Hi all, I am not extremely well versed in the Apple ecosystem, but recently I was able to acquire a 2018 MacBook Pro from my company’s surplus and wanted to play around with it. However, when I go to do a recovery on it, it forces me to connect to the company’s device management and installs a bunch of junk I don’t want. I spoke to our IT, and they said they won’t remove it from the device management pool until it is out of their warranty period which evidently is still a year or so.
My question is, if I were to be able to install from USB instead of from the internet, would it allow me to bypass the device management, or will it still prompt once I’ve got everything installed and connected?
If I CAN install from USB, how would I go about getting a Ventura install image without another Mac to download from? I currently only have Windows systems otherwise.
Essentially I am trying to see if it is possible to use it without the device management stuff, because if not I am just going to return it to our surplus.
Thanks!
Yes, it is possible, but it requires that you use a Monterey (or earlier) USB installer. A Ventura USB install won’t work; Apple explicitly “fixed” this workaround in Ventura.
Follow the instructions here: https://gist.github.com/henrik242/65d26a7deca30bdb9828e183809690bd
Essentially, what you’re doing here is blocking the machine from ever connecting to the Apple MDM servers. Once you’ve completed the Monterey installation it is safe to upgrade to Ventura.