) for about 10 min, then it boots into the recovery assistant mode and suggests to enter the new apple id. After i do that, the only option i have is to "reboot", and after reboot everything starts over. This "recovery assistant" mode is very limited, too, lacking usual disk utility, startup security utility etc etc. The only options it has are to erase the disk or choose boot volume. So i decided to avoid internet recovery altogether and made a bootable usb drive with Mac OS Catalina. Now i get a different error - security settings do not allow this Mac to use an external startup disk. And to fix it i am suggested to - guess what - change settings in the startup security utility which i have no way of accessing. So basically i have i laptop without any kind of OS now and i'm completely lost.
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Unable to recover Mac OS on latest Macbook Air.
- Thread starter Abe Babel
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A new MacBook Air would have a T2 Security Chip.
Some information about T2, if you are not familiar:
support.apple.com
support.apple.com
Normally the security settings (Security Utility) are accessed from Recovery (Cmd+r), but since that has been erased, I do not personally know how to recover unless Apple assists (as Fisherman recommended).
Some information about T2, if you are not familiar:
Mac computers with the Apple T2 Security Chip - Apple Support
Learn which Mac computers have the Apple T2 Security Chip.
About Startup Security Utility on a Mac with the Apple T2 Security Chip - Apple Support
Use Startup Security Utility to make sure that your Mac always starts up from your designated startup disk, and always from a legitimate, trusted operating system.
Normally the security settings (Security Utility) are accessed from Recovery (Cmd+r), but since that has been erased, I do not personally know how to recover unless Apple assists (as Fisherman recommended).