breaking into a Mac?

[cellio]

Dear brain trust,

My father had a laptop, an old MacBook. My mother would like to know what's on it. It's password-protected. I've been unable to guess the password, even knowing some of his other passwords and some patterns he used.

I have the passwords to his two desktop computers (iMacs), but also can't get in via network share (access denied). I have his cell phone, which should let me get into his iCloud account (that's the second factor). I have the impression that none of that will help.

Is there any way I can override the laptop's password and get in anyway? Or connect an external drive and make a copy somehow? I'm willing to take the laptop and a copy of the death certificate to an Apple store, except that I don't know if it's technically possible to get in (without damaging the contents, which is the whole point of the operation). I mean, we'd all like security to actually be secure, so this shouldn't be easy, but is there something between "easy" and "impossible" that I can try?

The laptop is at my mom's house, so I can't test things immediately, but I'm looking for any clues that could help on my next visit.

Comments

[cyndin]

Is it possible he backed up his data either to the cloud or to a local disc via Apple Time Machine? Getting into either of those may not be possible either but at least a cloud account might do password-forget and verify via text or email.

And what a good (and sad) reminder to share your passwords with trusted people who can access them after your death. Or at least to share the stuff you don't mind your family to see...

[cellio]

I've now gotten into his iCloud account. I see backups of files I saw on his iMac, but nothing that stands out yet as being from a different machine. On the other hand, I haven't done a direct comparison; next time I'm there I will compare what I see in iCloud to what I see on the iMac and go from there.

Good idea to look for a Time Machine backup! I saw one for the desktop computer but didn't check the laptop.

Next challenge: figuring out how to dump the entire contents of his iCloud drive to disk (specifically an external drive that I will plug in for the purpose). iCloud seems to have two modes: download individual file, and "restore". I don't want to overwrite anything; I want to make a copy.

Indeed, this is a sad and important reminder. Dani and I have had some conversations about this and need to figure out what we're comfortable sharing with each other. Maybe being able to unlock each others' phones is a good start.

[cyndin]

You can take a "new" phone (someone you know must have an old iPhone you can wipe) and you don't have to download anything as such. Just put in his iCloud login and let it populate. I don't know if you can do this with an Android or other phone. Perhaps.

Do the same on a laptop. You may be able to do it as a partition of an existing one. If you put apps on the external hard drive, you might make that work. I mean you can download directly (if that's possible) but if it's not bootable, I don't think the easy way works.

This will get you all his phone history, voicemails, photos, calendar, contacts, text messages, notes, and more. And yes you can see most of that (for some reason, not the voicemails) on a computer if you put in the iCloud account.

As for passwords, if you don't want to just give them to your spouse, do you have a lawyer or a trusted friend who you can give a sealed envelope (or USB stick) to? Michael and I can unlock each other's phones and computers and that's enough.