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

149 points by jbuild 7y ago

mrtksn 7y ago
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"
- AnthonyMouse 7y ago
  It's not especially shocking that the people doing repairs are the people talking about repairability. And you're taking it from the perspective of someone buying a new device from Apple who doesn't care about anybody else. Consider the perspective of a low income person who would otherwise buy a refurbished phone which will now be unavailable or more expensive, or the environmental perspective of having to manufacture new phones (future landfill) instead of reusing what already exists. If we care about other people then we should care about the consequences of what Apple is doing here.
  - mrtksn 7y ago
    My first iPhone was a used one, obtained from a willing seller who unlocked the device upon my purchase. My purchase was not a freak one, it was not an exception to the rule. The rule is, the willing party unlocks the device when sells or gives it away. Framing it as if iPhones or Macbooks are tied to the original owner and becomes e-waste after when the original buyer no longer needs it is not honest. Especially with the Apple products, the 2.nd hand market is very healthy and Macbooks and iPhones change hands until they become obsolete. If we are going to turn into a socialist utopia where we share the resources willingly or not, I don't believe that it's Apple's device lock that's stopping us. The same goes for the repairs, it is not true that manufacturers make devices unrepairable. In some cases, it might require more skill or equipment than other cases but these devices obey the laws of physics, therefore can be repaired. In some products, the miniaturization is way beyond what manual labour can handle but for those products companies and governments offer proper ways for disposal. IC's took over transistors and made things hard to repair, you throw away billions of perfectly fine transistors just because one transistor in the CPU went bad and this is OK because of the reliability is much better and the miniaturization made the material waste much smaller.
  - scarface74 7y ago
    No, that person would be able buy a refurbished phone from a source like Gazelle that insures that the rightful owner has deactivated the phone and knows that it isn’t stolen.
    - AnthonyMouse 7y ago
      There are a zillion phones that come to be refurbished because they originally had corporate owners. The IT department issues new phones and ends up with a giant pile of old phones, many of which are damaged, which aren't worth their time to sort out and resell, so they get thrown on a pallet and go in bulk to an electronics recycler. The recycler sorts the phones from the PCs from the laser printers and the phones go to a company that refurbishes phones. Now they've got a thousand iPhones from a dozen companies, legally-obtained, which are locked to the personal Apple account of some salesman three deep in the supply chain and they don't even know which specific company they're from, much less which salesman. So none of those phones can be refurbished, that person can't buy them, and the remaining phones they could buy -- which necessarily can't go to as many people as the larger number of phones -- cost more as a result of supply and demand.
- EpicBlackCrayon 7y ago
  > 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. Fair point. >The number of followers is not an engineering degree’s GPA. It is like a flavour of anti-intellectualism. I disagree here though. The engineers and product managers who make this stuff are often so detached from what's going on the ground or how people are actually using these products that someone who speaks for the layman is truly needed. There's also a wide variety of tech influencers out there, some who make cogent arguments about the product (Dieter Bohn comes to mind) and others who parrot those arguments absently mindedly. That latter group could conceivable be called anti-intellectual.
- AWildC182 7y ago
  > but their "Companies should prioritize on ease of repair even if it makes the devices less portable and less secure" narrative flips me. Everything wears out eventually. Nothing made in the past ten years is made to last forever and the trend is accelerating. Everyone uses their devices differently whether they're carefully stored in a laptop bag when not in use or sit out in a machine shop and everything in between. Processors aren't really getting that much faster so devices can last a lot longer than the did in the past. To spite this, build quality is getting worse and everyone is gluing batteries into their devices that WILL degrade to uselessness after 2-3 years of regular use. This mentality has to stop if don't want to create mountains of useless e-waste. Edit: also, nobody is asking for less security. Device theft isn't that big of an issue. This is just apple trying to screw with the resale market because they're struggling to sell more new devices when their existing ones aren't being obsoleted at the rate they used to.
  - rrdharan 7y ago
    > Device theft isn't that big of an issue. On what basis are you making this claim? At least for phones, activation locks had a noticeable impact on reducing device theft (which was rampant for a while earlier in the smartphone era and a real public safety concern in cities). https://techcrunch.com/2015/02/11/apples-activation-lock-leads-to-big-drops-in-smartphone-theft-worldwide/ https://techcrunch.com/2015/02/11/apples-activation-lock-lea...
    - AWildC182 7y ago
      I'm making that claim on a personal basis. I've never had a device stolen and I know of exactly one such incident with a person I know. I just don't consider it a problem that trumps right to repair and if you do, I hope apple starts potting their devices in epoxy.
      - kstrauser 7y ago
        Two of my coworkers in the room with me right now have had their phones stolen. I know that's just as anecdotal as your story, but I assure you that phones are stolen. Less so now that activation lock ruins much of their value, thankfully.
- j45 7y ago
  It’s fine you don’t like to take apart devices. For others it’s part competency (d they have the skills to and part preference. Many technologists in software included some experience in hardware, including device repair, building or servicing servers, etc.
  - mrtksn 7y ago
    I like taking apart stuff, I always do repair my devices by myself. That being said, what I expect from a device is to excel on its purpose and not compromise on it in the name of repairability. It's simply not true that things are not repairable, just harder. If anyone wants easy disassembly, can buy Lego.
