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This control severely limits the utility of stolen iPhones, which is a good thing for me as an iPhone owner. There are other phones that consumers can choose t
by RcouF1uZ4gsC 3y ago
This control severely limits the utility of stolen iPhones, which is a good thing for me as an iPhone owner.
There are other phones that consumers can choose that don’t have this pairing. But this pairing of parts is one of the reasons people choose and iPhone.
- dotnet00 3y agoThis is such an absurd excuse. The competing android devices are not exactly known for being a more popular target for theft. This is just a copout pushed by Apple to justify obviously bad practices, and due to their reality distortion field, you guys eat it up.
- thih9 3y ago> The competing android devices are not exactly known for being a more popular target for theft. Do you have a source? And which exactly competing android devices do you mean? Does the comparison factor in the popularity of the device?
- dotnet00 3y agoThere isn't a specific survey I can find pointing either way, which similarly makes the argument that theft is significant enough to justify restrictive and wasteful locks also moot. By competing devices of course I am referring to other flagships which are of a similar price and feature set, like flagship Samsung phones etc.
- ubermonkey 3y ago>The competing android devices are not exactly known for being a more popular target for theft. You're so close to getting it.
- cameronh90 3y agoThat’s just because the thieves don’t consider the android devices worth stealing. London sadly has an ongoing problem with phone snatchers and pickpockets, so on two occasions I’ve seen them nick an Android. In the first case, they just chucked it on the floor a few metres further down the road. On the second, the guy loudly shouted “what the fuck is this shit?” as he cycled down the road and threw it into a canal.
- Aeolun 3y agoI’m not quite sure what they expect if they snatch an Apple device? It’d just turn into a brick in a few minutes/hours?
- cameronh90 3y agoSo one of two things usually happen, either: (1) It gets shipped straight to Eastern Europe or China and broken down for parts which are resold back to unauthorised repair shops in the West as official Apple parts. Or more commonly (2) they will try to socially engineer the owner into giving up their Apple credentials so that they can sign out the iPhone and wipe it. If that fails, go to (1). When my brother’s partner had her iPhone nicked, they extracted her phone number off the SIM then started sending her messages linking to a phishing iCloud sign in page, saying something like “Your stolen device has been located, sign in here to recover it.”.
- chongli 3y agoThe proper comparison is not with Android phones, it’s with iPhones before Apple introduced this feature. The news reported a global drop in iPhone thefts at the time [1]. [1] https://archive.nytimes.com/bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/06/19/antitheft-technology-led-to-a-dip-in-iphone-thefts-in-some-cities-police-say/ https://archive.nytimes.com/bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/06/1...
- dotnet00 3y agoI disagree that the point of comparison should be iPhones from before this functionality, the point is that the negative effects of locking all parts are not worth the amount of theft, not that they don't reduce theft. After all, you could massively reduce burglaries too by allowing home security systems to have automated lethal turrets to shoot burglars, but that's considered way too far in terms of social cost by pretty much every place.
- chongli 3y agoThe point of my reply was to illustrate the true effect on iPhone theft from this change. Do you have a more accurate way to measure that? Whether you think the tradeoff is worth it or not is beside the point. I made no claim for or against the tradeoff, so you have nothing to disagree with there.
- chii 3y agoWhy doesn't apple allow the owner to choose to decouple the pairing? It's telling why they dont.
- jaas 3y agoBecause thieves know that all iPhones are locked like this and thus don’t steal them. If they knew that some significant percentage were not locked they would be worth stealing again, and if it’s locked they just throw it in a dumpster. The fact that your phone is locked protects everyone else as well.
- j-bos 3y agoSomehow I doubt even a percent of owners would choose to unpair. And if they do for repair purposes, there's no reason they couldn't re pair/register. What am I missing?
- M4v3R 3y agoNothing, the argument for pairing the parts is so weak that I’m genuinely surprised to see it here on HN so often.
- ghostpepper 3y agoThere have been reports of thieves threatening victims with weapons and demanding they disable icloud. Not saying that negates the benefit necessarily but it's a relevant data point.
- cantSpellSober 3y ago> thieves know that all iPhones are locked like this and thus don’t steal them Do you even believe this? I haven't seen any examples of thieves saying "stick em up! Oh, iPhone? Have a nice day" Easy counterexample: > an entire wall of iPhones (approximately 436) were gone https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2023/04/07/apple-store-robbed-half-million-washington-mall/11622949002/ https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2023/04/07/apple-...
- realusername 3y agoIt limits the utility of all iphones, stolen or not. It's not like you have a switch to deactivate it for yourself. And for the consumer choice, I don't see Apple making any advertising about how anti repair they are, strange. I doubt most phone owners know about the pairing issues.
- jqpabc123 3y ago[flagged]
- jqpabc123 3y agoThis control severely limits the utility of non-stolen iPhones which is not a good thing for an iPhone owner. There are other phones that consumers can choose that don’t have this pairing. But this pairing of parts is *not* one of the reasons people chose an iPhone because most buyers were oblivious to it since Apple never told them.
