A more reasonable policy would be for Apple to make the Activation Lock time-limited (like, for 6 months or a year) UNLESS the owner reports the device as stolen. If the device was reported as stolen then Apple can make the Activation Lock permanent.

Better than removing blocks and removing 2 steps

It’s Facebook and instagram (Meta) pushing this because they can’t compete. They having people lobbying Congress with lots of money to make laws banning TT.

You are required to have insurance for liability. (Injuries and damaged to others.).

You are not required to have insurance for theft. (Unless you have a loan on the vehicle and the vehicle is then an asset backing the loan and the bank then requires you to insure against theft.)

I am perfectly familiar with that, I just don’t get the argument that activation lock (a useful security feature that has effectively reduced theft due to its reputation) shouldn’t exist because some users or orgs can’t be bothered to deactivate it.

Just recently I bought a couple outgoing iMacs from work, including a model with a T2 security chip, and IT obviously went through “the trouble” of resetting the device to factory settings and removing the lock. It’s not that hard, and leaves the device perfectly capable of being used by others.

The way they’ve done it is an actual deterrent to theft, and what you’re describing wouldn’t be. I agree that there’s a trade off with sustainability, and maybe it’s the wrong trade off, but at least acknowledge that there’s value to the customer in the approach they’ve taken.

I loathe paywalls

It's definitely Apple turning devices into e-waste, because they designed a system that has its sole purpose in turning devices into e-waste. Then they included it in every new device with no obvious way to disable it, and no way to bypass it.

If they have done literally nothing, we wouldn't have this problem and we wouldn't be having this conversation.

I think ChatGPT is made just with the API. I believe it would work pretty similar if you just include all the previous responses and questions in the newest prompt/request.

That obviously gets pretty expensive quick, which is why the pro version of ChatPGT is $42 a month.

Liberty is meaningless where the right to her once thoughts and opinions cease to exist - Fredrick Douglas

From the large enterprise IT departments I've seen, cleaning up old laptops that aren't being re-used by the enterprise is a very, very low priority. Like, I've seen walls of old laptops, stacked and waiting to be cleaned. The value of the laptops has been depreciated, and reselling them for pennies on the dollar is hardly worth the effort for a company making billions of dollars per year.

It’s not Apple turning devices into e-waste, it’s users who left their credentials on a computer before disposing or selling it.

If they give you (the original user) a way to unlock it and you just choose to ignore it, how is that on them?

Apple devices are targeted for theft more than probably any other brand in the world due to high resale value. Activation Lock being a PITA makes them potentially worthless to would-be thieves.

It’s only an effective deterrent if it can’t be bypassed by anyone but the original user. Otherwise those bypasses can be exploited.

Imagine that one day China banned the export of rare earths to make weapons for the United States. The United States will obediently follow the instructions?

You clearly aren’t familiar with how much perfectly usable material people (both individuals and organizations) discard at recycling depots that aren’t going to go through the hassle of even a single mouse click for something that in their mind is trash and they’re throwing in the garbage. Working LCD televisions, 5 year old computers, appliances replaced because they didn’t like the color anymore etc.

In the past when drives were removable these places would typically pull them and either destroy and replace or run the disks through automated DOD multi pass erasing machines, do a fresh install of the OS and throw it out in the thrift store portion of the depot for $50-100 to cover the overhead of doing so.

Occasionally you’d get the odd stray machine with a bios lock that could be a parts donor for one of the other pallet load of the same machine that got banged up in the process of being thrown away, no big deal.

Now it’s getting to be a majority of devices coming in that are encumbered by some sort of lock, cloud service login or similar (like those sonos speakers that the company encouraged people to software brick and drop off at their local recycler). This is not unintentional on the part of the manufacturers.

>Is your argument that anyone should be able to do this when they stumble upon a locked Apple device? How would it prevent theft then, if the thieves could simply wipe the device and set it up as their own or resell it?

Exactly that. It's not Apple's job to police for theft. And they definitely shouldn't be doing it if they do it so poorly it turns thousands of devices into e-waste.

If you have the original Apple ID that was used to set up this machine. You don't have the original Apple ID that was used to set up this machine.

Whole thread of snarky people with surface level understanding thinking they're clever.

No. It’s not. Enterprise MDM activation lock and personal activation lock are two different things. This is really blown out of proportion. Apple added a much needed feature. And there is documentation of it. A lot of documentation. And people and companies are either choosing not to turn off the lock are too lazy or too stupid.

You just described the entire internet.

Find insurance companies that instead charge doubled/tripled premiums or something equally expensive I guess. :P

They aren’t stopping current insurance. A couple of insurance companies are not starting new policies for those affected vehicles.

No they didn't. You can wipe the machine and reset it.

What do you mean “cannot be removed?”

What you’re describing is exactly what happens when the user clicks “erase all content and settings”: it wipes the encryption keys, removes activation lock and resets the device to factory settings.

Is your argument that anyone should be able to do this when they stumble upon a locked Apple device? How would it prevent theft then, if the thieves could simply wipe the device and set it up as their own or resell it?

The responsibility is on the original owner to wipe the device properly and remove activation lock if they intend to resell it or donate it.

I don’t understand how Apple is responsible for IT managers not doing their jobs properly

If keyless but otherwise drivable cars were piling up in storage lots the way apple devices have been since iPads started featuring activation lock have been at recycling depots, they wouldn’t start shredding all the cars up, they’d be changing out the ignition tumblers and coding new keys.

There’s no reason a server side mechanism at Apple can’t be put in place to release activation lock after notifying the registered email address and a waiting period passing with no response. As part of such an unlock, a secure erase of the storage would mean there are no security implications and usable hardware would be diverted from becoming needless waste.

I’m surprised they can just stop your insurance for this kind of thing. It’s illegal to not have insurance, so what is one supposed to do?