if you buy a new macbook from apple that is not on the refurbished store, could it have been once used and returned

Macs that have been sold as new but are returned within the 14 day period are refurbished by Apple and subsequently offered for sale on their Certified Refurbished products page.

In the US, the uniform commercial code says that all stuff, even computers, that has ever been sold at retail is NOT new, and can not be sold as new.

Apple does not deliberately violate those laws just to make another buck.

As John Galt points out, Apple has a whole online store where it re-markets those and other 'nearly new' units generated during the course of it large-scale business. They are always identified as refurbished and re-certified to the same cometic and operational standards. They would otherwise be indistinguishable from new, but they are never represented as new.

¿Did you buy DIRECT from Apple, or from a Reseller?

I highly recommend checking out the Certified Refurbished page John Galt mentioned. If the model you want is available there, you can save a couple of hundred dollars. Things you buy from there come in a plain brown box, but that's the only discernable difference. They look like new, work like new and have the same warranty as a new item.

Grant Bennet-Alder wrote:

Certified Refurbished have one other minor difference in addition to the plain brown wrapper.

If the unit is dead-on-arrival, or needs exchange within the initial 14-day window, it can NOT be exchanged for NEW at an Apple Store. Instead, it must be sent back to the refurbishment center from which it came. After 14 days, wverything is the same as for new.

That's good to know. And it makes sense. There would be people who would try to beat the system by buying re-furbished and returning for new.

Certified Refurbished have one other minor difference in addition to the plain brown wrapper.

If the unit is dead-on-arrival, or needs exchange within the initial 14-day window, it can NOT be exchanged for NEW at an Apple Store. Instead, it must be sent back to the refurbishment center from which it came. After 14 days, wverything is the same as for new.

I was surprised to discover units shipped to me in Suburban Boston USA, were shipped from a center in Pennsylvania. This leads me to believe there may be more than one refurbishment center in the US.