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If it makes my laptop useless to be stolen and protects my personal information and finances I'd choose them being sent to the landfill over second hand market.

• philliphaydon 4y ago
  Apparently the laptops are given to a recycler to be destroyed by an institution. He’s trying to refurb and sell. https://twitter.com/rdklinc/status/1617541547469193217 https://twitter.com/rdklinc/status/1617541547469193217 > Wrong -- it means that 1000 of these devices were dumped from an institution to a recycler without even bothering to log out first. And these apathetic institutions don't return calls when asked to unlock because they want the machines destroyed.
  • chongli 4y ago
    Isn't this just a case of "buyer beware" for the recycler? If the machines haven't been properly erased so that they can have ownership transferred then the recyclers should refuse to accept them. On the other hand, if the original owners want the machines actually destroyed and not resold then I don't see the problem here.
    • judge2020 4y ago
      On the third hand, they're a recycler. It's unfortunate these Macs can't be reused, but I imagine the Recycler got these for free or bought them and paid scrap metal prices, not "we'll resell this" prices.
      • psychphysic 4y ago
        I disagree. I think apple should run a refurb but they wouldn't as that would depress their retail price. The devices are recycled just for parts. Even the motherboard will have parts removed and reused. It's a lot more work than flipping the laptop on eBay.
        • robertoandred 4y ago
          Apple's sold refurbished products for decades.
          • psychphysic 4y ago
            I'm totally wrong. Like the most wrong I've ever been. Well once I made a marmite pizza, other than that I've never been so wrong in my life
          • sgerenser 4y ago
            Indeed. Probably almost half of the Macs I’ve bought over the past couple decades have been refurbished.
        • mikestew 4y ago
          I think apple should run a refurb but they wouldn't as that would depress their retail price. I think people should at least make a good faith effort to look this shit up before gettin' all snarky: https://www.apple.com/shop/refurbished https://www.apple.com/shop/refurbished
          • psychphysic 4y ago
            Yikes I was totally wrong.
            • mikestew 4y ago
              Like I’ve never made a mistake, have an upvote. :-)
      • TomSwirly 4y ago
        > It's unfortunate It's not just "unfortunate": our wildly consumptive and wasteful nature is a crime against future generations. It's not just that our consumption and waste production are at record levels, to the point that we have damaged our climate!, but that they continue to increase at exponential rates.
        • widowlark 4y ago
          This is incredibly well said, thank you. All of this central control assumes the central control will still be there in the future. Someday, apple will cease to exist, and when it does, there will be millions of unverified bricks that used to be computers.
  • kube-system 4y ago
    Yeah, this is a problem with how many recyclers sell their services. What they sell to businesses is something like "we dispose of your device and securely shred your data" beside some picture of physically shredded hard drives... but reality is often something more like "we have a kid run DBAN on it and then flip it on eBay". Recyclers are going to have to have to make it worthwhile to the businesses they source their product from, and be a little bit more upfront about it, if they want to recycle these devices. What they want to do is whine to Apple so they can continue to go behind their customer's backs like they do now with every other device.
  • nix23 4y ago
    >Apparently the laptops are given to a recycler to be destroyed by an institution. He’s trying to refurb and sell. So he stole those then? Because he's not the rightful owner right? Even trash belongs to someone.
• hbn 4y ago
  As much as we all like to poke fun at Apple for some of their annoying decisions with lack of user choice, their locked-down systems also have pretty impressive results in that they've made it nearly useless to steal any of their devices. I remember hearing that in certain "protests" (definitely not riots) a couple years ago, where people were looting stores, Apple was able to easily get the serial numbers of all the stolen devices and remotely brick them. The contrast of how valuable Apple products are both new and second hand, compared to how useless they are to steal is pretty wild. I can't think of any other product like that.
  • jgwil2 4y ago
    There was really no need to shoehorn a snarky political talking point into this discussion.
    • ImHereToVote 4y ago
      Talking is just a cheap talking point.
    • robertlagrant 4y ago
      "Need" is a subjective bar. Was there a need for you to reply? Was there a need for me to reply to you?
      • jgwil2 4y ago
        OP was ostensibly making a completely unrelated point. The word "need" was referring to the relationship between the original topic of discussion and the snarky aside that OP dropped into it. There was no need for there to be a political component to make that point. It didn't add anything to the discussion. Obviously people are downvoting my comment, so people don't think that I was contributing to the discussion either, but I thought it was worth a shot to try to discourage the kind of comments that I believe degrade online discussions. I think I made my point in a pretty civil fashion, and that's the end of it as far as I'm concerned.
        • 4y ago
• 1234letshaveatw 4y ago
  Totally bro. Bring on the e-waste, as long as I am good who cares?
  • Brigand 4y ago
    Please.
  • philliphaydon 4y ago
    It’s only e waste if stolen or similar. If you are selling it then you can unlock it and there’s no problem.
