Remove Apple ID and upgrade older iMac

I understand your former boss's intentions. They are all above board and honorable, but you are asking for trouble by effectively inheriting his Apple Account (formerly known as Apple ID). At best, you should not use it.

Why? To Apple, You = your Apple Account. You are one and the same. That will definitely create problems for you if you ever need to avail yourself of not only support for that iMac, but support for any of the products or services it uses including its operating system (macOS), to say nothing of its email accounts, Music, Messages... it's a very long list.

I strongly encourage you to follow Chattanoogan's recommendation to follow What to do before you sell, give away, trade in, or recycle your Mac - Apple Support. Since you are now in possession of that Mac's Apple Account information, you can comply with all of it, and you shouldn't need to ask your elderly boss for help.

It’s odd — and possibly suspicious — that he would give you his credentials, but here’s what HE should have done prior to selling it to you.

What to do before you sell, give away, trade in, or recycle your Mac - Apple Support

You can find the detailed tech specs, user guide, and the “latest” MacOS capability of your iMac here:

Identify your iMac model - Apple Support

Also note that your kids should have their own Apple Accounts AND iMac logins. Don’t let them use yours.

Create an Apple Account for your child - Apple Support

Add a user or group on Mac - Apple Support

Being the 8 gigabyte hard disk drive configuration, and here with an even-slower-than-the-usually-slow i5 processor, this model iMac already has some performance-information available:

Why is my hard disk drive iMac so slow? - Apple Community

And I’d absolutely want to reset this iMac before handing it over to kids, lest there be issues or problems or — and whoever it might be aimed at — could conceivably have stalker or spyware or malware installed.

Until reset, apps will be associated with the “wrong” Apple Account too, which only adds to the mess.

Reset the iMac before use, and set up a kids’ account and set up family sharing, and lock down purchases, prevent logging out of the Apple Account associated with your re-established Activation Lock (common “freebie” scam), lock down Apple Pay, require approval before accepting Apple Cash transfers (or block it), and the rest of what is involved in keeping the kids from expensive, or trouble, or expensive trouble.

Starting points for reading:

• Create an Apple Account for your child - Apple Support
• Family Sharing overview for kids and teens - Apple Support
• Set up and use Apple Cash Family - Apple Support

Ninoshk wrote:

Also, I would like to know what kind of upgrades I can do on this older model. This will be use by my 5 and 7 year old kids and maybe my teen to play music while we are cooking or quick online searches.

Here is the specs:

1.6 GHz Dual-Core Intel Core i5

8GB 1867 MHz DDR3

Graphics 6000 1536 MB

That's not much to go on. A lot of iMacs had 8 GB of RAM or had Core i5 processors. What determines if - and how far - you can upgrade is the Mac's specific model and hardware model year. You can usually find this in the About This Mac dialog in the Apple () menu.

That said, MacTracker shows only a single model of iMac that matches "6000".

That model would be the iMac (21.5-inch, Late 2015). The 1.6 GHz variant had a 1.6 GHz Dual-Core Intel Core i5 (5250U) processor, and an Intel HD Graphics 6000 integrated GPU that could use up to 1.5 GB of main memory. Memory on this particular 21.5" iMac was not only sealed in, but soldered in – there is no way to upgrade it.

It originally came with OS X 10.11 (El Capitan) and can be upgraded as far as macOS 12.* (Monterey). Monterey is not one of the "most recent three" but is enough to run current versions of the Firefox Web browser. The Music application in Monterey should be recent enough to let you import music from CDs (if you have an external optical drive), purchase music from the iTunes Store, or subscribe to the Apple Music streaming service (if you would like to do that).

How to download and install macOS - Apple Support

A bit of identification:

1.6 GHz Dual-Core Intel Core i5

That processor info indicates this is one of the somewhat hobbled "educational/business" iMacs. The graphics hardware data identifies it as a Late 2015 model.

These were made for price-sensitive bulk buyers. To reach the US$200 savings goal at the time yours was made, Apple used a slow, 2-core laptop-class processor, where the regular consumer model that year had a faster 4-core desktop-class processor. Yours also got a lower-resolution display, not a bad one though.

Most had slow mechanical hard drives. That more than the cost-saving processor makes them feel really slow in use. It is also the reason many owners of these come here wondering why their iMac is slow.

It can run up to macOS 12 "Monterey" but that is now four OS versions behind the current one. Some apps like MS 365 (Office 365) will not longer run on Monterey.

It could worl as a kids' computer but it is now 11 years old and was never built for speed.

There are two passwords in play here. If the previous owner truly gave you his Apple ID (now called Apple Account) credentials then you have access to all his data. On the other if he gave you the login password for that iMac then you may still have issues trying to erase everything and use it.

So are you absolutely sure the password you were given was for their Apple Account? Or was it the login password instead?

One more thing to add to this informative thread.

Don’t — repeat DON’T — be tempted to cut corners and simply change the existing iMac’s account username …

e.g. from “Old Boss” to “Kids”

… changing user names so has a long history of creating very difficult to resolve problems in the MacOS.

Do it “right” from the start; properly establish your Kid’s Apple Accounts now … followed by your and then their separate and unique iMac user accounts …

… making sure that only YOU are the administrator …

… and you’ll thank yourself in the years to come for the problems and frustrations avoided.

John Galt wrote:

I understand your former boss's intentions. They are all above board and honorable, but you are asking for trouble by effectively inheriting his Apple Account (formerly known as Apple ID). At best, you should not use it.

…

I strongly encourage you to follow Chattanoogan's recommendation to follow What to do before you sell, give away, trade in, or recycle your Mac - Apple Support. Since you are now in possession of that Mac's Apple Account information, you can comply with all of it, and you shouldn't need to ask your elderly boss for help.

+1.

I would add that once the OP properly sets up the Mac with their own Apple ID – or an Apple ID that they create for a child, and add to a Family Sharing group, they should contact the former boss, to let the former boss know that the OP has no more need to access that Apple Account, and that the former boss should change the password on that account to something only he knows.

How to create a new Apple Account - Apple Support

Create an Apple Account for your child - Apple Support

I'm thinking that the OP might want to set up one or more separate Apple Accounts for the children so that things such as his or her photos in iCloud Photos, and files in iCloud Drive, don't show up on the iMac where young kids might accidentally delete them while playing around.

Re: “… I'm thinking that the OP might want to set up one or more separate Apple Accounts for the children …”

+1

It’s only a matter of time before they’re going to have iPhone and/or iPads … get them started-out on the “right foot” now.