I'm entirely on Apple's side here.<p>It makes me very happy, as a consumer, knowing that if someone steals my phone, they can't get any value out of it. I don't <i>want</i> them to be able to sell it to a refurbisher for cash. And I don't want them to be able to do it with my laptop either.<p>And for refurbishers, it's not hard to make it an obvious required step for anyone looking to sell their own legitimately-owned phone. You just make it part of the instructions, and force them to check a couple boxes or popups acknowledging this before they can print the shipping label to send it in. And if the person doesn't follow instructions, you send it back to them.<p>The headline should really be "...will make it difficult to refurbish <i>stolen</i> Macs". Not a lot of sympathy.<p>Edit: in response to comments... yes these can still be sold for parts. But it still makes me feel better a thief will get $30, not $300, for my phone -- that's often enough of a difference between it being worth it or not. And if people are dropping these off for recycling, isn't the expectation that they're being used for parts at best anyways? If they're high enough value to actually be refurbished and resold, then it's worth putting the recycling bins behind cashiers or similar, who are trained to first verify they're unlocked before accepting them.
I am a big fan of iFixit and dig their teardowns just as much as the device releases themselves but their "Companies should prioritize on ease of repair even if it makes the devices less portable and less secure" narrative flips me.<p>I never, ever buy devices for repair purposes or to resell them without bothering to do a factory re-set. The ideal device is one that doesn't need a repair and I do not accept for my devices to be re-purposed without my permission. The whole "this is garbage and this company should make this in a way that we like" is really annoying when it is written in an authoritative tone and rallies a mob.<p>I think they are stuck in the "When you only have a hammer, everything looks like a nail" mentality. I see a similarly annoying tone in the more techie social media personalities too, they don't just explain what's not working for them, they actually lecture the engineers that made this thing. The number of followers is not an engineering degree’s GPA.<p>It is like a flavour of anti-intellectualism.<p>iFixit is great but I don't buy that they are speaking on behalf of the user. I would have been more supportive if they were saying something like "This hurts our business, it would have been great if Apple took some steps to make things more repairable"
> “People don’t steal a phone to then go run and drop it off at their local recycling center,” he quips. And smartphone thefts have plummeted over the last several years, so stolen phones are becoming less of a problem in the first place.<p>And this excerpt links to this article: <a href="https://www.sfchronicle.com/crime/article/DA-Gasc-n-says-SF-phone-robberies-cut-in-half-11541650.php" rel="nofollow">https://www.sfchronicle.com/crime/article/DA-Gasc-n-says-SF-...</a><p>Which mentions:<p>> Smartphone robberies have plunged 50 percent in the past three years in San Francisco after they soared to epidemic heights and prompted a push for remote “kill switches” to become mandatory in the devices, District Attorney George Gascón announced Thursday.<p>So the article states that the Activation Lock isn't necessary because device thefts have plummeted. But they plummeted because of Activation Lock and similar features. That's circular reasoning if I ever saw it.
You can't make a security feature with a backdoor, or it's not security feature anymore. I'm with Apple on this. They really have no way of knowing that you're selling/giving away the phone, so they can't have the phone tell you to unlock.<p>That's really on the buyer. They need to know about getting the seller to reset.<p>Right now Sprint is running a deal where they give you a new phone if you turn in the old one. In very big bold letters, they explain that if the phone arrives locked, they will send it back and then charge you the full price of your new phone and shipping your old one back.<p>That's the right way for a reseller to handle this.
In my opinion, the article is wrong. Yes, if you get a mac with activation lock enabled, from someone who is not the person who can disable it, YOU are wrong.
Recyclers etc should simply educate their staff to ask and validate that activation lock/find my is disabled.<p>Here in .nl when you go to trade in your used phone, they ask, they check, and they tell you how to do it (they go all the way though the process until the step where you have to confirm, and they let the soon-to-be-ex-owner confirm the reset) before they even accept the phone.
The person who wrote the article should stop blaming the wrong party in this 'problem'. It's not up to apple to unlock (or create a backdoor that will render the feature worthless) the devices, but the party that accepts the devices for recycling/resale.
> “We receive four to six thousand locked iPhones per month,” laments Peter Schindler, founder and owner of The Wireless Alliance, a Colorado-based electronics recycler and refurbisher. Those iPhones, which could easily be refurbished and put back into circulation, “have to get parted out or scrapped,” all because of this anti-theft feature.<p>Maybe 6 thousand people get their phones stolen every month and don't want the theft to get any value out of the phone?<p>This whole article is pretty stupid. Apple is making iPhone and, now, Macs worthless if they are stolen. It is up to buyers of used iPhones and Macs to make sure their "new" phones are not locked. Apple is just responding to what customers want for the benefit of customers and not thieves.
