The Second Hand Mac OS

I have just got a second hand iMac (Core 2 Duo 2.4 20' Mid 2007) Which has been fully wiped. I have connected it to wifi and am trying to install OS X by using the reinstall option but when I log in to the App Store it just says item temporarily unavailable. Save up to 15% on a refurbished Mac. Tested and certified by Apple including a 1-year warranty. Free delivery and returns.

While Macs are definitely nice computers to have, not everyone can afford to buy a brand new one. Thankfully, used Macs are usually just as good as new ones, provided they have received proper care. Needless to say, putting the machine through some tests to see if it works well is recommended.

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The Second Hand Mac OS

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While physical appearance and hardware is where you should start, they are only part of a larger equation when you buy a used Mac. You also should thoroughly check the Mac’s software, especially if it has not been formatted beforehand.

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Here is a list of different aspects of the software of a used Mac that you have to double-check before sealing the deal.

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Important Note: We have already written about what aspects of the hardware you should check before getting a second-hand Mac.

1. Check for Other Users

Once you get your Mac, the first thing you should do is head to the root folder, usually named Macintosh HD (or any other name that the previous user might have given that folder) and there, check for other users under the Users folder.

If you find other users, simply head to the Mac’s Preferences and delete them from there.

2. Check for No Previous iCloud Credentials

With how ubiquitous iCloud has become among Apple users, now everyone who has an Apple device also uses an iCloud account.

Furthermore, due to the security features implemented by Apple, having a device linked to an iCloud account severely locks that device’s functionality if a previous user hasn’t signed out of iCloud before selling or giving away their device.

To check this on your secondhand Mac, head to Preferences > iCloud and see if the previous owner is still signed into their account.

3. Look for Forgotten Content

You would be surprised at how many Mac users take all the necessary measures to secure their Mac before selling it and yet forget to delete information in the most basic locations, such as the Notes or Reminders apps.

Other places to look into are mainly Apple’s default applications, like Pages, Numbers or Contacts, as well as the system’s default folders, like the Documents folder for example.

Another important folder to look into is the Applications folder, where previous users sometimes leave apps for which only they have a license.

4. Look into ‘Database’ Apps

Apple is known for constantly trying to remove file management from users, doing so in some of their most important apps, like Photos for example. These apps group files into a single Library file, which in turn takes a lot of space on the hard drive.

The main apps you should look for are iPhoto or Photos and iMovie, which place their libraries in the Pictures and Movies folders respectively.

Important Note: You can easily check for detailed information on the space of your Mac’s hard drive using great apps like Daisy Disk, which we reviewed here.

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5. Secure Sensitive Information

There is an app on the Mac that stores a ton of very sensitive information. It is Keychain Access, which is in charge of keeping user passwords and other credentials safe.

When getting a second-hand Mac, make sure that this utility is empty, since some Mac apps like Safari sometimes use information in Keychain to automatically log in to websites and other services, and you don’t want to be accidentally logged in to a stranger’s account.

Additionally, the previous user might have set up their Mac to share files and folders via the local network. So unless you want to accidentally share some important information, double-check this in the Sharing section within your Mac’s Preferences.

Lastly, FileVault is another very important element of the Mac security-wise. It is used to encrypt the content of your Mac’s hard drive and the previous user might have enabled it and then forgot about it.

Even worse, only the previous user has the password needed to disable it, so make sure you check this in the Security & Privacy section on your Mac’s Preferences panel.

6. Clean Up the Preferences Panel

One last thing you should take care of before getting your Mac is to make sure the Preferences panel is free from additional, third party utilities.

Utilities like these (flash or others) tend to expire from time to time and most likely are deeply linked to other apps on your Mac, so it is better to remove them and start from scratch, installing only the ones you want.

And there you have it. Make sure you go through all of these if you are considering getting a secondhand Mac. It might be a bit of work, but it will pay off in the long run.


The above article may contain affiliate links which help support Guiding Tech. However, it does not affect our editorial integrity. The content remains unbiased and authentic.

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Finding software for a vintage Mac is quite an undertaking. This starts with the operating system itself. Apple obviously doesn’t sell those outdated operating systems anymore. What you are left with are specialized dealers, craiglist or eBay. If you look at the prices at some good dealers like LowEndMac or Hardcoremac.com you’ll notice that we are talking serious money here. For popular PowerPC operating systems such as OS X Tiger or especially Leopard (the last OS X capable of running on PowerPC Macs) you are often looking at price tags above $200 or even $250. That in my personal opinion is just too much for an obsolete operating system, especially if you consider that unlike a PC, your old Mac initially came with an operating system that was included in its price.

If you are like me, you are left with eBay and Craiglist or their local equivalents in your country. That doesn’t mean you get your retail version of OS X or Mac OS there for cheap, but sometimes you can spot auctions or ads for far more reasonable prices like $50 or sometimes even less. You just have to spend a couple of weeks looking for a good find.

You also have to pay attention to what you are looking for. In general Apple operating systems are being offered as retail version, but also on gray disks that initially came with a Mac. These gray installation disks however do work with only a very limited selection of Macs, usually the ones they came with and maybe, just maybe and occasionally, other Macs from the same period.

