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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@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
@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.
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@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
@codemonkeymike https://support.apple.com/en-ie/guide/mac-help/mh21245/mac look for the startup options process. That is what i use.
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@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.
@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.
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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 I've had to give this same bad news to more than one person who bought a used Apple computer. Somebody will sell their Mac or iPad or whatever to a pawn shop or something without doing a reset and there you go. My brother managed to unlock one he got used from Rent-A-Center, but had to spend over an hour on the phone with Apple customer support to do it. I have a feeling if he'd gotten it from Facebook marketplace or a pawn shop or something he'd have been out of luck.
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@magnetic_tape @codemonkeymike I watched the ifixit video, https://www.ifixit.com/Guide/How+to+Remove+MacBook+ID+Activation+Lock+by+T203/143072
@Victorsigmoid @magnetic_tape @codemonkeymike
Have you looked at the price for the T203 unlock kit? AliExpress has them for $275 and upwards.
Probably makes more sense when recovering quite some devices. But nothing likely what someone does for a 2-5 Macs. And then you need the appropriate hotglue gun and a functional Mac along side to reprogram the T2 chip.
Might be worth it if you got a pile of macs which the OP picture shows.
But it is clearly not good for the ability to repair/fix used machines. Quite good for device security though.
Just wondering if this approach renders previous data completely unreadable or if it's possible to scrape off data from the device somewhere in this process.
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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 what is the correct process that I should follow if I am about to donate a Mac with T2 chip in order to avoid this?
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@noodlemaz Apple will just shred it.. so it's "recycled" for the metal.. but they're not re-using it.
In my experience, it's best to wipe it, then set it up with a new local account with a dummy admin password.. then put it as a sticky note on the keyboard.
If you plan for it to be useful again. You don't need an icloud password, just a local admin password.
Hope that helps!
@codemonkeymike the battery is dead, it doesn't hold charge. So not sure it can be?
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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 I do appreciate that T2 chips make my macBook basically not a good target for thieves though: They by know understand that stealing these devices is not worth it and don't even attempt.
But it will take time until donors understand that they need to do EACS, which is quite simple:
Erase your Mac and reset it to factory settings - Apple Support
Use the Erase All Content and Settings feature to quickly and securely erase all settings, data, and apps, while maintaining the operating system currently installed.
Apple Support (support.apple.com)
But this isn't widely known yet. There's been some people who had luck with going to Apple Stores and providing some kind of guarantee that these are donated pieces but it's a hassle. But for such a big stack, buying a T203 would potentially make sense, could perhaps even be part of a hacker space's tools.
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@yama @codemonkeymike @paulywill
It's in non-volatile memory (EEPROM) embedded in the chipset. It won't forget for 100 years.@RealGene @codemonkeymike @paulywill Is that an actual number ? Well that sucks. Then there have to be other ways of fooling it
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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 Hmm, I’m about to donate a bunch of MacBooks. All personal devices that were collecting dust. I’ve reset them and reinstalled the latest macOS possible.
Any way to check if they’re still locked?
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@nicolas17 @yama @codemonkeymike @paulywill this, most modern machines use NVRAM for variable store. You can't reset it by just yoinking the power.
Not sure how it's done on T2-based x86 (assuming T2 acts as ROT), x86 itself isn't fused so firmware isn't tamper-protected but it could be done by T2 (from what I remember, T2 emulates SPI to the x86 host and actual x86 UEFI lives in dedicated portion of an "SSD".
T2 should be vulnerable to checkra1n though, so it should be possible to fool the ROT and at least modify NVRAM variables to change security policy but it would require some research.@elly @codemonkeymike @paulywill Apparently "google is not your friend" as i cant seem to find anything that concretely tells me how nvram stores data "without power". The web truly is dogcrap theese days...
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@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
@ben @miked1112 @codemonkeymike It seems pretty easy to me — go to settings > Erase > follow the guide.
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Hmm… for the hardware firmware I’d still want to have to unlock it on device rather than having an attack surface/backdoor from the internet to exploit. Apple had the issue a couple years ago with thieves exploiting the remote password change to workaround the phone protections.
But I get how it sucks for this use case.
