> No one is forcing you to argue that position. You said “my phone has never been stolen… Apple shouldn’t solve this… sell me a steal-able phone”.
Once again, no I didn't. Hell, the snippet "Apple shouldn’t solve this" doesn't even appear in my text.
At this point, I'm beginning to wonder if maybe you're being deliberate in doing this, because I don't understand the need to paraphrase me. If I didn't think all of those details and qualifiers were necessary, I would've just left them out myself. And while I understand that my writing is not succinct, it's not like I wrote a novel, so why not just quote what I actually said? Otherwise, it feels like I'm just having to explain how my position differs from the one you're arguing against.
> My counter is that a primary reason you never had a stolen phone is the anti-theft solutions implemented by private companies.
I will quote myself:
> I never, ever argued against "actions to stop it". I argued against this action.
Note that while I have owned a couple iPhones, the last iPhone I owned only had one "paired part" that I am aware of. I am not arguing against iCloud locking as a concept. I am not arguing against all anti-theft measures.
I can see why someone may miss this from the first comment I made, since well, I didn't explicitly say that part. However, at this point, I don't understand what else I can say.
> Personally, I think removing the incentives to theft is a great way to reduce it, and this is particularly effective. Sure repair-ability would be nice, but I repair it so infrequently and it’s sufficiently cheap that I don’t mind. As an example, expecting the police to successfully hunt and remedy every petty theft of all the phones that would be stolen instead would be a lot less resource efficient for society. We have enough crime as is that the police have better things to do than fail to find a lost phone.
I am not suggesting police go and try to find every lost phone. I am suggesting that we have a serious societal problem and we're not really doing anything about the problem itself. The fact that police can't handle every single case suggests to me that it's completely out of control. It'd worse if this was the same for e.g. shoplifting, or breaking and entering... which it is, in some areas. But we don't accept that as "normal", and we shouldn't accept this as normal either.
I realize you were explicit about the fact that police action was just an example of something that one could do, but I find it interesting that it is the example you would go to. While a lot could be said about Japan, with far less prisoners and prosecution, they have generally a lot less issue with crimes like these in particular based on both anecdotal evidence and published statistics, yet it feels like it is a foregone conclusion that there's nothing that can be done about all of this petty theft. I call shenanigans.
Furthermore, while this may sound reasonable in an era of disposable phones and new shiny toys every year, I think it's a horrid long-term outlook. To me paired parts isn't worth it: it's a threat to sustainability and civil rights, as I think Apple's practices tend to be widely emulated regardless of whether or not the outcome for consumers is ultimately good. It's already getting harder and harder to buy computers, new or used, that do what you tell them to. Paired parts is just another dark step in the wrong direction.
In the future, Apple product launches will be measured in the volume increase they make to landfills.