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Aperron t1_j6n4c3m wrote

Reply to comment by DMarquesPT in Activation Lock is a great feature, but needs a rethink as 2020 Macs are turned into landfill by hugglenugget

You clearly aren’t familiar with how much perfectly usable material people (both individuals and organizations) discard at recycling depots that aren’t going to go through the hassle of even a single mouse click for something that in their mind is trash and they’re throwing in the garbage. Working LCD televisions, 5 year old computers, appliances replaced because they didn’t like the color anymore etc.

In the past when drives were removable these places would typically pull them and either destroy and replace or run the disks through automated DOD multi pass erasing machines, do a fresh install of the OS and throw it out in the thrift store portion of the depot for $50-100 to cover the overhead of doing so.

Occasionally you’d get the odd stray machine with a bios lock that could be a parts donor for one of the other pallet load of the same machine that got banged up in the process of being thrown away, no big deal.

Now it’s getting to be a majority of devices coming in that are encumbered by some sort of lock, cloud service login or similar (like those sonos speakers that the company encouraged people to software brick and drop off at their local recycler). This is not unintentional on the part of the manufacturers.

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DMarquesPT t1_j6n6i0m wrote

I am perfectly familiar with that, I just don’t get the argument that activation lock (a useful security feature that has effectively reduced theft due to its reputation) shouldn’t exist because some users or orgs can’t be bothered to deactivate it.

Just recently I bought a couple outgoing iMacs from work, including a model with a T2 security chip, and IT obviously went through “the trouble” of resetting the device to factory settings and removing the lock. It’s not that hard, and leaves the device perfectly capable of being used by others.

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Aperron t1_j6n7hwv wrote

That’s all well and good, but doesn’t change the fact that these perfectly reusable devices are already accumulating and will continue to accumulate in ever increasing mass quantities at recycling depots across the country where there is no possibility to do the ecologically and socially responsible thing and ensure they get a second life as a usable device for someone who isn’t suited to buy brand new.

Rendering mass quantities of usable equipment as at best a token fraction of its raw input material cannot be allowed to be classified as a sustainable practice. Any sustainability labels or accreditations need to be removed from both Apple and any enterprises that demand destruction of depreciated assets if that is to continue. Cut the greenwashing, call it what it is.

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Willing_Definition71 t1_j6ndcnb wrote

Its not Apples choice, stop pretending it is

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Aperron t1_j6ndvun wrote

Apple created the software mechanism in question, where it didn’t exist before and changed the status quo from one where it was trivial to salvage anything physically intact entering the waste stream for reuse to one where it was in many or most cases impossible.

That’s not even getting into Apples lobbying efforts at the individual state level to implement “sustainable “ ewaste disposal programs where the primary focus was physically destroying any usable hardware as quickly as reasonably possible after being discarded.

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Willing_Definition71 t1_j6ne6rg wrote

Sorry you don't understand corporate security, but no amount of talking yourself in circle will make your view popular

Apple devices are more recyclable than most on the market

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Aperron t1_j6own56 wrote

Recovering some raw materials from a usable item is not recycling. How hard is that to understand. Recycling when conducted properly has a primary goal of salvage and return to use for the original intended purpose of an item. Recovery of raw material is the absolute worst case last resort in recycling.

Shredding up a bunch of 5 year old computers that are the product of a considerable amount of human labor, energy, raw materials and transportation activities when they still have years of serviceable life remaining is not recycling, and it is not sustainable. Full stop.

Any circumstances making that a common outcome need to be challenged and mitigated. Both on the part of manufacturers and the original end users or purchasing institutions.

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DMarquesPT t1_j6nfzc0 wrote

I’ve bought plenty of used Apple devices over the years. That’s how I could afford my first iPhone and iPad as a student.

The only reason they’re accumulating is because the previous owners didn’t do their due diligence before getting rid of the devices. Removing activation lock when wiping a device is not hard.

The worst part of this is misled corporate owners who believe the myth that they have the destroy the computers/drives “for security reasons” when erasing the encryption keys does the job of safeguarding their deleted data on disk.

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