{"id":40811,"date":"2023-10-17T11:05:53","date_gmt":"2023-10-17T15:05:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/?p=40811"},"modified":"2023-10-17T12:09:31","modified_gmt":"2023-10-17T16:09:31","slug":"not-setting-up-find-my-bricked-my-macbook","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/2023\/10\/17\/not-setting-up-find-my-bricked-my-macbook\/","title":{"rendered":"Not Setting Up Find My Bricked My MacBook"},"content":{"rendered":"

Paul McMahon<\/a> (via Hacker News<\/a>):<\/p>\n

About 30 minutes before my flight was boarding, I pulled out my laptop to do some last minute work. But when I opened it up, a stranger’s profile greeted me. Evidently we had swapped laptops going through security.<\/p>

[…]<\/p>

I eagerly opened the box, which had a distinctly exotic scent - perfume or spices, I couldn’t quite place it. Sure enough, there was a bubble wrapped Midnight Blue MacBook Air. Opening it up, there was a Japanese keyboard. Everything good so far.<\/p>

Booting it up, something was a bit strange though. Rather than being greet by my login screen, I saw “Activate Mac”, and was prompted to select a wifi network. I did this, and then was shown an “Activation Lock” screen.<\/p>

[…]<\/p>

I get why Apple doesn’t want to tell me why they’re rejecting my requests to disable the activation lock, as it would help an attacker figure out how they might get a stolen MacBook unlocked. […] But come on! I bought the MacBook from Apple. I’m clearly the owner. They presumably can see that my Apple ID is associated with it. The only case I can think of where they legitimately shouldn’t unlock it is if I sold it to someone else and then stole it back from them.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I don’t like how these features are linked. If I don’t turn on Find My Mac<\/a>, I can’t locate a lost Mac, and it could be bricked due to Activation Lock<\/a>. But if I do enable Find My Mac, it can be remote-erased<\/a> by anyone who gets into my Apple ID account<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n

Previously:<\/p>\n