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.
The "solution" of just expecting the previous owner to never make a mistake is unreliable and totally unnecessary. Apple can act as the common contact for the system they created.
It would also make recovery of stolen devices easier. Refurbisher has Apple contact the owner, owner says it was stolen, person gets their equipment back.
I don't see the downside here, literally everyone gets what they want - people can sell or dispose of their old devices as they see fit, refurbishers and third-party repair shops can get parts and devices they need to run their business, Apple gets to continue touting the security of the platform, and victims of theft have a better chance of recovering their often expensive gadgets.
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."
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?
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.
Once you’re done using your device, it isn’t as easy to swap parts between macs without triggering the T2 chip where hardware changes must be okayed in an Apple.
That will flush secondary and used Mac markets away and back to Apple to likely do the same at the higher price point.
The used Mac marketplace is invaluable for new and young creators to get into a platform like Mac.
A stolen device has zero effect on apple's profits, but a repaired reused device does.
The sad thing is that others copy such "features" and in the end you will not be able to install or use a device that isn't "safe". How long until a democracy like the US or EU will dictate what is allowed on a device?1984 is coming and we are thinking it's a good thing because we can have a bit more "safety".
What Apple has done just isn't with the trade off.
Typically the value of a computer is about the same as the sum of its parts, because otherwise plenty of people would be up for a $270 profit by buying $30 worth of parts and assembling them to sell as a $300 computer.
> 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.
It's generally the other way around. The less a computer is worth (and so the less the parts are worth), the more you want to try to sell it as a whole unit to minimize transaction overhead because the fixed overhead is a larger percentage of the sale price on less expensive hardware.
From another comment: 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.
The difference between a working phone vs just its parts isn't $30. You should've gone with the parent's $30 vs $300 estimation.
I guarantee there are people willing to violently mug you for $300 but not for $30.
https://www.ifixit.com/News/apple-is-locking-batteries-to-ip...
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.
And a 9pm curfew for anyone not currently working would prevent a lot of bad behavior too. Also, it would be idiotic. Not all things that have _some_ good aspects are good things.
https://www.theverge.com/2018/11/12/18077166/apple-macbook-a...
"The parts affected, according to the document, are the display assembly, logic board, top case, and Touch ID board for the MacBook Pro, and the logic board and flash storage on the iMac Pro."
That doesn't leave much salvageable.
Apple does nothing, zero, nada to unite owners with lost equipment. (grumble, grumble)
Just realize they benefit from this.
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.
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"
And this excerpt links to this article: 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.
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.
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.
They have a way to contacting the owner to remove the lock. Why don't they do allow that? That would even allow to get back the device for the original owner.
The issue here is that Apple doesn't works toward making it harder to steal, they works toward making it harder to resell.
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?
Math. Math tells me that is impossible. It's basic cryptography. Adding a second key that someone else has makes it inherently insecure.
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.
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.
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.
Or, you know, talk to the friend that sold them the phone.
Hyperbole doesn’t sell their point at all.
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).
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.
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.
> 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.
A security feature with a backdoor isn't a security feature anymore.
Sure, and now please tell me how long it will take for the non certified 'recyclers' to also know how to bypass this activation lock? This bypass will render the whole feature useless, and can be removed the moment this bypass is implemented.
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.
Is it any wonder that manufacturers sometimes throw their hands up at how many constraints they're asked to design to?
"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-technolo...
I wonder why? Maybe due to theft-prevention features like Activation Lock?
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.
> 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?
(And yes, there are implementation issues to solve with this approach. But none unsolvable.)
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.
What happened to Google's modular phone?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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-lea...
I also think this system would be even better than Apple's current approach to ensuring that owners retain control of their data and hardware. Preventing misuse and allowing responsible transfer are two sides of the same coin. Though, again, I don't think Apple would see it that way.
Moreover, isn't this article about Macs anyway?
It was surprising how much value the old parts had.
Sad that old units with a broken X will just be scrapped because Apple will wants $hundreds for any of its specialized parts.
What happens when he leaves, or is fired, or decides he's going to make some side money...
Everyone wins. More stolen devices returned less electronic waste in the landfill.
[0]: https://support.apple.com/library/content/dam/edam/applecare...
