MacBook Intake & Assessment Workflow

Goal

Standardize intake and hardware assessment for MacBooks in unknown states while minimizing setup time.

At-a-Glance Workflow

Receive MacBook
    ↓
Physical inspection
    ↓
Can access desktop?
    ├─ YES → Gather battery data immediately
    │          using system_profiler SPPowerDataType
    │
    └─ NO → Boot Recovery
               ↓
        Gather hardware info via Terminal
               ↓
        Attempt ioreg battery read
               ↓
        Battery data available?
            ├─ YES → Finish intake
            │
            └─ NO → Temporary account or
                     external boot environment
                     for full battery metrics

Each step above maps to a section below:

Table of Contents

• 1. Initial Physical Inspection
• 2. Determine Device State
• 3. Recovery Workflow
• 4. Activation Lock & MDM Checks
• 5. Firmware Password Unlock (Intel only)
• 6. Battery Health Strategy
• 7. Apple Silicon vs Intel Notes
• 8. Common Terminal Commands
• 9. Recommended Intake Data Fields

1. Initial Physical Inspection

Before Powering On

Record:

• Cosmetic condition
• Screen damage
• Keyboard condition
• Missing screws
• Signs of liquid damage
• Engraving/stickers
• Charger included?
• SSD removed?

Quick checks:

• Does it power on?
• Does it chime?
• Backlight?
• Trackpad click?
• Fan spin?

Visual Identification Clues

Before powering on, these visual cues narrow down the model:

Then continue:

• If device boots normally → 2. Determine Device State
• If device does NOT boot → boot Recovery or Diagnostics first

2. Determine Device State

Scenario A — Welcome / Setup Screen

Examples:

• Country selection
• Hello animation
• Setup Assistant

Recommended path:

1. DO NOT complete setup yet
2. Boot into Recovery
3. Gather hardware data from Terminal
4. Decide whether deeper testing is needed

Continue here: → 3. Recovery Workflow

Scenario B — Existing User Desktop

Examples:

• Already logged in
• Existing account available
• Password known

Recommended path:

1. Open About This Mac (Apple menu) for fast identification
2. Gather battery data from System Settings or Terminal
3. Run quick hardware checks
4. Optionally reboot to Recovery for consistency

Scenario C — Locked / Unknown Password

Recommended path:

1. Boot Recovery
2. Gather hardware data
3. Evaluate Activation Lock / MDM status
4. Decide whether to erase

Continue here: → 3. Recovery Workflow

3. Recovery Workflow

Enter Recovery Mode

Intel Macs

1. Turn the Mac on (or restart it) and immediately press and hold Command (⌘) + R — start holding right after pressing power, before/during the startup chime, not after the screen lights up.
2. Keep holding both keys until the Apple logo or a spinning globe appears, then release. Don't let go at the chime — too early and it boots normally.
3. Wait for the macOS Utilities window to load.

If a firmware password is set, a padlock prompt appears instead of the Apple logo — enter the password to continue (see §5 Firmware Password Unlock).

Related combinations (held the exact same way — press immediately, release at the Apple logo/globe):

• Command + R — built-in Recovery; the latest macOS that was installed on this Mac.
• Option + Command + R — internet Recovery; upgrades to the latest macOS this Mac supports.
• Option + Shift + Command + R — internet Recovery; the macOS the Mac shipped with (or the closest still available).

Apple Silicon

• Press and hold the power button until "Loading startup options" appears
• Release the power button
• Click Options, then click Continue
• If prompted, select a volume and enter the admin password

Open Terminal

Recovery Menu: Utilities → Terminal

Core Intake Commands

Device Identifier

sysctl -n hw.model

Record it exactly as surfaced — e.g. MacBookAir8,1, no spaces around the comma and matching the original casing. The model lookup keys on this exact string.

CPU

sysctl machdep.cpu.brand_string

Output looks like Intel(R) Core(TM) i5-8210Y CPU @ 1.60GHz. Record the processor number — the token right after Core(TM), e.g. i5-8210Y (tier + SKU + suffix). Drop the Intel(R) Core(TM) prefix and the trailing CPU @ …GHz.

RAM

sysctl hw.memsize

hw.memsize returns raw bytes (e.g. 17179869184), not GB. Match that number against the Size reference to read off the RAM size — no manual math needed.

