Another reason to hate #Apple We're seeing more 2018+ MacBook Pro/Air donations — but Apple's T2 chip means even after iCloud sign-out and reset, the firmware stays locked to the original account.
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@codemonkeymike Does it run Linux?
@multi_flexi the t2 chip won't let you boot from USB unless you unlock it. And you need this to unlock it.
So nope. It's stuck
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@codemonkeymike@fosstodon.org this is fucking evil. like its not just inconvenient and greedy, it is blatantly evil.
@LunaCOLON3 I agree. There really is no excuse for this.
Even enterprise Chromebooks can be unlocked remotely when they're decomissioned. Apple could do this too. But they won't
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@codemonkeymike I had someone give me a used iPad last year and they hadn't reset it and the absolute nightmare I had getting it to work.
They wound up having to trust me with their username and password to log into their account so I could physically deal with it on the device.
Absolute fucking bullshit.
@retrosponge yup. It's such crap. Apple... Good hardware killed by shit policy
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@nicolas17 @codemonkeymike OK, that makes a little more sense. I’ve wiped and sold a couple T2 equipped Macs and not had problems, but I can see how that might go wrong (for example, if there was no Internet access while wiping the machine.)
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Another reason to hate #Apple We're seeing more 2018+ MacBook Pro/Air donations — but Apple's T2 chip means even after iCloud sign-out and reset, the firmware stays locked to the original account.
Without donor contact, these machines are useless.
I've upcycled ~1,000 older Macs, but T2 era machines will end that. It's controlling, creates e-waste, and will only get worse. #righttorepair matters — Apple couldn't care less.
@codemonkeymike With their growing market share the problem will get worse. I would wipe the drive and install linux. The challenge is to get wifi to work correctly. I was experimenting but with Intel based macs, rather than ARM based ones.
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@codemonkeymike With their growing market share the problem will get worse. I would wipe the drive and install linux. The challenge is to get wifi to work correctly. I was experimenting but with Intel based macs, rather than ARM based ones.
@richardazia but you can't even boot to USB without unlocking it.
That's the issue. Id love to install Linux on it. But i can't
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@codemonkeymike You may need to dump it at the Apple Store for them to recycle it.
@SamuraiSakura that's super wasteful
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@codemonkeymike Suspect you are talking about two different things. For a machine owned by an end user, removing the iCloud account and performing a factory reset absolutely makes that Mac available for activation and use by a new user, T2 or no. However, if the device is owned by the end user’s school or employer and enrolled by that organization to their device management, they would have to unenroll it.
@miked1112 nope. I've seen this personally too. Where I had a t2 mac mini. I signed out of iCloud, deleted it from my account, and reformatted the machine.
I gave it to a friend, who wanted to open the boot security to install Linux but needed my apple password to it.
I've had people donate to me with the same issues. It's crap.
If someone deletes the device from their iCloud account, you should be able to unlock the bootloader. Google does this easily with chromebooks
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@SamuraiSakura that's super wasteful
@codemonkeymike @SamuraiSakura Apple skips right over Reduce & Reuse. The order is important.
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@Aaron @bigzaphod it was donated 3rd party. How am I to prove it?
Also, id bet you this device is absolutely removed from their iCloud account. Yet remains locked on device.
It's purposely confusing and hard to get around. They could make this better right now. But they won't
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@codemonkeymike @SamuraiSakura Apple skips right over Reduce & Reuse. The order is important.
@ben @SamuraiSakura exactly.
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@codemonkeymike @SamuraiSakura Apple skips right over Reduce & Reuse. The order is important.
@ben @SamuraiSakura and you know if you have apple recycle it. All they're going to do is shred it and reclaim a bit if metal from it. Then do a victory lap about how awesome they are.
Meanwhile how much energy when into reclaiming that tiny bit of metal?
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@codemonkeymike yikes. I was just reading about imjtool and fighting edl qualcomm and some of the tools might help with T2?? I hate this shit
@amsomniac @codemonkeymike
Nah, those are specific to AOSP and Qualcomm devices respectively, T2 is a much different beast. There are some workarounds I've seen using checkm8 to trick bridgeOS into believing it's activated, but those are not truly permanent since machine identity and activation lock is tied to the ECID which is burned into the chip itself, and can't be changed. -
@ben @SamuraiSakura and you know if you have apple recycle it. All they're going to do is shred it and reclaim a bit if metal from it. Then do a victory lap about how awesome they are.
Meanwhile how much energy when into reclaiming that tiny bit of metal?
@codemonkeymike @SamuraiSakura gotta get ready for another Mother Earth keynote appearance
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@HitokiriEric @coldclimate yeah. I mean look. You can unsolder the t2 chip and reprogram it etc. Motivated thiefs can still do it.
But was this when a problem? I really don't think it was.
Again. Look at Chromebooks. They have a firmware level lock too that can't be hacked. And yet it can be decomissioned remotely when the org releases it.
You're telling me apple couldn't do this?! For regular users? Its a racket
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@oscherler @codemonkeymike IME Android tablets don't even have serious bootloader locking, unlike phones. You can basically do whatever with them.
@dalias @oscherler @codemonkeymike
Well, you're still probably getting dropped in EL1, so you're not truly free. The freest device you can buy is a used Chromebook, as they use Coreboot, so you can just compile and flash your own firmware. Thanks to the weird CR50 TPM thingy, if you've got a SuzyQAble, you can even get RW access to the AP firmware and a serial console without having to open the device, provided you run a command and assert your presence (once) with timed power button presses -
@codemonkeymike Suspect you are talking about two different things. For a machine owned by an end user, removing the iCloud account and performing a factory reset absolutely makes that Mac available for activation and use by a new user, T2 or no. However, if the device is owned by the end user’s school or employer and enrolled by that organization to their device management, they would have to unenroll it.
@miked1112 @codemonkeymike you have to specifically remove the iCloud account using these steps, logging out of iCloud and reseting the device is not enough. it's a (purposely?) confusing end user experience. https://support.apple.com/en-us/102773
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@brandonscript @codemonkeymike while they could simply give, don’t know, a certain number of years out of production and, honestly, they call them unsupported, so why not nuke the T2 on these? You know how many Macs I’ve seen that ended up being trashed because of this? It’s entirely irresponsible and yes they ought to be forced to back down a bit. We’re not suggesting that delicate and precious Mac users have their data stolen, nor their computing devices.
@csgraves yeah, resetting after a time limit without a claimant would be great. @codemonkeymike
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@Victorsigmoid have you seen the video of that? I just watched it and holy shit its intense haha.
I mean I AM considering it.. but what a nightmare.. its' super time consuming.. and you still need another up to date mac to hook it up to in DFW mode..
So even after ALL that.. you still end up needing a current Mac.. god i hate them
@codemonkeymike @Victorsigmoid
Fun fact: you don't actually need a Mac for a DFU restore: https://github.com/libimobiledevice/idevicerestore -
Another reason to hate #Apple We're seeing more 2018+ MacBook Pro/Air donations — but Apple's T2 chip means even after iCloud sign-out and reset, the firmware stays locked to the original account.
Without donor contact, these machines are useless.
I've upcycled ~1,000 older Macs, but T2 era machines will end that. It's controlling, creates e-waste, and will only get worse. #righttorepair matters — Apple couldn't care less.
@codemonkeymike @bigzaphod So your problem is that Apple is prioritizing the hardware and data integrity of THE OWNER and the owner did not properly unlock the device before it was recycled (or stolen). Sorry, but that doesn’t sound like an Apple problem. As an owner, that is what I want.
I understand that I sucks to be in your position, but Apple is doing the right thing here.
