[adabaed]

The question is why I need to spent my time going to apple support for resetting a simple account. This is 2022. Authenticator apps, sms, magic links. Why I need to call them, or even ask for an appointment. They just blocked my account for no reason. If this seems reasonable to any of you... I feel I stole my own computer!

[aspenmayer]

Yeah, I know. I feel for you. This sucks! So what is going on here?!

Someone may have owned or used the computer before you, even if you bought it “new.” It might have been purchased and returned and resold as new without your knowledge, and not properly removed from a prior associated Apple ID, perhaps. It might have been purchased fraudulently by this hypothetical prior owner. Or your purchase may have been flagged as fraud post-sale by the vendor for unknown or no reason, and reported to Apple as stolen by said vendor.

Apple will be able to help you with any of these concerns, if you are the legitimate owner. I don’t mean to offend, or to imply or to suggest you are not. All Apple needs to prove ownership is a picture of your receipt or a screenshot of the invoice if purchased online, whether from Apple or a third party.

[KermitTheFrog]

You right. And one of the possible Apple’s reason is that this MacBook may be stolen(from the store or reseller). In this case Apple ask for proofs of purchase.

[newman8r]

> All Apple needs to prove ownership is a picture of your receipt or a screenshot of the invoice if purchased online, whether from Apple or a third party.

If that's true, couldn't someone just print out a fake invoice, with no way for them to verify it either way?

[RKearney]

I’ve never seen invoices or receipts without some kind of unique identifier on them that could then be verified. My receipts from Chipotle are even uniquely identified by the store number, register number, date, and incrementing order number for the day.

[newman8r]

I wonder what happens if the third party retailer you bought it from goes out of business and can no longer be verified. Must be relatively rare. I'm curious if they just give the consumer the benefit of the doubt in those cases.

[aspenmayer]

As Apple is the first company to ever reach a $3 trillion dollar market cap, I’m not sure they find this to be a high priority, as they have the means to both track and remotely disable stolen devices. I believe the first time they deployed this capability en masse was after protests and looting a year or so ago.

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2020/06/local-authorities-wi...

[reaperducer]

This is 2022. Authenticator apps, sms, magic links. Why I need to call them, or even ask for an appointment.

It's inconvenient, but life is inconvenient. Such is the way of the world.

While it's true that this sort of thing shouldn't happen, your comments here seem to indicate that your big blocking point is that you don't want to talk to a human being. You want 2FA or magic links or some tech-focused hands-off method of resolving your problem.

Real life isn't like that. Sometimes you actually HAVE to go down to the DMV, or the post office, or the county clerk, or the returns counter at the store. The world is not the ideal tech utopia that the SV bubble has sold us. It's still run by wetware. Sometimes you have to just go through the motions instead of having a hissy fit on social media.

[mastax]

Isn't owning a Premium Apple Product supposed to be convenient and not like going to the DMV?

[KiDD]

You don’t even need to own an Apple product to create an AppleID.