That's a nice tractor you've got there. It'd be a shame if something happened to it.
Can I interest you in some protection... Err, 3 year service plan?
Can I interest you in some protection... Err, 3 year service plan?
https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2023/04/bathroom-tunneling-b...
If you mean "suspicious that it might have been stolen", the buyers are suspicious too, but they don't care, they're fine with it if it means they get it for cheaper.
Why so? May be I can't but how difficult it for a repair shop?
This can be fixed by replanting a tiny chip from the old screen to the new screen, requiring extremely precise micro-soldering skills that the average repair shop doesn’t possess.
It was originally supposed to prevent a repeat of the Hon Hai Zhengzhou incident where a team of line workers mixed/matched parts from units that failed QC and sold the Frankensteined units on the grey market. (Massively oversimplified, but that's the general gist)
The resulting near-total inability to swap screens/buttons without knowing someone with FDR update access was seen as acceptable collateral damage.
If that project came my way, it would have been a hard no, go find someone else. You literally implemented the most public unfriendly feature I've seen in a long time. That's one of those cases where sometimes the cure is worse than the disease.
While I understand we are all entitled to differently prioritizing ethical red lines, it saddens me whenever I see the public suffering for the sake of increased corporate profits.
...and it is only the company that gained anything. The extra parts on the market would likely have driven prices down, making the handsets less high dollar desirable theft targets. Instead; user servicibility plummeted, planned obsolescence ensured the path of least resistance was "buy another", and the accountants likely beamed at the improvement to the bottom line while the execs patted themselves on the back for a job well done securing money that otherwise "would have been left on the table".
Oh well. So it goes.
I checked online since and it seems that even with the advent activation lock, there's still a lot of phone thefts in some countries. They just sell the spare parts and can make 100 to 200 euros between the screen and battery.
I'd imagine with John Deere tractors, there's quite a few parts that could be resold so an activation lock wouldn't necessarily reduce the value by that much.
If there's violence involved it's another story but if a victim initiates it, they themselves can get into trouble. So these thieves are trained to be ultra passive.
I've seen it myself. Other source: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2011/jul/14/woman-defends-...
https://www.macrumors.com/2023/04/06/washington-apple-store-...
Also, the data on a phone is almost always far more valuable than the phone itself. If a thief steals my phone, it’s much better for me if they erase it. But they can’t do that, so my stolen phone with all my data just sits there one exploit away from being exposed.
Activation lock only serves to benefit the manufacturer as they get to sell more phones. It doesn’t benefit the consumer at all.
Unless these thieves were rolling in money previously, I would imagine they maximize theft as much as they possibly can — why would they leave money on the table? I don’t think they’re stealing to meet some monthly quota like hired hands on a farm; they should just be acting on a risk/reward function.
And as such, I think the more likely scenario as phones decrease in value per theft, other objects are made relatively more valuable (per risk/reward), and theft would transition elsewhere.
<huh, from what?
>myself (: