Hi former MacAddicts! I just got a free 2014 iMac! It’s my first “Mac” since 1997 (my last “Mac” was a PowerComputing machine which was on sale for only $1900 because Apple was revoking their cloning license because cloners made better, faster and cheaper Macs than Apple while they were allowed to do so). Neither of these machines are really Macs as the true Mac died by the end of the 1990s when Steve killed them off and replaced it with BSD/Mach. We know the story.

Anyway this 2014 iMac is a Nice piece of hardware even today, but unfortunately the previous owner has done a factory reset on it and the OS is badly out of date. So naturally, the first thing to do, as I’ve learned, is to upgrade to Big Sur. But, there is yet another problem here that Apple won’t help me solve. Apple requires you to attain an “AppleID” in order to even be able to download an OS upgrade! This is, of course, totally ridiculous. After spending 3 hours trying to get their website to provide an Apple ID, it became clear that they will not provide it to people with certain email addresses. Once you get over the e-mail address hurdle, Apple wants your PHONE NUMBER. Ok here’s my number. Nope! That doesn’t work either. It’s likely because they want a phone number to trace to a major carrier like AT&T, Sprint, T-mobile or Verizon. Everything else get’s rejected. Their tech support was completely useless in resolving this. End of story on AppleID. I will not be able to attain one which means NO BIG SUR OS UPGRADE for me.

So what is clear here is that the best course of action is to simply install Windows or Ubuntu on this baby using Bootcamp. Therefore my questions for you Mac Veterans here are:

  • Can I just install Windows on this machine using Bootcamp without upgrading to BigSur?
  • Can I just remove “Mac” OS entirely from this machine? If so, what is the easiest way to do this and install Windows or Ubuntu on it?

cheers!

  • obvs@talk.macstack.netEnglish
    1·
    11 months ago

    You may be able to get it to download Big Sur by forcing the installation of macOS through internet recovery:

    1. Restart your Mac.

    2. Immediately press and hold one of the following key combinations until you see the startup screen:

      Option-Command-R: Start up from macOS Recovery over the internet. Use this key combination to reinstall macOS and upgrade to the latest version of macOS that’s compatible with your Mac.

    • obvs@talk.macstack.netEnglish
      1·
      11 months ago

      Some other things to look into:

      You may also be able to use OpenCore Legacy Patcher to download and install newer versions of macOS onto the Mac.

      If you really want to install Windows or Linux, you should be able to install it natively, using a USB installer or booting from an install DVD.

  • Metacell@talk.macstack.netEnglish
    1·
    10 months ago

    It’s possible the previous owner did not release their AppleID ownership of this device before passing it on. Just conjecture…but I’d hope you would get some kind of message telling you that. This mac is old enough that the last bootcamp drivers Apple put out won’t support it, but if you have the ones that came with the default OS for that model, you should still be able to install Windows…but you would need an installation disk for Windows 7 or maybe 8, which was current at the time. Windows 10 came out in 2015. As for removing Mac OS completely…I don’t know. I don’t think you can just install another OS directly onto a mac without special installers running in Mac OS. Although their be some Linux distros that made special installation disks for macs.