Serial Number

ioreg -l | grep -i IOPlatformSerialNumber

Storage Size

diskutil info disk0 | grep "Disk Size"

Disk Size reports the raw formatted capacity, which reads a few percent under the marketed size — e.g. 121.3 GB for a 128 GB drive. Round up to the nearest standard capacity and record that:

Recovery Battery Assessment

Fastest Reliable Battery Command

ioreg -rc AppleSmartBattery | egrep "DesignCapacity|MaxCapacity|CycleCount"

DesignCapacity, MaxCapacity, and CycleCount are field names in the ioreg output — each line reports the key followed by its numeric value (e.g. "MaxCapacity" = 6200). On Apple Silicon the same command also surfaces an AppleRawMaxCapacity line (the MaxCapacity pattern matches it as a substring) — you'll need it below. Read the values off these lines:

• DesignCapacity
• MaxCapacity
• AppleRawMaxCapacity (Apple Silicon only)
• CycleCount

Interpret the capacity values

The unit MaxCapacity uses depends on the Mac — read the output, not the model, to tell which case you're in:

• MaxCapacity in the thousands (typically 4000–8000), no AppleRawMaxCapacity line → pre-T2 Intel (2017 & older). MaxCapacity is raw mAh; compute health with the formula below.
• MaxCapacity ≤ 100 → it's a normalized 0–100 percentage, reported by both T2 Intel and Apple Silicon. Handle the two differently:
  • T2 Intel (2018–2020): record that percentage directly as battery health.
  • Apple Silicon (M1+, 2020+): don't trust the percentage — on these Macs MaxCapacity is commonly pinned at/near 100 and ignores real wear. Use the AppleRawMaxCapacity line (raw mAh) and compute health from AppleRawMaxCapacity / DesignCapacity with the formula below.

To confirm the era instead of inferring it from the output, see §7: Intel pre-T2 is 2017 & older, Intel T2 is 2018–2020, Apple Silicon is M1+ (2020+).

Battery Health Formula (whenever you have a raw mAh value — MaxCapacity on pre-T2 Intel, AppleRawMaxCapacity on Apple Silicon) — divide the mAh value by the value reported under DesignCapacity, then multiply by 100. You're doing arithmetic on the two numbers, not running the field names as a command:

(raw mAh value) / (DesignCapacity value) * 100

Examples:

Pre-T2 Intel:   MaxCapacity 6200 / DesignCapacity 6900          = ~90%
Apple Silicon:  AppleRawMaxCapacity 4100 / DesignCapacity 4380  = ~94%
T2 Intel:       MaxCapacity = 89 (already a percentage)          → 89%

This is usually the best recovery-safe intake method because it:

• Works without setup
• Avoids installing CoconutBattery
• Is easy to automate
• Returns structured data

Use ioreg in Recovery; prefer system_profiler SPPowerDataType everywhere else. Once the Mac is booted normally, system_profiler SPPowerDataType reports Maximum Capacity: NN% directly — no unit interpretation, no version drift. The ioreg route exists because Recovery on Apple Silicon often can't run system_profiler SPPowerDataType cleanly. When you do parse ioreg, target each key by name (DesignCapacity, MaxCapacity, AppleRawMaxCapacity, CycleCount) rather than by output ordering — Apple has quietly renamed and added these fields between macOS releases.

Important Reality Check

Recovery battery reporting is unreliable on T2 and some Apple Silicon Macs — expect occasional missing or incomplete values. If data is missing, fall back to Battery Health Strategy.

Recommended Recovery Decision Tree

If battery data appears correctly

→ Record values and continue intake

If battery data is missing

→ Continue to 6. Battery Health Strategy

4. Activation Lock & MDM Checks

These are booted/logged-in checks, not Recovery steps — run them once you have macOS up (or read the status in Setup Assistant as noted below).

Activation Lock

Booted into macOS (logged in, via Terminal):

system_profiler SPHardwareDataType | grep -i "activation"

Returns Activation Lock Status: Enabled or Disabled (T2 Intel or Apple Silicon). You can also read the same status in System Settings → General → About.

This does not work reliably in Recovery. The Activation Lock field is populated by the running OS, so system_profiler in recoveryOS usually returns nothing — an empty result there tells you nothing about lock state. If you can't boot macOS, judge Activation Lock from Setup Assistant instead: being prompted to sign in with the previous owner's Apple ID during activation means the device is locked.

If locked, the machine cannot be resold or fully wiped without the original owner's Apple ID. Stop intake and flag.

Pre-T2 Intel Macs (2017 and older) do not support Activation Lock. The command above returns nothing on those machines — that's expected, not a clean bill of health. Confirm the era from §7 before interpreting an empty result.