- dwild 7y ago
  > 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. Don't your whole comment do the same? They are giving their opinion based on their preference. For sure it will be bias toward their goal, just like you want them to stop, so that your goal, keeping the statu quo, win. I prefer repairability because I want to be able to repair my own things and not depends as much on others. I don't expect them to do it, but I will say it loudly so that people know that my market exist. I also consider that better for the society in general, thus I will also push the government to go toward that too, because I consider the government should work toward the society better. Does it means my position will win? No, but I still have the right to defends it, just like you have the right to defends yours.
  - mrtksn 7y ago
    Not at all, these are products that I paid for. They were made for me in order to take my money, I have all the rights for strong opinions because of these transactions. The repair shops are 3rd parties that are trying to inject themselves in the transaction pretending to be on my side when they are actually irrelevant. They advocate for thicker less secure products so that their margins increase if they win my business. It's simply not true that the devices are not repairable, the issue is that repairing is low margin business. What they want is to have a low touch component business.
    - dwild 7y ago
      >They advocate for thicker less secure products so that their margins increase if they win my business. They advocate with me (a customer) for a more repairable product. Just like Apple advocate with you for a less repairable product. They are also the trillion dollars company against a billion dollars industry... seems like you are with the one expert in increasing margins. > It's simply not true that the devices are not repairable, the issue is that repairing is low margin business. No one's arguing that they aren't repairable, we are arguing that they makes them harder to repair. Why do your comment keep being that dishonest.
mullen 7y ago
> “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.
- eropple 7y ago
  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.
  - filleduchaos 7y ago
    I think the (valid if cynical) implication is that a large number of those "trashed and recycled" phones were trashed and recycled by people who are...not the owners.
    - retrac 7y ago
      Perhaps. Thieves don't strike me as the type to be more eco-conscious than average, though. I'm betting they're mostly just thrown out. Many people can't be bothered with the hassle of trying to sell a used device.
      - aroch 7y ago
michaelmrose 7y ago
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.
kgwxd 7y ago
Is there any proof this features reduces theft?
- OrangeMango 7y ago
  There is a high correlation with activation lock becoming widespread and the decrease in phone theft. That's not proof, but...
  - hyperbovine 7y ago
    Actually it is, if you are willing to assume that the arrival of activation lock was completely exogeneous.
- darklion 7y ago
  Yes. "Comparing data in the six months before and after Apple released its anti-theft feature, police said iPhone robberies in San Francisco dropped 38 percent. In London, they fell 24 percent. In New York City, robberies (which typically involve a threat of violence) of Apple products dropped 19 percent and grand larcenies of Apple products dropped 29 percent in the first five months of 2014, compared with the same time period from 2013, according to a report from the New York attorney general’s office, which included data from the New York City Police Department. By comparison, thefts of Samsung products increased 51 percent in the first five months of 2014, compared with the same period a year ago, the report said." https://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/06/19/antitheft-technology-led-to-a-dip-in-iphone-thefts-in-some-cities-police-say/ https://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/06/19/antitheft-technolo...
acallan 7y ago
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.
- NedIsakoff 7y ago
  I'm sure there will be tons of "Legit" refurbishers that will unlock for a "donation".
gok 7y ago
They misspelled "steal"
crazygringo 7y ago
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. 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. The headline should really be "...will make it difficult to refurbish stolen Macs". Not a lot of sympathy. 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.
- deleted 7y ago
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- lukeschlather 7y ago
  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 me an address to return it."
  - GhettoMaestro 7y ago
    > 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.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
hombre_fatal 7y ago
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. 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.
jessriedel 7y ago
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.
- StillBored 7y ago
  The process for recovering a locked iphone is problematic if the user forgets both the iphone password and the icloud password (because it was only used once a year before). That happened to a family member recently, I guess they were using face id regularly and changed their pin at one point and by the time they needed it again couldn't remember it. The part that really pisses me off is the "10 strikes and we wipe your phone bit". That happened to me too on an infrequently used iphone last year. I'm pretty sure I would have remembered the password because it was one a few dozen pins I use, but I didn't get the chance to try all of them because the fscking phone decided to wipe itself first (not attached to icloud).
  - crooked-v 7y ago
    You have to specifically turn on the "Erase all data on this iPhone after 10 failed passcode attempts" option for that to happen. If you do that without being very confident about remembering your passcode, it's your own dang fault.
  - pflats 7y ago
    > The part that really pisses me off is the "10 strikes and we wipe your phone bit". That happened to me too on an infrequently used iphone last year. This is an optional setting, and I'm relatively certain it used to be off by default. I think my newest iPhone specifically prompted me about it during setup.
faitswulff 7y ago
