Macpocalypse! Lost, Dead, or Stolen? Solopreneur’s Guide to Business Survival

Introduction

As a solopreneur, have you ever been in a situation where you couldn’t use your Mac even for a day? 

In today’s episode, you’ll discover what to do in case your Mac is lost, stolen, or just won’t start. 

Stick around till the end because I will not only share with you a step-by-step contingency plan to get you back on your feet quickly, but also a crucial tip that could save you from a lot of stress and lost productivity. 

I’ll unpack all of this after the intro.

Welcome to Macpreneur Podcast

Hello, hello, and welcome to episode 101 of the Macpreneur podcast. 

Whether it’s your first time or you’re a long-time listener, I appreciate that you carve out some time in your busy solopreneur schedule. 

I’ve created Macpreneur to help as many solopreneurs as possible save time and money running their businesses on their Macs.

Mac Productivity Tips

Now, in order to give you the most relevant Mac productivity tips and information, I need to know how well you’re currently dealing with the three killers of Mac productivity, namely unnecessary clicks, repetitive typing, and file clutter. 

For that, just visit macpreneur.com/tips and answer a few questions, which will take you less than two minutes.

After submitting your answers, you will receive personalized time-saving tips based on your results. 

Once again, visit macpreneur.com/tips and start boosting your efficiency today.

Mac Security and Contingency Planning

Mac security is much more than preventing it from being infected by malware, which I covered in the past two episodes.

And in case you missed them, check out episode 99, which covers a Mac security checklist aimed at raising the bar to prevent your Mac from being compromised, and episode 100, dedicated to helping you spot 7 vital signs that your Mac might have been compromised.

But what about physical security? A lost, stolen, or broken Mac can disrupt your workflow, impact client deadlines, and even compromise your data. Yikes!

During my corporate career, I got trained in project management, and among everything I learned, one concept stuck more than the others, and it’s Contingency Planning.

The way I remember it is via the ABC acronym: A Plan B is Contingency.

In other words, despite all our efforts to prevent something from happening, there is always a small chance that an issue could materialize. And in that case, we need to have a plan of action ready.

So in this episode, I will equip you with a plan that will help you minimize the disruption of your business, even if your main Mac gets lost, stolen, or breaks down.

And I’ll cover three scenarios: the first one if your Mac gets lost or stolen, the second one in case it cannot boot properly, and the third in case it is totally unusable.

Scenario 1: Lost or Stolen Mac

So let’s start with the first scenario, loss or theft.

The first thing to do in this case is to leverage the power of Find My, which can help you locate and ring your Mac, put it in lost mode, allowing you to display a message on the lock screen, and finally, give you the option to wipe it remotely.

For that to be possible, several conditions need to be met.

First, your Mac needs to be signed into iCloud, then Find My Mac needs to be activated, and finally, your Mac needs to be detectable.

And what do I mean by that? 

First, the Mac needs to be powered and near compatible devices. 

So for MacBooks, the battery needs to have at least a little bit of juice, and for desktop Macs, they need to be plugged into the mains.

But it’s not enough. 

The Mac also needs to be near other Apple devices that are part of what is called ‘The Find My Network’. 

It’s made up of other Apple devices like iPhones, iPads, and other Macs with an internet connection and each of them connected to iCloud.

It means that even if your MacBook is not connected to the internet, simply by being near, say, someone else’s iPhone, it’s that iPhone that will relay its location to iCloud.

And Apple architected the system with privacy-first principles. 

So first, location data is encrypted on Apple servers and only retained for 24 hours. 

And it’s only sent when you actively try to locate your device or when send last location is enabled.

So to check whether Find My Mac is activated, on a Mac running macOS 13 Ventura or later, open System Settings, then click on your Apple account at the top, then on iCloud and click ‘Show All’.

Next to Find My Mac, it should be written ON. You click on it to double-check that Find My Network is turned ON too.

On macOS 12 Monterey or earlier, open System Preferences, click on the Apple account in the top right corner.

Under Apps on this Mac using iCloud, check that Find My Mac is ticked.

On the right, click on Options, then check that Find My Network is turned on too.

Okay, provided that Find My Mac was turned on, here are different ways to locate a lost or stolen Mac. It could be from another Mac, from an iPhone or iPad, or from a web browser.

So, from another Mac running at least macOS 10.15 Catalina, just launch the Find My app. Then visit the Devices section, and on the left sidebar, you will see all the Apple devices connected to your Apple account. And on the right, you will see a map with a blue dot for the location of each device. Just click on the lost or stolen device from the sidebar, then on the map, click on the little information button to the right of the name of your device.

This will give you access to all the available actions that you can do, like playing a sound, activating lost mode, or worst-case scenario, erasing the device.

If you have an iPhone or iPad, you can also launch the Find My app. There, tap on the Devices section. Tapping on the device of your choice will give you the same actions as from the Mac app.

