Hacker News Reader

I don’t lose things often, but want them to be 100% useless to anyone who has decided to steal them.

How does it control how you can use it? The account owner always retains full control. It's non owners who are being restricted.

In theory. In reality it is probably Apple who is in control and the account owner is asking Apple nicely to put their device onto that list when (and only when) they ask.

I'm sure you could do this with clever cryptography by uploading your public key to the device when you first set it up then signing an attestation of wanting to lock it but this is probably not how it works.

I could spend all day worrying about what in theory could happen. Or I could just trust that it works the way it always has and when Apple violates my trust, I’ll just never buy their products again. And I’m only out around $200 for a pair of AirPods.

Which is why it should be opt-in.