MDM Enrollment

Booted into macOS (logged in, via Terminal):

profiles status -type enrollment

The profiles binary does not exist in recoveryOS — running it there gives "command not found." This is a booted-only check; if you can't boot macOS, use the Setup Assistant visual cue below instead.

Look for:

• Enrolled via DEP: Yes — device will re-enroll automatically after a wipe. Treat as MDM-locked.
• MDM enrollment: Yes — currently managed. (Field is singular in the output; a clean machine reports No for both lines.)

Visual cue (no login needed): if Setup Assistant shows a "Remote Management" screen, the device is DEP-supervised.

If DEP-enrolled, the original org must release it from their MDM before resale.

5. Firmware Password Unlock (Intel only)

A firmware password is the padlock prompt at boot that blocks Recovery, external boot, and startup-disk changes until the password is entered. Intel-based Macs only (pre-T2 and T2) — Apple Silicon has no firmware password; Apple moved that functionality into recoveryOS, gated by FileVault, so there's nothing to unlock here on an M-series Mac.

The firmware password itself is supplied separately and is never stored in this doc.

Entering Recovery

If the padlock prompt appears before Recovery loads, enter the firmware password there first — you can't reach the removal tools otherwise.

Removing the Password

Two ways to turn it off; both need the firmware password. Pick by whether the Mac has a working admin account.

Terminal (Recovery) — works even with no macOS account. Use this when the disk is wiped/unknown, or when the GUI throws "no admin found." The command authenticates against the firmware password itself, not a macOS account.

# In Recovery → Utilities → Terminal (already root, no sudo needed)
firmwarepasswd -check     # confirm a password is set
firmwarepasswd -delete    # prompts for the current firmware password, then clears it

Then restart. Re-run firmwarepasswd -check to confirm it reports no firmware password set.

GUI Startup Security Utility — needs a macOS admin account. Recovery → Utilities → Startup Security Utility → Turn Off Firmware Password → enter the firmware password. Use this when the Mac still has a working admin user.

"No admin found" / can't authenticate: Startup Security Utility asks for the installed macOS admin password, so on a wiped or account-less Mac it dead-ends. Use the Terminal method above instead — it doesn't touch macOS accounts.

The same firmwarepasswd -delete flow works on both pre-T2 and T2 Macs when you know the password. (A forgotten firmware password is a different problem — it needs Apple's reset key or an Apple Configurator erase — and is out of scope here since the password is provided.)

6. Battery Health Strategy

Current Best Practical Workflow

Preferred Path

1. Attempt battery read in Recovery
2. If successful → avoid setup entirely
3. If unsuccessful:
   • Boot normally
   • Use existing account if available
   • Otherwise create temporary local account
4. Run:

system_profiler SPPowerDataType
# if command not found:
/usr/sbin/system_profiler SPPowerDataType

5. Record:

• Cycle Count
• Maximum Capacity
• Condition

6. Remove temp account or erase machine afterward

Why Recovery Alone Is Not Fully Reliable

Battery reporting depends on:

• Power management services
• SMC communication
• OS-level frameworks
• Model-specific hardware initialization

Recovery intentionally loads a reduced environment.

Result:

• Hardware identification works well
• Battery telemetry may not

7. Apple Silicon vs Intel Notes

Confirm architecture first via About This Mac, uname -m (arm64 = Apple Silicon, x86_64 = Intel), or visual cues (notch + flat sides = Apple Silicon Pro/Max). The table below summarizes the workflow differences that affect intake.

8. Common Terminal Commands

Device Identifier

sysctl -n hw.model

CPU

sysctl machdep.cpu.brand_string

RAM

sysctl hw.memsize

Common values:

Storage

diskutil info disk0

Battery

ioreg -rc AppleSmartBattery

OR

system_profiler SPPowerDataType
# if command not found:
/usr/sbin/system_profiler SPPowerDataType

Serial Number

ioreg -l | grep -i IOPlatformSerialNumber

9. Recommended Intake Data Fields

Core Fields

• Serial Number
• Device Identifier
• CPU
• RAM
• SSD Size
• Battery Cycle Count
• Battery Health %
• Activation Lock?
• MDM Locked?
• Cosmetic Grade
• Charger Included?
• Passcode Present?

Suggested Derived Fields

Use MacBook Model Lookup to derive these from hw.model:

• Model Year
• Screen Size
• Intel vs Apple Silicon
• Touch Bar?
• Retina?
• Storage Upgradeability