Apple's anti-repair and anti-refurbishment practices: Difference between revisions

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 ===Blocking operating system downgrades<!-- Will emulate "Operating system downgrades" from parent article -->===
-===Greenwashing===
+=== Activation Lock ===
-Apple claims to be environmentally friendly and invests significant amounts of funds in corresponding PR campaigns,<ref>{{Cite web |title=Environment {{!}} Mother Nature |url=https://www.apple.com/environment/mother-nature/ |access-date=2025-09-15 |website=Apple}}</ref> but the reality is not quite as green.
+Apple prevents activation of devices that have not been unlocked by the initial owner before giving them away, selling or recycling them.
-====Green energy sharing====
+The reason cited by Apple is theft prevention, but it has been argued that this practice may be in place to prevent second hand sales and recycling of devices since they would compete with new devices, and Apple only makes a profit on the latter.
-Apple shares manufacturing capacity at Chinese companies FoxConn and Pegatron with other companies. If Apple uses 20% of their manufacturing capacity, and company B, C,  D, and E also each take up 20%, and the company doing the manufacturing runs on 20% renewably generated energy, now Apple as well as companies B, C, D, and E will each publicly claim that their manufacturing runs 100% on renewable energy. In other words, each company will claim the 20% renewable energy was used for ''their'' production.<!-- This desperately need sources to back it up -->
-====CO<small>2</small> Certificates and forest projects====
+This leads to a colossal amount of e-waste from devices where the previous owner has not disabled the activation lock. It also makes the devices dependent on Apple services. If Apple one day decides to no longer support this procedure for a particular model, it becomes impossible to use. Aside from putting undue restrictions on what consumers can do with their devices, this also makes historic preservation very challenging.
-…
+A simple solution to the theft problem could be to send previous owners an e-mail to the address linked to their Apple ID with an option to either consent to the release of the activation lock or report their device as stolen. A default answer (either allow or deny unlock) could be chosen if the user does not make a choice within a reasonable timeframe, for instance if the e-mail address is no longer in use. However, Apple has so far chosen not to implement a system like this.
 ===Underpowered base models===