I have inherited an imac due to a bereavement and need to change the apple id to my own, how do I go about it. I have all the original receipts as well as proof that I have legitimately come to own it Do I need to reformat it and if so how.
iMac, Mac OS X (10.7.5)
appleID's are not as strongly tried to macs as they are ios devices
you can just make a new user
with computers it's a multiuser system so each member of the family can have each their users and they live separate lives
so if you can login you can make a new user
if you don't know the password
Change or reset a user account password on your Mac - Apple Support
Ok thanks for that info. So if I create an account in my name I can go to the apple store and buy apps using my apple ID and password from my other apple devices like my i pad.
Maturecheese wrote:
So if I create an account in my name I can go to the apple store and buy apps using my apple ID and password from my other apple devices like my i pad.
Yes you can. Just make sure that you are logged in to the App Store and iTunes App Store with the account you want to use.
Once again thank you. I will still want to get the mac reformatted at some point though and although I have done this loads of times on a pc I have never done it on a mac so I will probably have to take it to a shop to get done as It looks a bit more complicated than a pc reformat.
Reformatting and re-installing the OS is s simple process, but you will need a reliable (and preferably fast) connection to the internet.
Here are some instructions for re-installing the OS:
OS X: About OS X Recovery - Apple Support
Internet Recovery will re-install the OS that shipped with the Mac when new, assuming it was OS X 10.7 (Lion) or later. Once installed, you can then upgrade for free to OS X 10.10 (Yosemite) using your own Apple ID via the Mac App Store.
Thanks yet again🙂 I will look into it in the near future although I did try updating to Yoshmite 2 days ago (after setting up a user account in my name) and it froze on 2 minutes left. i took a chance and used cmd ctrl power button and luckily got away with it. When I reformat I assume it will wipe the previous owner from the system completely and go back to the factory state.
Inherited Imac
