> Avoidant as I am of Apple's ecosystem, I can only imagine the "security" justification for serializing a display panel. Covert exfiltration of sensitive information from password managers and such?

They're a more valuable target for theft the more parts that can be "cleanly" sold.

Are ipad thieving gangs really breaking down and on selling stolen components?

Yes. I have a friend who works at Geek Squad and had to service someone who got their iPhone chop-shopped. Someone had stolen the phone, swapped out everything with knock-off parts, and then left the phone behind. The victim flagged the phone as lost on Find My so they at least got a free warranty replacement.

The fact that chop-shopping is a thing with phones now does not excuse Apple's parts serialization shenanigans.

I am not doubting you, it just is really weird that they would bother to replace the parts at all. my guess would be to try and sell the chopped unit as a real iphone? but why leave it behind?

If you make Apple devices totally worthless to thieves, you discourage theft. Make them bricks which can't even be harvested for parts.

That's the goal apparently, and it makes sense.

This.

As a user I'm okay with using only authorized components if it makes theft virtually impractical as there wouldn't be much to use even if the device is stolen.

It will give me more peace of mind as no one will have the incentive to steal an iPad anymore.

Does anybody really think that one company removing users freedom at the software level, will make thieves not steal hardware worth $1000+?

This is some silicon valley tech bubble mentality.

It makes sense from Apple's image that want to create: being associated with trust and stability, even if means less freedom at some extent.

If I ("I" as the potential customer) can buy an iPad where I can trust Apple because they are taking many measures to make my iPad non-stealable (by practically removing many incentives to steal) it would create a trustworthy image and I'd feel safer, and Apple would have reached its goal of that image.

It makes sense from Apples perspective yes, I mean, after all third party repairs was seen as a huge threat to revenue.

As a user though, lol.

Well as a user who never broke an iPad screen I'd prefer this way too.

Less reason to steal, especially being in a country where Apple device prices are skyrocketing and theft common, I'd even pay more for this to happen as an insurance.

I sure hope you don't have a bag/case for it and leave it clearly visible so that any passing thieves knows it's an apple-device they should leave be.

That people encourage being stripped of rights is just wild. Can't wait to see where this will take us...

Well I don't have a case and I work a lot outsides.

What if someone runs away with it when I'm at the restroom?

Just because you don't need it doesn't mean that there aren't anyone who needs it.

"needs it"

What is "it"?

A completely false sense of security based in technological religion?

No, nobody needs that.

I'm not. It's only creating more e-waste, and thieves will find a way around it sooner or later anyway.

Does it? Apple products have an absolutely blooming 2nd, 3rd hand markets, they easily serve 4-6 years I might even say on average.

Yes, it does, and there is no way it doesn't. If you want to argue otherwise, you'll have to logically explain how not being able to replace parts of a device leads to longer lifetimes. Because we're not talking about selling your iPad that fully works, we're talking about selling one with a broken display.

Your argument fails because you can replace parts of the device.

The goal is to make stolen components useless, not prevent repair.

You can let the parts be replaced by authorized repair shops. You can't do it yourself, you have to pay a hefty markup. This makes the replacement uneconomic for many older devices, thus creating e-waste.

3rd party repair shops don’t charge a heavy markup, which you can see by actually looking up prices. They need to compete with both Apple and people just buying a new device.

"ipad thieving gangs" makes it sound like a joke, but yes, there are people who steal iphones and ipads, and they know who to talk to to sell them, which in turn disassemble them and know who to talk to to sell the components, etc.

If you go to aliexpress you will find tons of used, original Apple components. Where do you think they came from?

Yes, in Shenzhen.

Discouraging chop shops for phones seems silly, but 3rd party repair shops have major incentive to find cheaper components. Compare the history of car stereos vs catalytic converter thefts.

I support the right to repair, but there are real issues that should be addressed. Steps like stamping catalytic converters with the cars VIN really can help.

> Then he got on twitter and started talking

Sadly, I've see this happen to several people I used to admire.

Twitter is really, really bad for certain types of people.

In my experience, TOR's been fine for latency, but the problem I've been having is getting stuck in an infinite loop of Cloudflare "Checking if the site connection is secure."

There just isnt enough exit nodes that cloud providers have opted to either blacklist, or heavily deprioritize those nodes' traffic.

I'd want to see every computer connected to the internet turn into an exit node! It makes it infeasible to block those IPs, and also prevents people from being charged a crime for such traffic.

> prevents people from being charged a crime for such traffic.

Depending on the jurisdiction, this may not be true. In any case it could cause punishment by forcing the exit node operator to get the runaround of the legal system.

Also it is conceivable that governments would update laws to make it illegal, if there was such an impact to NSA data collection to warrant it.

It's a nice thought and running an exit node is on my short term to do list, but I also recognize the costs associated with it and what it may mean for my family.

For what it's worth, I'm in a 'hot' area and my application response rate is something like 3%. I've also had this bad luck where a lot of the larger companies I've been interviewing with have rejected me without giving a reason, and then a month or two later (or one time, the day after the onsite!), I'd see that they were having layoffs.

edit: and just as an aside, I'm a minority in tech, and I feel a bit like I'm more likely to get an interview (some recruiters have told me as much... wanting to increase diversity on their teams) while also more likely to get a "technical rounds were great, but not a culture fit" final decision.

I'm a minority in tech too and I never respond to the race, ethnicity and gender questions. There are many red flags to find out which companies are likely to be racist. If the company's diversity statement is larger than the job description, I do not apply. So far this has worked pretty well for me. I applied to 25 jobs in the last month and I got 3 interviews so far. I think ethical companies that do not partake in racist statistics appreciate you not answering those questions.

Maybe not by design, but they must be worse for non-social types (or parents or people with other after work responsibilities.)

> To this day I still wonder if I was really the one unprofessional

As someone who has been in a similar place, I wouldn't think this would be any less professional than if you got in an auto accident, had to be bed-bound for several months, the company couldn't let you work remotely and you had to leave.

Depression's a bitch, it makes you want to not seek out care and makes you more likely to interpret anything in the most negative way. Try to not be too hard on yourself for how you had to handle yourself, for all you know those two extra weeks could have caused you to need to be hospitalized or slowed down treatment.