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.

@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.)

@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

@SamuraiSakura that's super wasteful

@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

@codemonkeymike @SamuraiSakura Apple skips right over Reduce & Reuse. The order is important.

@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

@ben @SamuraiSakura exactly.

@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?

@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.

@codemonkeymike @SamuraiSakura gotta get ready for another Mother Earth keynote appearance

@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

@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

@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

@csgraves yeah, resetting after a time limit without a claimant would be great. @codemonkeymike

@codemonkeymike @Victorsigmoid
Fun fact: you don't actually need a Mac for a DFU restore: https://github.com/libimobiledevice/idevicerestore

@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.

@codemonkeymike look up target mode. There is a key combination that allows to recover macs. You can choose to reinstall macos, safe boot or install another OS.

@codemonkeymike https://support.apple.com/en-ie/guide/mac-help/mh21245/mac look for the startup options process. That is what i use.

@maverick604 @codemonkeymike @bigzaphod and I think you really don't understand what your planet is and why Appel sucks on all levels. They just want to keep your datas in their datacenters.