Andrew
You wouldnt think a MacBook Pro could ship without an operating system – or that it would even be possible – but this is precisely what happened with the machine delivered to me. At first, all I got when I turned it on was a black screen with the international symbol for not being able to do something (a circle with a diagonal line inside). A call to Apple helped: press down the power button once and then hold down the command, shift, option and R keys until the next screen appeared. This was a black screen with only 2 choices: choose a network and then a lock icon next to a small text entry field with no explanation as to what it could be for. I entered the network password, and this got me to the next screen: I had to choose to install the only operating system my machine originally came with: 10.11. No other version of OS X was offered to choose from. So the Amazon description of a "Fresh installation of macOS 10.14 Mohave" was wrong, to say the least. After a few hours of installing 10.11, I then had to call Apple to send me the link to download the 10.13.6 operating system I wanted (my contact management program wont run on 10.14). After several hours of this installation, I then had to do a Migration Assistant procedure from my Time Machine backup to this new machine. More hours. And then to make sure my iCloud files were on my machines hard drive as well as in iCloud took a good 24 hours partially due to having to boot in Safe Boot mode while 75,000+ files slowly uploaded. Now the machine is working just fine – it just took 3 days to get to this point. Also: the machine I received is clearly stated in About This Mac as a "Mid 2015" model, unlike 1 review which mentioned 2014 or another which mentioned early 2015. At least the machine arrived without a scratch or ding.
