[alanfranz]

“Those companies are selling their perfectly good used cars without giving new owners their keys, and since the security system in those cars is really good and can’t be overridden, they’re trash.

Bad carmakers! Could you just allow us to use your cars without keys??!”

Seriously. Blame on the institutions that don’t unlock the devices, maybe they just have no idea. Blaming activation lock is totally silly.

Maybe a way to “ping” an activation lock “owner” for “lock deactivation” and allow deactivation if no answer in, say, 90 days, could be a useful improvement; but the fault of this is not Apple’s.

[Shawnj2]

Some sort of way to contact people who own activation locked devices that have been stolen would be nice, I once got an activation locked Apple Watch in the mail (long story) and tried to return it to the owner and was pretty much told “no you can’t really do that” by Apple, and there’s no way to unlock it back to being a functional watch either which is my second preference if it’s completely impossible to contact the owner. The only thing I could do was sell it on eBay as an activation locked device to someone who will presumably part out the device and toss the main board since otherwise it’s just e waste for my junk drawer.