I feel like most posters here aren't reading the full article, specifically this paragraph: > 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. 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.
- jedberg 7y ago
  How hard would it be for a minimum wage employee of a "certified" recycler to steal the key necessary to unlock locked phones? A security feature with a backdoor isn't a security feature anymore.
  - faitswulff 7y ago
    Users can already unlock devices themselves over iCloud, correct? What if it just pinged the previous owner to ask if it was legitimate?
    - StillBored 7y ago
      The problem is that a certain percentage of users set-up the icloud account with a password, then promptly forget it exists until they need it. Which tends to be when they have also forgotten their pin, because the pin is now similar to the icloud password and not required for every unlock.
      - faitswulff 7y ago
        Still, it would allow for some devices to be properly recycled and resold while maintaining security for the rest.
- saagarjha 7y ago
jedberg 7y ago
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. That's really on the buyer. They need to know about getting the seller to reset. 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. That's the right way for a reseller to handle this.
- izacus 7y ago
  > You can't make a security feature with a backdoor, or it's not security feature anymore. Why are you so 100% sure that there's no way that Apple could design a system to keep it secure and allow recycling? There's hundreds of ways they could design their security flow where recycling is possible.
  - gruez 7y ago
    >Why are you so 100% sure that there's no way that Apple could design a system to keep it secure and allow recycling? There's hundreds of ways they could design their security flow where recycling is possible. Can you list some of them? How would you prevent unscrupulous recylers from turning into fences for stolen macs?
    - FarAdvance4 7y ago
      Not even just the recycling business owner. Hire Joe over here, he works there, learns the systems and how to unlock the devices legitimately. What happens when he leaves, or is fired, or decides he's going to make some side money...
    - shkkmo 7y ago
      You have a system that allows the recycler to indirectly contact the device owner and offer them a choice of having the device returned or a small iTunes credit provided in return for the device being unlocked. Everyone wins. More stolen devices returned less electronic waste in the landfill.
protomyth 7y ago
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.
- scarface74 7y ago
  How is Apple locking the owner of the phone out?
  - protomyth 7y ago
    Wish I knew the root cause. It's happened a number of times and passcodes and biometrics don't work and they have receipts. The phone is just locked. I assume there was a change made that they didn't understand or they just put the wrong code in. I just cannot chalk it ALL up to user problems given we hit the half-dozen point.
supernova87a 7y ago
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. Is it any wonder that manufacturers sometimes throw their hands up at how many constraints they're asked to design to?
torarnv 7y ago
«In other words, they won’t be able to do much with it besides scrap it for parts.» Or, you know, talk to the friend that sold them the phone. Hyperbole doesn’t sell their point at all.
nkrisc 7y ago
> “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. And this excerpt links to this article: https://www.sfchronicle.com/crime/article/DA-Gasc-n-says-SF-phone-robberies-cut-in-half-11541650.php https://www.sfchronicle.com/crime/article/DA-Gasc-n-says-SF-... Which mentions: > 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. 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.
- dwild 7y ago
  > But they plummeted because of Activation Lock and similar features. Activation Lock != kill switches A kill switch is a switch. It's an action. The activation lock is always there, the action is required to remove it, not to kill it. Kill switches are fine, because then the issue only happens when it's actually stolen. Activation lock aren't fine because it also happens when it has been sold.
repler 7y ago
There’s a reason why the ‘98 Honda Civic and ‘97 Honda Accord are the most stolen cars to this day. Anti-theft features largely work very well. Removing the anti-theft features from very expensive phones is going to be a non-starter for the vast majority of people.
- sschueller 7y ago
  I thought the primary reason is the high resale value while also being extremely common. It also blends in well with traffic unlike a Ferrari.
ndesaulniers 7y ago
> 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. > 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. 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?
izacus 7y ago
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.
- mvanbaak 7y ago
  No. Repair means broken parts get replaced but the same owner (thus the person who activated the mac) will get the device back. This new feature simply means macbook robery will go down like the cellphone robery went down after activation lock became normal. Thus, a better world.
justusthane 7y ago
> And smartphone thefts have plummeted over the last several years, so stolen phones are becoming less of a problem in the first place. I wonder why? Maybe due to theft-prevention features like Activation Lock?
- cbdumas 7y ago
  Yep if you click through to the article they linked that's exactly what it says.
mvanbaak 7y ago
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. 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.
bambax 7y ago
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. (And yes, there are implementation issues to solve with this approach. But none unsolvable.)
lanevorockz 7y ago
As society degrades practices like this will be more and more valuable. It's part of ultra urban societies and our inevitable future.
lacker 7y ago
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.
mikl 7y ago
Generally it’s not too difficult to get someone to unlock the Mac before returning it. 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. 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.
mensetmanusman 7y ago
If Apple cares about the environment, they will fix this.
lonelappde 7y ago
If something is getting stolen so much, that indicates it's too expense for the society of exists in.
pier25 7y ago
Hopefully these kind of practices will be regulated in the future. Humanity needs to reduce energy and resource consumption as much as possible. What happened to Google's modular phone?

