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Apple’s Activation Lock Will Make It Difficult to Refurbish Macs

ifixit.com

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Re: Apple’s Activation Lock Will Make It Difficult to Refurbish Macs

#11

Post by GhettoMaestro »

crazygringo wrote: post #5

I'm entirely on Apple's side here. 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 want 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. And for refurbishers, it's not hard to make it an obvious required step for anyone looking to sell their own legitimately-owned phone. Yo…

Exactly. This brew-ha-ha is nothing. This is an anti-theft feature. Hard to argue against features designed to reduce the potential for someone to target it for theft.

As someone who has had both a smartphone and a laptop stolen, I would have loved to know that aside from my frustration with the insurance company that the thief walked away with 2 worthless bricks.

And no, right to repair should not ban user-initiated device activation locks.

Re: Apple’s Activation Lock Will Make It Difficult to Refurbish Macs

#12

Post by GhettoMaestro »

lukeschlather wrote: post #10
crazygringo wrote: post #5

I'm entirely on Apple's side here. 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 want 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. And for refurbishers, it's not hard to make it an obvious required step for anyone looking to sell their own legitimately-owned phone. Yo…

The article pretty well lays out why this doesn't work. We're talking about recyclers here. The people sending in these devices have literally thrown them away into a trash bin. There's no return address. Creating a backdoor might not be the answer, but it sounds like there's no way to send a message to the phone's iCloud account saying "Hey I have your phone, it was recycled. Please remote-wipe and unlock it or give…

> The article pretty well lays out why this doesn't work. We're talking about recyclers here. The people sending in these devices have literally thrown them away into a trash bin. There's no return address.

It sounds like the system works as designed. Steal a locked-iPhone? Congrats, you just stole a worthless brick. Please illustrate to me how this mechanism "doesn't work" when it seems to defeat 99%+ of folks from re-selling the illegitimately-obtained device for any meaningful amount of money, contrasted to its worth in an unlocked state.

Re: Apple’s Activation Lock Will Make It Difficult to Refurbish Macs

#13

Post by mrtksn »

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.

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.

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.

It is like a flavour of anti-intellectualism.

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"

Re: Apple’s Activation Lock Will Make It Difficult to Refurbish Macs

#14

Post by mullen »

> “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.

Maybe 6 thousand people get their phones stolen every month and don't want the theft to get any value out of the phone?

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.

Re: Apple’s Activation Lock Will Make It Difficult to Refurbish Macs

#15

Post by qxnqd »

crazygringo wrote: post #5

I'm entirely on Apple's side here. 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 want 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. And for refurbishers, it's not hard to make it an obvious required step for anyone looking to sell their own legitimately-owned phone. Yo…

Most components aren't affected by activation lock, on iphones or on macs. You can still reuse many things that are in demand, like the screen, the speakers, the buttons, the cameras, and so on. It will be the same with macs. THey will throw away the motherboard and sell the rest. Still profitable.

Re: Apple’s Activation Lock Will Make It Difficult to Refurbish Macs

#16

Post by wlesieutre »

GhettoMaestro wrote: post #12
lukeschlather wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The article pretty well lays out why this doesn't work. We're talking about recyclers here. The people sending in these devices have literally thrown them away into a trash bin. There's no return address. Creating a backdoor might not be the answer, but it sounds like there's no way to send a message to the phone's iCloud account saying "Hey I have your phone, it was recycled. Please remote-wipe and unlock it or give…

> The article pretty well lays out why this doesn't work. We're talking about recyclers here. The people sending in these devices have literally thrown them away into a trash bin. There's no return address. It sounds like the system works as designed. Steal a locked-iPhone? Congrats, you just stole a worthless brick. Please illustrate to me how this mechanism "doesn't work" when it seems to defeat 99%+ of folks from…

Parent comment knows it works as designed as an anti-theft feature.

They're arguing that it's not designed well because it should accommodate recovering parts from phones that were knowingly disposed of without the owner releasing the activation lock first.