«In other words, they won’t be able to do much with it besides scrap it for parts.»<p>Or, you know, talk to the friend that sold them the phone.<p>Hyperbole doesn’t sell their point at all.
Was there no other source for this story besides this piece of hyperbole? Everything is a "nightmare" and "chaos" with "victims" and phones sent to the "shredder". We shouldn't support this garbage writing.
There’s a reason why the ‘98 Honda Civic and ‘97 Honda Accord are the most stolen cars to this day.<p>Anti-theft features largely work very well.<p>Removing the anti-theft features from very expensive phones is going to be a non-starter for the vast majority of people.
Well, I'm getting a little sick of Apple locking the actual owner of the device out and then telling us to go talk to the phone company who has no clue what Apple is talking about then fax in some documents that might or might not get Apple to unlock the device. The thought of this psychosis being brought to the Mac side of the house is just painful. I can only imagine how a non-technical person feels when their phone rebels on them and they aren't anywhere near an Apple Store. The last phone we had problems with had to be taken to a store some 400 miles away from the place where the person lived because a couple of weeks of BS phone calls didn't do it.
I feel like most posters here aren't reading the full article, specifically this paragraph:<p>> When asked what could be done, Schindler suggests Apple implement a bypass that would allow certified recyclers and refurbishers to unlock donated devices if they’re not reported lost or stolen. And Shindler says 99% of the locked devices his facility receives aren’t lost or stolen. “People don’t steal a phone to then go run and drop it off at their local recycling center,” he quips.<p>Allowing certified (by Apple) refurbishers and recyclers to unlock the phones - iff it's not reported lost or stolen - doesn't seem like an open invitation to theft to me.
Generally it’s not too difficult to get someone to unlock the Mac before returning it.<p>The upside of the activation lock is amazing. I remember how it was before, I had several friends who had their phones stolen - some were even mugged for it.<p>These days, criminals don’t bother trying to steal iPhones, because they know they’ll be a useless brick that no fence will pay for. Getting this for the Mac, too, is a massive benefit to Mac-owners.
Why can't the feature include a way to send a message to the user requesting permission to remove the lock? The user could respond by allowing, dismissing which would require an exponential back off before sending another message or deny forever barring all further messages.
If refurbishers were able to bypass the activation lock, what would the point of an activation lock be in the first place? This is perhaps one of the most important use cases, and it's a good sign that iFixit is complaining about it.
So first the attorneys general of the various states begged Android/Apple/etc to implement activation locks to help reduce phone theft. And now the recyclers beg for an easier way to deactivate it to increase recyclable parts content.<p>Is it any wonder that manufacturers sometimes throw their hands up at how many constraints they're asked to design to?
> And smartphone thefts have plummeted over the last several years, so stolen phones are becoming less of a problem in the first place.<p>I wonder why? Maybe due to theft-prevention features like Activation Lock?
Apple can still unlock these phones. If people are really concerned about the waste generated by unlockable stolen phones, they should try turning it in at an Apple store.
It's pretty satisfying seeing how many perfectly good looking iPhones on Facebook Marketplace in my city have to spell out "parts only". I ended up just buying a $200 iPhone 8 from Amazon Renewed instead of looking for a legit seller.<p>Repair shops can buy them up for cheap and legitimate owners get cheaper 3rd party repairs, though at the unfortunate expense of the theft victim. But at least the "middle man" doesn't get a huge payoff.
> When asked what could be done, Schindler suggests Apple implement a bypass that would allow certified recyclers and refurbishers to unlock donated devices if they’re not reported lost or stolen.<p>> In cases when a device is lost or stolen, Schindler says he’s more than happy to hand it off to law enforcement in order to find the owner, but that’s a rare occurrence.<p>Huh, yeah, because that could never be abused, and all refurbishers are ethical and not incentivized to claim willful ignorance in order to profit from the sale of stolen goods, right?
The problem is with the environment cost. Let's tax manufacturers for every device found whole in the trash. See how fast the problem gets solved.<p>(And yes, there are implementation issues to solve with this approach. But none unsolvable.)
Umm... does that mean that those Macs can't be repaired in 3rd party shops either now? Since if I remember correctly, on iPhones the repairers can't replace the secure bonded components anymore.
Hopefully these kind of practices will be regulated in the future. Humanity needs to reduce energy and resource consumption as much as possible.<p>What happened to Google's modular phone?