    • eli 4y ago
      The previous owner CAN unlock if they're able to and they know they're supposed to. Unfortunately I suspect a lot of devices are intentionally donated or recycled while unintentionally locked. I wonder what percentage of SMBs have proper MDM set up for their devices versus just a bunch of personal apple IDs with no way for the org that owns them to unlock them?
      • acdha 4y ago
        This is a self-correcting problem: if I buy a Mac from you on Craigslist I’m not going to say “oops, no big deal” if I can’t use it - I’ll ask you to unlink it, reverse a charge, or even take you to small claims court. Over time, people learn this and it becomes routine just like people buying used cars know to check that the seller really owns it and isn’t lying about the collision history.
        • widowlark 4y ago
          how do you reverse a cash payment?
          • acdha 4y ago
            You don’t, which is why many people either avoid them, carefully check before paying (Apple has a detailed “before you buy” guide for this exact reason), or in the worst case that’s why I mentioned small claims court since regrettably some people will misrepresent what they’re selling.
• userbinator 4y ago
  None of this is an issue if its actually real second hand. People don't always take the time to go through everything. Traditional disk encryption serves your protection perfectly well. As the saying goes, "Those who give up freedom for security..."
  • alanfranz 4y ago
    How does fde make a laptop useless to be stolen?
    • smoldesu 4y ago
      Because the actually valuable content (the data) is protected, while the disposable part (the hardware) is taken. If you have a responsible backup habit, disaster recovery is as simple as restoring another device. FDE gives you permission to shrug-off lost devices and data, something an unencrypted laptop can't quite offer.
      • kube-system 4y ago
        Thieves don't steal devices to sell the data. They steal devices to sell the device.
        • deleted 4y ago
          [deleted]
        • lwkl 4y ago
          It's not about the thieves intent. It's about the person that ends up with a stolen or recycled device that wasn't properly wiped and now has a bunch of sensitive data on the hard drive (you can find tons of stories like that). Also industrial espionage is a thing and but I agree with you that's probably a minority of thefts.
          • kube-system 4y ago
            Yes, I know what FDE is good for. But it doesn't prevent or deter anyone from stealing the device, as Activation Lock does. FDE has no utility in reducing the value of a stolen device, because they can be simply reset to factory settings.
• peoplefromibiza 4y ago
  > If it makes my laptop useless to be stolen and protects my personal information and finances keeping information private and/or secret and rendering a perfectly usable device a brick are two completely orthogonal things. My laptop is perfectly secure, without Apple having a say on what I do with it after I bought it. Including reselling it. p.s. if someone saw my laptop and a mac laptop left alone in the same room, they would try to steal the Mac, making my laptop even safer by virtue of not being from Apple.
  • tsimionescu 4y ago
    > p.s. if someone saw my laptop and a mac laptop left alone in the same room, they would try to steal the Mac, making my laptop even safer by virtue of not being from Apple. A lot of people around are claiming the exact opposite: thieves have learned that stealing Macs is useless, while other laptops have clear re-sale value. The retail price of Macs is irrelevant if there is no way to fence them, and if thieves are aware that there is no way to fence them.
    • peoplefromibiza 4y ago
      > thieves have learned that stealing Macs is useless, while other laptops have clear re-sale value thieves have also learned that the only easily re-sellable laptops are the $200 brandless stuff bought on Aliplay, that are probably not worth it. every brand laptop today can be registered, has some form of "find my laptop" and supports encrypted filesystems Macs aren't good only for re-sale, but also for spare parts and/or raw materials. Nobody would steal a Trabant over a BMW just because the BMW has more sophisticated security. Thieves are able to learn new tricks too.
      • mannerheim 4y ago
        > Macs aren't good only for re-sale, but also for spare parts and/or raw materials. Except this entire thing blew up because of recyclers bitching that the laptops were only worth the value of scrap, something like $13.
• mihaaly 4y ago
  When your ownership of things depends on a private organization - under the ultimate control of who knows who with what private agenda and incentives -, the organization's willingness of cooperation in this ownership, and proper and fair implementation of procedures, with incentives for them to do so the best being indirect (sales volume of products as a whole) then there is definitelly an issue! Just because there are criminals out there we shouldn't mandate all and every honest parties prove themselves of their innocence proactively.... I am surprised this security vs. freedom things is still something where people argue so overwhelmingly for the security part against themselves despite the many many many bad experiences throughout the history in various levels.... (there are schemes where the ownerships is strictly controlled but by a public body of the society with regulations around it - house, car, etc - but not a private business oriented organization's coined policies and online account implemented by there sole discretion and judgement who is allowed to use what, what constitutes acceptable proof in their view, and who is given access to that authoritive account and who is locked out eventually, potentially for a completely independent reason)
  • lowbloodsugar 4y ago
    You don’t have to buy one. Problem solved.
    • TheLoafOfBread 4y ago
      You don't need to breathe. Problem solved for driving my rolling coal around.
    • mihaaly 4y ago
      You mean if I do not buy then this whole problematic construction will go away for good?! I can do that! I can refrain from buying for the sake of the humanity, no problem! : )