Are we intentionally forgetting the part about how these are recycled machines? Sometimes the business doing the recycling doesnt have direct contact with the owners, often businesses are pawning off months old machines and dont know the last user who had the machine, theres so many scenarios where its not fair to say 'just contact the previous owner' - this grey area just leads to waste, and the only one at fault is Apple
> Sometimes the business doing the recycling doesnt have direct contact with the owners,
Did the owners just push the laptop under the door and run away? At the point where they receive the laptop they can say: "If the laptop is locked it will cost you $X to dispose it here. If it is unlocked we pay you $Y."
Set X and Y appropriately and people who can will unlock them.
No, what we're saying is we only have the business's word on that, and that isn't worth very much. There are tons of shady recyclers who look the other way at laptops that "fell off the back of a truck", and I'm very confident that's what's happening here, and you (and Vice) are falling for it. The bit about multiple thousands of business laptops getting junked is a total ragebait distraction, because any business of that size has MDM enabled. What they're really complaining about is individual laptops whose provenance is unknown, and at best they don't care where they came from, at worst they're active participants in the theft rings.
>Sometimes the business doing the recycling doesnt have direct contact with the owners,
Then how do they know that they're not dealing in stolen goods? If they can't establish a chain of custody to a legitimate owner, then they're being irresponsible.
