A story about how I emailed Apple CEO Tim Cook to have my locked MacBook unlocked.
A person who got his lost MacBook back, but was unable to do anything because it was automatically activated, wrote about his experience saying that simply sending an email to Apple CEO Tim Cook solved the problem. Ta.
Unbricking my MacBook took an email to Tim Cook | TokyoDev
The person who lost his MacBook was Paul McMahon, who runs TokyoDev, a service that mediates software developers in Japan. He mistook his MacBook for someone else's at airport security and got it back a month later.
However, it seems that the MacBook that I got back was activation locked. Furthermore, someone had linked the new Apple ID to the device and turned on the 'Find' function, so even if you contacted support, they would not recognize it as Mr. McMahon's own device.
Apple's 'Find My' is a powerful device protection feature, and if you try to initialize your device with it turned on, an error will occur, and if you force the initialization, an activation lock will be applied. Mr. McMahon had never turned on Find My on his device, giving someone he didn't know the opportunity to turn on Find It. As a lesson learned, McMahon warned that you should always turn on the Find My settings.
After the above problem was
With no other option, Mr. McMahon wrote an email to CEO Cook. 'My lost MacBook came back with an activation lock on it. It refused to unlock even though I submitted a store receipt. I wrote an article about this experience and posted it on popular social media. It was posted at the top of the site's Hacker News.I would like to end this frustrating story with a happy ending,'' he wrote, and actually sent it.
Four business days later, I received a response from one of Cook's executive assistants in Japan. Mr. McMahon exchanged emails and phone calls over the next two weeks, and apparently asked his assistant to clarify the truth of the situation.
The assistant said that the MacBook was initialized once after Mr. McMahon lost it, and then reported as 'lost' by a newly created iCloud account with an email address starting with 'p.' Mr. McMahon's unlock request was denied in accordance with the company's policy of not unlocking devices that have been reported lost, even if proof of purchase has been submitted.
It seems that the existence of an unscrupulous shop was behind Mr. McMahon's MacBook being locked.
Mr. McMahon was also communicating with the person who mistook the MacBook, but he said that the person had brought the MacBook to a shop and asked them to unlock it. At that time, the shop secretly initialized the device, created an Apple ID without permission, linked it to the MacBook, and falsely claimed that the device was ``unlocked'' and charged a fee. Unfortunately, the person was unaware of the false response.
By managing the MacBook's Apple ID, the shop can lock the device or report it as lost. This is just Mr. McMahon's speculation, but it seems that the shop side may have had the purpose of locking the terminal later and forcing them to pay an additional unlock fee.
However, because Mr. McMahon submitted the documents again, the assistant was convinced that the MacBook belonged to Mr. McMahon himself and was able to successfully unlock it. Mr McMahon said: ``I haven't provided any more evidence than I originally provided, but for some reason it has been addressed.If you have an issue that cannot be resolved through the normal channels, it's worth emailing Tim Cook.'' 'I guess so.'
'Apple makes it easy to skip the Find My settings when you first activate your MacBook,' McMahon said. 'However, given the serious consequences of not doing so, we've revised the setup workflow. I think it is necessary to clarify the disadvantages or completely review the unlock policy.What I encountered this time was a rare case where someone took their MacBook to an unscrupulous shop. 'Similar unscrupulous shops may do the same to other people.'
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