As parent comment points out, this could be a simple matter of the refurbisher requesting a release of the lock, sending a request through Apple, and Apple requesting permission of the phone's owner via the account it's locked to. If the phone was stolen, they click no. If the phone was given for recycling and has parts that can still be used, they click yes.

If Apple really wants to reduce waste (their next big environmental goal after meeting the renewable energy one), they could offer a $5 gift certificate to incentivize people to bother with releasing their old phone's motherboard if it's still usable, but implementing this in the first place would already cost them time and money so I'm not holding my breath.

Re: Apple’s Activation Lock Will Make It Difficult to Refurbish Macs

#17

Post by michaelmrose »

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.

Re: Apple’s Activation Lock Will Make It Difficult to Refurbish Macs

#18

Post by zozbot234 »

lukeschlather wrote: post #10
crazygringo wrote: post #5

I'm entirely on Apple's side here. 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 want 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. And for refurbishers, it's not hard to make it an obvious required step for anyone looking to sell their own legitimately-owned phone. Yo…

The article pretty well lays out why this doesn't work. We're talking about recyclers here. The people sending in these devices have literally thrown them away into a trash bin. There's no return address. Creating a backdoor might not be the answer, but it sounds like there's no way to send a message to the phone's iCloud account saying "Hey I have your phone, it was recycled. Please remote-wipe and unlock it or give…

> it sounds like there's no way to send a message to the phone's iCloud account saying "Hey I have your phone, it was recycled. Please remote-wipe and unlock it or give me an address to return it."

Apple (and Google, with the Android equivalent) could do this easily, couldn't they? Wouldn't this also be useful for the case of devices that are lost and found, so that they can be returned to the owner?

Re: Apple’s Activation Lock Will Make It Difficult to Refurbish Macs

#19

Post by eropple »

mullen wrote: post #14

> “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. Maybe 6 thousand people get their phones stolen every month and don't want t…

So you picked up, before you spun up your hauteur engine, that that number is not six thousand stolen iPhones, but six thousand trashed and recycled ones? And that there's no way to communicate to a user that their lock prevents it from being done?

There's no reason why a user can't be asked by Apple "hey, a recycler received this locked iPhone, do you want to wipe and unlock it for recycling?" save for an unwillingness to implement it; as-is, this just and only just generates waste. But it let you get mad, so that's cool, I guess.

Re: Apple’s Activation Lock Will Make It Difficult to Refurbish Macs

#20

Post by GhettoMaestro »

wlesieutre wrote: post #16
GhettoMaestro wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The article pretty well lays out why this doesn't work. We're talking about recyclers here. The people sending in these devices have literally thrown them away into a trash bin. There's no return address. It sounds like the system works as designed. Steal a locked-iPhone? Congrats, you just stole a worthless brick. Please illustrate to me how this mechanism "doesn't work" when it seems to defeat 99%+ of folks from…

Parent comment knows it works as designed as an anti-theft feature. They're arguing that it's not designed well because it should accommodate recovering parts from phones that were knowingly disposed of without the owner releasing the activation lock first. As parent comment points out, this could be a simple matter of the refurbisher requesting a release of the lock, sending a request through Apple, and Apple reques…

> They're arguing that it's not designed well because it should accommodate recovering parts from phones that were knowingly disposed of without the owner releasing the activation lock first.

> As parent comment points out, this could be a simple matter of the refurbisher requesting a release of the lock, sending a request through Apple, and Apple requesting permission of the phone's owner via their account. If the phone was stolen, they click no. If the phone was given for recycling and has parts that can still be used, they click yes.

Is that even possible? (Legitimately curious) My understanding is in the current design certain expensive things, like the SoC+Security-Enclave are certed/secure-booted, and I imagine other parts are just generic / "off the shelf" plug in and power up and go.

If it is possible to allow more component level re-use without violating the security goal (deter theft), I'm all for it. The more I think about this I honestly think this is active design decision by Apple to avoid a number of long tail permutations they would otherwise need to test and support.

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