apple newbie, quick question

[coreyb]

my cousin came over tonight, wants me to reformat her apple laptop. i unfortunately have no experience with macs and would like some kind of guide on how to do this. it was/is not as easy to reformatting a windows pc for me.

thanks in advance.

corey.

 

[coreyb]

she isnt running mavericks btw,

also, she is hot as hell and i have to have this figured out tonight!

 

[coreyb]

why is this so ez on microsoft?

go to store, download iso, convert to usb and done deal...why cant i do this on this mac? im willing to pay for it!?

 

[ChAoTiCpInOy]

What kind of Apple laptop is it? Apple logo in the top left. More info. Hardware Overview: Model Name and Model Identifier.

http://www.everymac.com/mac-identif...odel-id-machine-model-for-identification.html

 

[jkroeder]

she isnt running mavericks btw,

also, she is hot as hell and i have to have this figured out tonight!

but... she's your cousin 😵

Either way, it's very easy on a Mac. While booting up the laptop, hold down the Command + R keys

 

[coreyb]

hey it doesnt matter, if you saw her you would understand...

i tried command + r and no go.....

 

[coreyb]

its 5 year old mac AA1181

 

[ChAoTiCpInOy]

It looks like the latest version of OS X that you can use on that Macbook is OS X 10.7 "Lion". Your best bet would be to find the disk image somewhere and burn it on a disk or put it on a usb drive and then boot from the disk image and then wipe the drive and start over.

 

[MotionMan]

It looks like the latest version of OS X that you can use on that Macbook is OS X 10.7 "Lion". Your best bet would be to find the disk image somewhere and burn it on a disk or put it on a usb drive and then boot from the disk image and then wipe the drive and start over.

Then post pix of your hot cousin.

MotionMan

I know you're just trying to be funny, but that's really not appropriate for this forum
-ViRGE

 

[RampantAndroid]

It is easy...on newer macbooks just boot into recovery and it'll download an install image for you.

 

[dave_the_nerd]

It looks like the latest version of OS X that you can use on that Macbook is OS X 10.7 "Lion". Your best bet would be to find the disk image somewhere and burn it on a disk or put it on a usb drive and then boot from the disk image and then wipe the drive and start over.

I have an A1181 with 10.9 on it. It depends, they recycled the model number for several machines with different guts and the same outsides. They got different version numbers. Mine's a Macbook 5,2. Everything from a MacBook 1,1 to a 5,2 was an A1181. Except for the Macbook 5,1 which was the original Unibody. The 6,1 and 7,1 followed, until they were discontinued in favor of the Macbook Air.

Except the A1185, which was the A1181 in black plastic. (Same, otherwise. I keep meaning to buy a 1185 keyboard one of these days and swap the keycaps. It'd look awesome.)

None of them, however, support cloud boot, wifi boot, or internet recovery.

As for 10.8 or 10.9 compatibility, the easiest way to tell is the video card. If it's a Geforce 9400M, yes. Intel GMA950 or X3100, no.

Anyway, OP:

Find another mac. Log into App Store, buy Lion (Or Mavericks, depending), download, use SuperDuper to clone to a thumb drive. Insert thumb drive, turn on old laptop. Hold down option/alt key, boot from thumb drive. Select HDD, reformat, reinstall.

Is your HDD working? If not, it's a standard 2.5" SATA HDD. Replacement directions are on iFixit.

Cousins, hot or not, frequently have hot friends who are not your cousins, and know you well enough to be effective wing(wo)men. Get to work, don't diddle your cousin.

All the problems in this thread are now solved. Good night.