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Comment by peoplefromibiza | Hacker News Reader

> 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.

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> 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.

> 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.

> 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.

electronic devices are a source of copper, silver, gold, nickel, zinc, steel, glass, cobalt etc etc

They are quite more valuable than the bare aluminium case.

In 2016 Apple declared that it had recovered nearly 90 million pounds of materials from Apple devices recycled through its program in 2015. Sixty-one million pounds of those materials are reusable in future products, including 2,204 pounds of gold

From an environmental POV Apple should allow people to use/re-use/resell their devices as long as possible. Of course that would not align with their interest that is selling as many new devices as possible.

The legitimate owner of the device can resell it.

except when they can't (I saw comments of users that lost the access to their accounts or that could not prove they bought the item because they lost the receipt that had their devices turned into very expensive bricks)

OTOH e-waste should not be allowed under any circumstances when the raw materials are scarce and/or retrieving them is damaging to the environment or they are polluting.

Last but not least the device destiny should be under the control of the person in possess of the item, unless the item was stolen.

If someone brings their car to my junkyard to destroy it and I fix it and resell it or dismantle it and sell it as spare parts it's completely under my rights, I don't see why electronic devices should work differently and why the manufacturer should have the keys.

Don't let me start on non-Apple compatible replacements parts that Apple won't let you use, even if the warranty has expired.

I would rather my devices become bricked if they're stolen from me. You are welcome to disable the feature on your own devices or not purchase devices that have this feature.

> I would rather my devices become bricked if they're stolen from me

Non sequitur.

The device is mine when I buy it, but it is sometimes impossible to unbrick something that Apple bricked.

I would rather let you pay a premium to have the features you so much want, because annoying the majority just because you want something, should cost you more.

Also the will to generate useless e-waste should be punished, we are past the times when people (especially americans) can use the entire planet as their own junkyard.

>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.

That might be true now, but it might not be as time goes on and this bricking functionality becomes common knowledge.

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