Mac question

Hardware and technical stuff
1

I got asked a question today at my temp job. One of the first year law students had their new Mac Air laptops stolen. No problem I said, just utilize the “find my mac” option with Apple and it will take you and the cops right to the person. Here’s the hitch. This laptop wasn’t password protected and he thinks the thief will have reformatted and reset the Mac to factory defaults. Whoever swiped this Mac had instant administrator privileges, so is he screwed? I’m hoping that “Find My Mac” goes by the computers MAC address which I don’t believe gets reset (although I could be wrong.) I don’t have very much Mac experience so I told him I would check around and see what I found out.

Thoughts?

2

Whether or not the login is an autologin isn’t important–what’s important is if the laptop was setup with an Apple ID. If it was, then it may be possible to track it.

There’s nothing to check out: just login to the Find My Mac site with the Apple ID associated with the laptop. If that was never set up, lesson learned.

3

Yes, tell him to log into icloud.com, don’t wait any further. It’s possible his Mac will still show up even if the hard drive was reformatted. The last known location should still be there for up to 24 hours.