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.