And for older Macs, Windows PCs, or Android smartphones and tablets, open a browser then visit icloud.com/find, and click on the big sign-in button that is in the middle. 

Then enter your Apple ID and password. 

Same thing, you will see all your devices on a map, and you will be able to select the one that you want to take action on.

A small bonus tip, you can always visit icloud.com/find, also from Safari on any Mac, iPhone, or iPad, and help a friend locate their Apple devices too. 

They just need to sign into their Apple account.

Scenario 2: Mac Won’t Boot

Okay, now let’s see what to do in case your Mac cannot boot properly.

There are three things you can do in this situation. 

The first one is to boot from the recovery partition. The second one is to boot from a clone of your system, and finally, to run Apple Diagnostics.

Booting from the recovery partition

Let’s start by booting from the recovery partition, which requires first to completely shut down your Mac.

If you have a Mac with an Apple Silicon chip, such as an M1, an M2, or later, press and hold the power button until you see Loading Startup Options.

On the right, you will see an options icon, click on it, then on Continue. You will need to select an administrator account and enter the password for it.

If you have an Intel-based Mac, then power on your Mac, then immediately press the Command and the R keys together, and keep them pressed until it boots into recovery mode.

You might see a lock, and in that case, enter the password for your Mac.

Once you are in macOS Recovery, you will see a list of options and the one that you want to use is called Disk Utility.

In Disk Utility, start by clicking on the View button in the toolbar, then Show All Devices.

On the left sidebar, you will see a tree-like structure, starting at the top with a physical disk itself, then underneath a container, and inside that container, you will see two volumes, Macintosh HD and Macintosh HD dash Data.

The best way to proceed is to start repairing from the bottom up. So, starting with the volumes, then the container, then the disk for that. 

Start by clicking on Macintosh HD dash data, then click on the first aid button in the toolbar. Click on the run or repair button and let Disk Utility do its job.

Repeat the same operation with a Macintosh HD volume, then the container, and finally with the disk. And if all goes well, click on the Apple menu in the top left corner, then choose Restart.

If, at any point, Disk Utility says that it has found errors that it could not repair, then you might need to fully erase the internal disk, then reinstall macOS, and restore from a Time Machine backup.

This process can take quite a long time, and if you have an important deadline for one of your projects, you will need something to get running fast.

Booting from a clone of your internal disk

And this is where booting from a clone of your Mac can help. This requires having a secondary SSD drive that contains a recent enough clone copy of your internal drive.

Beware that simply dragging and dropping files from the internal drive to an external one is not enough. You will need a bootable clone of your Mac, which requires a tool like Carbon Copy Cloner or SuperDuper.

Carbon Copy Cloner offers a 30-day free trial while SuperDuper has adopted a freemium pricing model.

It means that SuperDuper offers basic functionality for free like creating a fresh clone, which means copying every single file and folder each and every time, to only copy or remove what has changed since the last cloning operation, you will need to purchase the full license for SuperDuper.

Personally, I have chosen Carbon Copy Cloner as I much prefer the interface and given my line of work, I’m able to purchase a corporate license so that I can install and run Carbon Copy Cloner on my client’s Mac as well.

And what I especially like with Carbon Copy Cloner is the ability to group tasks together and precisely control when and how often each task gets run.

Okay, to boot a Mac with Apple Silicon from a clone, you need to turn off your Mac, plug the clone drive into it, then hold down the power button until you see Loading Startup Options.

Wait a few seconds and you will see at least three icons: Two drive icons, one in yellow for the clone and a grey Macintosh HD, and to the right, the options icon that we use to access macOS Recovery. 

With your mouse or the arrow keys of the keyboard, select the clone drive, then click or press enter.

If you have an Intel-based Mac, then shut down the Mac and plug the clone drive into it.

Then, power on your Mac and immediately press the Option key. Same thing, you will see the Clone Drive icon in yellow as well as Macintosh HD. Select the Clone Drive icon and wait until your Mac boots up from it.

If you have a desktop Mac, such as the iMac, Mac Mini, Mac Studio, or Mac Pro, connect the keyboard with a USB to Lightning cable as sometimes Bluetooth pairing is not working well.

Now a few considerations when booting from a clone. 

Having a fast SSD is preferable because traditional spinning hard drives are much slower, even when connected over USB 3.

Second, you might need to re-enter your password for iCloud and other services after the first boot, and it’s best to turn off Time Machine or to disconnect the Time Machine drive while you are running from the clone.

Finally, if Backblaze was running on your main Mac, then you should uninstall it from the clone since the license is tied to your main Mac anyway.

In any case, running your Mac from a clone needs to be considered as a short-term, temporary solution. It allows you to meet a deadline even if the internal hard drive of your Mac has failed.

However, you should take care of repairing the internal hard drive as soon as possible.

