This is one of the reasons why you should just not buy Apple-branded stuff: such things are designed to be remotely-lockable. With an Android-based device this couldn't happen. Provided that you have a backup of your data, you could just reflash the device, restore your backup and start using the device again. Just don't buy Apple stuff. Between people having assistance denied (example: Linus Sebastian 5 k$ Mac Pro),…
Yup. Stallman's annoyingly accurate prescience strikes again. https://www.gnu.org/proprietary/malware-apple.html
Yeah, Stallman's out there. But he's not wrong. It only takes a bit more time to show the abuses that he warns about.
I sit in a weird place where I admin and advocate for Windows and Linux. Feels wrong, but I introduced Linux into a bunch of windows admins. I felt that going the full kerb/ldap/radius/linOTP/shib stack would be too much to chew immediately. Steps :)