Like a lot of things, for 99% of users who don’t care they should default to a version that’s secure from most thieves but not totally secure from government and then let the users who really care opt in to the stronger lockdown mode.
@HitokiriEric @codemonkeymike @coldclimate i havent read most of this thread, but i read up to this point and i dont plan to read any more after writing this reply here, but i just want to say, the way you talk about people is extremely infantilizing.
Like a lot of things, for 99% of users who don’t care they should default to a version that’s secure from most thieves but not totally secure from government
i think like 99% of things you have a hard time with people because you see them as helpless baby sheep who need a nanny for lacking your superior intellect. and yeah im gathering all of this from reading on reply of yours on a website... but honestly dog i feel so confident in this assessment that i am quite sure i wont be the one thinking about it in an hour.
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@codemonkeymike@fosstodon.org this is fucking evil. like its not just inconvenient and greedy, it is blatantly evil.
@LunaCOLON3 @codemonkeymike@fosstodon.org im pretty sure a Supreme Court ruling from a few years back forced apple to release flashing scripts to reset the machine to new?
ive been able to defeat T2 era chips/phones before and flash a new OS with no reference to the previous iCloud owner (at least im pretty sure I have) -
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 Reminds me that this whole ecosystem is broken - My phone number was for a few months for testing purposes in Apple business manager (some 4 years ago) as "technical contact" and even though it's not there anymore, just last year I got three calls from confused people who bought a new MacBook from one of the retailers we used and it presented them with device management window and my phone number ... Not only the retailer mistakenly assigned the serial number under the apple business manager, somehow my phone number still resufarces from time to time even though Apple representatives say it's not there anymore. And even the process of selling old Macs to users and getting them out from Apple business manager is not reliable (at least it wasn't a few years back).
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@codemonkeymike Link to information about this? Are you saying that the donors failed to clear these machines properly before getting rid of them, or that it is impossible for them to do so?
@LoneLocust @codemonkeymike yeah I’m calling BS on this. I have reset countless Macs, and while it’s true that Activation Lock is a pain, it’s completely false that it’s forever tied to an Apple account. If they remove it properly, the account association is gone completely.
It can be tricky to remove it properly because sometimes you think you removed it just for it to reappear later, but it’s absolutely doable.
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@HitokiriEric @codemonkeymike @coldclimate i havent read most of this thread, but i read up to this point and i dont plan to read any more after writing this reply here, but i just want to say, the way you talk about people is extremely infantilizing.
Like a lot of things, for 99% of users who don’t care they should default to a version that’s secure from most thieves but not totally secure from government
i think like 99% of things you have a hard time with people because you see them as helpless baby sheep who need a nanny for lacking your superior intellect. and yeah im gathering all of this from reading on reply of yours on a website... but honestly dog i feel so confident in this assessment that i am quite sure i wont be the one thinking about it in an hour.
@0x00string @codemonkeymike @coldclimate
This is an excessively rude and cruel response. The way you’re talking to people is extremely misanthropic and lacks any empathy. Honestly, dog, you’ve added nothing to this exchange except shittiness so peace out.
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@LoneLocust @codemonkeymike yeah I’m calling BS on this. I have reset countless Macs, and while it’s true that Activation Lock is a pain, it’s completely false that it’s forever tied to an Apple account. If they remove it properly, the account association is gone completely.
It can be tricky to remove it properly because sometimes you think you removed it just for it to reappear later, but it’s absolutely doable.
@can I’m not doubting that there’s a problem of locked machines downwind in the second hand market — people do die without providing their passwords, so there are machines that “died” with their owner, and that is a waste.
I’m just trying to understand in what circumstances Apple has the power to do anything about it, if any.
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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.
I'm not an apple user so I wonder, is that a result of the original user not removing their account correctly or is this is a matter of "once the owner, forever the owner"?
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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 Contact Apple. Ask for the Enterprise Support Team to look into this. You will have to have some sort of proof about what your organisation does; how you normally obtain the machines. It's likely a "device to device" decision since the devices are locked by the (ex)owner. However, in certain cases Apple may be able to help. (Note: if these used to be for example university DEP enrolled machines, Apple likely can not do anything)
