How to avoid associating your Apple ID with your Mac’s account in Mountain Lion

One issue that’s come up in the wake of Mat Honan’s troubles has been how Apple has built easy ways to associate your Apple ID with your account on your Mac. One of those associations is an option to use your Apple ID’s credentials to reset your account password on your Mac.

   

I personally don’t want to have my Apple ID associated with my account on my Macs (especially since I can still set up all the iCloudiness I want using iTunes and the iCloud preference pane), so I don’t set that up. See below the jump for how to avoid associating your Mac’s account with your Apple ID and also how to remove an existing Apple ID from your account entry in System Preference’s Users & Groups preference pane.