Yes, apple does allow the registered “owner” to transfer it to another person’s apple account, so it only becomes scrap metal when they don’t. But, as the article says, many large organizations “recycle” large numbers of machines without doing the work to let the recycler actually reuse it.
Apple could easily unlock these machines but they’d rather sell new computers than have more second-hand ones on the market so they choose not to.
People everywhere are today disobeying the law of obsolescence. They are using their old
cars, their old tires, their old radios and their old clothing much longer than statisticians had
expected on the basis of earlier experience.
[…]
I propose that when a person continues to posses and use old clothing, automobiles and buildings, after they have passed their obsolescence date, as determined at the time they were created, he should be taxed for such continued use of what is legally “dead.”
hey, you don’t like the “freedom” of being able to discard a perfectly functioning device because a corporation doesn’t want to lose profit? are you some kind of socialist?
If you want to liberate these macbooks, it looks like the Asahi Linux project might be able save these discarded machines and we can reduce the consumption of these machines.
It would be nice if there was a large supply of cheap-because-apple-prevents-them-from-running-macos M1 laptops available for running free software on, but I’m pretty sure that this “Activation Lock” thing is in the firmware and blocks running other OSes too.
I haven’t inspected it recently maybe it is an i486 processor. I just know that it has only 3gb of ram and a 64 bit version of Debian doesn’t work and I need a 32 bit OS to function. Chromium gives it issues. It’s good for basic tasks of server administration. It’s one of those imac monitor and computer in one kind of machines.
Are you sure it has 3GB? Apple only shipped macs with 32-bit Intel chips very briefly (in 2006, with the Core Duo, which is i686) and I think they couldn’t have more than 2GB ram. Maybe you have a later model which actually has a 64-bit Core 2 Duo but the 64-bit Debian installer just didn’t work on it.
I believe it’s in their T2 chip, which means that unfortunately, the only way to fix it is to swap the entire board. The CPU and T2 chip are serialized, as well as a bunch of other components. Also, the drive is encrypted by the T2 with encryption keys that are specific to that particular T2, so unless you replace everything including the drive, you can boot from neither the SSD nor an external drive.
The T2 will not allow you to read most of the data and it will erase itself if you try, so there’s no real way around it unless someone finds a bootrom exploit or something else that’s extremely low level.
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the original owner has to unlock it correct? So if they unlock it before giving it away/trashing it, it’s still usable correct?
Yes, apple does allow the registered “owner” to transfer it to another person’s apple account, so it only becomes scrap metal when they don’t. But, as the article says, many large organizations “recycle” large numbers of machines without doing the work to let the recycler actually reuse it.
Apple could easily unlock these machines but they’d rather sell new computers than have more second-hand ones on the market so they choose not to.
Peak capitalist innovation
Bernard London wrote Ending the Depression Through Planned Obsolescence in 1932:
Marx is spinning so fast in his grave that if we hooked a generator up to him we would never have to use fossil fuels again.
hey, you don’t like the “freedom” of being able to discard a perfectly functioning device because a corporation doesn’t want to lose profit? are you some kind of socialist?
If you want to liberate these macbooks, it looks like the Asahi Linux project might be able save these discarded machines and we can reduce the consumption of these machines.
It would be nice if there was a large supply of cheap-because-apple-prevents-them-from-running-macos M1 laptops available for running free software on, but I’m pretty sure that this “Activation Lock” thing is in the firmware and blocks running other OSes too.
I got an apple product no longer supported by Apple that but it has an i386 processor
Really? What is it? I can think of a couple of i486 Apple products but no i386.
I haven’t inspected it recently maybe it is an i486 processor. I just know that it has only 3gb of ram and a 64 bit version of Debian doesn’t work and I need a 32 bit OS to function. Chromium gives it issues. It’s good for basic tasks of server administration. It’s one of those imac monitor and computer in one kind of machines.
Are you sure it has 3GB? Apple only shipped macs with 32-bit Intel chips very briefly (in 2006, with the Core Duo, which is i686) and I think they couldn’t have more than 2GB ram. Maybe you have a later model which actually has a 64-bit Core 2 Duo but the 64-bit Debian installer just didn’t work on it.
I believe it’s in their T2 chip, which means that unfortunately, the only way to fix it is to swap the entire board. The CPU and T2 chip are serialized, as well as a bunch of other components. Also, the drive is encrypted by the T2 with encryption keys that are specific to that particular T2, so unless you replace everything including the drive, you can boot from neither the SSD nor an external drive.
The T2 will not allow you to read most of the data and it will erase itself if you try, so there’s no real way around it unless someone finds a bootrom exploit or something else that’s extremely low level.