149 points by jbuild 7y ago

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"

AnthonyMouse 7y ago
It's not especially shocking that the people doing repairs are the people talking about repairability. And you're taking it from the perspective of someone buying a new device from Apple who doesn't care about anybody else. Consider the perspective of a low income person who would otherwise buy a refurbished phone which will now be unavailable or more expensive, or the environmental perspective of having to manufacture new phones (future landfill) instead of reusing what already exists. If we care about other people then we should care about the consequences of what Apple is doing here.
- mrtksn 7y ago
  My first iPhone was a used one, obtained from a willing seller who unlocked the device upon my purchase. My purchase was not a freak one, it was not an exception to the rule. The rule is, the willing party unlocks the device when sells or gives it away. Framing it as if iPhones or Macbooks are tied to the original owner and becomes e-waste after when the original buyer no longer needs it is not honest. Especially with the Apple products, the 2.nd hand market is very healthy and Macbooks and iPhones change hands until they become obsolete. If we are going to turn into a socialist utopia where we share the resources willingly or not, I don't believe that it's Apple's device lock that's stopping us. The same goes for the repairs, it is not true that manufacturers make devices unrepairable. In some cases, it might require more skill or equipment than other cases but these devices obey the laws of physics, therefore can be repaired. In some products, the miniaturization is way beyond what manual labour can handle but for those products companies and governments offer proper ways for disposal. IC's took over transistors and made things hard to repair, you throw away billions of perfectly fine transistors just because one transistor in the CPU went bad and this is OK because of the reliability is much better and the miniaturization made the material waste much smaller.
- scarface74 7y ago
  No, that person would be able buy a refurbished phone from a source like Gazelle that insures that the rightful owner has deactivated the phone and knows that it isn’t stolen.
  - AnthonyMouse 7y ago
    There are a zillion phones that come to be refurbished because they originally had corporate owners. The IT department issues new phones and ends up with a giant pile of old phones, many of which are damaged, which aren't worth their time to sort out and resell, so they get thrown on a pallet and go in bulk to an electronics recycler. The recycler sorts the phones from the PCs from the laser printers and the phones go to a company that refurbishes phones. Now they've got a thousand iPhones from a dozen companies, legally-obtained, which are locked to the personal Apple account of some salesman three deep in the supply chain and they don't even know which specific company they're from, much less which salesman. So none of those phones can be refurbished, that person can't buy them, and the remaining phones they could buy -- which necessarily can't go to as many people as the larger number of phones -- cost more as a result of supply and demand.
EpicBlackCrayon 7y ago
> 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. Fair point. >The number of followers is not an engineering degree’s GPA. It is like a flavour of anti-intellectualism. I disagree here though. The engineers and product managers who make this stuff are often so detached from what's going on the ground or how people are actually using these products that someone who speaks for the layman is truly needed. There's also a wide variety of tech influencers out there, some who make cogent arguments about the product (Dieter Bohn comes to mind) and others who parrot those arguments absently mindedly. That latter group could conceivable be called anti-intellectual.
AWildC182 7y ago