On top of that, it’s not always possible to boot from a clone drive, especially if the issue is not related to the hard drive at all.

Running Apple Diagnostics

And in that case, you will need to run Apple Diagnostics to try to understand the root cause of the problem.

If you have a Mac with an Apple Silicon chip, press and hold the power button until you see the loading startup options, and on the screen that shows Macintosh HD and options, just press Command and the letter D together.

If you have an Intel-based Mac, then power on your Mac, then immediately keep the D key pressed.

If it doesn’t work, turn off and turn on the Mac again, but this time press Option and D together.

If Apple Diagnostics throws an error code, write it down, then from another device, visit support.apple.com/102334.

Search the error code on that page to see what the problem is. 

In most cases, your Mac will need to be repaired, meaning that you will need either to visit an Apple store or an independent repair provider, ideally an AASP for Apple Authorized Service Provider.

And this usually means that your Mac will be gone for a few days, sometimes a few weeks, which leads me to the last scenario.

Scenario 3: Completely Unusable Mac

Your Mac is completely unusable.

In that case, having a spare Mac is essential if you want to be able to continue running your business.

So it could be your previous Mac or a refurbished one.

A few considerations about spare Macs: prefer one with an internal SSD as they are much faster than traditional spinning hard drives or even Fusion drives.

Prefer also an Apple Silicon one, as they are much more capable than Intel-based ones.

Make sure that the internal storage is at least the same as the Mac that is being repaired. This will allow you to have all your apps and data on it.

And finally, make sure that the licenses for your business-critical applications allow you to install and run them on more than one Mac.

In some cases, you may need to temporarily transfer the license from the unusable Mac to the spare Mac. In that case, the procedure will be available on the developer’s website.

Setapp promo

This is, in fact, one reason why I’m using Setapp and why I’ve signed up for the Power User Plan. 

In case you don’t know Setapp, it’s a subscription service that gives access to a catalog of more than 240 Mac apps. 

The base plan covers 1 Mac, the intermediate plan covers 1 Mac and 4 iOS devices, and the plan that I have, so, Power User, covers 4 Macs and 4 iOS devices.

This means that installing business-critical apps on more than my main iMac can be done in a breeze.

Normally, you can only try Setapp for free for 7 days, but with my referral link, the free trial period is extended to 30 days. 

To get this special bonus at no cost to you, just visit macpreneur.com/setapp, S E T A P P, in one word.

And you’ll see that the promo code Macpreneur will be pre-filled for you. 

Just click on the continue button, then create a Setapp account, either using your Apple ID, your Google account, or submitting your name, email address, and the password of your choice.

Once again, visit macpreneur.com/setapp to start streamlining how you manage your software licenses today.

Final Tips

Before concluding this episode, there’s one more thing I’d like to mention: having a plan B in place is necessary but not sufficient. 

Like we did at school, from time to time, we need to perform the equivalent of a fire drill.

Assume that you cannot use your main Mac anymore, then practice locating it from your iPhone, and at the minimum, putting it in lost mode.

Then, from time to time, use your spare Mac exclusively for at least a full day. This will give you a tangible feeling for what’s missing to be as productive as you are on your main Mac.

And if you have made a clone of your internal drive onto an external SSD, periodically boot from it to check that it’s working.

And finally, imagine that you had to buy a completely new Mac and simulate recovering data from your Time Machine backup and your cloud backup.

In the second half of 2023, my iMac started misbehaving, and after going through macOS recovery, the verdict was that I had to wipe the internal drive, reinstall macOS from scratch, and restore from Time Machine.

Now, instead of doing that, I worked from my secondary Mac, the 14-inch MacBook Pro, and at the same time, I made a copy of the clone back onto the internal hard drive. 

Not only was it quicker than restoring from Time Machine, but I had no configuration to do at all. 

And what would have taken me a day or two was done in half a day.

Recap

So to recap, we’ve covered a comprehensive contingency plan if your Mac gets lost or stolen, in case it can’t boot properly or when it’s totally unusable.

In most cases, you will need to boot from the macOS recovery partition, so practice doing that to be ready when you absolutely need it.

Invest in a spare drive that can be used as a bootable clone, and invest in a spare Mac too.

I have included recommendations for those in the checklist covered in episode 99. 

So, if you haven’t downloaded the checklist yet, remember to visit macpreneur.com/msc for Mac security checklist.

If you need help going through it, just listen to or watch episode 99.

If you enjoyed this episode, please share it with a fellow solopreneur and DM me on Instagram. My handle is @macpreneurfm.

Next and outro

So that’s it for today.

In the next episode, I will discuss how to safely dispose of old Apple devices, primarily old Macs.

So make sure to subscribe or follow this podcast to get it automatically next week.

And until next time, I’m Damien Schreurs, wishing you a great day.

Thank you for listening to the Macpreneur Podcast. If you’ve enjoyed the show, please leave a review and share it with a friend right now.