Some may say that, because having their laptop stolen is a problem they actually experienced. Having your device remain owned by a vendor, who only "licenses" it for you to use opens up a whole new world of problems, some of which average person can't even imagine.
It is only thieves and ideologues who actually experience any difficulty. And while I’m all for righteous purity, I am also happy knowing that the thief who stole my MacBook from Spaces coworking in San Jose (do not ever use Spaces!) will get nothing for the risk they took, and/or that a buyer taking a too good to be true deal will get a brick.
Yes, I like this world better than the free-open-insecure alternative.
That might be a minor consolation, but the bigger point is that this will (hopefully) significantly disrupt the market for shady used MacBook sales and thus the incentive to target MacBooks for theft.
This is the government encryption backdoor all over again. There is no such thing as a security backdoor that can be used only by good guys. If Apple can’t determine someone is the legitimate owner of a locked device, they have two choices: allow thieves to unlock devices, resulting in more theft. Or decline to unlock for some legitimate owners who chose to lock their device and not take precautions.
It’s a tough choice, but I think Apple is making the right one here. You may disagree, and that’s fine.
Or should Apple just remove the activation lock feature, that was added specifically in response to large amounts of theft because we don’t think those thefts are going to happen any more?
He took down the details of it.
Actually, everyone experiences this right now. Macbooks are working like this. And 99% of people are fine with it. We don't have to imagine anything
That's not true. I think you're saying that Mac users are already today in an ecosystem where this could bite them hard, that much is true. But nobody gives it any thought until they personally find their multi-thousand dollar device useless and Apple refuses to help even though they totally could if they cared. Only then do they realize what a terrible situation it is.