[tinus_hn]

No, you’re missing the mark. If there is to be any kind of theft protection it is going to be a protection of the device from a user, either the proper owner or a thief.

There is no way for the device to make the distinction if the owner does not register himself as the owner and the thief does. Then the thief is the owner and the device will protect itself from the real owner. There is just no way around it. That is a mistake made by the person writing the blog, they admit it and they say Apple should have made it more obvious which is a reasonable request. Not Apple should have not made the protection, that is an unreasonable request.

You might have philosophical problems with this kind of protection, fine, then don’t buy the devices because they have it, they are advertised to have it and you can’t get them without it.

Don’t buy a device that you know doesn’t do what you want and then go whining on the internet that it doesn’t do what you want. That’s a you problem.

[jtriangle]

Have you considered, for a moment, that the thief ever being able to register the device as their own is the entirety of the problem?

The owner of the device doesn't own the keys to it, apple does. That's how the OP lost access in the first place.

I will admit that, this situation was preventable, had apple required the "find my device" feature to be active upon setup. The fact is however, they do not. You can't have it both ways, if you're going to have a walled garden, then wall off the garden, no half measures, you're responsible for everything, including this mishap.

[tinus_hn]

No, you’re fantasizing about your philosophical position again. It’s all announced and advertised in advance, if you don’t like the way the products are advertised to work, don’t buy the products and don’t complain the products work the way they are advertised to work.

Whining about keys with Apple and thieves doesn’t change a thing about that, it’s just your philosophy. Registering the device to the owner is the responsibility of the owner. It would be nice if Apple would be more insistent, even though then you would whine more ‘because Apple is shoving advertising for its services down peoples throats’ or ‘because Apple is forcing people into accepting iCloud’ but we can just disregard your whining. As you agree it would be better and would have prevented the problem in the article. But that doesn’t change the fact the responsibility is with the owner. Not with Apple. The owner made the mistake, and he agrees with it.

And requiring Apple to be perfect just because they don’t subscribe to your lofty philosophy is ridiculous. If you buy the devices you accept the agreement which, just like the agreement that comes with any similar device, plainly states that the devices and the software they run are not perfect, the product is as-is, don’t like it return it.

If companies were beholden to your philosophies we would get nowhere. That’s why no company does that. It just doesn’t work.