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Comment by Saulivar | Hacker News Reader

Acquaintance of mine bought an iPad. Proudly showed it to me how he can draw this and that. 6 months later he somehow forgot the password, entered it wrong too many times and the iPad is a brick. He's 75 years old. He can't find a receipt, there's no way to restore it. There's no way to put Linux on it. There's no way to do anything. Another example - my mom. I was feeling generous, bought her an iPad as a present. Now nothing works on it anymore. You need some type of ID. The one I have never works. The whole thing is a brick. Useless piece of crap. She's 77 years old and uses her small phone screen to do anything. So that's Apple products for you. They benefit the company, not the owner. You shell out thousands of dollars, end up with a brick. I will never buy another product from Apple again. (My wife just bought a brand new iPhone. Lol). Let's see how long that will work for her.

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> The whole thing is a brick.

The problem here is that apple, in their infinite arrogance, feel that they continue to be the owner of the device you bought. The owner is who gets to set the policy. Apple here is setting and enforcing this bricking policy thus they are effectively the owner. But they still want you to pay for the device as if you were purchasing it!

The job of a vendor is to provide mechanisms to implement any kind of policy the buyer wants; the job of a buyer is to establish the policy that is best for them.

Apple wants to sell a device but continue being both the vendor and the owner of it. That is wrong.

> So that's Apple products for you.

Makes you wonder why they are so popular if this is the average user experience right?

I think this was tongue in cheek but some reasons:

* Apple products are status symbols

* Induced demand through marketing

* Ecosystem lock-in, once you go Apple it's hard to switch back out

Why they're so popular? I'll tell you why.

Because 90% of the people are irrational buyers. They buy to impress their annoying cousin, or prove that they're more worthy than his wife's sister's husband. Because Apple's products are pricey and iPad case costs more than a iPad's competitor itself.

Same reason why my friend business owner in Dubai says his employees from India buy the most expensive phone with their first salary. Just because you buy the most expensive product, doesn't mean you get the best quality. And good marketers know it.

> Makes you wonder why they are so popular if this is the average user experience right?

Because people in general don't do risk analysis. Like in the 80s when everyone still smoked despite the risk of death being well known. Oh it won't happen to me!

Then when you have to throw away that perfectly functional $1000 apple device because apple decided you can't use it anymore, only then you realize you've been had.

I mean, obviously it’s not the average user experience. For most people Apple products are not perfect but overall very solid and reliable.

Also, it’s not bricked. Just needs to be wiped:

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT211078

The average 77 year old is going to have a better experience with an iPad than they're going to have with an Ubuntu tablet

They'll brick both. But they'll complain more about the non-standard solution.

> He can't find a receipt, there's no way to restore it.

These stories are semi-ridiculous. I don't doubt this person is in the predicament you describe. But why can't he just go to an Apple Store and have them unlock it? Does this person not own an ID?

This has disturbingly happened to just about every apple device made I've owned, except the older apple computers.

The older macos devices (pre-t2 chip) are always usable. You can usually get old data off them, or they can be re-initialized.

But old ios devices? Had an old ipad, it glitched and it needs an apple id password. but it hadn't been hooked up for years and you can't connect it to wifi without it. old ipod touch? same mess.

It seems if older ios devices get out of sync of current os, it becomes hard to recover them unless you have a mac with macos that matches ios by year.

Whoever set up the device is to blame. An iPad can do everything your phone can do so its security is taken seriously. Just write down the password if you can't remember it. Or make it your dog's name. If you can't find the password anywhere then how can you expect Apple to tell the difference between you and some criminal?

The purchase history? They have a record of your ownership.

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