- ozyschmozy 3y agoHow often does phone theft actually happen? I keep hearing this argument but in my ~15 years of owning non-apple phones and laptops, I've never had one stolen, or heard of anyone getting theirs stolen. Have I just been very lucky?
- vasdae 3y agoThe answer depends on the country or even the city you live in or visit. In some places walking around with a $1000 phone is extremely dangerous to your life.
- ndsipa_pomu 3y agoThat seems surprising to me, when surely there's no easy way to steal a phone (iPhone or Android) and not have it completely locked and unusable. I would imagine that cars are eminently more desirable a target to steal as they're often left unattended for hours/days at the side of the road and they're typically worth far more than $1k. It's also relatively easy to attack a car waiting at traffic lights, over-power the driver and have access to the car and the keys, if the actual vehicle is required rather than just selling the parts.
- vasdae 3y agoPickpocketing is quick and easy, sometimes not even a crime, and even though phones are locked, you can sell the Android phone for pieces. That's not the case for the iphone.
- ndsipa_pomu 3y ago> Pickpocketing is quick and easy, sometimes not even a crime I find that difficult to believe.
- Lalabadie 3y agoIn many places, it's a crime according to the law, but if nothing happens with thieves or reported theft, then in terms of consequences it's not a crime.
- lakpan 3y agoIn theory that sounds great, in practice you can find Facebook groups for ~stolen~ ahem lost iPhones for sale. The value of a bricked phone is never zero, so theft prevention isn’t as good as Apple claims.
- ponorin 3y agoif this was their only intention they would let third party repair shops access to genuine parts or software tools. the reality is that third party "apple certified" repair shops are contractually less capable than uncertified ones, so much so that calling their service repair feels too generous. apple do this to sell you phones instead of phone parts. if any of what you're saying was true it's simply a happy accident.
- lcnPylGDnU4H9OF 3y ago> happy accident That’s a perfect term for this. I would absolutely believe that Apple approached this from that exact anti-theft perspective but it sure is easy to see how such a feature might benefit their bottom line. It’s a matter of looking around and wondering where the inexpensive parts are.
- paulmd 3y agoGiving third party shops official parts would still preclude the ability to enforce anti-theft unless you also gave them the software to pair it, and then you’ve once again precluded any ability to enforce anti-theft. Apple needs to know what hardware is going into a particular phone to implement the killswitches, which means it can’t be handled as bulk inventory. They will sell you hardware that has been paired to a specific phone, but they’re not going to not have pairing (which is legally mandated for anti theft, over the objections of hardware vendors at the time) and they’re not going to hand out the ability to bypass the anti theft by signing your own keys. Could they come up with some license-based model where the cpu wants to see apple attestation that the part is not stolen etc, perhaps, but, it’s not a trivial problem either. > apple do this to sell you phones instead of phone parts. if any of what you're saying was true it's simply a happy accident. Apple literally will sell you the parts though. How does that fit into your supposed “plot to force you to buy whole phones instead of parts”? People are silly. About apple and nvidia and a couple of other companies in particular - there is a real thing with negative parasocial attachment to these brands, people love to hate them. http://paulgraham.com/fh.html http://paulgraham.com/fh.html
- luuurker 3y agoNo one ever stole my phone, but I had everything from broken displays to dead batteries, so at least in my case this is not good for me as a owner.
- mwint 3y agoTextbook confounded reasoning: it’s possible no one stole your phone _because_ they’ve been made such undesirable targets for theft.
- luuurker 3y agoThese "locks" might reduce theft, but not only they still happen, but you can also make money with a stolen phone. You can sell it for parts. An iPhone will annoy you about the replaced display, but the phone still works. You can transfer the old battery's controller to the new one so the phone doesn't know about the change. You can sell the shell of the phone, speakers, cameras, etc. Maybe now I benefit from these Apple restrictions and annoyances, but I've been using expensive phones since before Apple started doing this and yet my phone was never stolen. I've cracked a few displays and killed a few batteries though. What seems to help me is having some awareness of my surroundings. I live in a big city and every day I see people standing by the road waiting for a bus. Phones out, noise cancelling headphones, bikes passing right in from of them... I mean, it's not that hard for a snatcher to take their phone.
- 2OEH8eoCRo0 3y agoTheft is a boogeyman that allows Apple absolute control over their devices. Why is theft Apple's problem rather than law enforcement? Should cars require a password too? Why don't we make all consumer goods require a password so that theft can be a thing of the past!
- mwint 3y agoLaw enforcement (and prosecutors) are increasingly unconcerned with theft of “small” amounts, and theft by groups of people they’ve decided to stop prosecuting. I’m happy that Apple isn’t just saying “meh, not our problem”, and it’s one reason I buy their stuff.