I know--different context--but the technical implementation is similar. Which would suggest the impact of those discussions is larger than previously thought.
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.
This isn’t far fetched. Many SIM swaps are done by employees of carriers taking bribes to help thieves perform SIM swaps. They aren’t all done by social engineering.
Now suppose none of that occurs and Apple unlocks phones. Now a phone that has user data on it that was formerly encrypted is available to a third party.
Yes Apple could perform a remote wipe, but again why would Apple want to get in the middle of that? What if someone was being malicious and copied someone’s serial number and asked Apple to do a remote wipe?
Long story short, if the phone wasn’t unlocked before it was given to the refurbisher, you have know way of knowing whether the phone was stolen.
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.
> 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.
You are an honest person.
The downside for Apple is that they want people to be forced to buy new phones from them, not one on the secondhand market from someone else.
Money doesn't get paid until activation lock is verified as disabled. T-Mobile does this every time I trade in a phone, it's nothing new.
> or a couple who broke up where it's not clear who "owns" the phone.
There's no good way to ever handle this, ever - even without activation locks. Not worth worrying about, send the device to the registered owner and let the courts deal with it if people want to get bitchy with their former partner.
Apple could play the go-between. They could alert the previous owner that the device has been found, and provide a grace period where a user could request return, for a fee, including Apple's S&H, and a finders' fee for the reporting agent.
At the expiration of the grace period, Apple could provide a device reset code.
HNers go on and on about big brother Cupertino all the time, but ooh some (well intentioned but misguided) refurb/recycling shop writes an article and all of a sudden critical thinking goes out the window.
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.
And as for repairability, it’s subjective. I have a soldering iron and my dexterity is not bad at all, therefore many things deemed hard to repair by some are easy for me. I bet there are people who are much better than me and have better equipment, so let’s not pretend that there’s an universal repairability score or something like that.
I wasn't arguing about your opinion on repairability, I was arguing about you stating that ifixit shouldn't defends my case.
> And as for repairability, it’s subjective.
And ifixit does a pretty good job explaining their scoring and show how something is more repairable than others.
> let’s not pretend that there’s an universal repairability score
There's no universal score, but there's definitely things that make repairability easier or harder, tools or no tools.
Also, please refrain from snide remarks, per HN commenting guidelines. Let your arguments stand on their merits.
Now, I could point out that absent any rationale, your comment fails to make the conversation "more thoughtful and substantive", as requested per HN commenting guidelines. However, I'd also remind everyone that HN isn't moderated by replying to comments you feel break the guidelines. Quite the opposite: "don't feed egregious comments by replying," if you really believe a comment is that bad then flag it.
However, said guidelines also remind us that critical comments are teaching moments and can be inherently good. Wit is frequently a valuable component in criticism, and there's a different between wit and mean-spirited snark. Thus, we're left with maybe the most important guideline: Assume good faith. I genuinely believe the article OP is well-intentioned, and was hoping the comment parent would provide some additional justification or perhaps reflection based on the distinction between good ideas and BigTech overreach. Instead, meta-commentary.
Regardless, have a good day.
Based on the anecdotal commentary, it seems like many recyclers and refurbishers do attempt to educate users that devices should be unlocked. It also seems like this doesn't always happen for sundry reasons so there is still a lot of waste.
Used to be very common for someone to buy an iPhone on eBay, realise it was activation locked and then see comments everywhere on how to remove it.
My guess is many of those people would end up just throwing the phone away.
I had the buyer of my stolen iPhone 8 on eBay contact me and say "Hey, it says this phone is yours - since you've probably already replaced it, can you help me unlock it so I'm not -also- getting ripped off?".
Pretty ballsy.
Remote unlocking won't help people whose devices are stolen either. Worse, recyclers would have very little incentive to help because they paid for the device.
> What would be the "backdoor" of allowing recyclers to prompt users to remotely unlock or authorize apple to issue a signed unlocking code for that particular device?
You'd need to store the encryption key somewhere and make it available for remote use. This is scary enough IMHO.
> it seems like many recyclers and refurbishers do attempt to educate users that devices should be unlocked.
This is not about user education. Recyclers should not accept locked devices in the first place.