I got myself OS X Leopard and Tiger (both retail) for $35 and $28 respectively, but it took close to 3 months to find them at these prices. I also snatched an old Mac OS 9 retail CD (unfortunately without the box) for mere $10 at a local store dealing in computer repairs and second hand hardware. Having both OS X Tiger and Mac OS 9 I felt I’m being covered in terms of my iMac G4. Wrong.

As it turned out, the Mac OS 9 (9.2.1) retail disk is basically too old for the iMac G4. It does boot, it even starts to launch Mac OS 9, but then the screen goes black and that’s it. Looks a lot like an issue with graphics drivers. What I would need is the original Mac OS 9 installation/restore disk that came with the iMac G4. Except I find it close to impossible to get one of those. Nobody seems to sell them and if they do, they are usually from a much never iMac G4.

If you think going to a forum and ask for help would be a good idea at this point, you are quite mistaken. I did spent some time looking into the problem and reading several related posts on various forums and what I usually found was: whenever someone came up with a problem like that rather than getting offered an image of a disk that would solve the problem he got told off followed by multiple posters telling in harsh words to not pirate software.

I am against software piracy even more than the next guy (I do make my living from creating software), but at least some common sense should be applied. Apple declared these operating systems obsolete, unsupported and doesn’t sell them anymore. At this point what I would expect is being able to download restoration disks for obsolete Macs in the support section. Unlike Windows, Mac OS and OS X are bound to Mac hardware and that’s where Apple makes its money.

What I am left with at this point with my Mac OS 9 installation is turning to torrents and hopefully find the disk I need there. Do I feel bad about? Not even a tiny bit, especially since I actually own a retail version of Mac OS 9.

This brings me to another issue. I would love to try OS X Panther, Cheetah or Jaguar on my iMac G4 just to see how they looked and felt. I do however consider paying upwards of $300 for those systems and especially for that purpose madness. Unlike OS X Tiger or Leopard, the older versions of OS X rarely show up in classifieds or on auctions. And the situation gets even worse when it comes to old software. Check eBay for very popular software like let’s say Office 2001. As I am writing this, eBay.co.uk has tons of books for Microsoft Office 2001, but the only software is an Office 2001 update CD. Finding software that is more rare than Office or games is an exercise in futility. I should know as I am trying for a couple of months now.

This is where abandonware comes in. While from a legal standpoint it’s a gray area at best, when one applies common sense to the issue it is the only viable approach available today.

I love abandonware and have been a big fan of sites offering old software and games to download. As a matter of fact, I was also professionally grateful for the service these sites provide whenever I needed to look at some of the software or games I did in the past. Even if I would find the original game somewhere in storage at the office I would still have to battle the stupid copy protection we shipped our games with. Considering I don’t have an optical drive in any of my notebooks for at least 5 years now, that would be a serious problem on its own.

The company I work at and that I am a majority owner of does not care about our old games or software. We don’t sell then, we don’t support them and many people in the team don’t even remember those products anymore. If there are sites that make those products available to fans, then we are glad about it. If there are gamers or users out there who can enjoy our old work, the better. Should we want to use one of those brands to release a sequel, we can just write those sites to take the old products down and from experience from another company I worked for I know they do it quite promptly. Everyone is happy.

Out of curiosity, over the past couple of years I asked a lot of friends in the gaming industry about their opinion on abandonware. To my surprise, most just didn’t give a damn about the subject. Some were fans of it like I am. Few didn’t like the idea, but couldn’t be bothered to do anything about it either. Very few were really glad those sites exists, because their company does not have the one or other game anymore. They never bothered to transfer their products to new storage medias and put them into their backups. These games would otherwise be lost forever.

With more and more companies taking their old games and developing remakes for mobile (iOS and Android), the situation in terms of abandonware might see a change in the future. Until this happens though, let’s just enjoy it.

Just google mac abandonware and you’ll find the major sites on the first result page.

If you have been using computers for a couple of decades or even longer, you are likely to re-discover software and games you used and played in the past. Chances are you payed for many of the ones you downloading today in your past. I know I do.

I slowly start to seriously regret junking my large game collection a decade ago when I moved from one country to another. I do believe games with their original disks and boxes will become proper collector items within the next decade. Maybe not as large as comics are today, but what comics were for the last generation, computer games are for the current one. On the other hand half of my games back then were already so old, the diskettes could not be read reliable anymore. I did keep the boxes in good condition though…

My favorite site for mac software is Macintosh Garden. When it comes to old games, I usually look at My Abandonware and play those oldies on my modern Macs using Boxer. It is basically a Mac port of DOSBox wrapped into a beautifully made user interface making setting those games up and running them incredibly simple.

Now, some very popular oldies cannot be found on abandonware sites anymore, because they again can be bought. You can find them on Steam occasionally, but there is one site you want to put into your bookmarks: gog.com. What those guys do is they license old games, remove copy protections making these games DRM free and modify them to run on recent computers. Then they sell them at bargain prices, usually only for a couple of bucks. Like Steam, they often have great special offers. They currently offer more than 600 games for PC, but their Mac games section is growing nicely, too.