No. Simply no. What is stopping a "criminal" from bypassing this activation lock? Time and technical ability? It surely isn't legal recourse or fear of losing

No. Simply no. What is stopping a "criminal" from bypassing this activation lock? Time and technical ability? It surely isn't legal recourse or fear of losing the device. It's a matter of time before this is moot. On top of that, I've left "criminal" in quotes because quite frankly, I don't care if Apple claims breaking this lock is a breach of DMCA, ToS, or anything else. I've paid for the device. It's mine. The data on it is mine. If I want something out of it bad enough, I'm getting to it. Regardless of their corporate philosophy. On recycling, this is likely a step away from being generally responsible. Apple already has locks in place preventing parts from "non-genuine" repair shops being used. In addition they engineer components to be tightly-coupled to one another. Now they want to lock the entire device? At best, this can be argued as "pro-customer", but not pro-consumer. Apple has made good decisions in the past; this isn't one of them.