> but their "Companies should prioritize on ease of repair even if it makes the devices less portable and less secure" narrative flips me. Everything wears out eventually. Nothing made in the past ten years is made to last forever and the trend is accelerating. Everyone uses their devices differently whether they're carefully stored in a laptop bag when not in use or sit out in a machine shop and everything in between. Processors aren't really getting that much faster so devices can last a lot longer than the did in the past. To spite this, build quality is getting worse and everyone is gluing batteries into their devices that WILL degrade to uselessness after 2-3 years of regular use. This mentality has to stop if don't want to create mountains of useless e-waste. Edit: also, nobody is asking for less security. Device theft isn't that big of an issue. This is just apple trying to screw with the resale market because they're struggling to sell more new devices when their existing ones aren't being obsoleted at the rate they used to.
- rrdharan 7y ago
  > Device theft isn't that big of an issue. On what basis are you making this claim? At least for phones, activation locks had a noticeable impact on reducing device theft (which was rampant for a while earlier in the smartphone era and a real public safety concern in cities). https://techcrunch.com/2015/02/11/apples-activation-lock-leads-to-big-drops-in-smartphone-theft-worldwide/ https://techcrunch.com/2015/02/11/apples-activation-lock-lea...
  - AWildC182 7y ago
    I'm making that claim on a personal basis. I've never had a device stolen and I know of exactly one such incident with a person I know. I just don't consider it a problem that trumps right to repair and if you do, I hope apple starts potting their devices in epoxy.
    - kstrauser 7y ago
      Two of my coworkers in the room with me right now have had their phones stolen. I know that's just as anecdotal as your story, but I assure you that phones are stolen. Less so now that activation lock ruins much of their value, thankfully.
j45 7y ago
It’s fine you don’t like to take apart devices. For others it’s part competency (d they have the skills to and part preference. Many technologists in software included some experience in hardware, including device repair, building or servicing servers, etc.
- mrtksn 7y ago
  I like taking apart stuff, I always do repair my devices by myself. That being said, what I expect from a device is to excel on its purpose and not compromise on it in the name of repairability. It's simply not true that things are not repairable, just harder. If anyone wants easy disassembly, can buy Lego.
dwild 7y ago
> 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. Don't your whole comment do the same? They are giving their opinion based on their preference. For sure it will be bias toward their goal, just like you want them to stop, so that your goal, keeping the statu quo, win. I prefer repairability because I want to be able to repair my own things and not depends as much on others. I don't expect them to do it, but I will say it loudly so that people know that my market exist. I also consider that better for the society in general, thus I will also push the government to go toward that too, because I consider the government should work toward the society better. Does it means my position will win? No, but I still have the right to defends it, just like you have the right to defends yours.
- mrtksn 7y ago
  Not at all, these are products that I paid for. They were made for me in order to take my money, I have all the rights for strong opinions because of these transactions. The repair shops are 3rd parties that are trying to inject themselves in the transaction pretending to be on my side when they are actually irrelevant. They advocate for thicker less secure products so that their margins increase if they win my business. It's simply not true that the devices are not repairable, the issue is that repairing is low margin business. What they want is to have a low touch component business.
  - dwild 7y ago
    >They advocate for thicker less secure products so that their margins increase if they win my business. They advocate with me (a customer) for a more repairable product. Just like Apple advocate with you for a less repairable product. They are also the trillion dollars company against a billion dollars industry... seems like you are with the one expert in increasing margins. > It's simply not true that the devices are not repairable, the issue is that repairing is low margin business. No one's arguing that they aren't repairable, we are arguing that they makes them harder to repair. Why do your comment keep being that dishonest.

