While I've posted quite a bit about the joys of building VMs for testing, testing with an actual Mac in your hands is always a good idea. VMs are representations of what a physical device will do, and sometimes you really need the real thing to understand what a workflow will look like to a real person using a Mac at your organization.
Fortunately there is an easy way to quickly reset a Mac to a blank state without wiping the drive and reinstalling the full OS. As long as you're testing on an APFS Mac (so, High Sierra or Mojave) you have the tmutil command available to quickly make snapshots that you can use to restore to within 24 hours. And you can run tmutil from the Terminal in Setup Assistant, which means you can get yourself back to a true vanilla state of the OS without reformatting by doing the snapshot before you even get through all of Setup Assistant.
Here's what that looks like:
1. Start with a fresh Mac that hasn't gone through Setup Assistant yet. You can get it in this state however you prefer; the native option here is to boot into Recovery, wipe the drive, and reinstall macOS fresh.
2. Boot up the Mac and let it start Setup Assistant. Select your region and keyboard.
Fortunately there is an easy way to quickly reset a Mac to a blank state without wiping the drive and reinstalling the full OS. As long as you're testing on an APFS Mac (so, High Sierra or Mojave) you have the tmutil command available to quickly make snapshots that you can use to restore to within 24 hours. And you can run tmutil from the Terminal in Setup Assistant, which means you can get yourself back to a true vanilla state of the OS without reformatting by doing the snapshot before you even get through all of Setup Assistant.
Here's what that looks like:
1. Start with a fresh Mac that hasn't gone through Setup Assistant yet. You can get it in this state however you prefer; the native option here is to boot into Recovery, wipe the drive, and reinstall macOS fresh.
2. Boot up the Mac and let it start Setup Assistant. Select your region and keyboard.
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