@yojimbo This is why I hate and don't recommend them to my clients, but that's almost the entirety of Apple's support policy.

@LexPendragon Current $dayjob uses Macs, mostly because of this sort of simplicity. It's obvious what to do - roll out a new device, worry about the old one later - that end-user support is much simpler. The only people that have stuff in $HOME are technical people that should know better, and can fix it themselves.

@LexPendragon However, this emphasis on thin client means that Chromebooks become a decent alternative too ...

@yojimbo I am the technical person, I see no method to fix this erased hard drive.

(I already did their built in reinstall and recovery, and now that doesn't even come up. I am frustrated. I am shouting into the void because I am kinda hoping someone who loves Macs can see it and say 'Oh, did you try pressing Command F-I-X during starting up?')

@LexPendragon mmm, the factory reset boot with opt-cmd-P-R has worked for me in the past, and IIRC will download the entirety of macOS from the net; but I'm not going to swear to that because it's been a while since I've tried it ...

@yojimbo It's been about thirty minutes since I tried it. It thinks that's a thing, but it doesn't do anything as far as I can tell.