mullen 7y ago

> “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.

eropple 7y ago
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.
- filleduchaos 7y ago
  I think the (valid if cynical) implication is that a large number of those "trashed and recycled" phones were trashed and recycled by people who are...not the owners.
  - retrac 7y ago
    Perhaps. Thieves don't strike me as the type to be more eco-conscious than average, though. I'm betting they're mostly just thrown out. Many people can't be bothered with the hassle of trying to sell a used device.
    - aroch 7y ago

michaelmrose 7y ago

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.

kgwxd 7y ago

Is there any proof this features reduces theft?

OrangeMango 7y ago
There is a high correlation with activation lock becoming widespread and the decrease in phone theft. That's not proof, but...
- hyperbovine 7y ago
  Actually it is, if you are willing to assume that the arrival of activation lock was completely exogeneous.
darklion 7y ago
Yes. "Comparing data in the six months before and after Apple released its anti-theft feature, police said iPhone robberies in San Francisco dropped 38 percent. In London, they fell 24 percent. In New York City, robberies (which typically involve a threat of violence) of Apple products dropped 19 percent and grand larcenies of Apple products dropped 29 percent in the first five months of 2014, compared with the same time period from 2013, according to a report from the New York attorney general’s office, which included data from the New York City Police Department. By comparison, thefts of Samsung products increased 51 percent in the first five months of 2014, compared with the same period a year ago, the report said." https://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/06/19/antitheft-technology-led-to-a-dip-in-iphone-thefts-in-some-cities-police-say/ https://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/06/19/antitheft-technolo...

acallan 7y ago

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.

NedIsakoff 7y ago
I'm sure there will be tons of "Legit" refurbishers that will unlock for a "donation".

gok 7y ago

They misspelled "steal"

crazygringo 7y ago

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. 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. The headline should really be "...will make it difficult to refurbish stolen Macs". Not a lot of sympathy. 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.

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lukeschlather 7y ago
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 me an address to return it."
- GhettoMaestro 7y ago
  > 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.

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hombre_fatal 7y ago

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. 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.

jessriedel 7y ago

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.

StillBored 7y ago
The process for recovering a locked iphone is problematic if the user forgets both the iphone password and the icloud password (because it was only used once a year before). That happened to a family member recently, I guess they were using face id regularly and changed their pin at one point and by the time they needed it again couldn't remember it. The part that really pisses me off is the "10 strikes and we wipe your phone bit". That happened to me too on an infrequently used iphone last year. I'm pretty sure I would have remembered the password because it was one a few dozen pins I use, but I didn't get the chance to try all of them because the fscking phone decided to wipe itself first (not attached to icloud).
- crooked-v 7y ago
  You have to specifically turn on the "Erase all data on this iPhone after 10 failed passcode attempts" option for that to happen. If you do that without being very confident about remembering your passcode, it's your own dang fault.
- pflats 7y ago
  > The part that really pisses me off is the "10 strikes and we wipe your phone bit". That happened to me too on an infrequently used iphone last year. This is an optional setting, and I'm relatively certain it used to be off by default. I think my newest iPhone specifically prompted me about it during setup.

faitswulff 7y ago

I feel like most posters here aren't reading the full article, specifically this paragraph: > 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. 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.

jedberg 7y ago
How hard would it be for a minimum wage employee of a "certified" recycler to steal the key necessary to unlock locked phones? A security feature with a backdoor isn't a security feature anymore.
- faitswulff 7y ago
  Users can already unlock devices themselves over iCloud, correct? What if it just pinged the previous owner to ask if it was legitimate?
  - StillBored 7y ago
    The problem is that a certain percentage of users set-up the icloud account with a password, then promptly forget it exists until they need it. Which tends to be when they have also forgotten their pin, because the pin is now similar to the icloud password and not required for every unlock.
    - faitswulff 7y ago
      Still, it would allow for some devices to be properly recycled and resold while maintaining security for the rest.
saagarjha 7y ago

jedberg 7y ago

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. That's really on the buyer. They need to know about getting the seller to reset. 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. That's the right way for a reseller to handle this.

