This was a response to a comment about a potential feature as described:

"Why does the recovery not just have a button called factory reset which unlinks your apple account, deletes the volume and then sets it all up like new."

So yes, it currently does not work like that. But such a feature would allow Macbooks to be easily stolen and reused by others.

The unlink stage would require your password. The recovery partition requires internet to reinstall already.

Yep, just like it does on iPhones - where Apple has a button for this and it’s really easy. I’m sure a lot more iPhones get stolen than laptops every year, and I doubt the factory reset button behind its password prompt makes that any worse.

The weird thing is that when my partner turned in an old Mac mini to Apple for recycling they wouldn’t do it because her account was still on there and there was a system password.

But we couldn’t figure out what they were talking about, we had reinstalled the OS. It’s embeded in there somewhere deep.

If it had a T2, that will store the Apple ID.