During the short wizard-based utility that appears, you’re asked whether you want to “Remove everything” and, if so, whether you want to “Clean data,” which will securely clean the drive of all of your personal information if selected. In Windows 10, you simply open Settings, navigate to Update & Security > Recovery, and choose the “Get started” button under the Reset this PC heading. Imagine you want to sell, give-away, or trade-in your Windows PC. Apple? They started off terrible and only made it worse.

And while Windows certainly has its issues, this is a great example-and not the only one-where Microsoft saw the problem and fixed it years ago. We’re so buried in stories about how damn fast M1-based Macs are, about how they’re going to change everything, that we often lose sight of the basics. What bothers me about this kind of thing, beyond the obvious, is how no one ever discusses it. But in this case, this process is now both terrible and dangerous, and it can lead to one bricking their Mac by mistake. And as is so often the case, the M1 chipset breaks with the past.

Yesterday, I prepared my M1-based Mac Mini for return to Apple and was reminded of how terrible this process is on Apple’s desktop platform.

What is the mac mini m1