I decided to write this post due to a rather large issue I have just had with Orbicule’s Undercover software after I had an iMac go in for repair recently. The iMac died suddenly and was to have it’s logic board replaced. Upon collection of the Mac at the Apple store the genius powered the unit on. We logged into the account and boom

HELP HELP, I AM A STOLEN MAC   

cried the iMac!! It appears that the logic board replacement had tricked the software into thinking it hadn’t been online for 2 months and the software automatically switches to plan B according to the software’s developer. According to the message on the iMac screen connecting the unit to the internet and completing a reboot would resolve the issue. But if your net connection is supplied dependent on your mac address how do you plan on connecting to the net after a logic board replacement!? The machine has a new mac address and there is no way of accessing it as the orbicule software essentially locks up the mac.  In fact it also will proceed to dim your screen to make the “thief” take it in for repair or try to sell it on. Maybe a reason why Apple replaced the 24″ screen which had nothing wrong with it for £382!!Anyway I detract, the way to get round this issue if your unable to connect to the internet is as follows: 

1. Restart the Mac and hold down the Command + s keys in order to boot into single user mode.
2. Once booted enter the following command (Don’t type it wrong and get the spaces right this is critical) /sbin/mount -uw /
3. This command mounts your hard drive
4. Now enter rm /Library/Launchdaemons/com.orbicule.uc.plist to remove orbicule
5. There should be no message in return, if you see one you have typed something wrong. Repeat again if you get a message.
6. You should also carry out the following command rm /Library/Preferences/connected.plist
7. Type exit to reboot your mac.

The above list will have now uninstalled Undercover so you must reinstall it by downloading it and installing it from the Orbicule website. Though, thankfully, there should be much relief after following these steps as your Mac should now be usable! 

Oh and on a final note, to all of us that use Undercover. Don’t for one second think that if your Mac is stolen and it does end up at Apple for repair that they will call Orbicule to verify. Despite reporting to them it was a stolen mac and asking them to call a recovery line they just didn’t bother and didn’t even ask for ID on collection to verify that we were the machine owners compared to our registration in their database…. well done Apple!