izacus 7y ago
> You can't make a security feature with a backdoor, or it's not security feature anymore. Why are you so 100% sure that there's no way that Apple could design a system to keep it secure and allow recycling? There's hundreds of ways they could design their security flow where recycling is possible.
- gruez 7y ago
  >Why are you so 100% sure that there's no way that Apple could design a system to keep it secure and allow recycling? There's hundreds of ways they could design their security flow where recycling is possible. Can you list some of them? How would you prevent unscrupulous recylers from turning into fences for stolen macs?
  - FarAdvance4 7y ago
    Not even just the recycling business owner. Hire Joe over here, he works there, learns the systems and how to unlock the devices legitimately. What happens when he leaves, or is fired, or decides he's going to make some side money...
  - shkkmo 7y ago
    You have a system that allows the recycler to indirectly contact the device owner and offer them a choice of having the device returned or a small iTunes credit provided in return for the device being unlocked. Everyone wins. More stolen devices returned less electronic waste in the landfill.

protomyth 7y ago

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.

scarface74 7y ago
How is Apple locking the owner of the phone out?
- protomyth 7y ago
  Wish I knew the root cause. It's happened a number of times and passcodes and biometrics don't work and they have receipts. The phone is just locked. I assume there was a change made that they didn't understand or they just put the wrong code in. I just cannot chalk it ALL up to user problems given we hit the half-dozen point.

supernova87a 7y ago

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. Is it any wonder that manufacturers sometimes throw their hands up at how many constraints they're asked to design to?

torarnv 7y ago

«In other words, they won’t be able to do much with it besides scrap it for parts.» Or, you know, talk to the friend that sold them the phone. Hyperbole doesn’t sell their point at all.

nkrisc 7y ago

> “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. And this excerpt links to this article: https://www.sfchronicle.com/crime/article/DA-Gasc-n-says-SF-phone-robberies-cut-in-half-11541650.php https://www.sfchronicle.com/crime/article/DA-Gasc-n-says-SF-... Which mentions: > 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. 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.

dwild 7y ago
> But they plummeted because of Activation Lock and similar features. Activation Lock != kill switches A kill switch is a switch. It's an action. The activation lock is always there, the action is required to remove it, not to kill it. Kill switches are fine, because then the issue only happens when it's actually stolen. Activation lock aren't fine because it also happens when it has been sold.

repler 7y ago

There’s a reason why the ‘98 Honda Civic and ‘97 Honda Accord are the most stolen cars to this day. Anti-theft features largely work very well. Removing the anti-theft features from very expensive phones is going to be a non-starter for the vast majority of people.

sschueller 7y ago
I thought the primary reason is the high resale value while also being extremely common. It also blends in well with traffic unlike a Ferrari.

ndesaulniers 7y ago

> 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. > 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. 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?

izacus 7y ago

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.

mvanbaak 7y ago
No. Repair means broken parts get replaced but the same owner (thus the person who activated the mac) will get the device back. This new feature simply means macbook robery will go down like the cellphone robery went down after activation lock became normal. Thus, a better world.

justusthane 7y ago

> And smartphone thefts have plummeted over the last several years, so stolen phones are becoming less of a problem in the first place. I wonder why? Maybe due to theft-prevention features like Activation Lock?

cbdumas 7y ago
Yep if you click through to the article they linked that's exactly what it says.

mvanbaak 7y ago

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. 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.

bambax 7y ago

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. (And yes, there are implementation issues to solve with this approach. But none unsolvable.)

lanevorockz 7y ago

As society degrades practices like this will be more and more valuable. It's part of ultra urban societies and our inevitable future.

lacker 7y ago

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.

mikl 7y ago

Generally it’s not too difficult to get someone to unlock the Mac before returning it. 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. 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.

mensetmanusman 7y ago

If Apple cares about the environment, they will fix this.

lonelappde 7y ago

If something is getting stolen so much, that indicates it's too expense for the society of exists in.

pier25 7y ago

Hopefully these kind of practices will be regulated in the future. Humanity needs to reduce energy and resource consumption as much as possible. What happened to Google's modular phone?